XI
Our
studies of karma, which have led us lately to definite individual
examples of karmic relationships, are intended to afford a basis for
forming a judgment not only of individual human connections, but also
of more general historical ones. And it is with this end in view that
I would like now to add to the examples already given. Today we will
prepare the ground, and tomorrow we will follow this up by showing
the karmic connections.
You
will have realised that consideration of the relation between one
earth-life and the next must always be based upon certain definite
symptoms and facts. If we take these as our starting-point, they will
lead us to a view of the actual connections. And in the case of the
individualities of whom I have ventured to tell you, I have shown
where these particular starting-points are to be found.
Today
I want, as I said, to prepare the way, placing before you problems of
which we shall find the solutions tomorrow.
Let
me first draw your attention to the peculiar interest that one or
another personality can arouse. I shall speak of personalities of
historical interest as well as of personalities in ordinary life; the
very interest that some persons arouse in us will often urge us to
find a clue to their life-connections. Once we know how to look for
these clues in the right way, we shall be able to find them. As you
will already have noticed from the way in which I have presented the
cases, it is all a matter of seeking in the right way. Let us then
not be deterred, but proceed boldly.
Whatever
one's attitude to the personality of Garibaldi may be in other
respects, there can be no doubt that he is an interesting figure in
the history of Europe; he played, as we all know, a remarkable part
in the events of the 19th century. Today, then, we will make a
preparatory study of Garibaldi, and to begin with I will bring to
your notice certain facts in his life which, as we shall find, are
able to lead the student of spiritual science to the connections of
which we shall learn tomorrow.
Garibaldi
is a personality who participated in a remarkable way in the life of
the 19th century. He was born in the year 1807 and he held a
prominent and influential position on into the second half of the
century. This means that the way he expresses himself as a man is
highly characteristic of the 19th century.
When
we come to consider the features of his life, looking especially for
those that are important from a spiritual aspect, we find Garibaldi
spending his boyhood in Nice as the son of a poor man who has a job
in the navigation service. He is a child who has little inclination
to take part in what the current education of the country has to
offer, a child who is not at all brilliant at school, but who takes a
lively interest in all sorts and varieties of human affairs. What he
learns at school has indeed the effect of inducing him very often to
play truant. While the teacher was trying in his own way to bring
some knowledge of the world to the children, the boy Garibaldi much
preferred to romp about out-of-doors, to scamper through the woods or
play games by the riverside. On the other hand, if he once got hold
of some book that appealed to him, nothing could tear him from it. He
would lie on his back by the hour in the sunshine, absolutely
absorbed, not even going home for meals.
Broadly
speaking, however, it was the great world that interested him. While
still quite young he set about preparing himself for his father's
calling and took part in sea voyages, at first in a subordinate, and
afterwards in an independent position. He made many voyages on the
Adriatic and shared in all the varied experiences that were to be had
in the first half of the 19th century, when Liberalism and Democracy
had not yet organised the traffic on the sea and put it under police
regulations, but when some freedom of movement was still left in the
life of man! He shared in all the experiences that were possible in
times when one could do more or less what one wanted! And so he also
had the experience — I believe it happened to him three or four
times — of being seized by pirates. As well as being a genius,
however, he was sly, and every time he was caught, he got away again,
and very quickly too!
And
so Garibaldi grew up into manhood, always living in the great world.
As I have said, I do not intend to give you a biography but to point
out characteristic features of his life that can lead us on to a
consideration of what is really important and essential. He lived in
the great world, and there came a time when he acquired a very strong
and vivid impression of what his own inner relationship to the world
might be. It was when he was nearly grown up and was taken by his
father on a journey through the country, as far as Rome. There,
looking out from Rome as it were over all Italy, he must have been
aware of something quite remarkable going through his soul. In his
voyages he had met many people who were, in general, quite alive and
awake, but were utterly indifferent to one particular interest —
they were asleep as regards the conditions of the time; and these
people made an impression on Garibaldi that nearly drove him to
despair. They had no enthusiasm for true and genuine humanity, such
as showed itself in him quite early in life — he had indeed a
genius for warm, tender-hearted enthusiasm.
