Lecture V
Faust and the Problem of Evil
Dornach 3rd November, 1917
To characterise the successive epochs of
human evolution on the earth (referring, to begin with, only
to post-Atlantean time) we can select one item or another out
of spiritual science; we are thus gradually led to form real
conceptions of the several epochs. To-day we shall speak
about the fourth — that is, the Graeco-Latin time; and
about the fifth, our own time, which began about the year
1413. We shall add certain particulars to what we already
know about these epochs.
Every such
epoch may be said to have a special task. I beg you not to
think in this connection of a merely theoretic or scientific
task, or of anything exclusively concerned with
knowledge.
Every epoch
has a special task, — a task which must be solved in
life itself. In actual life itself, impulses have to arise
with which the individuals living in these epochs must come
to terms, — with which they have to wrestle, and out of
which proceed not only their ideas but their feelings, their
emotions, their loves and hates, and the will-impulse which
they receive into themselves. Thus in the widest sense we can
say: Every such epoch has a task to solve.
Looking into
the Graeco-Latin epoch, we find that the task it had to solve
is chiefly related to what we may comprise with the words
“Birth and Death” within the Universe. These
things have become rather vague and obliterated in our time.
No longer in the deepest sense of life, but in a more
theoretic sense, the great problems of Birth and Death stand
before the human being of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. He
no longer has a true feeling of the deep way in which the
phenomena of Birth and Death entered the heart and mind of
the human being of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. We human
beings of the fifth epoch (as you know, we are still more or
less at the beginning of it, for it began in the year 1413;
and an epoch lasts 2166 years) We have to solve in the widest
sense, in a living and energetic way, what we may call the
problem of Evil. I beg you to envisage this most thoroughly.
Evil will approach the human being of the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch in every conceivable form.
Scientifically he will have to solve the nature and essence
of Evil. In his loving and in his hating, he will have to
grapple in the right way with all that springs from Evil; he
will have to fight and wrestle with the resistances of Evil
to the impulses of the Will. All this is essential to the
tasks of the fifth post-Atlantean time.
Nay, more,
the problem of Evil belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch
in a still higher degree than did the problem of Birth and
Death to the life of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Why so?
It was, in fact, the Atlantean time which had to solve the
question about Birth and Death with the same vital intensity
with which the fifth post-Atlantean time will have to solve
the problem of Evil. In Atlantean time the phenomena of Birth
and Death stood before the human beings of that evolutionary
epoch far more vividly and directly, in a far more elemental
way, than now. That which is hidden behind Birth and Death,
is, in effect, far more concealed to-day from human vision
and from human feeling. Now the Graeco-Latin time,
fundamentally speaking, was after all but a faint repetition
of that which the Atlanteans had had to experience with
regard to Birth and Death. The experiences of the
Graeco-Latin time were, therefore, not so intense and vivid
as will become the wrestlings of the fifth post-Atlantean
time, which began in 1413, with all the powers of Evil,
— with all that springs from Evil. For the human being
himself will have to free himself from all this by means of
the very opposite forces, which to evolve is in effect. the
specific task and need of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.
What I have said in this moment need only be envisaged in a
sufficiently intense and vivid way, and many things which we
have characterised during these weeks will be clearly
illustrated. Many things will appear as consequences of this
fundamental premiss: that it is the task of the fifth
post-Atlantean time to wrestle with the life-problem of
Evil.
Let us now
ask, how did Goethe perceive that this is so, when in his
drama he showed Faust as the representative of humanity,
placing him in conflict with Mephistopheles who is the
representative of Evil? From this very fact you can see that
the Faust drama is derived out of the deepest interests of
the present epoch.
It is
peculiar to man that he can only come to terms with the
things with which he has to wrestle, if he extends his
consciousness over them, i.e., if they do not remain in the
unconscious. (We emphasised this more than once during our
recent studies.) That is the peculiarity: Whatever evil
impulses can possibly arise from the foundations of the
cosmic order, must betray their presence to our
consciousness.
