LECTURE 10
[ Study Guide: Souls of the Nations — Tenth Lecture ]
16th June, 1910.
Before we can develop all that can be extracted from the significant picture
of the ‘Twilight of the Gods’, it will be well to form a
foundation, a basis, to work from. For we shall deal with the nature
of the Germanic Scandinavian Folk-soul, and from the results of our
investigation describe it more minutely. We must see how in Europe
the whole collective spiritual life worked in co-operation, how
through the activity of the various Folkspirits progress was brought
about in mankind, beginning from the earliest ages and proceeding
through our present age on into the future.
Each individual people, yea, even all the smaller
subdivisions of peoples have their special task in this great
collective picture; and you will perceive from what has been said,
that in a certain respect it was just to the pre-Christian and
post-Christian cultures of Europe that the task, the mission was
given to educate the ‘ I ’ through the
different stages of the human being, to form it and gradually to
develop it. As we have shown to be the case in the Germanic
Scandinavian people, the ‘ I ’ was in primal
ages still clairvoyantly shown to man from the spiritual world. It was
shown that this ‘ I ’ was bestowed upon man by an
Angelic Being, who stands between man and the Folk-soul, by Donar or
Thor. We have seen that each single individual felt himself to be
‘ I ’-less, impersonal;
to him the ‘ I ’
was a gift, presented to him from the spiritual world. Naturally in
the East, when the ‘ I ’ actually awoke, they
did not find it in that way. There man had already evolved
subjectively to such a high stage of human perfection, that he did
not feel the ‘ I ’ as something foreign to him,
but as his own. When in the East man awoke to the ‘ I ’,
Eastern culture had already proceeded so far, that it was capable of
gradually developing that delicately spun speculation, logic and
wisdom, which we have before us in the Eastern Wisdom.
Therefore the East did not experience the whole process
of receiving the ‘ I ’ as though coming from a
higher spiritual world, with the assistance of a divine spiritual
individuality such as Thor. This was experienced in Europe, and hence the
European felt this gradual ascent to the individual ‘ I ’
as the emerging from a kind of group-soul. The Germanic Scandinavian
still felt himself attached to a group-soul, belonging to a whole
community, as if he were a part in the great body of his people. Thus
only could it come about that nearly 100 years after the
Christ-impulse had been given to the earth, Tacitus could describe
the Germans of Central Europe as appearing to belong to separate
tribes, and yet as members of one organism and belonging to the unity
of the organism. At that time each individual still felt himself to
be a member of the tribal ‘ I ’. He felt his
individual ‘ I ’ being gradually born out of
the tribal ‘ I ’, and in the God Thor he
recognized the giver, the bestower of the ‘ I ’, the
God who really presented him with the individual ‘ I ’.
But he felt this God to be still united with the collective spirit of
the tribe, with that which dwelt in the group-soul. To this
group-soul was given the name Sif. That is the name of the spouse of
Thor. Sif must linguistically be connected with the word Sippe-tribal
relationship, — and this connection really exists, although
veiled and hidden. Occultly, however, Sif signifies the group-soul of
the individual community from which the single individual grows
forth. Sif is the being who unites herself with the God of the
individual ‘ I ’, with the giver of the individual
‘ I ’, with Thor. The individual man recognized
Sif and Thor as the Beings who gave him his ‘ I ’.
The Northman still felt thus about them, at a time when to the
peoples in other parts of Europe other tasks had already been given
in the educating of man up to the ‘ I ’.
Every single people has its particular task. There above
all we find that people, that collection of peoples, that community
of peoples whom we know by the name of Celts. The Folk-spirit of the
Celts — of whom from former lectures we know that later he
received quite different tasks — then had the task of educating
the still youthful ‘ I ’ of the peoples of
Europe. For this it was necessary that the Celts should receive an
education and instruction which was communicated directly from the
higher world. Hence it is perfectly true that through their
Initiates, the Druid Priests, the Celts did receive instruction from
the higher worlds which they could not have acquired by their own
strength, and which they then had to hand on further to the other
nations.
