The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday I endeavored to show how the material to be presented here regarding Goethe's most intimate opinions and views on the development of the human soul is not arbitrarily worked into his works, and in particular into the material with which we are particularly concerned, his fairy tale of the green snake and the Beautiful Lily, but I have tried to show how the whole basis on which to build, the explanation of this fairy tale and Goethe's more intimate worldview, can be gained from a historical consideration of Goethe's life, from a historical tracing of the most important impulses of Goethe's ideas. I may say that an attempt has been made to establish the foundations for what is to be given today in a more freely developed form on the subject. If we allow the fairy tale we spoke about yesterday to arise before our soul, it appears to be completely immersed in mystery. And one would like to say that either one must assume that Goethe wanted to put a lot of mystery into this fairy tale, as he put a lot of mystery into the second part of his “Faust,” according to his own sayings, or that we could regard this fairy tale — which is quite impossible — as a mere play of the imagination. If the latter were not already excluded by Goethe's whole way of thinking, one would have to say that such an assumption is particularly prohibited by the fact that Goethe placed this fairy tale at the end of his story “Conversations of German Emigrants”. For it is basically the same idea that we found characteristic of Goethe's entire life yesterday, and which also lives in these “Conversations of German Emigrants,” which were written in the last decade of the eighteenth century. And from what immediately precedes the “fairy tale,” we can once again discern the theme of this fairy tale.

We are presented with the conversations of people who have been forced to emigrate due to events in their French homeland, who look back in the most diverse ways on what they have experienced in terms of sadness. We see how the entire story comes to a head to show what people who are, in a sense, uprooted from their circumstances and surroundings can go through in the solitude of their souls; what people in such a situation can gain by reflecting on their emotional experiences, by self-observation. We need only highlight a few examples to show how Goethe brings everything to a head, how a soul that becomes a fighter within itself, that often asks itself through various prompts: What kind of guilt have I accumulated, how have I hindered the soul's development? How such a soul tries to find out about itself. First we meet an Italian singer who is to reveal her fate to us in this story because her destiny can serve to illustrate a human soul that, in a certain respect, must remain on the surface of world observation. A human soul that, although it attentively follows what is going on around it because it is forced to by its circumstances, is not yet mature enough to distinguish between what, in a sense, may be called an accident and the spiritual necessity of things. It does not yet know how the phenomena of life must be connected so that we can assume the presence of spirit and spiritual laws in our environment. This Italian singer behaved in such a way towards a man that he became seriously ill as a result of her repulsive behavior, and that he is actually dying because of her behavior. So she is summoned to his deathbed. She refuses to come to his deathbed. He must die without having seen her. Now, in the time following his death, many things happen that give a soul, which would have to be characterized in the same way as that of the Italian singer, something to think about; so much to think about that she does not really know what to make of what is going on, which could still be seen as connected with my whole behavior, with the whole way in which I behaved towards the dead man in relation to his fate. After death, something very strange happens. She hears all kinds of noises in her rooms, the furniture dances, and she is even slapped in the face by an unknown, invisible hand, so that she is really frightened by the strangeness and horror of these events. Is the dead person somehow there, wanting to assert himself because of the way I behaved towards him?

A cupboard's top breaks open, and it is strangely revealed that at the very moment that cupboard's top broke open in this room, a cupboard in France, made by the same carpenter, burst into flames in its rooms. Mind you, my friends, it would never occur to me to try to explain these things in the light of a spiritual worldview, nor to suggest that Goethe wanted to express that there was something in such events that could give cause, for all I care, to assume all sorts of hidden spirits or the rumbling of the dead.

Goethe merely wanted to show that there are certain souls that are so little enlightened that they do not know what to do with such strange events, that are not enlightened enough not to say: these things are nothing; but they are also not superstitious enough to say: the dead man is certainly stirring, but rather those who, because they are not developed, can only have an indefinite feeling about such things. We see how the soul fares in the external world, depending on its stage of development, which Goethe already demonstrates by steering the stories in “The Sorrows of German Emigrants” in the direction of “fairytales”. He shows us how a person is put in the position of having to heal a lady of her sensuality, her passion. He suggests the path of having her fast, of guiding her through asceticism, so to speak, in order to dampen the ardent passion in this way. This is another indication of what a soul can go through in order to experience development. Continue – and now notice how Goethe does indeed lead the matter upwards in stages. First, he shows a soul that is really digging around in the vague in the Italian singer; he shows an already more real thing in the lady that I just mentioned: It is indeed the case that many people come to a purification of their passions, to an upward development of their soul through fasting. Here we are moving from the indefinite into the definite, into reality, and this is fully the case when we ascend into the reality of human soul development in the physical world, as we see in the third story related by Goethe. He shows how a person is initially somewhat unscrupulous, and thus stands at a subordinate level of soul development, to the point where he says: What belongs to my father also belongs to me. The practical result of this is that he commits theft at his father's checkout. He grows, so to speak, precisely through this act. His soul ascends, and he becomes, precisely by doing this wrong deed, a kind of moral center for all the humanity that then groups around him. Thus, already in his stories, which lead up to the “fairy tale,” Goethe shows us how he wants to depict soul development, the soul's ascent from certain subordinate stages to higher stages of knowledge and world view.

Now, as we saw yesterday, we are dealing with soul forces that are represented by the figures, the beings of the “fairytale”, and with the play of soul forces, which is to gradually purify itself into harmony, even into a symphony of soul forces, as the soul rises higher in the deeds performed by the figures and persons of the “fairytale”. In what happens in the 'Märchens', we are dealing with will-o'-the-wisps that want to be ferried across from the other side of the river to this side by the ferryman. They are initially filled with gold, but the ferryman does not want their gold as a reward because the river would be thrown into wild turmoil if gold pieces were to fall into it. Rather, he must demand fruits of the earth: three onions, three artichokes, and three cabbages. The will-o'-the-wisps have the ability to shake gold around them, and we have seen how they encounter the snake, which they call their aunt from the horizontal line, while they themselves are beings from the vertical line. By sprinkling gold, they give the snake something that becomes fruitful and beneficial within it, because the snake, by connecting the pieces of gold with its own substance, becomes inwardly radiant. That which it could not see before and which has something to do with the secrets of soul development, that it can illuminate that within itself.

When I tried for more than twenty years to gain access to this fairy tale in every possible way, it was above all a liberating thought in the confusion of questions that arise from the “fairy tale” when it became clear that above all I had to pursue the gold. Gold plays a role of the most diverse kind in this fairy tale. First in the will-o'-the-wisp. The will-o'-the-wisp scatter it around; there it shows itself in a certain way as something that we may address as not beneficial in certain respects. In the snake, the gold becomes beneficial. Then again in the golden king, who is made entirely of gold, then we find it again on the walls of the hut where the old man with the lamp lives, and there the will-o'-the-wisp lick it down and make themselves thicker and more substantial by licking the gold down from the walls. So the gold comes up several times, and one time we are pointed to the fact that this gold has something to do with the power of the human soul, by being pointed to the temple, which is first below and then above ground, that the golden king represents the bringer of wisdom. It is something that we do not need to interpret or explain, but where we can say: Here Goethe himself says: the golden king refers to the giver, the bringer of wisdom. So the gold must have something to do with wisdom. It is the gold, by filling the being of the golden king, that makes him a wise being, that leads him to bestow the gift of knowledge

Know the Highest!

— this is transferred from the golden king to the youth, and the youth is thereby quickened. Gold is therefore something that the Giver of Wisdom is able to instill in man. The will-o'-the-wisps, if they represent a soul-power, must represent the soul-power that is able to receive wisdom, for they have the gold within them, the soul-power that can also cast wisdom aside. We learn how this wisdom can be stored by the fact that on the walls of this symbol of wisdom, gold, was stored for a long, long time before the will-o'-the-wisps licked it. We cannot help but say, since we know how well founded it is to see soul forces in the individual forms, that the will-o'-the wisp represent the abstract intelligence, the pure power of the intellect, which is capable of acquiring a certain amount of wisdom through what is usually called external science, what is called speculation, external experience. And now we also understand why gold, wisdom, plays such a role in the pure intellect of the will-o'-the-wisps: the person who absorbs what knowledge, science and wisdom is with the pure intellect absorbs it above all in order to have something personal with it, in order to be able to use it personally. We can look into Goethe's soul and recognize the way he related to something when we become aware of how he often congratulated himself, so to speak, for never having been in a position to officially represent as a teacher the science to which he so devotedly dedicated his time , that he was only able to give the world some of his wisdom when he was inwardly impelled to do so, was not called upon to cast wisdom aside as one casts aside clothing when one is destined to become a teacher or an abstract bearer of wisdom.

In this way, Goethe presents human wisdom in the Irrlichtern that has developed one-sided intelligence and power of reason, and it is a peculiarity that – however much it may be denied – abstract knowledge, mere intelligence, especially when it increasingly moves into wisdom – and abstract intelligence can absorb vast amounts of wisdom – that this leads to vanity, to wanting to be able to deal with concepts everywhere. We are speaking entirely in Goethe's spirit when we realize why we still contrive such wise thoughts and think so cleverly: abstract concepts and ideas that are not drawn from the depths, from the richness of life, are unsuitable for ultimately leading us into true communion with the eternal riddles of existence. Where we need something that goes straight to our hearts from the eternal riddles of existence, we need something other than abstract ideas and concepts, as products of mere intelligence. When we stand before the boundary that separates the two realms, the realm of the sensually physical world, into which we feel transported, and the realm of spirituality, the realm of the supersensible, when we feel ourselves at this boundary, we are we are repelled by all abstract concepts and ideas. Indeed, these abstract concepts and ideas are not even capable of making comprehensible to us what is closest to us, for they alienate us from what is closest to us. How far removed the abstract thing is from grasping even the most everyday things that surround it; so it is incapable of giving in its concepts and ideas to that stream to which we are drawn when we want to cross over into the supersensible world. For concepts and ideas are not good for that. If you want to get to the very source of life, then it rears up and does not let us get close. Therefore, the river has no use for the gold that the will-o'-the-wisps are able to give, and we are told that none of them have ever confessed or served time. They are from the vertical line, while the old crone is from the horizontal line. This indicates how man removes himself from the ground through abstract concepts and ideas and cannot reach the ground of everyday life, which he is supposed to understand. We see how plastic these abstract figures of the will-o'-the-wisp are. But are ideas and concepts, are philosophical explanations under all circumstances that which separates us from the true source of existence? No, they are not, if man has the capacity to live in such a way that he combines his own life forces with things. Not to go out into the realm of abstract concepts and ideas, but to move correctly within things, to become a spirit, as Faust became one when he said:

Exalted Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
turn thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature for a kingdom,
the power to feel and enjoy it. Not
You only allow coldly amazed visitors, granting me to look into their deep chests as into the bosom of a friend. You lead the line of the living before me, and teach me my brothers in the silent bush, in air and water.

Where man truly enters into an inner communion with the beings of nature, where he does not sever himself with all the powers of his soul from the beings of nature, there the same concepts that alienate him from the world when they become abstract serve him to penetrate ever deeper and deeper into existence. We must not, so to speak, turn things around and say: because abstract concepts and ideas alienate the abstract being from the true essence of things, concepts and ideas are worthless in general. No, on the contrary, where they fall into the soul power that rises, lives in and with things in a certain community, in such a soul power they are full of light at the same time. Therefore, gold, which in a certain sense is without blessing in the will-o'-the-wisps, becomes such a blessing, the light in the snake that lives in the clefts and has the horizontal line, clings to the earth. If man clings to the earth, if he loves all things, if he immerses himself in things, if he, to use the much-maligned word, “mystically” immerses himself in things, then clear ideas serve to guide him through things. Therefore, you can also see – I don't know how many of you have had such an experience, but it can be had – that sometimes scholastically presented philosophies seem cold and sober, but that the same ideas, when they come to us from simple primitive people who live outside as herb gatherers, root gatherers or the like – and who are usually very interested in the secrets of existence – to what lofty ideas such people, mystically united with nature, sometimes come. We shall see how, in the case of primitive people who are in communion with nature, ideas become luminous that are worthless, sober, frosty in the case of abstract people. Thus we are led away from the will-o'-the wisp that abstract intelligence presents to us, to that soul power that is deeply rooted in us and that has the mystical urge to plunge into things, as it were. This is vividly and vividly depicted to us, as the snake moves through the crevices: Man, in fact, even if he does not enlighten himself with concepts, does not live in abstract ideas, comes close to the heart of things, like the snake to an underground temple, where, because it cannot shine, it first perceives only through touching certain forms that it only later examines in the light. Man, when he has only an appreciation of the mysterious workings of the forces of nature, comes to the heart of nature and can experience something of what lives in the things around us. We experience this with the snake, which shows us how it is a representative of those soul forces in man that can live without ideas under certain circumstances, only then not illuminated by the light of knowledge, but which nevertheless lovingly delve into things and come to a certain understanding of the riddles of the world. When the balance is restored by the fact that ideas and concepts are absorbed into these mystical powers of our soul, then the time comes when a person who is lovingly inclined towards things also finds that which he previously only sensed from the sources of existence; that he can also illuminate it through his own inner light. Yes, he is only led deeper into it.

You may recall a significant saying of Goethe's, where he says:

If the eye were not solar,
How could we behold the light?
If the power of God does not live in us,
How can we be enraptured by the divine?

Where Goethe immediately points out how we must respond to the eye of the light, which is intended to illuminate the secrets of nature, if it is to shine back again, reflecting the secrets of nature within it, as it were. Therefore, we must absorb the preparation for knowledge within us, as the snake absorbs gold, then we penetrate into what otherwise remains dark, as man, when he inwardly preserves the sense, the open heart, for the spiritual, sees the insights more clearly, how he can only then also see the spiritual in his environment.

And so the snake enters the underground temple. Here Goethe indicates to us in a wonderful way that there are subterranean places for the life of the human soul. One can only characterize such things as Goethe presents here if one enters somewhat more intimately into the strange workings of the human soul in its development. It can then be felt how our soul, before it is able to explain the things of the world outside and to prove the divine life and weaving of the spirit in all things, has to be inwardly certain that there is such a divine source, that there is a supersensible behind all that is sensible. She can experience the certainty of this supersensory within herself and yet be unable to see this supersensory shining throughout the universe. Oh, it is a lofty goal to behold the spirit in its form, as it is the creative source of all that surrounds us in the great world, as all that surrounds us in the great world wells up from the spirit. To do this, man must first develop the highest powers of the soul within himself.

The supersensible, which sleeps hidden in the normal human consciousness as a higher self, must first be evoked by man in order to ascend to the higher level of his spirit's development. One can sense that something like this exists. But then one also comes to another realization: if one has any sense of reality, of true existence, one must say to oneself: I can only reach my ultimate goal if I see how everything lives and is permeated by the spirit, how spirit is in all things. But I myself, as I stand in the world with my sensual body, so I am, as it were, crystallized out, born out of the spirit — out of which I am born, without my being involved, which I can ultimately achieve again through the highest knowledge. In a mysterious way, unconscious to myself, I have come from this land of the supersensible, into which I want to penetrate again through my knowledge. There we have the other shore, of which the “fairytale” speaks, the land beyond the river, where the beautiful lily dwells, which represents the highest world and life view, which represents the soul power to which man can develop. From there comes the mysterious being, the ferryman, who brings the will-o'-the-wisps over from the other side. Through real powers, man is transported into this world, where he stands as if surrounded by darkness – hence the mysterious words spoken by the ferryman, who brings us from the transcendental world to the land on this side of the river, who may only bring the beings across, but no one over. In no way can man return to where he came from except through birth. Other paths must be taken.

Then the will-o'-the-wisps ask how they can enter the realm of the beautiful lily, that is, how a single soul power can merge into the harmony of soul powers in such a way that it ascends to the highest. The snake then suggests two means: One is that which can be given by itself, when it allows itself to be transported by the Serpent at midday, when the sun is at its highest point. The will-o'-the-wisps say: 'That is a time when we do not like to travel. Yes, why? It is simply quite beyond the grasp of the Abstract-Lover, who wants to live only in abstract ideas and concepts, who wants to achieve everything only through combinations and conclusions, to make the transition as represented by the snake, through mystical devotion to things, through seeking mystical communion with things. This mystical communion cannot always be attained either. I recall that a great mystic of the Alexandrian school confessed in his old age that he had only experienced that great moment a few times in his life, when the soul feels ripe to delve so deeply that the spirit of the infinite awakens and that mystical moment occurs in which the God in the breast is experienced by the human being himself. These are moments at noon, when the sun of life is at its highest, when something like this can be experienced, and for those who always want to be ready with their abstract ideas, they say: anyone who ever has real thoughts must reach the highest level, for them such midday hours of life, which must be seen as a grace of earthly life, are no time to travel. For such abstract thinkers, there must always be a moment to solve the riddles of the world. Then the snake points out another way they can get across, namely through the shadow of the giant, that strange being that can do nothing for itself, cannot carry the slightest weight, not even a bundle of rice on its shoulder. At dusk, when half-light spreads, when the giant lets the shadow fall over the river that separates the sensual from the supersensual, then people can also cross over. What kind of a strange being is this giant? If we want to understand this giant, we must bear in mind that Goethe was well aware of those powers of the soul that lie, so to speak, below the threshold of consciousness. In the case of normal people, these powers only emerge during dreams. However, if we speak in a spiritual scientific sense, they belong to the subordinate clairvoyant powers that not attained through the development of the soul, but which occur particularly in primitive souls in the form of presentiments, second sight, and all that is connected with a soul that has not yet progressed very far, from which a certain uncontrollable and uncontrolled clairvoyance wells up.

Through such clairvoyant powers, there is no denying that a person can get some ideas about the supernatural world, and many people today still prefer to come to the supernatural world through such ideas or through spiritualistic images than through development, through the real upliftment of the soul into the land of the supernatural. What belongs to the realm of the subconscious, to the realm of the soul, that is not illuminated by what one can call clear mind, what one can call the light of insight, what one can call self-control, what is also like dream-like knowledge in life, is represented to us in this giant. In fact, one cannot truly recognize anything through this subconscious, because it is very weak compared to real knowledge, something that cannot be controlled anywhere, something that cannot be relied upon, so to speak.

If you wanted to personify this subconscious, you couldn't do better than a human being who is unable to carry the slightest weight. Through such subconscious knowledge, man — if he wants to develop it alone — is not able to recognize in a controlled way the slightest thing that stands on a sure basis, that has weight for our world view. But the shadow of this subconscious plays a great role in the whole of cultural life. Oh, that shows through everything — and only one word needs to be spoken to [characterize] the shadow, which for many human souls actually leads satisfactorily into the realm of the supersensible: the word 'superstition'. If countless people did not have superstition, which is the shadow of the subconscious, which prefers to operate not in the light of clear ideas but in the twilight, they would have no idea of the supersensible world, and for countless people today superstition is still the shadow of the subconscious, which leads them in the twilight hours of the soul life into the realm of the supersensible. One need not even enumerate the various manifestations of superstition in the history of civilization; one need only consider how people come to Theosophy, to spiritual science, which seeks to convey something to us from the supersensible world, something that only those people can comprehend who are willing to make great efforts to lift their soul higher. We want to ascend to the higher beings. But many make themselves comfortable, they want the spirits to descend to us instead of us rising to them. They are happy when a medium is found somewhere who, from the realm of the subconscious, testifies to the existence of the supersensible world. Not only inferior minds pay homage to what flourishes so abundantly as “spiritualism,” but even scholars who do not want to admit that the soul can be raised to the heights of the spirit through its own development. It is not said that the things that happen are not true, but distinguishing between truth and error is extremely difficult, and only for the initiated is it possible to exercise scientific control.

Goethe wants to point out this shadow of the subconscious, this whole vast realm that eludes wise self-knowledge and self-control, this power of the soul. But he does not point it out like a polemicist – Goethe was never a polemicist – he is aware that every power of the soul, at its level, even if it has to be suppressed at another level, has its importance, so he does not say: Beware of the giant, but he even finds it useful here to have the snake give the advice to the erring ones that they should have themselves translated by the giant's shadow at dusk. Strangely enough, this advice is repeated today when scholars do not want to bite into theosophy. Then well-meaning people come and say: let a spiritualist session convince you of a supersensible world, then you will be introduced to it in a plausible way. But superstition plays a great role in attracting attention, in directing the human mind to the supersensible world, and it must be clearly understood that Goethe, who wanted to present the entire field of soul forces as in a symphonic harmony, really believed, as this superstition, when it does not degenerate into wild superstition, has its good reason in the soul forces, which do not all come with sober, clear concepts, but first say to themselves: We can penetrate deeply, deeply into the secrets of things - but we would rather first hold it with intuitions of their secrets. First sense these secrets, do not immediately find our way into sharp contours! This intuitive restraint in relation to things is very important, since it should play a part in the entire life and weaving of our soul development.

Goethe wanted to show that what was expressed so clearly in outer nature was expressed in a higher way in the forces of the soul. I do not want to point out how Goethe, if he had not written a poem, a drama, a Wilhelm Meister, a Werther, would have been a shining personality for all time through his scientific discoveries. That in addition to his better-known scientific discoveries, he found a certain law that was not thought up or speculated by him, but which we will see is deeply rooted in the things themselves, like a leitmotif in all of nature's work, and which could be called the law of balance, in all external natural things as well. That nature has a certain measure of development for every being, can alter it on one side or the other, and can allow multiplicity and diversity to emerge from it. Look at the giraffe! Nature has used a certain measure of forces for the giraffe's activity, using more strength for the development of the front body, the neck, which is why the hindquarters are stunted! Look at the mole! Here nature devotes all its forces to the body, which is why the little feet remain stunted. Goethe showed how one can understand the difference in form between a dromedary and a lion and how different organs result from applying uniform measures in one direction one time and in the other direction another time. We see how a typical structure expresses itself in its diversity: in one case, the lower jaw develops teeth; in another, the lower jaw remains toothless and horns develop. When Goethe enunciated this law, it was naturally thought to be the saying of a poet who understood nothing of natural science, who was a layman, a dilettante. But in 1830, in the French Chamber, during his dispute with Cuvier, a French naturalist drew attention to this law under the name “balancement des organes”. The future will have much to say about this “balancement des organes” because it leads deep into the formal properties of the various entities. Goethe also applied this law to spiritual life. He recognized that there is also such a thing in the soul that expresses the individual at a higher level in the individual soul forces, so that he says: There are human beings who develop the special quality that is represented by the will-o'-the-wisps. They represent will-o'-the-wisps in life itself, false prophets who can do no other than communicate what they have learned to others and pour out their gold. Other people who can place a mystical light in nature, like the snakes that submerge themselves in nature. In short, Goethe wanted to show how, in general, normal life in the outer world, souls present themselves in such a way that they develop one-sided powers. How man can reach the higher level of knowledge by inwardly representing the type of the human soul, a balance, a right interaction of all soul forces, linked to the most sober soul force, the sense of foreboding. Not as superstition does, which loses itself in foreboding and lets the power of intelligence be enslaved by the foreboding of the nature of things.

On the one hand, Goethe shows how man can become one-sided, but he also shows how, if he wants to attain higher knowledge, he must strive towards that summit, which is symbolized by the beautiful lily, the inner harmonious balance and the interaction of the individual soul forces.

Now we know that the serpent, having received, so to speak, the inner radiance within, comes into the subterranean temple. Now it can distinguish between those spiritual worlds that approach man, that must inspire man, that can give strength, and those that the human soul must properly have within it if it is to ascend to a higher existence. There are certain powers in the human soul that it must have if it is to ascend to a higher level. But if a person wants to attain this higher level without having found the right path at the right time through the inspiration of these world powers, if he wants to grasp the highest that can be achieved in knowledge and world view prematurely, then this world view is something that can kill, confuse and paralyze him in his soul. Therefore, the youth who wants to unite with the lily before he is ripe, he will first be paralyzed, yes, killed. That is, Goethe has vividly expressed what he once expressed in a short saying:

Everything that frees our minds without giving us mastery over ourselves is corrupting.

There is a high level of human development through which the human soul can grow together with the fruits of all knowledge. It stands before us like a distant prospect. Our striving must be directed towards maturing, towards shaping ourselves in such a way that we are in the right mood, in the right inner state, and do not receive the highest in an immature way. So the youth is killed first and is to be led first through the endowment of soul powers, represented by the kings. Before he can connect with the beautiful lily, the snake leads him to the three kings. Meaningful conversations surround these kings like secrets. The golden king is the supersensible power that can be kindled in our soul, which gives the right wisdom so that the power of wisdom harmonizes with the other soul forces. The silver king represents piety. And for Goethe, piety means something quite different than in the ordinary sense.

Those who know Goethe also know that for him, the cult of beauty and art were intimately connected with religious feeling; therefore, beauty is what always makes him feel pious, so that for him the king of wisdom is represented by gold. The king who is endowed with the soul power that generates religion through beauty is the silver one. But that which is to permeate our impulses of will, that which wants to penetrate us in the ordered life of the soul as the power of the will, is represented by the brazen king.

Our soul forces must be under our complete control, so that we can distinguish them, so that we see the world in the right way, full of wisdom, and our feelings do not play tricks on us. That the life of feeling is not overcome by the life of wisdom and the life of wisdom in its turn by the life of the will and vice versa, but that the three soul powers arise separately, specified in the higher soul life. As for the fourth king, it may be said that every human being has wisdom, piety and willpower within him, but that they are mixed together in a chaotic way, like gold, silver and ore. Then a higher age of development begins for the soul when this chaotic mixing of soul powers ceases, and man is not even pushed by an impulse of will, at one time his feelings run away with him, at another time he is led by wisdom alone. No, when the non-chaotic, as it happens through the fourth king, is mixed, when man clearly separates within himself the realm of soul power, that of wisdom, that of the feeling of beauty, that of the religious mood, that that is imbued with the good will to do good, so that he rules over this realm and is not driven by it, then he will come to that point in time when one can say: It is time, I must undertake something else. A soul that is led unprepared before the realm of wisdom, beauty and power would hardly see anything of these things.

The man with the lamp represents a soul force that, in a certain sense, prepares people for wisdom, beauty and strength. It is the peculiarity of this lamp that it can only shine where there is already another light. What kind of light comes from the lamp of the old man? The same light, the light of religious world view, which must precede the actual wisdom knowledge, radiates from our hearts, even if we have not yet penetrated into things. It is a light that can only shine where other light is already present. Religions can only produce faith where they arise through this or that preparation, or where they are adapted to what people feel under the climate, certain cultural epochs and so on. There, therefore, the serpent, which wants to penetrate through mere inner mystical soul power to wisdom, piety, power, must encounter the kings, the soul forces, with the light of faith, which leads the soul to higher knowledge, which prepares the soul. Thus Goethe shows how the right time must approach. How it must first be guided by the light of faith and how it can then, when the soul has prepared itself, guided by the light of faith, ascend to an age where it has experienced many things. How it can come to the direct grasp of the soul power in its separateness as well as in its harmonious interaction. It is shown how man can prepare himself here on the physical plane on this side of the river. How on the other side, if man connects himself prematurely with the heights of human emotional life, he suffers damage in his soul, so to speak, perishes.

