VIII
HUMAN EVOLUTION IN ITS RELATION TO THE
CHRIST PRINCIPLE
We have
seen that we come closer to the profound
meaning of the Gospel of St. John when we seek to approach it
from various sides, and yesterday we were able from a certain
point of view to indicate one of the most significant
mysteries of this Gospel. In order that we may gradually
reach a complete understanding of the mystery presented
yesterday, it will now be necessary to consider the advent of
Christ-Jesus in our postAtlantean period. We have gathered
together the most varied material in order that we might
trace the evolution of the human being and within it the
Christ Principle. Today we shall try to understand why, just
at this point of time in our evolution, the Christ appeared
as a human being walking upon the earth and we shall in this
way form a connection with what we have already heard in part
in the last lectures. Now we shall have to consider
especially the evolution of our humanity in the
post-Atlantean period.
We have
repeatedly stated that at a time very far
in the past our forefathers dwelt out there in the west in a
region now occupied by the Atlantic Ocean. Our forebears
dwelt upon old Atlantis. In the lecture of the day before
yesterday we were able to call attention especially to the
external bodily appearance of these our Atlantean
forefathers. We have seen that the physical body, visible now
to the external human sense organs, only slowly and gradually
reached the present density of flesh which it now possesses.
We said that not until the last part of the Atlantean period
did men bear some resemblance to their present form. Even
toward the last third of the Atlantean period they were still
essentially very different creatures from the men of today,
although to the external senses they appeared much the same.
We can best make clear what progress the human being has
made, if we compare him in his present state with any of the
existing higher animals. However highly developed the animal
may be, it must now be clear for various reasons how the
human being differs essentially from the animal. We find that
upon the physical plane or in the physical world, every
animal consists of physical body, ether or life body and
astral body; that these three parts compose its animal being
in the physical world.
You must
not imagine that only what is
physical exists in the physical world. It would be a
great mistake if you were to seek all that is etheric or in
fact all that is astral only in the super-sensible world. It
is true you can see only what is physical with the physical
senses in the physical world, but that is not because only
what is physical exists here. No, the ether and astral bodies
of the animals are present in the physical world and the
clairvoyantly endowed person can see them. It is only when he
wishes to reach the real ego of the animal that he can no
longer remain in the physical world; he must then mount into
the astral regions. There the group-soul or group-ego of the
animals is to be found and the difference between the human
being and the animal consists in the ego of the former also
being present here below in the physical world. This means
that here in the physical world, the human creature consists
of a physical, ether and astral body and an ego, although the
three higher members, from the ether body upwards, are only
perceptible to clairvoyant consciousness. This difference
between the human being and the animal is expressed
clairvoyantly in a certain way. Let us suppose that a person
endowed with clairvoyance is observing a horse and a man.
Extending beyond the horse's head, which is lengthened out to
a muzzle, he finds an etheric appendage. This etheric head
protrudes beyond the physical head of the horse and is
magnificently organized; these two do not coincide in the
horse. But he finds that in the human being of the present,
the etheric head corresponds almost exactly in form and size
to the physical. Clairvoyantly observed, the elephant makes
an extremely grotesque appearance with its extraordinarily
huge etheric head; it is, indeed, etherically a very
grotesque animal. In the human beings of the present, the
physical and etheric heads coincide and in form and size they
are very nearly alike. This, however, has not always been the
case. We find it so only in the last third of the Atlantean
period. The ancient Atlanteans' etheric head protruded far
beyond his physical head, then by degrees these two grew
together and it was in the last third of the Atlantean period
that the physical and the etheric heads exactly coincided. In
the brain, near the eyes, there is a point which coincides
with a very definite point in the etheric head. These points
were apart in ancient times; the etheric point was outside of
the brain. These two important points have drawn together and
only when this occurred did the human being learn to say
“I” to himself. Then appeared what we yesterday
called the “Consciousness Soul.” Through the
coincidence of the etheric and physical heads, the appearance
of the human head changed very greatly, for the head of the
ancient Atlantean was still very different in appearance from
the head of present human beings. If we wish to understand
how the present evolution became possible, we must consider a
little the physical conditions in ancient Atlantis.
