I
t was my task
yesterday to show from the example of individual
personalities how the historical evolution of the world runs
its course. If one seeks to come further in the direction of
Spiritual Science, one cannot represent things otherwise than
by showing the consequences of events as they reflect
themselves in the human being. For not until our own epoch does
man feel himself for reasons which we will discuss in the
course of these lectures, shut off as an individual being from
the rest of the world. In all previous epochs man felt —
and, be it noted, in all subsequent epochs man will again feel
himself as member of the whole Cosmos, as belonging to the
entire world; even as a finger (as I have often expressed it)
can have no independent existence for itself, but can only
exist on a human being. For the moment a finger is separated
from the human being, it is no longer a finger, it begins to
decay, it is something quite different, subject to quite other
laws than when attached to the human organism. And as a finger
is only a finger in unison with the organism, so in the same
way is man only a being having some form or other, whether in
Earth-life or in the life between death and a new birth, in
connection with the entire Cosmos. The consciousness of this
was present in earlier epochs and will again be present in a
later time; it is only darkened to-day because, as we shall
hear, it was necessary for man that it should be darkened and
clouded in order that he might develop to the full the
experience of freedom. The farther we go back however into
ancient times, the more do we find man possessing this
consciousness of belonging to the whole Cosmos.
I
have given you a picture of two personalities, — the one
called Gilgamesh in the famous Epic and the other Eabani. I
have shown you how these personalities lived in the ancient
Egypto-Chaldean epoch in accordance with what was possible to
men of that time, and how they afterwards experienced a
deepening through the Mysteries of Ephesus. And I told you at
the end of my lecture yesterday that these same human beings
had their part later in the historical evolution of the world
as Aristotle and Alexander.
In
order now fully to understand the course of Earth evolution in
the times when all these things were taking place, we must look
more closely into what such souls were able to receive into
themselves in these three successive periods.
I
have told you how the personality who is concealed behind the
name of Gilgamesh undertook a journey to the West and went
through a kind of Western Post-Atlantean initiation.
Let
us first form an idea of the nature of such an initiation, that
we may the better understand what came later. We shall naturally
turn to a place where echoes of the old Atlantean initiation
remained on for a long time. This was the case with the
Hibernian Mysteries
[See the 8th and 9th lectures in
Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres.
],
of which I have recently spoken to the
friends who are here in Dornach. I must now repeat some of what
I then said before we can come to a clear and full
understanding of the subject we are treating.
The
Mysteries of Hibernia, the Irish Mysteries, were in existence
for a long time. They were still there at the time of the
foundation of Christianity. And they are the Mysteries that in
some respects preserved most faithfully the ancient
wisdom-teaching of the Atlantean peoples. Let me give you a
picture of the experiences of a person who was initiated into
the Irish Mysteries in the Post-Atlantean epoch. Before he was
able to receive the initiation he had to be strictly prepared;
the preparation that had to be undergone before entering
the Mysteries was always in those times of extraordinary
strictness and rigour. The important thing in the Hibernian
Mysteries was that the pupil should learn to become aware in
powerful inward experience ofthat which is illusory in
his environment, — in all the things, that is to say, to
which man attributes being on the ground of his
sense-perception. Then he was made aware of all the
difficulties and obstacles which meet man when he searches
after the truth, the real truth. And he was shown how,
fundamentally, everything which surrounds us in the world of
the senses is an illusion, that what the senses give is
illusion, and that the truth conceals itself behind the
illusion, so that in fact true being is not accessible to man
through sense-perception.
Now, very likely you will say that this conviction you
yourselves have held for a long time; you know this quite well.
But all the knowledge a man can have in the present-day
consciousness of the illusory character of the sense-world is
as nothing compared with the inner shattering, the inner
tragedy that men of that time suffered in their preparation for
the Hibernian initiation. For when one says theoretically in
this way: Everything is Maya, everything is illusion,
— one takes it quite lightly! But the training of
the Hibernian pupils was carried to such a point that they had
to say to themselves: There is for man no possibility of
penetrating the illusion and coming to real true Being.