And now the strange figure of the old man's wife with the lamp. This woman, who is described to us as all too human, who is chosen by the will-o'-the-wisps to pay with fruits of the earth — she represents primitive human nature, which cannot rise to knowledge, but when connected to the man with the lamp, with the light, she can believe. What is the light of faith capable of? It can transform stones into gold, wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones. This is all characterized by the fact that the lamp-black pug that has eaten the gold that the will-o'-the-wisps have shaken off is transformed into precious stones by the old man's lamp. This shows the power of faith, this completely wonderful power of faith, this advancement of higher knowledge. Or how it is able to show us all things in such a way that they really present their divine aspects in a certain way. That they show what is in them even before they have reached the supersensible in them through knowledge. The dead stones show: what is endowed with wisdom is transformed into gold by the light of this lamp. This means that faith is able to already sense in things what wisdom later recognizes in full light, and how all things are not as they appear to us in the sensory world, but that they have a deeper side. This is symbolically indicated by how the light of faith in the old man's lamp transforms all things. Man, if he remains in his healthy nature, cannot attain to science, to knowledge, then he actually has something in him that is much more connected with the mysterious forces that stand at the border of the supersensible. Compared to the person who has come to abstract science and easily becomes a doubter and skeptic. How he loses his footing, becomes insecure, nervous about all knowledge. How secure some original primitive nature is, as represented by this old woman, who is so in touch with nature, who can give what the will-o'-the-wisps cannot give. Such people have an original feeling through which they are aware of the connections with the infinite, the divine, which lives and weaves in all nature as the supernatural. That is why, when learned people with their doubts come to some original people, there comes that compassionate smile that says: No matter how clever you are, no matter how much you know about nature with your learning, we know what you do not know; certain knowledge brings us together with that from which we ourselves originate. The woman can pay, which the will-o'-the-wisps cannot.

The human being must attain not only emotional certainty. He is connected with a supersensible realm, as is represented by the rule of the temple with the kings, where there is not only an inner, mystical sense of security, but the human being must ascend so that he is truly introduced to the realm of the supersensible, sees the spiritual life and activity. The temple must be transported from the underground into the overground. The temple of knowledge itself must rise above the boundary line, above the river between the supersensible and the sensual world. And it is conceivable that a soul which has worked on itself in this way, has gone up the stages of development, has those holy midday moments of life in a certain way in hand, can pass through them into the spiritual and over into the sensual world. That it can draw attention to how the Divine-Spiritual reigns when an event of external nature is shown and can point again to the pure Divine-Spiritual that is in the supersensible realm, so that it is achieved that not only exquisite, particularly favored spirits can cross the river. This is to be achieved through spiritual science in modern culture. Goethe is a prophet of theosophy in his “Fairy Tale,” in that he shows that not only the favored mystical natures, who have innate mysticism, have midday moments of life when they can cross over the river and find the realm of the supersensible in the bright sunshine of life, but that there is a soul development that everyone can undergo. Every soul, naturally, even though it is laborious and full of renunciation, can all wander over and across, from and to the transcendental realm, when what the mystery of faith is has occurred.

“How many secrets do you know?” – “Three,” replied the old man. “Which is the most important?” asked the silver king. “The revealed,” replied the old man.

This saying [of the revealed secret] often occurs in Goethe because Goethe, like all true mystics, was of the opinion that there is nothing spiritual that does not experience itself externally, materially, somehow, that one can find connections between the material and the spiritual everywhere. It is only a matter of finding the right point, the right place in the universe where the spiritual expresses itself externally, physiognomically. The secret, apparently! Not so much how to seek the spiritual in a roundabout way, but to connect with things, like the snake. And one also finds a way into the spiritual through communion with the material world. The revealed secret is the one that can be found everywhere and to which only a certain maturity of the soul belongs. The three secrets are none other than how wisdom, beauty and piety and virtue should live in us, not separately. Characteristically, a fourth is necessary, which the old man cannot know. But he can know that it is time to say it! What does the snake whisper in the old man's ear? That she is willing to sacrifice herself, that she is willing to sacrifice her own body, just to build a bridge over the river out of what arises from her.

The great secret of the sacrifice of the lower soul forces, which should only be the path to the higher self: I want to sacrifice all that which is connected with the lower entities of nature, which I have sought, obedient to the laws of the world. Those who do not have this dying and becoming remain only a gloomy guest on the dark earth.

First, man must go through all that leads him to the events and facts of nature, in order to then offer up what he has gained and experienced with his lower self as a sensual being, and ascend.

Jakob Böhme expressed this mystery beautifully:

He who does not die before he dies
will perish when he dies.

He who enters the supersensible world through the gate of death without having killed the lower powers of the soul, without having died to the lower self before passing through the physical gate of death, would not prepare himself in this embodiment to see the true spiritual being before death!

The soul saves itself from ruin in the lower self when it becomes like the snake, which does not merely remain in the clefts, but sacrifices itself. This means that there is a power of the soul in us that can connect with all nature beings. This power must first be sacrificed, however, for the sake of higher knowledge, so that what must first be sacrificed is all that is lower egoism, all that base selfishness, in order to attain higher freedom. Thus that which first led us into the realm of this world itself becomes the path to the beyond. We ascend into the supersensible world only over that which we have sacrificed ourselves. The will-o'-the-wisps are only able to unlock the gate. They have the keys. Science has the keys, as Mephistopheles has the keys to the realm of the mothers; he can unlock, but not lead into, the real secrets. We can recognize the value of the sciences, appreciate the intelligent and abstract in human life, for it leads us to the gate. But then the higher soul forces must begin if we want to be admitted into the temple. Thus we see how these will-o'-the-wisp actually play out their role to the end, and how Goethe, in the development of his fairy tale poetry, captures the meaning of the soul forces down to the last details. The “fairytale” is such that with this kind of explanation, every word, every sentence is proof that a deeper meaning is being introduced into the fairy tale. Through the effect of the lamp, the old man's house is lined with gold. What remains of religion, of the different religions? Tradition!

Let us try to imagine the whole thing in concrete terms in our cultural process. Let us go to our libraries and search in the historical works on this and that religion. How much of the gold is stored there, how much is illuminated by the light of the lamp, how the abstractions come in, licking up the gold, gleaning the history of religions from the books and making new ones out of old books. Even where wisdom becomes history, stored up in libraries, the will-o'-the-wisps can nourish themselves on it; they even walk around full of erudition with what comes first from these sources. It agrees less with the pug, the natural creature, the unlearned one, who dies from this wisdom and must first be revived. First, through the light of the lamp, he is transformed into precious stones and can be transformed from precious stone through contact with the lily. The lily can enliven everything that has gone through death, that has undergone this – what does not have this dying and becoming – a bright guest must have become this on this earth. He who wishes to endure the touch of the lily must have passed through the death of the lower self.

Thus the young man only becomes ready to come into contact with the beautiful lily after he has been killed. He can only enter the Temple of Wisdom after the snake has sacrificed itself. When all this has happened, the young man can then be led to the temple. When the sacrifice has been made, the soul is led upwards from its subterranean existence to the realization that everything is permeated and interwoven by the spirit. Then the temple is led from below upwards, and the human being is endowed with that which the individual soul powers can give him. Wisdom gives him that which is expressed in the sentence of the golden king:

Recognize the Highest.

The symbol is the oak wreath. The silver king gives him the sceptre and says:

Feed the sheep

as a sign of his endowment with the power of piety. The king of brass hands him the sword and shield and tells him:

Keep your sword at your left side, and your right hand free.

Right-hand virtue is not aggressive in its approach, but it stands strong and firm on its feet, and when it is a matter of human dignity and human destiny, it is ready to defend these and to work in the world in human love and beneficial human action. Now the young man unites with the beautiful lily. The individual powers of the soul are illuminated by true love. But the soul can only feel this when it has risen above ordinary love, when it is absorbed in love for the spiritual. Wisdom, beauty, piety, virtue, they develop and promote the soul's development. Love not only has to grow, it invigorates, shapes and harmonizes everything. It lifts the soul up a step. There we then see how the human being, when he ascends, when he finds himself in that temple where he can experience knowledge, how he comes to see, but now in holy awe, how the small temple in the large temple sees the highest, the secret of secrets, the human being himself, how he passes over as a spiritual being from the spiritual world to the hut of the , where man is placed as a small world, as a small temple in the larger temple, showing so beautifully when the soul moves up to the steps of higher knowledge, then he attains the secrets of the world through wisdom, piety, and virtue. What Goethe so beautifully felt as the Spinozian love of God, the development of the highest powers of the soul, comes to the riddles, the secrets of the world, but as the highest of the secrets, which we only see again as a small temple in the great, the secret of man himself and his connection with the divine being. The giant comes last, also groping around, and then becomes the hour hand of time. Our knowledge becomes spiritual, it dissipates when we ascend in our soul life, and what is external materialism is the consciousness of those laws that work mechanically. The giant basically stands for the subconscious, for everything that comes from the forces of the soul that also work in the subconscious. This may only remain in one when we look up at what is the utmost for our inwardness, how the times follow one another, what the outer rhythm of time is. This has its ultimate justification, and mere mechanical knowledge has a justification there. One would like to say: Goethe may have had in mind when he came up with this idea of the giant, who finally becomes the hour hand of the world, what superstition has been done with the art of numbers, the various structures in space, what is only a superstitious shadow of a greater knowledge that has remained from the old days of the old worldviews. But one thing remains as justified: to use what has been recognized to form a kind of chronometer for the processes that surround people.

Thus, in a certain respect, we find everything that Goethe felt was necessary for the development of the soul's powers translated into vivid images. If you want to ascend to the highest, then you must develop the soul's powers in such a way that it can only be expressed symbolically in rich, meaningful images. Then you will come close to what Goethe wanted to say when you try to gain an insight into these images from the whole of Goethe's world view. But you must be aware that what is contained in the fairy tale is infinitely richer than I have said, and that all of this is actually only a suggestion of the kind in which Goethe's fairy tale should be sought and felt. But perhaps it is possible to get a sense of the inner wealth and greatness from which Goethe created with such immeasurable productive power. How right he is when he says that the true, the beautiful, the truly artistic can only be an expression of the general truth that permeates the world and that people can recognize. And this was also what lived in Goethe as a conviction, what led him from step to step in restless pursuit; this is what draws us to Goethe, so to speak. Goethe is one of those minds that work like only the very greatest.

You read a work by Goethe once in your life. You think you have understood it. After five years you read it again and realize: I didn't understand it then, but only now. Then again after five years, and you realize how much you have discovered that you couldn't see before because you weren't mature enough. Only now, after you have experienced so much yourself, only now can you understand the work. Five years later you read it again, and then perhaps you are so happy that you say to yourself: At the time you did not understand it; you must, you can wait until you become more mature and more mature, to be completely satisfied as you grow into it more and more. This feeling is only experienced by the most exquisite minds in the development of humanity. In such people we see the leaders of human culture. One gets an inkling of the infinity of the soul's content by being able to penetrate ever deeper into it. Then one counts him among those spirits about whom, summarizing today's reflection, we can say:

Like stars shining
in the sky of eternal being
are the spirits sent by God.
May all human souls in the realm of becoming on earth
succeed in seeing their flames of light!

Dear attendees!

It was in the late summer of 1831 – that is, [not quite] a year before Goethe's death – that the great poet sealed a package. The contents of this package were to remain untouched until after his death.

What Goethe sealed at the time was the conclusion of his great life's work, the second part of his “Faust” as it is presented to us today. And the words that Goethe spoke to one of his friends when he had completed this great work of poetry sound significant. He said: “My life's work is now complete, and basically it doesn't matter what I do now and whether I do anything at all.

It is a peculiar feeling that must creep into our soul when we see such a personality arrive at the height of life and at the same time in the evening of life, and when such a feeling passes through the soul of this personality. This statement by Goethe implies that our poet feels something deeply inwardly concluded in his life's work: he feels, so to speak, that he has brought to an end and to a goal something that he had been working on for a long, long time – not years, but decades! And when we consider that the work in which he has invested his highest ideals and views of life has been completed, then we must attach a very special importance to such a work – such a rich, meaningful life that can speak of itself with such inner harmony and with the consciousness of having reached a goal [that he has given the world what he had to give, that is the deep meaning]. To have given to humanity the best you have to say! [With this great poet, we can understand how his work grows with development, becoming richer and richer.]

We can get an impression of what that means if we put ourselves back into the poet's life, into that time when he, in September of the year 1783, in Ilmenau, carved into a [wooden wall] the words:

Over all the hills
There is peace,
In all the treetops
You can barely feel
A breath;
The little birds are silent in the forest.
Just wait, soon
You too will rest.

Even if we have to understand such a poem based on the situation and perhaps have to remember that it was born in such a moment of inspiration as Goethe had – it was evening – out of the evening mood, we can still say that these words, so full of meaning, were written out of Goethe's mood at the time, out of that mood of heavy worries of the inner life, when heavy riddles weighed on his soul.

It was at the end of his life, when he was back at the place where he had written these words. He reread them in old age, and with tears of emotion he looked back to this youthful mood. What lies between two such moments in Goethe's life! What ultimately lies in Goethe's life between the time when he began to invest all his thirst for knowledge as a yearning for the ideals of life in the youthful [first parts of] Faust, and the moment shortly before his death, which brings this work to a close! Oh, it is very peculiar that we can follow several steps in this work of the poet's, where it shows us how it grows and grows with the poet's personality. Even when he arrived in Weimar in his [mid] seventies, he brought with him certain parts of his “Faust”. That was the first form in which he expressed his life ideals and riddles. This version was not available in print for a long time – it was preserved until the nineteenth century, when it was found in the estate of a Weimar court lady. Rediscovered when the archives were opened, the “Faust” was printed as a fragment in 1790. [From then on, the “Faust” grew more and more.]

Today, my task is to characterize this mighty poem from the outside and thus create the conditions for tomorrow's lecture, which will delve deeper into the profound secrets. There has been much talk about the incomprehensibility of the second part. In response to this, I would simply like to raise the question: Do you believe that a personality such as Goethe, at the end of his life, is as easy to understand as he was in his earlier years? Should we not rather endeavor to penetrate with all our might into what he had to say in his old age?

We have three versions of Faust: first, the youthful Faust, which is called the first part. This is available to us in the manuscript that was found in the Weimar estate of the aforementioned court lady. The second version dates from 1790. And the third appeared in 1808. This is the form in which the first part of “Faust” is now available to us. From then until the 1820s, Goethe did not think about continuing his “Faust.” [We will see what the reasons for this were.] For Goethe, the problem was too great to simply bring it to a conclusion. It was only in 1820, when he was at the height of his powers, that the poet took up the work again and completed it with energy and strength in the last year of his life. Oh, in Goethe we have a person who is already confronted with the greatest issues of life in his youth, but at the same time a personality who, from decade to decade, was able to look into his own soul and say: Now you have come a step further.

And when we see how far above us this ever-striving personality stands, must we not be inspired to follow the steps he took between the first and second parts of his “Faust”? [Truly, there is a tremendous difference between the stages of the first part of “Faust” and between the first and second parts.] If we first consider the figure that could have been printed in 1775, we would see a personal work in which Goethe's most intimate yearning and striving have been incorporated. Everything that Goethe has felt in terms of mystery and profound experience has been poured into this work.

Then we find that “Fragment” that first came to our attention in 1790. There we find a remarkable difference compared to the first one: Goethe is already more serene. What first comes to us as a personality with an individual touch and nuance is more elevated into the impersonal and serene. We feel more that what is being discussed concerns not only Goethe in his youth, but also all of us to a greater or lesser extent.

And if we then consider the figure from 1808, we find that he [“Faust”] has moved more from the human into the superhuman, into a sphere where the powers of heaven fight for man and man is placed in the struggle between good and evil – expressed in particular in the “Prologue in Heaven”. In the first part, we see the striving of the Goethe soul to participate as a human being, but in 1808 we see him placed in the whole of humanity, his perspective broadened from the human-personal to a grand tableau of the world.

But in the inner character we find that the first part contains something that Goethe himself, in the age of life, feels as something personal and unclear, not as something universally human. Those who delve into it find something theoretical in it: the way a person speaks when faced with things unknown to him, of which he has only a presentiment. The second part – however strange this may sound in view of our usual preconceptions – is a realistic work, flowing from the most fundamental experiences after he could say of himself that he had arrived at a satisfactory solution to all the questions of life. [In this respect the second part is raised even higher above the personal level]. Therefore, if we understand him correctly, Faust fills us with the same satisfaction as all literary works of which we can say: here an artistic individuality has struggled to speak to all people, to inner peace, to inner harmony.

How Goethe allowed the content of “Faust” to flow out of his innermost being can help us understand why the first part is more theoretical and the second more realistic in the way it recounts Goethe's experiences of what he experienced.

If we want to find Goethe in his “Faust”, we have to realize that the goal was contained in his disposition from childhood on. That is why it is so significant that seven-year-old Goethe already felt unsatisfied as a boy [from what his environment told him] about the great underpinnings of life. Of course, he cannot express it then, only feel and sense it; but he feels in the direction that he was later able to present in such sharp contours. And so we find that one day he is looking for an expression for his feelings about the divine: He takes a music stand and places on it everything he can find of natural products in his father's collection of natural objects. He has erected a kind of altar for himself, and through the products of nature he allows the creator, the creative spirit behind it all, to speak to him. For the seven-year-old boy intended to make an offering to the god he was seeking. And on top of it he places a small incense stick, and he takes a burning glass, collects the rays of the rising sun with the burning glass and ignites the small incense stick. He has made a sacrifice to his god at the very source of nature. [This is the direction of Goethe's soul, his striving towards the sources of life.] In his memoirs, he himself says that as a boy he wanted to sacrifice to the deity. This urge remained in his soul and was expressed in all his later endeavors.

Thus we see him, when he was supposed to be studying law as a student in Leipzig, mainly occupied with what he could take from the natural science of the time; and in all other sciences and knowledge of life he looks around, just as he had looked around at the end of the sixties [of the seventeenth century] in all knowledge. But he does not seek [individual insights] as one otherwise [as a young student] sought under the constraints of circumstances. He sought to blaze a trail to insights of all kinds; he strove [for a general knowledge of the spiritual source of humanity], thereafter, what was then expressed in abstract terms, in sober, dry observations of external life impressions, that he sought to connect with the innermost longings and needs of his soul: the insights should bring him enlightenment about the riddles of life. The knowledge of the time was not suited for this purpose.

Everything that came to him was connected in Goethe with his very individual quest, with all the questions that arose in him about the infinite. And his life, even in his youth, was such as to point him to the spiritual and eternal. But that which was so suited to deepen his whole life from youth on was particularly expressed in various events of his life.

Only two of these will be mentioned here: During a serious illness, he felt close to death. Yes, death stood at his bedside in his early youth. He was touched by this event in his life by the transience of all externals, and his soul was also directed outwardly to the pursuit of the immortal.

Anyone who follows Goethe's life at the time will see how this event deepened his life. He was suited to encounter very special [intellectual circles] in Frankfurt. And the personalities who, in the most eminent sense, direct the soul towards investigating [the riddles of life], the spirit and the sources of existence, who have worked their way out of the traditional moods of religion, who ask: Where are the limits of our knowledge? How much do we have to leave to mere religious traditions and how much to our own insight? [Those who do not ask about the limits of knowledge, about the limits of science and revelation] did not feel at home with those who were Goethe's friends at the time.

Meanwhile, a different mood prevailed among those in the midst of whom stood the sincere Fräulein von Klettenberg, whom Goethe later immortalized in his “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul.” In this circle, people said to each other: There is something in the human soul that can be developed, that can mature ever higher and higher. Man is not always mature enough to recognize the highest, but forces slumber in his soul that he can develop [that can be brought out if one strives and works on himself. One then acquires inner spiritual powers that are otherwise not present in the soul]. And what he cannot achieve, no matter how humanly he tries, he can achieve if he develops powers that cannot be achieved in ordinary life. The content of this circle of friends was the development of the soul; because it was their conviction that there is something in the soul that remains unconscious, or let's say subconscious, in ordinary life. [In ordinary life, people are unconcerned about the mysterious powers that are there.] If a person lives in such a way that he devotes himself only to sensory perception, and processes this sensory perception only with the intellect, he does not approach the sources of life, he passes by the hidden powers of the soul, which he can develop and work on. And when a person has brought himself to a higher level of development, then he penetrates deeper into what is hidden behind the objects. Then the spiritual, the eternal, the imperishable comes to meet him. Such was the mood of these friends.

So you can see that these people had a different attitude to the question of the immortality of the human soul than many people have in their lives, where they often refrain from seeking insight into what is eternal in nature or in art, or leave it to traditional lore. It was not so with these friends. They said to themselves: There is something immortal out there in nature, and there are forces that are in the human organization as they are out there in nature. What is transitory and shows itself to be transitory on the outside is also transitory within the human being. And if we only see our powers with this transitory, then the immortal will never reveal itself. But in the hidden depths of the soul lie deeper powers of the human being, powers that are covered as if by a veil because the human being only gives some to the outer sense perceptions and the mind that combines them. Through such powers, which are purified and which give objective knowledge [of the eternal] [in the same way as the intellect gives it for the sensual world], we must purify the senses and try to distract them from the transitory. That is what they said to themselves: When I connect with the eternal in my own soul, then I stand spiritually face to face with the immortal, then I have brought it out of myself, then nothing can take away the certainty of immortality, then I am connected with the spirit in my own breast, which comes from the Spirit of God just as sense things come from the outer belonging and harmony.

Goethe felt a deep kinship with these souls. But there was much that was unclear in these souls. What I have now explained with certain words was expressed by them more in the form of intuitions, of unexpressed feelings of the soul; it was expressed more in certain soul gestures than in sharply outlined insights.

It was into this society that young Goethe came. And this society had a certain preference for a certain kind of writing that emerged from a medieval knowledge that had already passed away. Writings that expressed the way in which one sought to approach the great secrets of human nature. Goethe also came into contact with these writings, and we can see what the basic mood of his heart was when we see him searching in these medieval writings with an unceasing thirst for knowledge, in order to find means to develop the hidden forces of his soul that would finally lead to the knowledge of the immortal. One such work was that of Valentinus Basilius and Theophrastus Paracelsus, [Welling's “Opus macrocabalisticum et theosophicum”, but especially Kirchweger's “Aurea catena Homeri”], which he himself calls cabalistic-theosophical.

What do these writings contain that a person with a modern attitude at the time would delve into such writings as if a modern-day Haeckelian or other modern educated person would occupy themselves with the strange writings of Eliphas Levy? [If an ordinary person delved into them at the time, they would consider these writings to be pure nonsense, a flight of fancy.] And that is exactly how it was in those days: a modern person would feel that it was pure nonsense, that only a fantasist could devote himself to such things. One can understand this attitude, then and now. From a certain point of view, it can be recognized as a justified attitude. One need not be surprised that someone who is not far enough along in the development of his soul can only see pure nonsense in it. Goethe found more than mere nonsense in it. But some of it was pure nonsense. It still belonged to the time before the invention of printing, when everything was still written by hand; to the time when science had not yet been enriched by what Galileo and Kepler had taught. In those days, people sought to understand nature in a completely different way. If we want to characterize the way in which people wanted to approach the source in that time before the great achievements of natural science, we have to say that before that time, people sought to enter into nature and the world with everything that was in their soul, to enter into nature and the world with everything in his soul, not only with his intellect; but to purify his will and feeling in such a way that he also recognizes objectively with his feeling in the same way that mathematical knowledge searches. [Something that today's man can hardly imagine. In the same way, desire can become a power of knowledge. But for that, man must change it; he must work on it; he must purify and purify it of all selfish feelings. In the same way, the will can be elevated to a power of knowledge. But for that, man must not leave feeling, sensation and desire as they are – he must work on them!

The circle of friends around Goethe knew how to work on it. While the mind can be left as it is, because it is already as one can leave it, [one must reshape feeling, emotion, will and desire so that they become powers of knowledge]. Only through this work can one extract the hidden abilities of the soul that give man a knowledge of the eternal. The intellect, which is conveniently left alone, can only provide enlightenment about the transitory. This kind of knowledge through will and feelings had been more neglected [compared to intellectual knowledge at the time], even in Goethe's youth. On the other hand, what was gained through external sensory perception and the intellect prevailed, as is also the case today. But Goethe knew the limits of sensory-intellectual knowledge. [So he could not really find his way around in these writings, which, since they were written by latecomers who no longer had their own knowledge, contained a lot of nonsense.] His soul received nourishment from these books, although he could not understand them. They contained much that was pure nonsense, but anyone who could see beyond that to what was more deeply contained in these writings could feel that there was knowledge lying dormant within them. And this is what Goethe felt: the realization that does not aim to take the world as it is, but to develop the soul, to shape it, to bring up the forces that lie dormant within it. (He now wants to develop the ability to grasp these within himself.)

In these writings, Goethe found strange figures that only a fool can find pleasing today. But there is something else behind these things; I will mention just one example. In that writing, “Aurea catena Homeri,” which made a particular impression on him, you will find a strange figure: two dragons. One formed at the top as a semicircle. It is full of life and gives the impression of a good being. Below, entwined with it, is a shriveled, dried-up dragon, which appears as a symbol of evil. The two are entwined in a circle. Within the circle are two triangles: one point facing upwards and the signs for the individual planets of our solar system at the corners.

How fascinated Goethe's soul must have been by such a sign, for what is experienced in the soul in relation to this sign does not leave the soul untouched. Inner soul forces stirred when he looked at this sign: what otherwise only served human needs, what will and desire is, stirred like the urge for knowledge. He felt something that is necessary for the knowledge of such writings.

If someone wants to say: Of course, if you just want to talk about the tasteless stuff, you show that you have no knowledge of science, such as philosophy and other sciences. This objection can be understood, even if one says: In our knowledge, we should see what is there in truth. What this fantastic stuff depicts does not depict truth. Those who speak in this way are absolutely right. But they do not know what is important! What matters is the impression that these images make on the soul; that they are precisely those that bring out what otherwise lies deep within the soul, that they have creative power for the soul. And Goethe felt how this sign affected him: “It affects your will,” he felt. It draws forces from your soul that connect with the universe. He felt that. But he felt something else as well, something terrible for him at the time. He was confronted with all these things, felt that they could trigger something in the soul, felt that they could work — but he did not feel the strength within himself to be able to let this something take effect. He only felt that they concealed something

and I cannot understand what I can sense there.

[He sensed something in them like the spirit of the world, but he cannot understand it through his education and his previous life.] It was terribly shattering for Goethe's soul when he sensed something like connections with higher soul forces, sensed what could flow out of this “Aurea catena Homeri”, and yet had to say to himself: You are not yet mature, you cannot penetrate the secrets of the world, your powers of knowledge have not yet matured. But he longed to follow such a path of knowledge. And so he came to other signs, to a symbol that represented not only the great world but also the working of the spirit on earth. He felt closer to it, but still was not able to extract the forces from the earth. Now we feel how what he experienced flowed into Faust. There he focuses on the title page of the 'Aurea catena Homeri'. It shows him how the forces go from planet to planet, how their inner relationship is indicated with human desires, [it draws them up to good, down to evil], in the forms of coiled dragons, with the triangles, one point of which is directed upwards. A few pages further on, he sees the picture that shows “heavenly powers ascending and descending”. There he must turn away, for he did not feel his powers ripe to understand this.

Now read the passage in Goethe's “Faust” that shows that you cannot grasp anything from ordinary knowledge, from scientific knowledge, nothing that is experienced in the depths of the soul:

There I stand now, I poor fool, And am as wise as before!

That was the mood when Goethe left Leipzig.

