EVIL
IN THE LIGHT OF SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE
Berlin, 15th January 1914
Be sure to compare this with another version of this lecture,
The Evil.
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Basically, what we have to deal with today is an ancient issue
for mankind: the issue of the origin of wickedness and of evil
in the world. And though in our time many people are of the
view that, fundamentally, this question cannot be defined any
further, yet the human soul feels compelled to bring it up time
and again. For this question is indeed not one that rises up to
our soul just from theoretical or scientific viewpoints; it is
far more of a question that human souls are confronted with
step after step in life, because their lives are embedded in
goodness, in doing good, but also in evil and wickedness. On
the one hand, one might say, the whole history of human
thinking and reflection unfolds, in order to fully persuade us
that our questions have always been issues for the deeper
spirits in human development. On the other hand, we can study
significant and prominent thinkers of the nineteenth century
and of our time, and we will find that even with these
prominent thinkers a halt was called to all philosophy, to all
striving towards knowledge, precisely when faced with this
issue. So today, we wish to try and consider what arose from
the lecture cycle this winter about Spiritual Science, as the
basis from which perhaps we can approach some way to finding an
answer to the riddle of evil and wickedness. I say advisedly
“we can approach,” since I have often expressed
that this significant question must be addressed in a wholly
particular way: Spiritual Science does not only open that
existence to our sight which cannot be reached by external
science, but in a certain way it also makes it decisive. And we
may perhaps be able to feel about such a question, that it is
one that easily throws up the highest questions, as they are
usually thrown up, when one is at the start of striving for
knowledge in a certain way. That leads to real striving for
knowledge, and often it only shows the initial steps on the
path, through which one can gradually approach a solution to
the major riddles of life.
First
of all, permit me to raise one point in advance, that should
make clear how deeply this question has occupied the hearts and
souls of significant thinkers throughout long ages. We can go
far back into human development; but first we would like to
refer to thinkers in the last centuries before the foundation
of Christianity in Greece: to the Stoics, that group of
remarkable thinkers which, following the views of Socrates and
Plato, tried to answer this question: how should human beings
behave, so that their behaviour corresponds to their deepest
being, to their previously prescribed and recognisable purpose?
This can be designated as the fundamental question for the
Stoics. And as an ideal for humanity, that strove to insert its
purpose in the universe accordingly, the ideal of the wise
surfaced before the soul vision of the Stoics. — It would
take us too far, if we were to exhaustively portray the ideals
of the Stoics, and how this all is connected with the general
stoical world view. But one point at least must be raised, that
in Stoicism an awareness came into play, that human development
was going towards an ever clearer and clearer self-aware human
being, in order to work upon the human consciousness of the I.
This was said in the stoic manner: this I, through which
humanity is enabled to insert itself in full clarity in the
world, this I, can be darkened, and can at the same time deaden
itself; and this deadening happens if a human being allows
feeling life to enter too strongly into the surging wave-play
of imagination and perception. To the Stoics, if a human being
were to allow the clarity of the I to be submerged, to be
befogged by the being of pain and emotion, this seemed a kind
of spiritual impotence. For this reason, for the Stoics,
holding back the pain and emotion within the human soul, and
striving for peace and equilibrium, led to freedom from the
spiritual impotence of the soul.
We can
see what must often be raised here, as the first step on the
path to knowledge of the spiritual world, which also consists
of this: that the wild waves of the being of pain and emotion,
that at the same time create a spiritual impotence, are held
back, so that the clarity of soul vision is extracted from the
full experiences of the soul. What is here set out as the first
steps on the path that leads into spiritual vision, all that
swirled around before the Stoics. As regards Stoicism, I have
tried to bring to the fore precisely this side of Stoic being
in the new edition of my “World and Life Views in the
Nineteenth Century,” since it is still only little worked
upon in the history of philosophy. In the matter just
described, conquering pain, conquering sentiment appeared as an
ideal before Stoicism. And that which inserts itself as wisdom
in the development of the world, recognises in the meaning of
Stoicism, that the development of the world was able to take it
up. That world development was also shot through with wisdom,
so its wisdom must also reach up into the flowing of cosmic
wisdom.
Always, when the question surfaces: how does the human self
position itself in the whole structure of the cosmic order?
— Another question then arises: how does the cosmic order
permit wisdom, (which humanity must assume, if it wants to
embed itself into the cosmic order) to unite firstly with that
which rules as evil in the widths of world experience, and
secondly with what wickedness has set up in opposition to human
striving for wisdom in the world?
Now,
before the soul vision of the Stoics stood what was later
called divine providence. How did a Stoic find himself then,
with regard to this assumption of evil and wickedness?
Something had already surfaced within Stoics, which even today
can be put forward as a kind of justification of evil and
wickedness, (if we do not want to penetrate into spiritual
science itself, but only go up to the doors to the same). This
arose before the Stoics as the need for human freedom. And now
they could say to themselves: if a human should strive through
his/her freedom towards the ideal of wisdom, the possibility
must be offered to him/her also not to strive.
Freedom must reside in striving for the ideal of wisdom. But
with this it must be allowed, that one can also remain behind
with those features, from which one strives upwards; it must be
granted that at the same time one can plunge into the being of
sentiment and pain. Then, as the Stoics thought, they plunge
down into a kingdom that is not their own human kingdom, but
really a kingdom below their true humanity. And to want to
reject the wise cosmic order, so that a human can plunge down
into such a kingdom that is beneath him/her: doing that is so
clever, as if one were to reject the wise cosmic order, since
under humanity there is a kingdom of animal, plants and
minerals. The Stoics knew that there is a kingdom into which a
human being can plunge down, from which his wisdom is far
removed: but if he/she can drag himself out of it, but it must
be from his/her own free choice, his/her wisdom.
