Lecture 5
The Being and Evolution of Man
Berlin, 23rd July, 1918
We have been
trying to come to grips with the following question: Why does
man not notice how different — different spiritually
and in their culture — are the several periods in
which, during our present earth-cycle, he has spent his
repeated earth-lives. We need to understand clearly why it is
so widely believed that Man has altered very little during
thousands of years, since history began, whereas Spiritual
Science shows how greatly souls changed in their essential
character during the third; fourth and fifth Post-Atlantean
epochs — the fifth being our present one. These changes
are confirmed by Spiritual-Scientific knowledge, but we find
very little trace of them if we scan outer history, as
usually presented and written.
I have already
tried to show, in approaching this question, that, if one
pays a little attention to the soul-element in history the
changes spring to lisht. I have endeavoured to make
comprehensible the difference between the feelings of the
human soul, in, for instance, the eleventh or twelfth
centuries, and those of the of the human soul of to-day. As
an example I tried to illuminate for you the soul of Bernard
of Clairvaux in the twelfth century. Such examples might be
multiplied, but before we go further in this direction, we
will revert once more to the kernel of our question: What is
it that prevents man from observing rightly how his various
earth-lives differ in this respect?
He is chiefly
prevented by the circumstance that, as constituted in the
present earth-era, he has exceedingly little perception of
his real ego, his true human self. But for certain
hindrances, he would have quite a different idea of his
nature and being, We will deal with these hindrances
presently. For the moment I would like to point out, —
you can take it, to begin with, simply as an hypothesis
— how man would appear to himself if his real being
were revealed to him.
If this were
possible, he would above all notice a great and constant
change in his personal life between birth and death. Looking
back from whatever age — 20, 30, or 50 — towards
his birth, he would see himself in perpetual metamorphosis.
He would perceive by-gone changes morn clearly and realise
hopefully that further changes are in store for him in the
future. These I have mentioned in other lectures.
Because
present-day man is too little inclined to realise himself as
a soul-being, he has not much idea of how he has
altered in the course of time. Strangely, but truly, his idea
of himself is divided into two parts. He sees his bodily part
on the one hand, a more or less constant factor in his life
between birth and death. He is conscious, of course, that he
“grows”, that he was tiny and became bigger, but
that is almost all he knows consciously about his outer
physical being. Take a simple example. You cut your nails
— why? Because they grow. That shows, if you think
about it, that a continual process of shedding takes place in
your organism as regards the outer bodily part of it. In fact
you drive that part out, so that in a certain time, at most
in six or seven years, the material of the body is completely
changed. You continually get rid of your material outfit.
Man, however, is not conscious of this outer dissolution and
continual reconstruction from within. Just fancy, how
differently we should know ourselves, if we were conscious of
how, as it were, we shed the external part of our physical
body, dissolve it, and rebuild ourselves anew from within
— we should be observing the metamorphosis of our own
being!
Something else
would be linked with this. If we really took into our
consciousness that the body we bear is our possession for
only seven years, that we have thrown off all we possessed of
it before that, we should appear to ourselves much more
spiritual. We should not have the deceptive notion, “I
was a little child to begin with — then I grew bigger
and different” — but we should know that though
the material of the child-substance is somewhere, what has
remained is not material, but absolutely super-substantial.
If man could bring this metamorphosis into consciousness, he
would be looking back at something retained ever since
childhood. He would recollect himself as a spiritual being.
If we knew what takes place in us, we should have much more
spiritual conceptions of ourselves.
Yet again
— suppose we looked at ourselves much less abstractly,
we talk about ourselves as though we had a “Spiritual
centre.” We speak of our Ego and we have the idea:
“Our Ego was there in our childhood, and accompanied us
further,” and so on; but we really picture it simply as
a kind of spiritual centre. If only we could rise to the
other conception — that of outer dissolution and inner
reconstruction — we could not help regarding the Ego as
the efficacious, active cause of it. We should see ourselves
as something very real and inwardly active. In short, we
would look upon our Ego not as something abstract, but would
survey its inwardly active work on our body, leading this
from one metamorphosis to another. We should correct any
erroneous conceptions which we cherish on the subject at
present. They are even embodied in the expression of speech.
We say “we grow,” because we have the notion that
we were to begin with, children, and have grown taller; but
the matter is not as simple as that. The truth is that in a
tiny child the bodily and the soul-spiritual activities are
experienced more as a unity wherein the head-organism and the
reproduction-organism (sex-organism) are closely associated.