As
he passed through the countryside and afterwards came to Rome, a kind
of vision must have arisen in his soul of the part he was later to
play in the liberation of Italy. Other circumstances also helped to
make him a fanatical anti-cleric, and a fanatical Republican, a man
who set clearly before him the aim of doing everything in his power
to further the well-being of mankind.
And
now, taking part as he did in all manner of movements in Italy in the
first half of the 19th century, it happened one day that for the
first time in his life, Garibaldi read his name in the newspaper. I
think he was about thirty years old at the time. It meant a good deal
more in those days than it would do now, to read one's name in the
newspaper. Garibaldi had, however, a peculiar destiny in connection
with this reading of his name in the newspaper, for the occasion was
the announcement in the paper of his death-sentence! He read his name
there for the first time when his sentence to death was reported.
There you have a unique circumstance of his life; it is not every man
who has such an experience.
It
was not granted to Garibaldi — and it is characteristic of his
destiny that it was not, considering that his whole enthusiasm was
centred in Italy — it was not granted him at first to take a
hand in the affairs of Italy or Europe, but it was laid upon him by
destiny to go first to South America and take part in all manner of
movements for freedom over there, until the year 1848. And in every
situation he showed himself a most remarkable man, gifted with quite
extraordinary qualities. I have already related to you one most
singular event in his life, the finding of his name in the newspaper
for the first time on the occasion of the announcement of his own
death-sentence. And now we come to another quite individual
biographical fact, something that happens to very few men indeed.
Garibaldi became acquainted in a most extraordinary way with the
woman who was to be the mainstay of his happiness for many years. He
was out at sea, on board ship, looking landwards through a telescope.
To fall in love through a telescope — that is certainly not the
way it happens to most people!
Destiny
again made it easy for him to become quickly acquainted with the one
whom he had chosen through the telescope to be his beloved. He
steered at once in the direction in which he had looked through the
telescope, and on reaching land he was invited by a man to a meal. It
transpired, after he had accepted the invitation, that this man was
the father of the girl he had seen! She could speak only Portuguese,
and he only Italian; but we are assured by his biographer, and it
seems to be correct, that the young woman immediately understood his
carefully phrased declaration of love, which seems to have consisted
simply of the words — in Italian of course — “We
must unite for life.” She understood immediately. And it really
happened so, that from this meeting came a life-companionship that
lasted for a long, long time.
Garibaldi's
wife shared in all the terrible and adventurous journeys he made in
South America, and some of the recorded details of them are really
most moving. For example, the story is told of how a report got about
that Garibaldi had been killed in battle. His wife hurried to the
battlefield and lifted up every head to see if it were her husband's.
After a long time, and after undergoing many adventures in the
search, she found him still alive. It is most affecting to read how
on this very journey, which lasted a long time, she gave birth to a
child without help of any kind, and how, in order to keep it warm,
she bound it in a sling about her neck, holding it against her breast
for hours at a time. The story of Garibaldi's South American
adventures has some deeply moving aspects.
But
now the time came, in the middle of the 19th century, when all kinds
of impulses for freedom were stirring among the peoples of Europe,
and Garibaldi could not bring himself to stay away any longer in
South America; he returned to his fatherland. It is well-known with
what intense energy he worked there, mustering volunteers under the
most difficult circumstances — so much so that he did not
merely contribute to the development of the new Italy: he was its
creator.
And
here we come to a feature of his life and character that stands out
very strongly. He was, in every relationship of life, a man of
independence, a man who always thought in a large and simple
way, and took account only of the impulses that welled up from the
depths of his own inner being. And so it is really very remarkable to
see him doing everything in his power to bring it about that the
dynasty of Victor Emmanuel should rule over the kingdom of Italy,
when in reality the whole unification and liberation of Italy was due
to Garibaldi himself. The story of how he won Naples and then Sicily
with, comparatively speaking, quite a small force of men,
undisciplined yet filled with enthusiasm, of how the future King of
Italy needed only to make his entry into the regions already won for
him by Garibaldi, and of how, nevertheless, if truth be told, nothing
whatever was done from the side of the royal family or of those who
stood near to them to show any proper appreciation of what Garibaldi
had accomplished — the whole story makes a deep and striking
impression. Fundamentally speaking, if we may put it in somewhat
trivial language, the Savoy Dynasty had Garibaldi to thank for
everything, and yet they were eminently unthankful to him, treating
him with no more than necessary politeness.