We can
see: the concept that many people have who stand before the
door to the answers laid out by Spiritual Science about the
meaning of evil, already resided in ancient Stoic wisdom; and
one cannot say that the grasp of evil as such has shown any
real progress in later centuries. At the same time this can
emphasise for us, how to go out and encounter a spirit, who was
otherwise an exceptionally significant spirit, who lived in the
time since the foundation of Christianity and who had a major
influence on the forming of Western Christianity: to
Augustine. Augustine too had to think over and research
the meaning of evil in the world; and he came to a singular
expression: that evil and real wickedness hardly exist, but
they are simply something negative in that they are the
negation of good. So Augustine said to himself: goodness is
something positive; but in the end a human being in his/her
weakness is not always able to perform it, so that goodness is
limited. This limited goodness needs to be explained as
something positive, as little as the shadows that are cast
forth by the light, need to be explained as something positive.
If one were to hear the Church Father Augustine speak about
evil, so one might perhaps find such an answer naïve
compared with what one might imagine is thinking that has
progressed for a few centuries. But how things truly stand with
regard to the question of the meaning of evil, can be set out
before us, through the answer an erudite man gave precisely the
same answer in our time: Campbell, who described the
so-called “New Theology” and whose works in certain
circles had created a great sensation. He too believes, that
one cannot enquire about evil and wickedness, because they show
nothing positive, but are simply something negative. We do not
wish to get involved in hair-splitting philosophical deductions
to refute the viewpoint of Augustine — Campbell. Since,
for anyone who can think with an open mind free of prejudice,
this response about the simple negativity of evil stands on the
same ground as the answer someone might make and says: What
then is cold? Cold is only something negative, namely the
absence of heat. Therefore, one cannot speak of it as something
positive. But if one turns around when it is cold, with no furs
or winter clothes on, so one will then feel this negative as
something very positive! This image should make it fully clear,
how little one straightens things out with this answer that
truly does not go beneath the surface, and which indeed even
major philosophers of the nineteenth century have given: that
with regard to evil and wickedness we have nothing to do with
anything positive. It may be that in this regard, we have
nothing to do with anything positive; but this “not
positive” is precisely as negative as cold is compared
with heat.
Now we
could put forward a whole group of other thinkers, who through
the preparation of their own soul life, one would like to say,
came close to what Spiritual Science now has to state. For an
example of such, one could put forward Plotinus the
Neo-Platonist, who lived in post-Christian times and still
followed the principles of Plato; and with him also put forward
at the same time a large number of other thinkers who have
thought about evil and wickedness in the world. They tried to
make the following clear: that a human being is put together
from a spiritual and a material-bodily nature. By plunging down
into the bodily, a human being shares in the characteristics of
matter, which from the outset creates obstacles and limitations
in opposition to the activity of the spirit. In this plunging
down of the spirit into matter lies the very
origin of evil in human life; but therein also lies the origin
of evil in the outer world.
That
such a view has not just been considered simply in the heads of
individual thinkers as a satisfactory answer to this major
question about the significance of evil and wickedness in the
world, even though it is greatly widespread, can explain a
comment that I will not suppress, because maybe it will make
our situation more precisely clear. I will refer to a thinker
from an entirely different region: to the significant Japanese
thinker, who was a pupil of the Chinese thinker Wang Yang Ming:
namely Nakae Toju. For him everything that constitutes
experience of the world, consists of two things, of two
entities on could say. For him, one entity is this, that he
looks up to as to the spiritual, and it permits the human soul
to take part in the spiritual: this entity he called Ri.
Then he looked at what bodily forms a human being, and which
permits the bodily to take part in everything through which is
it constructed from matter: and that entity he called
Ki. And from the particular juxtaposition of Ri and Ki
all beings arose, according to him. For this thinker from the
East, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century,
mankind is partly made of Ri and of Ki. But, because the human
soul must plunge down with its Ri into Ki in its experience,
from Ki the will streams out against it — and with will
comes desire. Thus, the human soul in its life is involved in
willing and desiring, and so it stands before the possibility
of evil.
This
thinker from the East, who lived a reasonably short time before
us, as was said, in the first half of the seventeenth century,
is not far removed from what in Western lands, at the time of
Neo-Platonism, of Plotinus for example, one tried to set forth
as the origin of evil: humanity's involvement in matter. We
shall see later that it is important to refer to this in this
way, in order to answer the question of the origin of evil with
the involvement of humanity in matter. Precisely this comes to
meet us in the most remote circles of human thinking. A thinker
of the nineteenth century, who truly was one of its most
significant ones, tried to examine evil and wickedness, and I
would like to briefly portray the main points of his thinking.
He saw in the world around him, part evil, part human
wickedness, and he stood before evil and wickedness as a
philosopher, who had trained himself in depth about the
characteristics of human nature in particular: Hermann
Lotze, one of the most significant thinkers of the
nineteenth century, whose very significant
“Microcosm” for example, amongst others, described
meaningful philosophical works for the nineteenth century. Let
us try to call up others before our souls, from amongst our
most significant contemporaries, who like Hermann Lotze stood
before the issue of evil. He said to himself: evil does not try
to deny its existence. How have we attempted to answer the
question of evil? For example, it has been said, that evil and
wickedness must be there in life; since only through learning
how the human soul struggles out of evil, can we be educated.
Now Lotze was no atheist, but one who assumed God as living and
weaving throughout the world, so he said: how should one then
put the idea of education about evil and wickedness? One must
assume that God has used evil and wickedness, in order to
develop humanity and to elevate it to the free use of its soul.
That could only happen, if humans were to organise this inner
working for themselves, that is organise our working the way
out of evil, and only through this, then learn to recognise
one's own true being and its true worth.
Against this Lotze objected at the same time: whoever gives
such an answer, does not take account of the animal kingdom
first of all, into which in truth not only evil but also
wickedness have entered comprehensively. How does cruelty rise
up to meet us in the animal kingdom, how does everything, that
is taken up in human life, and which can become the most
fearsome burden, come to meet us everywhere in the animal
kingdom! But whoever wants to lead us to the animal kingdom in
this field as regards education, can they not also run into the
same animal kingdom issues? So Lotze turned away from the idea
of education. In particular he drew attention to the fact that
omnipotence of God would contradict this idea of education;
since it was only possible then, Lotze thought, to extract the
best in a being from the worst: once the worst had been given.