The two experiences of head and body separate later, becoming
alien to one another. The material organism of childhood does
not increase, for it is thrown off, dissolved; but the two
poles of our own being grow wider apart. By this means, later
on, in a fully formed body, in which the poles have separated
from one another, our substance is organised from within. It
seems to us as mere growth, but that is not so; we are
organised inwardly, therefore we are connected with different
outward things in earlier and later periods of life. As time
goes on, the head-organism needs to move itself further away
from the immediate earth-forces. The head rises;
consequently, we “grow.”
All these
conceptions would change if we accepted the actual truth
— which we do not do. We leave out of account the
constantly changing body, the body that is always becoming
different we ignore it and imagine that it grows of itself
and becomes larger; and so we fail to notice what a rich,
mobile, living, inward entity is the ego, which works on us
unceasingly between birth and death. Such a conception would
give us a really coherent idea of ourselves if we could but
grasp it, but modern man is not capable of that. This is to
some extent connected with the destiny of the human race,
with the whole development of our epoch. Man does not really
identify himself with his living, active, ego, which actually
builds his organism from year to year, but he divides it; on
the one side he looks at his organism, which he imagines to
be solid and enduring, and on the other at his ego, which he
makes into an abstraction, a figure of straw. Such a man
says: We have on the one side a sense-organism, a bodily one,
through which we cannot approach things because they can only
make “impressions” on us: the essential nature of
the thing does not reveal itself to us at all; the
“thing-in-itsef!” cannot be apprehended, we have
only phenomena. Certainly, to look on the body as enduring
substance gives this argument some justification. Then he
looks at this insubstantial ego and says: There, within,
there is something like a “feeling of duty,” and
he sums it up as the “categorical imperative.” The
unity is split up. If we thus divide the unity in human
nature, criticising it from two sides, we become followers of
Kant. What I am now saying goes into the very depths of
present-day human thought.
Man of this age
is little fitted to comprehend himself as a complete being in
the word. He divides himself in the way I have described. The
result is that we never contemplate our real soul-being with
the eye of the spirit, or we would see that this part of
ourselves is what continually works upon and changes the
body. We look merely at the abstract body and the abstract
ego and do not trouble about what the whole undivided human
being may be. To become aware of that would at once lead us
to recognise that this undivided being is different from
incarnation to incarnation. The true, genuine human ego,
concealed as it is, hidden at present from the soul's gaze,
differs from life to life. Of course, if we are thinking of
the abstraction, “ego,” not of the concrete human
ego, we cannot arrive at the idea of the ego being so
different from life to life. The result of thinking
abstractly in this way is that things which are in any way
similar are ultimately reduced to a featureless uniformity.
Souls of course are similar in successive earth-lives; but on
the other hand, they also differ, because from life to life a
man passes through the course of human development. Because
man does not in truth behold either the mutability of his
body, or the real, whole activity of his ego, he does not see
his true being. This is, as it were, a golden rule for
gaining real knowledge of man and insight into his nature.
And why?
The answer to
this question lies in what you know of the Ahrimanic and
Luciferic elements. We divide our being in such a way that on
the one side we place our body, which we regard as having
been small once and having expanded and grown, whereas it has
in reality continually renewed itself. What is it that
appears to us if we look at the body in this way? The
Ahrimanic element, active within ourselves. But this
Ahrimanic element is not our real human being; it belongs to
the species and indeed remains the same though all ages.
Therefore in looking at the body, we are really looking at
our Ahrimanic part, and this is all that modern scientific
anthropology describes in man. That is one thing we see
— the corporeal part of ourselves, which we hare
conceived of as being dense. The other is the abstract ego,
which is in reality fluctuating, living strongly within us
only; while we form a conception of ourselves, between birth
and death. There we have our individual education, our
uselessness and also our value, — there we survey our
own personal life between birth and death; but we do not see
our ego as it is in reality, as it works upon the
metamorphoses of our physical body; we see it as Lucifer
shows it to as, rarified. We see our physical part
materialised, densified by Ahriman; our soul-spiritual part
rarified by Lucifer.
If this was not
so, if we did not divide ourselves so that one pole of our
being is Ahrimanic and the other Luciferic, we should have a
much more intimate connection with the dead who are always
among us, because we should be more closely related to the
spirituel world. We should comprehend the complete reality,
to which belongs also the world in which man is after he
passes through the gate of death, and before he returns to
this world through the gate of conception.
Thus we never
have our real being before us, but on the one side the
physical-corporeal Ahrimanic phantom, on the other the
soul-spiritual Luciferic phantom; two phantoms, two delusive
images of ourselves, yet between that, imperceptible to us,
lives the real man, that being to which we must refer when we
say “man,” because this is the true man,
progressing from life to life.