Take,
for example, the entry into Naples. Garibaldi had won Naples for the
Dynasty and was regarded by the Neapolitans as no less than their
liberator; a perfect storm of jubilation always greeted his
appearance. It would have been unthinkable for the future King of
Italy to make his entry into Naples without Garibaldi, absolutely
unthinkable. Nevertheless the King's advisers were against it.
Advisers, no doubt, are often exceedingly short-sighted; but if
Victor Emmanuel had not acted on his own account out of a certain
instinct and made Garibaldi sit by him in his red shirt on the
occasion of the entry into Naples, he himself would most certainly
not have been greeted with shouts of rejoicing! Even so, the cheers
were intended for Garibaldi and not for him. He would most assuredly
have been hissed — that is an absolute certainty. Victor
Emmanuel would have been hissed if he had entered Naples without
Garibaldi.
And
it was the same all through. At some campaign or other in the centre
of Italy, Garibaldi had carried the day. The commanders-in-chief with
the King had come — what does one say in such a case, putting
it as kindly as one can? — they had come too late. The whole
thing had been carried through to the finish by Garibaldi. When,
however, the army appeared, with its generals wearing their
decorations, and met Garibaldi's men who had no decorations and were
moreover quite unpretentiously attired, the generals declared: it is
beneath our dignity to ride side by side with them, we cannot
possibly do such a thing! But Victor Emmanuel had some sort of
instinct in these matters. He called Garibaldi to his side, and the
generals, making wry faces, were obliged to join with Garibaldi's
army as it drew up into line. These generals, it seems, had a
terribly bad time of it; they looked as though they had
stomach-aches! And afterwards, when the entry into a town was to be
made, Garibaldi, who had done everything, actually had to come on
behind like a rearguard. He and his men had to wait and let the
others march in front. It was a case where the regular army had in
point of fact done absolutely nothing; yet they entered first, and
after them, Garibaldi with his followers.
The
important things to note are these remarkable links of destiny. It is
in these links of destiny that we may find our guidance to the karmic
connections. For it has not directly to do with a man's freedom or
unfreedom that he first sees his name in print on the occasion of his
death-sentence, or that he finds his wife through a telescope. Such
things are connections of destiny; they take their course alongside
of that which is always present in man in spite of them — his
freedom. These are the very things, however — these things of
which we may be sure that they are links of destiny — that can
give a great stimulus to the practical study of the nature and
reality of karma.
Now
in the case of a personality like Garibaldi, traits that may
generally be thought incidental, are characteristic. They are, in his
case, strongly marked. Garibaldi was what is called a handsome man.
He had beautiful tawny-golden hair and was altogether a splendid
figure. His hair was curly and gleaming gold, and was greatly admired
by the women! Now you will agree, from what I have told you of
Garibaldi's bride — whom he chose, you remember, through a
telescope — that only the highest possible praise can be spoken
of her; nevertheless, it seems she was not altogether free from
jealousy. What does Garibaldi do one day when this jealousy seems to
have assumed somewhat large proportions? He has his beautiful hair
all cut away to the roots; he lets himself be made bald. That was
when they were still in South America. All these things are traits
that serve to show how the necessities of destiny are placed into
life.
Garibaldi
became, as we know, one of the great men of Europe after his
achievements in Italy, and traveling through Italy today you know
how, from town to town, you pass from one Garibaldi memorial to
another. But there have been times when not only in Italy but
everywhere in Europe the name of Garibaldi was spoken with the
keenest interest and the deepest devotion, when even the ladies in
Cologne, in Mainz and in many another place wore blouses in
Garibaldi's honour — not to mention London, where Garibaldi's
red blouse became quite the fashion.
During
the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870, Garibaldi, now an old man, put
himself at the disposal of the French, and an interesting incident
took place. His only experience, as we know, had been volunteer
fighting, such as he had conducted in Italy and also in South
America, yet on a certain occasion in this full-scale war he was the
one to capture a German flag from under a pile of men who were trying
to protect it with their bodies. Garibaldi captured this flag. But he
had such respect for the men who had hurled themselves upon the flag
to guard it with their own bodies, that he sent it back to its
owners. Strange to relate, however, when he appeared in a meeting at
some place or other soon afterwards, he was received with hisses on
account of what he had done.