But that would contradict the omnipotence of God: first
we must work our way out of the worst, at the same time as
preparing to be able to build goodness thereupon. So Lotze
turns around to say: maybe one should consider more like
someone who says that whatever is evil, what is bad, is
wickedness. This arises not through the omnipotence of God, nor
through the will of any conscious being; but evil is connected
with that which exists in the world, in the way for example
that the three angles of a triangle that add up together to
180º, are related to a triangle. So, if God wanted to
create a world, he must conform to that which is true without
him. So any world that he wanted to create is perforce
connected with wickedness and evil. So, he must, if he wanted
to create a world, prepare evil and wickedness along with it.
— Against this Lotze objected: but then we limit what we
can properly assume is the working and weaving of a divine
being through the world. Since, when one observes the world,
then one must say: according to general laws, according to
which the appearances of the world can be thought through, it
is very likely that it could be thought of without evil and
wickedness. If we observe the world, we must say at once, that
wickedness contravenes real freedom; so it must be from
arbitrariness that freedom was called into being by the divine
being.
We
could add still other matters that Lotze and other thinkers
have said on the problem and riddle of evil — Lotze is
mentioned here only as being typical. I will only draw your
attention to that to which Lotze came to in the end, because
that will be important for us later. So Lotze turned against
the German Philosopher Leibnitz, who had written a
“Theodysee,” that was a justification of God
against evil, and had come to the view that this world, even if
it also contained much evil, was still the best possible of all
worlds. Because if it was not the best one possible, Leibnitz
thought, then either God did not know the best possible world
— and that conflicts with his all- knowingness; or else
he must not have wanted to create it, which conflicts with his
all-goodness; or he must not have been able to do so —
and that conflicts with his omnipotence. Now, Leibniz says,
since in thought one cannot conflict with these three
principles of God, one must assume that the world is the best
one possible. — Now against this Lotze objected: in any
case one cannot speak of an omnipotence of God, since in the
world, where evil exists and the wicked reigns, this would be
held to be outflowing from God. Therefore, one must say, as
Lotze thought, Leibnitz has limited the omnipotence of God and
by doing so won for himself the teaching of the best of all
possible worlds.
Now,
Lotze thought, there is still a way out. One must say: in
general, when we observe the cosmos one can see overall order
and harmony; evil and wickedness can only be seen in the
details. So Lotze said: but what can a viewpoint give, which
depends solely from the vision of humanity? Since about a
world, where in general and as a whole, order and harmony
command, so as to be able to astound us, and where in details
evil and wickedness show themselves as black spots, one could
also use the expression: what does it say, when in general and
as a whole, order and harmony command in a world, and in
details everywhere evil and wickedness is to be found? Here
Lotze thought — and this was the culmination of his
experience to which we wanted to refer-, one should rather say
this one thing: evil and wickedness are indeed in the world. It
must be wise that wickedness is there alongside excellence, and
evil alongside good; it is just that we cannot see this wisdom.
And so we are obliged to accept evil and wickedness beyond the
boundaries of our knowledge. It must indeed be wisdom, which is
not human wisdom Lotze thought: wisdom we cannot reach and
which justifies evil. So Lotze transposed the wise concepts of
evil and wickedness into an unknown world of wisdom.
At
least I have expressly made these arguments, which for many
will seem more or less pedantic, because they show us with what
weapons humanity tried to approach the concept of evil and
wickedness in philosophical thought, and how here we have found
this confession time and again: these weapons have proven
themselves to be completely blunt against such an enigma, which
we come up against step by step in life; and even as Lotze
says, they are completely unsuitable.
Now
there is also another thinker, who tried to explore even
further than Plotinus did into this, that is, in fact into the
underground of being, which can only be reached after a certain
development of the soul aimed at uplifting it to higher
faculties of knowledge. Such a thinker was Jakob
Böhme. And if one approaches Jakob Böhme, one
approaches certainly a spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, into which not many nowadays even wish to penetrate,
since today he is seen more as a kind of curiosity. Jakob
Böhme tried to penetrate into the depths of the world and
its appearance up to the point where he felt something like a
kind of Theosophy rising up in himself, as a kind of vision of
God in his own inner being; and he now tried to make clear to
himself, how wickedness and evil are to be pursued into the
deepest underground of the world, and how evil and wickedness
are not something simply negative, but are in a certain way
rooted in the underground of the world and of human existence.
Jakob Böhme saw the divine being as something, that in
him, as he said — we must first of all become accustomed
to his way of expressing himself — one must enter
“amicably.” A being that allows its activity to
flow out into the world at the same time, could never manage to
grasp its own self. This activity must, one would like to say,
hit up against something. Basically, each morning in waking up
we perceive this to a small degree, and that is what Jakob
Böhme put into his imagination. When we wake up, we are in
a position so to speak, to unfold our soul-spiritual being to
an unlimited extent from our soul-spiritual activity. There we
hit up against our environment with our soul- spiritual
activity. Through this, that we hit up against our
surroundings, we become aware of ourselves. In general, a human
being is only self-aware in the physical world, in that he hits
up against things. The divine being cannot be such that it hits
up against others. It must set up its adversary, or as Jakob
Böhme stated in several expressions, its “no”
against its “yes” for itself. It must limit its
endlessly out-flowing activity in itself. That is…it must
“amicably” distinguish, it must at the same time at
a certain point create its own opposite on the surrounding
circle of its activity; so for Jakob Böhme it was
necessary for the divine being, in order to become self-aware,
for it to create its own adversary. Now through taking part in
the being of a creature, Jakob Böhme thought, not only
that which streams out of the diving being, but from what the
divine being had to create necessarily as its adversary,
wickedness arises: evil above all arose in the world. The
divine being set itself up against its own adversary, in order
to become self- aware. Therefore, we cannot speak of evil and
wickedness, but only of the necessary conditions of the
divinity for becoming self-aware. But since creatures arose,
and those creatures are not simply embedded in out-flowing
life, but take part in the adversary, evil and wickedness have
arisen.
