Taurus-age: Mercury, Moon, Saturn; the decanates during the Aries-age: Mars, Sun, Venus. And the decanates during our age, the Pisces epoch, are very characteristically those forces which can serve us most, according to the celestial-clock: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars. Mars - here not in the same service as he had when he was in his house, when he went through Aries, but Mars now as representative power for human strength. But in the outer planets, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars you see what is connected with the human head, the human countenance, the human word-formation.
Thus all that is connected with spirituality for this life between birth and death - we will speak next time of the other life between death and a new birth - is especially serviceable in this epoch.
This epoch therefore is the one containing the greatest spiritual possibilities. In no age was it granted to men to do so much wrong as in this, since in none could one sin more deeply against the inner mission of the time. For if one lives with the age, then through the Jupiter force one transforms the force coming from the earth into a spiritually free humanity. And at one"s disposal are
the best, the finest powers of man which he develops between birth and death: the Saturn- Jupiter- and Mars-forces.
The World-Clock, my dear friends, stands favourably for this epoch, but this must give no occasion for fatalism.
This must not cause people to say: Well let"s leave ourselves to World-destiny, everything is sure to be all right... rather is it to be the cause, if a man will - but he must will - of his finding endless possibilities just in our age. Only, meanwhile, men do not as yet will.
But it is always unfounded to say: Well, what can I do by myself? The world takes its course ...
Certainly, my dear friends, such as we are now, the world does not pay much attention to us today. But something else is the point. The point is that we are not to say, as the men of thirty-three years ago said - that they wouldn"t bother themselves about anything! That is why things have become what they now are. The question in our time is that each for himself should begin to wish to escape from
abstraction, to lay aside what is foreign to reality and so on, and to seek, each for himself, to approach the real and get beyond abstractions.
One must approach from such far-lying concepts, my dear friends, if one is to develop the important subject that is to occupy us - discussion of, so to speak, the becoming older of man, the going- towards-death, just as much as the originating- from birth, the coming-from-birth. Whereas today, pedagogy, practical education of children, proceeds entirely from recognizing that the child is born and develops as child, the time must come in
which the child learns what it means to become older. But these things cannot be so simply elucidated, and so one must bring the ideas from far away. For one can say: In order to overcome that estrangement from reality which today is the signature of the time, above all it is necessary for men to develop the will to attentiveness, the will to set Jupiter in motion. Jupiter is precisely the force that makes a perpetual call on our attentiveness. Men are so happy today if they need not be attentive, if they can resemble the sleeping Isis - I have purposely spoken of the sleeping Isis! The greatest part of mankind is sleeping through this present time and feels itself very, very well in so doing, for men hammer out concepts and stop short at these, and will not develop attention. The important thing to do is to examine the relationships of life. And the difficult years in which we are living must above all get us away from what has weakened human civilization for so long - inattentiveness, absence of will - and make us look into world conditions.
It is not enough, my dear friends, merely to skim
lightly over things.
It might easily seem, for instance, that I have spoken again and again from all possible aspects of the harmfulness of Wilsonianism from some subjective urge. It is from no subjective urging, but it is actually necessary today to point the way from countless illusionary ideas into the direction in which attention must be unfolded. We learn by the events of the time; if we sharpen our attentiveness we learn precisely from the events of today an immense amount of what we need in order to understand the great impulses which solely and alone can lead mankind out of the calamities into which it has brought itself. One must put certain questions to oneself if one is to be attentive to things. It is not the point to have some general view of something, but how one sees it, how one is able to put questions regarding the outer world.
Spiritual Science has also this practical significance, that it gives us the impulse of questioning, of putting questions.
You see, my dear friends, that one reads nowadays of the so-called Peace negotiations of Brest-
Litowsk. You know that various people are taking part in them. The chief people from Russia taking part - to single that out - are Lenin, Trotsky, a certain Herr Joffe and a certain Herr Kameneff, whose real name is Rosenfeld. Trotsky"s name is Bronstein; Joffe is a rich trader from Cherson.
