LECTURE 4 MORALITY, AS A GERMINATING FORCE. Berlin, 27th February, 1917.
On the occasion of our last lecture, I spoke to you of the three
meetings which the human soul has with the regions pertaining to the
Spiritual world. I shall have to say a few more things as to these,
which will give me the opportunity of answering a question asked at
the end of the last public lecture at the Architectural Hall,
regarding the forces which bring over the karma, the external destiny,
from a former incarnation. I have been told that this is very
difficult to understand. In the course of these lectures I will return
to this subject; but it is preferable to do so after having discussed
a few points which may perhaps help to make the question better
understood. Today, however, in order to make the question of the three
meetings with the Spiritual world still clearer, I intend to insert,
by way of episode, something that it seems to me important to discuss
just at the present time.
When we consider the ideas and concepts which have found their way
into the souls of people of all grades of education as the result of
the Spiritual development of the last century, we observe how strongly
its influence tended to cause people to consider the evolution of the
world and man's place in it, solely according to the standard of
Natural Science and its ideas. There are of course plenty of people
still living today who do not believe their attitude of mind and soul
to have been formed by the concepts of Natural Science. These people
do not however observe the deeper foundations upon which their minds
were formed; they do not know that the ideas of Natural Science have
just slipped in a one-sided way, not only determining their thoughts
but even in a certain way their feelings. A man who today reflects
along the lines laid down for everyone in the ordinary educational
centres, whose mind and disposition have been formed in accordance
with them, and whose ideas are based upon what is taught there, cannot
possibly feel the true connection between what we call the world of
morality, of moral feeling, and the world of external facts. If, in
accordance with the ideas of our times, we ponder on the way in which
the earth and indeed the whole firmament is supposed to have developed
and may come to its final end, we are thinking along the lines of
purely external facts, perceptible to the senses. Just think of the
deep significance to the souls of men, of the existence of the
so-called
Kant-Laplace
theory of the creation of the world, according
to which the earth and the whole heavens arose from a purely material
cosmic mist (for it is represented as purely material) and were then
formed in accordance with purely earthly physical and chemical laws,
developed further according to these laws, and, so it is believed,
will also come to an end through these same laws. A condition will
some day come about in which the whole world will mechanically come to
an end, just as it came into being.
Of course, as I said before, there are people today who do not allow
themselves to think of it in this way. That, however, is not the
point; it is not the ideas that we form that signify, but the attitude
of mind which gives rise to these ideas. The conception I have just
alluded to is a purely materialistic one; one of those of which
Hermann Grimm says, that a piece of carrion round which circles a
hungry dog is a more attractive sight than the construction of the
world according to the Kant-Laplace theory. Yet it arose and
developed; nay, more: to the great majority of men who study it, it
even appears illuminating. Few there are who, like Hermann Grimm, ask
how future generations will be able to account for the arising of this
mad idea in our age; they will wonder that such a delusion could have
ever seemed illuminating to so many. There are but a few people who
have the soundness of mind to put the question thus, and those who do
are simply considered more or less wrong-headed. But, as I said, the
point is not so much the ideas in themselves, as the impulse and frame
of mind which made them possible. These conceptions came as the result
of certain attitudes of mind; yet, though they came from learned men
and were given out by them, most people still believe that the world
did not originate in any such mechanical impulse, but that Divine
impulses must have played a part in its creation. Still it remains a
fact that such conceptions were possible. It was possible for the
attitude of men's minds, their disposition of soul, to take on such a
form that a purely mechanical idea of the origin of the world was
conceived. That signifies that at the bottom of men's souls there is
the tendency to form conceptions of a materialistic nature. This
tendency is not only to be found among the unlearned, and others who
believe in this idea, it exists in the widest circles among all kinds
of people, yet most people today are still rather shy of becoming
followers of Haeckel, picturing everything Spiritual in a material
form. They lack the necessary courage for this. They still admit of
something Spiritual; but do not give the matter further thought. If
the above mentioned concept holds good, there can then only be room
for the Spiritual and especially for the moral, in a certain sense.
For just consider: If the world really came into being as the
Kant-Laplace theory believes, and only comes to its end through
physical forces, dragging all men down to the grave with it, together
with all their ideas, feelings and impulses of will, what then, apart
from all else, would become of the whole moral order of the world?