Certainly, such an answer cannot be satisfactory to those who
attempt to penetrate through spiritual science into the secrets
of existence. This is set out here solely in order to show to
what depths a sensible thinker goes, if he researches the
source of evil in the world. And accordingly, I could also add
much that could show us more than what we have found shining
back from the world as an answer, when we try and draw close to
enigmas, amongst which are wickedness and evil. If we now try
and relate to what at the same time arises before us as a
confession of one of the most prominent thinkers of the
nineteenth century, as a confession by Lotze, we can say
something like the following. Lotze is of the view, that there
must be such wisdom somewhere, which justifies evil and
wickedness. But mankind is limited in its capacity for
knowledge; it cannot penetrate to that wisdom. — Are we
not standing before, what we have often been forced to mention:
that it is a beloved prejudice of our own time, to take our
capacity for knowledge as it once was, and to hardly to reflect
upon the fact that something could come out of the objects
which are in our daily lives; something that could rise above
itself, in order to have insight into other worlds, more than
the simple world of the senses and the understanding related to
the senses? Maybe it has already arisen before us, so that we
are unable to find the answers to significant questions such as
the origin of evil, because with regard to knowledge that turns
to the senses and to the understanding that is related to the
sense world, it spirals upwards above and away from this
knowledge towards another knowledge. Along the path a way must
be found, of which I have often spoken here, a way along which
the human soul triumphs over that which is our everyday and
usual scientific viewpoint. We have often spoken of the
possibility that the human soul struggles to release itself
from its bodily nature, that it really can perform a spiritual
chemistry, that even releases the soul-spiritual element in
mankind from the bodily, just as in outer chemistry, hydrogen
is released from water. We have spoken of this: when a human
being so releases his/her soul-spiritual nature from the
bodily-corporeal one, so that it can rise up to the spiritual
and that its bodily nature stands over against the
soul-spiritual, so when the soul-spiritual is outside the body
and is able to perceive in a spiritual world, then it can see
into the depths of the world through direct experience, not
within but outside of its body, as far as this knowledge is
accessible to him/her. Maybe we should ask ourselves here: what
then comes to meet us, when we truly try to walk along this
path of spiritual research, the path that has often been
described here, and which is set out extensively in my book
“How does One Achieve Knowledge of the Higher
Worlds?” What are the experiences one arrives at, when
one really follows this path, in order to become a participant
in super-sensible worlds? Now it will specially interest us,
how what we usually call evil in everyday life positions itself
on this path. We only need to look somewhat into everyday evil,
what people call evil in everyday life. There it emerges, when
a spirit researcher begins on his/her path, in order to rise up
to soul-spiritual worlds, in order to truly come out of the
bodily with his/her soul-spiritual being and to perceive free
of the body, that everything that he/she must look back upon as
evil, yes even upon imperfection in life, sets the hardest
obstacles on his/her path. The most difficult hindrances come
from that which one must look back upon as something imperfect.
With this I do not want to say that the arrogant teaching
follows logically: that anyone who achieves vision in the
spiritual world as a spiritual researcher must be called a
perfect human being. This should not be understood at all
through saying this. But it should be repeated, what was once
very forcefully emphasised: that the path to spiritual research
is martyrdom in a certain sense, and it is so precisely on the
basis that in the moment in which one comes out into the
soul-spiritual from the bodily and takes part in the spiritual
world, one looks back upon one's life with its imperfections
and now knows: you bear these imperfections with you as a comet
bears its tail. You bore them in yourself in other lives and
must compensate for them in later lives. What you have stepped
over until now, without having an awareness of it, now you can
see. — This tragic insight into that which we are in
everyday life depends on how a human being seeks out the way
upwards to the spirit world. If it does not depend upon this,
then it is not the true path to the spirit world. Of this act
one must say: a certain seriousness of life starts, when one
steps up into the spirit world. And if man gains nothing else,
at least one conquers this one thing: that one can see one's
own evil and one's own imperfections with endless clarity. So,
one might say: one conquers an experiential knowledge of evil
and imperfection with the very first steps that one takes
upwards into the spirit world.
Where
does this come from? When we look closer to see where it comes
from, we find in this the essential feature of all human evil,
so to speak. In my last book “The Threshold of the
Spiritual World” I tried to refer to precisely this
essential feature of evil, as far as it proceeds outwards from
mankind. The common essential feature of all evil is none other
than selfishness. — If I wanted to prove this in detail,
what I will now set out here, I should have to speak for
several hours; but I will only set this out and each person may
then follow up for themselves with the further run of thoughts
that follow as a consequence. They will also be followed up on
in the next lectures, where we shall speak of the “Moral
Basis of Human Life.” Basically, all human evil comes
forth from what we call selfishness. We shall go and follow
through from the smallest details, which we regard as human
slip-ups, to the strongest crimes, that are human imperfections
and human evil, regardless of whether they are portrayed to us
as apparently arising more from the soul or apparently more
from the bodily: the common essential feature, that comes from
selfishness is universally present. We find the true meaning of
evil, when we think of it as bound up with human selfishness;
and we find all striving outwards and over imperfections and
evil, when we see this striving upwards in the struggle against
what we call selfishness. A great deal of careful thinking has
been done over some ethical principle or another, over some
moral basis or another; but the deeper we plunge into ethical
principles and moral foundations, precisely this shows us that
selfishness is the common root of all human evil. And so we
might say: the more a human being works him/herself free of
evil here in the physical world, the more he/she overcomes
selfishness.
Now
this result leads to another one just behind it; and it is so
made one might say, that it is almost oppressive in spiritual
investigation, truly oppressive. So what should one then
develop, when one seeks to find the way up to the spiritual
worlds, to those worlds, that one must look at with the soul-
spiritual outside of the body?