There he sought a different path in Frankfurt, as he expresses so beautifully in Faust. He opened the book of Nostradamus and saw the sign of the macrocosm. [There he sees the working of nature before his soul, he sees:]

How everything is woven into a whole,
One within the other, working and living!
How heavenly powers rise up and down
And pass each other the golden buckets!
With wings that smell of blessing
From heaven through the earth they penetrate,
Harmoniously resounding through the universe!

This is a beautiful and wonderful description of what so fascinated Goethe. This is how he expresses what he feels when he sees the sign of the first spirit. Then he turns to the sign that only concerns the processes that take place on earth. He sees the sign of the earth spirit. Again it fascinates him. Before, he felt the stirring of the powers that are otherwise expressed as interest and feeling for objects. These powers should now develop in the earth spirit sign in such a way that they become powers of knowledge. Try to imagine the powers that come into question as powers of knowledge for the soul; first the objective powers of the mind, the powers of thinking. These are easy to access. But then the powers of feeling and perception, which can only be purified in the described way and can be awakened by the signs that evoke the spiritual world. Now Goethe had unlocked such a sign, and now he felt that he was not yet ripe for it. He did not feel ripe to understand the powers of perception that connect only with the earth either. Not ripe!

Now something rises in his soul. But at first only terror and fear, which are reflected to us where “Faust” turns away from the earth spirit, whom he calls “terrible face”, and whereupon the earth spirit then says to him:

You resemble the spirit you understand, not me!

Thus Goethe's insights are reflected in the first part of “Faust”. But Goethe was not a personality who could necessarily remain a “fearfully cringing worm”; he was a personality who was powerful enough to strive on. What did the personality say to itself? It did not speak like other personalities who believe that they are seekers of knowledge and say: There are limits to knowledge. It is easy and comfortable to dismiss all this as nonsense. No! Goethe said to himself: I am not yet ready for this! That is something we can learn from Goethe: he said to himself, “You are not ready yet; you must first begin to work on yourself in order to mature to what is possible for the soul.” [Now he worked on himself to get ahead.] To achieve this, he now immersed himself in life in order to get to know life and people and science in all its aspects. And we see this when, after his time in Frankfurt, he comes to Strasbourg, looks around at nature, in order to grasp the things that he, as a seven-year-old boy, placed on his father's music stand, in order to get to know the divine-spiritual forces of being through their knowledge. But not only the divine-spiritual forces of what is formed externally in nature, but also of human life and its manifold forms. And now we can already see how he has the favorable opportunity to get to know all the ups and downs of the human soul, the human soul in its infinite kindness and love – but also in all its malicious, spiteful and harmful qualities, with all its longings, torments and sacrifices. [He experienced the greatest satisfaction, but also tormenting doubts, in the souls of people.] There he met the great personality of Herder in Strasbourg, a personality who strove throughout her entire life to come close to the sources of life, who also felt that the powers of her soul were not ripe. A terrible mood was in Herder's soul at that very moment, when, despite his titanic urge for knowledge, he loses courage and says to himself, [You cannot strive higher]. One's own inability is a general human inability. Herder was close to such moods, such moods had gained control in him and caused a lifestyle that was harsh and rejecting – only bearable for a soul like Goethe's, which was benevolent. Goethe had recognized the greatness of Herder's soul. And no matter how much Herder might have belittled him, Goethe knew that he was in the presence of greatness. And Goethe had a great soul, great enough not to pay attention to the unimportant when faced with the important. When he climbed the stairs of the Gasthof zum Heiligen Geist and unexpectedly saw this personality, who Herder introduced in a somewhat brusque manner – with his coat fluttering, his coat-tails criss-crossed in his pockets – Goethe sensed at a single glance that this personality was Herder, and he said: “You are Herder.” From that moment on, his respect for him increased.

Deep ideas lived in Herder, as we can find them, for example, in his treatise “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity”. But all this was not enough for him. Then Goethe got to know a tremendous striving that was on the verge of collapsing, and was held down by it. But Goethe had already learned from another personality the inadequacy of the ordinary mind: from his friend Merck. Of him, even the most well-meaning woman, Goethe's mother, said: “He can never leave Mephisto at home; he finds fault with everything.” Goethe saw these personalities, and he saw in them something that in turn had a significant effect on his soul: that they had particularly developed what he himself had in his own soul. As in a mirror, he saw his soul, himself! He saw the intellect into which error and superstition of the outer world creep. He sought to comprehend the spirit of the earth, which he has spoken in “Faust”:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth!
Birth and death,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So I create at the whirring loom of time,
And work the living garment of the Godhead.

He had tried out of inner urge to grasp the spirit and soul that spoke to him in the forces of life, in the images of the “Aurea catena Homeri.” But he had also felt that he was not yet ready to soar to these heights of the mind. He had now realized why: because there was still too much of the sensual interests in him. Now he knew that the spirit to which he still resembled too much was the most evil, the Mephisto spirit.

You resemble the spirit you understand,

the Earth Spirit could speak, who saw the Mephistophelian in Goethe's soul.

Now a good part of the idea for Faust shone forth in Goethe: Why can't human beings, in their ordinary feelings and perceptions, achieve the same kind of clear insight as they do in their thinking? Why are desire and perception not as powerful as the powers of thought? Because there are forces at work within us that are not ourselves, but which have an effect on us. The forces that we embrace with our actions and desires, according to both ancient and new spiritual science, are the forces of Lucifer, and these bring our desires down to such a level that they cannot become an objective power of knowledge in this life. This is how Lucifer works.

But there is also another kind of force that makes us act, that our minds gain real knowledge when we direct our perception to this world. These are the forces that were first characterized by Zarathustra as ahrimanic. Thus the Ahrimanic forces, which are imbued with desire and would penetrate to the macrocosm, work in us. [They prevent feeling from becoming a power of knowledge in relation to the earth, just as the Luciferic spirits prevent desire from rising to cosmic knowledge.] The Luciferic entities work in us.

Goethe sensed what clouds the human gaze and leads to error, what is called the forces of Ahriman. For Ahriman is the same as what we are accustomed to calling Mephistopheles, after the one who characterizes human behavior as lying: from the Hebrew “Mephis” is liar and “tofel” is ruin. It means the same thing that Zarathustra calls Ahriman. But Mephisto does not mean Lucifer. He is the power that leads man to lie, to see outer life in deceptive forms, not in truth.

All these forces are at work where man passes through life and is led by his interests to see life in its deceptive forms.

Goethe, despite his most sincere efforts, could not penetrate to the sources of truth at that time because he still had too much of the Mephistopheles in him – You resemble the Mephistopheles, not me! And so [in the “Urfaust” immediately after the earth spirit] Mephisto appears suddenly, as if shot out of a pistol. [Sudden because Goethe only sensed the context, did not clearly recognize it.] Another deeply moving secret of the soul.

Thus we see how Goethe pours into “Faust,” as it were, what he experiences, how he tries to depict how Mephisto guides him to take pleasure in such stale stuff as in Auerbach's cellar, in many of the externalities of life, which he must call banal from a higher point of view. But this Mephisto leads him to something else as well. If we follow Goethe from Strasbourg to the time when he had passed the bar exam, a little later, we find two qualities that must have brought a deep and searching soul into strange conflicts. The first one comes to us when we seek him out as a legal scholar. He was not very good at the positive knowledge of the law, [he only knew a few legal paragraphs]. But when it was a matter of quickly grasping some case and penetrating it in no time, he was one of the very first, still admired today by experts who follow his processes. [He was a practical man who quickly found his way in practical life with his mind.] He is proof against the outrageous statement that those who seek access to the spiritual life must be impractical people in life. Goethe sought access to the spiritual worlds to the highest degree and at the same time was an eminently practical person compared to all those who are impractical because they are untalented. Some young poets think that it is part of being absorbed in the intellectual life that you have to be an impractical person. Such people are only talented up to a certain point. No one would ever dispute the special talent that Goethe showed in writing his “Iphigenia”. On his desk lay the lists for the recruitment of recruits. While the recruits were being drafted, he wrote the verses for his “Iphigenia” in between. That was a whole human being! Penetrating into the spiritual world never prevents one from finding one's way into the practical world. Goethe felt he was a practical person.

But he also felt this: when he was consulting with himself one day, he had to say something to himself that made a deep impression on his soul. There are many, many things in which you have not been at your own height in your life – and above all: you have become guilty! The self-knowledge: You have become guilty – in the face of such cases as the Frankfurt poet experienced in Sesenheim, in the face of the struggle of the most violent passions that confronted him there in Friederike. He also knew that they did not fit together, that he would be paralyzed in all his striving if he had sought a connection with her. But he knew that through the way he behaved, he had become guilty, knew that Mephisto had led him; as we are led by Mephisto when, instead of being led into clear circumstances, we are led into error and deception.

Goethe felt completely and in his deepest innermost being, because he grasped all these questions at their center, that this in the human soul, which guides everything in the human soul, that [this Mephistophelian power] can lead it far, to completely different self-confessions than what he had to clothe in words: You have become guilty. He knew that when these Mephistophelian forces intrude into the striving for knowledge, they can make a charlatan out of a person in the face of higher striving for knowledge! There he stood with his soul before something monstrous; there he stood [before a tremendous abyss] that he said to himself: You must go beyond what only the mind can experience, you must call upon the powers of feeling and emotion for knowledge, [those that Mephistopheles pulls down], but there is still something of Mephisto living in you. Another self lives in you besides. Only now did he clearly recognize a figure of the sixteenth century who [has interested and frightened so many people], who has instilled fear and horror in people. Now the “Faust” of the sixteenth century became clear to him. How did he become clear to him? We take a deep look into Goethe's psychological self-knowledge when we research it. Goethe said to himself, as many people could still say today: Man cannot help but seek access to the forces that transcend the sensual. That is why, in our time, which does so little for the deepest needs of the soul, we have so many currents that emanate from such people who seek access to the spiritual currents, to the spiritual foundations of the soul.

The first thing [that is necessary] for a person to find access [to the spiritual world] without harm, to purify and cleanse his soul, is that he free himself from everything that is now called, in Goethe's sense, Mephistophelian forces, from the merely negating, criticizing endeavors [that are directed only at the things of the outer world]. This is not easy; Goethe himself shows how difficult it is by being bound to Mephisto as to a spirit that makes up part of his soul.

If man listens to this Mephisto in him, then he does not tell his fellow human beings the truth, but rather what the Mephistophelian element, reinforced by the Luciferian element, incites him to, leading to arrogance, ambition, pride, charlatanry.

Truly, a very fine cobweb separates the charlatan from the true spiritual researcher. This can also be seen today. Theosophy or other spiritual movements arise because they correspond to the longing of our world. But it is not easy to become a messenger of the spirit.

If the researcher is not free from these Mephistophelean forces, then he is not a real researcher, but a charlatan who incites vanity in the field of knowledge. — Here a fine sense is really necessary to distinguish between noble striving for higher knowledge and charlatanry. And it is difficult for the one who does not penetrate deeply into the spiritual life to distinguish the charlatan from the spiritual researcher. This danger also exists in Theosophy. It is not easy to satisfy the longings. He who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world is in danger of falling into charlatanry. It is therefore only too understandable when the charlatan and the spiritual researcher are confused. The reproach of the outer world is only too justified: “One cannot distinguish the charlatan from the true spiritual researcher”. This, which can confront us so vividly in life, confronted Goethe in his soul. The Mephistophelean brings you so close in an entity, as it is to Faust, whom people fear, of whom one can say that he has united with the devil, has fallen prey to the forces that lead to lies and deception. And now the question arose in Goethe's soul: How can man save himself from the danger of charlatanry, so that Mephisto does not lead him down into the abyss? Thus the Faust question had become a matter of the heart for Goethe.

The first thing a person must say to himself when this question arises in his soul is: [You must become simple and humble]. You have to go through something, where you look for the individual thing in you; from the smallest experience, from the smallest observation, to find the divine in every single experience. Goethe embarked on this path. On this path we see him wandering through Italy, modestly, humbly collecting all the details. In the inconspicuous coltsfoot, he seeks to clarify the different effects of plant forms, [observing the difference in its appearance here and elsewhere]. We see him hurrying from picture to picture, from work of art to work of art, in an intimate, selfless way. Although he has read Spinoza at home to uplift himself, he does not dwell on it because he is humble. [He goes to the works of art and says to himself,] When I look at them, I know that the ancients created like nature, by raising forces to a higher level. There is necessity in this, there is God. He does not seek to build a worldview in a rush, from thing to thing, humbly seeking the smallest thing in order to modestly seek the divine-spiritual in the smallest thing. [Perhaps you sometimes find it inconvenient when someone who talks about spiritual science speaks of details.] The human quest for knowledge is not modest enough, does not want to go from detail to detail, wants to go straight up; one would like to span the whole world at once with one word. For example, in the theosophical movement, emphasis is placed on going from detail to detail in each step, so it is sometimes said, “I want to go straight to the highest levels of the Logos,” although the person in question does not understand more about the Logos than that the word “Logos” is composed of five letters. (Above all, modesty is needed; Goethe achieved this necessary modesty).

Goethe learns from detail to detail. That was what Goethe did. In doing so, he achieved the purity and refinement that he had after he had been on this path for a while, so that he can now speak in a different way about [his encounter with those spiritual forces like the earth spirit, from whom he had previously turned away, curled up in terror like “a timid worm curled up in terror”], of his encounter with the earth spirit, who experiences what is happening on the earth. At that time he had to listen to:

You resemble the spirit you comprehend, not me!

The spirit had appeared to him out of the fire. So now, after he had gone from piece of nature to piece of nature through modesty, through prudent research, so that he could incorporate the piece he wrote in Italy into “Faust,” now he addressed this spirit of the earth differently, as characterized in that beautiful monologue in “Forest and Cave”:

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
turn thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
strength to feel, to enjoy. Not
coldly marvelling visit thou only allowest,
allow me to look into her deep chest
As into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water know.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches
And crushing neighbor trunks,
And the hill muffled hollow thunders,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show me
Then myself, and my own chest,
Secret deep wonders open up.

That was the progress Goethe had made through his endeavors. Now, after he had humbly followed in nature's footsteps step by step, he no longer felt like a sluggard of knowledge, and closer to the spirit that had previously rejected him. Now he was allowed to look into his soul with a different kind of satisfaction and bliss. What he had once sought to grasp in a single flight, he had now recognized in the most diligent study of detail. He had ascended in humility. Now he was face to face with the spirit that lives not only as an earth-spirit in the outer world, but also lives in the human soul. It led him to the secure cave within, to self-knowledge. He had gained a view of nature that now really allows the spirit to recognize nature:

You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in the air and water.

Now he had ascended – albeit always with the powers that had triggered his Frankfurt aspirations back then – but he had ascended in humility. And now what lived in his own soul presented itself to him as the eternal, the immortal. With what he was able to connect, after he recognized this “spirit of the earth” in the outer world, the spirit led him to self-knowledge. Now he felt ready to find within himself the strength that he had previously sought by storming. And so we learn from the great Goethe how we, with him, should mature in the depths, carefully and humbly, and say: This cannot affect our soul now, but it wants to wait patiently and let it mature. Those who do so will say: It is good that you have done so, and have also opened up many things, because that had to mature in you first and then flourish. We can learn from Goethe: faith in the development of the human soul, faith in the necessity of maturing, so that we can believe in the immortality of the eternal, [so that we gradually grow into the spiritual world];

At the time when he found a cave in his inner soul in which the secrets of his own heart were revealed, he did not believe he was finished, but strove ever higher. And we will see how “Faust”, which appeared in fragment form in 1790, rises ever higher.

At that time, much of what he experienced was only external. But more and more, he connected with the experiences of the inner soul: he penetrated into the mystical. [After Goethe had seen the living earth spirit in the outer world, he also found his inner strength: “And the deep shafts of my own spirit open up” - the Goethe of 1790 strives deeper and deeper. Humbly and modestly, he looks up.] Thus he came to feel intensely in his deepest soul: There is something immortal, and the human soul can recognize it because it can recognize in itself that which is immortal. That was the testament that he left behind, sealed, in the completion of his “Faust”; which was expressed in the final words:

All that is transitory is but a parable.

Not long before the completion of the second part of his “Faust,” Goethe told his faithful Eckermann that he had taken great care to ensure that this work, in particular, met theatrical and artistic standards so that those who merely wanted to enjoy it with their senses would get their money's worth. And Goethe himself adds that those who are initiated into the secrets will indeed find the deeper meaning behind these images.

But everything is sensual and, conceived for the theater, will catch everyone's eye. And that's all I wanted. If it's just that the crowd of spectators enjoys the appearance; at the same time, the initiate will not miss the higher meaning, as is the case with The Magic Flute and other things.

This, my honored audience, can be an indication of how justified it is to look for deeper secrets in this, Goethe's most mature work. And he himself knew that not everyone could easily succeed in understanding these deep secrets. For another time he said to Eckermann:

I will confide something to you that will help you in many ways and will benefit you for the rest of your life. My works cannot become popular; anyone who thinks or strives for this is mistaken. They are not written for the masses, but only for individual people who want and seek something similar and who are moving in similar directions.

However, on the path that we characterized here yesterday, which Goethe himself had to ascend from decade to decade to a certain human perfection, only a few can follow; and if everyone had to go through this lengthy path of life in spirit, then the understanders of the second part of “Faust” would indeed be few and far between. But through theosophy, which seeks to penetrate into the depths of life, there is the possibility that the soul first summons its innermost powers in order to see spiritually what it can see with the senses. When man penetrates into the results of spiritual research, he certainly arrives at a quicker understanding of what personalities of such rich content as Goethe have to say.

Yesterday we saw how Goethe ascended to perfection, as the stages of this appear to us in his “Faust”. We also pointed out that the first part of Faust was actually only published in its completed form in 1808. We pointed out what a personal, individual work Faust was at first and how it becomes more and more impersonal, talking more and more about matters of the human soul that are more or less meaningful to every human being.

In this way, Goethe removes his Faust from the narrow confines of the individual and into the struggle of the objective powers of the world. That is why he has to organize what you know as “Prologue in Heaven”. There it is not only the inner powers of the soul, but the objective world spirits, which are behind the worlds, that begin their contest for the soul of Faust. There [Goethe shows us how deeply he has penetrated in understanding that it is a mistake] when man regards himself as a separate being; how it is an illusion. Our finger does not do that. It would say to itself: the moment I am cut off, I am no longer a finger. If it wanted to succumb to the same delusion as a human being, it would disintegrate. It would disintegrate if it could walk around on our body – cut off. A human being can walk around on the earth, which is why he succumbs to the delusion of being a separate being. If only he would devote himself with all his soul to the fact that he can no longer live physically just a few miles above the earth, he would not give himself over to this delusion, would feel how the forces not only of the physical but also of the spiritual world play into his own soul. For Goethe, this happened visibly from decade to decade. Thus the powers of the human soul grew into world powers. And in his poetry, he shows us the representatives of the good spirits confronting the representatives of the evil spirits. And it seems to him, Goethe, that man is not just a “fearfully cringing worm”, but someone who understands how, from millennium to millennium, human affairs go through the process of becoming earthly and take hold of the individual human being. Hence the marvelous similarity to the old Biblical record where he has God say to Mephistopheles: “Do you know Faust?” — Mephistopheles: “The doctor?” — The Lord says: “My servant,” as we find it again in the Old Testament Book of Job, where Satan appears before the Lord and the Lord asks him:

Have you taken care of my servant Job?

[Now it seems to us that not just any human being appears to us in Faust; now Goethe appears to us as one who understands how, from stage to stage, human affairs pass through the evolution of the world.] Thus, as Goethe matured, Faust gradually became a world poem. It could only become one because Goethe, through his own development, was able to experience more and more in his inner life how the forces that he had sensed back then in Frankfurt could really be there, developing out of the depths of the soul. In his restless striving, he finally brought them out of himself. And so he knew that man can look into the supersensible world, that there are spiritual eyes as there are sensory eyes, that there are spiritual ears as there are sensory ears.

As early as 1808, he speaks as one knowing about all the things that were still closed to him when he first stood before the Earth Spirit: He speaks as one knowing about the phenomenon that the Pythagorean school recognizes under the name “music of the spheres”. [There, the soul foundations appear to man as harmonies. It is not music, but it is something that can be compared to it, something real that becomes the inspiration of the soul.

When the soul draws from the depths what lies dormant there, the inner tones appear to it as harmonies, as something that is heard with spiritual ears.

It is what is expressed in inspiration. Then the human being feels what this spiritual music is. Then he no longer looks through external vision and admires the appearance of light, but then the soul feels that something behind it is inspired. This is what Goethe expresses in the prologue:

The sun sounds in the old way.

And may those who believe that they are standing on the ground of realistic aesthetics say: the poet allows himself such images. A poet like Goethe, who only gives what he has experienced, does not write nonsense, as in the external realistic sense, when speaking of the sounding sun. He speaks of it only when he has experienced it as something spiritual and real, when he knows that such a resounding exists for the human being who enters into the higher spheres of existence. Therefore, he sticks with this image when he lets Faust ascend to a real insight into the foundations of this world (after the impetuosity and sin of the first part). When Faust, at the beginning of the second part, is to look deeper into the spiritual world, we read the words:

Hark! listen to the storm of the hours!
For the ears of the spirit
The new day is already being born.
Rock gates creak and clatter,
Phoebus' wheels roll and clatter,
Light brings a mighty roar!
It trumpets, it trompets,
Eyes blink and ears are amazed,
the unheard do not hear.

Goethe already presents his Faust as someone who listens to the deeper essence of things. And Goethe truly expresses that he wants to say that “Faust” has ascended from the point of view where he longed for these things but could not grasp them. There he had only one certainty:

The spiritual world is not closed;
a sense is closed, your heart is dead!
Rise up, bathe, disciple, undaunted,
the earthly breast in the dawn!

But the “timidly coiled worm” was then far from bathing the “earthly breast in the morning dawn”.

In the second part, we see how Faust awakens; and how wonderfully described it is, how he bathes in the dawn, how revelation comes to him from the very foundation of things! Such is the inward artistic consistency of Goethe in the continuation of his “Faust.” And Faust is now to be introduced to the great world, to learn to recognize in it all that comes from the Mephistophelian power. Since man is a part of the whole human essence, the power that - as we have characterized - creeps into the human soul and permeates it with deception and lies, will also show itself [not only where man is alone with himself, but also where] man creates without having raised himself above the ordinariness of existence. Therefore, Faust must be led from the small world to the imperial court, must be led to where the great world destinies are decided for his time. It must be shown how the power of Mephisto also leads from error to error there. Therefore, Faust appears with Mephisto at the imperial court. He intervenes in world-historical events. With exquisite humor and precisely for that reason, Goethe describes the scene of Mephisto's hand in the invention of paper money. In the history of literature, it has hardly ever been described with such delicate humor how these forces intervene in world history. There is also this Mephisto in it.

People have often scoffed at the masquerade that is enacted in the second part. If one could take the time to interpret each individual figure from Goethe's mind, one would see how every thought is realized down to the smallest detail, and each would show us the way in which the powers play into everything. [They show us the reflection of Mephistophelean power.] This can be shown in a palpably realistic way. That is why Goethe shows it in a masque. There Goethe showed how the Mephistophelian powers work. He wants to take this even further, showing how Faust and Mephisto relate to each other by moving forward, awakening more and more of the slumbering powers of his soul. He wants to show at court that not only the outwardly sensual appears in the masque plays [but also the ancient, not belonging to the sensual present]: one demands to see the ancient figures of Paris and Helen. There we are led out of a realm that belongs to the sensual present into something that is not in the present in any sense.

But Goethe shows very clearly that he has insight into the conditions of existence. He knows that there is not only something transient but also something eternal in human life, and that something of what has lived as a human being in times as old as can be is present in the world: that the spirit can be found in the spiritual world. And in his picture, Goethe wants to tell us that those people who connect with their own eternal in the soul can penetrate into the realm that lies beyond what eyes can see and ears can hear. [This spiritual realm is not theoretical.] This realm is an experience for those who prepare themselves in an appropriate way. [It is] very real. And it was there for Goethe too, very present.

However, this realm differs quite significantly for the student from what the eyes can see outside. Let us first point out one difference between the two worlds: in our world, things appear with sharp contours, so that we have, so to speak, quite a bit of time to get an idea of how things are. It is different when the soul enters the spiritual world. Then a realm appears to us that shows us the entities that are there in continuous transformation. Just as our feelings change from moment to moment in our own soul, and our passions change from hour to hour, so in the spiritual world there is a continuous transformation.

Formation, transformation,
eternal sense's eternal entertainment,

as Goethe [characterizes it]. He knows that the sensual is born, crystallized out of the spiritual [world], which lies behind our world. He seeks an understandable expression for what the soul sees behind this sensory world. He found the expression.

He had once read in Plutarch. He read about the city that was in the possession of the Carthaginians and that Nicias was supposed to win back for the Romans. Therefore, the Carthaginians considered him a traitor and he was to be imprisoned. As Plutarch recounts, he then behaved as if he were possessed; he ran through the streets shouting: “The Mothers, the Mothers are pursuing me!” Thereupon no one dared to lay a hand on him. The expression ‘the Mothers’ made a special impression on the ancients. ‘The Mothers’ were goddesses who were supposed to represent those powers of the soul that were to lead into the spiritual world, to crystallize out of it like a crystal from the mother liquor. Therefore, Goethe found the name and called this realm ‘the realm of the Mothers’.

What then remains of Paris and Helen after their earthly personalities have sunk into the realm of decay? In the realm of the supersensible world, in the realm of the Mothers. Therefore, if Faust is to bring forth what is demanded of him, he must bring forth the immortal and imperishable in Paris and Helen. To do so, he must descend into the realm of the Mothers. He knows that this realm of the mothers exists and that he can find the immortal in human beings there. But how does he get there? He has not yet banished all Mephistophelian forces from himself; so Mephistopheles must give him advice on how to find the entrance, how to get from the outer world into the realm of the mothers. At his stage of development, Faust cannot yet enter the spiritual realm, although he is certain of its existence. Mephisto belongs to the spiritual world, but is not in fact an externally visible being. He rules in the sensual world, but does not belong to it. Therefore, he has understanding and even the key to lead Faust there; but he does not know what it looks like there. Where he rules, there is no understanding for the supersensible world. Mephisto is the power that presents the external world to us as an illusion: He rules in the realistic world. [This Mephistophelian power also rules today in the materialistic mindset. The error that the material world is the only true one is an influence of Mephisto, who prevents the soul from recognizing the reign of the supernatural. Realism is therefore only possible if Mephisto rules in the soul. And he can only go as far as the external material man can come. But he provides the key to the supernatural world, but can only come to the gate himself. [Thus one can go far through the outer science, up to the gate of the supersensible world, but one cannot enter through it.] Because he has no sense for the supersensible forces, Mephisto only delivers the key. This allows Faust to enter the realm of the mothers. For anyone who experiences the realm that is behind our sensory world, this is an appropriate representation.

And now the dialogue between Faust and Mephistopheles unfolds, which shows how far Goethe was able to penetrate into the relationship between the sensual and the supersensible world. Mephisto describes the realm of the mothers, where the eternal beings of Paris and Helen are, in such a way that he says: You may swim across the sea as far as you like, you see the sun, moon and stars moving; but when you enter the realm that you now want to enter, you see nothing, space seems empty to you, time seems empty. Mephistopheles sees nothing in the realm of the mothers, just as materialism sees nothing where the supernatural world is. But Faust replies to Mephistopheles, as always the spiritual researcher does to the materialist:

In your nothingness, I hope to find the all.