We must in all
seriousness consider what this means for human knowledge. In
this way we shall come to understand why it could be imagined
that throughout the various epochs man remains the same. What
we see are the incorrect thoughts about man; on the one side
the idea of what does remain true to the species through long
ages, and on the other, the real soul-spiritual psychic
being, which is supposed not to extend beyond the life
between birth and death. An understanding of how the
soul-spiritual element alters the body from year to year
would lead to a grasp of the mighty transition which occurs
when it envelopes itself in the physical-corporeal through
conception or leaves it again through death. We pay no heed
to the work performed by the soul-Spiritual element on the
body.
All this can be
expressed in a different way. What we conceive of as our
complete organism is but a small part of what we are as human
beings. We only “dwell” in this organism. What we
are accustomed to look upon as our organism, densified
through Ahriman as we see it, has its real origin much more
in our last incarnation than in this one. From the various
studies of this year and former years you will gather that
your physiognomy, in its present form, results from your
preceding incarnation, your last earth-life. In a person's
physiognomy we can really see a connection with his former
life. Everything belonging to the physical corporeal organism
is much more deeply connected with the last life than with
the present one. Man of to-day is easily beguiled into
saying: inasmuch as we have had no previous life, it cannot
give us our present form, whether great or small. That is
only self-persuasion. If we were to understand ourselves
correctly, we should be obliged to look back to a former
life. Paying attention to what forms our organism, in the way
I have set forth, would bring enlightenment. A sudden light
would be thrown on what we ourselves cannot form, and we
would see how it has been formed by an earlier life. We can
really have insight into someone if we know how his
soul-spiritual part has fashioned his organism. This comes
forth, as it were, out of his personality, and behind it
remains what Ahriman makes visible as the result of th
earlier embodiment.
For anyone who
is accustomed to look upon man as a real living being, it is,
when meeting a fellow-man, as though an entity emerged from
him. Ths entity is his present self: only as a rule it is
invisible. The other entity remains a little behind the
first, and this it is which was formed from the past life. In
the emerging entity something soon presents itself. At first,
this entity is, I might say, perfectly transparent, but it
rapidly becomes opaque, because the soul-spiritual element,
appearing as an active power, densifies the entity which has
just emerged. And then appears something else, which seems to
be a seed for the ensuing earth-life.
For him who can
perceive the connections, present-day man is seen as
threefold. All sorts of myths convey this in their symbols.
Call to mind numerous descriptions in which three consecutive
generations are set forth, obviously to illustrate the
threefold nature of man. Remember many of the renderings of
Isis, also various Christian portrayals in which three
figures are described as belonging together. Man's threeford
nature is what is really meant. Of course a materialistic
interpretation is possible — “Grandmother, Mother
and Child,” if you like; but the threefold character is
put there because it corresponds to a reality which can be
perceived. We can most truly picture earlier times if we
divest ourselves of the fantastic ideas of modern learning
(which always tries to spin a meaning round pictorial
representations), and take notice of what humanity's
perceptions were in a past not so very far behind us, and how
these were expressed artistically.
This kind of
consideraticn is of the utmost importance. if we are to bring
home to ourselves that the Christ, Who went through the
Mystery of Golgotha, has His relation (of which we speak so
often), to the true human ego. If we consider St. Paul's
words, “Not I, but Christ in me,” this “in
me” refers to the true, hidden ego, invisible to view
as yet. Man must in a sense look on it as a Spiritual being
if he would find the right connectiona with the Christ. One
would like to know how certain passages in the Gospels can
possibly be understood, if this is not taken into account.
For instance, the passage at the very beginning of the Gospel
of St. John, where John speaks as go the Christ came to man
as to the abode where He belongs. The (German) translators
usually construe it “He came unto His own estate, and
his own people received Him not,” yet the Gospel goes
on to say: “But to as many as received Him, to them
gave He power to become the children of God, even to them
that believe on His Name, which were born, not of blood, nor
of the will of man, but of God” (John I. 12,13.). And
it is made quite clear that He desired to come to all men who
had this consciousness; yet those without, indeed all men,
are certainly born “of blood” and “of the
will of man”. The being I have been describing as the
“true man”, not born of blood nor of the will of
man, comes indeed from the spiritual world, and clothes
himself in physical heredity. The Gospel is speaking of the
man of whom I have told you to-day, and that is why it is so
difficult to understand and is so erroneously expounded,
fettered as it is by the conceptions current, to-day. Without
the conceptions conveyed by Spiritual Science, the
underlying, aspects of the Gospels cannot be understood; with
them, a sudden light breaks in.
