LECTURE III Dornach, April 9, 1921
This evening,
I do not wish to continue directly with the considerations
normally carried on here on Saturdays and Sundays. Instead
— in order that the friends of our cause,
[Note 1]
who have gathered here, can take
along as much as possible of what is more or less closely
connected with the studies undertaken during this week
— we shall venture into still more intimate
considerations intended to relate to the questions already
touched upon.
Even in
reference to fructifying philology by means of
anthroposophical spiritual science, I have indicated that an
original form of sensibility for language has been lost and
that in its place a more abstract orientation towards the
things of the surrounding world has come about. I have
pointed out that a significant developmental force in human
history is represented in the fact that through Aristotle, in
the fourth century before Christ, there emerged what
subsequently was called logic. For it does indeed signify an
orientation towards the world in an abstract sense to find
one's way consciously into the logical element, which earlier
had been present more unconsciously and instinctively in the
constitution of the human soul.
I said that
an inner concrete process was still experienced in ancient
times that is comparable to what we can study in the
processes of puberty. What appears in the child when it
learns to speak, is a metamorphosis, a more inwardly
developing metamorphosis of the process that unfolds later on
in the human being in the process of reaching sexual
maturity. And what runs its course inwardly in this process
of learning to speak, in ancient times had aftereffects for
people's whole life. The human being experienced himself as
if through the word something were coming to expression in
him that lived also in the things outside, something the
things do not express, however, because they have, in a
sense, become dumb. As the word resounded, something was felt
within that corresponds to processes in the outer world. What
was experienced then was much more substantial, much more
closely connected to human life than what is inwardly
experienced today in comprehending the world through abstract
concepts. What human beings then experienced through the word
was more organic, I would say, more instinctive, more
inclined towards the animalistic soul element than what we
can now experience through the conceptual, abstract grasp of
things. We were brought closer to the spiritual life through
this abstract comprehension. Yet, at the same time, we
arrived at abstraction. Thus, at precisely the
world-historical moment, when human beings were in a sense
elevated to the point of gradually grasping the spirit, their
mental experience at the same time suffered a dilution into
abstractions — I can express these matters only in a
more or less pictorial manner since our language has not yet
coined words for it.
Naturally,
this process did not develop in the same way in all of
humanity. It took place earlier in those folk groups that
were the foremost bearers of civilization; others remained
behind. I was able to point out that in the eleventh century
the population settled in central Europe still occupied a
standpoint that must be designated as pre-Aristotelian
compared to the Greek development of civilization. In central
Europe, people advanced much later beyond the point the
Greeks passed with Aristotle. Through Aristotelianism, the
Greeks anticipated much of what came about for the central
European nations and those counted among them because of
their culture only in the first third of the fifteenth
century.
Now, two
things are connected with this development in regard to the
comprehension of language and the abstract element. I have
already pointed out one. As human soul life was lifted into
abstraction through Aristotelianism — which still was
only a symptom for a general comprehension of things within
the Greek culture — it became estranged from the direct
experience of the word, of language. With this, the portal
leading to man's unfolding life in the direction of birth was
closed. In their everyday experience, human beings no longer
found their way back to the point where they could have
realized through the process of acquiring speech how the
soul-spiritual element holds sway in them just as it does
outside in the world. Due to this, they were also diverted
from looking back still further. For the next stages would
have shown what one might call overall union of the spirit
with physical-corporeal matter. They would have yielded
comprehension of preexistence, the insight that the human
soul-spiritual element leads an existence in supersensory
worlds prior to uniting with the corporeal nature that arises
within physical matter. It is true that this insight did not
exist in earlier times of humanity's evolution in the
definitely conscious form in which we try to acquire it today
through spiritual science; instead, it was present in a more
instinctive manner. The remnants of it appear to us in the
Oriental civilization, which consider looking upon the
preexistent human soul a matter of course.
If the human
being is then in a position of continuing further, something
that is even more difficult to discern than preexistence
becomes actual knowledge and perception, namely, repeated
earth lives. This view existed in earlier ages of human
development, though in an instinctive manner. It survived in
a more poetic, imaginative form in the civilizations of the
Orient when the former had already fallen into decadence,
albeit a most significant, even beautiful decadence.