If you
had been able to walk through ancient
Atlantis, out there in the west, you would not have been able
to experience the conditions of rain, fog, air and sunshine
that we have now in our present earth. At that time mists
pervaded especially the northern regions, west of
Scandinavia. Those human beings who lived in ancient
Atlantis, in the region where Ireland now stands and even
further to the West, never saw rain and sunshine as separate
phenomena as is now the case. They were always immersed in
mist and only with the Atlantean Flood did the time come when
the fog banks separated from the air and were precipitated
into the ocean. You might have searched through the whole of
Atlantis and you would not have found that spectacle which is
now well known to you all as an extraordinary phenomenon of
nature; it would have been impossible to discover a rainbow.
That is only possible through a separation of rain and
sunshine such as can now exist in the atmosphere. On Atlantis
before the Flood, you would have found no rainbow. Only
gradually, after the Flood, did this phenomenon appear, that
is, it became a physical possibility. If after having
received these communications of Spiritual Science, you
recall that the memory of the Atlantean Flood is preserved in
the various sagas and myths of the Deluge and that after the
Deluge, Noah came forth and first saw the rainbow, then you
will get some idea of how literally and profoundly true the
religious documents are. It is a fact that human beings first
saw a rainbow after the Atlantean Flood. These are the
experiences which can be had by one who acquaints himself
with occultism, and then bit by bit learns to understand how
literally the religious documents must be taken. Of course
one must first learn to understand the alphabet.
Towards
the end of the Atlantean period, the
external and internal human conditions proved to be most
favorable in a certain region of the earth's surface which
was in the vicinity of present Ireland. This region is now
covered with water. At that time the conditions there were
especially favourable and in this region the most highly
gifted of the Atlantean races developed, a race that was
especially endowed with the capacity to rise to an
independent human self-consciousness. The leader of this
people, which in Spiritual Science literature is usually
designated the ancient Semites, was a great initiate who
sought the most highly developed individuals of this people
and migrated with them to the east through Europe as far as
Asia into a region occupied now by the present Tibet. Thither
migrated a relatively small but spiritually very highly
developed fraction of the Atlantean peoples. Toward the end
of the Atlantean period, it so happened that gradually the
westerly portions of Atlantis disappeared and became covered
by the sea. Europe in its present form gradually arose. In
Asia, the great Siberian regions were still covered with
extensive bodies of water, but, especially in the south of
Asia, there were regions of land which had already appeared,
differently formed, however. Some of the less advanced of the
great mass of people joined with this germinal group which
migrated from west to east. Many went with them a long
distance, others not so far. But the peopling of ancient
Europe came about for the most part through the migrations of
great hordes of people out of Atlantis who settled there.
Other great groups of people who had been driven from other
parts of Atlantis, even some from ancient Lemuria, had come
into Asia at a still earlier period and now encountered each
other during this migration. Thus peoples variously endowed
and of very different spiritual capacities settled in Europe
and Asia. The small number who were led by that great
spiritual individuality, Manu, settled there in Asia in order
to foster the greatest possible spirituality. From there
streams of culture flowed out into the various regions of the
earth and among the various peoples.
The first
cultural stream flowed down into India,
and through the impulse given by the spiritual mission of
that great individuality, Manu, there developed what we may
call the ancient Indian civilization. We are not speaking now
of that Indian culture of which we have only echoes in those
wonderful books of the Vedas, nor are we speaking of what has
been handed down to posterity as tradition. Previous to all
that can be known of this external culture, there existed a
much more glorious and more ancient culture, that of the
ancient Holy Rishis, those great teachers who in the far
distant past gave to mankind the first post-Atlantean
civilization. Let us transplant ourselves into the souls of
the people of this first post-Atlantean cultural stream. This
was the first really religious human culture. Those Atlantean
cultural periods which preceded this one were not religious
cultural epochs in the true sense of the word. Religion is,
in fact, a characteristic of the post-Atlantean age. You will
ask, why is this the case?