The
pupils were by this means trained to content themselves,
as it were in desperation, with the illusion. They came into an
attitude of despair: the illusory character, they felt, is so
overpowering and so penetrating that one can never get beyond
it. And in the life of these pupils we find always the feeling:
Very well then, we must remain in the illusion. That means,
however: we must lose the very ground from under our feet. For
there is no standing firm on illusion! In truth, my dear
friends, of the strictness and severity of the preparation in
the ancient Mysteries, we to-day can scarcely form any idea.
Men shrink in terror before what inner development actually
demands.
Such was the experience that came to the pupils in regard to
Being and its illusory character. And now there awaited them a
similar experience regarding the search after Truth. They
learned to know the hindrances man has in his emotions that
hinder him from coming to truth, all the dark and
overwhelming feelings that trouble the clear light of
knowledge. And so once more they came to a great moment when
they said to themselves: If Truth is not, well then we live
— we must live — in error, in untruth. For a man to
come thus to a time in his life when he despairs of Being and
of Truth means, in short, that he tears out of him his own
humanity.
All
this was given in order that the human being, through
experiencing the opposite of what he was finally to reach as
his goal, might approach that goal with the right and deep
human feeling. For unless one has learned what it means to live
with error and illusion, then one cannot value Being and Truth.
And the pupils of Hibernia had to learn to value Being and
Truth.
And
then, when they had gone through all this, when they had, as it
were, experienced to the bitter end, the opposite pole of what
they were eventually to reach, the pupils were led (and here I
must describe what happened in the picture-language that can
rightly represent what took place as reality in the Hibernian
Mysteries) — they were led into a kind of sanctuary where
were two pillar-statues of infinitely strong suggestive force,
and of gigantic size. The one of these pillar-statues was
inwardly hollow; the surface that surrounded the hollow
space, the whole substance, that is, of which the statue
consisted, was elastic throughout. Wherever one pressed, one
could make an indentation into the statue; but the moment one
ceased to press, the form restored itself.
The
whole pillar-statue was made in such a way that the head was
more particularly developed. When a man approached the statue,
he had the feeling: Forces are streaming forth from the
head into the colossal body. For of course he did not see the
space within, he only became aware of it when he pressed. And
the pupil was exhorted to press. He had the feeling that the
forces of the head rayed out over the whole of the rest of the
body, that in this statue the head does everything.
I
willingly admit, my dear friends, that if a modern man in our
present-day prosaic life were led before the statue, he would
scarcely be able to experience anything but quite abstract
ideas about it. That is certainly so. But it is a different
matter, first to experience with one's whole inner being, with
soul and spirit, yes, and with blood and nerves, the might of
illusion and the might of error, — and then, after that,
to experience the suggestive force of such a gigantic
figure.
This statue had a male character.
By
the side of it stood another, that had a female character. It
was not hollow. It was composed of a substance that was not
elastic, but plastic. When the pupil pressed this statue
— and again he was exhorted to do so — he destroyed
the form. He dug a hole in the body.
After the pupil had found how in the one statue, owing to its
elasticity, the form was always re-established, and how in the
other he defaced the statue by pressing it, and after something
else too had taken place, of which I shall speak presently, he
left the place, and was only led back there again when all the
deformations he had caused in the plastic non-elastic female
figure had been restored, and the statue was intact. Thanks to
all the preparations which the pupil had undergone — and
I can only give them here in outline — he was able to
receive in connection with the statue having a female character
a deep inner experience in the whole of his being — body,
soul and spirit.
This inner experience had of course been already prepared in
him earlier, but it was established and confirmed in full
measure through the suggestive influence of the statue. He
received into him a feeling of inward numbness, of hard and
frozen numbness. This so worked in him that he saw his soul
filled with Imaginations. And these Imaginations were pictures
of the Earth's winter, pictures that represented the winter of
the Earth. Thus was the pupil led to perceive Reality, in the
spirit, from within.
With the other, the male statue, he had a different
experience. He felt as though all the life in him, which
was generally spread out over the whole body, went into his
blood, as if his blood were permeated with forces and pressing
against his skin. Whereas before the one statue he had to feel
that he was becoming a frozen skeleton, he had now to feel
before the other that all the life in him was being consumed in
heat, and he was living in a tightly-stretched skin. And this
experience of the whole inner man pressing against the surface
enabled the pupil to receive a new insight. He was able to say
to himself: You have now a feeling and experience of what you
would be if, of all the things in the Cosmos, the Sun alone
worked upon you. In this way he learned to recognise the
working of the Sun in the Cosmos, and how its working is
distributed in the Cosmos. He learned to know man's relation to
the Sun. And he learned that the reason why man is not in
reality what he now felt himself to be under the suggestive
influence of the Sun-statue, is because other forces, working
in from other corners of the Cosmos, ‘mummify’ this working of
the Sun. In such manner did the pupil learn to find his
bearings in the Cosmos, to be, as it were, at home in the
Cosmos.