You
will agree — this is not merely an interesting life, but the
life of a man who in very deed and fact is lifted right above all
other greatness in evidence in the 19th century! A most remarkable
man — so original, so elementary, acting so evidently out of
primitive impulses, and at the same time with such genius! Others
working with him may perhaps have been better at leading large armies
and doing things in an orderly way, but none of them in that deeply
materialistic period had such genuine, spontaneous enthusiasm for
what they were aiming at.
Here,
then, is one of the personalities whom I would like to place before
you. As I said, I shall give preparatory descriptions today, and
tomorrow we will look for the answers.
Another
personality, very well-known to you by name, is of exceptional
interest in connection with investigations into karma. It is Lessing.
The
circumstances of Lessing's life, I may say, have always interested me
to an extraordinary degree. Lessing is really the founder of the
better sort of journalism, the journalism that has substance and is
really out to accomplish something. Before Lessing, poets and
dramatists had taken their subjects from the aristocracy. Lessing, on
the other hand, is at pains to introduce bourgeois life, ordinary
middle-class life, into the drama, the life concerned generally with
the destinies of men as men, and not with the destinies of men
in so far as they hold some position in society or the like. Purely
human conflicts — that is what Lessing wanted to portray on the
stage. In the course of his work he applied himself to many great
problems, as for example when he tried to determine the boundaries of
painting and of poetry in his Laocoon. But the most
interesting thing of all is the powerful impetus with which Lessing
fought for the idea of tolerance. You need only take his Nathan
the Wise and you will see at once what a foremost place this idea
of tolerance has in Lessing's mind and life. In weaving the fable of
the three kings in Nathan the Wise, he wants to show how the
three main religions have gone astray from their original forms and
are none of them really genuine, and how one must go in search of the
true form, which has been lost. Here we have tolerance united with an
uncommonly deep and significant idea.
Interesting,
too, is the conversation between Freemasons, entitled Ernst und
Falk, and much else that springs from Freemasonry. What Lessing
accomplished in the way of critical research into the history of
religious life is, for one who is able to judge its significance,
really astounding. But we must be able to place the whole Lessing, in
his complete personality, before us. And this we cannot do by
reading, for example, the two-volume work by Erich Schmidt which
purports to be a final and complete study of Lessing. Lessing as he
really was, is not portrayed at all, but a picture is given of a
puppet composed of various limbs and members, and we are told that
this puppet wrote Nathan the Wise and Laocoon. It
amounts to no more than an assertion that the man portrayed here has
written these books. And it is the same with the other biographies of
Lessing.
We
begin to get an impression of Lessing when we observe, shall I say,
the driving force with which he hurls his sentences against his
opponents. He wages a polemic against the civilisation of Middle
Europe — quite a refined and correct polemic, but at every turn
hitting straight home. You must here observe a peculiar nuance in
Lessing's character if you want to understand the make-up of his
life. On the one hand we have the sharpness, often caustic sharpness,
in such writings as The Dramatic Art of Hamburg, and then we
have to find the way over, as it were, to an understanding, for
example, of the words used by Lessing when a son had been born to him
and had died directly after birth. He writes somewhat as follows in a
letter: Yes, he has at once taken leave again of this world of
sorrow; he has thereby done the best thing a human being can do. (I
cannot cite the passage word for word, but it was to this effect.) In
so writing, Lessing is giving expression to his pain in a wonderfully
brave way, not for that reason feeling the pain one whit less deeply
than someone who can do nothing but bemoan the event. This ability to
draw back into himself in pain was characteristic of the man who at
the same time knew how to thrust forward with vigour when he was
developing his polemics. This is what makes it so affecting to read
the letter written when his child had died immediately after birth,
leaving the mother seriously ill.
Lessing
had moreover this remarkable thing in his destiny — and it is
quite characteristic, when one sets out to find the karmic
connections in his case — that he was friends in Berlin with a
man who was in every particular his opposite, namely, Nikolai.
