The Conceptual World and Its Relationship to Reality

GA 165 — 16 January 1916, Dornach

Second Lecture

Yesterday we tried to place ourselves in the position of the developing process of conceptualization and idealization, of the development of concepts about the world and of ideas, and we saw that a certain development can be observed here as well: that, so to speak, from a kind of clairvoyant experience of the concepts, what the Platonic ideas were arises, and that gradually developed that abstract way of thinking which still extends into our own day; but that time is pressing, so that, as it were in a conscious way, living life in concepts is to be achieved again, in order to enter into living spirituality in general, so that what was left behind as dream-like clairvoyance in concepts may be achieved again in a conscious way.

Now we have to look more closely at how, in a very different way, all the highest matters of world existence can be grasped in a time when there was still something of the resonance of the old, clairvoyantly grasped concepts, and how quite differently the highest matters of humanity had to be grasped when conceptual thinking had already become intellectual-rational and abstract. For the questions we spoke of again yesterday, which arose so significantly in medieval scholasticism, these questions could actually only develop naturally in an age in which one was uncertain about the relationship between the world of concepts and the true world of reality. In a time that had preceded Greek philosophy, something like what we have considered the doctrine of universals in re, post rem, ante rem could not have been conceived at all, because the vividly possessed concept leads into reality. One knows that one stands in reality with it, and then one cannot raise the questions that were discussed yesterday. They do not arise at all as riddle questions.

Now, in the early days of Christian development, there was still something of an echo of the old clairvoyant conceptual world, and one can say: when the Mystery of Golgotha went through the development of European and Near Eastern humanity , there were still many people who were really able to absorb the things that relate to the Mystery of Golgotha in echoes of clairvoyantly grasped concepts, which can actually only be understood spiritually. Only in this way can we understand that much of what was developed in the first centuries of Christianity to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha must have been incomprehensible in later times. When the older Christian teachers still used the echoes of the old clairvoyant concepts to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha, then, of course, these clairvoyant concepts remained incomprehensible to the later centuries in their actual essence. Basically, what is called gnosis is usually nothing more than the echo of old clairvoyant concepts. They tried to understand the Mystery of Golgotha with old clairvoyant concepts, and clairvoyant concepts were no longer understood later, only abstract concepts. Therefore, what Gnosis actually wanted was misunderstood. However, it would be very one-sided to simply say: There was a Gnosis that still had old clairvoyant concepts that went back to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, and then came the unwise people who were unable to understand the Gnostics. It would be very one-sided to think in such a way. To work in a certain perfect sense with clairvoyant concepts belongs to a much older time than the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, to a much older time. And these clairvoyantly grasped concepts were already infected with Lucifer, that is to say, the old clairvoyant-conceptual grasping was already permeated with Lucifer, and this Luciferic permeation of the old clairvoyant conceptual system is Gnosticism. Therefore, a kind of reaction against Gnosticism had to arise, because Gnosticism was the dying old clairvoyant conceptual world, the old clairvoyant conceptual world already infected by Lucifer. This must also be borne in mind.

Now I will start with a man who, in the first centuries of Christianity, tried to stem the currents that came from Gnosticism, which had become Luciferian, and wanted to understand the Mystery of Golgotha from this point of view. That is Tertullian. He came from North Africa, was well-versed in the wisdom of the pagans. Towards the end of the second century, after the Mystery of Golgotha, he converted to Christianity and became one of the most learned theologians of his time. It is particularly interesting to take a closer look at him, because, on the one hand, he still had some inner understanding of the old clairvoyant conceptual world from his study of ancient pagan wisdom, and, on the other hand, because, as his conversion story shows, he had the full Christian impulse within him and wanted to unite both in such a way that Christianity could fully exist. To do this, he had to suppress what he perceived as the Gnosticism with a touch of Luciferism in Basilides, Marcion and others. And now certain questions arose for him. These questions arose for Tertullian for a very specific reason. You see, when we begin with spiritual science today, we very often speak of the structure of human nature, of the way in which man first has his dense physical body, which the eyes can see and the hands can grasp; then how there is an etheric body, how there is an astral body, a sentient soul and so on. That is to say, we seek above all to recognize the constitution of human nature. But if you follow the historical development of spiritual life in the centuries since the Mystery of Golgotha, you will find nowhere that the human constitution has been observed in such a way as we do today. This was lost and had already been lost when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred. Those who were touched by the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha no longer knew anything about this structure of the human being. But this presented a very definite difficulty for them. In order to recognize this difficulty, my dear friends, try to connect with your own heart, with your own soul, in order to ask yourself a question. You know that we have tried in many different ways to make clear to you the way in which the Christ, through Jesus, has intervened in the evolution of the earth. But try to understand how the Christ has penetrated the members in Jesus, if you knew nothing of the whole constitution, of the essence of man! Only this made it possible to understand how the Christ, as a kind of cosmic ego, permeates the bodies, so that you first knew something about these bodies. For those who in the future will seek an understanding of the Christ, knowledge of the structure of the human being must be the essential preparation.