And
when the pupil felt the suggestive influence of the
Moon-statue, when he had in him the hard frost of numbness and
experienced a winter landscape within him (in the case of the
Sun-statue, he experienced a summer landscape in the spirit),
then he felt what he would be like if the Moon influences alone
were present.
What does man really know about the world in the present-day?
He knows, let us say, that the chicory flower is blue, that the
rose is red, the sky blue, and so forth. But these facts make
no violent or overwhelming impression upon him. They merely
tell him of what is nearest at hand, of what is in his
immediate environment. If man would know the secrets of the
Cosmos, then he must become in his whole being a sense-organ,
— and, to an intense degree.
Through the suggestive influence of the Sun-statue, the whole
of the pupil's being was concentrated in the circulation of the
blood. He learned to know himself as a Sun-being, as he
experienced within him this suggestive influence. And he
learned to know himself as Moon-being, by experiencing the
suggestive influence of the female statue. And then he was able
to tell from out of these inner experiences he had received,
how Sun and Moon work upon the human being; even as we to-day
can say, from the experience of our eyes, how the rose affects
us, or from the experience of our ears can tell the working of
the sound of C sharp, and so on.
Thus the pupils of these Mysteries experienced still, even in
Post-Atlantean times, how man is placed, as it were, in the
Cosmos. It was for them an immediate and direct experience.
Now
what I have related to you to-day is but a brief sketch of the
sublime experience that came to men in the Mysteries of
Hibernia, and continued so to come until the first centuries of
the Christian Era. It was a cosmic experience —
this Sun-experience and Moon-experience.
In
the Mysteries of Ephesus in Asia Minor the pupil had to undergo
experiences of quite a different character. Here he experienced
in a particularly intense manner, with the whole of his being,
that which later found such perfect expression in the opening
words of the John-Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word. And
the Word was with God. And a God was the Word.’ In Ephesus, the
pupil was led, not before two statues, but before one, —
the statue that is known as the Artemis (Diana) of Ephesus.
Identifying himself — as I said yesterday —
with this statue which was fullness of life, which abounded
everywhere in life, the pupil lived his way into the Cosmic
Ether. With the whole of his inner feeling and experience he
raised himself out of mere earthly life, raised himself up into
the experience of the Cosmic Ether. And now he was guided, to a
new knowledge. First of all, the real nature of human
speech was communicated to him. And then from human speech,
from the human image, that is, of the Cosmic Logos, from the
humanly-imaged Logos, it was shown to the pupil how the Cosmic
Word works and weaves creatively throughout the
Universe.
Once more, I can only describe these things in bare outline.
The process was such that the attention of the pupil was
especially drawn to what happens when the human being speaks,
when he impresses the mark of his word on the outgoing breath.
He was led to experience what happens with that which, through
his own inner deed, man leads over into life, — to feel
how his “word” looks in the element of air; and
moreover, how two further processes are united with what takes
place in the element of air.
Imagine that we have here the expired air, on which are
impressed certain words that the human being speaks. Whilst
this breath, formed into words, streams outwards from the
breast, the rhythmic vibration goes downwards and passes over
into the whole watery element that permeates the human
organism. Thus at the level of his throat, his speech-organs,
man has the air-rhythms when he speaks. But along with his
speaking goes a wave-like surging and seething of the whole
fluid-body in the human being. The fluid in man, that is below
the region of speech, comes into vibration and vibrates in
harmony. This is what it really means when we say that our
speech is accompanied by feelings. If the watery element in the
human being did not vibrate in harmony in this way, man's
speech would go forth from him neutrally, indifferently; he
would not be able to permeate what he says with feeling. And
upwards in the direction of the head, goes the element of
warmth, and accompanying the words that we impress upon the air
are upward-streaming waves of warmth, which permeate the head
and there make it possible for our words to be accompanied by
thought.