In respect of
all these relationships, something tremendous happened at the
Mystery of Golgotha for the evolution of humanity. Before
then, as you know, the complete human ego lived differently
in the body. The Mystery of Golgotha marked a point of time
in which the whole consciousness of man was changed, as the
result of the Union of the Christ-Being with earthly
evolution. Now the time has , for an increasing comprehension
of the Mystery of Golotha and its conneetion with
mankind.
A knotty point
for the many expositors of the Gospels, for instance, is the
saying which, however epressed or translated., always has the
same ring — the saying that “The Kingdom of
Heaven has descended.” Amongst those who have entirely
misconceived this expression is H.P. Blavatsky, who seized
upon it and asserted that Christians therefore maintained
that with the Mystery of Golgotha a sort of heavenly kingdom
had come down to earth, and yet nothing different has
happened — the ears of corn and the cherries have not
become twelve times is large, etc.; intimating that on the
physical earth nothing is altered. This “descent of the
Kingdom of Heaven,” of the spiritual kingdom, crates
great difficulties for many commentators of the Gospels,
because they do not clearly understand it. The meaning really
is that until the Mystery of Golgotha, men had to experience
what they could of the spiritual on the physical plane by
means of atavistic clairvoyance. After that, they had to lift
themselves up to the spiritual, and discern things in the
Spirit, which really has drawn near to them. There is no need
for the word-spinning arguments which are brought forward
from all quarters; the' truth must be recognised, and this
truth is as follows: —
The effect for
men of Christ having passed through the Mystery of Golgotha
is that they can no longer receive spiritual life mearly
through the fact of their physical existence, but only by
living in the spiritual world. Anyone who now lives only in
the physical world, is no longer living on the
earth, but below the earth; because from the Mystery
of Golotha onwards, the possibility is given us of living in
the spirit. The spiritual kingdom has in truth come among us.
Taken in this sense; the expression is at once understood,
but only in connection with the Christ. This, however, was to
be temporarily hidden. As man made the effort to acquire it,
it would be gradually communicated to him; and only by
gaining insight into it can the real course of, modern
history since the Mystery of Golgotha be understood.
Christianity, as it had come into the world through the
Mystery of Golgotha, was in its early centuries implanted in
the Gnosis, which was then more or less still in existence.
It embodied very spiritual views of the real nature of Christ
Jesus. Then the Church took on a defined form. This form can
be traced historically, but you must bear in mind what its
task was from the third, fourth, fifth century onwards. The
explanation now given must not on any account be
misunderstood. Spiritual Science, as here advocated, stands
on the ground of genuine, active tolerance for all existing
religious revelations. Spiritual Science must therefore be
able to discover the relative truth of the different
religious creeds. It is not that Spiritual Science leans more
or less sympathetically towards this or that creed; its aim
is to distinguish the truth contained in the different
religious denominations; it weighs them all with care, and
refuses to be one-sided. Spiritual Science must not be
proclaimed as leaning towards this or that Creed: it is the
Science of the Spirit. It can for instance,
fully appreciate that it is a pity that for many people the
inner content of Catholic ritual is lost. It knows how to
appreciate the special virtues of Catholic ritual in relation
to the course of civilisation, and also that a certain
artistic output is closely related to Catholic ritual, which
indeed is only a continuation of certain other religious
creeds, much more so than is commonly thought. In this ritual
there resides a deep element of the Mysteries. However, what
I have to say essentially concerns sonething else, at all
events not the Catholic ritual, which has its full inner
justification as an extraordinary impulse for human creative
achievement. What I now have to set forth is this: that
ecclesiastical forms were given certain tasks — which
are indeed still theirs to a certain extent, but were given
for the most part at the time when such ardent souls as
Bernard of Clairvaux found their way to their God through the
Church. We must always discriminate between the Churches and
such personalities as Bernard of Clairvaux and multitudes of
others. What then, was the task of the Church? Its task was
to keep souls as far away as possible from an understanding
of Christ, to bring it about that souls should not approach
too near to Him: The history of Church-life in the third or
fourth century, and later on, is substantially the story of
the estrangement of the human mind from a comprehension of
the Mystery of Golgotha; in the development of the Church
there is a certain antagonism towards an understanding of
Christ. This negative task of the Church has its
justification in the fact that men must always strive anew
through the force of their own minds and souls to reach the
Christ, and fundamentally through all these centuries man;s
approach to the Christ has been a continual struggle of the
individual against ecclesiasticism. Even with such men as
Bernard of Clairvaux, it was so. Study even Thomas Aquinas.