The collective culture of Europe is a gift of the
European Mysteries. The progressive Folk-souls are, as they progress,
always the leaders of the collective culture of humanity. But at the
time when these Folk-spirits of Europe had to direct men to work from
out of themselves, it became necessary that the Mysteries should
begin to withdraw. Hence with the withdrawal of the Celtic element
there took place a kind of withdrawal of the Mysteries into much more
secret depths. At the time of the old Celts there was, through the
Mysteries, a much more direct intercourse between the
spiritual Beings and the people, because the ‘ I ’
was still united to the group-soul nature, and yet the Celtic element
was to be the donor of the ‘ I ’ to the other
part of the population. We might therefore say, that before the
actual Germanic Scandinavian evolution began, the mystery-education
could only be given to European civilization by the old Celtic
Mysteries. This mystery-education allowed just so much to come to the
surface as was necessary to form a foundation for the whole culture
of Europe. Now out of this old culture, through intermingling with
the many different races, peoples and subdivisions of peoples, the
most varied Folk-souls and Folkspirits were able to fertilize
themselves, and they brought the ‘ I ’ into ever
different conditions in order to educate it, the ‘ I ’
which has worked its way up out of the foundations of all that lies
below the ‘ I ’ of man.
| Diagram 6 Click image for large view | |
After the old Greek culture had to a certain extent
reached a culminating point in the fulfillment of its special
mission, we see quite a different aspect of this same mission in the
Roman Empire and its various stages of culture. We have already
mentioned that the several post-Atlantean civilizations follow one
another in certain order. If we wish to obtain a survey over these
successive stages of post-Atlantean civilization, we may say that the
old Indian culture worked upon the human etheric body. Hence the
wonderfully wise, clairvoyant character of the old Indian culture,
because — after the development of the special human capacities
— it was a culture that was in the human etheric body; so that
we may say, the ancient Indian culture is to be understood somewhat
as follows (see diagram).
From the Atlantean down to the later post-Atlantean
epoch the Indian Folk-spirit went through the whole of the
development of the inner soul forces, without his ‘ I ’
being wakened. He then returned to his work in the human etheric
body. The essential thing in the old Indian culture is that the
Indian, with completely developed soul-forces, with soul-forces
refined to the highest point, goes back again into the etheric body,
and within that he perfects those wonderfully delicate powers, the
later reflection of which we see in the Vedas and in a still more
refined condition in the Vedantic philosophy. All this was only
possible because the Indian Folk-soul had evolved to high degree
before the ‘ I ’ was seen and realized, and
this again occurred at a time when man could perceive by means of the
forces of the etheric body itself.
The Persian Folk-soul had not progressed so far as this,
only so far as to perception in the sentient body or astral body. It
was again different at the time of the Egyptian-Babylonian-Chaldæan
culture. That part of man which we describe as the Sentient Soul was
then able to perceive, and we must therefore describe this
Egyptian-Chaldæan culture as working in the Sentient Soul. The
Græco-Latin Folk-spirit was directed to the Intellectual Soul or Soul
of the Higher Feelings, and worked in that. He himself was only able
to work upon this Intellectual Soul or Soul of the Higher Feelings
because it had a sort of expression of its nature in the etheric
body. But this form of world-conception which now appeared in Greece
was less real, as it were, less objective, it bore less of the stamp
of reality. Whereas in the old Indian culture there was a more direct
activity in the etheric body, there was a more blurred, a fainter
image of the reality, which, as I have said, was like a memory of
what these peoples had once experienced, a memory reflected in their
etheric body.
In the other peoples which then follow upon the Greek
people we have to deal principally with the use of the physical body
for the development, stage by stage, of the Spiritual Soul. Hence the
Greek culture was one which we can only understand if we try to do so
from within, if we realize that in this culture what is important in
external experience is that which pours forth from the inner nature
of the Greeks. On the other hand the peoples lying more towards the
West and the North have the task, under the guidance of their
Folk-souls, of directing their gaze out into the world, and of seeing
what is there to be seen on the physical plane, and of perfecting
that which has to play a part on that plane. The Germanic
Scandinavian peoples had also the special task of perfecting this as
they alone could, because they still enjoyed the blessing of being
able to see into the spiritual world with the old clairvoyance, and
to carry the primeval experiences which they perceived so vividly,
into that which had to be arranged on the physical plane.