Thus, when we speak, we have to do with three things: air,
warmth and water. This process, which alone presents a complete
picture of what lives and weaves in human speech was taken as
the starting-point for the pupil of Ephesus.
It
was then made clear to him that that which thus takes place in
the human being is a cosmic process made human, and that in a
certain far-off time the Earth itself worked in that way; only
it was not then the air element, but the watery element, the
fluid element — which I described yesterday as a
volatile, fluid albumen — that had this wavelike
moving and surging. Like the air in man, in the
microcosm, when he speaks on the outgoing breath, so was
once the volatile, fluid element, the albumen which surrounded
the Earth like an atmosphere. And as to-day the air passes over
into the warmth-element, so the albumen went upwards into a
kind of air-element, and downwards into a kind of earthly
element. And as with us feelings arise in our body through the
fluid element, so in the Earth the Earth-formations, the
Earth-forces sprang into existence, all the forces that work
and seethe within the Earth. And above, in the airy element the
cosmic thoughts were born, the soaring cosmic thoughts that
work creatively in the earthly substance.
Majestic and powerful was the impression that the human being
received at Ephesus, when he was shown how in his own speech
lived the microcosmic echo of what had once been macrocosmic.
And the pupil of Ephesus, when he spoke, felt an insight come
to him through the experience of speech into the working of the
Cosmic Word. He could perceive how the Cosmic Word set in
motion the volatile fluid element, giving it movement full of
meaning and import; he saw too how it went upward to the
creative cosmic thought, and downward to the Earth-forces
coming into being.
Thus did the pupil live his way into the Cosmos, by learning to
understand aright what was in his own being. ‘Within thee is
the human Logos. The human Logos works from out of thee during
thy time on Earth. Thou, as man, art the human Logos.’ (For in
very deed through that which streams downwards in the fluid
element we are ourselves formed and moulded out of speech,
whilst through that which streams upwards, we have our human
thoughts during our time on Earth.) ‘And even as in thee the
essence of humanity is the microcosmic Logos, so once in the
far-off beginning of things was the Logos, and It was with God
and Itself was a God.’
In
Ephesus men had a profound understanding of this for they
understood it in and through the human being.
In
considering such a personality as is concealed behind the name
of Gilgamesh, you must remember how he led his life in the
whole milieu and environment that radiated out from the
Mysteries. For all culture, all civilisation, was in earlier
times a radiation from the Mysteries; so that when I name
Gilgamesh to you, you must think of him — as long as he
was living in Erech — not indeed as himself initiated
into the Mysteries of Erech, but as living in a civilisation
that was permeated with the feeling and experience man could
have from his relation to the Cosmos.
An
experience then came to this personality during his journey to
the West, which made him directly acquainted, not with the
Hibernian Mysteries themselves — he did not travel so far
afield — but with what was cultivated in a colony of the
Hibernian Mysteries, situated, as I told you, where the
Burgenland now is. What he experienced there lived in his soul
and then developed further in the life between death and new
birth; and in the next earthly life he underwent at
Ephesus a deepening of the soul in connection with this same
experience.
The
deepening of the soul took place for both the individuals of
whom we have been speaking. Verily it was as though a torrent
surged up from the depth of the civilisation of that time and
broke like a great wave on the souls of these two. They
experienced in vivid and intense reality what survived in
Greece after the Homeric period only as a beautiful semblance,
as the glory of something that is gone.
In
Ephesus one could still have a feeling of the whole Reality in
which man had once upon a time been living, in the days when he
still had an immediate relation to the Divine-Spiritual; when
Asia was for him only the lowest of the heavens, when he still
had connection with the higher heavens bordering upon it. In
those far-off times man had experienced in ‘Asia’ the presence
of the Nature Spirits, and above, the presence of the Angels,
Archangels, etc., and above them again, the Exusiai and the
rest of the Hierarchies. Of all this one could still have as it
were an after-feeling in Ephesus, in the place, that is, where
Heraclitus also lived and where so much of the old Reality was
still experienced even in later Grecian times, down to the 6th
and 5th centuries B.C.
It
was indeed characteristic of the Greek that he took what had
once been experienced by man in connection with the Cosmos and
steeped it in the myth, in beauty, in the element of art,
turning it into images that man felt more human and more near
to him.