But there is
also another necessity. It is insufficient, as a rule, merely
to know what belongs to the one epoch. These things can only
be rightly judged by comparison. It is not really enough to
be aware that now, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, man has
to wrestle with Evil in the historic evolution of Earth-life.
There must be added a certain consciousness about the
preceding epoch, — that is, in our case, the
Graeco-Latin epoch. The impulses that lived in the
Graeco-Latin epoch must also become impulses of human beings
of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Observe how wonderfully
what the poet Goethe felt is connected with this perception,
derived as it is from the very nature of human evolution
— of the historic evolution of mankind. Goethe longed
to know the world of classical-antiquity by direct
perception, as well as it could be known in his time. He
wanted, as it were, to guess its secret from all that he saw
and realised in Italy. Therefore the longing for Italy lived
in him like a kind of illness. But this was essentially due
to the fact that Goethe felt himself in the fullest way a
child of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Goethe did not
aspire to Italy with the kind of impulse which inspires any
Professor of the History of Art, who thinks himself already
clever in every domain, and only wishes to extend his
information. That was not what Goethe wanted. Goethe desired
no less than a change in his state of consciousness, —
another kind of vision. Many things could be cited in
evidence of this. Goethe said to himself as it were: If I
remain only in the North, my soul will have a form of vision
that is not wide enough. I must live, for once, in the
atmosphere of the South in order to get other forms of
vision, — other forms of concept, other forms of
thought, of feeling. The Witches' Kitchen Scene in
Faust, for example, with its decidedly Northern
content, was written by Goethe in Rome. He believed that he
would only be able to enter fully into the very nature of
spiritual contemplation, if his state of consciousness was
transformed by the atmosphere that there prevailed. We must
endeavour to had our way into Goethe in a more intimate and
delicate way.
Now we can
also see that Goethe did not set Faust over against
Mephistopheles out of an empty or merely abstract reflection,
but rather because he wanted to portray the representative
man of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch within the evolution of
mankind. At the same time, endeavouring as he did to compare
things vividly in the two states of consciousness, he found
it necessary to let Faust experience not only conditions and
events of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but to carry him
backward in time and let his soul dive down into the fourth
epoch, so that this epoch, too, might set its stamp upon
Faust's consciousness. For this is what happens where Faust
comes together with Helena.
It is often
interesting to put the different Scenes together in this
all-embracing poem. It would be interesting, for example, to
produce one after another the Witches' Kitchen, the
Invocation Scene at the Imperial Court, and then the Scene
where Helena herself appears. For these three scenes
represent three successive acquaintances of Faust with
Helena. In the Witches' Kitchen, while Mephistopheles is
entertaining himself with the apes, etc., and with the witch.
Faust sees the picture in the magic looking-glass. Faust, as
he sees it, only speaks of the woman's beauty, but the words
of Mephistopheles even now remind us that the picture of
Helena appears: —
“Thou'lt find, this drink thy
blood compelling,
Each woman beautiful as Helen.”
Here, then,
emerges for the first time what is afterwards developed in
the scene at the Emperor's Court, and finally appears in its
third form in the
“Classico-romantic Phantasmagoria”
in the third Act of the Second Part. It
would be interesting, for once, to see these three put
together one after another. People might then perceive that
the Faust drama is an organic, living entity, full of
inner order.
It is not for
nothing that we hear it again out of the lips of Faust
himself at the Emperor's Court: “I scent the Witches'
Kitchen.” As soon as the action is approaching Helena
once more, he scents the Witches' Kitchen. We are reminded of
Helena. These things are carefully weighed. Goethe is not
like any other poet. Goethe is one who created out of
necessities and impulses derived from a far wider sphere.