Thus, when we
look back to former epochs of human evolution without the
prejudices of modern anthropology, we find a mode of
perception that, albeit instinctively, penetrated into
things. Inasmuch as human beings still understood the
processes of acquiring speech, they also grasped something of
the soul activity within outer nature; and inasmuch as they
understood the incorporation of the soul-spiritual into the
physical corporeal element, they understood something of the
spirit vibrating and weaving through the world.
To the extent
that historical knowledge of the Greeks reaches back, only
the sparse remnants of this ancient spirit perception are
contained in the traditions of Greek civilization. If we go
back beyond Aristotle and Plato to the Ionic philosophers, to
around the turn of the fifth and sixth centuries
B.C.
in Greek development of thought, we find a philosophy, for
example in the work of Anaxagoras,
[Note 2]
that cannot be comprehended on the
basis of today's assumptions. Motivated by a certain healthy
insight, the philosophers of the Occident should really admit
to themselves that Western philosophy simply lacks the
prerequisites to understand Anaxagoras. For what Anaxagoras
acknowledges — though already in decadent form —
as his nous dates back to those ages I have just spoken of,
ages when people still sensed and perceived how the world is
infused and woven through by spirit, how, out of spirit, the
soul-spiritual being of man descends in order to unite with
the physical-corporeal nature. In former times, this was an
instinctive, concrete perception. Then it diminished to the
knowledge present in the instinctive insight into the process
of speech, something that in turn was lost during the
Aristotelian age, particularly as far as the most advanced
civilizations are concerned.
As I have
already explained, when people still had insight into this
process of emerging speech, they sensed something in the
resounding of the word that was an expression for an
objective happening in nature outside. Here, I come to an
essential difference: What was conceived as the universal
soul by those who can be called “knowledgeable about
speech” in the ancient sense, was predominantly thought
of as filling space, and human beings experienced themselves
as having been formed out of this spirit-soul element filling
out space. Yet this was something different from what we
discover when we go back further beyond the nous of
Anaxagoras. Then we arrive at something leading into the
preexistence of human beings; it is something that does not
merely deal with the fact that the human soul weaves and
exists in the present within the universal spirit and soul.
Instead, we find here that this human soul dwells with the
universal spirit and soul in time.
We must be
familiar with these matters through an inner comprehension,
if we wish to gain truly historical insight into a most
significant process in the development of civilization in
western Asia and Europe. Nowadays, people really have no
relevant conception of the state of mind of humanity living
in the age when Christendom was established. Certainly, if
you consider the general human soul condition of today in its
particular configuration, you have to picture the great
majority of those people of western Asia and Europe as having
been uneducated in comparison to the education of our modern
age we are so proud of. Yet, in those times, there were
individuals who towered above the great mass of uneducated
humanity. I might say, the successors of the ancient
initiates stood out because of significant knowledge,
knowledge that indeed did not dwell in the soul the same way
as does our knowledge, which is permeated everywhere by
abstract concepts and has therefore attained to full
consciousness. Something instinctive existed even in the
highest knowledge of that period. Yet, at the same time,
something forceful was inherent in this instinctive
knowledge, something that still penetrated into the depths of
things.
It is strange
that many representatives of present-day traditional
confessions have a curious fear of the possibility that
somebody might discover that such penetrating knowledge did
exist in past times, knowledge that arrived at refined
concepts even if these were viewed more through instinctive
pictures, as I said, and were expressed in forms of speech,
for the comprehension of which there exists little feeling
today.
Our
anthroposophy is not intended as a renewal of what is called
Gnosis, but it is the path that allows us to look into the
nature of this Gnosis. In regard to its sources, our
anthroposophy has nothing in common with the ancient Indian
philosophies. It can nevertheless penetrate into the
compelling, magnificent aspects, the outpouring from all
things, of the Vedanta, Sankhya, or Yoga philosophies,
because it once again attains in a conscious manner to those
regions of the world that were then reached instinctively.