Suppose for a moment that the condition of the burial of all things
came about: what good would it have been to have ever pronounced some
things good and others evil? What would it avail to say this is right,
and that is wrong? These would be nothing but forgotten ethical
concepts, swept away as something which, if this idea of the
world-order were correct, would not perhaps survive even in one single
soul. In fact, the matter would stand thus: from purely mechanical
causes, by physical and possibly chemical forces, the world came into
being and by like means it will come to an end. By means of these
forces phenomena appear like bubbles, produced by men. Among men
themselves arise the moral ideas of right and wrong, of good and evil;
but the whole world passes over into the stillness of the grave. All
right and wrong, good and evil, is merely an illusion of man, and is
forgotten and vanishes away when the world becomes the
grave. Thus the only thing that stands for the moral world-order
is the feeling one has as long as the episode lasts, which extends
from the first state to the last, that man requires such ideas for his
common life; that man must form these moral ideals, though they can
never take root in a purely mechanical world-order. The forces of
nature heat, electricity, and so on intervene in the plan of
nature, they make themselves felt therein; but the force of morality would,
if the mechanical plan of the world were correct, only exist in the mind
of man; it would not intervene in the natural order. It would not be
like heat which expands bodies, or like light which illuminates them
and makes them visible and permeates the world of space. For this
moral force is present and soars as a great illusion over the
mechanical world-order, and vanishes, dissolves away, when the world
is transformed into the grave. People do not sufficiently carry these
thoughts to their logical conclusion. Hence they are not on their
guard against a mechanical world-order, but allow it to remain not
from kindness of heart, but rather from laziness. If they have a
certain want in their hearts, they simply say: Science does not
demand that we should think deeply about this mechanical world-order,
faith demands something else of us; so we put our faith side by side
with science and just believe in something more than mechanical
nature, we just believe what a certain inner demand of our hearts
compels. That is very convenient! There is thus no need to rebel
against what Herman Grimm, for instance, felt to be a mad idea of
modern science. There need be no rebellion. But this attitude cannot
be justified by one who really wishes to think his thoughts out to
their conclusion.
It may be asked: What is the reason that people today live thus
blindly in an impossible position, in which it is impossible to think
logically? Why do they accept such a position? The reason is, strange
as this may sound if one is not familiar with the thought and hears it
for the first time, the reason is that people have more or less
forgotten, in the course of the last century, how to think truly of
the Christ Mystery which must take its place in the very centre of the
life of the age; they have forgotten how to think of it in its real,
true sense. The way in which man thinks of the Christ Mystery in the
newer age should be such that it rays into his whole thinking and
feeling. The position which man has assumed to the Christ since the
Mystery of Golgotha represents the standard of his whole collective
ideas and sentiments. (I may perhaps have more to say on this subject
in the near future). If he cannot look upon the Mystery of Christ as a
true reality, he is unable to develop ideas and conceptions by which
to gauge the views of the world held by others, ideas permeated by
reality, and really capable of penetrating the truth.
That is what I wanted above all to make clear to you today. If a man
really thinks in the way I have just illustrated, as most people of
the present day do, whether consciously or not, the world is then
divided on the one hand into the mechanical natural order, and on the
other into the moral world order. Now to timid souls, who often
believe themselves to be very courageous, the Christ-Mystery forms
part of the purely moral world-order. This applies chiefly to those
who see nothing more in the Christ-Mystery than the fact that at a
particular time, a great, perhaps even the greatest Teacher of the
Earth-world appeared, and that His teaching is the thing of greatest
importance. Now, if Christ is only considered as the greatest Teacher
of humanity, this view is in a sense quite compatible with the twofold
division of the world into a natural order and a moral order. For, of
course, even if the earth had formed itself as the mechanical world
order represented, and is eventually to become the common grave of all
things, it might still be possible for a great Teacher to arise who
might accomplish much to make men better and to convert them. His
teachings might have been sublime, but they would avail nothing when,
at the end of all things, everything would be a grave; when even the
teachings of Christ Himself would have disappeared, and there would
not even be a remembrance of Him remaining in any living being. People
do not like to think that; but their dislike would not alter the fact.