Let us now
ask ourselves more precisely: “What is the meaning of
this threefold encounter of Faust with Helena? The three are
very different from one another. In the first, in the
Witches' Kitchen, in the magic looking-glass, Faust is to a
slight extent transfixed. He sees a picture. One who is
acquainted with the more subtle distinctions of occult
science can well estimate this picture which Faust sees in
the magic look-glass. As I have often told you, our thoughts
or ideas in ordinary life are no more than the corpses of that
which we really experience. Behind all thoughts are Imaginations;
we, however, kill the Imaginative part. You can read of it in a
more exact philosophic form in my forthcoming book
Riddles of the Soul,
which contains a brief
chapter on this very subject. That which Faust sees in the
magic mirror in the Witches' Kitchen is something which is
living in himself, raised up into an Imagination. In ordinary
life he only has the idea in an abstract form. Now he
experiences the picture of Helena which Goethe lifts out of
the whole realm of his imaginative life; now he experiences
it transformed again to a living Imagination. Thus in the
first place — I beg you to observe this well — in
the Witches' Kitchen Scene we have an Idea that has become
Imagination.
In the
Invocation Scene at the Emperor's Court, the thing goes
further. Far more of Faust is taken hold of than the mere
life of ideas. if Faust had merely seen the picture as he saw
it in the magic mirror, he could not have reproduced it
outwardly, whether by smoke or any other means. For him to
reproduce it outwardly, it must be connected with his inner
life of feeling and emotion. We cannot but admit that Goethe
indicates his meaning with the greatest possible intensity.
Faust no longer merely admires — within the life of
ideas — the beauty of Helena, as in the picture in the
magic looking-glass in the Witches' Kitchen. You can perceive
this from the wonderful way in which Goethe describes, in the
Invocation Scene, the entire scale of emotions and feelings
whereby Faust feels himself united with Helena. Truly it is a
wonderful enhancement. No single word could be removed, where
Faust breaks out into the words that tell of his inner
relationship to Helena: inclination —
love — worship — mania. It could not be described
more truly to the inner life of soul. Remember this
enhancement, and you will see how Goethe emphasises the
intimate connection of what happens here with all that Faust
experiences in his heart, in his life of feeling. That which
emerges in the Invocation Scene is no longer merely an idea
transformed into Imagination; it is Feeling that has become
Imagination. Here, then, you have the second stage —
the Invocation Scene in the Emperor's Court —
Feeling that has become Imagination.
Now we pass on to the
“Classico-romantic Phantasmagoria,”
where Helena appears not merely as a spectre, but as a
present reality to Faust, for he begets Euphorion his son.
Here Goethe clearly indicates that the
‘Classico-romantic Phantasmagoria’ proceeds from
Faust's life of Will, no longer merely from his Feeling or
his Thinking. The ‘Classico-romantic
Phantasmagoria’ is Willing that has become
Imagination.
Ideation,
Feeling and Willing, translated into the Imaginative sphere
— that is what you have in the enhancements of the
encounter with Helena. All this is shaped with artistic
truth. Even for one who does not dismember Faust as we are
doing, but simply enjoys it, these things are there. Now the
very fact that Goethe chooses Helena to appear to Faust, is
in a way connected with the essence of the life-tasks of the
fourth and fifth post-Atlantean epochs. We are here touching
upon a problem which even the Bible only very gently touches.
Ricarda Huch in her new book on Luther's Faith touches
it rather less gently. It is the connection of the problem of
the knowledge of Woman with that of the knowledge of Evil. A
mysterious connection is indicated in the Bible, in that the
Luciferic temptation took place through the Woman in
Paradise. The longing for the Devil during the present, fifth
postAtlantean epoch is well described in Ricarda Huch's book,
Luther's Faith. I It is characteristic; but we cannot
enter into these things any more, for we should be treading
on very thin ice in our time if we were to indicate them, let
alone to discuss them further.