One people there was, which, at its later stage no
longer possessed this blessing; which in the first place had not gone
through such a previous evolution, but had been placed on the
physical plane at one bound, as it were, before the birth of the
human ‘ I ’ and therefore was only able under
the guidance of its Folk-soul, of its Archangel, to look after that
which helped this human ‘ I ’ on the physical
plane, that which was necessary for its well-being there. This was
the Roman people. Everything that the Roman people had, under the
guidance of its Folk-spirit, to accomplish for the collective mission
of Europe, was for the purpose of giving importance to the ‘ I ’
of man as such. Hence the Roman people was able to develop that which
places the ego among other egos. It was able to found the whole
system of the rights of the individual. Hence it was the creator of
jurisprudence, which is built up purely on the ‘ I ’.
The relation of one ‘ I ’ to another was the
great question in the mission of the Roman people. The other peoples,
which grew out of the Roman civilization, already possessed more of
what — coming so to say from the Sentient Soul, the
Intellectual Soul or Soul of the Higher Feelings and from the
Spiritual Soul itself — in some way or other fertilizes the
‘ I ’ and drives it out into the world.
Therefore all the mixtures of races of which external history
relates, which occurred on the Italian and Pyrenean Peninsula, in
present-day France and in present-day Great Britain, were necessary
in order to develop the ‘ I ’ in the different
shades of the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul or Soul of the
Higher Feelings, and the Spiritual Soul on the physical plane. That
was the great mission of those peoples which gradually developed in
various ways in Western Europe.
All the several shades of culture and the missions of
the peoples of Western Europe can finally be explained by the fact
that there had to be developed in the direction of the Italian and
Pyrenean peninsulas that which could be formed in the ‘ I ’
through the impulse of the Sentient Soul. If you study the several
folk-characters in their light and shadow sides, you will find that
in the peoples of the Italian and Pyrenean peninsulas there is a
peculiar mingling of the ‘ I ’ with the
Sentient Soul.
Then you will be able to understand the peculiar nature
of those peoples who till now have lived in the land of France, if
you consider the growth and mingling of the Intellectual Soul or Soul
of the Higher Feelings, with the ‘ I ’.
The great world-historical effects, however, which we
may consider as represented by Great Britain, are to be traced back
to the impulse of the Spiritual Soul penetrating into the human
‘ I ’. With the world-historical mission that
proceeded from Great Britain is also connected that which proceeded
from the founding of the external constitutional form. The union of
the Spiritual Soul with the ‘ I ’ did not exist
as yet inwardly. If, however, you recognize how this union came about
between the Spiritual Soul and the ‘ I ’ that
had been driven outwards, you will find that the great historical
conquests made by the inhabitants of that island proceed from that
impulse. You will also find that what took place there in the
founding of the parliamentary forms of government at once becomes
comprehensible, if you know that an impulse of the Spiritual Soul was
to be placed on the plane of the world's history.
Thus many shades were necessary, for the several peoples
had to be guided through many stages of the ‘ I ’.
If we had sufficient time to follow these things on further we should
find pictures in history which would show us how the basic forces
branch and work out in the most various ways. Thus did the peculiar
constitution of the soul work among the western peoples, who had not
preserved in themselves the direct elementary remembrance of the
clairvoyantly experienced things of the spiritual world of former
times.
In later times, in the Germanic Scandinavian domains,
that which proceeded directly from a gradual, successive evolution of
primeval clairvoyance and which had already been poured into the
Sentient Soul, had to develop in quite a different way. Hence that
current of inwardness, which indeed is only the after-effect of a
more inward clairvoyant experience gone through in a former age. The
Southern Germanic peoples had in the first place their task in the
domain of the Spiritual Soul.
The Græco-Latin age had to develop the Intellectual Soul
or Soul of the Higher Feelings. But it had not merely to give the
impulse with this soul, it had to work also with a wonderful
premature development that was endowed with clairvoyant experience.
All this was poured into the Spiritual Souls of the Central European
and Northern Germanic peoples. It worked among these souls as an
inner capacity, and the Germanic peoples living more to the South had
first of all to develop what pertains to the inward preparation of
the Spiritual Soul, to fill it inwardly with the consciousness
resulting from the old clairvoyance, but transposed on to the
physical plane.