Of
Lessing it can be said — it is not literally true, but it is
none the less characteristic — that he never dreamed, because
his intellect and his understanding were so keen. On this account, as
we shall see tomorrow, he is for the spiritual researcher such an
extraordinarily significant personality. But there is something in
the very construction of his sentences, something in the home-thrusts
with which he lays his opponent in the dust, that really makes every
sentence a delight to read.
With
Nikolai it is just the opposite. Nikolai is an example of a true
philistine. Although a friend of Lessing, he was none the less a
typical philistine-bourgeois; and he had visions, most strange and
remarkable visions.
Lessing,
genius as he was, had no visions, not even dreams. Nikolai literally
suffered from visions. They came, and they went away only
after leeches had been applied. Yes, in extremity they actually
applied leeches to him, in order that he might not be for ever
tormented by the spiritual world which would not let him alone.
Fichte
wrote a very interesting essay directed against Nikolai. He set out
to give a picture of the typical German-bourgeois as shown in the
personality of Nikolai. For all that, this same Nikolai was the
friend of Lessing.
Another
thing is very remarkable in Lessing. In his own Weltanschauung,
Lessing concerned himself very much with two philosophers, Spinoza
and Leibniz. Now it has often attracted me very much, as an
interesting occupation for spare hours, to read all the writings in
which it is proved over and over again that Lessing was a Leibnizian,
and on the other hand those in which it is proved on still more solid
ground that he was a Spinozist. For in truth one cannot decide
whether Lessing, acute and discerning thinker as he was, was a
Leibnizian or a Spinozist, who are the very opposite of each other.
Spinoza — pantheist and monotheist; Leibniz — monadist,
purely and completely individualistic. And yet we cannot decide
whether Lessing belongs to Leibniz or to Spinoza. When we try to put
him to the test in this matter, we can come to no conclusive
judgment. It is impossible.
At
the close of his life Lessing wrote the remarkable essay, The
Education of the Human Race, at the end of which, quite isolated,
as it were, the idea of repeated earth-lives appears. The book shows
how mankind goes through one epoch of development after another, and
how the Gods gave into man's hand as a first primer, so to speak, the
Old Testament, and then as a second primer the New Testament, and how
in the future a third book will come for the further education of the
human race. And then all at once the essay is brought to a close with
a brief presentation of the idea that man lives through repeated
earth-lives. And there Lessing says, again in a way that is
absolutely in accord with his character (I am not quoting the actual
words, but this is the gist of it): Ought the idea of repeated
earth-lives to seem so absurd, considering that it was present in
very early times, when men had not yet been spoilt by school
learning? The essay then ends with a genuine panegyric on repeated
earth-lives, finishing with these beautiful words: “Is not all
Eternity mine?”
One
used to meet continually — perhaps it would still be so if one
mixed more with people — one used to meet men who valued
Lessing highly, but who turned away, so to speak, when they came to
The Education of the Human Race. Really it is hard to
understand the state of mind of such men. They set the highest
estimation on a man of genius, and then reject what he gives to
mankind in his most mature age. They say: he has grown old, he is
senile, we can no longer follow him. That is all very well; one can
reject anything by that method! The fact is, no one has any right to
recognise Lessing and not to recognise that this work was conceived
by him in the full maturity of his powers. When a man like Lessing
utters a profound aphorism such as this on repeated earth-lives,
there is, properly speaking, no possibility of ignoring it.
You
will readily see that the personality of Lessing is interesting in
the highest degree from a karmic point of view, in relation to his
own passage through different earth-lives. In the second half of the
18th century the idea of repeated earth-lives was by no means a
commonly accepted one. It comes forth in Lessing like a flash of
lightning, like a flash of genius. We cannot account for its
appearance; it cannot possibly be due to Lessing's education or to
any other influence in this particular life. We are compelled to ask
how it may be with the previous life of a man in whom at a certain
age the idea of repeated earth-lives suddenly emerges — an idea
that is foreign to the civilisation of his own day — emerges,
too, in such a way that the man himself points to the fact that the
idea was once present in very early times. The truth is that he is
really bringing forward inner grounds for the idea, grounds of
feeling that carry with them an indication of his own
earth-life in the distant past. Needless to say, in his ordinary
surface-consciousness he has no notion of such connections. The
things we do not know are, however, none the less true. If those
things alone were true that many men know, then the world would be
poor indeed in events and poor indeed in beings.