Nevertheless,
it was out of this impulse that the culture of ancient Greece
— and Goethe in connection with it — derived the
figure of Helena. We must, remember that the Helena problem
played an important part in the content of the old Greek
Mysteries. To recognise the being of Helena was essential to
a certain process of Initiation. For in the being of Helena,
in the old Greek Mysteries, one learned to know something of
the tasks of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch in relation to
the Spiritual World. Therefore in ancient Greece there was an
exoteric and an esoteric legend of Helena. The exoteric
legend is well known; the other has also become known, for
all things esoteric become exoteric by-and-by. The exoteric
legend is as follows: Through the well-known event with the
three Goddesses, Paris was instigated to take Helena from
Menelaus. He appeared in Greece; and with Helena's consent
eloped with her, — took her to Troy. Thereupon the
Trojan War broke out. The Greeks besieged and conquered Troy,
and Menelaus took Helena back with him again. That is the
exoteric legend.
Homer, as you
are well aware, only reveals this exoteric legend. Though he
himself was initiated into the esoteric legend, he would in
no way betray it. It was not until a later period of Greece
that the Dramatists — Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
— condescended to betray something of the esoteric
legend, which was to this effect: that Helena did not
acquiesce in her elopement; Paris did not elope with her, but
stole her away by force against her will, and went with her
across the sea. Hera drew the ships from their course, and
Paris had to land with Helena in Egypt, where at that time
king Proteus was ruling. Slaves who had escaped from Paris'
ships told the whole story to Proteus, whereupon he took
Paris and his train, and Helena, into captivity. Paris he let
go, but he took Helena from him. According to this legend,
Helena never became the wife of Paris. His treasures were
taken from him; he was sent back to Troy without Helena, but
on this journey to Troy he was able to take with him the Idol
of Helena, in place of the real Helena who had remained
behind with Proteus in Egypt. Paris, therefore, appeared in
Troy with the mere Idol of Helena, and it was for the Idol
that the Greeks fought; they would not believe the Trojans
that the real Helena was not in Troy. Then, when the Trojan
War was ended, Menelaus himself travelled to Egypt, and
brought with him from thence his wife who had remained
guiltless.
You are
perhaps aware that Goethe very clearly hints at this esoteric
aspect of the legend in the third Act of the Second Part of
Faust, — in the ‘Classico-romantic
Phantasmagoria.’ Mephistopheles-Phorkyas continues the
speech of Helena who is at a loss and no longer knows where
she is. In this Act Goethe places Helena before us, burdened
with all the doubts that have befallen her. She has been
robbed, and now she hears all that is being said of her. It
is all utterly confusing. Things that relate to the Idol and
not to the reality come to her ears, and in the last resort
she herself no longer knows who she is. And out of all these
doubts we hear her say: —
“Name not those joys to me! for
sorrow all too stern.
Unendingly was poured upon my
breast and brain.”
Mephistopheles-Phorkyas replies:
“Nathless, they say, dost thou
appear in double form,
Beheld in Ilion, — in Egypt, too,
beheld.”
Thus Goethe
very clearly hints at the fact, how complicated the figure of
Helena really is. He brings it into his Faust. For
with the Helena problem much indeed is told. And it is not
without meaning that it is Mephistopheles who acts as
mediator in the second part of the Drama. He gives the key to
Faust, directing him into those regions which to
Mephistopheles himself are empty Nothing, vet in which Faust
is confident that he will find the All. Here again, every
word is of significance. Faust has the possibility to change
his state of consciousness, — to lead it over into that
which was experienced in the preceding, Graeco-Latin epoch,
— in the fourth post-Atlantean. We must not take
‘the All’ in a merely abstract sense, but in a
concrete spiritual shape and form. Into this spiritual form.
Mephistopheles cannot enter. He belongs to a different
region. Mephistopheles is really there to work as Spirit in
the spiritless world of material events, which above all must
give its impulses to the man of the fifth post-Atlantean
epoch.
In effect,
during this fifth post-Atlantean epoch certain human beings
have the task to be aware of the aspect of the spiritual
world, thus to make conscious that which can really be
achieved by means of the impulse of Evil.