Let us
see how Atlanteans lived. Since the etheric
head was still outside of the physical head, the ancient hazy
clairvoyance was not yet completely lost. Therefore, at
night, when the Atlantean was outside of his physical body,
he could look into the furthest reaches of the spiritual
world. Although during the day — when he dipped down
into his physical body — he saw physical things here in
the physical world, at night he still saw, to a certain
degree, the regions of the spiritual world. Transfer
yourselves now for a moment into the middle or first third of
the Atlantean period. What was the condition of the human
being then? He awakened in the morning and his astral body
was drawn into his physical and ether bodies. At that time
the objects of the physical world were not yet so sharply and
clearly contoured as they are now. When a city is enveloped
in fog, and you observe the lanterns in the evening as though
surrounded by an aura of color with undefined edges and
streams of color, you have in this a picture of how things
appeared at that time on Atlantis. The outlines were not
clearly defined, but it was like seeing the lanterns in the
mist. Hence, there was likewise no such sharp division
between the clear day-consciousness and the unconsciousness
of the night as appeared after the Atlantean period. During
the night the astral body slipped out of the ether and
physical bodies, but since the ether body still remained
partly united with the astral body, there were always
reflections of the spiritual world; the human being could
always have a hazy clairvoyance, could live within the
spiritual world and could behold about him spiritual beings
and spiritual activities. The scholars who sit in their
studies say that the common people have composed, for
example, the Germanic myths and sagas out of their folk
phantasy. Wotan and Thor and all the other gods were only
personifications of nature forces. There are complete
mythological theories which deal in this way with the folk
creative phantasy. When one hears such a thing, it is easy to
believe that such a learned individual is like the Homunculus
in Goethe's Faust, born out of a retort, who had never seen a
real human being. For anyone who has really observed the
people, it is not possible to speak in this way of the
creative folk imagination. The legends of the gods are
nothing less than what remains of actual events which people
of earlier ages really beheld clairvoyantly. This Wotan
really existed. During the night human beings wandered about
among the gods in the spiritual world and knew Wotan and Thor
there as well as they knew people of flesh and blood like
themselves here upon the earth. What primitive people of that
age beheld, for a long time dimly and clairvoyantly, has now
become the content of myth and saga, especially of those of
the Germans.
People
who at that time migrated from west to east
into the regions later called Germany were those who had
retained, more or less, some degree of clairvoyance and who
were still able at a certain time to perceive in the
spiritual world. And simultaneously with the migrations of
that greatest of initiates and his followers into Tibet,
whence he sent forth the first cultural colony into India,
initiates who fostered the Spiritual Life in the Mysteries
were left behind everywhere among the people of Europe.
Mysteries existed among these people, the Druid Mysteries,
for example, but men no longer have any knowledge of them
— for what is recounted is merely fantastic rubbish. It
is a significant fact that at that time when the higher
worlds were mentioned among the Druids or among the peoples
of the regions of western Russia and Scandinavia where the
Mysteries of the Trotts existed, there was always a large
number who knew of these spiritual worlds. When they spoke of
Wotan or of the incidents that occurred between Baldur and
Hodur, they were not talking of something wholly unknown to
them. There were many who had themselves experienced such
incidents in special states of consciousness, and those not
having the experiences themselves heard it from their
neighbour in whom they had confidence. Wherever you might
have gone in Europe, you would still have found vivid
memories of what existed on Atlantis. What did exist there?
Something one might call a natural, living companionship with
the beings of the spiritual world, with what is today called
Heaven. The human being continually entered into the
spiritual world and lived there. In other words he needed no
special religion to point out to him the existence of a
spirit-land. What is the meaning of “religion?”
It signifies union, union of the physical world with
the spiritual. At that time the human being needed no special
means of union with the spiritual world, because for him it
was a world of natural experience. Just as there is no need
now for anyone to impart to you a belief in the flowers of
the field or in the beasts of the forest, because you see
them with your own eyes, so similarly the Atlanteans
“believed” in the gods and spiritual beings, not
through religion, but because they experienced them. As human
evolution progressed, mankind acquired a clear
day-consciousness. It was in the post-Atlantean age that
people acquired this clear waking consciousness and
they gained it by renouncing their ancient
clairvoyant consciousness. It will be theirs again
in the future in addition to the present clear
day-consciousness. For our ancestors here in Europe, the
sagas and myths often aroused memory-pictures of the distant
past. One might ask, what was the nature of these most
developed human beings? Strange as it may sound, these highly
developed individuals whom the leader guided eastward into
Tibet were for the most part advanced, because they had lost
their ancient, dreamlike consciousness. What does it signify
to progress from the fourth over into the fifth root-race? It
means becoming day-conscious; it means losing the ancient
clairvoyance. The great initiate and guide led away the
members of his little group in order that they might not have
to live among people who were still at the stage of the
ancient Atlanteans. Among the first, only those could be
guided into the higher worlds who had been trained
artificially, who had gone artificially through an occult
training. It may be asked, what did the people of the first
post-Atlantean epoch have left of that ancient relationship
with the spiritual, divine world? Only the longing for the
spirit world, the door to which had been closed. They felt
that there had been a time — for they heard it in their
sagas — when their forefathers had gazed into the
spirit world, had lived there among spirits and gods and had
discovered themselves in the midst of deep spiritual
realities. “Oh, could we but experience this
too!” they said and out of this longing the ancient
Indian way of initiation was created. This method of
initiation arose out of the longing for what was past and
caused the pupil to lose, for a time, the clear
day-consciousness which he had acquired in order that he
might force himself back in consciousness to his former
state. “Yoga” is the method of the ancient Indian
initiation which, through its technique and exercises,
restored what had been lost in a quite natural way.