In ancient times, when there were still dream-like, clairvoyant concepts, something was known about the structure of the human being; and something had been handed down to the Gnostics, even if it was distorted. Therefore, these Gnostics had tried to penetrate the coming of the Christ into Jesus of Nazareth with the last remnants of the concepts of the human constitution. But the others, to whom Christianity was now to come, and who were taught by their church teachers, knew nothing of this structure of the human being, nor did their church teachers. And so the big, extensive question arose: What is the actual situation regarding the interaction of the Christ nature and the Jesus nature? How is it possible that this Christ, as a divine being, takes hold in Jesus, as a human being? And it is this question that occupies people like Tertullian. Because they lack the prerequisite for understanding the matter, the problem arises for them again posthumously, as it were — but in the case of Christ Jesus it makes them wonder: how are the spiritual, physical and soul actually connected? They did not know how they are connected in people in general, but they had to find out something about how they were connected in the case of Christ Jesus. Because the Gnosticism of that time had a Luciferian bent, it naturally did not arrive at the right answer either. If you recall certain lectures that I have given here recently, you will find that I said that people, on the one hand, come to materialism and, on the other hand, to a one-sided spiritualism. One-sided materialism is Ahrimanic, one-sided spiritualism has a Luciferic touch. The materialists do not come to the spirit, and the Luciferic spiritists do not come to matter.

This was the case with the Gnostics: they did not come to physical existence, to material existence. And if you now look at a person like Marcion, you see: for him there is a clear, a more or less clear concept of Christ, but he is absolutely unable to grasp how this Christ was contained in Jesus. Therefore, the whole process became etherealized for him. He managed to grasp the Christ as a spirit, as an ethereal being that seemingly took on a body. But he could not grasp the correct way in which the Christ was in Jesus. Marcion came to say, in the end, that Christ did indeed descend to earth, but that everything that Jesus experienced was only seemingly experienced; the physical events are only seemingly experienced; the Christ did not actually participate, but was only there like an ethereal entity, which, however, remained quite separate. That is why Tertullian had to turn against Marcion and against the others who thought similarly, Basilides for example. And for him the great riddle arose: How was the divine nature of Christ connected with the human nature of Jesus? What exactly was the God-man? What was the Son of God? What was the Son of Man? — Above all, he sought to clarify these concepts. And so he first formed a concept that was very important and is still important today, which one must understand if one wants to see how manifold the possibilities of error are for man.

Tertullian developed a certain way of thinking. He had to break out of the old, clairvoyant way of thinking and come to a clear understanding of concepts and their relationship to realities, including higher, spiritual realities. I would like to insert an episode here that will help you to see not what Tertullian became aware of, but what dominated his thinking. I will insert a purely intellectual episode, but I ask you to take it very much to heart. I do the following. I write the number 1 and then its double 2, 2 - 4, 3 - 6, etc. And now imagine: I do not stop at all, I keep writing, that is, I write to infinity. How many such numbers would I have written then? Infinitely many, aren't they! But how many have I written here? Have I written a number on the right for every number on the left? Without a doubt, I have written exactly as many numbers on the right as I have written on the left, and if I continue into infinity, there would always be a number on the right for every number on the left. But now imagine: every number on the right is also on the left. But that means nothing other than: I have as many numbers on the right as I have on the left, but at the same time I have only half as many numbers on the right as on the left. Because it is quite obvious that there must always be one in between two numbers that are double, I must have only half as many numbers on the right as on the left. One is always left out, that is obvious, so I can only have half as many on the right as on the left. That is obvious. But consider that one is always missing, that 1, 3, 5, 7 and so on are missing, so half the numbers are missing on the right! So I only have half as many on the right as on the left. Nevertheless, I have exactly the same number of numbers as on the left. That is to say: as soon as I enter infinity, half is equal to the whole. That is quite clear: as soon as I enter infinity, half is equal to the whole – you cannot escape it. As soon as you enter infinity with your concepts from the finite, something like that comes out by itself, that half is equal to the whole. You can write all the numbers on the left and all the square numbers on the right: 1 - 1, 2 - 4, 3 - 9, 4 - 16, 5 - 25. Certainly there is a square number for every number, but as true as many numbers are missing here, it can only be a part. Think about it: after all, it is always only the square numbers.

You can visualize the same thing in another way: I draw two parallel lines here – I have shown this before. How large is the space between these two parallel lines? Infinitely, of course! In mathematics, as you know, this is indicated by this sign: 00. But if I now draw a perpendicular to it, and a parallel at exactly the same distance, then the current space is exactly twice as large as the previous one, but still infinite. That is, the new infinity is twice the previous infinity. You can see this very clearly here: you can see here, by the simplest means of thought, that thinking is only valid in the finite. It is unfounded and without result as soon as it goes beyond the finite. It cannot begin with the laws that it has within itself when it goes out of the finite into the infinite. But you must think of this infinity not only in terms of the very large or the very small, but also within the world of qualities.