If it be desired to believe absolutely in a merely mechanical
world-order it would be impossible to avoid such thoughts as these.
Everything depends upon the fact being realised that in the Mystery of
Golgotha something was accomplished which does not merely belong to
the moral world-order, but to the whole collective cosmic order;
something which belongs, not merely to the moral reality which
according to the mechanical world-order must be non-existent
but to the whole intensive reality. We shall be able to grasp what is
really in question if we turn our thoughts once more to the Three
Meetings which I mentioned in the last lecture, taking them in a
different sense from that to which I then referred.
I told you that every time a person sleeps, in the intermediate state
between his going to sleep and waking he meets Beings belonging to the
Spiritual world, Beings of a like nature to his Spirit Self as we are
accustomed to call it, Beings of the same substance and kind. This
means that when a man wakes from sleep, he has had a meeting with a
Spiritual being, and though he may be quite unconscious of having had
this experience, yet he carries the after-effects into his outer
physical life. Now what takes place in our soul during this daily
meeting is in a certain way connected with the future of man. A man of
today, unless he busies himself with Spiritual Science, knows very
little as yet of what goes on in the depth of his soul during sleep.
Dreams, which in ordinary life betray something of this, do indeed
reveal something, but reveal it in such a way that the truth does not
easily come to light. When a man wakes in a dream or out of a dream,
or remembers a dream, this is mostly connected with ideas he had
already acquired in his life, with reminiscences. These are however
only the garments of what really lives in the dream or during sleep.
When our dreams clothe themselves in pictures taken from our daily
life, these are but the garments; for in dreams is revealed what
actually takes place in the soul during sleep, and that is neither
related to the past nor to the present, it is related to the future.
In sleep are found the forces which in a human being can be compared
to the germinal forces which develop in the plant for the production
of a new one. As the plant grows it always develops the germinal
forces for the new plant in the following year. These forces reach
their height in forming the seed, in which they become visible. But as
the plant grows, while it is growing, the germinal forces for the next
plant are already there. In the same way the germinal forces;
whether for the next incarnation or even for the Jupiter-period -are
present in man, and he chiefly forms these during his sleeping state.
The forces then formed, my dear friends, are not immediately related
to individual experiences, but rather to the basic forces of the next
incarnation: they relate to the forces of the next incarnation. In
sleep, a man works upon his germs for his next incarnation into the
future. So that while he is asleep, he already lives in the future.
I do not wish to leave a too hazy impression in your minds in respect
to this, so will at once say that in the sleeping state, the next
incarnation is as the knowledge of the next day. We know from
experience that when to-morrow comes the sun will rise and we know
more or less how it will run its course, although we may not know what
the weather will be or what separate events may affect our lives. In
like way the soul is a prophet during our sleep, but a prophet who
only knows of what is great and cosmic; not of the weather. If one
were to suppose that the soul during sleep becomes aware of the
details of the next incarnation, one would be falling into the same
error as one who thought that because he knew that next Sunday the sun
will surely rise and set, and knew certain universal facts as well, he
could therefore predict the weather. This does not alter the fact that
while we are asleep we do have to concern ourselves with the future.
The forces which are of like nature with our Spirit-Self and that work
on the forming of our future, meet us during our time of sleep.
Another, a further meeting if I leave out the second is
the third meeting, of which I said in the last lecture that it only
takes place once in the whole course of a man's life in the middle of
it. I said that when a man is in his thirties he meets with what may
be called the Father-Principle, while he meets the Spirit-Principle
every night. This meeting with the Father-Principle is of very great
significance, for it must occur. You will remember I explained that
even those who die before the age of thirty have this experience,
only, if they live through the thirties it comes in the course of life,
while when death is premature it occurs sooner. You know that, as the
result of that meeting, man is enabled to impress the experiences of
the present life so deeply into himself that they are able to work
over into the next incarnation. Thus, that which is the meeting with
the Father-Principle is connected with the earth-life of the next
incarnation, whilst our meeting with the Spirit-Principle is for the
whole future; it radiates over the whole of our future life, as well
as over the life experienced between birth and a new birth.