Imagine,
for example, an ancient Atlantean whose
ether head protruded far beyond his physical head. When the
astral body withdrew, a large part of the ether head was
still united with it, therefore what it experienced could be
imprinted upon the ether body and thus he became conscious of
his experiences. When, in the last part of the Atlantean
period, the ether part of the head was drawn wholly into the
physical head, the astral body left the ether body entirely
each night. Thus in the ancient initiations, the teacher had
to try to draw out the ether body of his pupil by artificial
means; in other words, the pupil had to be brought into a
sort of lethargic condition, into a kind of death-like sleep
which lasted about three and a half days. During this time
the ether body protruded from the physical body and was
loosened from it. What the astral body then experienced was
impressed upon the ether body. Then when the ether body was
re-drawn into the physical body, the pupil knew what he had
experienced in the spiritual world.
That was
the ancient method of initiation, the Yoga
initiation, by means of which the pupil was lifted out of the
world wherein he found himself in order to be transported
back again into the spiritual world. And the cultural mood
which resulted from this kind of initiation found its echo in
the later Indian culture. It was this mood that gave rise to
the words: Truth, Reality, Being exist only in the spiritual
world, in that world into which a person enters when he lifts
himself out of the physical sense-world. Here he is in the
midst of the physical world, surrounded by the mineral, plant
and animal kingdoms. But what surrounds him is not reality,
it is only an outer semblance; he lost the reality ages ago
and now lives in a world of appearance, of illusion, of
Maya!
The world
of the physical, therefore, was the world
of Maya for the ancient Indian civilization. We must
comprehend this, not as a dull theory, but in accordance with
the cultural mood itself — in accordance with the
feelings of the people themselves of that time. When the
ancient Indian wished to be especially holy, the world of
illusion became worthless to him. This physical world became
to him an illusion; the true world existed for him when he
withdrew from the physical, when through Yoga he was
permitted to live again in the world in which his forefathers
still lived during the Atlantean period.
The
significance of further evolution consists in
the human being of this post-Atlantean period becoming
gradually accustomed to value the physical world which is
allotted to him, according to its worth and meaning. The
second epoch, the next step after the ancient Indian period,
is also a pre-historic cultural epoch which is named after
the people who later lived in the region of Persia; we
designate it the primitive Persian civilization. However, we
have not the later Persian civilization in mind, but a
pre-historic culture.
The second
period differs very essentially in its
mood, in its feeling-content from the primeval Indian period.
It became more and more difficult to loosen the ether body
during initiation, but it was still possible and in a certain
way it was always done even up to the time of Christ-Jesus.
But there was one thing these men of the primitive Persian
civilization had attained; they began to appreciate Maya or
illusion as something of value. The ancient Indian was happy
when he could flee from illusion. For the Persian, it became
a sphere of activity. It is true, illusion still continued to
appear to him as something hostile, something which must be
overcome. Later this gave rise to the myth of the battle
between Ormuzd and Ahriman in which the
human being allied himself with the good gods against the
power of the gods of evil existing in matter. Out of this,
the mood of that age was created. The Persian was still not
fond of this physical “reality” (Maya), but he no
longer fled from it like the ancient Indian; he worked upon
it and considered it a stage upon which he could be active, a
place where there was something that must be overcome. In
this second cultural stage, a step in the conquest of the
physical world had been made.