Thus the two stand facing each other: the eternal question of materialism and that world view that seeks to penetrate the supersensible – formulated in this dialogue. Faust even suggests that precisely because Mephisto is the power we characterized yesterday, he must also lead to lies and deception with regard to the supersensible world, and so Goethe has Faust say to Mephisto:

You speak as the first of all mystagogues,
who has ever deceived faithful neophytes
Only the other way around.

I have shown how easily one becomes entangled in error and lies when entering the spiritual world while still embraced by Mephisto, how one becomes a charlatan instead of a spiritual researcher. How justified, therefore, is the fear wherever the charlatan is near the spiritual researcher. Faust calls him a “mystagogue,” because the term used for the leader of the Eleusinian mysteries is rightly used for the charlatan who, without having made the journey, wants to point the way to the spiritual world. [This is the charlatanry that is only separated from the noblest spiritual research by a fine cobweb.] So Faust calls the mystagogue, who speaks of error from the spiritual powers that he cannot recognize – only the other way around, you speak, he says to Mephisto. While they speak of the many things they have seen, you speak of nothing. Mephisto speaks in the opposite, lying way to the spiritual world, just like those deceitful mystagogues. He speaks of it as a nothingness; they fantasize about some kind of spiritual world.

Goethe expresses himself so precisely because he speaks from the innermost experience. But that is why he also shows us what is necessary to penetrate into this world. One can, of course, if one penetrates unworthily – if one has not yet banished from one's soul everything that works as selfishness and egoism – one can indeed see many things in the spiritual world and penetrate, as Faust is now penetrating; but Goethe wants to make it clear that he is not yet inwardly mature, wants to show how difficult the path is to rid the soul of all Mephistophelean influences, wants to show how selfish passions still prevail in Faust. To be worthy, one needs a soul completely cleansed of selfishness. In Faust, personal passion still asserts itself. He wants to possess Helena for himself; but in that moment, the apparition becomes a danger to him. Even his consciousness becomes clouded – the [Helena] figure disappears into the realm of mothers.

Faust must seek another way to free himself from Mephistophelean powers, must develop his soul in such a way that he does not want to conquer the spiritual world at a double march [as in the first part]. [And even not at a single step, as he now entered the spiritual mother realm, he is not allowed to enter there.] He must conquer it in slow inner soul life, so that he follows step by step the inner spiritual conditions. If he really wants to go to Helena, then he must first himself attain full knowledge of how one can ascend again when one has descended, and must look into the secrets of how man really comes into existence. [He must look into those processes that accompany man's entry into life.]

Here, Theosophy shows that it is justified to present man as a threefold being. [How man consists of three bodies: the physical body, the soul body and the spiritual body. He who truly looks into the spiritual world with dignity sees how these three parts of man are combined.] And there, first of all, what we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears presents itself: his physicality. Then his soul shows itself. Thereupon spiritual science structures further and higher up. Today we are only interested in the spirit; so these three: body, soul, spirit. These three are here together. But anyone who looks into the spiritual world must know how they are structured out of the supersensible, these three. Only when it is shown how the immortal spirit of Helena unites with a soul and the connection from soul to body takes place, only then can Faust approach Helena, who is re-entering humanity, [then he is worthy for the spiritual world]. And from this man can see – for spiritual research shows him, but what Goethe knew: the view of the re-embodiment of the innermost human being.

It may seem quite strange when people today speak with certainty of the fact that Goethe had the idea of re-embodiment. But it is indeed the case that what lives in us returns not once, but often and often. Gradually, our time is approaching what will once be of the greatest satisfaction to our time, what will give the greatest satisfaction [where this idea, which will give people the greatest comfort, will appear to them as truth, where it will become popular. Truths only come gradually]. In Goethe's time, people had to lock such truths deep within their souls, for this and another reason: because they knew how infinitely many-faceted and ambiguous truth is [as soon as we approach the spiritual world], and how human words are so easily suited to present this truth with outlines that are too sharp. Therefore, Goethe could not but express in hints what lived in the depths of his soul. He expressed it in the second part of “Faust”. In his “Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years” he also expresses what man's innermost being is, the reappearance to be of use to one's great-grandchildren in this world:

[...] we hope that such an entelechy,

that is, the innermost essence of man,

will not leave our solar system entirely, but, when it has reached the boundary of it, will long to return in order to have an influence on earthly life and well-being again for the benefit of our great-grandchildren].

He does say it with great significance, but he hides his deepest conviction because people were not yet ready for [this idea, which will gradually and consistently emerge from natural science as well].

He expressed this idea poetically in the second part of Faust. He shows that there is a part of the human being that must join with, or be added to, the physical part in order to place the whole person in the sensory world: that there is a soul. And he was familiar with the term for this, which stands between spirit and body. The old terminology recognized it. In medieval literature it was called the “little man” in the big man, the same as what is called “purusha” in Indian literature, the little being that permeates the human being in countless personalities. It is the soul, not yet the spirit. Therefore, one who has not yet risen to the spirit can also penetrate to this soul. [To symbolically conceal this, Goethe has Wagner, who

greedily digs for treasure and is happy when he finds earthworms,

find the homunculus.

Goethe speaks very precisely, much more precisely than people are accustomed to reading. It should be explicitly pointed out that [with the homunculus] one is not dealing with something that belongs to the sensory world, but rather something that is added to it. Therefore, he coins a special image for the creation of the homunculus. All coming into being is called a creation. Here he coins a word himself, [as he had already done in “Faust” for the man striving beyond himself in the earth spirit scene, the word “superman” (Übermensch)]: “Überzeugung” (Über-zeugung) and means by Über-zeugung what extends beyond the ordinary man. That is what the scene with Wagner is about. Read the passage:

It will! The masses are stirring more clearly,
the conviction of the true, the true.

[Read what is usually written about this in the commentaries.] Goethe wanted to point out that the creation of the soul is a conviction. Such writings, which arise from inspiration, must be read carefully; they stand up to scrutiny.

[So now we have the soul.] Helena is to appear to Faust on earth. Faust wants to have her in his possession on earth. We only have the soul of Helena in the Homunculus. This soul must first unite with the body before the spirit can enter.

Now it is shown how the physical is stored in the soul. For this purpose, the homunculus must be guided into a world where it is known how the soul can be incorporated.

[He is not lacking in spiritual qualities,

— Spiritually, it is used in a trivial, soul-like way.

But it is used too much in a tangible, efficient way. So far, the glass alone gives it weight, but he would like to be more embodied.

He should be embodied by taking the natural path of how man develops; developing himself in the sense of the wisdom taught by Thales, for example. This leads him to Proteus. He must be taught and led to where the elements prevail, so that they can integrate into his soul. [He must be led into the classical Walpurgis Night, where the elements prevail, so that his soul can integrate into them.] Thales advises him

to start creation from the beginning

— to go through it —, and advises the homunculus to start with the mineral kingdom, then continue through the plant kingdom. [This is how he comes to Anaxagoras first. Then he seeks to classify the laws of the plant kingdom.] Goethe finds an expression for going through the plant kingdom:

It grunts so.

This describes the soul's passage through the plant element;

until you reach man, you have time,

it is said. [From the beginning, through the kingdoms of nature, the homunculus must embody himself.

The whole process that takes place on Walpurgis Night is the incorporation of the physical body into the soul, so that at the end we have before us the connection between the soul and the body. The soul or homunculus is characterized in such a way that when Faust, [still paralyzed by Helena], is lying in bed, he has a dream. The homunculus can look into the dream of “Faust” and describe the events. [Because he still belongs to the soul world, he could see him.] Every word in the second part of “Faust” could be a clue for the soul to merge with the body. Once this connection is made, the spirit that was present in previous embodiments can be absorbed. [At the end of the second act, the soul is connected to the body.] In the third act, the reincarnation of Helen appears to us, [after Faust had recognized in full detail how body, soul and spirit are joined together]. Now Faust has her before him as he can have her before him as an external human being.

At the same time, however, this poem shows us how Faust's soul forces are increasingly stirring. [When the mighty event of reincarnation presents itself to him, so that he recognizes it, his soul forces grow.] The characteristic of such a poem is that, alongside what is shown externally, there is an inner soul experience at the same time. By recognizing and seeing, his soul forces grow. What unfolds becomes a process of developing his soul. He makes mystical progress. We are presented with a mirror image of what Faust experiences in his soul.

From the union between Faust and Helena, Euphorion is born, the child of Faust and Helena. The aim is to show how Faust's soul has entered into a marriage, as it were, with the spiritual world. By increasing its powers, the soul feels something like a spiritual marriage. And what then arises in him appears to him as an image of the external spiritual world. [The soul feels supersensible knowledge as a child of itself with the universe. Thus Euphorion is like an image of mystical inner knowledge.]

Thus we are shown an image of the spiritual experience of Faust himself. [And at the same time, the stage at which Faust now stands is to be indicated]. He has not yet reached the stage of one who can permanently hold on to his supersensible experience; he can only catch certain glimpses of the spiritual world, then he must return to ordinary external life. And this is the experience of the developing mystic. [In a moment of celebration, the spiritual world opens up to him.] He knows how the descent from spiritual experiences affects the soul, knows that mood of the soul when what was knowledge sinks again and the soul calls for it. This is echoed in the words of Euphorion, who dies young and cries out [from the realm of shadows]:

Let me in the dark realm,
Mother, not alone!

That is the mood that our soul feels: it must, according to its insights, which have once again disappeared.

In a wonderful way, Goethe describes in the events what can appear as an inner soul experience of man as he progresses into the spiritual world. But Faust must go further when what he experiences fades away again. [The soul must regain what it once saw.] This is shown in the fact that the veil and the dress of Helen remain behind for him, Faust. Thus, such a personality retains only the memory of the spiritual experience. Faust must go further. These steps, too, are fully characterized by Goethe. First, it is shown how difficult it is – even for someone who has gained deeper insights into the spiritual – to guard against what still works in the world as the last Mephistophelian forces: Faust becomes a military leader in the [fourth] act, to accomplish a humane deed. He is not yet so far advanced that he can lead purely spiritual forces into the field. The Mephistophelian still mingles with what is around him. [It is not yet possible to see through what forces are leading Faust into the world.] Here the armor from old armories is presented. [Not only the natural, but also history], the historical appears here. The path that a person has to take to mature and to face nature is long. When contemplating nature, the powers of deception can interfere. [Yes, you can go very far with knowledge of nature and history]. The Mephistophelian powers interfere with what is presented as armor. We do not face the phenomena with pure knowledge, the fourth act should also show that.

Faust must be purified more and more, that he may be freed from all that still adheres to our desires of Mephistophelian power. That is difficult. It is the fact that he does not see them that makes it so difficult for man to free himself from these powers. [Again and again, things approach us in which Mephisto is hidden.] Faust does not yet see how the elements that can lead to deception are mixed into the actions of the mountain people. As long as we cannot see into these powers, we cannot free ourselves from them. We must bring it to the point where we are face to face with Mephisto in the flesh. Then he appears in the form in which he is depicted in all religious documents, then he appears as the tempter. Then we know what has power over us. Thus Mephisto must present himself to Faust as tempter, must emerge from unconsciousness into consciousness. Only then does Faust know what Mephistophelian power is. He must confront that power as a tempter. Goethe also indicates that in the course of his supersensible development, Faust confronts Mephisto in the form of the tempter, in that he lets him say:

But, that I may at last speak quite understandably,
Didst thou not favor anything on our surface?
In immeasurable expanses thou overlooked
The realms of the world and their glories.
But, insatiable as thou art,
Didst thou not feel any desire?

The Riches of the World and their Splendor: In the same sense as he speaks in the Gospels, Goethe has Faust face the tempter and be offered the glories of the world. [Man wants to possess them as long as the Mephistophelian power has power in him.] Man must renounce what things are. [That too is only possible in stages.] Faust learns to renounce. He has come so far that he rejects these glories [as immediate possessions; he takes them as a fief, not because he wants to possess them, but because he wants to make them fruitful]. He wants a piece of land that he can win from the sea; he wants

to stand on free ground with a free people,

wants to realize:

Action is everything.

He wants to work selflessly, not for his personal possessions, not for his own selfishness. This is the answer he gives to Mephisto, who offers him

the riches of the world and its glories.

He rejects it, even in the form of a small piece of land.

But [only one step on the way to shedding selfishness has been taken, and there is still something selfish about him]. He cannot yet renounce the unobstructed view. He still wants what he wants from the sea to appear free before his external gaze. The hut of Philemon and Baucis hinders him from this free view. This is a sign that he has not yet overcome the last stage of selfishness. But for Mephisto to once again make such a mistake, [the last remnant of Mephistophelian power must intervene in him, so to speak]: it is he who burns down the hut belonging to the old people.

Now Faust encounters something that even the advanced student knows from experience. [He falls prey to a final danger.] [He who can renounce sensual possessions but not yet miss the view.] The things of the outside world cannot harm him; not harm, want, guilt. He is freed from the fetters of these things. But that which is the last to depart from our soul and which clings until the last remnant of selfishness has vanished, that is worry. He will not be rid of it until the last remnant of selfishness has vanished. Worry! There is a far, far higher form of it, a far, far more heavenly form than the one we encounter in ordinary life. When a person tosses and turns in bed at night and cannot sleep because of worry, [this is also a sign that he has not entered the spiritual world, where he should be at night]. In the symbol, it appears: how he is not allowed into the spiritual world, the higher power of worry. Worry exists as long as he is chained to the sensual world. Man can find the key and block his way down from the spiritual world into the sensual world. If he has not yet separated himself from everything in the sensual world, then worry creeps into his life. [It blocks his access to the spiritual world. And so it happens to Faust as well.] Then it also shows that man still has something to overcome in his nature. Goethe expresses this by making Faust physically blind. Now he can no longer express this selfishness, outwardly he has gone blind. But

inside a bright light shines

– a brighter one. Now Faust is ready to enter the spiritual world.

Because Goethe knew these secrets, he spoke the word at the sealing of his package, which contained the second part of “Faust,” which contains Goethe's testament to humanity. He was satisfied because he could say to himself: I have expressed the abilities that I brought with me into this life as much as I could in this incarnation. He had come so far. Since most people will find it difficult to understand this word of the inner soul-becoming of man, from physical to spiritual vision and the possibilities that the soul must go through to ascend to such spiritual vision, Goethe had to depict in pictures what can only be expressed in words today: what he knew about the secrets of existence, about the supersensible powers of the soul life.

Now he had so much of what he desired during the Frankfurt period. But he could only present it to humanity in images because he knew how few words are suitable to express it. Because first people have to shape their words — as spiritual science is now trying to do — to express the tremendous content of the supersensible world.

Goethe was aware of the soul's inner progress. He expressed it in images. If we understand the term “mystical” correctly, this experience of the soul is called the “mystical life”. And because Goethe expresses this mystical life in his mighty testament to humanity, he allows what he has to offer humanity to fade away in the “Chorus mysticus”. That the soul has dormant powers within it, through which it can become aware of the eternal. For Goethe, this substantiates the saying that everything sensual in the world is an image, a parable for the immortal. What Goethe felt, that it is difficult to characterize the comprehensive things of the soul with words, he wanted to suggest by depicting in images what people cannot grasp. He presents what cannot be described, only seen, as an inner deed of the soul, in a very realistic way. What can be illustrated for the outer senses is done here in the second part of “Faust”. [Everything that is transient is only a parable for the immortal, everything sensual only an image for the supersensible. He felt that it is difficult to describe these transcendental phenomena in their fleeting movements with words. What is inadequate for ordinary life, he made an event in “Faust”.

The soul is certain that such a realm exists and that it can work its way up. It feels that it is something like a feminine that allows itself to be fertilized by the spiritual masculine forces of the universe. When it unites with all such creative forces of the universe, it feels itself to be the eternal feminine in relation to these forces. It is a sin against the great nature of Goethe to accept profane explanations of this sentence. [The eternal feminine of the soul allows herself to be fertilized by the cosmic forces in a cosmic marriage.] What the fertilizing of the universe brings forth is the feminine, that is what Goethe wants to say. This is what is presented to us only through experiences, what he himself has experienced - what man can experience in his mystical experiences. [Only when we have fully understood and experienced Goethe's Faust do those words resound powerfully in our ears.] Goethe's “Faust” ends with the mystical choir depicting this experience. [What a person can achieve in mystical development through spiritual research is summarized in the magnificent sentences that apply to every striving soul.

All that is transitory Is but a parable The inadequate, Here it becomes an event; The indescribable, Here it is done;

We will be hearing more about Goethe's dramatic fragment “Pandora” today. If I wanted to tell you everything there is to know about it, I would have to give several lectures. [With this work by Goethe in particular, it will only ever be possible to make a few remarks about how the poet experienced this figure of Pandora as living forces within himself.] I can only gently hint at the meaning of the individual figures that the poet sensed within himself, as it were, as living forces. Those who immerse themselves in the drama from this perspective will get an inkling that it could not be otherwise than that the forces in question were at work in the poet's soul itself. In the last lecture we saw how Goethe contrasted the two figures of Prometheus and Epimetheus in a powerful way. [Creative powers were in the pre-earthly time, spiritual powers, these two figures, as the poet has portrayed them as human beings.] Already in individual words of the drama one can even feel that creative powers lived in Goethe. Spiritual powers had taken the place of human powers, so to speak, such as originate from the pre-earthly moon-period. You can imagine that those beings, the Angeloi, passed through their stage of humanity under quite different conditions. To pass through the stage as we are passing through it today, requires conditions such as now prevail on earth. They also had to go through a completely different state of consciousness than we have now. But it would be quite difficult to describe the peculiar storms of consciousness that those beings who lived on the old moon and completed their stage of human development there went through. [It was a very peculiar form of consciousness that those beings had as human beings on the old moon. At that time, man had only a dim awareness of images. Those beings who were then human beings certainly had a higher level of consciousness than we do, and this present consciousness of ours cannot be compared with the former consciousness of the moon. [The consciousness of these beings on the old moon is recorded in the consciousness of the beings who then remained above.] It was also an awareness of objects, but at a much higher level. If those entities on the old moon had held on to their consciousness and brought it with them into earthly conditions, they would not have been able to live there at all. That is why those beings had to withdraw to a higher sphere when the actual development of the earth began. They had to renounce, so to speak, the development of the earth. If they had not done so, they would not have been able to see the earthly conditions on earth at all. They would have experienced only what was still present in them as an inheritance from the old lunar conditions. Nor would they have been able to intervene in the course of earthly events. They owe the fact that they were really able to intervene to the circumstance that they renounced the fruits of earthly development and remained on a higher level. Their consciousness had radically changed into a reflective consciousness. If the Elohim had not remained above but had descended to the earth, they would have become Epimetheus natures. Man still retains a part of what he had become on a higher level. This part of his development manifests itself everywhere in his life. Man is subject, as it were, to the tragedy of seeing things afterwards that would have turned out differently if he had been able to see them beforehand.

It has long been known, for example, that Ibsen, who is revered today as a great poet, failed his school-leaving exam. This is just one case of a strange occurrence. Or you just need to let the grandiose example of the irony of the university teachers' day sink in, and you will see that this epimetheic moment is not an isolated case. Should high school students be supported sympathetically or not? Those professors confessed that they had no means of recognizing the gifts of such people.

This epimetheic element is what humans have inherited from the Elohim. But now humans have also conquered the other side, namely the possibility of ascending more or less in the foresight that receives impulses from what one already grasps as the future. In school, this case is rarely represented, as you know from experience. This Promethean moment could only slowly flow into our being, and the Epimethean gradually dries up. [Through the Promethean element, we now have two currents. One that is slowly drying up, the Epimethean, and one that is slowly rising, the Promethean.] In the former ability, however, people have not yet come very far today. But these two intellectual currents are essential for us. [As an example of how this slowly ascending current will shape itself in humanity, it is shown how there are already things today that people can objectively face without personal emotions:] In science, solar and lunar eclipses can be calculated in advance. Man is therefore Promethean in relation to mathematical things. Here, passion is silent and only truth speaks. In everything mathematical, therefore, foresight is possible. Mathematics is the clear, unambiguous and luminous beginning of the Promethean element. This had to develop at a certain pace, and this was brought about by the fact that the leader of this element did not descend to our earth too early. By the highest directive, he had to wait until the conditions were such that he could descend as Prometheus. The Prometheus of whom the myth speaks descended to men too early; therefore, by divine directive, he was chained to the rock. He knew the secret that another would come after him, who would then be the true Prometheus. Prometheus also knew the secret that Zeus would one day be overthrown. But the Prometheus who gradually allows the impulse of foresight to work in humanity is the Christ. (Christ is also the one who then overthrows Zeus.) Prometheus keeps his secret from Zeus, who had him chained to a rock in the Caucasus. (In the present, the two work together.)

Thus, Goethe's drama is at the center of everything we know about world development. One element brings one forward, the other connects one with that which is to be brought forward.

[So we can say: Yes], there is a being who descended to the people, which one must let enter more and more into his soul, [that is the Christ]. Only one must take time for it and always remember what can still come from above. But another part of humanity will take its time to accept the Christ, and will receive him more as a gift from above, where those beings who have not become Epimetheus remain. Thus, what the human being is allowed to receive within himself must merge with what comes from higher realms. In these words, Pandora's story comes to an end!

So you see how deep the shafts are from which we have to draw the feelings in order to understand such poetry. Only the theosophical school of thought teaches us to understand the greatest treasures of humanity correctly. But this movement also shows us that what truly leads forward lies with the gods in the spiritual world, from whence it must be fetched in order to connect it with what lies dormant in the human soul.

What the poets bring us is a gift from above, and with it we must connect what we have within ourselves. The poet gives us the Epimethean, and we in turn bring him the Promethean element from spiritual science. [People who take up Theosophy will become Prometheans. Epimetheans are those who want to be blessed from above. The Promethean element must have become the property of humanity if, three thousand years from now, Maitreya Buddha is to appear on Earth.]

We should never confuse things with words, especially with slogans. If we understand the enrichment of one's own self as egoism, we would have to place egoity in a category to which it belongs. [If we strive for the enrichment of our own self, we must first deal with human nature and here I come first to the ego, which can assert itself in various ways in the three human bodies.] I have often spoken to you about our four bodies. The ego within is just another name for the self. It permeates the three bodies with its substantiality, asserting itself in them with varying degrees of force.

With regard to the physical body, man does not have it at his discretion to rein this ego, which asserts itself more firmly within him than it should. It does not work. Why does it do that? Because at some point in his development, man has experienced an influence in the Lemurian period, the Luciferic influence. Man is permeated by the Luciferic entities. This asserts itself in all three realms of the body. [Later, man will succeed in acting on all three bodies; now he only succeeds in acting on his astral body, on his desires and passions.] You know that man is increasingly able to rework the bodies. Today he has this in his hands with the astral body. It is more difficult with the etheric body. And with the physical body [he has no influence at all], but that lies in the distant future. It will only become possible through the occult development of the breathing process, [in which he develops “Atma” within himself, which happens through a special breathing]. The part of the etheric body that we are reworking [develops “Budhi” within itself, and now that it can act on its astral body, it develops “Manas”. These influences are transformations of the different bodies. The influence that took place at that time through satanic entities is designated as “serpent,” and through this influence on man, the I of man was brought to stronger activity. If today the I asserts itself more strongly in the physical body than it would be without the satanic influence in the Lemurian time – serpent in Paradise – then man can do nothing. Lucifer brings the I to a more intense effect in the physical body. The first thing that came about as a result is death. Death is the direct consequence of a strengthened I. [And death will no longer come when the influence of the luciferic beings is overcome.]

What would have happened without Lucifer? We only need to describe what man would be like. He would grow old, but would begin to soften his muscles and bones through the powers of the soul, detach parts, gradually sweat out material parts. He would thus be able to attract other matter and rebuild the body. There would be a transformation that would take place consciously, a beneficial process. [He is not yet able to do that, and that is why death occurs, to dissolve the matter.] Death has occurred due to the densification of the bone system. [There would be no illness if the power of the ego were not working so strongly.] This inability to dissolve one's own matter, that is death. When the earth will have reached the end of its development, it will undergo a metamorphosis. It is different now because of the solidification by Lucifer. Through his influence, illness comes. Man has no influence on this at the moment. In the processes that should take place like dissolution and composition, and now do not take place that way, the cause of the illnesses predominates. The daytime thinking is a continuous dissolution of substances in the brain. [During the night, the dissolved parts are reassembled by the spiritual world.] The night is there to send forces from the spiritual world. [Somehow there must be balance in the breakdown and construction.] In the moment when not so much is built in at night as is dissolved during the day, the disease is there. The disease can only occur because there is an ego in the organism that is exerting itself too strongly.

Now, in the etheric body, how is the activity [through a too strongly acting ego]? It asserts itself through the possibility of error on the one hand and of lies on the other. Man is subject to error because the ego works too much in the etheric body, not in harmony with the outside world. Now, and the lie? When we lie, this thought form is formed as a real fact, and in the spiritual world there arises what we call an explosion in the physical world. If the I did not merge in the etheric body, the person would know that what is not in accordance with the truth, with reality, causes destruction, an explosion. We have to take this into our karma, destroying our life's journey until we have balanced it again. A liar destroys as much in his karma as bomb explosions in the physical world. Lies and errors are caused by the ego asserting itself too strongly in the etheric body.

The astral body is filled with what is called selfishness and egoism because the I goes beyond the measure of assertion. We must be clear about this when we study selfishness in the astral body. The astral body consists of a sentient body and a sentient soul. We must distinguish this exactly. The sentient body is of an astral nature, but built up from the outside during the lunar period. Now, in the sentient body, the substance of the sentient soul is secreted at a subconscious level. What the sentient body is, that is quite all right with humans. Therefore, they have the ability to properly perceive their environment. Schopenhauer [only retained the idea]: the world as an idea. [He said:] Without the eye there is no light. But it is also true that without light there is no eye. This is because physical light is completely flooded with astral light, and that is what the eye has developed [from the human being]. So it is the astral that brings out and then chisels out the astral in the human being.

[First, the astral senses are developed through the influx of astral substance.] This is how we come into harmony with the outside world. If we only had the sentient body, we would be soulless creatures, [we would see with the eye] but without joy; [the outside world would only be reflected in us]. But now we have the sentient soul in addition. In the sentient body, the 'I' will be able to be a little stronger than the correct measure would have been without the influence of Lucifer. [The influence of the Luciferic entities asserts itself in the sentient soul; it does not reach the sentient body.] This has an effect in the sentient soul. Then the discord arises. That is egoism. When the I constricts the forces of the sentient soul too strongly, then egoism arises. The sentient body also takes in beautiful impressions, but the sentient soul cannot rejoice in them. The world gives the colors. The sentient soul should pour itself into what the sentient body gives. He who finds the possibility of going out of himself so far as to embrace the world strengthens his ego. This egoism is healthy because it is rich in content. All beings should do this.

When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden.

Schiller says:

Are you seeking the highest, the greatest? The plant can teach you. What it is without will, be you the willing one – that's it!

Angelus Silesius:

The rose has no why,
it blossoms because it blossoms;
it pays no attention to itself,
does not ask if it is seen.