Now
we must turn our thoughts to a time when on the one hand the
Greek civilisation had reached its zenith, when it had proudly
pushed back, in the Persian wars, the last thrust as it were of
the old Asiatic Reality, a time when however on the other
hand Greece itself was already beginning to decline; and we
must picture to ourselves what a man of such a time would
experience if he still bore in his soul the unmistakable echoes
of what had once been the Divine-Spiritual earthly Reality in
body, soul, and spirit of mankind.
We
shall have to see how Alexander the Great and Aristotle lived
in a world that was not altogether adapted to them, in a world
indeed that held great tragedy for them. The fact is, Alexander
and Aristotle stood in an altogether different relation to the
Spiritual from the men around them; for although they cannot be
said to have concerned themselves very much with the
Samothracian Mysteries, they had nevertheless a strong affinity
in their souls to what went on with the Kabiri in those
Mysteries. And right on into the Middle Ages there were those
who understood what this meant. Men of the present day build up
altogether false ideas of the Middle Ages: they do not realise
that there were individuals of all classes in life, on into the
13th and 14th centuries, who possessed a clear spiritual
vision, at any rate in that realm which in the ancient East was
designated as ‘Asia.’
The Song of Alexander
[Composed about 1125 by the Franconian priest
Lamprecht; the first German secular epic poem.]
that was composed by a certain priest in the early Middle Ages
is a very significant document; in comparison with the account
history gives to-day of the doings of Alexander and Aristotle,
the poem of the Priest Lamprecht is a sublime and grand conception,
still akin to the old understanding of all that had come to
pass through Alexander the Great.
Take for instance a passage in the poem where a wonderful
description is given after the following style. When
Springtime comes, you go out into the woods. You come to
the edge of the wood. Flowers are blooming there, and the sun
stands where it lets the shadow fall from the trees on to the
flowers. And there you may see how in the shadow of the trees
in Spring spiritual flower-children come forth from the calices
of the flowers and dance in chorus at the edge of the wood.
In
this description of Lamprecht the Priest we can perceive
distinctly shining through, an old and real experience which
was still accessible to men of that time. They did not go out
into the woods, saying prosaically: Here is grass, and here are
flowers, and here the trees begin; but when they approached the
wood while the sun stood behind it and the shadow fell across
the flowers, then in the shadow of the trees there came towards
them from the flowers a whole world of flower-beings —
beings that were actually present to them before they entered
into the wood. For when they came in the wood itself they
perceived quite other elemental spirits. This dance of the
flower-spirits appeared to Lamprecht the Priest and he
delighted especially in picturing it. It is indeed significant,
my dear friends; Lamprecht, even as late as the 12th or
beginning of the 13th century wishing to describe the campaigns
of Alexander, permeates them everywhere with descriptions of
Nature that still contain the manifestations of the elemental
kingdoms. Underlying his Song of Alexander, there was this
consciousness: ‘To describe what took place once upon a
time in Macedonia when Alexander began his journeys into Asia,
when Alexander was taught by Aristotle, we cannot merely
describe the prosaic Earth as the environment of these events;
no, to describe them worthily we must include with the prosaic
Earth the kingdoms of the elemental beings.’ How different from
a modern book of history, which is, of course, quite justified
for present times. There you will read how Alexander, against
the counsel of his teacher Aristotle whom he disobeyed,
conceived himself to have the mission to reconcile the
barbarians with civilised mankind, creating so to speak an
average of culture; the civilised Greeks, the Hellenes, the
Macedonians and the barbarians.
That, no doubt, is right enough for modern time. And yet how
puerile, compared to the real truth! On the other hand we have
a wonderful impression when we look at the picture Lamprecht
gives us of the campaigns of Alexander, attributing to them
quite a different goal. We feel as though what I have just
described — the entry of the Nature-elemental kingdoms,
of the Spiritual into the Physical in Nature, — were
intended merely as an introduction. For what is the aim
of Alexander's campaigns in the
Alexanderlied
of Lamprecht?