Now the laws with which this meeting, that we experience only once in
a life, are interwoven, they do not pertain to the earth: they are
laws which have remained in the earth-evolution just as they were at
the time of the moon-evolution. On the physical side they are
connected with our physical descent, and with everything which
physical heredity signifies. This physical heredity is indeed only one
side of the matter; there are Spiritual laws behind, as I have already
explained. So that everything that comes to pass regarding the meeting
with the Father Principle, points back to the past; it is the legacy
of the past; it points back to the moon-evolution, to earlier
incarnations, while that which takes place during sleep points to the
future. Just as what takes place during sleep forms the germ for the
future, so that which comes about as a result of men being born as the
descendants of their ancestors, carrying over from former incarnations
what is necessary should be brought over; all that has remained over
from the past. Both these what relates to the future and to the
past are in a sense striving outside the natural order. The
peasant still goes to sleep at sunset and rises at dawn; but as man
progresses in so-called civilisation, he tears himself free from the
order of nature. One meets persons in cities though they may not be
very numerous who go to bed in the morning and arise at night. Man is
freeing himself from the mere order of nature, the development of his
free will makes it possible for him to do so. Thus in a sense, because
he is preparing for a future which is not yet here, he is torn away
from the order of nature. When he carries the past into the present,
especially the past connected with the moon, he is also torn loose
from the order of nature. Nobody can prove the necessity according to
the universal laws of nature, that John Smith should be born in 1914;
such an event is not ruled by necessity as is the rising of the sun or
other natural occurrences, but by the natural order of the moon.
During the moon-period everything was like the order of our birth on
earth.
Man is however entirely subject to the order of nature as regards what
is of immediate significance to the present, to his earth existence.
Whereas, as regards the Father-Principle he bears the past within him,
and as regards the Spirit-Principle the future with respect to that
meeting of which I have said that it occurs in the course of the year
and which is now connected with the meeting with Christ man is
connected with the order of nature. If he were not, the consequence
would be that Christmas might by one person be celebrated in December
and by another in March, and so on; but although different nations
have different designations for the Festival of Christmas, there is
everywhere some kind of festivity in the latter days of December which
always bears some relation to the meeting I referred to. Thus with
respect to this meeting which is inserted into the course of the year,
man, for the very reason that this is his present, is in direct
connection with the order of nature; while with respect to the past
and the future he has become free from it, and has indeed been free
from it for thousands of years.
In the olden times man joined in the order of nature both as regards
the past and the future. In the Germanic countries, for instance,
birth was regulated in olden times in accordance with the order of
nature. Birth, which was then regulated by the Mysteries, might only
take place at a stated time of the year. Thus it was inserted into the
order of nature. In olden times, long before the Christian Era,
conception and birth were regulated in the Germanic countries by that
of which only a faint echo has been preserved in the Myth of the
worship of Hertha. In those days her worship comprised no less than
the following. When Hertha descended in her chariot and drew near to
men, that was the time of conception; after she had withdrawn, this
might no longer take place. This was so strictly adhered to that
anyone not born within the appointed season was considered lacking in
honour, because his human existence was not in harmony with the order
of nature. Birth and conception were just as much adapted to the
course of nature in olden times as sleeping and waking, for in those
days people slept when the sun had set and woke at dawn. These things
have now become displaced; but the central event which is adapted to
the course of the year cannot be displaced. By means of this, through
its harmony with the order of nature, something is retained and must
be so retained in the human soul.