When
you take this all together, with what I have referred to as
soul exercises in the run of these lectures, and which must be
used in order to penetrate into the spiritual world, you will
find that they run on, in order to strengthen certain soul
characteristics, which the soul has in the sense-world, that
make the soul stronger and more powerful, so it can set itself
up more and more independently. Now what comes out in the
physical-sense world as selfishness, that must be strengthened,
must be made more intensive when a human being steps up and
into the spiritual world. Since only in a strengthened soul,
which strengthens those powers in itself that are its very own,
which are in its Ego, and are rooted in its I, only such a soul
can rise up to the spiritual world. Precisely that which a
human must set aside, who wants to appropriate moral principles
for the physical world, must be strengthened on the way to the
spirit world. A significant mystic made the following
statement:
When a rose decorates itself,
It also decorates the garden.
This
is certainly true up to certain limits. But in human life
selfishness also goes forth, if the human soul is only seen as
a “rose” that decorates itself. But for the spirit
world, that is perfectly valid. In the spirit world what lies
in the expression: “When a rose decorates itself, it also
decorates the garden” is present to a higher degree. If
the soul rises up to the spirit world, and there it is all the
more a useful tool, the more it has been strengthened in itself
and has worked outwards on what lies in its inner fullness.
Just as one cannot use an instrument that is imperfect, so can
the soul itself not use what it has not fully driven out: what
lies in it from its I, from its ego.
From
this comparison, which takes us away from all facile phrases
and leads us into the actual facts that should not be
concealed, we now see that this spiritual world stands in
relation to the physical sense-world: that the latter must make
the former its own task completely. If a human being could only
live in the spirit world, then he/she would only be able to
develop inner faculties because of the law which must be valid:
“When a rose decorates itself, It also decorates the
garden”; he/she could not develop those faculties that
would bring him/her together with other people, and with the
whole world as a benefactor. We must find our abode in the
physical world that enables us to overcome selfishness.
Otherwise we have no duty to be benefactors in the world,
except when we fundamentally educate ourselves away from
selfishness, if I may use a trivial expression.
Now
the same thing that a spiritual researcher finds to be
definitive, namely the strengthening of his/her soul in order
to rise up to the spiritual world, that same thing is equally
definitive when a human being goes through the gate of death in
a natural way, and goes into that world that lies between death
and a new birth. There we transpose ourselves into a world,
which a spiritual researcher has also reached through his/her
soul development. There we must bring the characteristics that
the soul has allowed to become strong in itself, which make the
sentence true within the soul that runs: “When a rose
decorates itself, it also decorates the garden.” In the
instant in which we go through the gate of death, we enter into
a world, in which our I comes to its highest elevation and
strengthening. What we have to do in that world, we will hear
in the lecture: “Between Human Death and Rebirth.”
Now reference should only be made to this, that in this
spiritual world, in essence only that which the soul has itself
sent in arrives into this spiritual world, in accordance with
what it has experienced in previous earthly lives, in order to
structure the following. It must, to the extent that it
corresponds to its destiny, primarily be concerned with itself,
in the spiritual world between death and a new birth.
When
we observe the human soul in this way, then the following
appears to us from two different viewpoints. The way how
selfishness can be transformed into becoming a benefactor
appears in its meaning for the physical-sense world, since this
is the large training ground, where the one must come out from
the other, so that it may be something of value for the larger
circles of existence. And the world between death and rebirth
appears to us as that in which the soul must live with more
power, and for which the soul would immediately be useless, it
were to enter into this world weak and not empowered in this
way.
What
follows thereupon, that the soul has these two
characteristics?
It
follows from this, that a human must in fact protect him or
herself from that which in one field, in one world is
excellent, namely the lifting up of the inner soul into another
world so as to somehow use it at the highest level to achieve
the spiritual world; but that must be stricken by evil and by
the worst, if a human permits him or herself be penetrated by
what he/she must live out of as his/her being in the
physical-sense world: what is useful to him/her as worthy
preparation for the kingdom of the spirit. Thus we must
precisely be strong in the spirit between death and new birth,
in the strengthening and empowering of our I, with which we can
prepare for ourselves such a physical sense being, so that in
outer existence, in the acts and thoughts of the physical world
we can be as unselfish as possible. We must use our selfishness
before our birth in the spiritual world to work upon ourselves;
we must look upon ourselves in such a way that we can become
unselfish in the physical world, that is to say, moral.
Here,
at this point lies everything that one could name as the most
valuable for a person who wants to penetrate into the spiritual
world. In fact, one must be clear, that one sees one's own evil
and imperfection not otherwise than as a shadowy outline, when
one is in the spiritual world. That is what shows us, that we
must remain connected to the sense world, and how our karma,
our destiny must bind us to the sense world, until we
have broken through into the spiritual worlds so far that we
are able to live not only with ourselves alone, but with the
whole world. It shows as if on a screen, how things stand with
evil, what is essential in spiritual progress, namely self-
perfecting: that must be used on the things of outer life.
Trying to make spiritual progress is not something we can allow
to cease. That is our duty, far more. And that duty is
development for humanity, which is the law for all other
living beings. But evil is using directly in outer life, that
which is fitting for spiritual development. These two, outer
physical life with its morality must necessarily place a second
adjacent world, next to that towards which the soul strives
inwardly, if we wish to approach the spiritual world.
Now
there is something present however, that could appear to be a
contradiction. But one would like to say, the world lives in
such living paradoxes. It must be said: one must strengthen
oneself in the soul; precisely the ego, the I must become
stronger in order to penetrate into the spiritual world. But if
a spiritual step up were only to develop selfishness, then it
would not get very far. But what does that mean? It means: one
must enter into the spirit world without selfishness; or rather
that one cannot enter without selfishness — which each of
us who enters into the spiritual world must painfully
acknowledge, —, so one must have all selfishness so
objectively before one, that one sees one's own selfishness, to
which one is bound in the outer world. One must also consider
how to become an unselfish person using the means of the
physical life, because one no longer has the opportunity in the
spiritual world to become unselfish, because there one arrives
at the strengthening of the soul life. That is only an apparent
contradiction. Even when we enter the spiritual world, even
when we go through the gate of death into the spiritual world,
we must live there with what is present as strength in our
inner being. But we cannot achieve this, if we cannot achieve
this through selfless life in the physical world. Selflessness
in the physical worlds is mirrored as the correct selfishness
that raises value in the spiritual world. We can see how
difficult the concepts become, as we near the spiritual world.