Alexander comes to the very gates of Paradise. Translated
as it is into the Christian language of his time, this
corresponds in a high degree, as I shall presently explain, to
the real truth. For the campaigns of Alexander were not
undertaken for the mere sake of conquest, still less against
the advice of Aristotle to reconcile the barbarians with the
Greeks. No, they were permeated by a real and lofty spiritual
aim. Their impulse came out of the spirit. Let us read of it in
Lamprecht's poem, who in his own way with great devotion,
albeit 15 centuries after the life of Alexander, tells the
heroic story. He tells us how Alexander came up to the gates of
Paradise, but could not enter in, for, as Lamprecht says, he
alone can enter Paradise who has the true humility, and
Alexander, living in pre-Christian time, could not yet have
that. Only Christianity could bring to mankind the true
humility.
Nevertheless, if we conceive the thing not in a narrow but in a
broad-minded way, we shall see how Lamprecht, the Christian
priest, still feels something of the tragedy of Alexander's
campaigns.
It
is not without purpose that I have spoken of this ‘Song of
Alexander.’ For now you will not be surprised if we take our
start from the campaigns of Alexander in order to describe what
went before and what went after in the history of Western
mankind, in its connection with the East. For the real
underlying feeling of these things was still widely present, as
we have seen, at a comparatively late period in the Middle
Ages. Not only so; it was present in so concrete a form that
the ‘Song of Alexander’ could arise, describing as it does with
wonderful dramatic power the events that were enacted through
the two souls whom I have characterised.
The
significance of this moment in the history of Macedonia reaches
on the one hand far back into the past, and on the other hand
far on into the future. And it is essential to bear in mind how
something of a world-tragedy hangs over all that has to do with
Aristotle and Alexander. Even externally the tragedy comes to
light. It shows itself in this, my dear friends. Owing to
peculiar circumstances — circumstances that were fateful
for the history of the world — only the smallest part of
the writings of Aristotle have come into Western Europe, and
there been further studied and preserved by the Church. In
point of fact it is only the writings that deal with logic or
are clothed in logical form.
A
serious study, however, of the little that is preserved of
Aristotle's scientific writings will show what a powerful
vision he still had of the connection of the whole Cosmos with
the human being. Let me draw your attention to a single
passage.
We
speak to-day of the earth-element, the water-element, the
air-element, the fire- or warmth-element, and then of the
Ether. How does Aristotle represent all this? He shows the
Earth, the hard firm Earth; the fluid Earth, the Water; then
the Air; and the whole permeated and surrounded with Fire. But
for Aristotle the ‘Earth’ in this sense teaches up as far as
the Moon. And from the Cosmos, reaching from the stars to the
Moon, not, that is to say, into the Earth-realm, but only as
far as the Moon, coming towards us, as it were, from the
Zodiac, from the stars — is the Ether, filling cosmic
space. The Ether reaches downwards as far as the
Moon.
All
this may still be read by scholars in the books that have been
written about Aristotle. Aristotle himself, however, used
continually to say to his pupil Alexander: That Ether that is
away there beyond the realm of earthly warmth — the
light-ether, the chemical ether and the life-ether — was
once upon a time united with the Earth. It came in as far as to
the Earth. And when the Moon withdrew in the ancient
epoch of evolution, then the Ether withdrew from the Earth. And
so all that is around us in space as dead world — so ran
Aristotle's teaching to his pupil Alexander — is not
permeated by Ether. When however, Springtime approaches, and
plants, animals and human beings come forth to new life on the
Earth, then the elementary spirits bring down again the Ether
from out of the realm of the Moon, bring it down into these
newborn beings. Thus is the Moon the shaper and moulder
of beings.
Standing before that great female figure in the Hibernian
Mysteries, the pupil of the Mysteries had a most vivid
experience of how the Ether does not really belong to the
Earth, but is brought down thither by the elementary spirits,
every year, in so far as it is needed for the up-springing into
life.
And
this was so for Aristotle. He, too, had a deep insight into the
connection of the human being with the Cosmos. His pupil
Theophrastus did not let the writings come westwards that
treat of these things. Some of them, however, went to the East,
where there was still an understanding for such truths. Thence
they were brought by Jews and Arabs through North Africa and
Spain to the West of Europe, and there met, in a manner that I
shall have yet to describe, with the radiation of the Hibernian
Mysteries, as these expressed themselves in the civilisation
and culture of the peoples.