What then is the whole purpose of man's earthly evolution? That man
should adapt himself to the earth and take the earth-conditions into
himself; that he should carry into his future evolution what the earth
has been able to give him, not in any one incarnation alone, but in
the whole sum of his incarnations on earth. That then is the purpose
of the earth evolution. This purpose can however only be fulfilled
through man's to some extent forgetting during his sojourn on earth,
his connection with the cosmic and heavenly powers. This he has learnt
to do. We know indeed that in olden times man possessed an atavistic
clairvoyance, and into that the heavenly powers could work; man was
still connected with them; the kingdom of heaven in a sense extended
into the human heart. This had to become different so that man might
develop his free will. In order that he might become related to the
earth he had to have nothing more of the kingdom of heaven in his
vision, in his direct perception. This however is the reason that at
the time of his closest relation to the earth, in the fifth epoch in
which we are living now man became materialistic. Materialism is only
the most complete, the most extreme expression of man's relation to
the earth, and if nothing else had happened this would have brought
about his complete and utter subjection to the earth. He would have
had to become related to it and gradually share in its destiny; he
would have had to follow the same path as the earth is herself
pursuing; he would have been entirely dovetailed into the earth's
evolution, unless something else had occurred. He would have
been obliged to tear himself away, as it were, from the cosmos
together with the earth, and to unite his destiny completely with that
of the earth. That however was not planned for mankind, something else
was intended. On the one hand man was to unite himself in the proper
way with the earth; on the other, although through his nature he was
to become related to the earth, yet messages were to come down to him
from the Spiritual world which would raise him once again above the
earth. This bringing down of the Heavenly Message came about through
the Mystery of Golgotha. Therefore the Being Who went through the
Mystery of Golgotha had to take on human nature as well as that of a
Heavenly Being. This means that we must think of Christ Jesus not
merely as One, who although the Highest, entered human evolution and
developed therein; but as One Who possessed a heavenly nature, Who not
only taught and propagated doctrine but brought into the earth that
which came from Heaven. That is why it is important to understand what
the Baptism in Jordan really is; it is not merely a moral action
I do not say it is not a moral action, but it is not that
alone. It is also a real action. Something took place then which is
just as much a reality as the happenings of nature. If I warm a thing
by some warmth-giving means, the warmth passes over into that which is
warmed. In like manner did the Christ-Being pass into Jesus of
Nazareth at the Baptism by John. That is most certainly in the highest
degree a moral action; but it is also a reality in the course of
nature, just as real as the phenomena of nature. The important thing
is that it should be understood that this is nothing originating in
rationalistic conceptions, which always accord merely with the
mechanical, physical or chemical course of nature; but something which
as idea, is just as much an actual fact as the laws of nature, or
indeed the forces of nature.
Once this has been grasped, other ideas will become more real than
they are at present. We will not now enter into a discussion on
alchemy, but remember that what the old alchemist had in view was that
his conceptions should not remain mere ideas, but that they should
result in something. (Whether he was justified or not is a not the
point for the moment, that may perhaps be the subject of another
lecture.) When he burnt incense while holding his conception in mind
or giving voice to it, he tried to put sufficient force into it to
compel the smoke of the incense to take on form. He sought for such
ideas as have the power of affecting the external realities of nature,
ideas that do not merely remain within the egoistic part of man but
can intervene in the realities of nature. Why did he do this? Because
he still had the idea that something occurred at the Mystery of
Golgotha which intervened in the course of nature: that was just as
real a fact to him as a fact of nature. You see upon this rests a very
significant difference which began in the second half of the Middle
Ages, towards our own fifth age which followed the Graeco-Latin epoch.
At the time of the crusades, in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth
and fifteenth, and indeed in the sixteenth century, there were some
special natures, principally women, who devoted themselves so deeply
to mysticism, that the inner experience resulting therefrom was felt
by them as a spiritual marriage, whether with Christ or another. Many
ascetic nuns celebrated mystical marriages. I will not enter into the
nature of these inner mystic unions today; but something took place in
their inner being which could afterwards only be expressed in words.
In a sense it was something that subsisted in the ideas, feelings and
also the words in which these were clothed. In contrast to this,
Valentine Andrea, as the result of certain conceptions and Spiritual
connections, wrote his
Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosenkreuz.
This chymical or, as we should say today, chemical-marriage
is also a human experience, but when you go into the matter you find
that this does not only apply to a soul-experience but to something
not merely expressed in words, but which grips the whole man; it is
not merely put into the world as a soul experience, for it was a real
occurrence, an event of nature, in which a man accomplishes something
like a natural process. Valentine Andrea in
The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosenkreuz,
meant to express something that was more
permeated with reality than the merely mystical marriage of Mechthild
of Magdeburg, who was a mystic. The mystical marriage of the nuns only
accomplished something for the subjective nature of man; by the
chymical marriage a man gave himself to the world. Through this,
something was accomplished for the whole world; just as something is
accomplished for the whole world by the processes of nature. This is
again to be taken in a truly Christian sense. Those who thought more
real thoughts, longed for concepts through which they could better lay
hold of reality, even if only in the one-sided way of the old
alchemists concepts through which they could better grasp
reality, ideas in fact which were really connected with reality. The
age of materialism has at present thrown a veil over such concepts;
and those who today believe they think aright about reality are living
in greater illusion than these despised men at the time of the old
alchemists, who strove for concepts which should help them to master
it.