Those are the princ.i.p.al negotiators. It is not uninteresting - but even important perhaps - to turn one"s attention to the fact that for Herr Rosenfeld-Kameneff, it is only what the outer exoteric world calls pure chance that his head is still upon his shoulders. His head could long since have been sundered from his shoulders. For in November 1914, all sorts of delegates were arrested in Russia. One read about it at the time and knew of it in other ways. These delegates were imprisoned because they were accused of friendship with Lenin, who was abroad in a place not far from here. They believed at that time in Russia that Lenin had said "Of all evils that can happen to Russia in this war the fall of Czardom is the least." And so a number of delegates who were known to have communications with Lenin through letters and so on, were indicted. But at
that time it was impossible to get hold of them. To be sure, all sorts of patriotic, Russian patriotic, words were spoken. Words like these were spoken: "Over the heads and mangled bodies of our fighters, there are traitors who are in connection with the shameful Lenin in Switzerland" - and so on. Then further proceedings took place in February 1915. Again a number of persons were accused, among them a certain Petrowski, among them also a certain Kameneff, alias Rosenfeld.
Kameneff, in especial, counted among the accused at that time as the real Russian traitor-type, as a very particularly abominable fellow. And as the proceedings started, there was a general belief that it would not be long before his head ... would be off his shoulders. But Kameneff-Rosenfeld could bring forward proofs at that time that in all questions of the war, he had always taken a different stand from Lenin; so too, Petrowski; that they had no really serious friendship with Lenin.
Kameneff-Rosenfeld could prove in particular that he had never wished for the victory of Germany, that a German victory could only be desired by un- Russian crafty comrades like Lenin with foreign
interests, who, while they feel themselves too weak or too lazy, await the triumph of freedom from the sword of German generals. Those are the words that were spoken at these proceedings. And a certain Kerenski, who later played another role, was a.s.signed to Messrs. Petrowski and Kameneff as counsel, advocate. He was the defender of Kameneff in that lawsuit, and he got him off. The charge against both Petrowski and Kameneff- Rosenfeld was of high-treason and treason against the country, but Kerenski could get them off and in his speech are to be found the fine words "The accused were very far from the plan to stab in the back those who are ready to die for the Fatherland, they resisted no other intrigue so strongly as the one proceeding from Lenin"s secret confederacy."
Owing to the fact that Kerenski"s oratory and the other things that could be brought forward supplied proof that Petrowski and Kameneff had nothing in common with Lenin"s views, they came out of it all with fairly sound skins. Petrowski is now the Minister of the Interior in the Government of Lenin and Kameneff is together with Herr Joffe the most important negotiator at Brest-Litowsk.
I am quoting these particular stories, my dear friends, and could relate hundreds and hundreds of similar ones! But it is very important to look at actualities; that is what I wished to say. And in order to get to know actualities one must observe the men who have to do with them - if indeed these things men are taking part in are actualities.
It is vastly convenient to stand back and say: Yes, negotiations are going on at Brest-Litowsk between Russia and the Central Powers! That is abstraction, that is no actuality. One only approaches the real when one has the will to pay attention, to look really into the concrete. I wanted to bring the matter forward merely as an example to show that it is also necessary to study present- day history. Everyone today talks about current events, but how little is really known of the events of today, how little people actually know of what is going on, how little people even guess at what takes place; This is really astounding, and can only be understood through the unbelievable way in which our intelligence is trained. In fact our intelligence is trained in such a way that science misleads it on every hand to form judgments in the
way I have described: If I have one coin, then I have one coin; if I have two coins, then I have none, I have nothing! If there is one tombstone of Till Eulenspiegel, then he can have lived; if, however, there are two tombstones with an owl and a looking-gla.s.s, then Till Eulenspiegel did not live! If I want to make an electricity experiment in the Physics cla.s.sroom, I must carefully dry all the machines with warmed cloths so that nothing may be damp, for otherwise neither the ordinary electrical machine nor the inductive machine would obey me, nor anything else. But then immediately afterwards I relate: there out of the cloud - which in any case is thoroughly wet and which no Professor can have wiped with dry cloths - issues the lightning - and so could one go on.
Have I not again and again given examples of how one person repeats what another says; no one examines it! Thus, for instance, one can very well hear: the fundamental principle of modern Physics is the conservation of energy, of force. That is to be traced back to Julius Robert Mayer. Although physicists and nature-researchers and other learned men proclaim him today a great hero, Julius
Robert Mayer was once put in a lunatic asylum because he had published "absurd trash", had claimed to have discovered a new principle. He was indeed really incarcerated in a lunatic asylum!