The person who develops their own abilities as much as possible will serve their fellow human beings the most. Not leaving any of our inner powers undeveloped leads us to salvation. [But in the pursuit of developing our powers as much as possible,] there is a danger of falling into destructive selfishness, but without that, human beings could not develop any freedom. And so, for some, selfishness can lead to good fortune, while for others it can lead to disaster. Plants are prevented from growing beyond measure. When a blossom is at its most beautiful, it has brought forth its own essence. At the moment when there is a danger of its ego being emphasized, of its selfhood developing, the pollen arrives and the blossom must merge with the germ and die. This law also applies to a certain extent to human beings. When they create harmony between the sentient soul and the sentient body, they also experience that the moment they harden and do not pour themselves out into the world, they wither away. There are people who create harmony between what flows into the soul and what it experiences. They are then harmonious. This must be the aim of education. But people in whom the I is too active in the sentient soul, without balance in the outer life, where the inflow and outflow are not in harmony, these people become desolate. They cannot feel anything, not even in front of a work of art. This is the secret of what happens in egoism. People must find a way to become inflamed by the impressions of nature, [to learn to feel something when confronted with works of art]. The physician should put himself in the place of what the soul experiences; [an inner feeling must penetrate even into external movements, for example, when doing gymnastics]. He must be able to take joy in his surroundings; that is a spiritual person.

In other areas, we must establish this harmony, for example, in the knowledge of ourselves. We must find harmony in our knowledge of ourselves. “Know thyself” is often misunderstood. To reconcile our true self with knowledge of the world is self-knowledge, and it is part of the education of the human being to achieve that self-knowledge, which is selfless; to achieve justified selflessness so that the ego can pour itself out into the world again. Just don't brood! That hardens us. Self-knowledge is something that leads us to flourish. Otherwise we wither away as misfits, as pale envious people. If we seek the God only in us, we place ourselves in discord with the world. If we seek him in world knowledge, [we work outwardly], then there is a restorative equilibrium in our will impulses. This is an important law in relation to what we want. For nothing works as long as it remains within us, but only when it emerges from us. Then it works for our benefit when it [from outside] meets us in the mirror. These are the best conceivable deeds: to put out into the world what has been done. They are the invigorating ones. [A person can enrich his ego as long as the advancement of his own ego invigorates him.] The best deeds of the egoist, done for his own sake, do not further him. The moment egoism goes beyond a certain degree, it stifles the soul. Many are unsatisfied and desolate; many egoists live in withering. Egoism, overshooting its goal, turns against the egoist himself. When man crosses the boundary in the development of his ego, he becomes desolate. The egoist lives in withering. This would be more apparent if man did not live in an external society. We are interrelated, we human beings, and so the egoist does not bear the effects of his egoism alone; someone else must bear them too. For the egoist himself, this only expresses itself in karma.

“Wilhelm Meister” deals with the problem of the egoist. What does Wilhelm Meister want? Nothing other than to make his individuality as rich and perfect as possible. That is why he leaves his profession for the profession in which he expects the greatest freedom, so that everything can have an effect on him from the outside. Goethe shows where Wilhelm Meister's error has led him. He knew that there is a spiritual law. Goethe himself called humanity the great individual and so on. He said: Wilhelm Meister is a pretty poor fellow. But there is a guiding force in man that always leads him to do the right thing. That is the great law of karma, which does not allow us to do foolish things without making us do sensible things in the next life. It has been severely criticized that Goethe allows the secret guidance to be noticed. No one can see more in another person than he or she is. Thus, modern biographers depict Goethe as a philistine – [Engel is a grotesque, outrageous interpreter of Goethe]. In 1780, Goethe became a member of the Masonic Lodge “Duchess Amalie” – a symbol of spiritual leadership.

The best explanation of “Hamlet” is in “Wilhelm Meister”. In the “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul”, Susanne von Klettenberg reveals herself – almost word for word – as a reflection of her development. During her illness Makarie brooded as much as possible within herself, but her inner nature sought the outer world again within her own inner being, found contact with divine beings in her own nature, and enjoyed this pre-mystical life. She attained a high level. Her healthy nature pushed beyond this and came to the question [through an important event]: Is God only within? Then her gaze turned to Palestine, to Christianity. Christ became man, went through everything to the point of death. When she thoroughly understood this, she said: 'In every flower, the deity reveals itself from within to the world.' Now she lives with the event of Golgotha. Susanne von Klettenberg gave Goethe a significant push for his inner development. He never stopped.

The “apprenticeship years” were completed under Schiller's criticism. The “travel years” were created under peculiar circumstances. It turned out that the typesetter printed faster than Goethe could write; and in the beginning, he helped out with things he had written earlier: St. Joseph, Man of 50, Melusine and others. In the end, he could not keep up, so he gave it to Eckermann to revise. This is how the “Wanderjahre” came about. But it should be considered that everything Goethe wrote is full of the highest wisdom [and it is a concise excerpt of his own development]. Each one signifies a stage in his own development, a stage in Goethe's development. Thus life flows like a composition, if only it is taken up in the right way and can have an effect on individuality. Much has emerged from Goethe's development. Take the “Pedagogical Province”: the boys have three gestures. [Signs of] insight into the effect of the symbols. [There are three religious levels.] The best of the three religious categories: [a gesture upwards, downwards, towards one's own kind symbolizes real reverence for the highest, for those below us, and for our own kind.] Upwards, Goethe calls the first direction of reverence, the second to one's own kind, then reverence downwards. What is below us has also come from God. Then we have reverence for religion because the divine has descended. As the student immerses himself in what the gesture shows, the gesture should draw itself into his soul. The boys are dressed differently. Why? To develop their individuality, they should choose the colors themselves.

The conclusion shows how the self expands to embrace the whole world in Makarie, who looks inwardly at the laws of the stars – she has an astronomer at her side – and takes her measurements from the solar system. Selfless knowledge that is absorbed into the world – where Goethe subtly describes the entire intuitive life of such clairvoyant beings. At the end of “Wilhelm Meister”, the occult view of the world is described in Makarie, because Goethe wants to describe the unfolding of the self.

Thus, in 'Wilhelm Meister', Goethe shows the self rising from stage to stage, becoming richer and richer as the self grows into the world problem. In order for the human being not to lead to death, the shell must tear. The work is true and genuine.

Art is something that appears essential or inessential for life to different people, depending on their temperament and life experiences. How different were the points of view in the past: Plato had drafted that powerful plan of statecraft, but he saw poets and artists as dispensable in the whole organism. Schiller saw art as an uplift for humanity.

What does art have to say about the true forces of life? Theosophy lets things speak for themselves and asks: What has art shown us in the different ages of the world? We must first try to find our way around in sketch form. Theosophy is something quite new in this form. It is based entirely on a certain premise, on the premise that the supersensible spiritual world can be investigated. There are powers in the human soul that can be developed through awakening the soul's powers of spiritual vision. This is as much a fact as learning to see after undergoing an operation for blindness.

In the past, art did not look the same as it does today. It has changed a great deal over centuries and millennia. Today, this is often not taken into account. The ancient Greeks were not the same as we are. At that time, they were much closer to the state of soul in the spiritual world, which lies behind the physical. In prehistoric times, there were countless people who, through their natural gifts, were able to see into the spiritual world. This was linked to the fact that people were different then than they are today, both in themselves and in their feelings. Today, people have to develop the same qualities in their outer lives as others. Everything that prehistoric people did was influenced by the supersensible world. They saw, for example, the spiritual power behind stone and plant. Now, the one who is spiritually developed, who sees into it, knows that there is a spiritual lawfulness in it, and that what happens in the physical world is the reflection of spiritual processes. For the ancient Greeks, it was quite clear that when something happened in the physical world, the reason for it lay in the beyond.

For the ancient Greeks, there was one very special event: they transitioned to a completely different way of life. What we today call intellectual cultural life did not exist back then. They were beings who developed from clairvoyance. They had various clairvoyant abilities. Some outstanding individuals, what we now call geniuses, were those who knew their way around the spiritual world. Those who transformed their higher clairvoyant gift into action were the masters of the heroic age. This clairvoyance was a fact back then. Today, genius is not bound to heredity, but back then it was bound to blood. There were very specific families who were able to acquire this clairvoyant leadership. The heroes and rulers were people who had an instinctive connection with the supersensible world. They did not need to think about what to do, they acted out of their instincts, their desires. They followed them without rational consideration. That was the significant change, that feeling was transformed into intellectual culture. Such a Greek may well have felt in later times: Our ancestors acted on the direct impulse of their soul, but now such a quality is no longer inherited. The Greeks expressed this in images: the gods have taken this gift of clairvoyance from us and brought it to Asia Minor to the priestly state of Asia Minor, by having the most beautiful Greek woman, Helen, the wife of Menelaus, as the representative of clairvoyance, carried off to Troy, the priestly state of Asia Minor. Helen is another word for Selena – moon. It was felt that the service to the sun had replaced the old moon culture. Achilles, Agamemnon, Menelaus were seen as belonging to the age of the moon. Homer ties in with that event with his Iliad.

The Iliad begins: Singe, o Muse, mir vom Zorn des Achilles. Von Leidenschaften sollte gesungen werden, um auf die Zeit hinzuzuweisen, die der Verstandeskultur voranging.

The woman as a representative of clairvoyance is lost in two ways. The fight is for what has been lost, what has been banned to the priest-state of “Troy”. Homer describes the second way in which the ban is lifted when the storm rises, and it is only appeased when Iphigenia is sacrificed at [Aulis]. Greek legend shows us the replacement of the culture of clairvoyance with the culture of reason. Odysseus is the bearer of the modern culture of reason – a wooden horse, with the horse being a symbol of reason. He forms the transition to this.

Poseidon, the god of the sea, is the protector of the old. Athena is wisdom, and also a symbol of reason. Athena guides Odysseus home. Here, the fate of nations is to be described, and people are only used to illustrate it. The poet looks at the great world events and uses art to provide answers to them.

Plato, on the other hand, took the view that it is those who live that count, not those who come afterwards and tell the tale. He associated priestly poetry in the pre-Homeric period with looking up to the gods. This poetry was the first to contemplate life; before that, such contemplation did not exist.

Aeschylus is still completely absorbed in the contemplation of the supersensible world. The Eumenides and Prometheus Bound show the supersensible world growing into the sensual one.

More and more people grew into the culture of reason, and now we come to the thirteenth century, when Dante wrote his “Divine Comedy”. What does he present to us? A world of supersensible being. The whole philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus lived in Dante. Dante was a sage before he wrote that poem. The supersensible vision was before his soul. He was led through hell, through purgatory, his soul wandered through heaven. Man then became aware of his individual individuality. He asked about his relationship to his environment. This meant progress for humanity. Goethe says, for Goethe felt this as something powerful: What high thanks are to be said to him who brought us this world so freshly!

Again we skip a few centuries and come to the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, to Shakespeare. Humanity was different. It had made progress in physical-sensual reality. How did Shakespeare create? For whom, first of all? He did not create for those who set the tone in education. He wrote for the lower classes and created his dramas in a completely abandoned society. The educated would never have come there, exposed themselves to shame and ridicule. Those who set the tone at the time were completely absorbed in the physical world, but the lower classes still retained a receptivity. Shakespeare takes man as he is in his actions, his destinies. The impulses of his characters were played out in the physical world, but it only created an image. He described only individual destinies. If Shakespeare had lived for centuries, he could have singled out many more such individual destinies and written many more such dramas. The greatest poet, Goethe, could not have created a second drama like “Faust”. “Faust” is what goes beyond the individual human being. Up to Shakespeare, man stands on the ground of the sensual world. Goethe rises above it and seeks to reconnect heaven and hell. Faust describes what is not the fate of an individual.

Schiller's search for and expression of the task of poetry can be found in his Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man. He asks: How does the human being rise from the everyday to the higher, the supersensible?

Wherever Goethe creates a single work of art, there is always a falling out of man from himself.

In this way, art moves in step with the development of man. Goethe leads from the sensual world into the supersensible one. The longing for the supersensible world is clearly shown to us at the end of “Faust”. The twentieth century will bring us Goethe's testament. In spiritual science, humanity is to absorb what art longed for. Now art is to lead humanity into the supersensible. Art is a secret manifestation of the laws of the world.

Spiritual science will be a fulfillment of the longing that Goethe expresses at the end of “Faust” in the “Chorus mysticus”:

All that is transitory
Is but a parable
The inadequate,
Here it comes to pass;
The indescribable,
Here it is danced
The eternal feminine
Draws us on.

Dear attendees!

If today we are to speak about the value and significance of truth for the development of the human soul, then the old question may well arise for some: What is truth anyway? Can one speak in any way in general about what truth actually is? And if one cannot answer this question, how can one then possibly determine anything about the value and significance of truth for the human soul? Nevertheless, it is by no means the case that one cannot distinguish between approaching the truth and moving away from the truth. What Lessing really meant to express in his famous saying about truth is truly valid: If God were to extend to me his right and his left hand and in his right hand held the pure, full truth; but in his left hand held the eternal striving for truth, then I would say: Father, give me what you have in your left hand, the eternal striving for truth; for the pure, full truth is, after all, only for you.

It is true that man can only have an eternal striving for the pure, full truth; but it would be a mistake if, because of this, one were to fall back into the misunderstanding that one cannot distinguish between that which corresponds more and that which corresponds less to the ideal of truth.

Let us visualize, not so much through theoretical discussion as through an example, how there is indeed a tangible difference, so to speak, between what can be called truth and what can be said to have removed man from the truth. It is not at all true in general that everyone can have their own point of view regarding the truth, that one cannot distinguish whether what someone claims from their point of view comes closer to the truth or moves further away from it. In this context, we may recall the saying of a recently deceased American multi-millionaire, who, among other things, in addition to his occupation, which was certainly more lucrative in terms of his millions, was concerned with arriving at the truth about certain things through thought. In his aphorisms, he made a remarkable statement about the value of human beings: no person in the world is irreplaceable; indeed, one cannot even speak of a special value of the individual. If I – so he said – now lay down my work, numerous others will be found to take it up where I left it. If I withdraw from what I have been doing, I will easily be replaced, and when I die – so roughly he said – the railways will run just as before, the dividends will be earned just as before. In short, nothing special in the world will have changed with the departure of a person. And then he adds – and this is important –: It is the same with every human being.

Let us compare this so-called truth, which the multi-millionaire has expressed from his point of view, about the value and significance of man in the world, with a similar saying by the witty German art historian Herman Grimm, who said this at the time. When Treitschke died, Grimm said about his work and significance: When a man like Treitschke has passed away, only then do we realize what he actually meant to all those who had contact with him. Treitschke was one of those people – as Grimm says – who, when they stop working, cannot find a successor for their work. He makes one realize that individuals are irreplaceable in their value and significance.

They are different, these two statements about the value and significance of a person: one from the American millionaire, the other from the spirited German art historian Herman Grimm. I would like to add: Grimm did not add what the American millionaire added: That is how it is with every human being! Two points of view, one could say, if one wanted to judge lightly, to the effect that the truth can take on a special form for each person. Two points of view, one could say, about the value and significance of the human being.

Now, which is the truer? If you examine the two statements a little, you will notice a huge difference between the two. You just have to examine them according to certain characteristics that are not usually examined today. How does the millionaire take his point of view? Merely in terms of his own personality. He considers what would become of the work he has done up to a certain point in time; he judges entirely from himself and comes to the conclusion that the work he is giving up could be taken up by someone else at any moment, and therefore it must be the same for everyone. A very personal point of view confronts us here, which looks only at itself in order to arrive at the truth about the value and significance of the human being. And Herman Grimm, he does not judge anything about himself in this case, but about another personality. He judges in such a way that he completely disregards himself and is, so to speak, overwhelmed by something that is outside of him as a being. And that is precisely how he comes to judge the case, not making a general judgment from this individual case, but simply accepting the case as it is. We need only consider the difference in the two points of view to see what is characteristic in each case. In the one case, the value and significance of the human being is judged quite subjectively, quite personally, quite from one's own ego; in the other case, the ego is not involved at all. And if we really consider both statements, who could fail to feel that the one who judges impersonally, who disregards himself, allows himself to be overwhelmed, as it were, by the objective, has more to say about the value and significance of a human being than the one who judges quite subjectively, quite personally! This must be the natural feeling of everyone. Such a comparison shows that we must never say: point of view is just a point of view; but that there is a way of approaching the truth, of actually arriving at it in certain respects, if we try to fathom the truth by taking an impersonal approach. Or do we not feel that in certain respects, as Herman Grimm says, each person is irreplaceable? Not only great people are irreplaceable. Can the point of view of the American millionaire apply when one considers how irreplaceable a mother is for many a child, for example? Can one say that something can step into this gap to replace her? Oh, one will feel it as soon as one takes the point of view that there is a coming closer to the truth, even if there can only be an eternal striving for the pure, full truth.

So it is precisely with those things that have such value for the human soul that it is important to examine them sometimes in a very intimate and profound way. And with what we have gained from the simple example of personal and impersonal judgment, we have already gained a great deal precisely for the characterization of truth.

In the lecture on the mission of anger, we started from the assumption that what is actually the nature of the human soul, what we can call its soul nature in contrast to the human body, consists of three parts: the sentient soul, which is, so to speak, the lowest of the human soul members, the mind or emotional soul, which forms the second link of the human being within, and the consciousness soul, which is the third link. And we have already characterized that this sentient soul is the link in the human being within which we find desire, instincts, passions and so on. We have, after all, examined a part of this sentient soul ourselves by pointing to the element of anger and its effect on the sentient soul, and we have seen how the I is present in this sentient soul in a dull way, as it is still overwhelmed by the passions, drives, instincts, and so on.

If we ascend to the next higher level of the human soul, to the soul of mind or feeling, then the I becomes clearer and more luminous, and the I becomes a power in the human being that can perceive and understand itself. How does the soul of mind or feeling actually free itself from the sentient soul? The human being stands in relation to the external world. This external world makes its impressions on the human being; it gives him the rich world of color and light, of sounds, of warmth and cold, in short, everything we perceive through our senses. When we bring our soul into relationship with the outer world through its organs, then, in our sentient soul, joy and delight, suffering and pain, and so on, arise in relation to what we perceive outside in the world of color, in the world permeated by sound, in the world of taste and smell, and so on, through our perceptions. Everything that is connected to our perceptions in our sentient soul, our desires and instincts, makes up the lowest of the soul's members, so to speak, and in this lives, still unaware of itself, the human I, this center of the human being. But in this lowest limb of the soul also live the affects, the passions, the drives and desires. Man lets himself be easily carried away by them; his ego is not yet master over anger, annoyance, vexation; it lets itself be carried away by lust and suffering, by drives and desires, is submerged in them, is not the conductor, the actor in relation to these drives and desires. We can say that the I lives down there, brooding in the surging sea of the sentient soul; but what we call the mind or feeling soul cannot be distinguished from this surging sea of the sentient soul, that which we call the mind or feeling soul, unless the human being delves so deeply into himself that he connects in his inner life with what he has experienced in the outer world. We receive direct impressions from this outer world. We carry these away from our interaction with the outer world. Then we are alone with ourselves. There we weigh one joy against another, there we brood over our pain, we try to get over it or to delve even deeper into it. There we expand within ourselves what we have received from outside impressions. What the soul builds up within itself could not be worked through by it if the I did not do something with what has been received, if the I did not work in this soul. Stimuli from outside can come without the ego; man only has to face the outside world, the world has an effect on him. Like in a mirror, the outer world gives rise to pleasure and suffering, desires and instincts and so on in the sentient soul; but it is only when we turn away from this outer world and collect ourselves, when we process our instincts and desires, when we form a whole in our imaginations, that we say: We work our way through the ego from the sentient soul to the mind soul, then we internalize ourselves within our self, then we process what we have received from the outside. And this inner work is the content of the mind or emotional soul. And only then, when we are able to relate what we have built up to the outside world, when we have formed a realm of inner experiences through our inner life, when we have developed a sum of pleasure and joy in our soul that we call ' beautiful', for example, and then apply all this to the outer world; when we come to recognize something in the outer world as good, beautiful, true through the concepts we have formed, then we say we attain knowledge of the outer world. There we work our way up to grasping the outer world, up to the knowing, cognizing human being: there we develop the consciousness soul. This is initially the highest level of the human soul. Thus the sentient soul leads us from the outside in, we live in ourselves through the mind or emotional soul, and we find the way again to grasp the world through knowledge and understanding through our consciousness soul.

Within the sentient soul, we have encountered the element of anger, and in that anger we have found one of the preparers for the development of the I and the soul. A person who is not yet mature enough to form an opinion about what is true, just, and good will, by falling into righteous anger at the sight of some lie, some injustice, some evil, take a stand on this external world. Anger will, so to speak, indicate to him: This is not in accordance with you, [this is a discordance, an obstacle] and in his inner being awakens that which is called the ego, which opposes the outside world. Where we are inflamed with anger at something we cannot admit, there is the awakening of the ego. [And [the anger] develops this in the transition and ascent into the intellectual and emotional soul through constant internalization out of the developmental soul.] So if anger is something that a person must overcome in order to develop, we can almost say of anger: It has its value in that it can be overcome; if anger has only attained its full significance for a person when the has been transformed into love and gentleness, we can say that the most important thing for the mind or soul is that it presents itself to us as the element that, in the best sense, brings the two sides of the ego mentioned yesterday to development. If the human ego is to develop in an appropriate way, it must happen in such a way that, on the one hand, it becomes fuller and fuller. Only by developing a rich life of ideas and thoughts, a rich life of feelings, emotions and will within himself [and thereby strengthening his ego forces within himself], only in this way will he be able to embrace much of the world on the one hand – and on the other hand, the ego will be able to become a strong starting point for working outwards. The more his individuality develops, the more — we may say — a person is worth in the world as a human being. But we have already pointed out that this I is a two-edged sword, that on the other hand this I, by only aspiring to become richer and fuller in itself, can close itself within itself; that precisely by wanting to live only in itself, it closes the door to the outside world and thereby becomes impoverished. If, on the one hand, a person is to become as independent and strong as possible, then he must avoid impoverishing himself by closing himself off from the outside world by also cultivating the second aspect of the self, selflessness, the merging with the outside world.

Where is the element in human development that, by its very nature, does justice to these two sides of the I? There is nothing else that does justice to both sides of the I as much as truth does. Truth is something that, if it is to appear to us in its highest form, we can only find in the innermost part of our I. Only that which we have recognized as such through our I itself can be considered truth for us. Thus, the truth for the ego must be found in the innermost part of the human ego. We can say: Through the self, the truth for the human being is found. When the human being understands this character of truth, then he will say: It is precisely through the work for the truth that the ego becomes stronger in its selfhood in its inner strength; for truth is only achieved when the ego has to make an effort, because truth can only be found in the depths of the ego.

Hence the peculiarity of truth: we need nothing more than the work of our own ego if the truth is to have any value for us. Admittedly, in the case of present-day man, there are hardly any truths other than the simplest ones that take on such a form for him that the ego can really decide through itself. These are the simplest arithmetical truths. Once we have decided for ourselves that three times three is nine and not ten, then this decision, made in the innermost sanctuary of our ego, is enough to know that this is true. And even if millions of people were to say that three times three is ten, we would still decide for three times three is nine. This is valid for mathematical truths because they are clear and, so to speak, present themselves to us directly in their simplicity. Therefore, when we overcome this simplicity through the passions that assert themselves in the sentient soul, by the I working its way up into the rational soul, it must overcome the other affects in the same way as it overcomes anger. For only by casting out the instincts, desires, drives and passions that are in the soul can what a person experiences in the soul become truth. Where people disagree about the truth, where not everyone finds the same truths in their soul, it is precisely the urges, the desires, the passions that prevent them, so to speak, from truly seeing the circumstances of the truth transparently and brightly and clearly. The passions cannot have a say in simple mathematical truths. If, for example, passions were to arise regarding the transparency of mathematical truths, then many a housewife would certainly desire that if she takes three times three marks to market, it would make ten marks; for the passions speak in favor of this, but the simplicity and transparency of the mathematical truths do not allow the passions and desires to arise. In this case – in any matter at all, where we have managed to silence the passions and desires, we also clearly see the circumstances of the truth. In all the things in which we have not yet succeeded in silencing the passions and desires, we are not yet capable of deciding on the truth in earnest. But when we have succeeded in deciding on a truth, then the ego is in its inmost being the judge of the truth. Thus, the ego must feel itself in its power when it decides on the truth, when it acquires truth.

And again: once we have acquired the truth about something, we may say: this truth, although acquired in the most personal way, is the most impersonal of all; for we can find the same truth in all souls. When we have found a truth, it will take on the same form in millions of people who have also found it. Thus we will be able to communicate with the whole world about the truth. Thus truth is the most personal and thus it is the most impersonal. It leads most deeply into us, because there it must be decided, and it leads out again, because it applies independently of our arbitrariness. Truth is therefore the element in the life of the soul that has the most important mission in relation to this life of the soul. On the one hand, it educates the self to independence – for the self is the judge of truth – and on the other hand, it educates the self to selflessness, in that truth brings together this self with everything in our environment where truth is to be spoken at all. The two sides of the double-edged sword are best educated by the truth, and so the ego becomes strong to be led up from the surging activity of the sentient soul, where it still broods dull; so it becomes strong enough to be led up into the soul of mind or emotion, and at the same time it is prepared to be led up into the consciousness soul, where it comes out again to grasp the environment, to grasp the world selflessly. Thus we have characterized truth as the most important and essential element in the development of the I, in the work of the I on the three soul-members, the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul. This is why truth is such a powerful educator of the ego, because it works on both sides. We just have to take it seriously. Only those who truly strive for the truth in their own selves, and only strive for the truth, who allow only the truth to determine their inner world of ideas, may hope that this truth will fulfill this implied mission for them. A great English poet rightly says of truth, hinting at its brittleness, hinting at the high demands it makes of us: “To him who prefers anything to truth, this goddess does not surrender.” Those who place their Christianity above truth will soon realize that they are placing their particular denomination above Christianity. But those who place their particular denomination above Christianity will soon realize that they are placing their sect above their denomination. And those who place their sect above their denomination will soon realize that they are placing their personal whims above even the teachings of their sect. So says the poet Coleridge. Truth reveals itself only to him who is in turn ready to surrender himself entirely to it. But now we meet this truth within ourselves in a twofold form. The I asserts its two sides, which we have characterized, quite well in relation to this truth. If we want to characterize these two sides of the I, then we must present to our soul the way in which truth presents itself to the I from the world.