The philosophies of Central Europe, those philosophies
which were represented by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel as late as in
the nineteenth century, are apparently far removed from the sphere of
mythology, but they are nevertheless nothing but the result of the
most penetrating old clairvoyance, acquired by man when he worked in
co-operation with the divine spiritual Beings. It would otherwise
have been impossible for a Hegel to have looked upon his ideas as
realities, it would have been impossible for him to make the strange
statement so characteristic of him, when, in answer to the question,
‘what is the abstract?’, he replied, ‘The abstract
is for instance an individual man who performs his daily duties, let
us say a carpenter.’ That, therefore, which to the abstract
scientist is concrete, was abstract to Hegel. That which to the
abstract scientist are mere thoughts, to him were the great, mighty
architects of the world. Hegel's world of ideas is the final,
the most highly sublimated expression of the Spiritual Soul, and
contains in pure concepts that which the Northman still saw as
sensible-super-sensible, divine spiritual powers in connection with
the ‘ I ’. And when the ‘ I ’
was expressed in Fichte, it was nothing but a precipitation of what
the God Thor had given to the human soul, now viewed from the
Spiritual Soul in what seems to be the simplest of thoughts, the
thought ‘I am,’ which is the starting-point of Fichte's
philosophy. A straight line of evolution goes from the presentation
of the ‘ I ’ by the God Thor or Donar to the
old Northern peoples from the spiritual world, down to this
philosophy. This God had to prepare all this for the Spiritual Soul
in order that the latter might receive its fitting contents, for its
task is to look out into the outer world and to work within that
world. But this philosophy does not discover merely the external,
crude, materialistic experience, it discovers in the external world
the contents of the Spiritual Soul itself, and looks upon Nature
merely as the other side of idea. Take this on-working impulse, and
in it you have the mission of the Northern Germanic peoples in
Central Europe.
Now, as all evolution has to progress, we must inquire:
How does this evolution advance? When we look back into the ancient
times we can see something remarkable. As we have said, in old India
the first culture took place in the etheric body, after the necessary
perfecting of the spiritual forces had been accomplished. But there
are other civilizations besides, which have preserved the old
Atlantean culture and carried it over into the people of the
post-Atlantean epoch. Whereas on the one hand we have the Indian,
coming thus to his etheric body, and from this and its forces
creating his mighty civilization and his magnificent spiritual life,
we have coming from the other side a culture which originated in
Atlantis and continued to work on in the post-Atlantean epoch; a
culture which for its foundation and development works out the other
side, as it were, of the consciousness of the etheric body. That is
the Chinese culture. If you bear this connection in mind, and
remember that the Atlantean culture was directly related to what in
our earlier lectures we called ‘The Great Spirit,’ you
will understand the details of the Chinese culture. This culture was
directly connected with the highest stages of the evolution of the
world. But it still works into modern human bodies, and from a
completely different side. It will therefore seem quite
comprehensible that the two great opposites of the post-Atlantean
epoch will one day clash in these two civilizations: the Indian,
which, within certain limits, is capable of development; and the
Chinese, that shuts itself off and remains rigid, repeating what
existed in the old Atlantean epoch.
You really obtain an occult, scientific, poetic
impression of this Chinese Empire if you observe it in its evolution,
and think of the Great Wall of China, which was intended to enclose
on all sides that which came from the primal ages and developed in
the post-Atlantean epoch. I say that something like an occult poetic
feeling steals over one, if one compares the Wall of China with
something which existed in former times. I can only indicate these
things. If you compare this with the results that have been obtained
by science, you will find how extraordinarily illuminating these
things are.
Let us clairvoyantly observe the old continent of
Atlantis, which must be sought where the Atlantic Ocean now lies,
between Africa and Europe on the one side, and America on the other.
This continent was encircled by a sort of warm stream, a stream about
which clairvoyant consciousness reveals that, strange as it may
sound, it flowed upwards from the South, through Baffins Bay, towards
the north of Greenland, encircling it and then, flowing over to the
East, gradually cooled down; then, at a time when Siberia and Russia
had not yet risen to the surface, it flowed down near the Ural
mountains, turned, touched the Eastern Carpathians, flowed into the
region occupied by the present Sahara, and finally streamed towards
the Atlantic Ocean near the Bay of Biscay; so that it flowed in a
perfectly unbroken stream. You will understand that only the remnants
of this stream still remain. This is the Gulf Stream, which at that
time encircled the Atlantean Continent. You will now also understand
that, with the Greeks, the life of the soul is remembrance. The
picture of Oceanos arose in them, which is a memory of that Atlantean
epoch. Their picture of the world is not so very incorrect, because
it was drawn from the old Atlantean epoch. The stream that came down
by Spitzbergen as a warm current, and gradually cooled and so on, —
the region encircled by this stream the Chinese have literally
reproduced by enclosing within their Great Wall the culture which
they rescued from the Atlantean epoch. There was as yet no history in
the Atlantean civilization, hence the Chinese civilization is also in
some ways lacking in history. Thus we have there something
pre-Indian, something coming from Atlantis.