But now one sees at the same time, what human life can involve.
So now let us assume that a human being comes through birth
into physical being. In that case, it means, that if that being
that was in the spirit world before birth or conception,
between the last death and the present birth, is clothed in the
physical body, then the possibility is present that the person
with this, which must at the same time be the life force of the
spirit world, pulls through to its physical body unjustifiably;
that the soul strays into the bodily, in that it brings down
into the physical world that which is good in the spirit world.
Then, what is good in the spirit world becomes evil, becomes
wickedness in the physical world! That is a significant secret
of existence, that a human can bring down what it necessarily
needs in order to be a spiritual being, what in a certain sense
can be portrayed as its highest being for its spiritual being,
into the physical world, and that its highest and best
spiritual nature can become the deepest error in the physical
sense world.
Through what does evil enter life? Through what is so-called
crime in the world?
It is
present through the fact that a human being permits his/her
better nature, not the worse one, to plunge down into
the physical-body, which as such cannot be evil, and to develop
those features there, which do not belong in the physical and
bodily but belong precisely in the spiritual. Why can we humans
be evil? Because we should be spiritual beings! Because we must
come into the position, as soon as we live our way into the
spirit world, to develop those features, which become bad, if
we use them in the life of the physical sense world. If you
allow those features which are lived out in the physical world
as cruelty, malice for its own sake and others, to be taken out
of the physical sense world, and let the soul be penetrated by
them and live them out in the spirit world instead of the
physical sense world, then there they will take us further,
towards perfecting characteristics. That a human being uses the
spiritual in the opposite way in the sense world, that leads to
its evil. And if he/she could not be evil, he/she could not be
a spiritual being. Since the characteristics that can make
him/her evil, he/she must have; otherwise he/she could never
rise up to the spiritual world.
Perfection lies herein, that a human being learns to penetrate
himself/herself through and through with the insight: you
should not use the features that make you into an evil human
being in physical life, not in this physical life; since as
much as you use them here, so much you take away from the
empowering characteristics of the soul for the spiritual, so
much you need to awaken yourself to the spiritual world. There
these characteristics are in their correct place. So we see, as
spiritual science shows, that evil and wickedness through their
own nature indicate that we must assume a soul-spirit world
alongside the physical world. Then why do the human faculties
of knowledge of someone like Lotze or other thinkers freeze,
when they observe the sense world and say: we cannot penetrate
into the origin of evil and wickedness? Because of what is
present — a capacity for knowledge that cannot penetrate
to the spiritual world —, because it cannot enlighten
evil starting from the physical world, because it is a misuse
of powers that belong in the spirit world! No wonder also, that
no philosopher, who has a viewpoint from the spirit world, can
find the essence of evil in the physical sense world!
And if one has a tendency to penetrate from here into a further
world, in order to find the origin of evil, then also does one
not come to any knowledge of outer evil, of that which we
encounter as badness and imperfect in the outer world, such as
for example in the animal world. So, we must be clear, that
evil in human behaviour arises from this, that what for a human
being is great and perfect in one world, as soon as it is
uprooted into another world, it is changed over into its
opposite. But when one considers evil independently of humanity
in the world, the evil that flows through the animal world,
then one has to say: we must then be clear upon this, that not
only beings like humans are present, who through their life,
bring down what belongs in the spirit world and there is great,
and bear them into another world where it is out of place.
Other beings must also exist — and a glance onto the
animal world shows us also, that apart from humanity other
beings must exist, which in the region, where humanity cannot
take its evil, now bear their wickedness and so create evil.
That means, that we are led by the knowledge of where the
source of wickedness lies, at the same time to recognise that
not only can humanity insert itself as imperfect in the world,
but also that other beings are there, which can bring
imperfections into the world. And so we say that it is no
longer incomprehensible, when a spiritual researcher says: the
world of animals is basically an outer formation of an
invisible spirit; but in that spirit world beings are there,
which have done before humanity itself, what mankind now does,
in that it inserts the spiritual unjustifiably into the
physical world. From this all the evil in the animal world has
arisen.
It
should be stated today, that people are wrong if they believe
one can ascribe the impulse for evil to this involvement in
matter, based upon material existence, because the soul is
involved in a material existence. No, evil arises precisely
thought the spiritual characteristics and through the spiritual
possibilities of activity of humanity. And we must say to
ourselves: where lies the wisdom in the world order, that
wished to limit mankind to this, to only unfold goodness in the
sense world — and not evil, as we see through it, as we
have seen, that it necessarily must take power in order to go
forward in the spirit world? Through the fact that we are a
being that belongs both to the physical world and to the
spiritual world, and that in us not the imperfection, but the
perfection of spiritual law lies, we are placed in a position,
like a pendulum, that can swing out to one side; and we are
placed in the position to swing out to the other side, because
we are spirit beings, which can bear the spiritual into the
physical world, in order to realize evil there, as others,
beings who perhaps higher than mankind are able to realize
evil, which they have borne into the sense world, and which
should belong solely in the spirit world.
I know
very well that in such a portrayal of the origin of wickedness
and evil something has been said today, which can only be
enlightening to a small number of human beings, but who live
ever more and more into the human soul life. For one will find
that resolving the problems of the world overall is only
possible, when we think of our world as one with a spiritual
basis. Humanity may one day finish with the perfection of the
sense world — there is also an illusion about such
things; but with the imperfections, with wickedness and evil,
it will never come to an end, if it does not want to seek, to
what extent this wickedness and evil must be in the world. And
one has insight, that it must be in this world, if one says to
oneself: evil is only displaced into the physical world. If the
characteristics which mankind uses unjustifiably in the
physical world, and which there establish evil, were used in
the spirit world, so mankind would go forward there.