We look into the world. World phenomena present themselves to our senses, that is, to our sentient soul. Those who want to form concepts, ideas, and images about the world but do not want to believe that this world is built from concepts, ideas, and images may as well admit that it is possible to scoop water out of a glass that contains no water. However nonsensical it would be to claim this, it is nevertheless true that we can draw from a world in which there are no ideas or concepts and create in our minds what we then have in our souls: ideas and concepts of the world. A world that was not built according to ideas, that was not steeped in wisdom, could never evoke a reflection in the human soul that represents concepts and ideas of this world as an inner experience. For what would our concepts and ideas be, through which the laws of the world are to be experienced in us, what would all science be, if the world were not built according to ideas? All science would be fantasy, reverie; for science is a sum of ideas and concepts. If there were no ideas and concepts, in other words, if there were no wisdom in the world, if the world were not interwoven and permeated by wisdom, then our wisdom would be folly; for it would be pure fantasy, pure error. We would imagine something in our soul as a picture of the world that is constructed quite arbitrarily. It only makes sense to create an image of the world with the help of concepts and ideas if one assumes that these concepts and ideas are present in the world and that the things themselves that present themselves to our senses arise and grow out of the wisdom of the world, out of the wisdom that flows and streams through the world. So we say to ourselves: Behind this world, which we perceive through our senses, which we feel and desire through our sentient soul, behind this world is wisdom. And we seek to approach this wisdom by working our way up in our soul to that which our mind-soul inwardly reveals as truth. Wisdom is there in the world; wisdom works its way out in our own soul as we ascend to the mind and consciousness soul. But when we relate to this wisdom in the world, we have to say: Oh, this wisdom is built into the world, incorporated into it. We human beings stand, so to speak, as belated observers in relation to this world and explore the wisdom that is implanted in it. [A large part of our striving in the acquisition of knowledge consists of appropriating what pulses and lives through the world as wisdom.] If we allow the wisdom that flows through the world to shine in us as truth, then we are truly the ones who come afterwards. And if we look at the development of humanity, [it shows us how, with all his doings and inventions, man falls short of the wisdom already achieved by the environment with its wisdom]. So we can say: A closer look at human development soon shows us how man, so to speak, stands behind the wisdom of the world with his truth. One can see this by taking a look at the historical development of humanity. In the school books, one can read how people gradually came to produce what we call paper from certain substances. Through human wisdom, people have learned to produce paper. Just as man makes paper out of certain substances, so the paper of the wasp's nest is made – for the wasp's nest consists of paper. The wasp's nest shows the art of making paper, which has been present in nature as wisdom for countless centuries and which man, in his historical development, has found afterwards. In this way, man is truly a thinker of what has been thought outside. A large part of our striving in the acquisition of knowledge consists in reflecting on the wisdom of the world, in appropriating within ourselves what pulses and lives through the world as wisdom. By relating to the world in such a way that we allow its wisdom to shine in us, we feel, precisely in the innermost essence of our I, that we are strengthening ourselves, that we are relating to the world with the substance that is outside as spiritual substance. We grow stronger as the wisdom of the world shines in our I as truth. This truth, which reflects the wisdom of the world, corresponds perfectly to one side of our ego, namely the side that we can call the selfless side. After all, everything we think about the world is there without our ego, it has been there long before we could think it. In grasping the wisdom of the world, we experience something that is outside of our ego. We pour our I out into the world, so to speak: we are completely world, we are completely given to the world, completely selfless, by reviving the wisdom of the world in ourselves. In this way we make ourselves selfless by completely giving ourselves, objectively giving ourselves, to the wisdom of the world, which, as the light of truth, is to shine in ourselves. That is one side of the truth.

The other side of the truth comes to us when we consider human labor. When we consider all the human ideas that we realize in the smallest and largest of things, whether it is an everyday idea or the idea of an inventor who invents a machine, for example, we have the resounding, productive, creative work of man in mind. First we have the idea, then we have what is the external expression of this idea or the consequence of the idea. We see what arises in us, what has not yet been thought in the world, springing from our I. We see our innermost being emerge in our everyday activities, in the activities that we can describe as the realization of the great ideas of the inventors. First there is the thought, we do not reflect on the thought, the sensory phenomenon is not there first, the thought is there first, in which the sensory phenomenon comes to us through our own action, we are the forethinkers and we are the ones who, after our forethought, enter the world creatively ; there we feel our I growing stronger on the other side; there we feel how the essence of our I has flowed out, feel that which we can call our selfhood; through which we become capable of seeing realized that which the I first experiences outside in the surrounding of our existence. There we feel that side of the I where we do not merge into something that exists without the I, but on the contrary, there we feel our inner activity, our selfhood. [Our I is in our deeds, our works, just as it has also worked first in our thoughts.] As a forward thinker, the I is truly cultivating its selfhood; as a backward thinker, the I is truly cultivating its selflessness. And in these two components of the entire inner life, the truth within our work and striving in the world confronts us as reflected truth and as thought-out truth.

Now we ask ourselves: Is there a mediation between these two sides? Just as life approaches the human being, so do the two sides of his ego approach each other, but still keeping the components of truth apart. Truth is indeed the great educator of both sides, but the way the ego appropriates this truth introduces a division. Is there anything where the two sides of truth confront us in the world? [But if there are such truths that existed before, before the ego, and the ego grasps them independently of the external world, then realizes them in the world, that is a truth that we can recognize as one of selfhood and at the same time of selflessness.] If there are such truths that, on the one hand, can be conceived before all sensual reality and yet are realized, not in machines and daily activities; but if we enact the truth independently of the external world and then see it realized in this external world; if the truth that presents itself to us as pre-thought can at the same time show itself to be formed entirely according to the pattern of the postulated truth: Such a truth would be one that particularly cultivates both sides of the self. Do such truths exist? It is precisely such truths that Theosophy or spiritual science seeks to provide for modern humanity.

Let us try to make this clear with an example. It has already been stated that it is the task of Theosophy to present the proposition: that which is soul-spiritual arises only out of that which is soul-spiritual, just as Redi, in another field, first presented the proposition: that which is alive arises only out of that which is alive. We have seen that this proposition follows from what we call the realization of the repeated lives of man on earth. The way in which spiritual research reveals that the innermost core of man's being re-embodies itself is not brought about by logical conclusions, but is an immediate realization of the clairvoyant consciousness. Just as a person with physical eyes sees color and light, so a person who has developed the inner, hidden powers of the human soul perceives the essence of the human being, which we can call the immortal, that lives in the human being and presents itself to the clairvoyant consciousness, that comes from previous embodiments and that goes to future embodiments. So, through supersensible knowledge, we have the concept of the re-embodiment of the human essence. So the spiritual researcher comes and says: Through my research I have established that the human being undergoes re-embodiments; he describes the re-embodiment, he conceptualizes it in the same way that modern natural science conceptualizes the sensory perception and intellectual acquisitions. With these concepts he presents himself to people. Such knowledge cannot be found through outer perception; it must be found through supersensible vision, through the development of those organs that we call the spiritual eyes and ears. But when it is found, it can be conceptualized, thought of, and given forms that we call the forms of truth. So, we have a truth before us that expresses itself in a way that is not possible through outer perception. We have a preconceived idea in contrast to external perception. Just as the thought, as the idea of the machine lives in the mind of the inventor, without him seeing it externally, so the thought of re-embodiment lives as a result of research in the spiritual world, it lives in the mind of the spiritual researcher, but then the message goes out into the world, then we can we can look at the outside world and say: We see how [for example, a child] from the first day of a human being [gradually] develops from the vague, blurred facial features into distinct forms, [into a fixed physiognomy], which slumbers in a dark background of existence. There we see the definite forms developing. And we say to ourselves: According to what the spiritual researcher tells us, we can easily understand this. What has been brought over from previous embodiments is the core of the human being, [who lives anew in the child and comes from a previous life], who works out what was indeterminate into definite forms. We look at the whole development and say: When we look at life and test life, then this life itself in its appearances shows us the truth of what the spiritual researcher says; and only bias can cloud a person's view to such an extent that he would not find the truth in the external sensory appearance of what the spiritual researcher brings down as a preconceived idea from the higher worlds. Thus the spiritual researcher brings his truths down from the higher worlds, and holds them up to external perception. What confronts us in the external world offers us the evidence for the truths from the higher worlds, in that we then understand the external world. We penetrate beneath things with what we bring to them as truths. Thus what has been thought out agrees with the outer world, as the inventor's idea agrees with the finished machine. Thus what is otherwise separate is united in the truths that Theosophy presents. There we have, as it were, nothing behind us. The theosophical truth is not found like the idea of an inventor — created out of nothing in a certain sense —, it is found through observation in the spiritual world. But it can be applied to the external sensual world. This theosophical truth is both a pre-thought and a post-thought. Therefore, it affects the human soul in a completely different way than all the other truths that we encounter. (By absorbing this truth, man unleashes his ego.

By immersing himself in the wisdom of the world, man loses his self, and his I becomes one that, so to speak, flows out more and more; it becomes impoverished of inner strength. By thinking ahead in his daily activities, by demanding that what has been thought ahead be translated into external reality, he wants to imprint his ego on the external world, he wants to see more and more in his surroundings what his self wills; he wants to imprint his self on his surroundings. In this way, he is completely absorbed in his selfhood, and has created an interest in making this I, quite apart from the environment, as strong as possible. We can see two possibilities for the education of the I. One is that the I becomes a completely reflective one, where it is completely devoted to the outer world, where it is more and more devoted to the outer world, where it does not grow stronger in its power. The other is where the self is not merely filled with ideas from the outside world, but should be filled by the will. In the first case, the self can become desolate in the will. We can experience that such people, who absorb objective truth in the most conscientious way, are weak in will. On the other hand, we can observe that those people who only want to impress their will on their environment become closed off from what is going on in the outside world, from what should awaken their interest in the wisdom-filled content of the world. Thus we see, so to speak, the thinking I developed in those people who develop in the first way, and the willing I in those who develop in the second way. But we can achieve harmonious interaction between the thinking I and the willing I by allowing spiritual-scientific truths to take effect in us. Then the two beneficent powers in the I will awaken. On the one hand, the I will let all the content of the world into itself, out of which it is born, and will enrich itself inwardly through what is poured out into the whole world as its spiritual content. On the other hand, it will gather itself together within itself in order to become strong within itself. Thus the ego will not be impoverished in either direction, but will become strong and healthy in both. And this is the health-giving quality of theosophical truth: on the one hand, it is as fully realized as the reflective truth, and on the other hand, it has the same effect as the reflective truth. Therefore, it is healing because on the one hand it pours into us all the beauty of the world and on the other hand makes our ego so flourishing and fruitful because it enables what grows in the ego to find its reflection in the outer phenomena. Through the theosophical truth, we develop our ego so much because it is the truth that is both premeditated and reflected. That is the healthy aspect of the theosophical truth. While we would see in a person who is only a reflective person, who only wants to comprehend the wisdom of the world, that he can, under certain circumstances, paralyze himself more and more in terms of willpower and that his inner weakness , that he becomes inwardly ill from lack of such power, we would see on the other hand that he who only wants to realize his will becomes inwardly impoverished because he has no connection with the world. On the other hand, we see harmony prevailing in all respects in the theosophist. The thought becomes more concentrated as it is seized by the confidence of realization. In short, by permeating itself with the theosophical truth, the ego becomes a point of passage for wisdom. There the will is enlightened and on the other side becomes the true center by having the premeditated truth with the postmeditated truth in relation to the world. Humanity will gradually recognize that the will, which can appear so dry and so sober to the one who merely wants it implemented in external reality, warms up to living feelings because it meets with the wisdom of the world; and again, that this wisdom, which can seem so dry to us when we merely reflect on the world, can seem individual to us when it meets with the living will in the ego. Wisdom and will must meet in the ego. This is the healthy, life-affirming truth that we not only produce mind-soul - or emotional soul - but mind-permeated mind-soul and mind-permeated emotional soul in the higher soul members, in the mind-soul, through the nature of the I, these two sides of approaching the truth.

Above all, in more recent times, no one has felt this so deeply as the person we have spoken about here many times before, who was as close to spiritual science as possible, who created the greatest poetic works, as Goethe. And a work by the later, older Goethe should serve as an illustration to what has been said today. Oh, Goethe knew clearly and distinctly that the way in which man confronts the truth depends on how he has developed in his own self. That truth is merely something objectively compelling was never Goethe's thought. That truth enlightens man all the more the more receptive he is, that was his fundamental conviction, which is little understood today. People come and say: Oh, we have long since gone beyond a certain way of grasping the truth. Science has led us to the point where we cannot help doubting that there is something spiritual in a living being. [Science has thoroughly driven out of us the belief that something spiritual is to be sought behind every material thing. It has driven out our belief in something like an etheric body or a life force, because science is close to showing how living substance can be composed of external chemical components. Don't you hear everywhere that we are told: We cannot recognize such fantasies as those presented by Theosophy, because our ideal is to produce protein, that is, something living, from dead matter in the laboratory. May a counter-question be asked here? After all the development of man, can what he expects about the composition of a living being decide anything? Can that decide anything for his beliefs about the spirit of the world? If you want to think about it, you can find external proof that nothing is decided about the belief in the spirit through something like the expectation that protein could one day be produced chemically in a laboratory. The one does not force the other at all, this can be proved historically. Ask what else people have believed in the past, for example, in earlier centuries, in the Middle Ages, they not only believed that they would succeed in synthesizing protein from carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and so on, they believed something quite different. Imagine the sentences in Goethe's Faust, where Wagner stands before the preparation of the homunculus; the ability to do this was a belief that existed in the Middle Ages. People believed that they could create something that was a small human being from external substances through the various processes they performed in the laboratory. However, this belief that they could create a human being from external substances did not cause these people to deny the spirit. Therefore, the denial of the spirit today does not arise from the compulsion of objective facts, but from the inability [to grasp the spirit] to rise within one's own soul to the kind of thinking that sees the conditions for professing the spirit. One must also consider such things, then one will understand what it meant that only the one who can work in the substance of the soul as the external naturalist works in the external substance can grasp the life of the soul.

And Goethe was one who could see deeply into the ideas we have presented today. Above all, he was aware of the contrast between reflective and pre-reflective truth. And he beautifully expressed this contrast in a wonderful little poem, his “Pandora”.

This “Pandora” was written in 1807; a lot of nonsense has been written about it. People said: This is a Goethean late work, in which Goethe presents all kinds of concepts in symbols. In a Goethe edition, by a much-praised German scholar, you can read the words: Well, what does that tell us, other than that we can form a concept of ourselves, that man represents what he thinks of himself? Goethe would have thanked himself for presenting to the world what he had “formed of himself.” Goethe himself may have once expressed himself in a manner that was not polite but clear about people's judgment of his late works.

Anyone who takes [Pandora] in hand [and lets it sink in], attentively and without prejudice, will recognize one of them. Oh, there are not many works in which the content is evaluated in such a wonderful way, in keeping with the style. It is the one in this work that can be called the light artistic hand. Read “Pandora” and, if you imbue it with your sense of style, you will admire the ease with which everything is shaped to suit the person and situation in question, whether in the verse structure or in the diction. One person speaks in this verse form, the other in a different, more lightly flowing style. Everything is easy in this “Pandora”. It is precisely in this that the greatness of Goethe having to leave this work a fragment is revealed. Even with a Goethe, such a powerful artistic accomplishment as that evident in “Pandora” is only possible for moments. Even for Goethe it was only sufficient for the beginning of Pandora; but then he lost his way, for he was too small to continue the work in the greatness that inspired him as an artist when he created the beginning. But that should not deter us from recognizing the greatness that is present in Pandora.

Goethe was very clear about people who say: Yes, what Goethe wrote in his youth, one can go along with, it is all full of poetic originality; but what Goethe allegorized in his old age, no reasonable person can understand. This was already the case during Goethe's lifetime – not with regard to Faust, but to his other works of later years – Goethe himself by no means held the first part of “Faust”, which is so admired, in the highest esteem. He knew what he had put into it in order to develop ever higher and higher; he knew within himself how much his later works stood above his earlier ones. And so he says something impolite, but clearly:

They praise Faust
And what else
In my works roars
In their favor.
The old Mick and Mack
Is very pleased;
The pack of rags and bones thinks
It would no longer be!

This judgment is justified in the face of the philistine critics of Goethe, who make Goethe into what they themselves are – at least something good comes of it! In recent times, our audience has been inundated with such interpreters of Goethe. [Let us take a closer look at the work in terms of our topic today:] “Pandora” contains on a large scale the problem of the reflective and the forward-thinking human being – [Epimetheus belongs to the former, Prometheus to the latter]. Zeus wanted to take away the existence of evolving humanity. Under Zeus's rule, humanity would have been doomed. Prometheus confronts Zeus. According to the legend, he brings man fire, language and writing. He is thus the one who gives people the opportunity to emerge from the state in which they used to be, where the ego brooded dull down in the sentient soul. Man was to develop his I more and more. It is a correct observation that everything to do with fire, for example, is somehow connected with human forethought. Travelers described how, in areas where they had made a fire, the monkeys, for example, came and warmed themselves, but it never occurred to the monkeys to stoke the fire themselves; that is, these animals of the highest species are not able to envision the future. These higher animals, which are closest to humans, certainly felt the pleasant warmth of the fire; they may also have felt some kind of thought in a dull form, but they still did not think the thought through to the point of maintaining the fire by adding wood, much less to think of further practical applications. It is precisely because man has mastered the element of fire that he has been enabled to make his ego the starting point of thinking ahead, [and thereby gradually to lead his ego to a higher level in ever-increasing measure].

Thus, in his “Pandora”, Goethe presents us with the two brothers, Epimetheus and Prometheus. There stands the one brother: Epimetheus. His name already indicates that he is the contemplative; he is devoted to that which is imprinted on the world as wisdom, those thoughts that can shine as truth in the human soul. He is not prepared to think ahead; in his soul he dreams the truth dream of the world, which is an afterthought conceived behind the wisdom of the world as truth. Such is Epimetheus. Prometheus, on the other hand, is devoted to the other one-sidedness; he wants nothing to do with the reflection of wisdom. He only wants to know about that which arises in the soul of man himself, in order to realize it.

The true celebration of the real man is the deed

— that is Prometheus' saying. [He is a man of action, and this is how he appears before us as a forward thinker.] Thus we see the two opposites: Epimetheus, the thinker, and Prometheus, the forward thinker. Goethe expresses this in his “Pandora” already in the scenery. On the one side, we have Prometheus' dwelling. We see that everything that has been built there has been created by human labor. Although it is rough, we see that it does not bear the character of nature anywhere, does not depict anything outside in nature; we do not see a copy of a natural beauty, it is rough and crude, but as a human work it stands before us. In contrast, what is on the side of Epimetheus as his residence, comes to us as a scene that is composed of the beautiful creations of nature, of parts of nature, and continues into a wonderful landscape. We see in it the reflection on nature and the act of settling in such a way that one lives according to what is exemplified outside. Epimetheus and Prometheus appear to us as complete opposites in their striving for truth.

In the Greek saga, we are told that Zeus wanted to take revenge for the act of Prometheus. [Through Hephaistos, Zeus had an image of a woman made in an artful, artistically beautiful way] – Pandora – [which he brought to life]. She was to bring people gifts from the world of Zeus. [After her descent to earth, Prometheus rejects the divine being, but Epimetheus takes her in and makes the beautiful goddess his wife.] The saga tells how Pandora, the woman created by the gods, opens the box [that Zeus gave her] and how the goods that actually make people miserable fly out. Only one good remains in it: hope. Thus we see that in the saga, Pandora also has something to do with that which belongs to the human race of the past. From the future, thinking humanity has only hope from Pandora. What else it has, what people can use to get by, has been handed down from the past.

This Pandora also appears in Goethe as the wife of Epimetheus. But we see very clearly that Goethe takes what is an external action and elevates it into a spiritual world. We see the reflective soul of Epimetheus and see it connected with Pandora, that is to say, in this soul of Epimetheus lives that which is spread out in the world as wisdom, which is reflected upon as in a dream. The characterization of Epimetheus, who dreams wisdom, which is nothing other than Pandora herself when personified, is wonderful. He feels unsatisfied and weak, and then, in the further course of the drama, Goethe has Prometheus, the brother, confront Epimetheus. There Epimetheus raves about the [beloved, but also vanished, divine] Pandora, about the all-gifted Pandora. Goethe shows us that through this figure, worldly wisdom is illuminated to him, but worldly wisdom as it is grasped by man in reflection. What is this reflected truth like? It is abstract, uncreative, unproductive. Imagine that we could combine in our soul all knowledge about the entire world; but this knowledge would be unproductive if it were only reflected. Just as the wife of Epimetheus, just as Pandora, is endowed with the wisdom of the world but is unproductive. Prometheus, who has no sense for this Pandora, confronts Epimetheus; while Epimetheus raves about Pandora's magnificent hair, about how beautifully her foot moves – Prometheus says: Oh, I know how it is made. [I know how Pandora was made by Hephaestus, the blacksmith, and how she was brought to life by Zeus. He thinks only of the origin of the goddess, not of the beauty of what has come into being, what has been created, and so Pandora, who is otherwise unproductive, gives him the impetus for productivity. And this is what can come out of it as a reaction in him.] In Pandora's case, it is something mechanically put together, something that cannot be put into practice; something against which he asserts his saying:

The true man's true celebration is the deed!

Now Goethe shows how Elpore and Epimeleia, Hope and Foresight, have sprung from the marriage between Epimetheus and Pandora. [In her departure, Pandora took one of her daughters, Elpore, with her to the gods and left Epimeleia, chosen by Epimetheus, with her father.] These two daughters show different sides of Epimetheus's nature, [especially the latter in particular]. Hope, [Elpore], is what reflection alone can defend in relation to the future. The one who is a forward-thinking person sees what he has thought come into being in reality; the one who is a reflective person can say: I expect this or that to happen in the future; because what should happen does not come from himself. On the other hand, there is Epimeleia, the other daughter, who protects the past.

Prometheus also has a scion, Phileros; the one who descends from this I-human Prometheus is the actual caretaker of human I-ness. But already in the son we see the full one-sidedness of mere self-seeking. He no longer wants to create. He no longer wants to create. He cannot endure in a useful, different, thinking activity. This does not endure, because one-sided striving for the self is not complemented by wisdom. In Prometheus, this striving for the self is still present in such a way that it permeates the whole being of Prometheus. In the son, it manifests itself in such a way that it shows its harmful side at the same time. The son is not only the creator, but also the enjoyer of what is there. In this way, he causes conflict. In his blind rage, he even wounds the one who protects what exists, [his beloved] Epimeleia, the daughter of Epimetheus, in a fight.

Thus the powers of the human soul, the reflective and the thinking powers, confront each other in this Goethean drama. [And so these powers fight each other. But nothing is achieved by this; for the soul powers only increase and strengthen each other through harmonious interaction. Only in this way can truth fulfill its mission in the human being.

Goethe shows us how, ultimately, it is through the interaction of the two currents that true human salvation comes about. And Goethe also shows us how what he has depicted here is, for him, a mature result of development. Goethe looked back to the time when he had only developed the Promethean nature in himself one-sidedly. In 1774, the Goethe who was certainly already endowed with all the makings of Goethe, but still immaturely youthful, expressed this one-sided Promethean truth as his conviction in his 'Prometheus' at that time, and it flows towards us there. And if today we find a certain self-satisfaction in pointing to this youthful “Prometheus” as if it gave us the whole of Goethe, then we have to say: this is only a one-sided expression of Goethe himself. Goethe did not stop at thinking ahead; he added the thinking of his mature knowledge, his reflection. No, not only the premeditation, not only that which rejects all wisdom, not only the pre-thinking that rejects all reflection, but the confluence of both alone can establish the mission of truth.

That Goethe in his youth stood on a one-sided point of view, we can still gather from something else. He does not remember the words in the first part of “Faust” where Faust sets out to translate the Bible. There we see how Faust approaches the Bible and wants to replace the correct word “In the beginning was the word” with another: “In the beginning was the deed.” This is what he wants to contribute to the Bible more as a youthful person; that was not Goethe's final opinion. People should stop seeing the whole of Goethe in this. In his youth, Goethe probably cultivated this Promethean point of view, but later he clearly showed how he had progressed beyond it, how he later knew that in addition to the aforementioned deed, in order to develop people healthily, the word, that is to say the reflection of the wisdom imprinted by the world's spirits, must occur. Therefore, in his “Pandora”, Goethe adds from his totality, broadening his youthful point of view:

From heaven,
Senkert's word and deed blessedly descend,
a gift descends, undreamt of before.

That is, he means, unimagined by himself in the past, when he still believed that he had to correct the Gospel of John at this point, to replace the passage “In the beginning was the word” with “In the beginning was the deed”. For Goethe, the deed becomes the word, which expresses the character of what was previously conceived. The word becomes the other, the illuminating wisdom of the world. This is why Goethe says in “Pandora”:

What you below feel is our wish;
What you can give, we know.
You Titans make great beginnings; but
To lead to the eternal good, the eternal beautiful
Is the work of the gods; let it be.

Thus Goethe complements his youthful Prometheus point of view in the right, harmonious way with the point of view of Epimetheus, showing us what attitude and loyalty to true philosophy should be. In this way, Goethe's example shows us the mission of truth within our own human hearts.

Today you have recognized the truth as an educator of the human being. You have seen that truth is something most personal and at the same time something impersonal; something that makes the human being an I-human being, and something that in turn brings the I together with all other beings. You have seen that the ego is so strong on its two sides that it still expresses its selfless character in the Epimetheus-like element of truth and its selfish character in the Prometheus-like element on the other side; and you have seen that it is possible to bring about harmony between the two in spiritual-scientific truth, which encompasses the two, leading the will up to wisdom, leading wisdom down and allowing it to be seen as light, to illuminate the will itself.

Thus we see that truth, although it yields to the strong human ego at an intermediate stage, nevertheless fulfills the great mission in its perfection of shaping the ego ever higher and higher. Truth has this mission, to be the greatest educator of the human ego, at the same time leading to strong inwardness in thinking ahead and to strong selflessness in reflecting.

Thus, truth is the power that has the strongest mission, that leads the ego from level to level, making the soul more and more perfect. And we see this from the point of view that Goethe himself took towards truth, not ignoring any earlier stage, adding the necessary Epimetheus element to the Prometheus element. And Goethe is a true model of a person striving for truth precisely where we eavesdrop on him so intimately, where we readily admit: precisely because we see that he has become more and more mature, we can emulate him; he is great because he shows us the hopeful paths in the pursuit of truth. And then we feel this striving in us in such a way that it fills us with healthy strength, making us stronger and more unselfish. We feel that, in contrast to this, the sentence falls silent that wants to say that truth depends solely on the point of view.

But then again we turn to Goethe and let another mood come over us. In all seriousness of striving for truth, we must never abandon that other healing element that tells us: When you believe you have reached some level of truth, have recognized something, it is also able to tell you on the other side: You must also have already decided; you must tell yourself about no truth that it could be completely infallible, you must strive to let it appear before your soul in an even more truthful form, even with regard to that which you have already recognized as truth. When we feel earnest and dignity in our striving for truth, we also feel a serious, dignified humor, which on the other hand so beautifully corrects what pride could instill in us as a sense of truth. We then also feel the other thing that Goethe always said when he was in danger of holding on to the one truth too tightly: Oh, the thought that has been considered could only be an illusion, the thought that has been considered could be something that does not prove feasible. Yes, let us also feel that as a corrective to our arrogance of truth, as a strain on our seriousness, our dignity in the pursuit of truth! Let us feel the Goethe word

Quite and truly
I am a poor wretch.
My dreams are not true,
And my thoughts go awry.

If we can feel this, then we will be able to cope with our lofty ideal of truth.

In August 1831, Goethe sealed away the second part of his “Faust” as his spiritual testament to humanity. The importance he himself attached to this work is evident from the words he addressed to Eckermann: “Now I have actually fulfilled my life's work, whether I do this or that in the years that may now remain to me, it no longer matters.” The yearning thoughts and interests that he put into this life's work go back to the poet's earliest youth. It is said that not everything I will say about it today is in it, but it has worked and lived in his soul in his creative power. In 1827, he said that he had made sure in his second Faust that the soul-related aspects of the external images, the theatrical aspects, were such that they could appeal to the external, sensual view, but that for those with a deeper insight, the esoteric meaning would become quite clear. It is the predispositions, the moods, it is the whole constitution of his soul from which emerged what became image, figure in Faust. From his birth, Goethe was attuned to what may be called man's penetration into the spiritual world. Not to remain with what the outer senses and the mind bound to them give as knowledge and worldly wisdom, but to penetrate through the veil of the sensual world of observation, of the world of the mind, to the invisible, supersensible foundations of existence!