This is a triangle, this is a square, this is a pentagon (see drawing), I could make a hexagon, heptagon, octagon and so on, and if I keep going, it will become more and more similar to a circle. If I then draw a circle, how many corners does it have? It has an infinite number of corners. But if I draw a circle that is twice as large, it also has an infinite number of corners, but twice as many corners! So even in the finite, the concepts of infinity are everywhere, so that our thinking can fail everywhere, even where it can encounter the finite, because of infinity, because of the intense infinity. This means that thinking must always realize that it is at a loss and without support when it wants to go out of the finite sphere, which is given to it first, into the infinite.

We must draw a practical conclusion from this. We must really draw the practical conclusion that we must not simply think in this way, that we can go terribly wrong if we think in this way. And among the many negative achievements that can be attributed to Kant, the positive one is that he once gave people a good rap on the knuckles with regard to this nonsense: thinking in this way, going at everything. If you think about it, you can prove that space must have a boundary somewhere, that the world is finite; but equally that it is infinite, because thought becomes unfounded as soon as you go beyond a certain sphere. And so Kant put together the so-called antinomies: how one can prove one thing just as well as the opposite, because thinking is unstable, has only a relative value. One can think quite correctly with regard to one point; but if one is not able to extend it to the other, which is perhaps next to it, one goes wrong if one simply thinks or even just observes at random. In this area, one can really see how little people are aware that one cannot just lash out, neither with thinking nor with observing and with some taking in of what is out there.

Apparently, I am now linking something very metaphysical and epistemological with something very mundane. But it is exactly the same puzzle; it's just a shame that we don't have the time to discuss epistemologically how it is the same puzzle. Mr. Bauer drew my attention to something very beautiful in this direction a few days ago. You know that Pastor R., in his lecture in which he killed off our spiritual science, pointed out that if someone were to go up to our building after it, they would be reminded of old Matthias Claudius by all the incomprehensible people depicted there. And Pastor R. wanted to say that the good old Claudius would have to stand there and say: “Up there, these anthroposophists rule and want to recognize that which can never be recognized!” It is simply not recognizable to people. — And then he quoted Matthias Claudius:

We proud men of the earth
Are vain and poor sinners
And know not much at all;
We spin airy-fairy
And seek many arts
And get further from the goal.

So there we are, because old Matthias Claudius tells us that all people are poor sinners and should not turn their gaze to the incomprehensible and inscrutable. Well, and then good old Matthias Claudius also says, in a nutshell, that Pastor R. is such an intelligent person that he knows that people are poor sinners and know nothing of that which cannot be seen with the outer eye. Mr. Bauer, who was not content with simply listening to these words from Pastor R., opened Matthias Claudius and read the “Evening Song” by Matthias Claudius, which goes like this:

The moon has risen
The golden stars are shining
Bright and clear in the sky;
The forest stands black and silent,
And from the meadows rises
A wonderful white mist. How still the world is, And in the dawn's embrace, So cozy and so mild! As a quiet chamber,Where you the day's misery Sleepily and forgetfully shall.

Do you see the moon standing there? —
It is only half visible,
And yet it is round and beautiful!
Some things are probably like that,
Which we confidently laugh at,
Because our eyes do not see them.

We proud human children
are vain poor sinners
And know not much at all;
We spin airy-fairy
and seek many arts
And get further from the goal.

And so, poor sinner, Pastor R. is the one who is getting further and further away from the goal! He has simply forgotten that the fourth verse is connected to the third!

As you can see, it is important to try to be comprehensive in your thinking. Of course, if the fourth verse refers to Pastor R. – if Pastor R. identifies with all humble human beings – then the exact opposite can be concluded than if the third verse is added. This latter, trivial example is not completely unrelated to the more metaphysical-theoretical example I have given. It is necessary for people to realize that if they look at something and then think about what they have seen, they may come to the exact opposite of what is really true. And that is what particularly comes to the fore when the transition is to be made from the finite to the infinite or from the material to the spiritual or the like.

Now, someone like Marcion, from his Lucifer-infected gnosis, said: A god cannot undergo the process of becoming human and so forth that takes place here on earth, because a god must be subject to different laws that belong to the spiritual world. He did not find the connection between the spiritual and the material, the sensual. Now there was a debate about this, which no longer existed – Marcion is only externally, physically, recognizable from his opponents, for example from Tertullian – that the whole external physical story of Jesus of Nazareth would not be appropriate for the divine world order; how God could be on earth, that could only be appearance, that could all be without meaning. The Christ would have to be understood purely spiritually. Tertullian said: “You are right, Marcion” — this is now in Tertullian's writings — “you are right when you make your concepts as you make them; these are quite understandable, transparent concepts, but then you must also apply them only to the finite, to the things that happen in nature; you must not apply them to the divine. For the divine, one must have other concepts. And what is the rule, the law, for the workings of the divine, may appear absurd to the finite mind.