Likewise, our anthroposophy can penetrate into the essence of
the Gnosis. We know that this Gnosis was eradicated by
certain sects of the first Christian centuries to the point
where very little Gnostic knowledge is still available
historically. The Gnosis has actually become known to modern
humanity only through the documents of those who tried to
disprove it. They included quotes from the recorded texts in
their written refutations, whereas the original Gnostic texts
themselves were lost. Thus, the Gnosis has really been handed
down to posterity only through the documents of its enemies
who naturally quoted only what they deemed suitable in
conformity with their cleverness.
Just study
the quotation skills of our opponents and you will gain an
idea of how far one can penetrate into the nature of such a
subject. When one has to depend on the documents of the
opponents! Insight into the Gnosis has in most cases been
dependent on the texts of its opponents — outwardly and
historically it depends on them even today. Just imagine, it
would certainly be in accordance with the wishes of somebody
like Mr. von Gleich,
[Note 3]
if all anthroposophical texts should be burned up — surely,
he would like that best — and that anthroposophy would be
handed down to posterity only through his own proclamations!
We only have to picture things by means of something that can
truly call attention to them.
If, for these
reasons, we are unable to look into what already existed in
those times, we will go astray with all the treatises, be
they ever so well meant and scientific that concern something
most important in regard to the comprehension of
Christianity. One point, where almost everything remains yet
to be done because everything done so far by no means leads
to what could be designated by an honest striving for
knowledge as true insight, is the Logos concept we encounter
at the beginning of the Gospel of John. This Logos concept
cannot be comprehended if the soul-spiritual development of
human beings belonging to the most advanced civilization of
that age is not inwardly understood. This is the case
particularly if there is no comprehension of the
soul-spiritual development that ran its course in Greek
culture and shone across into Asia, casting its shadows into
what confronts us in the Gospel of John.
We must not
approach this Logos concept merely by means of a dictionary
or a superficial philological method. It can be approached
only if we inwardly study the soul-spiritual development in
question here, approximately from the fourth pre-Christian
century until the fourth century
A.D.
No satisfactory history
has yet been written about what then took place inwardly in
the most advanced part of humanity and its representatives of
wisdom. For this is related to the vanishing of any
understanding for the process of learning to speak. The other
matter, the comprehension of preexistence, was preserved in
traditions until the time of Origen;
[Note 4]
yet it was lost to inward
understanding much earlier than the comprehension of the
process of speech, of the resounding of the word in man's
inner being.
If we focus
on the soul-spiritual condition of the representatives of
wisdom in Asia Minor and Europe, we discover that a
transition took place. What had existed as a uniform process
in perception, namely the resounding of the word and in it
the being of the world, became differentiated into an
orientation towards abstract concepts, ideas, and a feeling,
a dull sensation of what was pushed down more into
subconsciousness — the world as such. And what resulted
from this? A certain fact came about in regard to the human
soul life because of it. The word content and the ideal,
conceptual content of consciousness were experienced in an
undifferentiated manner by human beings in ancient times.
Now, the conceptual content became separated.
Initially,
however, it did retain something of what human beings had
once possessed in the undifferentiated nature of word,
concept, and percept. People spoke of "concepts"; they spoke
of “ideas,” but yet it is obvious — for
example in Plato's case — that people still experienced
the idea spiritually and full of content. As they spoke of
the idea, it still contained something of what had earlier
been perceived in the undifferentiated word concept. Thus,
people already drew closer to the idea that is grasped as a
mere concept, but this grasp still retained something of what
was comprehended in the ancient resounding of words. As this
transition developed, the content of the world grasped
spiritually by the human being turned into what was then
expressed as the Logos concept. The Logos concept is
understood only when it is known that it contains this
transition to the idea, but without any remnant of the
ancient word concept in grasping this idea. As people spoke
of the Logos as the world-creative element, they were not
clearly but only dimly aware that this world-creative spirit
element has something in its content that was grasped in
earlier times through the perception of the word.
We must take
into consideration this quite special nuance of the soul's
experience of the outer world in the Logos. There existed a
very special nuance of soul perception, the Logos perception.