We cannot find in young Goethe the mature wisdom that has found its way into the second part of “Faust”; he could only give the most mature, profound and profound things at the end of his life. To those who later find his works incomprehensible, such as “Pandora” or “The Natural Daughter”, the youthful Goethe appears as a naive poet who has expressed great and powerful things in his works, including the first part of “Faust”. That is something that powerfully moves people; in the second part, he has woven quirks and incomprehensible stuff into it.

Then they praise Faust
And what else

In my works roars
In their favor,

The old Mick and Mack
Is very happy;

It means the pack of rags,
It would no longer be!

We want to follow how “Faust” grew out of Goethe's life, how he always tried to penetrate to the spiritual sources of external nature. Even as a boy, he sought to approach what he then understood as the great God of nature, as the spirit that rules over all natural phenomena. As a seven-year-old boy, he took a music stand, laid minerals, rocks, plants from his father's herbarium on it to hold the realms of nature together. — This expressed a feeling in the mood, the representatives of what nature is. For the seven-year-old Goethe, this was the altar at which he wanted to make his sacrifices to the great god of nature. He placed a small incense stick and a burning glass on top and waited for the rising morning sun to collect its rays and ignite the small incense stick to a sacrificial fire before the great god of nature.

We then see how his soul gradually matured to the mood – after the move from Frankfurt to Weimar – that he enthusiastically expressed in the prose hymn “Nature”. Here he expresses his reverence for the spiritual realm, in the words:

Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her – unable to step out of her, and unable to get deeper into her. Uninvited and unwarned, she takes us into the cycle of her dance and carries on with us until we are tired and fall out of her arms.

He knew himself so at one with everything excellent and everything seemingly deformed in nature that he said:

Even the most unnatural is nature, even the most clumsy philistinism has something of her genius.

And the other:

she invented death in order to have many lives.

What lies between these two times? Frankfurt and Weimar. How did he ascend to what we find in the powerful lyrical outburst in that prose hymn? From step to step, sometimes in unconscious urge, he has ascended in life. In his innermost being, at first unconsciously, he felt an irrepressible, invincible urge to know, which could not be hindered by anything, and which was connected with the whole of his life at every moment, pouring out, as it were, into the whole of his life, so that there can be no theory, no world of ideas for him at all, without his whole world of feeling and emotion being impregnated with his heart's blood. During his student years in Leipzig, he studied natural science, although he was destined for jurisprudence. In nature, he saw a kind of writing, in the natural world and natural facts, parables that express, speak like a writing, something that reigns as a secret in the outer sensual nature. Not through flashes of inspiration and fantasies did he want to penetrate the secrets of existence – he was born to the quiet walk through the world, which goes from step to step, from appearance to appearance. He did not want to grasp the phenomena of the world with a fanciful philosophy, even if the outer life, the passions, often rule more stormily and make invisible, so to speak, the actual, inner, calm, sure striving — this was always present in Goethe's life as a deep foundation. Now, towards the end of his time in Leipzig, a life event of the most serious kind occurred that immensely deepened his quest for knowledge: He fell dangerously ill. Where must knowledge lead us if it is to be true knowledge? It must lead us to where we penetrate into the secrets of life, as if led through closed gates, to those gates that life itself locks. Knowledge that would recoil from the problem of death could not satisfy the earnest striving of the human soul. The passing of death, which puts an end to everything that lives within the human mind and can be perceived with the external senses, imbued him with the seriousness in his quest for knowledge that his soul demanded.

In Frankfurt, where he now returned, it was other important experiences that strongly influenced him and about which he gives us hints in his autobiography “Dichtung und Wahrheit”. He came into contact with circles that were characterized by the earnest striving to connect what lives as spirit in ourselves with the great spirit of the world. At the center of those circles, which aspired from the depths of their souls to the depths of the world, was Susanne von Klettenberg. He turned to the study of very strange works, for example, “Aurea Catena Homeris”. Some of today's intellectuals would find only the most extravagant nonsense in it. Goethe did not. He did not find the kind of information one would find in a book on natural science, but rather things that affected him in such a way that he felt forces well up in his soul that he had to assume were otherwise dormant in man. He felt like a blind person born blind, in relation to the physical world, when he is operated on and his eyes open so that he can now perceive what was previously also present but not perceptible. He found symbolic thoughts in those books. The dragons, triangles, signs of the planets awakened in him a hunch that our soul can become like an organ for spiritual worlds.

He was still in this mood when he moved to Strasbourg. The first mood pictures of “Faust” emerged from this mood. So it is part of his soul, of his heart's blood, when we see Faust at the very beginning, how he has studied all the sciences - like Goethe in Leipzig - and then, unsatisfied by this, tries to penetrate into the supersensible world through a special method of spiritual research. Nostradamus, Sign of the World Macrocosm. He now lets Faust experience that his soul is still too small to develop within itself a sense for the great world. He seeks to evoke within himself the mood with which he can penetrate into what lives as a spiritual being, beyond earthly existence. He conjures up the earth spirit. From the answer that this gives him,

In the flood of life, in the storm of action I surge up and down, weaving back and forth! Birth and grave, an eternal sea, a changing weaving, a glowing life, that is how I create at the whirring loom of time and work the living garment of divinity.

It is clear that the earth spirit is a creative, productive force, that life is expressed in the elements of earthly existence, but one thing is missing: there are no passions or desires in it – only birth and death. He, the earth spirit, appears as an entity that expresses the higher, desire-free, purified forces of human nature in his character. It is an important law of the spiritual world that knowledge is not independent of moral endeavor. Knowledge in the higher sense can only be attained when our soul sheds that which is connected with desires, affects, inclinations, passions. The passions slumber in the depths of the soul, pervading the world of thought and knowledge. Goethe knew that the purity of the earth spirit is an ideal, but he also knew how difficult it is to fulfill. When the earth spirit then calls out to Faust:

You resemble the spirit you comprehend, not me,

sounds like the echo of his own inner being, which is aware of how far removed it is from the actual spirit of knowledge.

The body also hinders its materiality from revealing the pure forces that can approach the spirit. Faust feels: I am held down by what I do not see in my outer corporeality, not by the material forces, but by what is supersensible in corporeality. The embodiment of this supersensible in the physical is Mephistopheles; that is the spirit that he grasps for the time being. All the scenes in which he portrays how this companion and fellow attempts to lead Faust through the whole life of sensuality arise from him, always trying to pull him down from the regions of spiritual life into that which man as spirit and soul can only experience within the body. Step by step, Faust seeks to overcome Mephistopheles. Through the development of his own soul, he wants at all costs to penetrate into the spiritual world. But not through artificial, tumultuous means - spiritists - but seriously, piece by piece, [Goethe] lets the world affect him until he sees in all the details of nature something like characters that express the mysterious life of nature. After all that he had seen in the way of minerals and plants, he wanted to make a journey to India to look at what he had discovered in his own way, to read it again with the powers of the spirit that had now become his own. Appearance after appearance, fact after fact, he wanted to let it work on the soul, so that through the spiritual eyes and ears developed for the soul, the spiritual natural reasons for existence would leap out of the facts.

In Italy he examines everything to see if it can be a sign in the great cosmos. When he saw the works of art, he wrote, who had previously been a follower of Spinoza's theory:

There is necessity, there is God!

because he felt that there is a spiritual force behind art, that each individual work of art is a letter and that letter by letter, work of art by work of art, they fit together to teach us to read what, as a spirit, stands behind creative humanity in relation to art. Nature, plants, animals, everything, even in the mineral world, does not belong to dead material, but to the written character for the spirit behind it.

When Faust addresses the earth spirit:

Exalted spirit, thou gavest me, gavest me everything,
why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
turn thy face to me in fire

etc., it is as if he wanted to say: I now have a different relationship to the exalted spirit, which at the time touched me like a presentiment that made me unhappy because I could not realize it. I am beginning to understand you! The difference between the Promethean urge of the young Goethe and the overarching wisdom of the old Goethe is expressed in the fact that he does not want Faust to translate the first chapter of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word.” In contrast, in Pandora-1807, he writes:

From heaven descend
Word and deed, blessing each other,
Gift descends, unimagined before.

Man is more than what he locks up in himself, he is something that great cosmic forces fight for, forces of good and evil – prologue in heaven. The human soul is the theater of their struggle. The soul world is a world of spiritual colors and sounds: the new day is already born for spiritual ears, it trumpets, it sounds, the unheard does not hear itself.

Yesterday I endeavored to show how what is to be presented here about Goethe's innermost and most intimate opinion and view of the development of the human soul can be gained and that nothing in his works and especially in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily is arbitrary, that nothing has been arbitrarily secreted into it. I have tried to show how the whole basis for the explanation of the “fairytale” and Goethe's world view can be gained from an historical consideration of Goethe's life, from the historical pursuit of Goethe's most important ideas and impulses. An attempt has been made to substantiate what is to be given on the subject today in a more freely formulated way.

If we allow the fairy tale we discussed yesterday to come to mind, it does indeed seem to us to be completely immersed in mystery, and one might say: either we have to assume that Goethe wanted to incorporate many, many secrets into this fairy tale, as in Faust, according to his own words, or that we could regard this fairy tale as a mere play of the imagination. If the latter were not already excluded by Goethe's whole way of thinking and being, one would have to say that such an assumption is particularly prohibited by the fact that Goethe placed this fairy tale at the end of his story “Conversations of German Emigrants”. For it is the same thought that is characteristic of Goethe's entire life, which also lies in his conversations with German emigrants, and from what immediately precedes it, we can once again take the theme for this fairy tale.

We are presented with the conversations of people who have been forced to emigrate due to events in their French homeland, which look back in the most diverse ways on their sad experiences. The whole story is focused on showing what people who have been uprooted from their environment can go through as a result of this uprooting, in terms of the loneliness of the soul; what people in this situation can gain by reflecting on their psychological experiences, by observing themselves. We can only highlight a few examples to show how Goethe wanted to focus everything on revealing how the soul that wants to observe itself, that asks: What kind of guilt have I accumulated, how have I blocked the paths to development? First of all, we meet an Italian singer who is to reveal her destiny to us because in this destiny a human soul appears before us that must cling to the surface of the world view, which, although it follows what is going on around it attentively because it is forced to do so by is forced by the processes of life to do so, but is not yet mature enough to distinguish between what may be called chance and the spiritual necessity of things, a soul that does not know how the phenomena of life must be connected, if we assume the spirit in the environment. She has behaved towards a man in such a way that he has become seriously ill as a result of her repulsive manner and is dying because of her behavior. She is summoned to his deathbed, but she refuses to come. He dies without having seen her. After his death, all kinds of things happen that give the soul just described food for thought. 'How should I behave towards this?' she wonders. After the man's death, something very strange happens. She hears very strange things in the room, the furniture dances, she is slapped in the face by an invisible hand, and she is always forced to ask herself: Is the dead man somehow there, wanting to assert himself because I refused him? The top of a cupboard bursts, and at the same moment a cupboard in her own apartment in France, made by the same carpenter, goes up in flames. Goethe did not want to express that there was anything in such events that could give rise to the assumption of hidden spirits or the coming of the dead, but he only wanted to say that there could be such spirits that interpret all kinds of events in such a way that they are not sufficiently superstitious to say that the dead are certainly rumbling; they only come into an indefinite feeling and cannot get over it. What happens to the souls in the outside world according to their level of development is what Goethe wants to draw attention to. He then shows how one comes to the position of healing a lady from sensuality and passion; he takes the path of asceticism. This is again an indication of what the soul can go through in order to experience development. Goethe then leads upwards in stages. First a soul digging in the dark, then a more real thing in the lady just described, because many come to a cleansing of their soul through fasting. We are already entering more into a reality. And through the third of the things mentioned by Goethe, we enter completely into reality. He shows how a person is initially somewhat unscrupulous, he is in a subordinate soul development and says: What belongs to my father also belongs to me. He commits theft. Then conscience awakens, the soul rises, and precisely through the unrighteous deed he becomes a kind of moral center for all the people around him. He shows a soul development that signifies an ascent from a subordinate level to a higher level of knowledge and world view.

We are dealing with soul forces that are represented by the figures, the beings of the “fairytale”, and with the play of soul forces that is to be purified into harmony, into a symphony of soul forces in the deeds that the persons perform. At first we are confronted with will-o'-the-wisps that are ferried across the river by a ferryman. These will-o'-the-wisps are initially filled with gold, but the ferryman does not want their gold as a reward because everything would end in wild tumult. He much prefers to have fruits of the earth: three cabbages, three artichokes and three large onions. The will-o'-the-wisps have the ability to create a golden haze around themselves. They meet the snake, the aunt of the horizontal direction. For her, the gold is fertile and beneficial. She becomes inwardly radiant through the gold pieces. She can now illuminate what she could not see before.

When I tried more than twenty years ago to gain access to this fairy tale in every possible way, it was above all a rewarding thought in the tangle of questions of the “fairy tale” when it became clear that above all one had to follow the gold. Gold plays a role in different ways. The will-o'-the-wisps scatter it around. There it is not something blessed in a certain respect. In the snake, it becomes beneficial. Then we encounter gold again in the golden king, on the walls of the hut of the old man with the lamp; the will-o'-the-wisps lick it down, making themselves thicker. Once we are pointed to the human soul quality that gold has something to do with when we are pointed out that the golden king represents the giver, the bringer of wisdom. Goethe himself tells us: the golden king, in comparison to the others, represents the giver of wisdom. So gold must have something to do with wisdom. Gold is what makes the king wise, what enables him to endow the youth with wisdom:

Recognize the Most High!

Gold is something that the giver of wisdom is able to instill in man. The will-o'-the wisp must therefore represent the powers of the soul that are capable of receiving wisdom and that can also shake wisdom off. It must be shown how the gold can be stored; it is stored for a long, long time in the walls of the hut. We will have no choice but to see soul forces in individual persons, because we know how well it is founded. We can describe the will-o'-the-wisps as the abstract mind, the abstract thinking, which is capable of acquiring a certain amount of wisdom. Now we also understand why knowledge in the pure power of reason plays such a role in will-o'-the-wisps. Those who absorb what science is with their bare minds absorb it in order to have something personal about it, in order to be able to use it personally.

Goethe often congratulates himself on not officially representing science as a teacher. He congratulated himself on being able to give of his wisdom to the world only when he was inwardly compelled to do so, rather than being forced to cast it aside, as is necessary when one is destined to be a teacher or mere abstract dispenser of wisdom. Goethe presents such people in the will-o'-the-wisps, who have abstract knowledge. The abstract intelligence can absorb a vast amount of knowledge, but it leads to vanity. It is also spoken in Goethe's sense: However cleverly we think, however many abstract concepts we have, as long as we have ideas that are not drawn from the depths of life, they are unsuitable for ultimately leading us into the secrets of the eternal riddle of existence. Where we need something that goes straight to the heart of the eternal ideas of existence, we need something other than abstract concepts. When we come to the boundary of the physical world and the realm of spirituality, we are repelled by all abstract concepts and ideas. Indeed, all these abstract concepts and ideas are not even capable of making us understand, so to speak, what is closest to us. How far removed the abstraction is from even the most mundane things that surround us. It is incapable of giving anything to the stream through which we must pass if we want to enter the supersensible world. And if we want to approach the very source of life, it rears up when we come up with mere intelligence. The will-o'-the-wisps are from the vertical line, while the snake is from the horizontal line. This indicates that man, with abstract ideas, removes himself from the ground, from the ground of everyday life. We see how vividly the will-o'-the-wisps are formed. But are ideas and concepts, philosophical expositions, under all circumstances that which separates us from the true source of existence? No, it is not that; for if man has the ability to live in such a way that he combines his own life forces with things, that he does not rise up into the realm of abstract concepts and ideas, but moves quietly in things, such a spirit becomes, as Faust is one when he says:

Exalted Spirit, thou gavest me, gavest me everything
I asked for. Thou didst not in vain
Turn thy face to me in the fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
The power to feel and enjoy it. Thou dost
You only allow coldly amazed visitors,
Allow me to look into their deep chests,
As into the bosom of a friend,
You lead the line of the living
Before me and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.

Where man truly enters into communion with nature, the same concepts that alienate him from the world when he deals with abstractions serve him to penetrate ever deeper into existence. We must not simply turn around and say: because the abstractionist distances himself from reality, concepts and ideas are worthless in general. If there is a soul-power in them, which lives in and with things, then they become full of light at the same time. This is why gold becomes such a blessing for the snake, which lives in crevices and has a horizontal direction, and does not become alienated. When man loves things, when he mystically immerses himself in things, then ideas are the light that can help him through. Therefore, it can be experienced that sometimes scholastically presented philosophy seems frosty and sober. But when we encounter the same ideas in lonely nature lovers, in herb and root gatherers, and so on, we see how, in fact, in the serpents, in those who make contact with things, the ideas become full of light, which are sober in the abstractions. The snake thus points to the power of the soul, which has the mystical urge to submerge itself mystically in things everywhere. This is represented when the snake moves through the crevices. Man, who does not move in abstract things, comes close, like the snake, to the underground temple. If a person has a sense for the mysterious workings of the forces of nature, he comes to the heart of nature; he can experience something of what lives outside in nature in things, even if he does not have the ideas. The snake shows us the people who can live without ideas in an emergency, but who, by lovingly immersing themselves in things, come to grasp the riddles of the world. But when a balance is created, in that ideas and concepts are immersed in these mystical soul forces, then it comes about that the person who is lovingly inclined towards things can also illuminate with his own light what was previously only sensed from the sources of existence. Goethe says meaningfully:

If the eye were not solar,
How could we behold the light?
If not the divine power of God lives in us,
How can we be enraptured by the divine?

He immediately points out how we must respond to the light of nature's secrets if these secrets of nature are to shine back again. Man must have the inner sense, the open heart, he must have cultivated the recognition of the spiritual. Only then can he also see the spiritual in his environment. Then the snake enters the underground temple. Such underground places exist for the life of the soul. These things can only be characterized if they go into the strange workings of the human soul in development in a little more detail. Can it be felt that before the soul is able to perceive the spirit in the outer world, it has the inner certainty: Yes, there is a primary source from which everything flows? It can have this certainty and still not be able to see the spirit everywhere. Oh, it is a great goal to see the spirit everywhere. [Feeling: I myself have emerged from the spiritual. To do this, man must awaken.] Man must first develop the highest soul powers within himself. He must first evoke in himself the supersensible that sleeps in ordinary, normal consciousness. First he must ascend to higher levels of development.

First, the human being must have an inkling that something like this exists. Then he comes to another realization: I can only achieve my ultimate goal if I see how my whole existence is permeated by the spirit. I have been crystallized, born out of the spiritual, out of the supersensible, without my being involved in this birth out of the supersensible, which I can ultimately achieve through knowledge. In a mysterious way I am born out of the land that I can only reach again in the end. This characterizes the land of the beautiful lily, from which man also comes. The ferryman brings him over. Man is brought over by secret powers. The ferryman who brings to this shore must never bring anyone back again. The same real way by which we are brought over from the supersensible through birth cannot be the way by which we consciously return. Other paths must be taken.

Then the will-o'-the-wisps ask the snake how they can enter the realm of the beautiful lily, that is, how a single soul force can ascend to the highest. Two means are indicated: firstly, when the snake crosses the river at noon. But the will-o'-the-wisps do not like to travel there. It is quite beyond the scope of the Abstract Being, who wants to live entirely in ideas and inferences, to cross over in the way represented by the snake, through devotion to things, through mystical communion with things. This mystical communion cannot always be achieved. A great mystic of the Alexandrian school confesses that he has only achieved a few moments in which the spirit of the infinite has entered the soul, where the God in the breast is experienced by the human being himself. These are moments at midday when the sun of life is at its highest, when something like this can be experienced. For the Abstractlings, who say to themselves: Once you have the right thinking, it must lead to the highest, such midday hours of life, which one must await as a grace of life, are not hours in which they can travel; for them, what they are looking for must be achievable at any time. Then the snake points out to them that the shadow of the giant, who is powerless by himself, will fall across the river, and that is when they can cross over. If we want to understand the giant, we must bear in mind that Goethe was well aware of the powers of the soul that lie below the threshold of consciousness, which in the normal person only emerge in dreams, but which belong to the subordinate clairvoyant powers. These are powers that are not acquired through the development of the soul, but that occur particularly in primitive souls in intuitions, second sight, in all that is connected with less advanced souls, from which a primitive clairvoyance emerges.

Through such clairvoyant powers, man arrives at some notions of supersensible worlds. Many people today still prefer to come to the supersensible world through such intuitions or through spiritualistic shadow images than through the actual development of the soul. Everything that belongs to the realm of the subconscious, to the realm of the soul, that is not illuminated by clear understanding, by the light of insight, of self-control, everything that expresses itself like dream-like knowledge, is represented by the giant. In truth, one can recognize nothing through this consciousness, for it is very weak compared to real knowledge. It is something that one cannot control. It is best personified by a person who cannot carry weight, because through this realization nothing can be recognized that has weight for a worldview. But the shadow of this subconscious plays a great role in life. Only one word needs to be said to characterize this shadow: superstition. If countless people did not have superstition, the shadowy image of the subconscious that operates in the twilight of knowledge, they would have no idea of the supersensible world. For countless people today, superstition is still the shadow of the subconscious that leads into the supersensible. I need only emphasize how people can say that Theosophy, spiritual science, is something that only those people can grasp who put a lot of effort into raising the soul to a higher level. That is an uncomfortable thing. If the spirits want to be there for us, they should descend to us. This is where all the abundant superstitions in the field of modern superstition come from, which even today scholars pay homage to, who absolutely do not want to admit that the soul can become part of the spiritual through development. They are readily available to a medium who can give them some gift from the spiritual world. This is not to say that these things cannot be based on truth, but the distinction between error and truth is extremely difficult here and only possible for the initiated.

Goethe wants to point out this shadow of the subconscious, this realm in the human soul, but not like a polemicist, which Goethe never was. Goethe is clear that every power of the soul has its significance at its level; he even finds it useful here to have the snake give advice to the will-o'-the-wisp. But superstition plays a major role in drawing attention to and directing the human mind to the supersensible world. Goethe, who wanted to depict the entire spectrum of the soul's powers in their symphonic harmony, shows how this superstition has its good basis in the soul, in the powers that do not always come up with sober, clear concepts, but say to themselves, the things are rich, we just want to sense secrets for now, not frame them in sharp contours. This intuitive sense is something tremendously important that is to play a role in the overall consciousness and life of our soul development.

What was so clearly expressed in external nature for Goethe plays into the development at a higher level.

Goethe saw a certain law in all natural activity like a leitmotif. It is a law of balance that nature has a certain measure for all things and can give rise to all possible beings from unity. Goethe sought the law in all of nature in order to see in harmony everything that is embodied one-sidedly in the external world. When Goethe uttered this sentence, he was seen as just a poet, an amateur. The sentence only caused a stir when Cuvier, in his dispute with Geoffroy St. Hilaire, also drew attention to this law. Goethe, who lived in an understanding of nature that saw one-sidedness everywhere and wanted to grasp the whole by harmonizing the one-sided, also saw something in the soul that he wanted to combine by harmonizing. There are people who represent one-sided soul forces. The false prophets, who want to apply their wisdom everywhere, are the will-o'-the-wisps; then there are serpents and so on. He wanted to show that man can reach higher levels by representing the type of human being within himself. Thus, the sense that senses the supersensible in the sensible must be connected with abstract intelligence. One must not let the sober intelligence be subjugated by the sense, but nor should one emphasize the abstract concepts one-sidedly and refuse to understand how full of content is that which lives and moves in things. Goethe wanted to show how man can become one-sided, but how he must strive for the beautiful lily, for the inner, balancing human soul.

After the snake has received the inner glow, it enters the temple. The powers that must inspire the human soul give the strengths that man must have within him if he wants to ascend to higher existence. Goethe shows that there are certain powers of the soul that the soul must have if it is to ascend to higher levels. But if a person wants to attain the higher levels without having found the right path at the right time through inspiration, through the world powers, then this world view is something that can kill him, confuse him in his soul, paralyze him. Therefore, the youth who is not mature will be paralyzed at first, or even killed by complete exposure. So, what wants to free the mind without giving us control over ourselves, that has a killing effect, says Goethe. All our striving must be directed towards making us mature, towards shaping us so that the soul receives the highest in the right mood, in the right state. So the youth is killed at first. He is to be prepared by the endowment of soul powers by the kings. We have already seen from the golden king that he is the spiritual power that can be kindled in the soul and that gives wisdom in the right way when it harmonizes with the other soul powers. The silver king represents piety. For Goethe, beauty and the cult of art are closely related to piety. Beauty is that which makes us inwardly pious. The power of the soul that draws us through our feelings to the spiritual world is represented by the second king. The power of the soul of will [to do good] is represented by the brazen king.

But these soul powers must enter into the soul in such a way that we can distinguish them, that they enter into us in the right way, that we can master them, separate them; the life of feeling from the life of wisdom, and likewise the life of will from the life of feeling and the life of wisdom. These powers, which thus appear separately, condition the higher life of wisdom. The lower life is represented by the mixed king. Every human being has these three soul powers within them, but mixed. A higher age in the development of humanity will only begin when this chaotic mixing of soul forces ceases, when they are no longer mixed in such a chaotic way as in the fourth king, but are clearly separated from each other, with the area of soul power permeated with wisdom, and that permeated with beauty, and that permeated with the will to do good. Then the time comes when man may say to himself: “It is time.” Something else must precede this. A soul that has been led unprepared through wisdom, beauty and power would hardly see anything special.

Another soul force must guide us, which is represented by the man with the lamp. The lamp can only shine where there is already light. It is the light of faith that radiates from our hearts, even if we have not yet penetrated into things. It is what is brought as faith to things. It is a light that can only shine where there is already another light: religion can only generate faith where it is adapted to what people feel in a particular climate, in a particular cultural epoch, and so on. There the serpent, which wants to penetrate to wisdom, beauty and strength through the mere inner soul power, must encounter the light of faith that prepares the soul. Thus Goethe shows that the right time must approach, that first the soul must be guided by the light of faith, and that we can then come up to a direct grasp of the soul forces in being separate and in direct interaction. On this side of the river, then, man must prepare himself. On the other side it is shown how man, if he connects with the soul forces unprepared, damages his soul.

A strange figure is the old man's wife with the lamp, who is described as human, all too human, vain and so on, who is chosen to pay the ferryman with the fruits of the earth. This is primitive human nature, which has the power to be connected to the light of faith. We are shown: that the light shining from the lamp of the old man transforms stones into gold, wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones. The pug is transformed into a precious stone. This shows the power of faith, this very wonderful power of faith, oh, how it is able to show us all things in such a way that they really show us their divine in a certain way, show us what is in them. Dead stones turn to gold, showing themselves to be endowed with wisdom. Faith already senses this in things, how all things are not what they appear to us through the senses. This is shown by the transformation through the lamp. Man, when he remains in his healthy nature, when he cannot attain to science, has something within him that leads much more to the boundary of the supersensible. The scientist becomes a doubter, a skeptic, and one tries to see how certain some original nature, represented by the old woman, is able to give facts to the flow as the will-o'-the-wisps cannot. Such natures have an original feeling that connects them to the supersensible, which weaves and lives in everything; and one can see in such people how a compassionate smile appears when scientists talk, saying, we know something that you cannot know, that brings us together with what we are created from. This is shown by the fact that the woman can pay.