Let us now turn, in the further progress of the Germanic
Scandinavian Folk-spirit, to the description of what follows it. What
happens first of all, when a Folk-spirit so leads his people that the
Spirit-Self can specially develop? Let us recollect that the Etheric
Body was evolved during the Indian civilization, the Sentient Body in
the Persian, the Sentient Soul in the Egyptian-Chaldæan, the
Intellectual Soul or Soul of the Higher Feelings in the Græco-Latin,
the Spiritual Soul in our own, which is not yet completed. Then comes
the laying hold of the Spirit-Self by the Spiritual Soul, so that the
Spirit-Self shines into the Spiritual Soul, which, as that is the
task of the sixth stage of civilization, must be prepared for
gradually. That civilization, which must be pre-eminently a receptive
one, for it must reverently await the penetrating of the Spirit-Self
into the Spiritual Soul, is being prepared by the peoples of Western
Asia and the Slav peoples of Eastern Europe. These latter were pushed
forward with their Folk-souls, for the very good reason that
everything which is to happen in the future, must in a certain way be
prepared beforehand, must already push itself in, in order to provide
the elements for what is to follow.
It is extremely interesting to study these advance
guards of a Folk-soul who is preparing himself for later epochs. This
accounts for the peculiar nature of the Slav peoples at present
living to the East of us. Their whole culture gives the Western
European the impression of being in a preparatory stage, and they put
forward in quite a curious way, through the medium of their advance
guards, that which in spirit is quite different from any mythology.
It would be misunderstanding what is being pushed
forward from the East as a civilization of the future, it would be
misunderstanding this culture if we were to compare it with that
which the Western European peoples possess, viz., an impulse that
continues in a straight line, which is still rooted in and has its
source in the old clairvoyance. The peculiarity attaching to the
souls of these Eastern European peoples is expressed in the whole
attitude they have always shown when their relations to the higher
worlds have come into question. This relation, if we compare it with
what appears in our mythology in Western Europe and the strange
divine figures worked out even down to the individual character, is
quite different. That which it offers appears to us in such a way
that we may compare what it gives us as a direct out-pouring of the
Folk-spirit, with our various planes or worlds, through which we
prepare ourselves to understand a spiritual, a higher culture. For
instance, we find there in the East the following conception: The
West has received a series of successive worlds, lying side by side.
In the East we find in the first place a distinct consciousness of a
world of the Cosmic Father. Everything that is creatively active in
air and fire, in all the elements in and above the earth, meets us as
one great, all-embracing idea, which is at the same time an
all-embracing feeling, the concept of the Heavenly Father. In
somewhat the same way as we think of the Devachanic world as
fertilizing our earth, so do we find this heavenly world, the world
of the Father, coming towards us from the East, and it fertilizes
that which is felt to be the Mother, the Spirit of the Earth. We have
no other expression and can think of no other way of picturing the
whole Spirit of the Earth than in the picture of the fertilization of
Mother Earth.
Two worlds, then, confront one another there, instead of
single individual Divine Figures. And what is felt to be the Blessed
Child of these two worlds, stands in front of them as a third world.
That is not an individual being, not a feeling in the soul, but
something which is the product of the Heavenly Father and the
Earth-Mother. In this way the relation of Devachan to the Earth is
felt from the spiritual world. There, that which blossoms in the
material body is felt as something altogether spiritual; and that
which grows and blossoms in the soul, is perceived as the world which
is at the same time felt to be the Blessed Child of the Heavenly
Father and the Earth-Mother. Universal as these conceptions are we
find them among the Slav peoples which have been pushed forward
towards the West. In no Western European mythology do we find this
conception so universal. We find in them clearly defined Divine
Figures, but not that which we present in our Anthroposophy as the
different worlds; these we find more in the Heavenly Father, the
Earth-Mother, and the Blessed Child of the East.