I have
no need to say that it would be entire nonsense, if someone
were to draw conclusions from what has just been said: that you
portray that only villains move forward in the spiritual world.
It would be a complete travesty of what has been said. This is
because these characteristics only become evil through their
being used in the sense world, and they undergo a kind of
immediate metamorphosis if they are used in the spirit world.
Whoever wishes to raise such an objection, resembles someone
who says: so you maintain that it is entirely good, if a human
being has the strength to smash a watch? Certainly it is good
if he has that strength; but he does not need to use that
strength to smash the watch. If it is used to cure humanity,
then it is a good power. And in this sense, one must say: the
powers that a human being allows to flow into evil, are only
evil in that place; used right in the right place, are they
good powers.
It
must lead us deep into the secrets of human existence, if one
can say: through what is mankind evil? Through its using the
powers granted to it for its perfection, in the incorrect
place! Through what is wickedness, is evil in the world?
Through humans using forces that are lent to them in an
unsuitable world.
In our
present time one could say at once: for the underlying soul
there is a distinct tendency present to incline towards the
spirit world. A more precise intimate glance onto the
nineteenth century and on up to our present time could teach us
this. Against this in the nineteenth century amongst the
philosophers there also came into play what has been called
pessimism, a world view that immediately looks at the wicked
and to the evil present in the world, and draws the conclusion
some individuals have already drawn it —, that this world
cannot be seen as good overall, that something other is
required of mankind, than being led to its end. I will only
refer to Schopenhauer or to Eduard von Hartmann,
who both saw the solution for mankind, in that they said: an
individual can only find his/her salvation in the rise of world
processes, but not in a personally satisfying conscious
purpose. But I would like to refer to something else: that the
soul in the age of matter is imprisoned in materialism, and
that in this time the strongest hopelessness must arise towards
the world's evils, towards the wicked; since materialism
rejects a spiritual world, out of which light shines upon us,
to give its meaning to evil and to the wicked. If this world is
rejected, it is entirely necessary that this world is
hopelessly covered in filth by evil and wickedness in their
purposelessness. — I will not refer to Nietzsche today,
but to another spirit of the nineteenth century. From a certain
viewpoint I also wish to refer to a tragic thinker of the
nineteenth century: from the viewpoint that a human being must
necessarily live with their time, in that he/she is inserted
into their own time. That is a property of our being, that our
being finds itself together with the being of our time. So it
was only natural that in the latest times, that deeply formed
spirits, yes, precisely those who had an open heart for what
took place in their surroundings, we deeply gripped by that
world description, which only wants to see the outermost
appearance of the alpha and omega of world existence. But such
spirits can often give in to an illusion, that one can go
through the world inconsolably, if one must look into that
world existence which must be portrayed as evil — and
cannot look up to a spiritual world, in which evil is
justified, as we have seen.
A
spirit who, I would like to say, went through the entire
tragedy of materialism, even though he was not a materialist
himself, was Philipp Mainländer, born in
1841. One could call him a follower of Schopenhauer, if one
observes things outwardly. In a certain sense he was a deep
spirit, but a child of his time, so that he could only look
upward to what the material world exposes. Now materialism
worked indeed, enormously to imprison precisely the very best
souls: we should not be deceived about this. Yes, the humans,
who are not concerned with what is around them, what the times
and their spirit offer, and who live selfishly in a religious
confession that they have once found pleasant, the “most
religious” people are sometimes in this point the most
selfish of all; they reject any rising above the things which
they love, and do not concern themselves about anything else,
other than what they know. One can find this answer again and
again, if one refers to the tragedy of numberless human beings:
yes, cannot old Christianity satisfy souls much more than your
spiritual science? Such questions are put by spirits who do not
go along with the times and intolerantly reject everything that
should penetrate into cultural development for the salvation of
mankind.
Philipp Mainländer looked around him, at what outer
science, what our time was able to tell him from its
materialistic viewpoint, and there he could only find a world
filled with evil and mankind involved in wickedness. He could
not deny it, since the pressure of this new world view was so
strong that it hindered the soul from looking up to a spiritual
world. So let us not try and conceal from ourselves here: why
do so few people come to spiritual science? That is because,
since the pressure of the prejudice of materialism, or as it is
called more nobly, of monism is so powerful, it darkens the
soul and prevents its penetrating into the spirit world. If the
soul is left independent and to itself and is not dulled by
materialist prejudice, then it will surely come to spiritual
science. But the pressure is large, and from our time on, one
can say: it is connected to the epoch, in which one can
represent spiritual science before humanity with a few
perspectives, because the desire of souls has become so strong,
that spiritual science must find an echo in souls. In the
second and third thirds of the nineteenth century that echo was
unable to be present. Then the pressure of materialism was so
strong, that even a soul striving towards the spirit such as
that of Philipp Mainländer was held back. And so he came
to a unique view: to the view that nothing spiritual can be
found in the current world. We have in Mainländer in the
nineteenth century a spirit before us, who only did not make a
major impression on his contemporaries, because the spirit of
the nineteenth century, despite its major progress in material
areas, was a superficial spirit. But what a soul must feel in
the nineteenth century, that Mainländer felt, even when he
stood alone, because in a certain way he felt a kind of
spiritual impotence regarding the removal of that which must
leave one dissatisfied with a materialistic or monistic world
view. One does not need to pick up and read the somewhat thick
volume of Mainländer's “Philosophy of
Salvation,” but only the reasonably small booklet by Max
Seiling, in order to make a judgement about what I am saying
now.