For what can men accomplish today with their concepts? In our age in
particular we have some experience of what they can attain through
these empty illusions; the husks of ideas are idols worshipped today,
they have nothing to do with reality. For reality is only reached by
man plunging down into it, not by forming any sort of ideas at will;
yet the difference between unreal concepts and those which are
permeated with reality, can be perceived in the ordinary things of the
day, but most people do not recognise this. They are so absolutely
satisfied with the mere shadow of ideas, having no reality. Suppose,
for instance, someone today gets up and makes a speech in which
perhaps he may say that a new age must come which is already
manifesting, a completely new age in which every man will be measured
according to his own worth alone, when he will be valued according to
what he can do! Anyone today would admit that such words are in
complete understanding with the times! But, my dear friends, as long
as ideas are nothing but husks, however beautiful they may be, they
are not permeated with reality. For it is not the point that one who
is convinced that his own nephew happens to be the best man for the
job should admit the principle that every man should be put in the
place to which his powers are best adapted. It is not the ideas and
concepts one may have that signify: what is required is that with
those ideas one should penetrate the reality, and recognise it! It is
very pleasant to have ideals and fine principles and often still
pleasanter to give expression to them. But what is needed is that we
should really plunge down into the reality, recognise it, and
penetrate it. We are plunging more and more deeply into that which has
brought about these sad times, if we continue to carry on this
worshipping of the idols of the husks and shadows of ideas, if we do
not learn to see that it is not of the slightest value to have
such beautiful ideas and conceptions, and to talk about
them unless there is the will to get right down to the realities and
recognise them. If we do that, we shall not only find the substance,
but also the Spirit therein. It is the worshipping of idols, of the
mere shadows and husks of ideas, which lead us away from the Spirit.
It is the great misfortune of our age, that people are intoxicated
with fine words. It is unchristian too; for the true basic principle
of Christianity is that the Christ did not pour His teaching into
Jesus of Nazareth but poured Himself in; which means that He so united
Himself with earthly reality, was so drawn into the reality of the
earth, that He thereby became the Living Message from the Cosmos.
The New Testament, my dear friends, if read aright, is the most
wonderful means of education concerning reality; only the New
Testament must little by little be put into our own language. The
present translations do not now completely give the original meaning;
but when the old meaning is put into the direct language of our day,
the gospels will then be the very best means of bringing man
that power of thinking that is permeated with reality. For
nowhere can thought-forms be found in them that could lead to the
husks and shadows of ideas. We need but to grasp these things today in
their deeper reality. It may sound almost trivial to speak of the
intoxication of ideas, but this is so enormously prevalent today that
the ideas and concepts themselves, however beautiful they may sound,
are no longer the real point at issue: what is important is that the
man who utters them should take his stand on reality. People find that
difficult to understand today. Everything that comes out into the open
is judged today by its content, and indeed by what is understood of
that content. If this were not so, such documents, for instance, as
the so-called Peace-Programme of President Wilson which is
entirely void of ideas, a husk, a mere conglomeration of the shadows
of ideas would never be taken as based on reality. Anyone
having the power of discerning the reflections of ideas would know
that this combination could at most only work by means of a certain
absurdity, which might become a sort of reality. What is really needed
is that people should try to find ideas and concepts really permeated
with reality; this however pre-supposes in the seekers that they
themselves should be profoundly imbued with reality and be selfless
enough to connect themselves with that which lives and moves in
reality. There is a great deal in the present day well calculated to
lead people entirely away from the search for reality, but these
things are not observed.