In the Blessed Child there is again a world which
permeates another one. It is a world which is, however, conceived of
as being individual, because it is connected with the physical sun
and its light. The Slav element also has this Being, — although
in a differently developed form of conception and feeling, —
which we have so often found in the Persian mythology; it has the
Sun-being who so pours his blessings into the other three worlds that
the destiny of man is woven into the creation, into the Earth,
through the fertilization of the Earth-Mother by the Heavenly Father,
and through that which the Sun-spirit weaves into both these worlds.
A fifth world is that which comprises everything
spiritual. The Eastern European element feels the spiritual world as
underlying all the forces of Nature and their creations. But this we
must think of in quite a different shade of feeling, connected more
with the facts, creations and beings of Nature. We must conceive of
this Eastern soul as being in a position to see an entity in an
occurrence of Nature, of seeing not only the physically-sensible, but
the astrally-spiritual. Hence the ideas of an immense number of
beings in this unique spiritual world, which we may at the most
compare with the world of the Elves of Light. It is that spiritual
world, which is looked upon in Anthroposophy as the fifth world,
which dawns more or less in the feelings of the peoples of the East.
Whether they call it by this name or that, does not signify; what
does signify is that the feelings are colored and shaded, that the
concepts which characterize this fifth plane or spiritual world are
to be found in the world of the East. By means of these feelings this
world of the East is preparing for that Spirit which is to bring the
Spirit-Self into man, in readiness for that epoch when the
Spiritual-Soul shall ascend to Spirit-Self, in the sixth age of
post-Atlantean civilization, which is to succeed our own. We meet
with this in a very unique manner not only in the creations of the
Folk-Souls, which are as I have just described, but also in a
wonderful preparatory fashion, in the various externalities of
Eastern Europe and its culture.
It is very remarkable and extremely interesting to see
how the Eastern European expresses his tendency of receptivity
towards the pure Spirit by receiving with great devotion Western
European culture, thus indicating prophetically that he will be able
to unite something still greater with his being. Hence also the
little interest he has in the details of this Western European
culture. He receives what is presented to him more in broad outlines
and less in details, because he is preparing himself to take up that
which as Spirit-Self is to enter into mankind. It is particularly
interesting to see how, under this influence, a much more advanced
conception of Christ has been able to come in the East than in
Western Europe, excepting where it has come about through
Anthroposophy. Of all non-Anthroposophists the most advanced
conception of Christ is that held by the Russian philosopher,
Solovioff. It is so advanced that it can only be understood by
Anthroposophists, because he develops it higher and higher and gives
it an endless perspective, showing that what man is able to recognize
in Christ to-day is only the beginning, because the Christ-impulse
has as yet only been able to reveal to man a small degree of what it
contains within it. But as regards the conception of Christ, if we
look for instance at the way in which Hegel understood Him, we shall
find that one may say: Hegel understood Him as only the most refined,
most sublimated Spiritual Soul could.
But in Solovioff the concept of Christ is a very
different one. He fully recognizes the two parts in this conception,
and everything which has been expressed in the many theological
disputes, and which in reality rest upon great misunderstandings, is
put aside, because the ordinary conceptions do not suffice to make
the idea of Christ in His twofold nature comprehensible; they do not
suffice to make one understand that therein the human and the
spiritual must be clearly distinguished. The concept of Christ rests
upon clearly grasping what took place when the Christ entered into
the Man Jesus of Nazareth, who had developed all the necessary
qualities. There were, then, two natures which must first of all be
comprehended as such, although at a higher stage they again form
unity. As long as one has not grasped this duality, one has not
realized Christ in His complete form. This can, however, only be done
by the philosophical comprehension which has a premonition that man
himself will reach a culture in which his Spiritual Soul will attain
to a state into which the Spirit-Self can come; so that man will in
the sixth age of civilization feel himself to be a duality in whom
the higher nature will hold the lower nature under complete control.
Solovioff carries this duality into his conception of
Christ and brings emphatically into notice that there can be no
meaning in it unless one accepts the facts of a divine and a human
nature, both really working together, so that they do not merely form
an abstract but an organic unity, that thus only can this be
understood. Solovioff recognizes that two Will-centers must be thought
of in this Being. If you take the teachings of Spiritual Science as
to the true significance of the Christ-Being, which proceed from the
existence of, not an imaginary, but a spiritually real Indian
influence, you then have to think of Christ as having developed
within His three bodies the capacities of feeling, thought and will.
