A full insight into those relationships which we
are now contacting is not possible unless one looks more
closely into the nature of man in the period between going to sleep
and waking up; that is, the sleeping condition. Of course,
diagrammatically, the sleeping condition is well-known to you. That
which we call the astral body and Ego separate from the physical
and etheric bodies, But if we wish to go more deeply into the
nature of sleep; we must remember that it is just in the sleeping
condition that a man experiences the reality of what we discussed
in our last lecture, when we said that St Augustine sought in his
own inner experience to grasp the real true certainty about the
world, I told you in yesterday's lecture that in his waking
condition, condition, man does not grasp the full reality of his
inner being. We must be quite clear that what is described as the
astral body and the ego, do not really come to the consciousness of
man by day; in his waking condition there only comes to his
consciousness a copy, a mirror-picture of his ego and astral body.
If man were conscious in the sleeping condition, that is from going
to sleep until waking up, or, let us say, if he became conscious
through those exercises which you can find described in my various
writings — (which are all at your disposal) —, if man
could thus become conscious through his sleeping condition, he
would experience not a mirror-image, as by day, but the true form
of his Ego and Astral body. But we must quite clearly realise that
the true form of the Astral body and Ego appear in such a way to
the soul of man when he develops Imaginative Consciousness, that in
the inner experiences during the sleep condition, he experience in
his Ego end Astral body what we cull the third Hierarchy, the
Hierarchy of the Angels, Archangels and Archai.
Although throughout the whole of man's working
life he stands in intimate connection with what we must designate
as the Angels, Archangels and Archai, he does not experience
this consciously during the waking condition; and that constitutes
the deception in man's waking condition. He remains aware only of
an abstract Ego of those shadowy ideas and concepts which fill
man's soul, or perhaps of half-dreamy feelings and willings. This
is the essential — that throughout the waking condition man
does not progress beyond experiencing this shadowy side of his Ego
and Astral body; and that he cannot become conscious that all the
time there is working into his Ego those Beings of the third
Hierarchy to which I have just referred. But if he were really to
wake up in his sleep, if I may use that expression, he would not
have external nature around him, but would immediately feel in
himself the Beings of the Angels, Archangels and the Time-Spirits.
Now because those Beings work in us, my dear
friends we have in the constitution of our soul something which we
would not have otherwise have had. For instance, if the
Hierarchy of the Angels did not work into our and Astral body, we
would never feel ourselves to be individuals. Therefore, just
because the Hierarchy of the Angels work into our Spiritual,
psychic nature, we can feel ourselves to be free persons.
Because the Hierarchy of the Archangels work
into us, we can feel ourselves as members of the whole of humanity.
We might also say, that because these Arch-Angelic Beings shine
into our psychic, Spiritual nature, inspiring it, therefore
we really feel ourselves as men.
And because the Beings of the Archai, the
Spirits of Time, pulsate in our nature, filling it with their
Intuition, therefore we feel ourselves as earthly human beings
— that means members not only of the present humanity, but of
the whole of earthly humanity, from the very start of earthly
evolution to the very end of Earth-life. In that way we can feel
ourselves as members of the entire earthly humanity. Of course, we
only feel it dimly, because we can only dimly sense the influence
of these Time-Spirits within us.
We cannot say that we behold ourselves as
personalities; that we can only do when we attain the Imaginative
Consciousness. There remains a kind of reflection of this
Imaginative Consciousness when we so experience our thinking that,
through the free life of thought we feel ourselves as individual
beings. Let us once more make quite clear how it is that we feel
ourselves as individuals. We feel ourselves as personalities
because we can, of our own free will add one thought to another.
You would at once cease to feel yourselves as personal beings if
you were compelled to add one thought to another just as in
the world of external nature one phenomenon is linked on to
another. This experience of inner freedom for the developing of a
thought, gives us the certainty of feeling ourselves as personalities.