Aristotle then worked his way out of it, found his way closer
to abstraction and attained from it subjective logic. In
Plato, on the other hand, we find the idea as the
world-creative principle; in Plato, it is still pervaded by
concrete spirituality, because it still contains the remnants
of the ancient word concept, being basically the Logos,
though in diminished form.
Thus, we can
picture that what came with Christ into the man Jesus was to
be designated as the world-creative principle out of the
views of that age. People had a concept for that, the concept
that was indeed retained in the Logos concept. The Logos
concept existed. With it, people tried to grasp what had been
given to the world in the story of Christ Jesus. the concept,
which had developed out of ancient times and had assumed a
special form, was utilized to express the starting-point of
Christianity; thus, the most sublime wisdom was used to see
through this mystery. We must be able to place ourselves
completely into that age, not in the sense of an external
conception but in inwardly grasping the way people viewed the
world at that time.
There is a
great break between Plato and Aristotle. On the other hand,
the whole style of the Gospel of John is composed in such a
way that we see: It came about based on a living
comprehension of the world-creative principle and, at the
same time, because the one who wrote down the Gospel of John
was familiar with the Logos concept that had already been
lost. All translation of the Gospel of John is impossible if
one cannot penetrate into the origin of the Logos concept.
This Logos concept did indeed dwell in all vitality among the
wise representatives of the most civilized part of the world
between the fourth century
B.C.
and the fourth century
A.D.
When
Christianity became a state religion, something from which
the later Catholic Church was developed, the era was reached
when, in a sense, even the last nuance of the ancient
“word,” of the old word concept, was lost from
this idea. Fundamentally, Aristotle did nothing but separate
subjective logic from the Logos and develop the theory of
this subjective logic. Yet, at the time the dominant
condition of soul and spirit of mankind paid little heed to
what Aristotle had established as subjective logic. On the
contrary, Aristotelianism was forgotten, only entering again
into the later age by way of the Arabs. It did exist; but
aside from being present in this roundabout way through
tradition, people still clearly felt that one was dealing on
the one hand with subjective logic, on the other with the
perception of a world-creative principle in the Logos. In
this concept, something was still contained of what one had
grasped in the ancient conception of the
resounding-of-the-word in man's inner being as the
counter-image of the word-become-silent, namely, as the Logos
creating nature in this becoming silent.
Then, in the
fourth century
A.D.,
this nuance was lost from the Logos
concept. It can no longer be discovered; it vanished. It is
retained at most in a few secluded thinkers and mystical
seekers. It vanished from the general consciousness of even
the representative Church Fathers and teachers. What then
still appears as a most comprehensive, ideally spiritualized
world view in somebody like Scotus Erigena
[Note 5]
no longer contains the ancient Logos
concept, though that term is used. The former Logos concept
is utterly filtered into an abstract thought concept. The
world-creative principle is now understood not by means of
the ancient Logos concept, but only through the sublimated or
filtered thought concept. This is what then appeared in the
text by Scotus
[Note 6]
concerning the
division of nature, but it is something that basically had
already completely disappeared from consciousness: this loss
of the Logos concept, this transformation of it into the
thought concept.
In regard to
European humanity, concerning which I said that it retained
for itself a more ancient development into a later age, it
was considered necessary to go back even beyond the period
during which the Logos concept had been active in its full
vitality. But people traced it back in an abstract form, and
this return in an abstract form was even dogmatized. At the
Eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in
A.D. 869,
it was set down that the world and the human being are not to be
conceived of as being membered into body, soul, and spirit,
but merely into body and soul, and that the soul possesses a
few spiritual qualities.