He was reckoned a heretic by the orthodox; he was
interdicted, and only later did the Church adopt his
teaching. The path to Christ was really always a
“defensive action” against the Church, and only
slowly and gradually could men win their way to Christ. We
have but to think, for instance, of Petrus Waldus, the
founder of the so-called sect of the “Waldenses,”
and his associates in the twelfth century, none of whom at
that time had any knowledge of the Gospel. The spreading of
Church-life had come on without the Gospels. Just
think of it! From those around Petrus Waldus a few persons
were chosen who could translate something of the Gospels;
thus they learnt to know the Gospels, and as they learnt, a
holy, lofty Christian life flowed to them from the Gospels.
The outcome was that Petrus Waldus was declared a heretic by
the Pope, against the will of his contemporaries. Up to this
time a certain amount of gnostic knowledge had spread even in
Europe, as for instance among the “Catharists”
translated as “Purified Ones;” it was directed to
acquiring concepts, concrete concepts, about the Christ and
the Mystery theof Golgotha. From the standpoint of the
official Church this was not allowed, therefore the
Catharists were heretics: “hetzer” (German for
“heretic”) is only an alteration of their neme
— it is the same word.
It is very
necessary to take that of which I am now speaking in its full
strictness, in order to distinguish the path of Christianity
from that of the Church, and thus to grasp how, in our age,
through the principles of Spiritual Science, a way must be
paved tothe true Christ, to the real Christ-concept. Very
many features of the present day become clear when we realise
that not all that called itself Christian was intended to
communicate the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, but
that much was even intended to hinder that understanding, to
raise a barrier against it. Does this barrier exist to this
day? Indeed it does! I would like to give you a case in
point.
Manifold
endeavours, including that of Protestantism, were always in
opposition to the Church, because the Church in many ways had
the task of erecting a barrier against the understanding of
Christ, and men could do no other than strive for that
understanding. Petrus Waldus felt that need when he had
recourse to the Gospels. Until then, there was only the
Church — not the Gospels. Even now, many strange
opinions are held about this relation of the Church to the
Gospels. I want to read you a passage from a modern writer,
very characteristic of this state of things, from which you
will recognise that the opinion which condemnned Petrus
Waldus to excommunication is deeply rooted even now. Take it
as an example of what is being said even to-day:
“The
Gospels and Epistles are for us incomparable written records
of revelation but they are neither the foundation on which
our Faith was built, nor the unique source from which the
content of the latter is spontaneously created. In our view
the Church is older than the sacred writings; from her hand
we receive them, she guarantees their trustworthiness, and as
regards the dangers of hand-written transcriptions, and of
the changing of the text in translation into all languages of
the earth, the Church is the only authoritative interpreter
of the sense and import of every particular utterance.”
(“The Principles of Catholicism and Science”,
by George von Hertling, Freiburg 1899.)
This means that
the actual content of the Gospels is irrelevant; all that
matters is what the Church declares is to be found in them. I
have to say this, for the simple reason that even in our own
circles there is much simple mindedness on the subject. Again
and again one hears the view that it would be useful if we
could approach the Catholic Church, saying that our
interpretation is entirely favourable to the Christ. But that
would not help us at all, it would only blacken us in the
eyes of the Church, because she allows nothing to be upheld
about the Christ, or about any conclusions beyond those of
Natural Science, unless the Church herself recognises it as
in agreement with her doctrine. Whoever among us upholds a
conception of Christ, and believes thereby to vindicate
himself in the eyes of the Church, really accuses himself
— is indeed regarded as having done so, because he has
no right to declare anything about the Christ from any other
source than the Church's owm doctrine .
The same author
from whose work I have just read, speaks very clearly on the
subject: “Believers are in just the same position as is
the investigator of nature with the facts of
exoerience.” He means that the believer must receive
what the Church dictates to him about the spiritual world,
just as the eyes take in the facts of nature.
“He must
neither take anything away nor add anything, he must take it
as it stands; above all the very purest reception of the true
content of the matter is expected of him. The truths of
revelation are something given, for him who grasps them in
faith. For him, they are conclusive and complete. No
enrichment of them has been possible since Christ: their
volume cannot to decreased, and any change in their content
is out of the question”.