This feeling of inner freedom is what comes clearest of all to man's
consciousness by day; and it comes to man by day when he is awake,
because, from the moment of sleeping until waking he is permeated
by his Angel, that Angelic Being belonging to his own Ego.
In the feeling oneself as a human being as a
member of all humanity, we are generally speaking, already far more
apathetic, we feel ourselves far less strongly and intensely as
members of the whole of mankind; and that is because the
Arch-Angels, who bring this about, stand further away from us than
do our Angels; and that which inserts itself as Personality
into the whole human stream of evolution, (and which comes from the
Archai) that remains for most human beings something really quite
shadowy. On the basis of Anthroposophy we seek to evoke this very
feeling, of belonging to the entire earthly humanity, for it
becomes clear to us that in the 5th Post Atlantean epoch man
experiences things in a certain way; in the 4th in a different way;
in the 3rd in a still different way. One thus sees how the mood of
soul has altered in the various epochs of time, alterations brought
about by the various Beings of the 3rd Hierarchy, the Archai, the
Spirits of Time. It is of this that we seek to create a
consciousness on the basis of Spiritual Science. This consciousness
can alone give man the possibility of feeling himself an historical
Being, of feeling conscious: “I am now living as a
Personality, in the 20th Century.” The fact does not enter
the consciousness of most human beings, that their personality can
only be real as Personality, because it has been
placed in a definite point of time. How this permeation of the
human soul and spirit-being by the Beings of the third Hierarchy,
is something of which men would become aware, if he were intensely
enough to attain Imaginative Cognition.
In the ordinary path of human evolution, as you
know, Imaginative Cognition is not present. From the moment of
going to sleep until waking up, the reality of man's ego and astral
body is dumped down; and by day, when man is awake, he loses his
connection with the Beings of the third Hierarchy. That comes from
the fact that especially in our present cycle of time, man, when he
is awoke, is given over to an illusion. As we have seen, when he is
asleep, man is subject to the deception that his so and Astral body
are not then active; but they are not inactive. They are then in
living interchange with the Beings of the third Hierarchy. In the
waking condition, the state of affairs at the present cycle of tine
is, that our physical and etheric bodies, “unjustly”
illegally, as we night say, absorb our Spiritual, Psychic nature.
They permeate themselves with our spirit and soul. Normally this
should not be the case. It should be normal for a man to-day when
awake, to feel himself an Ego and Astral body, and to feel his
etheric and physical bodies as a kind of shell into which he
crawls, to feel then as something which he carries consciously
about with him. But man does not feel that today? he feels as
if the physical and etheric bodies were himself. But this they are
not. We are that Spiritual, psychic being which makes use of the
physical and etheric bodies as an instrument; but we cannot raise
ourselves above the deception which belongs to the working of our
epoch of time. We are, us it were, compelled to identify ourselves
with that which in the normal consciousness should be like a hammer
which one takes in ones hand and gives blows with it; so should we
regard our physical and etheric bodies. But in this epoch we have
to identify ourselves with them, — to give ourselves over to
the deception that we are these, that it is we ourselves who thus
go in a fleshly way through space. But they are not ourselves. That
is only because the consciousness of our ego is absorbed unjustly
illegally, by the physical and etheric bodies. That simply rests in
the fact that in the present cycle of time the Ahrimanic powers are
stronger than they should be in the normal evolution of mankind.
They draw down the etheric and astral bodies
into the physical and etheric bodies, so to speak, and they bring
about in man the deception that the head which he carries is
himself, that his hands and his whole body is himself. Wrongfully
the physical body absorbs that consciousness, so that it appears as
if the physical body brought about our personality. Anyone who
thinks that his physical body brings about his personality is
subject to the same deception as a person would be, who standing
before a mirror, believes it produces him, because it radiates his
reflection. To say that this fleshly form we carry round with us is
ourselves, is no cleverer than to hold your hand before a mirror
and believe that the mirror is producing your hand. Yet the whole
of modern Science is subject to that deception, All modern
Science believes that what we as individual persons experiences
inwardly, is somehow produced by the physical and etheric bodies;
whereas all the physical and etheric bodies do, is to radiate back
our astral body and ego, forming the mirror-image which, while we
are awake, we recognise to be our ego and our thoughts, in other
words, our astral body.