Then came
the third cultural stage. We are now approaching closer
and closer to historical times. This cultural period is
designated in Occult Science the Chaldaic – Babylonian
– Assyrian – Egyptian civilization. All these
civilizations were founded by colonies sent out under the
guidance of great leaders. The first colony founded the
civilization of the ancient Indians, the second founded what
we have just described as the ancient Persian cultural centre
and a third cultural stream travelled still further to the
west and laid there the foundation of the Babylonian –
Chaldaic – Assyrian – Egyptian civilization. Thus an
important step was taken in the conquest of the physical
world. To the Persian it still seemed like an intractable
mass which he had to manipulate if he wished to work in it
with those Beings whom he considered the good Spirits of the
true Spiritual Reality. He had now become more familiar, more
intimate with physical reality. Just consider the ancient
Chaldean astronomy. It is one of the most extraordinary and
tremendous creations of the human spirit of the
post-Atlantean age. There you see how the course of the stars
was explored, how the laws of the heavens were examined. The
ancient Indian would have looked out at this heaven and said:
The course of the stars with its laws is not worth the
trouble to investigate! To the people of the third cultural
epoch it was even then very important to penetrate into these
laws. To those belonging to the Egyptian civilization, it was
of special importance to examine the earthly relationships
and to develop the science of geometry. Maya or illusion was
explored and physical science came into being. Men studied
the thoughts of the gods and felt that they must make a
connection between their own individual activity and what
they found inscribed in matter as the script of the gods. If
you were to investigate spiritually the earlier conditions of
Egyptian political life, you would gain a concept of a
political organism very different from any that people of the
present day can possibly imagine. The individualities who
directed and guided those political states were wise men who
knew the laws governing the course of the stars, of the
movements of the cosmic bodies, and at the same time they
knew that everything in the cosmos must mutually correspond.
They had studied the course of the stars and knew that there
must be a harmony between what was taking place in the
heavens and what was happening upon the earth. According to
the events in the heavens they decreed what, in the course of
time, is to occur on earth. Even in the earliest part of the
Roman period (the fourth cultural epoch) there still existed
the consciousness that what transpires upon the earth must
correspond to what is happening in the heavens. For long
periods in the ancient Mysteries it was known at the
beginning of a new epoch what events would transpire in the
following period. It was known through the Mystery-wisdom,
for example, at the beginning of Roman history that a period
would follow in which the most varied historical events would
be enacted and that they would take place in the region of
Alba Longa. For anyone who can read it, it is clear that a
deeply symbolical expression is suggested here and that it
was, so to say, priestly wisdom that laid out or planned the
civilization of ancient Rome. “Alba Longa” was
the long priestly garment. In these ancient regions the
future historical events were in this way laid out — if
we may be allowed to use a technical expression. They knew
that seven epochs must follow one after another in
succession. The future was divided according to the number
seven and an outline of the future history was foretold. I
could easily show you how prophetic historical plans were
concealed in the story of the seven Kings of Rome which had
already been inscribed in the Sibylline Books even
as early as the beginning of the Roman epoch. In those days
people knew that they had to live through what was written
there and on important occasions they consulted the Holy
Books. This then accounts for the holy and mysterious
character of the Sibylline Books.
Thus
humanity of the third cultural epoch worked
Spirit into Matter, permeated the outer world with Spirit.
There are countless historical evidences of this concealed in
the development of the epochs of this third cultural stream
— this Assyrian – Babylonian – Chaldean –
Egyptian civilization. Our own age can be understood only when we
know the important relationships which exist between that age and
our own. I should like now to call attention to one of the
relationships between these two epochs, in order that you may
see how wonderfully things are connected for anyone who can
penetrate more deeply into them and who knows that what is
called egotism and utilitarianism has now reached its
culmination. Never before was a cultural epoch as purely
egotistic and unidealistic as our own and it will become even
more so in the near future. For, at the present time, spirit
has descended completely into a materialistic civilization.
Tremendous spiritual forces have had to be employed by men in
the great discoveries and inventions of the new age, that is,
of the nineteenth century. Just think, for instance, how much
spiritual force exists in the telephone, in the telegraph, in
the railroads, etc.! How much spiritual force has been
materialized, crystallized in the commercial relationships of
the earth! How much spiritual energy it requires to cause a
sum of money to be paid, let us say in Tokyo, by means of a
piece of paper, a cheque written here in this place! Thus one
may ask: Does the use of this spiritual force mean spiritual
progress? Whoever faces the fact must acknowledge the
following: You build railroads indeed, but they carry,
practically, only what you need for your stomachs; and when
you yourself travel, you do so only because of something that
has to do with your physical needs. Does it make any
difference from the standpoint of Spiritual Science whether
we grind our own corn with a few stones or obtain it from a
distance by means of the telegraph, ships, etc.? A tremendous
spiritual force is employed, but it is used in an entirely
personal sense. What then will be the meaning of what men
thus negotiate? Apparently not Anthroposophy, in other words,
not spiritual realities. When the telegraph and steamships
are used, it is in the first place a question of how much
cotton will be ordered to be sent from America to Europe,
etc.; in other words it is a question of something that has
to do with personal needs. Mankind has descended to the
profoundest depths of personal necessity, of physical
personality. But just such an egotistic, utilitarian
principle had to come sometime, because through it, the
ascending course of all human evolution will be facilitated.