So speaks one
who subscribes fully to the genuine orthodox Catholic view
— a view which must dissociate itself, for instance,
with a certain aversion from any train of thought such as
Lessing's, which leads-towards a renewed search for the
Spiritual. Lessing's views went as far as to embrace repeated
earth-lives; they are a product of modern spiritual life. The
bitterest opposition is bound to exist between the Catholic
Church and such Cerman spiritual life as flowed through
Lessing, Herder, Goethe and Schiller. This same person (von
Hertling) writes further:
“The
edifice of Church dcctrine, as it appears to the Theologian
of to-day and is presented by him, was not complete and
ready-made from the beginning. What Christ imparted to the
Apostles, what they proclaimed to the world, was not a
methodical, fully prepared system, developed at all points:
it was a rich store of truths, all united as in a focus in
one event of sacred history: the story of the Redemption, of
the Incarnation of the Divine Logos; but the instruction of
the believers, and the necessary defence against heathen
assaults, as well as against the misrepresentations of
heretics, made it necessary tc unite these truths in a
system, to develop their full content, to determine their
purport. — This was done by the unwearying proclamation
of the doctrine by those specially chosen as instruments,
according to the Catholic interpretation under the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, but at the same time vith the
co-operation of the learning of the early Church.
“No new
language was creeted by this revelation, but what was already
current was used; the sense and meaning of individual words
being recoined and heightened. Theology, which undertook to
think out the content of Revelation while setting it in order
for expository purposes, needed for the task certain tools
and resources: sharply circumscribed ideas for organising the
subject-matter; special exnression for making comprehensible
relationships which far exceeded the experience of everyday
life. A new task in the history of the world thereby devolved
upon Greek philosophy. It had the vessels ready Prepared,
into which an infinitely richer content, springing from a
higher source, was to be poured. Platonism was the first
source of this creative work. The drift of its speculation on
the super-sensible distinctly singled it out for the task.
Much later, after the lapse of more than a thousand years,
when the most important essentials of revelation had at last
been formulated in dogma, the close union of theological
science with Aristotelian philosophy was completed and exists
to this day”.
(Because,
therefore, the philosophy of Aristotle was united with the
Church as long ago as the Middle Ages, its value for the
Church today is beyond question!)
“With its
help, the sainted Thomas Aquinas, the greatest master of
system known in history, raised the great edifice of
doctrine, which, only modified here and there in detail, has
determined Catholic theology as to form, expression and
method of teaching ever since.”
The author in
question regards what he calls Church doctrine as having come
about by means of a certain union between the Christian
wisdom-element and Greek Aristotelian Philosophy. He does
recognise the possibility that in a very distant future, (he
says expressly “in a future by no means near as
yet”), Christianity might be approached through quite
different ideas He says: Supposing that Christianity had not
been spread abroad throurth Greek philosophy, but as it might
have been, through the Indian, it would have come forth in an
entirely different form. However, it must remain in the form
it has received: it must not, be changed by any novel view,
arising in modern times. But he in certainly aware that there
are points where he is treading on thin ice: —
“I am
only against a spiritual disposition which, in realms where
full freedom is accorded to Scientific investigation, is deaf
to all the fundamental objections, and holds fast to
tradition.”
Yet he holds
strongly enough to tradition!
And finally, it
is then necessary to give way, as was done in the case of the
Copernican system."
That waseonly
in 1827! He turns away from legitimate endeavours to
understand Christianity afresh, with a modern consciousness.
That is remarkably little to his taste. He says:
“I could
conceive that a far-distant future might loosen the union of
Theology and Aristotelian philosophy, replacing it's no
longer comprehensible or satisfying concepts with others,
which would correspond to a knowledree improved in many
ways.” He “could conceive” — that
what nobody in any case understands to-day might be replaced
by something equally incomprehensible.
“It would
not be offending against the warning of the Gospel, because
it would not be pouring new wine into old skins, for on the
contrary new vessels would be produced, to preserve therein
the never-failing wine of the doctrine of salvation, in its
essential character, and to purvey it to the
faithful.”
But that must
not happen. He goes on:
“But the
vessels must be chosen ones. The attempts made by
Cartesianism in the seventeenth century, and by the
philosnphy of Kant and Hegel in the nineteenth, exhort us to
prudence. A school of ideas which would replace
Aristotelianism would have to arise, just as that did, From
fulness of knowledge and contemporary
consciousness.”
Then these same
men would oppose it, because they at any rate are not the
offspring of “fulness of knowledge and contemporary
consciousness”.
“It would
have to acquire equal authority over wide circles of thinking
humanity, and even then its transformation into
ecclesiastical theology would hardly be attained without
errors and perplexities on all hands.”
It would be
necessary to “labour” to bring about
understanding. “As, for instance, in the thirteenth
century, when through the Arabs the complete philosophy of
Aristotle was brought to the Christian West. Its reception
aroused severe opposition. Even a Thomas Aquinas was not
spared hostility. He was held by many to be an innovator,
against whom the champions of the well-tried old order had to
marshal their forces.”
