Lecture 3
East and West
Berlin, July 9, 1918
Our
considerations have shown once more that the soul's life, in
all its aspects, is complicated. Threads unite the soul to
numerous realms, farces, and centres in the universe. We will
remind ourselves of what was said a fortnight ago, in order
to give us a link with certain truths that we shall begin to
consider to-day, and which will bring a certain aspect of
world-happenings before our souls in a way that is important
for use I will recapitulate very briefly what was said a
fortnight ago.
I said that to
know man in reality, it is useless merely to keep to the
track of the ordinary consciousness which predominates in him
from waking to falling-asleep, for we must recognise that
within it, other states of consciousness exist, dim and
shadowy, to be fathomed only by looking at man in his
threefold division of head, breast, limbs. Of course his
whole being makes use of the head, on which depends the
familixe form of consciousness; but we have established the
fact that he has also, by means of his head, a dream-like
consciousness which enables him to look back into his earlier
earth-lives. In the same way we have found that the limb-man,
but in conjunction with the whole man, unfolds a continual
dream-consciousness of his next life on earth. What we bring
forward in our Spiritual Science as a theory of
“repeated earth-lives” already exists as a
reality in the human soul. Dim and shadowy it is, but
nevertheless a reality. Besides this, it was said that
through the process of out-breathing, which belongs to the
breast man, a similarly dreamy consciousness develops of the
life between the last death and the present birth; and
through the process of in-breathing, likewise belonging to
the breast-man, a dim consciousness of the life to come after
death until the next birth. In short, all these forms of
consciousness interweave in man. Thus we see that in the
whole an we have to do with a delicately-woven organisation,
and that what is customarily dubbed man, what people
visualise as man, is in fact only a very limited part of his
whole being, and the coarsest part, at that.
This
complication comes about through man being embedded with his
various members, in worlds which are unknown and
“super-sensible” so far as the ordinary
consciousness is concerned. What is embedded in this way in a
spiritual world, and proves to be not by any mans a very
delicate, refined soul-life — as we observe in ordinary
human existence if we follow it through different earth-lives
— that is not so simple. Yet the total significance of
human life can be arrived at only by observing the
complicated human being in his progress through various
lives. For human vision of to-day, this intricate web is
altogether veiled, disguised. (we shall speak further of this
‘disguise’) All that is known of a man, as a
rule, is the disguise. For that which descends from the
spiritual world, takes up its abode in physical man and
re-enters the spiritual world at death, does not crudely
advertise itself in human life; indeed, much that happens in
human life is so crude that the processs whereby man is led
from one earth-life to another are hidden, disguised. An idea
of the complication of human life is arrived at only by
tracing it through long periods of time. And please observe
that this tracing — what I have to tell you of the true
course of human soul-life through long periods, — is
widely removed from what outer history relates. The reason
for this has often been pointed out. (We will speak of it
more exactly later on.)
One important
epoch in the development of humanity — particularly of
Western civilised humanity — comprises the seventh and
eighth centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. Just then, a
rapid, significant change took place in human souls,
especially those of Western civilisations. We remember that
this was the time when the third post-Atlantean epoch
gradually changed into the fourth. Before this particular
period, (700 or 800 B.C.) the characteristics
of the sentient soul were most conspicuous in humanity; afterwards,
those of the intellectual soul were acquired. In the fifteenth
century after Christ, not so very far behind us, there was
again an important turning point, when the stamp of the
consciousness-soul became apparent. Different soul-qualities
were acquired; there was also a difference in the dreamlike
retrospect into an earlier incarnation.
For instance,
at the beinning of the Graeco-Latin civilisation, in the
third fourth century B.C., a man of normal
development in the West, or thereabouts, manifested the qualities
of the intellectual or mind-soul. Yet his “dream” was
concerned with an earlier earth-life in which the
characteristics were those of the sentient soul. To be sure,
in the course of the fourth Post-Atlantean period the faculty
of directly perceiving repeated earth-lives gradually
disappeared, but it remained with a good many people, and
those who had it looked back to see themselves as
“possessors of the sentient soul”. There was a
comparatively great difference between what man met within
himself at that particular time, and what he saw when the
retrospective dream became objective to him, and he realised:
“That is what I was in my last earth-life”. Many
people saw that they differed widely in their present
incarnations from what they had been in the last. Because in
their then incarnation they felt according to the
intellectual or mind-soul, they realised that they had been
sentient-soul beings in their earlier life.