Philipp Mainländer looked out into the world, and he could
only see under the pressure of materialism, what the senses and
understanding portray. But he must assume a spirit world. But
it is not there, he told himself; the sense world must be
illuminated from itself. And now he came to the view that the
spirit world of our ancestors was real, that once there was a
divine spirit existence, that our soul was within a divine-
spiritual existence, and that the divine existence from a
former being has gone over into us, and that our world can only
be there, because God had died before that spirit world died
before us. So Mainländer sees a spirit world, but not in
our world; but in our world he only sees a cadaver loaded with
evil and wickedness, which can only be there, so that its
destruction can be overcome, so that what led to God and his
spirit world to die, should not enter into the destruction of
the cadaver into nothingness. — Monists or other thinkers
may laugh more or less at this; whoever better understands the
human soul and
knows
how a world view can become the inner destiny of a soul, how
the entire soul can adopt the nuances of a world view. He/she
knows what a human being must experience, who, like
Mainländer, was forced to transpose the spirit world into
past times and was only able to see the material cadaver of the
same left behind in the current world. In order to resolve the
evils of this world, Mainländer had taken up this kind of
world view. That he was more deeply involved in his world view
than Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, than Bahnsen or Eduard von
Hartmann, we can see from that fact that, at the time of
finishing his “Philosophy of Salvation” in his
fifty-third year, the thought came to him: your strength has
been used lovelessly, since you more quickly offer what appears
as your salvation of humanity, than when you still used it
after the middle of the life in the body. That
Mainländer thought with his world view with the deepest
sincerity is shown from the fact that he, when he came to this
thought: you now use more strength, when you pour out your
power into the world and do not concentrate on the body. He
really drew the conclusion, which Schopenhauer and the others
did not draw, and died through suicide, and that is, a suicide
through conviction.
Philosophers and others may look away from such a human
destiny: for our time however, such a human destiny is
endlessly significant, because it shows us how the soul must
live, which can really pierce down into its depths, to that
which as longing can resurrect in our time — how the soul
can live and confront the problem of wickedness and evil in the
world, and have not any vision into the world where spiritual
light spreads out and illuminates the sense of wickedness and
of evil. It was necessary that the human soul should develop
the materialistic capacities for a period. One can also
position in a certain future of spiritual life, I would like to
say, under a “psycho-biological viewpoint,” a point
of view of the soul life, and make clear to oneself, that only
when lifted up to the spiritual, does what appears in a
physical image, for example in animal beings, become valid for
human beings. Certain animals can go hungry for a long time and
also are hungry for a long time. Tadpoles for example, can
bring about their rapid transformation into frogs through long
hunger. Similar behaviour is also shown in certain fishes with
long hunger, because back-bone building processes come into
play, that make it possible to perform what they have to
perform; they are hungry because they hold back the forces,
they otherwise take in through taking in nourishment, in order
to force a way into another form. That is an image that is
suitable for use for the human soul: through centuries it has
lived through people constantly talking about the
“boundaries of human knowledge”; and even many who
believe that they think spiritually, are nonetheless entirely
devoted to materialistic imaginations — which are
willingly called monistic today because people are ashamed of
them —, and even philosophers are devoted to the maxim:
human knowledge can do no more than make a halt, when it stands
before the greatest riddles. The capacities that led them to
everything, had to be trained for a period: that is to say that
humanity must undergo a period of spiritual starvation. This
was the time of the arising of materialism. But the powers that
were held back in souls through this, they will now lead human
souls to seek for the way into the spirit world in accordance
with a psycho- biological law. Certainly one will find that
human pondering had to take the form that we meet up with in
Mainländer, who could no longer find the spirit world in
the physical world, because materialism had taken him. He was
forced to remain before the physical world: there he only had
the power to visualise errors, and not that which underlies our
world, that indeed gives us the possibility in find something
out in our souls, that refers to the future just as the outer
world refers to the past. It cannot be denied, that in a
certain sense Mainländer was correct: what our world sets
out all around us, are the remains of original development.
Even present-day geologists have to admit today, that we, in
that we wander across the earth, are walking away a cadaver.
But what Mainländer could not show, that is, that we, to
the extent that we are walking over a dead body, at the same
time are developing something in our inner being, which is
precisely a seed for the future, as that which is all around us
is a bequest from the past. And to the extent that we look into
this, what spiritual science is for individual souls, it can
resurrect in us, that which Mainländer was not yet able to
see, and therefore was forced to doubt.
So we
stand at the watershed between two epochs: the epoch of
materialism and that of spiritual science. And maybe nothing
can prove it to us in such a popular form, as when we, if we
correctly understand our soul, must live up against the
spiritual epoch, as considering evil and wickedness, when we
are able to lift up our sight to the illuminated heights of the
spirit world. I have often said, that with such considerations
one feels oneself in harmony with the best spirits of all ages,
who have longed, as mankind must live in an ever-clearer manner
as against the future. If one such spirit, with whom one feels
in full harmony, made a remark about the outer sense world,
that is like a call for spiritual knowledge, so we should also
put together what today has been able to enter into our souls,
and this should spark off a kind of transformation of such a
remark.
Goethe let something be said in his “Faust,”
that shows how a human being can lose their way away from the
spirit. Mankind's distance from the spirit world is set out
paradigmatically in a beautiful sentence with the words:
Whoever wants to know and describe the living,
Tries first of all to drive out the spirit,
Then he has the parts in his hand,
Except, sadly! only their spiritual bond is missing.
So,
this is how things lie in a certain way for all knowledge of
the world. It was the destiny of mankind, to devote itself to
parts for a few centuries. But ever more and more one will
perceive the absence of the spiritual bond as not only a
theoretical deficiency, but as a tragedy of the soul.
Therefore, spiritual researchers must today look into the soul
overall, which the majority of souls do not know how to do
themselves: and catch sight of the longing for the spirit
world. And if we set our eyes upon something, such as
illuminating the nature of evil and of wickedness, then perhaps
we may extend Goethe's remark, in that we take the following as
a summary of what was said.
Goethe
thought that whoever wants to strive for a world view, should
not stop at parts alone, but must see the spiritual bond above
all. But whoever approaches as significant a life question as
the riddle of evil and wickedness, he should say based on
spiritual-scientific foundations, as a summary of his/her
persuasion in accordance with his findings:
Whoever does not solve the soul riddle,
Remains in the simple light of the senses;
Whoever wants to understand life
Must strive towards spirit heights!
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