Tertullian was thus confronted, not consciously, I will not say, but intuitively and unconsciously, with the great riddle of how far thinking, which is adapted to nature, to natural phenomena, applies. And he countered Marcion: If one applies only that thinking which appears plausible to man, then one can assert what Marcion says. But with the Mystery of Golgotha, something has entered into world evolution to which this thinking is not applicable, for which one needs other concepts. — Hence he formed the word: These higher concepts, which refer to the divine, compel us to believe what is absurd for the finite. In order not to do injustice to Tertullian, one must not just quote the sentence: “I believe what is absurd, what cannot be proved” – but one must quote this sentence in the context in which it appears and which I wanted to make somewhat understandable. That was the main problem that now occupied Tertullian: How is the divine nature of Christ connected with the human nature of Jesus? And here he was clear about one thing: human concepts are not suitable for grasping what happened with the mystery of Golgotha. Human concepts always lead to the inability to connect the spiritual that one has grasped from the Christ with what one must grasp as earthly history in relation to Jesus. But, as I said, Tertullian lacked the possibility of grasping the problem from the constitution of man, as we are trying to understand it again today. As a result, he initially only managed, for the first time, to find, I would say, the surrogate for the concept that we develop when we want to clarify something in a particular place in our spiritual scientific knowledge.

Do you remember a place in our spiritual knowledge that you can find, for example, in my 'Theosophy'? There you will see: first there is the physical body, etheric body, astral body, then: sentient soul, mind or feeling soul, consciousness soul, and finally the individual connections with the spirit self. There are various discussions about how the spirit self works its way into the consciousness soul. But this is exactly the point to consider if you want to look into the abiding of Christ in the man Jesus, if you want to understand this. It is a prerequisite to know how the spirit self enters the consciousness soul in general humanity; it is a prerequisite to understand how the nature of Christ, as a special cosmic spirit self, entered the consciousness soul nature of Jesus of Nazareth. Tertullian only found a substitute for this, and what he formulated as a concept can be understood as saying today: According to Tertullian, there is no mixing between the Christ, corresponding to the spirit self, and the Jesus, corresponding to the consciousness soul and all the lower aspects of being that belong to it. And humanity will only get to know such a connection when the spirit self is properly present. Now we live in the age of the consciousness soul. Each person will have a much looser connection when the spirit self is regularly developed in the sixth post-Atlantic period. Then people will also better understand how differently, for example, the Christ nature was bound to the Jesus nature than, let us say, the consciousness soul was bound to the mind soul. The consciousness soul is, of course, always mixed with the mind soul. But the spirit soul is connected to the consciousness soul, not mixed with it. And this is the concept that Tertullian really developed. He says: Christ is not mixed with Jesus, but connected. The one God-man, Christ Jesus, presented Himself to him in order to illustrate to him once again in the age in which this old conceptual clairvoyance was no longer present how the divine and the physical soul were connected in human nature. The Christ appears before Tertullian as the representative of all humanity. Through the Christ, he studied the constitution of man in order to understand Christ Jesus. The Christ became the center of his entire thinking, which could no longer be applied to the one human nature. And because Tertullian had realized that Christ is not mixed with Jesus, but connected - he could not say as we would say: like the spirit self with the consciousness soul - but he said: not mixed, but connected - through this it emerged for him, that he said: everything that Christ has connected with, also comes from the spirit of the world; that is the father principle in the world. For Tertullian, the Father principle became that which, so to speak, belonged to the earthly manifestation of Jesus. There lies the father principle, the creative principle in nature, that which brings forth everything in nature. The Christ principle united with this, the son principle. Thus it became for Tertullian, and through the father and the son, through the purification of the external, the natural, through the Christ, the spirit arises again, which he calls the Holy Spirit.

Thus, in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, that which stands as the Christ Jesus, as Jesus emerging from the Father-Principle, as everything in the world emerges from the Father-Principle. Thus, this Christ Jesus, by virtue of the fact that he carried the Christ within him, was the Son emerging from the Father-Principle, who had simply come later, the Bringer of the Spirit — the Spirit, which then in turn comes from him. Thus Tertullian sought to find the way out from the individual human being to the cosmos: to the principles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jesus, Father
Christ, Son
Holy Spirit

Now the great difficulty arose for him in making it understandable how three could be one and one three. In ancient times, when there were still clairvoyant concepts, it was not particularly difficult to imagine this. But for the time when everything falls apart through concepts and nothing can be properly connected anymore, the difficulty arose. Tertullian used a nice comparison to make it clear how one can be three and three one. He said: Take the source. From the source comes the brook, from the brook comes the river. If we ask about the river, we say: It comes from the spring through the brook; from the spring through the brook. Or take, he said, for comparison the roots, the shoots, the fruit: the fruit comes from the root through the shoot. — Tertullian needed a third comparison, saying: The little flame of light comes from the sun, carried through the cosmos. Thus, he said, one must imagine that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son. And just as this trinity – source, brook, river – does not contradict the unity that the river is in reality, so the fact that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son does not contradict the unified development of Father, Son and Spirit.