What did it
mean to have this feeling: “I was a sentient-soul in
the last incarnation”? It is an impossible feeling for
present-day man, but in the early centuries of the fourth
post-Atlantean period man could still remember it vividly. In
the third epoch, the Egypto-Chaldean, it was the normal thing
to experience — and it means that man was unaware that
he was a thinking being. To have thoughts meant nothing to
him; but he had an unbroken, vital feeling of standing, in
connection with the outer world — an outer world
entirely steeped in spirit.
It is extremely
difficult to describe this sentient-soul consciousness,
because it was so vivid to the senses that really a man
continually felt himself remaining behind as a shadow in each
par; of space through which he had passed, For instance, as
we should express it, to have sat on a chair and left it for
a time, produced the feeling, “I am still sitting
there”. The feeling of union with outer things was very
vivid. Above all, a complete, clear view of one own spatial
form was continually present, and the corresponding feeling
of that form. The strength of this feeling made the teaching
of reincarnation, at that time consciously given, very
powerful; for looking back, a man saw a vivid image of his
spatial form in the dream of his earlier earth-life. His
veritable self appeared, as it had been in many different
circumstances.
This living
vision of himself was lost to many during the fourth
post-Atlantean epoch. -Man became incapable of producing a
force strong enough to grasp what was present in him as
dream-like remembrance of a former earth-life — chiefly
because men who reincarnated later, did not, in this dream of
earlier earth-lives, remember the sentient soul, but an
intellectual mind-soul, destitute of this vision, vague and
inward and not objective. Man could not grasp its the
consciousness of earlier earth-lives entirely ceased. In a
quite definite way it will come back in the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch, and no one can truly understand human
development without taking account of such truths as
these.
What arose in
humanity was to be found under varied forms in the most
diverse regions of the earth. As I have often pointed out, we
must expect that in the future there will again be a time
— and it will manifest with particular significance in
the third millennium when it will be impossible for anyone
not to possess a certain power of looking back into earlier
earth-lives, and more especially also a clear realisation
that there are more lives to come. This particular
consciousness will appear in varied forms in different
regions, a fact which it is specially important to
understand.
Let us consider
the main regions where this will come about in various ways:
the great oriental region, stretching from Eastern Europe,
into Asia, and then the occidental region, including Western
Europe and America. The capacity of the future for perceiving
repeated earth-lives is germinating differently in these two
regions. In the West it is already clearly
recognised in initiated circles, and the significant thing in
the West is that occult capacities are reckoned with, and
their employment in outer life is contemplated. To omit this
from consideration shows a very indifferent understanding of
the development of the West and its whole influence on the
history of mankind. Precisely the most important things in
the West, the occurrences due principally to the
Anglo-American race, happen under the influence of mysterious
inner knowledge such as this. To describe the things in
question is apt to land us in paradox, because they are
things of which the shrewd observer (he always is so shrewd
and clear-sighted!) says: “Well, why do not the
initiates know that?” We need only recollect what I
have told you of the activities of Lucifer and Ahriman, in
the past and present, what they do and feel and specially
what they have done; yet people think themselves cleverer
than they, and claim that they themselves would have avoided
“remaining behind”, etc. A correct view of such
things is necessary. Certain things can be done by those who
are cleverer than man.
There is
apparent in the West, from certain mysterious depths, a
tendency to oppose the teaching of repeated earth-lives. An
opposition to it as regards the future is noticeable in
certain very enlightened circles amongst the English and
Americas . That is the paradox to be noted. It is desired in
certain spiritual centres in the West to cause the gradual
cessation of these repeated earth-lives, alternating between
birth and death, death and rebirth, so that in the end a
quite different arrangement of man's life may be brought
about — and means do exist for achieving such a
purpose. The object is this: through a certain schooling, a
certain acquisition of forces, to transpose certain human
souls into a condition in which, after death, they feel
themselves more and more akin to the conditions and forces of
the earth, acquiring almost a mania for the earth-forces
— of course those of a spiritual nature —
quitting the neighbourhood of the earth as little as
possible, remaining in close proximity to it, and by means of
this nearness hoping to live on as “the souls of the
dead” around the earth, exempt from the necessity of
again entering physical bodies. The Anglo-American race is
striving after a remarkable and strange ideal: no longer to
return into earthly bodies, but through the souls of the
living to have an ever greater influence on the earth,
becoming, as souls, more and more earthly. All efforts are
thus to be directed to the ideal of making life here on earth
and life after death similar to one another. Thus will be
attained — in our day only by those instructed
according to this rule, which will become more and more the
prevailing custom — as immeasurably greater, stronger,
attachment to the earth than the recognised
“normal” one.