That is the Fundamental Truth which we mast
realise. With reference to this Fundamental Truth, modern humanity,
by reason of the forces working through our present epoch of time,
give themselves over to a deception of consciousness which
consists, as I have just told you, in the delusion that all that we
think, or experience as our thoughts or our feelings, is produced
by our body. Mankind is subject naturally to this delusion to-day.
With his present consciousness he cannot transcend that deception,
just as the Sun when low on the horizon looks bigger
than when high up in the heavens. One knows it is a delusion, yet
it does seem to be so. At this point of time man help regarding his
flash and blood as himself. That is a delusion of consciousness, my
dear friends; but man was not always subject to this deception of
consciousness; it is essentially a characteristic quality of
the humanity of post-Christian tines, after the Mystery of
Golgotha. Before the Mystery of Golgotha this delusion did not
exist. Before the Mystery of Golgotha there existed another kind of
deception, Before Golgotha man did not believe that his
consciousness was united with his physical body. Of course, history
tells nothing of this, but it is so. It would have been sheer
nonsense for a man of the second or third millennium of the
pre-Christian era to suppose that his soul was produced by his
physical body; in olden times no man felt himself bound to his
physical body as the modern man does. In those pre-Christian times
man really had a living consciousness of the Beings of the third
Hierarchy, and because he knew: — “My soul is not
identical with my body,” he also knew that his soul was not
bound up with the bone and muscles of his body, but that it was
bound up with the Beings of the third Hierarchy,
He was subject to a different delusion, not in
his consciousness but in his life. He believed that his soul was
bound up with external nature, together with the Beings of
the third Hierarchy, just as modern man believes his soul to be
bound up with his physical body. Man to-day gives himself over to a
delusion in consciousness, he believes that his soul is united with
his body. The reason he cannot see the Beings of the Angels,
Archangels and Archai, is because his physical body darkens them
for him. The man of old, although he had a consciousness that these
Beings were there and that his soul was bound up with them, could
not see directly but only dimly into the external, sensible nature.
A modern man, in the delusion of his consciousness, believes
that his soul is bound up with his body; the man of old believed
that the Beings of the third Hierarchy were bound up with the
external nature which he perceived with his senses. At that time he
confused the Divine Beings of the third Hierarchy with the
phenomena of nature, and expressed this in his interpretation of
natural phenomena. Man to-day places his soul in his flesh and
blood, the man of old placed the Beings of the third Hierarchy in
external nature. He had no Natural Science such as we have to-day,
but he considered the phenomena of nature as brought about by this
or the other demon, more or less Divine Spiritual Beings,
concerning whom he gave himself to a life of deception, in that he
thought of these Spiritual Beings as operative in the phenomena of
Nature. It is an important fact, that this change took place in the
development of man in pre-Christian times; he gives himself over to
a characteristic delusion of life, and after the Mystery of
Golgotha to a delusion in his consciousness. The reality, the
effective working of Christ Jesus (and of this we shall speak
further in the next lecture) should consist in this — of
elevating, of raising that delusion in man's consciousness,
elevating it, bringing it home to him that he is deceived; and
through the “Christus in mir.”
“Christ in me,” man should be brought
to feel that what lives as astral body and ego, lives in free
Spirituality, and is not bound up with his flesh and blood. Of
course, this can only be seen on the path of Spiritual Science, but
it can already be felt in the words of St Paul:
“Nicht ich, aber das Christus in
mich,” “Not I, Christ in me.”