So he tried to make clear to himself how the three can be one: like roots, shoots and fruit, like source, stream and river. And he also tried to arrive at a certain formula. By thinking in terms of the father principle – that is, in terms of that which is always the source from which the spirit principle comes through the son principle: the natural, the externally created, the externally revealed; in terms of the son principle, that which permeates the penetrates the externally revealed; and with the spirit principle, that which is brought about for earthly development by both together, he formed a doctrine for himself, but which was basically only a single symptomatic expression of what was developing in general in these first centuries of Christianity among people who, on the one hand, still had something of Gnosticism in them, and at the same time were suffering all the pains and afflictions because Gnosticism was bound to be lost. These people were now trying to come to terms with what Christ Jesus was, and what He had to be in order to fulfill the goal of the Mystery of Golgotha. Tertullian is only one particularly ingenious representative of those who, in the early days of Christianity, tried to penetrate spiritually to what had happened.

Then, out of Christianity, there emerged what you know as the Credo, as the Apostolicum, which was established in the third and fourth centuries and was then also established by the councils. If you study this, as it was in those days, then you will find out: it is basically a defense against Gnosticism, a rejection of Gnosticism, because one sensed the Luciferic factor in Gnosticism. Gnosis tends towards Lucifer, that is, towards a one-sided spiritual conception. It cannot, therefore, come to the Father Principle at all, cannot properly appreciate it. It regards the material world with contempt, as something it cannot use. It must be stated: I believe in God the Father, the Almighty Father – the first part of the Creed. This first part of the Creed is formulated against the contempt for the material, so that even the external, that which is seen with the eyes, is also understood as a divine, and precisely a divine, that emerges from the Father principle.

The second thing was to declare, in opposition to Gnosticism, that there was not only an ethereal Christ in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, but that this Christ was really connected, not mixed, with the man Jesus of Nazareth. It had therefore to be established on the one hand that the Christ was connected with the spiritual, and on the other hand that the Christ was connected with Jesus of Nazareth, the natural evolution on earth, and that when suffering, dying, rising and all that death, resurrection and all that has yet to take place in imitation of the Mystery of Golgotha, is not something in which the Christ does not participate, but that He really suffers in the flesh. The Gnostics had to deny that the Christ suffered in the body because He was not connected to the body; for the Gnostics, at least for certain Gnostics, it was only an apparent suffering. In contrast to this, it should be stated that the Christ was really connected to the body in such a way that He suffered in the body. So all the events that had taken place on the external physical plane were to be connected with the Christ. Therefore: I believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Holy Ghost and Mary the Virgin, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, rose again on the third day, and ascended into heaven – that is, became spiritual again – and is seated at the right hand of the Father, judging the living and the dead.

One can now say: The Gnostics came closest to the spirit, which is to be regarded as a mere spiritual. But it is spiritual in so far as it now represents a spiritual essence, but must gradually be realized in human coexistence in the social structure that is emerging during the Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan period, where the Holy Spirit is embodied, not now in an individual human being, but in all humanity, in the configuration of society. But it is only at the beginning. However, the Gnostics were the ones who could best understand that something that is only spiritual does not intervene in the material. Therefore, the God of the Gnostics was basically the closest thing to the Holy Spirit. But this Christianity, which wanted to be transferred to earth, which did not want the spirit to be lost to Lucifer, to be seen only as something spiritual in it, this Christianity now also had to define faith in the spirit as something that was connected to the material: I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the Holy Church. — That is now in the Apostolicum, that is, the church as a great physical body of the Holy Spirit. This Christianity was not allowed to regard life in the spirit as something merely inward either, but had to have realized the spirit outwardly through the remission of sins, in that the Church itself took over the ministry of the remission of sins and, in addition, the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Church, in the remission of sins, in the resurrection of the flesh.

So the Credo is in about the 4th century. So there were nothing but barricades against Gnosticism, and the way these three parts of the Apostolicum are formulated is closely related, as is something like this: the river has arisen from the source through the stream, or: the fruit has arisen from the root through the sprout. During that time there was an enormous striving to grasp how the spirit is connected to the material that spreads throughout the world, how one can think the spiritual together with the material, how one can think the Trinity together with that which spreads outwardly in the material. That is what is sought; it is sought intensively. But when one considers all that lives in the Apostolicum, which today has become completely incomprehensible, one must say: the echo of the old clairvoyant concepts still lives in it, only to die away, and therefore the not the old living forms that it could have gained if one had been able to understand the Trinity and the Apostolicum with earlier clairvoyant concepts, but it is a beginning to grasp the material and the spiritual at the same time.

Today there are very many people who say: Why concern oneself with this old dogmatics? There people have only ruminated with all sorts of crazy ideas, but no one can make sense of it, it is all vain dreaming. If we look more closely, however, we find that behind this vain dreaming there is a tremendous struggle to grasp what had just become relevant for the world through the Mystery of Golgotha on the one hand, and through the loss of the old clairvoyant knowledge, the gradual fading away of the old clairvoyant knowledge, on the other.