But for the
Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence on humanity jn Lemurian and
Atlantean times, the human soul would feel itself less
intimately connected with the physical body than it does
to-day. This would have been shown by the fact that numerous
people, (indeed the majority of mankind), would have regarded
their bodies as belonging to the earth, and would have felt,
“I live within my body”, in the same way as we
to-day experience, “I walk on the solid Earth”.
Thanks to the Luciferic influence, we feel our bodies nearer
to us than the Earth. We say that the earth is “outside
us”, but we reckon our bodies as part of ourselves.
From a certain lofty spiritual point of view, we are just as
much outside our bodies, even in waking, as we are outside
the earth. In a sense our soul only ‘stands’ upon
the brain; the brain is the ‘floor’ for our
thinking. This is no longer recognised because of the effect
of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence. Had there been no
such influence, we should have felt ourselves as souls, more
alien to the body; we should have regarded it as a sort of
movable hillock, on which we supported ourselves, just as we
do on a heap of sand.
In certain
Anglo-American circles this is organised into a science. They
cultivate especially the powers of perception belonging to
the body which strengthen the subjection of man to the body,
through the incoming of forces not belonging entirely to the
body but binding it to the earth. Various practices are
intended to bring home vividly to the man of this race that
his body belongs to the earth. He is to feel not only,
“I am my arm, my leg”, but “I am also the
force of gravity passing through my limbs; I am the weight
which encumbers my hand or arm”. A strong physical
sense of relationship between the human body and the earthly
elements is to be acquired. This strong feeling of
relationship between the creature in the physical body and
the earth exists to-day in certain species of apes, which
have it as their soul-life. In them it can be studied
physiologically and zoologically. What is present there can
be gradually formed into a “system of instruction for
human beings”; all that has to be done is to develop
the coarse side of relationship with nature into a system of
bodily education. (In saying this I am neither railing nor
criticising; I am merely stating facts.) Thus it will be
possible to bring about a sort of practical Darwinism,
intensifying the relation of man to what binds him to the
earth in a certain sense, to “monkeyfy” him. That
is the practical side. It will be pursued through the
intensive cultivation — ostensibly instinctive but in
fact carefully directed — of sports and such-like
things. This fetters the soul, drawing it into a sense of
kinship with the earthly, with the earth itself, and so a
spiritual ideal such as I have described is set up. By this
means the continuing alternation of spiritual life and
physical life will be overcome, and by degrees the ideal will
be realised of living in future periods of earth-evolution as
a kind of “phantom”; of dwelling on earth in this
guise. A very interesting point is that this ideal can be
appropriately followed only by the male population, and
hence, in spite of all politicl endeavours, an increasing
difference between men and women will arise in Anglo-American
civilization (Political endeavours certainly seem to be aimed
in the opposite direction, but in the inner depths of their
being men often want sonething quite different from what they
are pursuing by political means.) Anglo-American spiritual
life will in essence descend to future ages through woman;
while that which lives in male bodies will strive towards
such an ideal as I have described. This will set the pattern
of the future Anglo-American race .
If now we look
at the East, we have an entirely different picture. Modern
man may well look towards the East, for what is to develop in
Eastern Europe is at present entirely hidden and suppressed.