The great credit due to Julius Robert Mayer has gone in particular to a University Rector, but I will not stress this further; it often comes up, as you know. What I will stress is this: again and again one sees "The Conservation of Energy - Julius Robert Mayer discovered it". No one re-reads, but each one re-says what has been said. In Julius Robert Mayer"s work nothing at all is stated in the form, in the definite form, in which the energy- principle is represented today, but it exists there in quite a different formulation, in fact in a reasonable formulation!
Another example may be considered which lies near our subject - Dr. Schmiedel has given me a magazine in which they support Goethe"s "Farbenlehre". Two learned gentlemen a.s.sert that Goethe knew nothing of the Fraunhofer lines: Dr.
Schmiedel has put together four columns, purely of pa.s.sages from Goethe in which he speaks of the
Fraunhofer lines! But the learned gentry talk, pa.s.s judgment on the range of Goethe"s optical knowledge, and let flow into such judgments - "he knew nothing of the Fraunhofer Lines." They tell people impudent falsehoods, for naturally today in this "authority-free" time, what a "learned"
man says is just as much a gospel for a large number of people as for many, many politicians what Mr. Woodrow Wilson says is a gospel. Thus in our present time it means a good deal if someone simply states: Goethe did not know of the Fraunhofer lines! Nor does it help much to prove it to people; for soon a third person says it and then a fourth. For the inattention, the thoughtlessness with which people live today is indeed great, while the will to look at the concrete truth is not forthcoming. Mankind moreover is much too much inclined to take a lively interest in abstractions, to become enthusiastic through abstractions.
With this I have only introduced what is yet to occupy us - the important principle which must enter into the culture of our time, and our
pedagogy, the principle of man"s becoming old, the becoming old of his physical body, which is linked with the becoming young of his etheric body. Of this then we will speak next time in all detail.
Lecture V 11th January, 1918.
It is our aim in these lectures to speak of important questions of mankind"s evolution, and you have already seen that all sorts of preparatory facts drawn from distant sources are necessary to our purpose. In order that we may have a foundation as broad as possible, I shall remind you today of various things that have been said from one or another standpoint during my present stay here, but which are essential for a right understanding of the two coming lectures.
I have pointed out to you that in that evolutionary course of mankind which can be regarded as first interesting us after the great Atlantean catastrophe, significant changes took place in humanity. I have already some months ago indicated how changes
in humanity as a whole differ from changes taking place in a single individual. The individual as the years go on becomes older. In a certain respect one can say that for humanity as such, the reverse is the case. A man is first child, then grows up and attains the age known to us as the average age of life. In so doing the man"s physical forces undergo manifold changes and transformations. Now we have already described in what sense I a reverse path is to be attributed to mankind. During the 2,160 years that followed the great Atlantean catastrophe mankind can be said to have been capable of development in a way quite different from what was possible later. This is that ancient time which followed immediately upon the great flooding of the earth - called in geology the Ice Age, in religious tradition, the Flood - from which there actually proceeded a kind of glacial state.
We know that at our present time we are capable of development up to a certain age independently of our own action; we are capable of development through our nature, our physical forces. We have
stated that in the first epoch after the great Atlantean catastrophe man remained capable of development for a much longer time. He remained so into the fifth decade of his life, and he always knew that the process of growing older was connected with a transformation of the soul and spirit nature. If today we wish to have a development of the soul and spirit nature after our twenties, we must seek for this development by our power of will. We become physically different in our twenties and in this becoming different physically there lives at the same time something that determines our progress of soul and spirit.
Then the physical ceases to let us be dependent on it; then, so to speak, our physical nature hands over nothing more, and through our own willpower we must make any further advance.
This is how it seems, externally considered - we shall see immediately how matters stand inwardly.
There was in fact a great difference in the first 2,160 years after the great Atlantean catastrophe.
Then indeed man was still dependent on his physical element far into old age, but he had also
the joy of this dependence. He had the joy of not only progressing during his growth, and increasing, but of experiencing, even in the decline of life-forces, the fruit of these declining life- forces as a kind of blooming of soul qualities, which man can feel no longer. Yes, external physical cosmic conditions of human existence alter in relatively not such a very long time.