The temple must be transported from below the earth up into the upper realm, it must rise above the river. And it is conceivable that a soul has gone up the steps in such a way that it can experience, feel the midday moments of life; so that it is achieved through a higher soul development, that not only special spirits can cross the river. That is what is achieved in the new culture through spiritual science. And Goethe behaves like a prophet in the new culture by pointing out that not only special minds can find the transcendental realm, but that there is a soul development that everyone can undergo; so that everyone can walk over and across when what is the actual secret has occurred.

“How many secrets do you know?” – “Three,” replied the old man. “Which is the most important?” asked the silver king. “The obvious one,” replied the old man.

The expression “the revealed secret” often occurs in Goethe because, like all true mystics, he believed that the connection between the material and the spiritual is evident everywhere; therefore, it is not so important for man to seek the spiritual in all sorts of detours, but to really connect with things as the snake connects with them. The revealed secret of all three is that which can be found everywhere, and which requires only a certain maturity of soul. The three secrets are simply these: wisdom, piety and virtue. A fourth is still needed for this, the snake whispers into the old man's ear; the old man cannot know that. But he can know that it is now time. What does the snake say now? That she is willing to sacrifice herself to be a bridge over the river. There you have the whole secret of the sacrifice of the lower soul forces. You can find this sacrifice further in Goethe's words:

And so long as you do not have this,
this dying and becoming,
you are only a dull guest
on the dark earth.

First, a person must go through all that has led him through life. But what he has gained, what he has experienced through the lower soul life, he must be able to sacrifice in order to ascend.

Jakob Böhme, whom Goethe knew very well, expressed this secret beautifully:

He who does not die before he dies, will perish when he dies.

He who enters the supersensible world before he has died for the lower self would not yet be able in this embodiment to see correctly the spiritual after death.

He who does not die before he dies, will perish if he dies.

The soul protects itself from ruin in the lower self, says Goethe, when it becomes like the snake that sacrifices itself, that is, there is a soul force in us that can connect with the forces of nature and that must be sacrificed: that which, as lower selfishness, is necessary to achieve human freedom. Therefore, that which has led us becomes the way into the beyond. We enter the supersensible world through that which we have sacrificed ourselves. The will-o'-the-wisps are now able to unlock the door of the temple. Science has the key to the realm of the supersensible, but it cannot lead into the real secrets, because it only leads to the gate of the temple, just as Mephisto has only the key to the realm of the mothers, but cannot penetrate it himself. So we see how the will-o'-the-wisps actually fulfill their role to the end and how Goethe captures the meaning of soul development in each individual case.

What remains of religious belief? The tradition in our cultural processes. Go to the libraries, look up how much of the gold is stored there, and see how the abstractions lick the gold down and make new ones out of the old books, as a librarian once said. Goethe shows that the will-o'-the-wisps can feed on that. How many scholars walk around full of what comes straight from these sources. The pug dog dies from it, it makes him feel worse. But he can be revived by the lily, as he has passed through death. Whoever wants to endure contact with the lily must first have passed through the lower death. The youth is only ready to unite with the beautiful lily when he has suffered the last misfortune, is completely dead, has fully felt the effect of what happens when one unites with the supersensible while still immature. The snake sacrifices itself, which has an immediate effect on the details of natural existence. When all this has happened, the youth can then be led into the temple. Then the soul is led upwards to the realization that everything is permeated and animated by the spirit. Then the temple is led upwards, the soul endowed with that which leads to the supersensible. Wisdom gives him that which is characterized by:

Recognize the Highest

and by the oak wreath; the golden king gives that. The silver king says:

Feed the sheep,

in memory of the pious shepherd,

Feed my lambs;

is an expression of piety. The iron king gives him a sword and a shield and says:

The sword on the left, the right free!

Stand strong and firm on your feet when it comes to defending human dignity and human dignity, but do not be aggressive. Now the young man is allowed to connect with the lily. The powers of the soul may be illuminated with truth and love, which the soul only finds when it connects with the spirit. The young man feels the love, of which it is said last: wisdom, beauty, piety and virtue, they promote the development of the soul, love forms the soul, harmonizes everything. When man ascends into the temple in which knowledge can be experienced, he comes, in holy awe, to see, like a small temple in the great temple, the highest, the secret of man himself, who passes from the spiritual world into the world of this world. The ferryman's hut is placed as a small world in the great temple; when the soul advances to higher knowledge, then it attains what Goethe felt as Spinozian love of God, it comes to the riddles, the secrets of the world. But as the highest of the mysteries, as that which he in turn sees like a small temple in the great one, that is the mystery of the existence of man himself in connection with the divine being.

The giant comes last and becomes something like an hour hand that indicates the time. Our knowledge becomes spiritual, shedding all that is external consciousness as we ascend; all forces that work mechanically, that are a remnant of the subconscious. All this may remain only in one, when we look up at what is the most external for our inner being. Thus, the merely mechanical, which has not yet been elevated to higher knowledge, has a right to exist. Goethe could have had in mind all the superstitions that have been practiced with the art of numbers and all the prevailing beliefs from old worldviews. But one thing remains behind, to form a kind of chronometer for what knowledge gives it. Thus everything is transformed into a plastic image, right down to the last detail, which Goethe felt was the law of human education.

Today I was only able to explain the main features, but if you read the “fairy tale” with this in mind, you will find that every page, indeed every half-sentence, can be proof of its correctness. One can only hint at this symbolically, in richly symbolic images. We must be aware that what is contained in Goethe's “Fairytale” is infinitely richer than what could be said, and that everything said today is only a suggestion of how to search and feel about a symbolic fairy tale. It is not possible to give more than a hint. But perhaps you have gained a sense of the great and immeasurable productive power with which Goethe created, how right he was when he said that only beauty and art can be an expression of truth. This is also what lived as a conviction in Goethe and led him from stage to stage in restless pursuit. But this is also what led us so to Goethe. Goethe is one of those minds that work in a way that only the greatest minds can. You read a work by Goethe and think you have understood it. Each time you read it again later, you believe that you have finally understood it correctly. Finally, you say to yourself: I still don't understand it, I have to wait until I become more and more mature. This is only the case with the most exquisite minds. This assures us that in Goethe we have one who belongs to the leaders of mankind. Thus, in summarizing what is to be characterized here, one may say of Goethe's spirit:

They shine like stars
in the heaven of eternal being
The spirits sent by God.
May all human souls succeed
in the realm of earthly becoming
To see their flames of light.

On a beautiful September day this year, I went on a trip to Zurich. Since the day was free, I decided to go to Maria-Einsiedeln, which was an important place of pilgrimage in the early Middle Ages and enjoys a wondrous location. There was also a so-called pilgrimage on this day, and since fine, sunny weather was in prospect, one could expect an extraordinarily lively atmosphere in Maria-Einsiedeln, as is well known.

I also wanted to make a pilgrimage, for which there was an opportunity here, so I took a carriage to the Devil's Bridge, which goes up and down hills, and after a while I found myself there in front of a house that had recently been built in place of an old, historically significant house. a plaque identifying it as the birthplace of the famous physician and naturalist Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim, who was born here in 1493 and died in 1541, at the age of forty-eight. If you linger there a little, you really feel the magic of nature, as you can only encounter it in the Alps. All the plants and animals there inspire you with a sense of intimacy, a language of the most intimate familiarity with the untouched essence of nature. And in the midst of such strong impressions of the interweaving with an outwardly charming nature, the image of the young Paracelsus arose in me, who had spent the first nine years of his life in this impressive environment. In him, we have a receptive personality who, even in his childhood years, was open to learning about nature. This boy had an individuality that seemed to prepare him to eavesdrop on many of nature's secrets in such a unique place, even if it was only at first by guesswork. We can imagine how the boy longingly awaited his absent father, a respected and busy doctor, with his questions, how he often accompanied his father on short trips, and how many a word about patients, their care, and the surrounding nature was exchanged in questions and meaningful explanations. When the boy turned nine, the family moved to Villach in Carinthia, where he was able to continue his interaction with nature and his father to an even greater extent.

Now follow me in your mind to a house in the eastern part of Salzburg, where a plaque announces that Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim died here on September 23, 1541. The legend associated with his death may come to mind, according to which the doctors, who were extremely hostile towards him, hired someone to throw him off the nearby hill. Between the years mentioned, a highly peculiar life is enclosed, and this remarkable personality at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries appears in the development of mankind as the dawn of a certain epoch, which can still show the spiritual sky of all that is beautiful and grandiose. Basically, everything that can be heard from the soul of Paracelsus is a testimony to the fact that he maintained a continuous and intimate connection with nature and understood the world around him. He maintained these strong relationships during his extensive travels throughout the world, in the areas of his homeland, throughout Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Turkey, everywhere quickly understanding and at home with what presented itself to him in the most diverse forms as the secret of existence. Thus, he gathered a rich treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom on his travels, and how he explored the world in his own way becomes even clearer to us when we imagine how he lived out the impressions he had brought with him from there and from his youth at the University of Basel, especially when we consider how university studies were conducted at the time, and how it was with scientific research and medical knowledge in particular. The old writings of Galen and Avicenna were used as a basis everywhere, and the learned men of the universities of that time delivered a kind of commentary on these ancient writers in Latin.

Paracelsus said to them: You speak about books, you are far removed from all that nature speaks to us in powerful revelations when we only open the gates of our soul to her, and he left this official teaching center of that time. Some called him a tramp then and still call him one today, but he was only a tramp on the outside, and only because he believed that if you wanted to learn the secrets of the world, you had to go to the spiritual beings that lived in that very world. He wanted to use his clairvoyant powers of the soul to learn how nature lives in its creation, to eavesdrop on the secrets of the world in all the countries he traveled through. Not from books, but from the great book of nature, he wanted to turn the individual pages of the same, as he said, while traveling from place to place. Paracelsus believed that behind the sensual lies the spiritual and that what is outwardly perceptible is only a manifestation of the spiritual. The great, all-embracing spiritual has different sensual forms in plants, animals and humans in different countries and climates, although the spiritual is unified. He sought the spiritual in its diversity, like a hidden aroma or a concealed light. It was also clear to him that the external form of the current life, including that of the types of humanity and the individual peoples, in their healthy and diseased states, also belong to these diversities. He imagined disease to be something mysterious, but with a different character in Germany, Hungary, Italy, and so on. He wanted to get to know what came to his mind when he was directly confronted with nature, in order to establish a salutary science of medicine. When we see Paracelsus placed in the multiform world, we recognize how he found special powers in the great book of nature and in his soul, and what he said, according to his studies and experiences, takes on an almost personal character. He developed a very unique state of mind as a result of his special relationship with nature. Without this leading to arrogance, he said that he felt forces speaking in and through him, which he felt as if not his own arbitrariness and logic, but as if nature were speaking directly in and through him. Only someone who is capable of grasping such a relationship, in which Paracelsus felt completely natural and at ease, will be able to understand how he could not relate to his colleagues and their books differently than actually occurred, since it did not appear to him that they were striving for genuine knowledge, when he said: “He who wants to learn and practice true pharmacology should not go to the old authors, not to Galen and Avicenna, not to Bologna, Paris and so on, not to those, not there, but follow me; for mine is the monarchy!” He was so grounded in himself, and his motto was: “No one should be a servant to another; he can remain alone for himself.” Thus, we see Paracelsus as an honest, defiant personality among his contemporaries, as a person in whom a clairvoyant power had emerged, who knew how nature lived in its creation, how it expressed itself in the healthy and diseased state of man.

But just as uncomfortable as he felt as a student, so he also felt as a professor and city physician in Basel. Although he was famous for his travels and his skills, and although he was able to help where all others failed, he was more or less considered by his colleagues to be a tramp who had roamed with dubious people, and although he should have behaved differently as a teacher in office and dignity, he had remained the same even in his university life. So he didn't get along with his colleagues either; even when we follow him on his travels, how he performs famous cures on the poor, on princes and respected people, and is cheated of his fee by them, as well as at the highest levels. He became famous, among other things, for healing a person whom we can regard as a forerunner of the age of printing, namely Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, who, as a credible scholar, expressed a judgment full of respect and reverence for Paracelsus. In Basel, a strange and momentous event took place: Paracelsus cured a canon of Lichtenfels of a severe and painful illness, and had stipulated a fee of one hundred talers for the cure. The sufferer took the remedies prescribed by Paracelsus three times, and then recovered. However, he did not want to pay the sum for such a simple service, as he saw it. Paracelsus then became quite angry and sent loose notes around the whole city. The city council, however, told him that if, after such insults to the highly esteemed canon, he had not left the city within half an hour, he would be put in prison. Paracelsus therefore fled from the city under the cover of darkness.

As he so often clashed with his environment, so it happened with his colleagues, since he cured according to other aspects. Besides, they took it very badly that he shared the connections that were self-evident to him, which he had overheard as secrets of nature and now applied to the healing and care of the sick, quite unashamedly, that he and connected, did not believe that he should express them better in the Latin language with its sharp, abstract contours, but instead used the living German language with its great flexibility and fine nuances. His colleagues did not understand how his knowledge, which was inaccessible to them, was interwoven with innumerable imponderables, how he was able to present this in German, contrary to the custom of learned schools, to his listeners, and thereby dare to reduce the dignity of the university according to their outdated view. During his wanderings, they tried to blacken his name everywhere. The scholars challenged him to Latin disputations, which he accepted, but in which, in the event of technical differences, he shouted at them in German, thus providing a vivid picture of the relationship between him and his contemporaries. It is understandable that almost everyone treated such a man in the most hostile way, and also that his life could only be short in such a grueling struggle. With his comprehensive and penetrating knowledge, he was unable to adapt to the externalized habits of his colleagues in his field and to wear the old-fashioned robe in which they appeared at the university at that time, so that they said of him: “Our colleague Paracelsus was seen walking around in the robe of a cart driver.” Those who felt they were no match for him in terms of knowledge and ability, and whom he openly despised because of their scientific masquerade, can be understood to have felt a deep hatred for him, and this is the source of the legend that formed at the end of his life: that he was deliberately annoyed to death or even thrown off the mountain near Salzburg. Thus we see his portrait, traversed by the deep traces of mental labor and the furrows of suffering that his opponents had caused.

In order to get closer to the spiritual life of this man, we have to try to answer the question of how Paracelsus actually imagined the surrounding nature, which he needed for his medical science, and human nature in his individual way; how peculiar his spiritual conception was. He initially established the following points of view: One must be able to comprehend the whole great world, the macrocosm, in its manifestation and understand how man, as microcosm, is situated in it as a particular detail, how air relates to the lungs, light to the eye, how the same works outside and inside in man. Everything that has effect outside we also find in man with its laws. Therefore, we have to look for what can make a person healthy or sick in the macrocosm, especially as a member of the Earth planet as a large organism in which the human being represents a link. He then said: Although the human being can be integrated into the chain of natural phenomena, he is still a self-contained being. The forces of the whole of nature are concentrated in man, but cannot easily lead him to cut himself off from the external forces and beings of nature. This is because, said Paracelsus, man has within him a living architect, an “archaeus”, who literally tears him away from the whole of nature and gives him his own unique configuration.

Paracelsus wanted to explore what a person absorbs from external influences in order to then process them within themselves, and he took such elementary insights to the highest expression. This is the most important thing to him, but not much is said about it. When man eats bread and fruit, for example, he said, the “archaeus” transforms it in man into flesh, into the various substances of the organs, as an inner alchemist, and depending on how this happens, the external substances become healthy, useful bodily substances or poison. He then examined this transformation, the unconscious art of this being, and viewed a certain type of disease from this perspective.

He established the third law: what has been integrated in this way is organized from many groups of individual organs and is independent. The human being is a whole small world, a microcosm in the image of the macrocosm.

He therefore came to the conclusion that out there in the cosmic conditions of the large planetary bodies there is something that corresponds to the microcosm of the human being. For example, the way the sun and moon relate to each other is how the heart relates to the brain internally; so you have to study both in their uniqueness and mutual interrelations and transfer them to the human being in their effectiveness, and likewise transform Saturn and Jupiter in their movements, sizes and light conditions to the liver and spleen of the human being, as their microcosmic image.

Thus, he constructed an internal heaven from the organs of the human being as an image of the external starry sky. He thought of the dynamically differentiated energies in the human being in this way, considering nothing to be separate, but everything in lively interaction. It is interesting to see how he defended what appeared to him to be the effect of an inner heavenly system, not as a rough interaction of the food we take in, but in rough language: “Oh, they don't understand anything, those who believe that the food we take in interior according to their chemical constitution, so to speak, only in continuation of their external chemical forces; because that would be about the same as regarding the plant as an effect of the dung, compared to the living configuration of the organs active in the human being. Thus, we see how the interacting organs appear to him like the dynamics of a complicated clockwork, and Paracelsus says: Man can therefore be “offended”, depending on the inner alchemist prepares the spiritual or unspiritual, with normal or anomalous interaction of the organs, even without external causes!

Fourthly, Paracelsus says as a basic principle: the soul falls ill through its own passions and emotional upheavals, with the organism also affected as an after-effect.

Finally, as a fifth point of view: the completeness of the science of medicine is given to him by the fact that the person in his illness must be seen as someone who suffers from his fate - karma - from something that towers above him spiritually, that intervenes in the spiritual microcosm from the spiritual macrocosm, so that the former is completely under the influence of the latter.

Thus, Paracelsus combined a wide-ranging knowledge with the greatest trust in the spiritual and mental powers of the human being, but also with the broadest trust in the spiritual forces of the great world that underlies the organization of the human being. He therefore said, through the mind we find God behind the natural event, through faith we find Christ and through imagination we find the Holy Spirit. He had a deep soul, his heart was imbued with the most intimate piety. We see the most essential part of his clairvoyant vision in his piety, from which everything that accompanied his deeds as a doctor emerged. It is therefore understandable that he described love and hope as his two most important remedies, and the nature of his medical treatment emerged for him without fail from this, when he did everything in full love and devotion that was possible according to his five points of view, and in the knowledge of these connections, he hoped that his remedy would have the healing effect that he had intuitively seen. He lived completely with the disease and the conditions of his patients in general. He looked clairvoyantly according to his five aspects, what had worked from the outside into the person, what the “inner alchemist” had done on it. What then penetrated from the great spirit of the whole of nature to the sick person, was not reflected back to him in abstract terms, but in such a way that it flowed down from the sick person to him again and concentrated in him to that which he had to prescribe as a remedy. Therefore, we can understand how Paracelsus was deeply convinced that his medical work was a continuous production as an artist. He guided the substances beyond nature to become effective remedies by forming and combining them for this purpose. Higher nature in nature was his art, his intention and his alchemy; he created art products in relation to nature. In Paracelsus, something reminds us of Goethe's saying:

When the healthy nature of man functions as a whole, when he feels himself to be a part of a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole in the world, when harmonious comfort grants him pure, free delight – then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as if it had reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being.

There is no more precise way to describe this clairvoyant man than through these words!

And if we turn our gaze from Paracelsus to Goethe over the centuries, then, despite all the differences, Goethe's spirit has much in common with that of Paracelsus. We see that, as a young boy, Goethe placed himself in nature when, at the age of seven, he took a music stand, decorated it with all kinds of minerals from his father's collection, with plants and shells, crowned the whole thing with a small incense cone, and then waited for the sun to rise. He collected the rays in a burning glass, ignited the incense stick with it, and thus offered a sacrifice to the great, almighty God in front of his altar. If we consider the motives for which the young Goethe acted in this way, then we feel how he, like Paracelsus, felt most intimately connected with nature. Paracelsus said of himself, as a rough-and-ready country boy, that he was sent out of the house in all weathers, and that he did not grow up in soft beds on figs and wheat bread, but on sour milk and coarse oat bread.

In Goethe, we find a rarely disturbed harmony, always soon regained, also in his view of nature, which is evident in many ways in his work as a scientific researcher on his trip to Italy, where he, like Paracelsus, traveled the country observing keenly and wrote home about coltsfoot, for example, which, among other things, particularly caught his eye as it developed in different ways after changing the climate and sun, location, soil type and so on. He sees the emergence of diversity from unity, as he particularly wanted to demonstrate with the primal plant, from which he developed the diversity of plant natural phenomena. He also wrote that he would like to travel further to India, not to discover something new, but to follow nature in its ever-changing diversity.

In this way, something in Goethe was awakened that can be found in many ways in the figure of Paracelsus. And when Goethe embodied his main character in Faust, many traits are interwoven into this that evoke the thought that, when conceiving of “Faust”, Goethe was under the influence of the character of Paracelsus, despite the great difference between “Faust” and the historical Paracelsus, who died before the end of the forties of his life, but until then carried an inner harmonious seclusion as a treasure in his soul, which he had gained from his intimate intercourse with nature. It was only a short lifetime of this in itself rarely happy spirit, which his research results and his professional activity connected with the eternal reasons of nature.

Faust begins where Paracelsus ends, but with great doubt in all his extensive knowledge, Faust strives in the years of his life that Paracelsus no longer reached.

Goethe had developed Faust to the point where he had reached the stage of soul development that Paracelsus had when he penetrated into the essence of nature, when Faust breaks out into the words:

Exalted Spirit, thou gavest me, gavest me everything
I asked for. Thou didst not turn
Thy countenance to me in fire in vain.
Gavest me the glorious kingdom of nature
and the power to feel and enjoy it. Thou dost
allow only cold, wondering visitors,
granting me to look into her deep breast,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You drove the line of the living
before me, and taught me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.

Thus he was related to the life and workings of nature, but nevertheless Faust's research was different from that of Paracelsus; for Goethe shows us that Faust's insights are not always gained in direct contact with nature, as they are with Paracelsus, but remain confined to the realm of the soul forces.

Therefore, in Mephistopheles, without such a confrontation with the phenomena of nature, Goethe brought a confrontation of the soul, so that the soul was not seen in nature, but only in the soul.

And yet, we can see a strong relationship between Faust and Paracelsus when the latter put the Bible aside for a long time and turned away from it, just as Paracelsus did from the learned works of Galen and Avicenna. Both trusted their own powers to find their own way. Thus we feel that Goethe often sees Paracelsus in the background and, to a certain extent, sees him through Faust. For example, in the scene where Faust goes out into the spring landscape with Wagner and recounts:

My father was a dark man of honor
Who, in his own way, thought long and hard
about nature and its sacred circles
with whimsical effort;
who, in the company of adepts,
locked himself in the black kitchen
and, according to endless recipes,
brewed up the adverse.
Then a red lion, a bold suitor,
was married in the lukewarm bath of the lily,
and then both tormented with open flames
from one bridal chamber into another.

One could almost see Paracelsus talking to his father. Or when we read how Faust struggles to “translate the New Testament into his beloved German”, into the language that flows from his soul, just as Paracelsus does not want to express the wisdom of nature that he has deciphered in the foreign Latin, but only in German. But nowhere in Faust does the struggle with the surrounding nature in the direction of its knowledge appear as it does in Paracelsus, but in the first part with moral, in the second part with spiritual, spiritual powers - Homunculus.

What Faust wanted to achieve was something natural for Paracelsus, who thought and acted completely selflessly. Only at the end, after a selfish life, when he had become blind in old age, did Faust achieve selflessness, when “a bright light shines within”, when he became a mystic, when he gained insight into the innermost being, which Paracelsus had discovered throughout his life as an elementary feeling spirit from external nature. Paracelsus was the dawn at the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, clearly visible to all. In Faust, we can only seek it within, as a soul-acting power.

Why was Goethe able to describe Faust as he did? Because something special occurred in the development of humanity between the life of Paracelsus and the conception of Faust, which powerfully shifted the earlier conditions and steered them into new channels. What Copernicus and Kepler discovered, Paracelsus no longer experienced. He was only the dawn of a science that had then entered the morning dawn from the sensual into the supersensual. Paracelsus penetrated through the phenomenal side of nature to the spirit, but through Copernicus and the men working in his spirit, humanity has been led into the age of intellectuality, of thinking, which does not want to penetrate the veil to explain the world of the senses in the sense of earlier times, but seeks satisfaction in the knowledge of the soul. It was therefore inevitable that a spiritual approach would be chosen as the basis for the work of Goethe's Faust, just as Copernicus, Kepler, Giordano Bruno and Galileo worked in the same way. As a mystic, Paracelsus appropriated the same knowledge that Faust acquired through direct observation of nature. Goethe's Faust shows how modern man depends on the inner life of the soul. In the same way, spiritual science searches in the depths of the soul for that which can lead from the transitory to the infinite eternal.

After Paracelsus, a new era dawned, which said that if we turn to the non-sensuous, we will gain a correct understanding of our world system. And so Goethe presented his Faust as a representative of this view who had risen to a higher level. Spiritual science is advancing along this path, which leads from the realm of the soul into the secrets of nature. Just as Giordano Bruno broke through the blue firmament of the eighth sphere, so spiritual science is now breaking through the boundaries of birth and death by revealing the soul as an infinite being that reaches beyond space and time. Goethe thus seems like someone who shows us the beginning of the right path by presenting us with an image in Faust, to which the memory of Paracelsus leads us, in order to be able to understand him even more.

Thus, individual human beings are placed in the context of the further development of the world, and so today, too, man must again break new ground so that he can find the harmonization of his soul forces in his insights, beyond Paracelsus and Faust. Based on such relationships, one feels more and more deeply the inner affinity between Paracelsus and Goethe, especially in the latter's words:

When the healthy nature of man functions as a whole, when he feels himself to be a part of a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole in the world, when harmonious comfort grants him pure, free delight – then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as if it had reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being.

In man as in a microcosm, Goethe, like Paracelsus, seeks and sees the entire workings of the great world, the macrocosm.

On the way back from the birthplace of Paracelsus in Maria-Einsiedeln, one is thoroughly shaken by the journey over the valley and hills, and in this way, one becomes quite aware of the gnarled character of Paracelsus, in addition to which, the memory of Goethe also resurfaced on approaching the pilgrimage church. Symbolically, the spirit of the great seemed to manifest itself to me in the outwardly small-looking church of Maria-Einsiedeln, as soon as one really lets the interior take effect on oneself and appreciates the tasteful interior in its kind accordingly. Goethe once stood in this atmospheric room, in this small yet great church, which, like a microcosm in the macrocosm, also presented the human being as an image of the great world to the contemplative observer. I sensed this in his words and could imagine how Goethe, in this place where Paracelsus often stood, felt the basic sensation of the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm in man becoming clearly expressed within himself. The path from Paracelsus to Goethe shows us this: the two boundary points of this path, the evening star and the rising sun of the new age, point to a profound similarity between the souls of the two men as a living protest against an external, unspiritual, non-spiritual understanding of things, which Goethe says in Faust, and which, significantly, Mephisto says:

Who wants to recognize and describe something alive,
First seeks to drive out the spirit,
Then he has the parts in his hand,
Unfortunately, only the spiritual bond is missing.
Encheiresin naturae is what chemistry calls it,
Mocks itself and does not know how.

This also belongs to the character of Paracelsus as a living protest against overlooking the whole when considering the parts. Instead of the final words, Goethe had written in the earlier version of “Faust”:

He makes himself an ass and does not know how.

Paracelsus and Goethe both condemned such a view of nature; both were inspired by the opposite tendency, which, in line with Mephisto's words, could be translated as:

Who wants to get to the bottom of something living
should seek to fathom the spirit in the depths!
And when he has the parts in his hand,
he sees the spirit's light
as the only salvation in the spiritual bond
that holds together what otherwise does not recognize itself
and the secrets of the universe.