It is
remarkable how it is with this principle of over coming an
old way of understanding. “Christianity — men may
think it quite a good principle, but they absolutely will not
admit its validity in their own epoch. It cannot be said that
such a thing is done in simplicty. It is very learned, for
the pamphlet concludes with a really significant reference
— a reference to an Order which has at all times had
reputation for shrewdness — a brotherhood which has a
different standing from that of Bernard of Clairvaix or
Francis ef Assisi, whose reputation rested or a certain
mystical tendency. This other Order reckoned mystical piety
aad such-like of less value than a certain shrewdness and
understanding of worldly affairs. Hence the pamphlet says in
conclusion:
“I end
with an utterance of St. Ignatius of Loyola, which has been
incorporated into the constitution of the Jesuit Order, and
has ben referred to of late in different quarters:
“Scientific pursuits, if they are undertaken with pure
stiving in the service of God, are on that account, because
they comprehend the whole of humanity, not less, but more
pleasing to God than pennance.”
The endeavour
has been made in our own time to awaken clear understanding
on all sides. I will prove this to you by an example. I have
been reading to you from this author so that you may see the
position taken up by those who hold certain views, as regards
a movement I was describing. This attitude of theirs was
perceived by a writer who published a short time ago, (it is
importent to note that it is of recent date) an article on
the author of this pamphlet. I will read an extract from
it:
“At the
Conference in 1893, on the subjct of Catholic Science and the
position of Catholic savants at the present day this
declaration was made:
“We
Catholic-Scientists of the nineteenth century are convinced
that there is no antagonism between Science and Faith, but
that they are ordained to combine in inner harmony. We are
convinced that no two sides of truth exist, or can exist. God
is the source of all truth; He has spoken to us through the
Prophets and the incararnated Logos; He speaks to us through
the ordained ministry of the Church, and no less in the laws
of logic, which we must hold to when we strive for knowledge
of the truths of Nature. eBcause God cannot contradict
Hinself, therfore no antagonism can exist between
supernatural and natural truths; between the teachings of
revelation and a science which earnestly, honestly brings to
light the laws and the rules of method.”
“This
really means, however, that philosophy is reduced to silence.
Its freedom is just the same for us as that of a flock of
sheep in its enclosure, or the prisoners within walls.
Philosophy, as regards its own principles, is just as little
free under the determining, limiting rule of faith as they
— who are allowed to walk about on their own feet, to
use their own-hands and to move as they like, but in a
strictly — enclosed space. The phrase “Catholic
philosophy” embodies a direct contradiction, for by its
own account of itself it is not unconditionally
free.”
If our
Spiritual Science were not independent, it would not be what
it ought to be.
“Catholic
philosophy has to follow a prescribed line of march. A
philosophy claiming to be based. on scientific method must
hold firm, regardless of consequences, to nothing outside the
results of its own researches and its own thinking. It is
bound by strict rules of investigation and verification, and
is forbidden to take its stand within any particular religion
or on any point of ecclesiastical dogma. Otherwise it is not
science but unscientific dogmatism, governed not by
principles of knowledge, but by faith and the power of faith.
In that case it does not go its way unhindered and
uninfluenced, nor does it follow impartially its own laws,
but it acknowledges as a matter of course an ordained truth,
and, in relation to that, resigns its independence.”
(Dr. Bernhard Münz. “The German Imperial
Chancellor as Philosopher” in the “Austrian
Review”, 15th April 1918.)
That is
precisely the task of the present time, to find the way for
every hman being to stand on his own feet. A man who
maintains such things as you have just heard quoted stands in
sharpest contradiction to this task. There are neople who see
that such opinions preclude any possibility of a scientific
view of the universe; but it seems very difficult at the
present time to prove the impartiality of one's judgment,
however necessary it may be. The further progress of
civilisation will depend on men comin to learn how in their
soul-being they are connected with the Spiritual world;
whoever shuts his eyes to this, hinders the most important
task of his own day. There is no escape from this conclusion.
The remarkable thing to-day is that people can look at the
matter, and in a marvellous way draw other conclusions from
it. The author of this article writes of the man from whose
pamphlet I have read to you, which culminated in the
confession of Jesuitism. The “subject” of the
article is Georg von Hertling, now “Count”
Hertling. — The author of the article, however, in
spite of having said that the outlook he is criticising
“excludes all science”, adds in conclusion:
“Count
Hertling is a decided, strongly-marked individuality.