Just as the
eve cannot see itself but only other things, so too
Mephistopheles, who is the very. Impulse of Evil. cannot see
Evil himself. This is among the things which Faust must sec
and learn to know. Mephistopheles cannot see Helena; at least
he cannot see her with full consciousness, with full
attention. Yet after all, he is not altogether unakin to
Helena. The way to Mephistopheles was only possible out of
those impulses which Christianity gave for the fifth
postAtlantean epoch. There is indeed a certain tendency to
Helena; nevertheless, what ancient Greece — or her
Initiates — desired to express through the
Helena-problem remained remote and strange. The Christians of
past centuries also knew Helena, but they knew her in the
form of ‘Hell.’ However remote the kinship is,
the word ‘Hell’ is not altogether without
etymological connection with ‘Helena,’ for the
things themselves have to do with one another. The
Helena-problem is very complicated, as you can see when you
behold the esoteric form of the Greek legend.
The same
thing is clearly indicated at several points in my Mystery
Plays: Ahriman-Mephistopheles must be recognised; we must see
through him. The Faust Drama says in a certain sense
the same. Referring to Ahriman-Mephistopheles, Goethe coined
a sentence of great importance for the fifth post-Atlantean
epoch. The human being of the fifth post-Atlantean age must
somehow bring it about that Ahriman-Mephistopheles feels
himself recognised by him. You will recall the closing scene
in the last of my Mystery Plays. It is an important moment
where Ahriman-Mephistopheles feels that he is recognised. At
this moment the Impulse of Evil knows it: — Those who
are having to experience Evil have found a standpoint which
enables them to stand not within Evil, but outside it. That
is most important. It is of deep significance when
Mephistopheles calls out to Faust: —
“I'll praise thee, ere we separate; I see
Thou knowest the Devil thoroughly.”
This is
important. Mephistopheles would not have said the same to
Woodrow Wilson. He would have had no cause.
This relation
between Faust and Mephistopheles contains a great deal of the
problem of the fifth postAtlantean age. For, as I told you,
this fifth post-Atlantean age has the task to go on into the
inevitable battle with the most manifold forms of Evil. The
impulses of human evolution must become sharp and clear
again. Such impulses must arise as have arisen in the
conflict with Evil. Far more intense, I said, is this
experience than the experience of the fourth postAtlantean
age, because the latter was in a sense a repetition of the
Atlantean epoch.
Wherein sloes
a first experience in the course of human evolution on the
Earth consist? It is indeed a first experience — an
initial experience — which stands before us here. The
fourth post-Atlantean age had to live through the problem of
Birth and Death, but only as a repetition of the Atlantean
epoch. Now, in the fifth post-Atlantean age, an initial
experience has entered in once more. And — it consists
in this: that we must draw renew out of the fount of Maya
— out of illusion. The human being must make
acquaintance with illusion — with Maya, with the great
illusion.
I have
repeatedly drawn attention to this from quite other. points
of view. I did so, for instance, in my book
The Riddle of Man,
where I associated the problem of freedom with the
fact that in our consciousness, to begin with, mere
mirror-images take place, — mirror-images, that is to
say, Maya. And in my present essay on the
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, anno 1459,
I emphasise the real function of illusion for our consciousness.
The fact is that these things can only now be said directly for
the first time. They do not belong to any abstract theory or
fantasy, but to immediate reality. It is wonderful to see how
Goethe was initiated into these things. The fifth
post-Atlantean epoch must create very much out of illusion.
In the character of Faust Goethe represents the human being
of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. When Faust enters the
larger world, he creates, paper currency. This too is
characteristic of the Ahrimanic nature of commerce in the
fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Paper currency is the tangible
economic proof of the fact that. the imaginary, the unreal,
the illusory, prevails and plays its part in the commerce of
this time.