From what I have told you, you can already, my
dear friends see that there are reasons why man should experience
this Duality up to a certain point; experiencing on the one hand
the ordering of Nature which consists contains no ideals, which of
necessity connects one event with another, an ordering in which
merely cause and effect, effect and cause are incorporated, so that
one can never think that through what goes on in Nature, any ideal,
moral or otherwise, can be realised. On the other hand, man is
conscious that he could not develop an existence worthy of man
unless he had ideals, unless he could cling to something else than
a mere external Ordering of Nature. But with the consciousness
accessible to him to-day, he cannot regard his ideals as operative,
as effective, in the same way as, let us say, electricity or
magnetism or the force of heat, — so, that the ideals are
able to enter into Nature, into the ordering of natural phenomena.
For that reason the Ordering of Nature and his own ideals appear to
him side by side, but he cannot build a bridge from one to the
other. He cannot build that bridge my dear friends, because he
cannot look into the Cosmos both by day and by night, where the
bridge has to be built. If only man could have a normal
consciousness by day — that means an Ahriman-free
consciousness — so that he could feel: “I as an
individual person, am not bound to my physical or etheric bodies
any more than when I look into a mirror which reflects me, I am
bound to the image before me.” If man could have this
consciousness about his ego and astral body, he would regard the
ego and astral bodies as reality and not as mere reflected
images, and then he could also recognise his ideals as real forces,
just as real as electricity and magnetism, only they are not
working at the present time, they are acquiring reality in
the present incarnation for the next; from this earthly
existence they pass over into the next earthly existence.
If man in the waking condition could perceive
that his ego and astral body are bound up with the Beings of the
third Hierarchy, as I have pointed out, — in other words,
— if man could but fully see himself, and not merely feel
himself but realise himself as a free personality not bound up with
flesh and blood, he would no longer believe that the external
nature outside him as presented to his sense-organs is a strong
enough reality to oppose the force of his Ideals, He would know
that, that which is the Ordering of Nature to-day, will crumble
away with all those substances; that there is no such thing as the
conservation of matter, but that which in Nature destroys itself,
and when that which to-day is Nature no longer exists, then another
external sense-reality will appear in its place, and that which
to-day constitutes our ideals will become Nature in the next epoch.
So we can say, to-day we experience an Ordering of Nature, (see
diagram red) we experience an Ordering of our Ideals (yellow). The
physicist believes that this Nature is maintained by a conservation
of force and a conservation of matter, that the Ordering of Nature
persists —, that the same atoms, the same forces play into
all future.
[The diagram is missing – e.Ed.]
The physicist, if he is sincere, can say none
other than this: — “The ideal Ordering was a dream, it
must sink and vanish like dreams. At the end of the earth our
dream-ideal will no longer be there, it will have been
buried.”
Spiritual
Science shows that this is a delusion, untrue. We have the Ordering
of Nature, (red) but in reality there is no conservation of
force or of matter, for that which is the Ordering of matter ceases
at a certain definite point of time; and that which to-day
constitutes our ideal Order, forms the continuation of the Ordering
of Nature.
[A gap in the page ... another missing diagram? – e.Ed.]
All that we see round us with our eyes, or that
we hear with our ears, all that we perceive around us with all our
senses, will, when the earth reaches the Venus-condition, be
non-existent; but out of that nothingness the possibility will be
given for the Ideals of modern humanity to become the external
Ordering of Nature. No conception of the world, my dear friends,
which fails to recognise the destruction of what is sensible, can
ever have a hope that the Ideal has the power to realise itself,
for if what is sensible were eternal, if the conservation of
force and matter did exist, them our ideal world would simply be a
dream. It is of immense significance that man should at the present
time, have this illumination: — that the Ideals of the
present constitute the Nature of the future. It is a great delusion
to believe that the atoms and forces around us are the eternal.
They are not the eternal; they are the temporal. That indeed is the
fate of Spiritual Science, it has to contradict and refute a
perception held by the present-day universal perception and view of
science as an absolute certainty, and which is yet nothing but an
Ahrimanic deception.