Then again came a time in which man no more remained capable of development to such a great age, into the fifties. In the second epoch after the great Atlantean catastrophe, which again lasted for approximately 2,160 years, and which we call the Old Persian, man remained still capable of development up to the end of his forties. Then in the next epoch, the Egypto-Chaldean, he could develop up to the time of his forty-second year. We are now living - since the 15th Century - in the period where man carries his development only into his twenties. This is all something of which external history tells us nothing, which moreover is not believed by external historical science, but with which infinitely many secrets of mankind"s
evolution are connected. So that one can say: Mankind as a whole drew in, became younger and younger - if we call this change in development a becoming-younger! And we have seen what consequence must be drawn from it. This consequence was not so pressing in the Greco- Latin age; a man then remained capable of development up to his thirty-fifth year through his natural forces. It becomes more and more pressing, and from our time onward quite specially significant. For as regards humanity as a whole we are living, so to say, in the twenty-seventh year, are entering the twenty-sixth and so on. So that men are condemned to carry right through life the development they acquired in early youth through natural forces, if they do nothing of their own freewill to take their further development in hand.
And the future of mankind will consist in their receding more and more, receding further, so that I, if no spiritual impulse grips mankind, times can come in which I only the views and opinions of youth prevail.
This becoming younger of humanity is shown in external symptoms - and one who regards historical development with more sharpened senses can see it - it is shown by the fact that in I Greece, let us say, a man had still to be of a definite age before he I could take any part in public affairs. Today we see the claim made I by great circles of mankind to reduce this age as much as I. possible, since people think that they already know in the twenties everything that is to be attained. More and more demands will be made in this direction, and unless an insight arises to paralyse them there will be demands that not only in the beginning of his twenties a man is clever enough to take part in any kind of parliamentary business in the world, but the nineteen-year-olds and eighteen-year-olds will believe that they contain in themselves all that a man can compa.s.s.
This kind of growing younger is at the same time a challenge to mankind to draw for themselves from the spirit what is no longer given by nature. I called your attention last time to the immense incision in the evolutionary history of mankind
which lies in the 15th Century. This is again something of which external history gives no tidings, for external history, as I have often said, is a fable convenue. There must come an entirely new knowledge of the being of man. For only when an entirely new knowledge of man"s being is reached, will the impulse really be found which mankind needs if it is to take in hand of its own freewill what nature no longer provides. We dare not believe that, the future of humanity will come through with the thoughts and I ideas which the modern age has brought and of which it is so proud. One cannot do enough to make oneself clear how necessary it is to seek for fresh and different impulses for the evolution of humanity. It is of course a triviality to say, as I have often remarked, that our time is a transition age - for in reality each age is a transition. But it is a different thing to know what is changing in a definite age.
Every age is a.s.suredly an age of transition, but in each age one should also look about and see what is pa.s.sing over.
I will link this to a fact - I could take a hundred others - but I will link on to a definite fact and let it serve as an example - one could draw on hundreds from every part of Europe. In the first half of the 19th Century, in 1828 in Vienna, a number of lectures were held by Friedrich Schlegel, one of the two brothers Schlegel, who have deserved so well of Central European culture.
Friedrich Schlegel sought in these lectures to show from a lofty historical standpoint what the development of the time required, and how these requirements should be studied if the right direction were to be given to the evolution of the 19th Century and the coming age.
Friedrich Schlegel was influenced at that time by two main historical impressions. On the one hand he looked back at the 18th Century, how it had gradually evolved to atheism, materialism, irreligion. He saw how what had gone on in people"s minds during the course of the 18th Century then exploded in the French Revolution.
(We wish to make no criticism, merely to bring forward a fact, to consider a human outlook.)
Friedrich Schlegel saw a great onesidedness in the French Revolution. To be sure, one might find it today reactionary if such a man as Friedrich Schlegel sees a great onesidedness in the French Revolution, but one would also have to look on such a verdict from other aspects. On the whole it is fairly simple to say to oneself that this or the other was gained for mankind through the French Revolution. It is no doubt very simple; but it is a question whether someone who speaks enthusiastically in this way of the French Revolution is really altogether sincere in his inmost heart. One questions it! There is a crucial test of this sincerity which simply consists in this: one should consider how one would look at such a Movement if it broke out round one at the present day? What would one say to it then? One should really put oneself this question when judging these matters. Only then does one have a kind of crucial test of one"s own sincerity, for on the whole it is not so very difficult to be enthusiastic over something that went on so and so many decades ago. The question is whether one could also be enthusiastic if one were directly sharing in it at the
present day.