Now the development continues, and something similar is happening as has already happened in older times, when out of the one root of the mysteries, where art and religion and science were still one, the three have developed out of each other. Now again that which is in that common root, which one tried to grasp through the Apostolicum, strives apart into the trinity. I will now attempt to describe this further development in such a way as can be presented today without causing too much offence. For if I were to communicate what needs to be said without further ado, many a head would be turned by it.

What started out as a unity developed within Western culture in three separate currents. That is to say, one current was particularly suited to grasp the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, one current more the Son, the Christ, and one current more the Father. And the curious thing is that more and more in separate courses of development the Holy Spirit current, the Christ current, and the Father current are emerging, but one-sidedly. For naturally, it can only be penetrated in its entirety when all three are present. If one develops what is to be understood as a trinity so one-sidedly, then difficulties of development arise; then some things are left out, and others degenerate. Now the following developed: The common development gradually separated in such a way that one developmental stream clearly continued, which was directed primarily towards the Holy Spirit – not as the first in time; the first in time is, of course, the coming together – and this is the one that is still essentially embodied today in the Russian Orthodox Church. However strange it may seem, the essential feature of the Russian Orthodox Church is that it primarily honors only the Holy Spirit. And you will recognize from the way, for example, Solowjew speaks about Christ, that he is primarily well-versed in grasping Christianity from the side of the Holy Spirit. It does not depend on whether he consciously speaks about Christ or not, but on which spirit rules in him, which meaning he connects with the things. What matters is the inner aspect, especially the way in which he inseparably regards the external social order of the church in relation to what is taught and is cult. This is entirely out of the nature of the Holy Spirit. The early Church, however, wanted to avoid this mere knowledge of the Holy Spirit by setting up the Trinity in the Creed and adding the Christ and the Father to the Holy Spirit. But these three must – which is also Solowjew's ideal – come together again in a kind of synthesis.

The second current was the one that was more oriented towards cultivating the Christ; it may have taught all kinds of things about the Holy Spirit, but essentially it cultivates the Christ. It is the church that spread from Rome in the Occident and had the tendency to cultivate the Christ. Think of it: in all areas where this church was active, it basically wanted to cultivate the Christ; wherever you look, there is the Christ. Wherever you look, this church is significant in the one-sided cultivation of the middle article of faith in the Creed. Only in recent times has this church tried to penetrate the Father principle as well. But because they do not know the actual inner connection, they cannot establish the right relationship between Christ and the Father. And this incorrect recognition of the relationship between Christ and the Father is what causes all the discussions in modern Protestantism. It pushes from Christ towards the Father. This can be observed again in our time. The sad events of the present have also brought about the fact that individual souls, rather numerous souls, have been imbued with religious consciousness by these events; this can be proven. But Christ reigns very little in this manifestation of the new religious consciousness; much more the father principle, the general principle of God, by which is meant the father principle. Anyone who is able to observe correctly in the world can see this everywhere. I would like to describe just one small symptom to you. During our last stay in Berlin, a dear member died and was cremated in Berlin. I set the condition – due to the prevailing circumstances it was necessary – that a minister speak. He was a very dear man and very much in agreement with me speaking afterwards. But lo and behold, he now gave a truly soul-stirring speech, and one had the feeling, as he spoke of God the Father, that he spoke deeply inwardly from the soul. And the whole time I listened to him and realized: This is actually a confirmation of what spiritual science in general must show: The Christ has been cultivated, now people have gone astray; when one speaks of religious life, one only comes to the father principle. — Many letters that come from the field, whose writers have deepened religiously, speak little of Christ, everywhere of the principle that must be seen as the father principle. — Anyone who studies this can see this. And then, at the end, because Christmas was just around the corner, the pastor mentioned Christ. This was so far-fetched because, as a Christian, he now thought it might be advisable to speak of Christ. You couldn't find any appeal or meaning in it. — And such phenomena are now increasing every moment.

There is also a third current that cultivates the Father principle one-sidedly. And now you can imagine: the two fundamental pillars that were erected against the one-sided cultivation of the Father principle by the Apostolicum, the Christ and the Holy Spirit, must be left out if only the Father principle is cultivated one-sidedly. On the other hand, the father principle was introduced into the Apostolicum to indicate that the material world is also a divine one. The one-sided father principle is cultivated in the school of thought that ties in with Darwin, Haeckel and so on. That is the one-sided development of the father principle. And no matter how much Haeckel may have resisted it, he was born out of religion. He was born out of religion through the one-sided development of the Father principle, just as other religious currents were born through the one-sided development of the Holy Spirit or the Christ principle.