Now let us go back again to something else, to
which I have drawn your attention. Before the Mystery of Golgotha
what I have characterised to you as the delusion of man, can be
described as a delusion of life; after the Mystery of Golgotha it
was a delusion of consciousness. When one knows this, one can
understand many things in the development of man. Above all one
understands why, before the Mystery of Golgotha, those human beings
who had atavistic clairvoyance, could not see things in their
true form, but saw the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies as demons.
That is why those ancient Mythologies consist essentially in a
demonology. The Gods of the ancient Mythologies were seen as
Demons, as for the most part they were. And that rests on the fact
that a delusion of life was present then. Men had to think of a
false Ordering of Nature as a Divine Ordering, just as they have to
think to-day of a false Ordering of the body as ordained for
mankind.
Then came the Mystery of Golgotha; and man had to take the
soul-mood which resulted from the Mystery of Golgotha. Before the
Mystery of Golgotha, man in his waking condition stood in a more
direct relationship to the Beings of the third Hierarchy than
to-day. He saw them. And through their delusion of life they
“fantasised” these Beings into Zeus, Apollo, and so on.
These are the Beings of the third Hierarchy, but they were
poetically altered, as seen under the influence of that delusion of
life, as we to-day see everything which refers to man under the
influence of our delusion of consciousness.
In spite of all that however, a Divine Spiritual
order was spread into humanity. Just think how close man of those
ancient epochs felt his human world to be to the Divine Ordering of
the Cosmos! There was the human Hierarchy, and then came the Divine
Hierarchy. Man did not feel so cut off as to-day, for he continued
the world straight up to the Gods! How close the Greek felt his
world of the Gods to the world of Man.
Then came the Mystery of Golgotha, and that was then no
longer the case! Not through the Mystery of Golgotha, for that was
to give compensation for what has been lost. But time itself
brought into human evolution that man was to be cut off from this
conscious connection with the Divine-Spiritual world of the
third Hierarchy; only a memory, an historical memory remained. Then
came the time of the first epoch after the Mystery of
Golgotha. Men certainly had to think somewhat differently to what
they did before the Mystery of Golgotha; but something of that
immediate past still worked in them, when men knew that the Divine
Spiritual Beings work into the earthly events and arrange and
ordain what man does on the Earth. Therefore man of old was
convinced that when he founded a State, (if one wishes to use the
word “State,” it is incorrect, but we are accustomed to
speak like this to-day) — he knew that those social
structures were founded under the influence of the third Hierarchy.
Man felt that his arrangements on Earth were Divine arrangements.
You need merely study Egyptian history, even without clairvoyance
to see how fully convinced the Egyptians were that what man does
here in his social life was all arranged by the Beings of the third
Hierarchy. That was so before the Mystery of Golgotha. After the
Mystery of Golgotha the Church established a kind of grade in the
clerical dignitaries. Such gradations were arranged; but behind the
arrangement of those degrees there was a quite different thought.
This can be seen quite clearly in the early Church writers. In
Dionysius the Areopagite, you can see it clearly for yourself.
There was to be such an arrangement in the administration of the
Church that it should be an image of the Divine Ordering! and the
relation of the Deacon to the Archdeacon was to be an image of the
relation of the Angel to the Archangel, Again the relation of
Archdeacon to the Bishop was a copy of the relationship of the
Archangel to the Archai. Thus it was endeavoured to make the social
structure of the Church a sort of copy of that Theocracy! Above in the
Spiritual world there is a sequence of Hierarchies, and down below,
in the physical world, there should also stand as a copy of the
Spiritual Hierarchies, a sequence in the clerical dignitaries. In
the first epoch after the Mystery of Golgotha, that was not
conceived juridistically, but theocratically. It was a copy. The
clerical Hierarchy was conceived as a copy of the Third Hierarchy,
Thus in the first Christian Centuries it was endeavoured to
establish such organisations as should cause the position of man on
Earth to each other to be a copy of the Hierarchies in the
Spiritual world.