There you have a human feeling, thinking and willing into which the
divine Feeling, Thinking and Willing has immersed itself. The
European will only thoroughly assimilate this when he has risen to
the sixth stage of culture. This has been prophetically expressed in
a wonderful way in Solovioff's conception of Christ, which like
a rosy dawn announces a later civilization. Hence this philosophy of
Eastern Europe strides with giant steps beyond that of Hegel and
Kant, and when one enters the atmosphere of this philosophy, one
suddenly feels as it were the germ for a future unfolding. It goes so
much further because this conception of Christ is felt to be a
fore-shining, the morning dawn of the sixth post-Atlantean
civilization. By means of this the whole Christ-Being and the whole
significance of Christ becomes the central point of philosophy, and
it thus becomes a very different thing from what the Western European
conceptions are able to offer concerning it. The conception of
Christ, — so far as it has been worked out in
non-Anthroposophical circles, in which it is comprehended as living
substance which, as a spiritual personality, is to work into the
social life and the life of the States, which is felt as a
Personality in Whose service man finds himself as ‘man with the
Spirit-Self,’ — this Christ-Personality is worked out in
a wonderful, plastic manner in the various expositions Solovioff gives
of St. John's Gospel and its opening words. Again it is only on
the ground of Spiritual Science that a comprehension can be found of
what is so profoundly understood by Solovioff in the sentence, ‘In
the beginning was the Word, or the Logos,’ and so on, of how
differently St. John's Gospel is understood by a philosophy,
which can be felt as a germinating philosophy which points in a
remarkable manner to the future. Although on the one hand it must be
admitted that in the domain of philosophy Hegel's work
represents a most mature fruit, something that is born from the
Spiritual Soul as a very ripe philosophical fruit, on the other hand
this philosophy of Solovioff is the germ in the Spiritual Soul for the
philosophy of the Spirit-Self, which will be added in the sixth age
of culture.
There is perhaps no greater contrast than that eminently
Christian conception of the State which hovers as a great ideal
before Solovioff as a dream of the future, that Christian idea of the
State and the people, which takes everything it finds in order to
offer it to the down-streaming Spirit-Self to hold it towards the
future so that it may be Christianized by the powers of the future: —
there is really no greater contrast than this conception by Solovioff
of a Christian community in which the Christ-idea is still a future
one, — and the conception of the divine State held by St.
Augustine, who accepted, it is true, the Christ-idea, but constructed
the State in such a way that it was still the Roman State; he took up
Christ into the idea of the State given him by the Roman State. The
essential point is, that which provides the knowledge for the
Christianity which is growing on into the future. In Solovioff's
State Christ is the blood which runs through all social life, and the
essential point is that the State is thought of in all the
concreteness of personality, so that it acts indeed as a spiritual
being, but it will fulfill its mission with all the characteristic
peculiarities of a personality. No other philosophy is so permeated
by the Christ-idea, — the Christ-idea which shines forth to us
from still greater heights in Anthroposophy, — and yet
remaining only at the germinal stage.
Everything that we find in the East, from the general
feeling of the people up to its philosophy, comes to us as something
that bears only the germ of a future evolution within it, and that
therefore had to submit to the special education of that Spirit of
the Age whom we already know; for we have said that the Spirit of the
Age of the ancient Greeks was given as an impulse to Christianity,
and was entrusted with the mission of becoming later on the active
Spirit of the Age for Europe. The national temperament which will
have to develop the germs for the sixth age of civilization had not
only to be educated but to be taken care of, from the first stages of
its existence, by that Spirit of the Age. So that we may literally
say, — whereby the ideas of Father and Mother lose their
separate sense, — that the Russian temperament, which is
gradually to evolve into the Folk-soul, was not only brought up, but
was suckled and fed by that which, as we have seen, was formed out of
the old Greek Spirit of the Age and then acquired another rank,
outwardly.
Thus are the missions divided between Western, Central,
Northern and Eastern Europe. I wished to give you an indication of
these things. We shall work further on the foundations of these
indications, and show what will distinguish the future of Europe, and
also show that we must form our ideals from such knowledge. We shall
show how through this influence the Germanic Scandinavian Folk-spirit
gradually transforms himself into a Spirit of the Age.
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