What has happened to cause the human being to attach so much
importance to his own personality, thus causing him to feel
himself so much a separate individual? And, moreover, what
was it that prepared him for this strong feeling of self in
his life between birth and death?
In the
third period of civilization a most
important preparation was made for this, in the desire to
retain the form of the physical body beyond death in the
“mummy,” in the wish to prevent the dissipation
of the form of the body by embalming it. Thus, this holding
fast to the separate individuality became imprinted upon the
soul in such a way that now it appears again in another
incarnation as the feeling of personality. That this feeling
of personality is so strong today is the result of the
embalming of the body in the Egyptian period. So we see that
in human evolution everything is correlated. The Egyptians
mummified the bodies of the dead in order that people of the
fifth epoch might have the greatest possible consciousness of
their own personality. Certainly, profound mysteries exist
within human evolution.
Thus you
see how the human being has gradually
descended deeper and deeper into Maya and has permeated
matter with what he is able to achieve. In the fourth
cultural period, the Greco-Latin age, he placed his inner
being out in the external world. Thus you see in Greece how
he objectified himself in matter and form. He concealed his
own form in the figures of the Grecian gods. In Aeschylos
there still resounds, in dramatic form, men's desire to
convert their own individuality into artistic form. They step
out upon the physical plane and create a copy of themselves.
In the Roman period men created an image of themselves in the
institutions of the State. It is a sign of the greatest
dilletantism when one traces what is now called Jurisprudence
back beyond the Roman period. What existed previously is, in
concept, something quite different from Jus or
“Justice,” “Right” (Recht),
for the concept of the human being as an outer personality,
the concept of human rights did not exist prior to that time.
In ancient Greece there was the Polis, the little
municipal state, and men felt themselves as members of it. It
is difficult for people to enter into the consciousness of
the Greek epoch. In the Roman epoch, the path into the
physical world had been trod so far that the individual human
personality — as a Roman citizen — appears also
as possessing rights. Everything progresses by stages and we
shall trace in detail how the personality emerges by degrees
and how at the same time the physical world is being
conquered more and more in the progress of history, and how
the human being is plunging deeper and deeper into
matter.
Our own
epoch is the first after the Greco-Latin;
in other words, it is the fifth epoch of the post-Atlantean
age. There will follow after it a sixth and a seventh epoch.
The fourth, the Greco-Latin, is the middle period,
and during this middle period, Christ-Jesus came
upon the earth. This event was prepared for within the third
post-Atlantean epoch, because everything in the world has to
be prepared beforehand. The third epoch made ready for that
greatest of all events which was to be enacted upon the earth
during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch at a time when men had
progressed far enough in their feeling of personality to step
outside themselves and create their gods in their own image.
In the art of the Grecian period, men created a world of gods
after their own image. They repeated this in the form of the
State. An understanding of physical matter was reached even
to the degree of the union of Maya (the world of illusion,
matter) and Spirit. This is the moment when men also attained
an understanding of personality. You will comprehend that
this was also the time when they were able to understand God
as a personal manifestation, the time when the spirit
belonging to the earth also progressed to the point of
becoming a personality. Thus we see how in the middle of the
post-Atlantean civilization God Himself appeared as a man, as
a separate personality. When we see how in Greek art the
human being fashioned an image of himself, we may say: What
happened in the middle of the post-Atlantean civilization
appears to us as an image. When we pass from the Greek to the
Roman period and observe the types of human beings of the
great Roman Empire, does it not actually seem as though the
Greek images of the gods had descended from their pedestals
and were walking about in their togas? One can fairly see
them!
Thus the
human creature had progressed from the
time when he felt himself as a member of the Godhead to a
feeling of himself as a personality. He could comprehend as a
personality even the Godhead Itself which, embodied in the
flesh, had descended and dwelt among men.
It has
been our desire here to picture to our souls
the reason for the appearance of Christ-Jesus just at this
period of human evolution. How this mystery developed
further, how in the earlier evolutionary periods it shone
forth prophetically, and how it works prophetically into the
distant future, we shall consider next time.
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