The other
process of evolution I have just mentioned runs parallel to
what had been dogmatically set down there. For a person who
studies the development of Occidental civilization from the
first Christian centuries, where much was still pervaded by
Gnostic elements, up to the fourth and fifth centuries of our
Christian era, it is an extraordinarily interesting fact to
experience this diminishing of the Logos concept. Later, when
the Gospels were translated, nothing, of course, could be
brought into these translations of any feeling for the Logos
concept as it had held sway within pre-Christian humanity in
those eight centuries, in the middle of which lies the
Mystery of Golgotha. This peculiarity of the period from
which Christendom emerged must be studied also by means of
such intimate aspects. Nowadays, people prefer to solve even
the most difficult problems by means of the threadbare
concepts, concepts that are easily acquired. Historical
problems such as I have just mentioned, however allow a
solution only if we seek the preparation for the solution in
the acquisition of certain nuances of the human soul life, if
we are willing to proceed from the honest assumption that in
the present cultural age we simply do not possess in our soul
life the nuance that leads to the Logos concept as it is
meant in the Gospel of John. This is why we should not try to
comprehend the Gospel of John with the vocabulary and
conceptions of the present. If we attempt to understand the
Gospel of John with present-day concepts, superficiality will
dictate to us from the very outset. This is something that
must be discerned with an alert eye of soul and this must be
done in regard to history in these areas, for things are in a
bad way at the present in regard to this history.
Only
recently, I have had to call to mind an extraordinarily
important fact in reference to this subject. A letter written
by one of the most recognized theologians was brought to my
attention — it was not addressed to me.
[Note 7]
This esteemed theologian of the
present expressed himself on anthroposophists, Irvingites,
and similar rabble. He confused everything. In his
exposition, one point in particular stands out strangely. He
says of himself that he has no sense for the sort of view
that points to the super-sensible such as anthroposophy tries
to do; he has to limit himself to what is given in human
experience.
This is a
theologian whose vocation it is to speak on and on about the
super-sensible. He has become famous for having written fat
historical volumes about the life of the super-sensible in
human evolution. He is an authority for countless people of
stature at present. Such a modern theologian admits that he
has no sense for the super-sensible but, instead, wishes to
stick to “human experience!” Yet he talks about
the super-sensible and does not say, I wish to remain within
human sensory experience; therefore, I negate all theology.
Oh no, in our age, he becomes a famous theologian! My dear
friends, it is so important for us to be alert to everything
that is in a certain sense a determining factor today among
our young people, yet at the same time proves itself to be an
inner impossibility.
It is
necessary to grasp with inner energy how one is to proceed to
sincere and honest insight. Perhaps it can be discerned
particularly in problems such as the Logos problem, and a
person who sees what anthroposophy as to set forth about such
a problem should realize from this that anthroposophy is
certainly not taking the easy way out. It tries to do
research earnestly and honestly and it is only because of
this that it comes into conflict with a number of
contemporary trends. For today people actually have either
hatred or fear of such thoroughness, which must, however, be
striven for and is needed in all areas of scientific life. I
ask you: does the opposition, which so readily dispenses
shallow judgments concerning anthroposophy, even know what
anthroposophy occupies itself with? Does it know that this
anthroposophy struggles with problems such as the Logos
problem, which, after all, is only one detail, albeit an
important one? It really would be the duty of those who are
leaders in the sciences to at least have a look at what they
judge from the outside. But this is the problem, that
external life can be made comfortable — and this
applies to many people — if one shuns the inconvenience
of searching in an earnest manner. To be sure, for all this
love of convenience, one is not aware of the strong forces of
decline in our present civilization. The attitude of
“after us the deluge” powerfully dominates the
currently prevalent scientific world.
This is what
I wished to illustrate today by means of one important
problem of philological and historical research. After all,
it is my hope that if particularly the esteemed students will
realize more and more how the conscientious attempt is made
to focus especially on those problems current research
ignores, the young people above all others will come to the
realization that such paths have to be pursued. I harbor the
hope and I also know: If we work sufficiently in the
direction of developing enthusiasm and confessing to the
truth, what is needed to achieve again forces of regeneration
in human civilization will be attained after all. Perhaps
certain forces of darkness can suppress for a while what is
being striven for here. In the long run, they will be unable
to do so if the reality corresponds to the will, if, in fact,
something light-filled is contained in what anthroposophy
wills. Indeed, truth has means that only truth can discover
and that are undiscoverable for the powers of darkness. Let us
unite, old and young, young and old, in order to attain a
clear view for discovering such paths to truth!
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