But
now all that I have been describing to you was no more than the
starting-point for the teaching that Aristotle gave to
Alexander. It was a teaching that belonged entirely to inner
experience. I might describe it in outline somewhat as follows.
Alexander learned from Aristotle to understand how the earthy,
watery, airy and fiery elements that live outside the human
being in the world around him live also within the human being
himself, and how he is in this connection a true
microcosm. He learned how in the bones of the human being lives
the earthy element, and how in his circulation and in all the
fluids and humours in him lives the watery element. The airy
element works in all that has to do with the breathing, and the
fiery element lives in the thoughts of man. Alexander had still
the conscious knowledge of living in the elements.
And
with this experience of living in the elements of the world
went also the experience of a near and intimate relationship
with the Earth. In these days we travel East, West, North,
South, but have no feeling for what streams into our being the
while; we only see what our external senses perceive, we only
see what the earthly substances in us, not what the elements in
us perceive.
Aristotle, however, was able to teach Alexander: When you go
eastwards over the Earth, you pass more and more into an
element that dries you up. You pass into the Dry.
You
must not imagine this to mean that when one travels to Asia one
is completely dried up. We have here, of course, to do with
fine and delicate workings, that Alexander was perfectly able
to feel in himself after he had received the guidance and
instruction of Aristotle. When he was in Macedonia he could
feel: I have a certain measure of dampness or moistness in me,
that diminishes as I go eastward. In this way, as he wandered
over the Earth he felt its configuration, as you may feel a
human being by touching him, let us say by drawing your hand
caressingly over some part of his body, feeling the difference
between nose and eye and mouth. So was a personality such as I
have described to you able to perceive a difference between the
experience he had when he came more and more into the Dry, and
the experience that was his on the other hand in going westward
and coming more and more into the Moist.
The
other differentiations man still experiences to-day, though
crudely. In the direction of the North he experiences the
Cold; in the direction of the South the Warm, the Fire element.
But the interplay of Moist and Cold, when one goes North-West
— that is no longer experienced.
Aristotle awakened in Alexander all that Gilgamesh had passed
through when he undertook the journey over to the West. And the
result of it was that his pupil could perceive in direct inner
experience what is felt in the direction of North-West, in the
intermediate zone between Moist and Cold: — Water. A man
like Alexander not merely could, but did actually speak in such
a manner as not to say: There goes the road to the North-West
— but instead: There goes the road to where the element
of Water holds dominion. In the intermediate zone between Moist
and Warm lies the element where the Air holds dominion.
Such was the teaching in the ancient Greek Chthonian Mysteries,
and in the ancient Samothracian Mysteries; and thus did
Aristotle teach his own immediate pupil.
And
in the zone between Cold and Dry — that it to say,
looking from Macedonia, towards Siberia — men had the
experience of a region of the Earth where Earth itself, the
earthy, holds dominion — the element Earth, the hard and
the firm. In the intermediate zone between Warm and Dry, that
is, towards India, was experienced a region of the Earth where
the Fire element ruled.
And
so it was that the pupil of Aristotle pointed Northwest
and said: There I feel the Water-Spirits working upon the
Earth; pointed South-West and said: There I feel the
Air-Spirits; pointed North-East and there beheld hover
especially the Spirits of the Earth; pointed South-East towards
India, and saw the Spirits of Fire hover over the Earth, saw
them there in their element.
And
in conclusion, my dear friends, you will be able to feel the
deep and close relation both to the natural and to the moral,
when I tell you how Alexander began to speak in this way: I
must leave the Cold-Moist element and throw myself into the
Fire — I must undertake a journey to India. That was a
manner of speaking that was as closely bound up with the
natural as it was with the moral. I shall have more to say
about this tomorrow.
I
wanted to-day to give you a picture of what was living in those
times; for in all that took place between Alexander and
Aristotle we may see at the same time a reflection of the great
and mighty change that was taking place in the world's
history.. In those days it was still possible to speak in an
intimate way to pupils, of the great Mysteries of the past. But
then mankind began to receive in increasing measure logic,
abstract knowledge, categories, and to push back the other.
We
have therefore to see in these events the working of a
tremendous and deep change in the historical evolution of
mankind, and at the same time an all-important moment in the
whole progress of European civilisation in its connection
with the East.
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