It was not so
in those periods of human evolution when the chief thing was
not money but the exchange of commodities, or barter. Even if
money was there, the economic life was not based upon it. In
those times it would not have been true to say that the,.
outer economic life was permeated by a network of illusions,
as in fact it is during the present, fifth post-Atlantean
epoch. Goethe brings Faust himself into connection with this
illusion of the economic life. What does he mean to tell us
when he places the second appearance of Helena directly after
the Scene at the Emperor's Court? What is it really at this
point? We are confronted with the whisperings of an
astrologer, with suggestive influences — I mentioned it
in yesterday's lecture — we are confronted with
illusion. Illusion lives — this was what Goethe meant
to say — illusion lives in the outer historic reality,
lives in it spiritually. Flow often have we spoken of it in
recent lectures! The concepts, the ideas, that lead to such
great errors as I mentioned recently, — all these are
born of illusion. You will remember: I told you of one
characteristic error, but we could mention hundreds of others
of this kind. Certain economists who thought themselves
particularly clever, stated in 1914 — out of their
economic laws — that the War could not last longer than
four to six months at most. It was impossible otherwise. Yet
it will soon have lasted as many years. Why is it so? Why do
human beings live in ideas that are proved absurd by the
reality? Because there plays into their life of thought that
‘spectral fabric’ which Goethe represents as
coming into the Emperor's Court through Faust. it is because
the human beings do not see through what lives as spectral
fabric in their ideas. As soon as the fifth, post-Atlantean
epoch began, the imagination of those, who were sensitive to
such things, was turned to the perception of reality over
against such ‘spectral fabrics.’ Goethe had a
prototype for this Scene at the Emperor's Court. I refer to
Hans Sachs' beautiful description of the necromancer who
causes Helena to appear at the Court of the Emperor
Maximilian. It is not Faust in this case, it is the Emperor
himself who wants to seize the image and falls a prey to it,
— is paralysed by it. So then we have this weaving of
‘spectral fabrics’ into the reality of the
historic process. And I should like to ask: Where else is it
represented so grandly, so truly, out of the fulness of
spiritual realities, as in Goethe's Faust?
Now as I said
before, the consciousness of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch
and that of the fourth must work together. Faust grows away
from Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles gains nothing from it but
the conclusion: —
“One's self with fools to hamper,
At last even on the Devil puts a damper.”
Faust is
seized by apoplexy, he is paralysed. His soul-nature has
separated from his body. Yet there now follows the Scene
which we presented here last year, — Faust's dream,
which is perceived by Homunculus.
Whence comes
the Helena of this second apparition, even though she is a
mere ‘spectre’? It, is quite clearly indicated:
it is the astrologer who brings her — albeit only by
suggestion — out of the rhythm of the stars. Connect
this fact with what I told you recently of the macrocosmic
element that works in the woman before fertilisation. This
Helena comes from the stars; but she guides the impulses
within Faust's soul towards another Helena. Homunculus sees
how in the vision of Faust the birth of Helena emerges. It is
the Scene of Zeus, of Leda with the Swan. Faust is led over
to the problem of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, — to
the solving of the problem of Birth. This is the thing that
emerges at the very moment where Faust grows away from the
clutches of Mephistopheles, — where Mephistopheles has
nothing left of him but the outer physical body. Now there
arises in the soul of Faust the impulse to go over into the
fourth post-Atlantean epoch.
It is roost
wonderful how the motifs are intertwined. We see how Goethe
uses the interplay of that which lives within us out of the
fourth and the fifth post-Atlantean epochs. But he knew still
more. He points to the esoteric legend of Helena, — of
how in Troy there was only the Idol, that which is founded in
the stars, which is of cosmic origin; while the other, the
individual
Being of
Helena, had moved to Egypt, to Proteus. In the declining city
of Troy, that part of Helena remained which belonged to the
third postAtlantean epoch, which the third postAtlantean
epoch expelled. It was the part of Helena which Egypt allowed
to go; while as to that which Egypt reserved for the fourth
post-Atlantean epoch, Menelaus took it back from Egypt and
brought it again to Greece. Thus in the esoteric
Helena-legend, which Goethe certainly adapted, not only the
fifth but the fourth and also the third post-Atlantean epochs
play their part. Goethe made use of the Helena-problem in a
most wonderful way.
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