What for the moment has taken root there is of course the
reverse of what has to come about. In Russia there is a
battle against spiritual life of any kind, against any
spiritual foundations for humanity, although it is just in
the East that some of these ought to be laid. We are nowadays
little inclined to open our eyes and rouse ourselves to an
understanding of what is happening. We sleep and let things
pass over us, although it is absolutely necessary — in
our day particularly — to exercise our power of
judgment concerning what is going on. Men such as Lenin, and
Trotsky should be seen by their contemporaries as the
greatest, bitterest enemies of true spiritual development,
worse than any Roman Emperor, however atrocious, or the
notorious personages of the Renaissance. The Borgias, for
instance, are proved by historical events as far as the
conflict with the spiritual is concerned to have been mere
babes compared with Lenin and Trotsky. These are things which
people do not observe to-day, but it is necessary sometimes
to draw attention to such matters. For one thing surely
should attract the attention of our souls — these four
years (of war) should have taught us that the old
history-myth, elaborated in so many forms, is no longer
tenable. Once and for all it should by recognised that in the
light of present events the tales about the Roman Empire of
the Renaissance are worth no more than “school-girl
fiction”, and anyone who clings to them is incapable of
being corrected by what can be learnt through awakening to a
real estimate of recent events. Something escapes the notice
of sleeping mankind — escapes it more now than it did a
short time ago, when the as was judged more by its spiritual
creations, for in them one could find a true indication of
what might be called the elements of a real understanding of
Eastern Europe; and if we are to look into what is preparing
over there we must take account of this.
This region
— Eastern Europe — will, although not in the very
near future, produce people who will cultivate a survey of
repeated earth-lives, although in a different way from the
West. In the West a sort of battle against such an idea will
be fought, but in the East, there will be an adoption, a
reception, of this truth. There will be a longing so to
educate human souls that they will become attentive to what
lives within them not only between birth and death, but
between one earth-life and another. During this training
certain things will be pointed out which these Eastern people
will experience with peculiar force. Even to children it will
be explained that man possesses something — something
he can feel and experience — which is not accounted for
by the life of the body. Older people will make the following
clear in teaching the young; they will say, “Now
notice; what do you feel in your soul”? When this
question is put to him in various ways, the pupil will have
the idea: “I feel as if something were there; something
has entered my body which was on earth long age, went through
death, and will come back again some day — but it is a
very dim feeling.” Then, bringing it home more closely
to the pupil: “Try to explore further behind this: What
relation does your dim feeling bear to the rest of your
Soul-life?” And the pupil, going behind the various
forms of the Question (of which the right one will certainly
be found) will say: “What I feel, what is destined to
live again, is something which destroys my thinking; it will
not let me think, its aim is to slay my thoughts”. This
will be a very important feeling, arising and being
inculcated as a natural thing in Eastern people. They will
acquire a feeling of something within, which endures from
life to life, yet deprives them, as earthly-beings, of
thought; it benumbs them, renders them empty, deadens them.
“I cannot think correctly; thought grows blunter when I
feel the depths of my human nature; this part of me entombs
my thought; although I feel something within me which is
eternal, I possess it as a sort of inner murderer of my
thought”.
That will be
the feeling. Among all exceptionally interesting psychic
things which the world has yet to learn from the East, will
be this; and it occurs to me that those who have concerned
themselves with the East if only in the domain of its art and
literature, will find that indications of such things are
already there. In Dostoevski's writings such indications are
not lacking, where men strive towards the best and highest
within them, only to find an inner murderer of their
thoughts. The cause is the coming to fruition in a quite
special form of the Consciousness soul, the most earth-bound
of all the members of the human soul. As time goes on, and
the soul feels the capacity for experiencing its repeated
earth-lives, it will not feel as in ancient Greece in the
days before Christ, when the sentient-soul was seen in all
its vividness; no, the Intellectual soul or mind-soul will
gradually be felt as something lying further away behind, and
as the direct killer of thoughts.
The training;
will go further. These souls will seem to themselves as an
inner tomb for their own being, yet a tomb through which the
way will be made clear for the manifestation of the spiritual
world, and this is the next feeling I will describe. They
will say: “It is true: when I experience my immortal
part which goes from life to life, it is as though my
thought-effort died; my thinking will be put aside, but
Divine thought streams in and spreads over the tomb
of my own thoughts.” Thus the Spirit-Self arises: the
Consciousness or Spiritual Soul descends into the grave. No
diagram is needed here — the Consciousness Soul is
superseded by the Spirit Self — but I want to show how
it will be for the human soul when the ego experiences the
gradual transition from the one to the other. In the East
this experience will be like this: “The Eternal has so
developed on earth — (descending ever since the
Graeco-Latin epoch) — that ordinary thought, which
springs only from the human side, is disturbed by it. Man
becomes empty, yet not for nothing: into the void gradually
flows the new manifestation of the spirit, in its infant form
of the Spirit-Self, filling the soul of man.
Dramas of the
soul, tragedies of the soul, necessarily accompany the
achievement of such a development. In the East many a man
will endure deep inner tragedy and suffering, because he
discovers: “My inner being kills my thought”.