Then gradually men lost the consciousness that
they still had in their memories. The historic memory of the old
theocracy was lost, in which man still knew that the earthly
arrangements were a consequence of a copy of the Deeds of the Gods.
The consciousness of this was lost, and in the place of the
consciousness of the living world of Divine Beings, which were seen
by men in olden times, and of which they still knew, there come
abstract concepts. And so came the centuries where, in place of the
individual Gods, — the Christians called them Angels —
they put abstract ideas, a metaphysic of abstract concepts. The
Divine Ordering, which should have its copy in the human ordering
became theocratic; the application of mere ideas to man's
social arrangements produced something which was simply intended to
bring some kind of order into human intercourse. As formerly it was
thought to create an image of the Divine Cosmos in the human social
structure, so in the metaphysical age which followed, it was simply
striven to maintain some order by punishing evil and not
punishing the good, perhaps even rewarding it, — thus
creating an ordering in which the social order could exist. And so,
as in the place of living Gods there now appeared abstract,
metaphysical concepts, a human Ordering appeared which in a sense
so stamped itself on man, that one was preferred before another,
not because that was a copy so that order should be maintained on
earth; one came to command and the other to obey. Abstractions
appeared in the place of the living permeation of the social
Ordering.
Essentially the epoch of real metaphysic
prevailed throughout the middle ages. The Roman consciousness
essentially provided the special element for this metaphysical
Ordering, which spread everywhere; one finds memories of this in
the very words. For instance the word “Prince”
(Fürst), is a memory of the
Theocratic Ordering. The Prince, (Fürst),
was the first, because some one had to be first, just as
in the Divine Hierarchies also, one had to be first. A memory of
the metaphysical order of administration is given us in the word
Count, “Graf,” which is connected with
“grafo;” — to write.
In the metaphysical Ordering, everything is registered! the
social order was kept by writing documents, by making compacts.
And then came the modern age. This newer age
brought disbelief in the abstract concepts, in metaphysics.
Men could now only believe in the external sense-phenomena, even in
human life. Those traditions which still existed in ancient times
of a living consciousness which somehow worked thus into the
social structure, was lost. First the Gods, later the metaphysical
concepts; these things could no longer exist in modern times; but
they must again be won on those paths indicated by Spiritual
Science. All consciousness of the Spiritual basis, of a Spiritual
structure, was radically obliterated by Industrialism. Therefore
Auguste Comte and his teacher Saint-Simon, felt themselves so
specially united with the epoch of Industrialism, for they
allowed positivistic Science alone to have any value. — That
means, only that which can be related to the external sensible
natural ordering, permeated by causal necessity.
Therewith, my dear friends, the concept of
truth itself has undergone a complete transformation.
People to-day have not the right feeling for these things, they do
not as yet realise aright the fact, that the very concept of Truth
has undergone a history. These modern human beings who knew
themselves to be under a theocratic Ordering, had no such idea of
Truth as human beings get to-day under the authority of Natural
Science. It is extraordinarily difficult to speak of these things.
To-day a man may think that, with reference to the world around
him, truth consists in the coinciding of an idea with external
reality. He gets that thought from Natural Science. Such a concept
of Truth simply did not exist in the first Christian
Centuries. There was another idea of Truth then, which was
essentially connected with the theocratic social order. The concept
of truth which lives in all souls to-day really did not exist then.
This extraordinary fact, my dear friends, is not realised now. It
is more easy to recognise the concept of Truth which lived then, if
one approaches the idea of Divine Judgment. Suppose two people are
fighting a duel, (I will not touch upon the question of duels, I am
simply giving an instance), it cannot be determined from the very
start by some calculation that A, will win and B will not, —
if that were so the duel would hardly occur; the truth only emerges
in the course of the conflict. We ourselves still have this idea of
truth at the present day, in the case of war. We should not wage
war if we knew from the start, as in an experiment in a chemical
laboratory, how the war was going to end. In this the old concept
of truth is rooted even to-day, that truth itself can only he
revealed in the course of what actually happens, that one can do
nothing but watch how the Divine Judgment will fall. That is the
old concept of Truth.