This
is the second case whose karmic connections we are going to study.
There
is a third case I should like to open up, because it is one that can
teach us a great deal in the matter of karmic relationships. Among
the personalities who were near to me as teachers in my youth there
was a man to whom I have already referred; today I should like to
speak of him again, adding some points that will be significant for
our study of karma.
There
are, of course, risks in speaking of these matters, but in view of
the whole situation of the spiritual life which ought to proceed from
Anthroposophy today, I do not think such risks can be avoided.
What
I am now going to tell you came to my notice several years after I
had last seen the person in question, who was a greatly beloved
teacher of mine up to my eighteenth year. But I had always continued
to follow his life, and had in truth remained very close to him. And
now at a certain moment in my own life I felt constrained to follow
his life more closely in a particular respect.
It
was when, in another connection, I began to take a special interest
in the life of Lord Byron. And at that same time I got to know
some Byron enthusiasts. One of them was the poetess, Marie Eugenie
delle Grazie, of whom I shall have much to say in my autobiography.
During a certain period of her life she was a Byron enthusiast. Then
there was another, a most remarkable personality, a strange mixture
of all possible qualities — Eugen Heinrich Schmidt. Many of you
who know something about the history of Anthroposophy will be
familiar with his name.
Eugen
Heinrich Schmidt first became known in Vienna during the eighties,
and it was then that I made his acquaintance. He had just written the
prize essay that was published by the Hegel Society of Berlin, on the
Dialectics of Hegel. Now he came to Vienna, a tall, slight man filled
with a burning enthusiasm, which came to expression at times in very
forcible gestures and so on. It was none the less genuine for that.
And it was just this enthusiasm of Schmidt's that gave me the
required “jerk,” as it were. I thought I would like to do
him a kindness, and as he had recently written a most enthusiastic
and inspired article on Lord Byron, I introduced him to my other
Byron enthusiast, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie. And now began a wildly
excited discussion on Byron. The two were really quite in agreement,
but they carried on a most lively and animated debate. All we others
who were sitting round — a whole collection of theological
students from the Vienna Catholic Faculty were there, who came every
week and with whom I had made friends — all we others were
silent. And the two who were thus conversing about Byron were sitting
like this. — Here was the table, rather a long one, and at one
end sat delle Grazie and at the other end, Eugen Heinrich Schmidt,
gesticulating with might and main. All of a sudden his chair slips
away from under him, and he falls under the table, his feet
stretching right out to delle Grazie. I can tell you, it was a shock
for us all! But this shock helped me to hit upon the solution of a
particular problem.
Let
me tell you of it quite objectively, as a matter of history. All that
they had been saying about Byron had made a strong impression upon
me, and I began to feel the keenest need to know how the karmic
connections might be in the case of Byron. It was, of course, not so
easy. But now I suddenly had the following experience. — It was
really as if the whole picture of this conversation, with Eugen
Heinrich Schmidt being so terribly impolite with his foot! — as
if this picture had suddenly drawn my attention to the foot of Lord
Byron, who was, as you know, club-footed. And from that I went on to
say to myself: My beloved teacher, too, had a foot like that; this
karmic connection must be investigated. I have already given you an
example, in the affliction of the knee from which Eduard von Hartmann
suffered, of how one's search can be led back through peculiarities
of this kind. I was able now to perceive the destiny of the teacher
whom I loved and who also had such a foot. And it was remarkable in
the highest degree to observe how on the one hand the same
peculiarity came to view both in the case of Byron and of my teacher,
namely, the club-foot; but how on the other hand the two persons were
totally different from one another, Byron, the poet of genius, who in
spite of his genius — or perhaps because of it — was an
adventurer; and the other a brilliant geometrician such as one seldom
finds in teaching posts, a man at whose geometrical imagination and
treatment of descriptive geometry one could only stand amazed.
In
short, having before me these two men, utterly different in soul, I
was able to solve the problem of their karma by reference to this
seemingly insignificant physical detail. This detail it was that
enabled me to consider the problems of Byron and my geometry teacher
in connection with one another, and thereby to find the
solution.
I
wished to give these examples today and tomorrow we will consider
them from the point of view of karma.
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