Individuality literally means indivisibility, but in this
case it implies divisibility, inner blending, universal
organisation. Individual soul, family soul, and nation-soul
meet and are accentuated side by side in this man: this
trinity-of soul it is that makes him so strong and stamps him
as the predestined Chancellor of the German Empire.” A
need of our time is to find a way of touching the nerve
through which the current of Spiritual Science must flow, and
this can be none other than the one which enables the soul to
find its onn way to the spiritual world. This must be
thoroughly understood, for it is bound un with the deepest
needs, the most indispensible impulses, our age. Our time
demands of man that he should be able, in noticing a thing,
to admit it, and to draw the real conclusions from it.
Spiritual Science can be genuine only in those who have the
courage to face truth and to maintain it; otherwise such
experiences as I have described will become more frequent. I
must add this, because more and more simple minds are to be
found amongst us who hear with joy any praise of Spiritual
Science, or what appears like it. Discrimination precisely in
these very points is necessary. “Praise” can be
far more hurtful and run far more counter to our efforts,
than adverse criticism, when honestly meant.
Hermann
Heisler, a protestant theologian, gave seventeen sermons in
Constance and published them afterwards under the title of
“Vital questions of the Day”. By chance a
characteristic review of his book fell into my hands, and our
unsophisticated friends would perhaps count it as something
to be pleased with, inasmuch as it is unadulterated
praise:
“These
sermons deserve particular attention, on account of their
authorship. Heisler was for ten years an evangelical Pastor
in Styria and Bohemia, then, alarmed at the danger of
becoming numbed by the routine of his office, resigned it for
the time being, in order to devote himself for a year to
studying the fundamentals of natural science and philosophy.
Finally, urged by an inner call, he returned to his spiritual
sphere with new joyfulness and love. As he could not serve
his country with the colours, he offered his spiritual
services to the Church of his native Baden, and was entrusted
with a cure of souls at Constance, where these seventeen
addresses were given in 1917. They are remarkable as
regards their substance. They are all based on deep spiritual
effort, and expect hearers and readers alike to share in it.
They are not, designed to arouse beautiful feelings but to
lead through earnest thinkins to convinced knowledge. They
avoid the sermonising tone, and read almost like scientific
treatises developed in a popular way about religious
problems. I would instance the sermon on that many-sided
conception, freedom. It arrives at the true conclusion:
‘Of course there always remains as absolute necessity
which directs us. Even as free human beings, we still follow
the aim which most attracts us; but the divine gift of
freedom which Christ brings us is that the lower attractions
of the sense-world lose their constraining power over our
souls, and the majesty of the spiritual world gains inner
sovereignty over us.’ ” The peculiar feature of
Heisler's preaching, however, does not lie in the powerful
grasp of his thinking, but in its special content: Heisler is
a convinced, inspired Theosophist. He himself would
rather use the term, “follower of Spiritual
Science”. That must not be confused with the
spiritualistic belief in the materialisation of spirits. It
calls for a purely spiritual activity, bound to no material
means. Our thoughts are forces, which, invisible yet
powerful, stream out from us and impress the seal of our
being on the whole of Nature, beneficially or the reverse.
This belief in the imperishable power of the spirit is set
forth for our comfort in the address, ‘Our Dead are
Alive;’ it takes an amazing form in the one on
‘Destiny.’ Based on the account in St. John's
Gospel of the man born blind, the old Indian and Orphic
doctrines of the soul's pilgrimage, its reincarnation in an
earthly body, is taught; the preacher would thereby solve the
riddle of how fate so often seems unjust, and, like Lessing in his
“Education of the Human Race,”
would arouse a belief in a carefully planned divine education of
humanity. When I add that Heisler looks upon this teaching,
indeed on all his Spiritual Science, as a return to the New
Testamet, lecturinrg upon it as science, and consciously
overstepping the Kantian boundary between knowledre and
faith, I have sketched his schene of thoght it its main
features.”
“Well, we
might say, what more is wanted! Really nothing better could
be written! But the author of the review concludes his
considerations thus: “I myself reject this Spiritual
Science and abide by Kant; but after all, the sermons contain
so much that is good, and Theosophy is for the moment
agitating theology in so significant a way, (cf. for example,
Rittlemeyer's writings in the Christliche Welt),
that I believe I do many theologians and laity a service by
drawing attention emphatically to these addresses.”
(D. Schuster in “The Hanover Courier”,
18th July, 1913.)
That is often
the way of thought in our age: inner force and courage are
lacking in it. The man has “nothing but good” to
say; one notices that he has insight into the good, because
he can define it in charming words; but then — “I
personally reject this Spiritual Science”! There you
have the fruits of what I began by describing, and much in
the present time is connected with these
“fruits”. In the next lecture I will deal further
with the tendency I have been discussing, and its effpcts in
social democacy and Bolshevism.
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