Those who think as Auguste Comte or as the
Socialists to-day, have completely broken with this idea of Truth.
They only recognise a truth as such, where the event in its course
can be foreseen. The cry of Auguste Comte: “Know in order to
foresee,” is the radical transformation of the concept
of Truth in our modern age. But, my dear friends, with the concept
which prevails to-day, one can only grasp external nature.
Concerning this point, humanity to-day gives way to a colossal
delusion. Men believe, for instance, that they can grasp historical
life through this idea of Truth, which Auguste Comte and
Saint-Simon taught. But it cannot be done, even with the old
concept of Truth as divine Judgment, for that stood under the
influence of the Delusion of Life. Our modern concept of Truth
stands under the influence of our Delusion in Consciousness.
There must come the concept of Truth of Anthroposophy; a concept
gained in a far more widely embracing way than that in which St
Augustine got his concept of Truth; for as I have explained to you,
that too was subject to delusion.
This is connected with many things: and a great
deal depends on it. It is not enough to speak abstractly on the
evolution of the idea of Truth, one must in general, in all its
details, know how the Concept of Truth can lead the soul of man
along many different paths according to the nature of his idea of
Truth. It is an anachronism to speak to-day in the same sense of
Nationalism, as was possible in the pre-Christian age; because in
the pre-Christian age it was not only a human view — that a
Divine Ordering then permeated the human Ordering, it was actually
the case. Now, the Divine Ordering no longer permeates it. Hence,
wherever to-day man hangs his consciousness on the Ordering of
Nature, on that which is merely produced by a sequence of births,
on the Principle of nationality, for instance, there he is involved
in an anachronism. It is laid on man to-day to find quite other
structures of social order than those worked from outside. The man
of old could look to his nationality, because he saw it determined
by the divine Ordering. But man cannot do this to-day in the same
sense without falling into an anachronism, and to-day to honour the
Nation itself as something special, is an anachronism, he must
consider other social structures. To regard a Nation as something
special, would bring about the modern Ahrimanic delusion.
“Nations” are relics of the pre-Christian Age,
and modern humanity must rise above them through that development
which I have indicated. We must see how concretely human beings
strive after a special development of the concept of Truth. That is
important, even if it is inconvenient to-day, my dear friends. But
if we are unprejudiced in trying to grasp reality, we must
assimilate many an uncomfortable truth.
You see, man now goes right against what
Anthroposophy wills. That world-view which found its special
advocate in Auguste Comte, limits itself merely to an external
Ordering of Nature. We must press forward again to a Spiritual
world, and a bridge must be found between Idealism and Realism.
That is what I wont to emphasise in these lectures. But this cannot
be done simply by speaking of these things, but by grasping the
concrete impulses working in the world. We must look certain facts
full in the face, without prejudice. Now there are very curious
facts connected with the things we are now considering. Yesterday I
spoke of Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon. Both consider positivistic
Science as the only thing valid, positivistic Science which simply
relates to the sense-life, to a what is in the causal Ordering of
Nature. Nevertheless the extraordinary fact is before us,
that Auguste Comte turned away from his teacher and guide,
Saint-Simon, because gradually Saint-Simon had become too mystical;
and the disciples of Auguste Comte gradually turned from him
because he himself became altogether mystical in his old age. We
are faced with this extraordinary fact, — that
Saint-Simon as well as Auguste Comte, on the one side stand
directly on the basis of the most Ahrimanic Science,
consciously in the epoch of Industrialism, they stand on the
soil of this Ahrimanic Science; and yet they become mystics!
Extraordinary! That really is an extraordinary fact.
One has to ask the “why” of such a
fact, but this can only be explained if without prejudice, one
admits that on the other hand man is living towards Spirituality.
Unconsciously human beings are striving towards
Spirituality. Even such beings as Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon,
who only want to grasp external nature, are also striving after
Spirituality.