Those who seek the ideal humanity, because the first step
brings no freedom, will succumb to something akin to inner
weariness, deadening, dimness.
In order to
enable these circumstances to be seen objectively, so that
they can be understood with a proper sense of whither they
are tending, the Central European peoples are there. That is
their task, but they will accomplish it only if they recall
to mind what I have spoken of in my book,
“The Riddle of Man,”
as a forgotten stream of spiritual life. It is
very, very important that this stream, which to-day is mostly
forgotten but once existed as a force of spiritual
understanding in relation to the whole world, should be taken
hold of again in Middle Europe. Who to-day realises what a
magnificent understanding of all aspects of human culture was
evinced by certain personalities, such as Friedrich Schlegel
for example? Or the deeply significant insight into human
evolution of such thinkers as Schelling, Hegel, Fichte?
People talk a great deal today about Fichte, but, needless to
say, those who talk most about such great thinkers,
understand least. What a revival of understanding would be
possible if, in the genuine, real sense of the words,
“the Goethe-spirit” animated mankind! We are far
from that at present! To keep on saying that the
Goethe-spirit must be revived at once, to-day, is beside the
point; what does matter is that in the world we are unjustly
criticised because we give, the impression of no longer
possessing it. The connection, for instance, of our Building
at Dornach with the Goethe-spirit — I do not believe
that many people understand that. Nevertheless it is not
unimportant.
What I have
been telling you to-day from the aspect of Spiritual Science
as to the characteristics of West and East is declared by the
thinkers of West and East alike, only it must be correctly
understood. What emerges from political discussions of to-day
in the West must be interpreted in the right way, and certain
impulses which appear in connection with man's
soul-development must be correctly perceived. The impulse to
conquer the earth, as it prevails amongst the Anglo-American
peoples, is inwardly connected with the ideal of becoming
disembodied earthly beings in the future; and Rabindranath
Tagore's remarkable lecture on the
“Spirit of Japan”,
now published in book form, is entirely
impregnated with what is dawning in the East. Not that it
contains what I have been saying; but pulsing through it are
the experiences which such an Eastern thinker, at any rate
one from the Far East (what dawns in the Far East is more
significant), has to express concerning the coming
development in Eastern Europe. It is, however, necessary for
everybody, whether in the West or East, to recognise the
content of the spiritual substance of Mid-Europe. Of course
what people first look at are the outward, physical
surroundings. Eastern writers — I call to mind Ku Hun
Ming — are now publishing significant works; but
supposing that the name of Goethe comes up for discussion,
where can such an Eastern turn but to the
“Goethe society”,
with its headquarters in the town from which
Goethe's spiritual activities once rayed forth? There he
would find this Goethean spiritual life cared for in the most
remarkable way — as never before. The opportunity was
presented of making princely munificence fruitful for a
widely-spread spiritual life; for what the Grand-Duchess
Sophie did to encourage the Goethe-cult was immeasurably
great. That was really equal to the occasion; but other
people were by no means equal to it. A
“Goethe society”
was founded. Looking at it from outside one
must ask — who supports it, who represents it? Is there
anyone in whom the spirit of Goethe lives? It is very
characteristic of our time that its representative is a
former Finance Minister! We must take into account all the
experiences, the soul-experiences, which lead to such a
thing. The only ray of hope in the concern is his name,
“Kreuzwendedich,”
[ Note 1 ]
a surname in use for generations. Usually such things are
ignored, but they ought not to be; the great need is for more
understanding of what is going on in the world.
Now I pointed
out last time that by reason of the developments of the last
centuries, 540 million extra hands, machine-hands, have been
added to the earth population of 1500-million. Through this
an Ahrimanic element entered into human development. It is
related to something which has become altogether necessary
— the exploration of the world by natural science, as I
said before. Within the last four centuries this exploration
has obliged man to study nature in detail, to acquire
knowledge of natural laws and beings. This sort of
observation has been carried into every possible field, even
that of history, where it is out of place. Nobody is
supposed, in the realm of natural science, to talk for ever
about “Nature, nature, nature!”, as though the
idea were to establish a sort of pan-nature, a universal
nature. This conception would do little to advance modern
culture, but some outlooks are always inclined to stop short
at that point. I will give you an example.