He who knows sees many sad things going on. For instance, that it
should be possible at the present day for people to be impressed
simply by a combination of words, by a number of speeches, which
indeed are printed, but which, to one who does not go by mere words
but by realities, are absolutely appalling. Speeches have been
delivered by a highly honoured person of our day, who in his very
first speech immediately takes up the attitude that man on one side of
his nature, is absolutely related to the order of nature, and that the
theologians are not acting aright if they do not leave the order of
nature to the scientists who investigate it. The speeches go on to say
that as regards the order of nature, man is simply a piece of
machinery; but on this machinery depend the functions of the soul;
what are then specified as functions include practically all the
functions belonging to the soul. All these are then to be left to the
Nature investigators! Nothing is left to comfort theology but the
thought that all this has now been given over to Natural Science, and
all we have to do is to make speeches to talk! After that, of
course one can only live on husks of words. Furthermore, the speeches
are so composed that they lack continuity. (I shall come back to this
subject in the coming lectures and go into it more fully.) If you look
closely into the thought that is supposed to be connected with the one
immediately preceding it, you will find that it cannot possibly be
thought of as connected. The whole thing sounds very well, however! In
the preface to certain lectures On the Moulding of Life,
it is stated that they have been lately attended by thousands of
people, and that certainly many thousands more feel the need to
comfort their souls at this serious time by perusing them. These
lectures were given by the celebrated theologian Hunzinger, and I
believe are in the Quelle-Meyer Library, under the name of
Knowledge and Education. They are among the most dangerous
literature of the day, because, although they sound enchanting, one's
thought-life becomes simply confused, for the thoughts are
disconnected and, if one strips off the fascinating words, are nothing
but nonsense. Yet these lectures were very much praised, and no one
noticed the confused thoughts in them or stopped to test them;
everyone was charmed by the shadow-words.
Yes, the external reality entirely hangs together with that which man
is ever developing. If he develops concepts void of reality, the
reality itself becomes confused and then follow conditions such as we
have today. It is no longer possible to judge things by what meets us
today externally; we must form our opinions by studying what has been
developing in the minds of men for years, or decades, perhaps even
longer still. That is what must be gone into. The whole thing depends
upon our not accepting the Christ from His teaching alone, but that we
should look at the Mystery of Golgotha in its actuality, in its
reality; that we should see that it was a Fact that Something
super-earthly united itself with the earth in the person of Jesus of
Nazareth. We shall then come to realise that morality is not merely
something which fades and dies away, when the earth, and even the
fabric of the heavens, shall become a grave; but that even though the
present earth and the present heavens become a grave, yet, just as the
present plants will become mere dust while in the present plant there
is the germ of the next one, so there is the germ of the next world in
this world of ours, and man is connected with this germ. Only this
germ requires the connection with Christ that it may not fall into the
grave with the earth, as a plant germ that has not been fructified
falls into dust with the plant. The most real thought it is possible
to hold, is that the present moral order of the world is the germinal
force for the future order of nature. Morality is no mere worked-out
thought; if permeated with reality it exists in the present as a germ
for later external realities. But a conception of the world such as
that of Kant-Laplace, of which Hermann Grimm says that a piece of
carrion which attracts a hungry dog is a more appetising aspect, does
not belong to that order of thought. The mechanical plan of the world
can never penetrate to the thought that morality contains within it a
force which is the germ of the natural, of the nature of the future.
Why can it not do this? Because it must live in illusion. For just
imagine, my dear friends: if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken
place, all would have been as in the Kant-Laplace theory. If you think
away the Mystery of Golgotha from the earth, that theory would be
correct. The earth had to reach such a condition that, left to itself,
it must inevitably lead the human race into the desolation of the
grave. Things had to take place as they have, that man might attain
freedom through his relation to the earth. He will not sink into the
grave, because at the critical moment the earth was fructified by
Christ, because Christ descended, and because in Christ lies the
opposing force to that which leads to the grave, namely, the germinal
force whereby man can be borne up once more into the Spiritual world.