And basically, it seems rather superficial when people say that the first councils only dealt with dogmatic concepts. These dogmatic terms are not just dogmatic terms, but they are the outward symbol for deep contradictions that live in European humanity, for those contradictions that live in those who are predisposed as Holy Spirit people, predisposed as Christ people, predisposed as Father people. This differentiation is also deeply rooted in the nature of the European world. And to the extent that in the first centuries of the Christian proclamation, people looked at the whole of Europe, they established a creed that encompasses the Trinity. Of course, each one-sidedness can bring the other side with it, but it does not have to. But humanity must pass through many trials, must pass through many one-sidedness in order to find its way out of one-sidedness to totality, to wholeness. And then one must also have the good will to study things in their deeper content, in their deeper essence.

If we study the three layers, the three currents of European intellectual life, which can be characterized as I have just done, in their deeper essence, then we will see that the differentiation has gone deep into the very fiber of people's souls, and we will learn to understand much that, if we do not understand, can only stand before us like a painful enigma. One would like to say: just as unity was presented in the Trinity before Tertullian, so three main European human needs lived in the way the One expressed itself symptomatically in Three, insofar as they were guided by religious life, and something like the formation of the schism between the Western Roman and the Eastern Roman Church, the Roman and the Greek, the Orthodox Church, is only the outer expression of the necessity that lies in the impulse that must branch out in different directions.

In this sense, spiritual science will make many things in human life understandable. In this way, by trying to shine ever deeper light into human interrelationships, into the interrelationships within the whole development of humanity, it is of course quite misunderstood today. For more and more clearly, the time is emerging in the outer world that wants nothing to do with spiritual science, a time in which a deeper understanding of history is no longer sought; in which everyone pursues only what they want to believe to be true according to their subjective beliefs, their personal sympathies or antipathies. Of course, spiritual science is needed precisely in such a time, because the pendulum of development must swing in the other direction. But it is equally obvious that spiritual science will be misunderstood in such a time. And we really must be clear about how much of our time lives in such a way that man does not seek objectivity, the overview, but judges rashly out of his inclinations. It is really the case that, on the one hand, there is a profound necessity to say an extraordinary amount from the spiritual world, but that it is extraordinarily difficult to make oneself understood in our immediate present. Never as strongly as in our immediate present did people live, so to speak, in the general aura, of which they are not even aware. I am deeply convinced, if I may say so, that much in our time must remain unsaid. Many will find it self-evident that they are now suited to hear, perhaps in a smaller circle, what otherwise cannot be said. But this opinion is quite erroneous. Many people may indeed long to hear now something that can perhaps only be said to humanity in years to come. But we must realize that we are living in a time when the judgment is not made only when a word with its meaning approaches our soul, but when the judgment has already been made before the word approaches our soul. In our time, the way in which the word is received is already largely determined by the time the word reaches the ear, and has not yet been received by the soul. There is no longer time to ask about the meaning, so stirred up are people's passions and emotions by the oppressive events we have been plunged into, and many a word could only be tolerated by being spoken in our presence.

We can do nothing else in our presence than to make this clear to ourselves again and again, that it is essential that a number of people are found who stand firmly on the ground of what we have already attained; who stand firmly and faithfully on this ground and can cherish the hope that this firm and loyal standing on the ground of spiritual science can become important and essential for the development of humanity in a certain period of time. The time will surely come when — since many passions have already been stirred up — something like a great question will permeate the atmosphere in which our spiritual-scientific movement lives. This question will not be clearly heard, but perhaps the effects will be clear. Nor will the answers be given clearly in words, but in relation to external events they will perhaps be very clear. Something will be whispered through the spiritual-scientific current without being expressed in words, such as: Should I go with them or should I not go with them? And the answer will also speak of what has driven people out of sensationalism, out of sympathy with the general feelings that arise from spiritual science. It will arise from many secondary feelings, which will push towards an answer that will not be clearly formulated, that will not simply express itself by saying: I liked spiritual science, now other feelings have mixed in, now I no longer like it. Instead, people will appear in masks and seek all kinds of reasons, which they may discuss from many sides. The essential thing will be that one used to like spiritual science, but no longer likes it, which has a lot to do with enthusiasm, sensation, all kinds of sensual lustful feelings and so on. In a sense, precisely out of the emotions of the present, something will arise more and more, such as: I go with - and: I do not go with. - Alone in the inner being, our spiritual science is invincible, completely invincible. And what we have to look for is that at least some are found in whose hearts it is firmly anchored, but anchored not out of sympathy and preference, out of favor and sensation, out of vanity and enthusiasm, but because the soul is connected with it as with its truth, and because the soul does not shy away from difficulties in entering the core of truth in the world. Much will fall away completely; but perhaps what remains afterwards will be all the more significant and certain. This must be borne in mind when it is necessary to emphasize again and again that, until more peaceful times come to our civilized countries, we must renounce much that might be very useful precisely for understanding our present time, but which, because of the nature of our time, really cannot be brought before humanity at this time.