But now in the modern life of man something very
peculiar is to be seen. We will take another fact which, without
any national Chauvinism (which would not be seemly) we will try to
keep in mind. In the views which result as the flower of modern
nations, one can find characterised in a certain way what lies
under the surface; and, starting from this, I should like to point
to another very dominant English philosopher, Bentham, who lived
from 1748–1832. Bentham can be taken as characteristic of the
thinking of his people, and with a certain justice one must
describe the views of Bentham as Utilitarianism even in a deeper
sense. A certain basic sentence lies at the bottom of the ideal
World-Ordering according to Bentham, This principle is
usually called the “maximum of human happiness.”
Human happiness consists in this dogma, which Bentham put forward:
“The good (that means what should be striven for as an ideal)
consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human
beings on the Earth.” Let us get that sentence clearly in
mind: — “The good consists in the greatest happiness of
the greatest number of human beings on the Earth.” That
sentence, as a matter of fact, of the maximum of happiness on the
Earth, is the root-nerve of the Utilitarian philosophy.
Now one must bear in mind that this sentence was
regarded, not by Bentham himself nor by his disciples, but by those
who stand on a Spiritual basis, as absolutely Ahrimanic. The
occultists of his own Country say: Bentham put forward this purely
devilish sentence — they call it devilish because, so say
these occultists, if it were correct that good consists in the
greatest happiness of the greatest number, evil must then consist
in the greatest happiness of the least number.
I am not now saying anything which I myself wish
to bring before you as a definition or explanation, but simply
quoting what has been said. Thus, on the one hand the English
philosophy of Bentham, “The maximum of happiness;” on
the other hand that English Spiritualism
(Spiritualismus) which says,
“Bentham's sentence is purely of the devil, because in that
case evil would be the greatest happiness of the least number, and
from this there would result that evil and happiness could exist
side by side,” to which the Spiritualists would not under any
condition agree.
I am only bringing before you here a fact of
Spiritual life, significant in the most eminent degree, significant
as regards the enormous opposition to be found in a certain sphere
of the Earth between Spiritualism and external World-view.
And now again to-day, because I want you to
realise that we shall solve these oppositions in to-morrows
conditions, I want to put once more at the end, an apercus; you can
put three things together: — Goetheism,
Comteism, and Benthamism. These three things stand in
a certain sense, in a threefold way to the Spiritual striving of
man towards the future. The German Goetheism is so fashioned
that out of it Spiritualism (Spiritualismus)
can result. The French Comteism is so fashioned
that Spiritualism can develop alongside it, for in Augusts Comte
and Saint-Simon we find an extraordinary mysticism appearing side
by side with their positive philosophy. With the English
Utilitarianism, as in Bentham, nothing else is possible than
the sharpest opposition from the side of Spiritualism against the
national philosophy. That is something which lies in the soil of
evolution itself. The French nature must so develop that
Idealism, Mysticism and Positivism must develop side by side.
Whereas in England within the British nature, things must develop more and
more so, that, from the side of their Spiritualists, their own
“racial nature” must be combated in the sharpest way
possible. (That means, of course, what is put forward as the
philosophical blossoms of the nation)
With Auguste Comte — I am not giving you
theories but simply individual facts — there was such a
distinct inclination to Mysticism existing, that, in spite of his
application to Positivism and rejection of his teacher
Saint-Simon, at the end of his life he very clearly assumes a
Trinity. Auguste Comte honours three in his trinity:
1st. The great Fetish.
2nd. The great Medium.
3rd. The great Being.
And he says: the great Fetish is the
Mother-bosom of humanity in space. Space itself is the great Medium
out of which humanity comes. The great Being, the last person in
his trinity, is humanity itself in the abstract, spread out over
the Earth. Auguste Comte recognises this Trinity, — which is
an extraordinary quickening of Positivism with Mysticism.
Now of this we shall speak further to-morrow.
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