When the
investigator of Nineveh, Layard, once asked the Kadi of Mosul
about the characters of certain of his subjects and the
previous history of his different states, that was a far too
concrete scientific way of thinking for the Kadi. He could
see no reason why anyone should need to study the
characteristics of his subjects as though they were a
landscape, or the history of his provinces. That, he
supposed, was the foolish European way of studying nature;
and he said to the explorer: “Listen, my son; the one
and only truth is to believe in God, and this truth should
restrain a man from wishing to enquire into His deeds. Look
up; you see one star circling round another, also a star with
a-tail; it has needed many years to get so far; it will need
years to pass out of our orbit. Who would be so foolish as to
enquire into the path of this star? The hand that created it
will lead it and guide it. Listen, my son; you say that it is
not curiosity, but that you have a greater craving for
knowledge than I have. Now if your knowledge has made you a
better man than you were before, you are doubly welcome; but
do not ask me to trouble about it. I trouble about no wisdom
except that contained in the belief in God. I disdain all
other. Or I ask you another Question: — has your
wisdom, which spies into every corner, gifted you with a
second stomach, or opened your eyes to paradise?”
— Thus the Kadi of Mosul, on the subject of natural
science.
It may perhaps
amuse you that the Kadi, a typical representative of this
view, should give utterance to such sentiments, but Spiritual
Science, although in another realm, has to reckon with the
same type of thought. There are plenty of Kadis of Mosul.
They are for ever saying, “It is not at all necessary
to trouble ourselves about the Spiritual world or anything
else, except trust in God.” As the Kadi of Mosul
declined to know anything about natural science, so plenty of
people around us — esecially official representatives
of spiritual life — reject Spiritual Science. A little
book has just been printed, written from the best of motives,
in which is to be read this sentence : “The wickedness
of Spiritual Science lies in the fact that it wishes to know
about the Spiritual world, whereas the true value of
religious life consists in knowing nothing about it —
to have faith, great faith to believe in what you do not
know.” A man is supposed to be admirable if he can
admit “I know nothing, but I accept the Divine.”
People do not yet see that with regard to the spiritual world
this is the same view as the Kadi's — which make us
smile — with regard to the physical sense-world and the
knowledge of it. What is just the point: man must find the
transition to knowledge of the spiritual world exactly as he
found it to knowledge of the natural world. This needs to be
clearly and firmly recognised, for it will determine whether
in the future we shall have a view of the universe on which a
social structure for humanity can be founded. Such a
structure cannot be founded on what nowadays is called the
science of political economy, or something like that. All the
doctrines and views that make up political economy are either
an inheritance from ancient times, no longer useful, or they
are useless, foolish encumbrances, withered rubbish. A real
political economy will arise only when thought is permeated
by ideas taken from the spiritual world. What is taught in
official schools as political economy or as the-science of
human happiness gets into the heads of such enemies of
mankind as Lenin and Trotsky; they are the culmination of it.
What should fill mankind with the creative force of the
future must come from knowledge of the spiritual world. It
may seem paradoxical to speak as I have done about the West
and the East, but spiritual realities are contained in this
paradox! Although knowledge of these spiritual realities it
will be impossible to find a sound way of ordering earthly
conditions, which are inclining more and more towards future
chaos. Ideas that not long ago were recognised as significant
and valuable are no longer taken seriously. Everywhere there
will have to be a complete change of outlook. Religions will
mean nothing to humanity unless they are vivified by real
knowledge of the spiritual worlds. Their exponents will have
to learn — I am referring not to the content of
religions but to the way in which they have crystallised into
form — that these outer forms are not adapted to speak
truly to the inner being of humanity unless they appeal to
the real forces which come from the Spiritual World. The
counterparts of the Kadi of Mosul can no longer be tolerated
in the realm of public life. I speak humbly, unpretentiously;
but I believe you will feel that there is much, very much, in
what I am saying.
A distinct
question now remains to be considered. How is it that these
metamorphoses of the human soul, accomplished say, from the
twelfth century till now, or in a wider sense between the
seventh or eighth century B.C. and the
present time — are so entirely hidden from humanity at
large? This depends on the fact that in human nature something
still exists belonging to another world, and that this remaining
part appertains to the very deepest mysteries of humanity. Man
can only be understood by learning something of this other world,
which has a continuous interest in not being known. We will
speak of this next time.
Notes:
Note 1. Literally: Cross,
turn thyself about!
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