I would like to say these words to explain why some things have only been hinted at, especially in the last lectures. But I would like to add one more thing. Precisely when it is true – and it is true – that we live in a time when the word has already led to judgment before it has even reached the soul, then many can learn a great deal from the events of the present with the tools of what spiritual science already gives them. Much can be learned from what is happening around us, if we look at it more deeply, if we see how today outer humanity has almost completely lost the ability to judge according to any kind of objectivity, how judgments flow only from the emotions, permeating everything in the cultural world. And if you look for the reason why this is so, if you see this reason buzzing in the human aura of the present and then know how the word is already a judgment before it enters the soul, then you can also learn a lot from the events of the present with the instrument of spiritual science. And we should learn if we are to be able to become a tool in reality - as a society for this spiritual science. The example that was given today, how a person who wants to meet our society quotes a fourth verse and omits the third, yes, my dear friends, when you look for the reasons for the opposition that arises against us: they can be found everywhere. They must be sought everywhere in superficiality, in the most enormous superficiality. Everywhere, so to speak, a fourth verse has been seen and a third verse overlooked, figuratively speaking. Only many of us still do not believe that. Many of us still believe that they are doing well when they go to this or that person and tell him: I have become so spiritual through our spiritual science that I even read to my husband fighting out there in the field, and I know that it helps him. – Then, of course, people come and use that against us. Or when people are told what we had to hear, what was passed on as the 'Nathanael story' and so on. That such things should happen at all, that these things should really be passed on from our midst, seems at first to be done with the best of intentions, but with a good will that is connected with a certain naivety, but a naivety that is boundlessly arrogant because it does not recognize and does not want to recognize, but takes himself as a person so seriously that he considers it the most necessary thing in the world to want to convert this or that person – whom, if he were not so naive, he would know cannot be converted. This is so infinitely important that one can understand how, at times, naivety can feel endowed with boundless arrogance and a sense of mission. And as a rule, no one resents the naive person more than the naive person himself, who believes he is doing the very best when, out of a certain enthusiasm, he does the absurd.

And it is indeed necessary, if you take the matter, that we at least gain from spiritual science the ability to think modestly. If thinking can really go so wrong, as I have tried to make clear today, why should we always, when we have drilled this or that into our brains, why should we believe that it is an incontrovertible truth? And why should we then immediately trumpet it out into the world as if we were on a mission? Why shouldn't we decide to learn something real first and to get a certain inner impulse of aliveness from spiritual science, rather than just the one we get when we sip at it? Therefore, the seriousness, the deep seriousness that must permeate us cannot be emphasized enough, and it must always tell us: And no matter how much you believe in your judgment in any given direction, you have to test it, because it could be wrong. If we take all this into account, along with many other things (not everything can be said after all), then, little by little, we will truly be a number of people in whose inner lives what is so impersonal lives, just as the most important impulses must be impersonal in the present, if they are to prevail against the purely personal impulses that permeate and have permeated the world today.

I wanted to speak to you about your souls, since we will not meet for a few weeks now. I wanted to give you a broader perspective in the last hours before these weeks when we cannot speak to each other, by unrolling a page in the original development of Christianity and in its divergence into different currents. I am convinced that no matter how much you study the development of Christianity in past centuries, what has been said today will provide you with a thread that will clarify an infinite number of things for you in outward appearances. And in the outward appearances, if you really look at them seriously, you will find confirmation everywhere of what I could only hint at today. It would be good if we could use something like meditation material that could present us with problems and puzzles for our souls, the solution of which we could each try according to our ability. Of course, some will only be able to do this with fleeting thoughts, for a few minutes, while others will be more inclined to familiarize themselves with something that can provide enlightenment about what has been hinted at. But everyone can be stimulated if they try to develop, as I would say, the surging thoughts that go back through the centuries and yet are essentially involved in what is happening in the present, so that there is a need to understand it. I know that in reality no one understands our painful present without becoming familiar with all the contradictions that have arisen in a completely natural way in the course of European development. But when one compares what is being judged today about the world situation with what is objectively correct and can only be recognized if one knows all the forces that have intervened in the development, and which only the study of history can reveal, including in a spiritual sense, when one compares today's judgments with what leads to real judgment, then one is deeply, deeply pained. Not only do we feel pain, my dear friends, at what is happening today, but also at the difficulties that arise in order to get beyond what is happening today. And we must get out of it! And the better you will realize that a deep spiritual-scientific understanding of the developmental forces of humanity is necessary in all areas, without letting our personal emotions interfere, the more such an understanding of the developmental impulses through spiritual science is striven for, the more you recognize how important it is to recognize these impulses through spiritual science and to awaken them in your soul, the better you will be among those souls who can stand firm on the ground on which one must stand today if what is actually necessary according to the inner demands of human development is to be achieved.

I would like to speak to you about your feelings and emotions, so that spiritual science may enter into them and become firmly anchored in them, and so that there may be people, as there should be and as there must be, if we want to make progress in the evolution of humanity. In all modesty we must think this, but in this modesty we must do it, because it is not suitable to educate us to megalomania, but only to create in us the need to apply as much strength and as much intensity as possible to penetrating what wants to realize itself spiritually in the developmental history of humanity.