Friedrich Schlegel, as I have said, looked on the Revolution as an explosion of the so-called Enlightenment, the atheistic Enlightenment of the 18th Century. And side by side with this event to which he turned his attention he set another: the appearance of that man who took the place of the Revolution, who contributed so enormously to the later shaping of Europe - Napoleon. Friedrich Schlegel from the lofty standpoint from which he viewed world-history, pointed out that when such a personality enters with such a force into world- evolution he must really be considered from a different standpoint from the one that is generally taken. He makes a very fine observation where he speaks of Napoleon. He says: "One should not forget that Napoleon had seven years in which to grow familiar with what he later looked on as his task; for twice seven years the tumult lasted that he carried through Europe, and then for seven years more the life-time lasted that was granted him after his fall. Four times seven years is the career of this man." In a very fine way this is
pointed out by Friedrich Schlegel.
I have indicated on various occasions what a role is played by this inner law in the case of men who are really representative in the historical evolution of humanity. I have pointed out to you how remarkable it is that Raphael always makes an important painting after a definite number of years. I have pointed out how a flaring-up of Goethe"s poetic power always takes place in seven-year periods, whereas between these periods there is a dying down. And one could bring forward many, many such examples. Friedrich Schlegel did not look on Napoleon exactly as an impulse of blessing for European humanity!
Now in these lectures Friedrich Schlegel showed what, in his view, the salvation of Europe demanded after the confusion brought by the Revolution and the Napoleonic age. And he finds that the deeper reason of the disorder lies in the fact that men cannot lift themselves to a more all- embracing standpoint in their world conception, which indeed can only come from an understanding of the spiritual world. Hence, thinks
Friedrich Schlegel, instead of a common human world-conception, we have everywhere party- standpoints in which everyone looks on his point of view as something absolute, something which must bring salvation to all. According to Friedrich Schlegel the only salvation of mankind would be for each man to be aware that he takes a certain standpoint and others take others, and an agreement must come about through life itself. No one stand point should gain a footing as the absolute. Now Friedrich Schlegel considers that true Christianity is the one and only thing that can show man how to realize the tolerance that he means - a tolerance not inclining to indifference, but to strong and active life. And therefore he draws the conclusion (I must emphasize it is in 1828) from what he has put before his audience: the whole life of Europe, above all, however, the life of science and life of the State, must be Christianized. And he sees the great evil to be that science has become unchristian, States have become unchristian, and that nowhere has what is meant by the actual Christ-Impulse penetrated in modern times into scientific thought or the life of
the State. Now he demands that the Christ-Impulse should once more permeate the scientific and State-life.
Friedrich Schlegel was of course speaking of the science, the political life of his time, 1828. But for certain reasons which will shortly be clearer to us than they are now, one could look at modern science and modern political life as he regarded them in 1828. Try for once to inquire of the sciences which count for the most in public life: physics, chemistry, biology, national-economy, political science too, try to inquire of them whether the Christian impulse is seriously anywhere within them! People do not acknowledge it, but all the sciences are actually atheistic. And the various churches try to get along well with them, as they do not feel strong enough really to permeate science with the principle of Christianity! Hence the cheap and comfortable theory that the religious life makes different demands from those of official science, that science must keep to what can be observed, the religious life to the feelings. Both are to be nicely
separate, the one direction is to have no say in the other. One can live together in this way, my dear friends, one can indeed! But it gives rise to the sort of conditions that now exist.
Now what Friedrich Schlegel brought forward at that time was imbued with a deep inner warmth, and his great personal impulse was to serve his age, to demand that religion should not merely be made a Sunday School affair but should be carried into the whole of life, above all the life of science and State. And one can see from the way he spoke at that time in Vienna that he had a hope, a great hope, that out of the disorder produced by the Revolution and Napoleon, a Europe would come forth which would be Christianized in its life of State and Science. The final lecture treated especially of the prevailing spirit of the age and the general revival. And as motto for the lecture, which is truly delivered with great power, he put the Bible text: "I come quickly and make all things new." And he headed it with this motto because he believed that in the men of the 19th Century, to whom he could speak at that time as young men,