That means that when the earth becomes a grave, when it fulfils its
destiny according to the Kant-Laplace theory, the germ which is
concealed within it must not be allowed to fall into decay, but must
be carried on into the future. So that the Christian-moral plan of the
world presupposes what
Goethe
calls the higher nature in
nature. We might say: A man who is able to think in the right
way of the Mystery of Golgotha, as a reality, is also able to think
thoughts and form concepts permeated with reality. This is necessary,
this is what people must learn before all else. For in this fifth
Post-Atlantean age they have either desired to form concepts which
intoxicate them, or such as create blindness in them. The concepts
which intoxicate are chiefly formed in the realms of religion; those
which cause blindness chiefly in the domain of Natural Science. A
conception like that of Kant, which, while admitting the purely
natural ordering, placing the two worlds of knowledge and of faith
side by side, has yet only the moral in view, must result in
intoxication. Concepts based on moral grounds are able to intoxicate,
and the intoxication prevents one from seeing that one thus simply
succumbs to the stillness of the grave, into which all the moral plans
of the world have fallen, and perished. Or, again, such concepts as
those of present-day Natural Science, National Economy, and
forgive the expression, which may be rather hard to swallow
even the political concepts of the day, may create blindness; for they
are not formed in connection with a Spiritual conception of the world,
but from the shreds of what are called actual (that is, actual in the
physical sense), actual reality. Thus each man sees only as far as the
end of his own nose, and blindly forms opinions upon what he can see
with his eyes and grasp with mechanically acquired ideas, between
birth and death; without having formed any concepts permeated with
reality through being permeated by the Spiritual, by a grasp of
Spiritual reality.
It is necessary over and over again to point out what it is that our
age so desperately needs. For even history itself in our age is often
no more than the mere shadow of ideas. How frequently what
Fichte
said to the German people is proclaimed abroad today! What he really said,
however, can only be understood if one studies his whole life, that
life so profoundly rooted in reality! That is why I tried in my book,
The Riddle of Man,
to represent the personality of Fichte, as
he afterwards became, showing how closely from his childhood up he was
connected with reality. I should indeed be glad if such words as these
as to the need for our thoughts and concepts to be permeated
with reality were not only listened to superficially but
profoundly grasped, taken in, and really absorbed. Then only will a
free and open vision, a psychic vision, be acquired for what our age
so badly needs. Everyone of us should have this open soul-vision. If
we do not each make it a duty to think over the facts touched upon
here, we are not paying sufficient attention to the traffic going on
today in the shadows and husks of words, nor to the fact that
everything tends to lead people either into intoxicating concepts or
to such as make them blind.
I hope you will not take what has been said today as propagandism of
any sort, but look upon it as expressing existing facts. A man
certainly must and ought to live with his times and when anything is
described, he should not look upon it as all that is to be said on the
subject; he should learn to strike the balance. It is quite natural
that the world today should be confronted with impulses leading
entirely to materialism. That cannot be prevented, it is connected
with the deep needs of the age. But a counterbalance must be
established. One very prominent means of driving man into materialism
is the cinematograph. It has not been observed from this standpoint;
but there is no better school for materialism than the cinema. For
what one sees there is not reality as men see it. Only an age which
has so little idea of reality as this age of ours, which worships
reality as an idol in a material sense, could believe that the cinema
represents reality. Any other age would consider whether men really
walk along the street as seen at the cinema; people would ask
themselves whether what they saw at such a performance really
corresponded to reality. Ask yourselves frankly and honourably, what
is really most like what you see in the street: a picture painted by
an artist, an immobile picture, or the dreadful sparkling pictures of
the cinematograph. If you put the question to yourselves quite
honourably, you will admit that what the artist reproduces in a state
of rest is much more like what you see. Hence, while people are
sitting at the cinema, what they see there does not make its way into
the ordinary faculty of perception, it enters a deeper, more material
stratum than we usually employ for our perception. A man becomes
etherically goggle-eyed at the cinema; he develops eyes like those of
a seal, only much larger, I mean larger etherically. This works in a
materialising way, not only upon what he has in his consciousness, but
upon his deepest sub-consciousness. Do not think I am abusing the
cinematograph; I should like to say once more that it is quite natural
it should exist, and it will attain far greater perfection as time
goes on. That will be the road leading to materialism. But a
counterbalance must be established, and that can only be created in
the following way. With the search for reality which is being
developed in the cinema, with this descent below sense-perception, man
must at the same time develop an ascent above it, an ascent into
Spiritual reality. Then the cinema will do him no harm, and he can see
it as often as he likes. But unless the counterbalance is there,
people will be led by such things as these, not to have their proper
relation to the earth, but to become more and more closely related to
it, until at last, they are entirely shut off from the Spiritual
world.
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