Literature's Spiritual Crisis: Materialism and Soul Collapse

GA 254 — 31 October 1915, Dornach

Eleventh Lecture

In the last lectures I gave here, I endeavored to show you from a certain perspective how, in the middle of the 19th century, a kind of materialistic flood asserted itself within the evolution of humanity, and how it was felt from various quarters that such a materialistic flood had never before occurred in this way in the history of human development, and that the way in which it arose was of a certain significance — which we have characterized. On the other hand, I tried to convey the feeling that people must arm themselves in order to follow the course of development that was once laid out for humanity.

Now, especially in the last few lectures, I have shown you how various parties who are, in a sense, involved in the further development of those goals of human culture that are connected with spiritual science have endeavored to incorporate into the course of human development something that they considered necessary in order to show humanity that something new must be added to the old. Certainly, much more could be said about this, and there will also be opportunities in the course of time to discuss many things in this direction, for we will have to provide various pieces of evidence for what we have so far presented in a more narrative form. Today I would like to point out that in the external spiritual life around the middle of the 19th century, it was evident in many ways that people felt they were at a very important juncture. In external spiritual life, that is, in what is expressed in the various philosophical movements, in the literary movement, and the like, much could be cited from what I would call a convulsive element that has mixed itself into the course of human development. Since much could be cited, one can of course only pick out a few examples.

In order to shed light on the course of human development, I would like to take two examples from European literary life as a starting point today. These examples are intended to show us how there was a feeling in people's hearts and minds that something significant was happening in the invisible worlds, so to speak. One such example is Gutzkow's novel “Maha Guru,” the great guru, and a second example is — strangely enough, this second example was written at the same time as “Maha Guru” — the extraordinarily significant drama that ends with the cry: “You have conquered, Galilean!” and which, as far as I can tell, marks a special high point in 19th-century Polish literature.

It is remarkable that the young, free-thinking Gutzkow, who was in his twenties at the time, in the 1830s, chose this material to allude, as it were, to many things that were alive and vibrant at the time, and chose a person who later became the Dalai Lama in Tibet: the “Maha Guru,” the Great Guru, as he called him. Let us briefly consider this portrait of an era that seems so distant from European circumstances, yet in reality is so infinitely close to them: the “Maha Guru,” who appeared in the 1830s, at the dawn of the materialistic age.

One of the main characters in the novel “Maha Guru” is a godmaker. What is a godmaker in Tibet? It is someone who fabricates, creates gods; that is, he forms gods from all kinds of materials — as we work with plasticine today — gods gods according to the traditions that are strictly prescribed in the Tibetan canon. These things must be exactly right: the proportions that are prescribed in terms of facial features, the size of the hands, the type of pose they strike. Everything must be exactly right. Our hero, one of the heroes of the novel, comes from an old family that has always had the manufacture of gods as its special profession, and he understands his business extremely well. He is famous far and wide as a god manufacturer; his gods are bought throughout the Tibetan Empire. Now, while manufacturing one of the main gods, something terrible happens to him. Of course, one must put oneself in the heart and mind of a Tibetan if one wants to understand the full force of the word “terrible” in this context. And when you put yourself in the heart of a God-fearing Tibetan, what has happened to this god manufacturer is something terrible. What has happened to him is that the distance between the nostrils and the upper lip of one of the main gods has become slightly different than it should be, that he has shaped it slightly differently than prescribed in the canon. So this was something quite terrible and very important. He deviated from the old, venerable canon and made the distance between the nostrils and the upper lip slightly larger than prescribed. In Tibet, this is a terrible sin, something quite terrible, almost or just as terrible as if someone in the West today stood before any orthodox society and claimed that two Jesus boys were necessary to receive the Christ in Jesus, or if he spoke of a capacity for knowledge that goes beyond ordinary knowledge, people would say of him that he was seducing his followers into all kinds of clairvoyant experiments and the like, and that such teachings were fantastical. That is how it is done today. But in the time in which our novel is set, it was a similar, grave offense that the nostrils of the chief god had been made too far away from the upper lip during its fabrication. Only the punishments were different. Today, at most, one gives lectures full of incorrect information and takes other, milder measures. But back then, in that region, the god maker had to appear before the high Tibetan Inquisition tribunal, before the terrible council of black inquisitors. That is how one could describe it using terms common in Europe.

Now, in Tibet, there is no need for a police force; people obey of their own accord when they are told that the stranger has arrived without a horse, or that they must appear before the black Inquisition tribunal. There is no need to go and fetch them. Now our god-maker had to set off and turn himself in. He set off with his brothers and also with his lovely daughter, who was a very special Tibetan beauty. For many years, this daughter had helped him in a devoted and understanding way with her mastery of the Tibetan canon and had proven to be an extremely charming person. The brothers had to go with him because they were jointly responsible for his deed.

The caravan has now set out for Lhasa so that the sinner can be brought before the black tribunal. When they had traveled some distance from their home toward Lhasa, they encountered a strange, noisy, dancing, whistling procession of people playing all kinds of instruments, led by a shaman, who was also on his way to Lhasa. Now this was an acquaintance, a childhood friend of the daughter of the godmaker; he knew this entire caravan, whose leader was actually our godmaker, who, in the deepest feelings of sin of his falsely fabricated god, was on his way to Lhasa to face trial. The shaman drew his attention to the danger of his situation, saying: It would be good if the Vice Dalai Lama were still there, but it could also be that the real Dalai Lama had already been found and was already ruling Tibet from Lhasa. Then he might be even worse off. For the vice-ruler might still show mercy, but if the new Dalai Lama were already there, then there was no way of knowing whether full justice would have to be served. And if one has violated the canon as the godmaker did—by placing the nose at an incorrect distance from the upper lip—then it goes without saying that death is the punishment.

So the sinner learns that the discovery of the Dalai Lama, the Maha Guru, may be near. What does that mean in Tibet? You see, in Tibet it is clear that the soul of the great Bodhisattva who rules over Tibet passes from body to body. When a Dalai Lama dies, a new Dalai Lama must be sought, and this must be done in the most democratic manner possible, because the Tibetan constitution is highly democratic. There is no inheritance of dignities, nothing that would pass from father to son by physical means. According to Tibetan beliefs, this would be completely contrary to the dignity of the Dalai Lama. So when a Dalai Lama dies, the priesthood must set about finding a new Dalai Lama, and every young boy must be examined, because even in the poorest family, the great soul could have incarnated. The whole country must be examined, and every boy in every house and on the street must be shown, and depending on whether he has this or that sign, whether he exhibits this or that behavior, which in the opinion of the local priests indicates the necessary intelligence, he has the prospect of being recognized as the Dalai Lama. The one who shows the most signs is believed to be the great soul of the Bodhisattva, incarnated in this boy, and then he is the Dalai Lama. In the meantime, while the incarnation of God in human form is still being sought, a vice-Dalai Lama must administer the country for the time being.

Gutzkow continues: Word had already spread that the new Maha Guru or the new Dalai Lama might be crowned or introduced to his special dignity in Lhasa. And here I must interweave a little story that Gutzkow tells. He tells it in a slightly different context, but we only want to conjure up an image of his “Maha Guru” in our minds.

The lovely girl traveled with her father, the sinner. According to the Tibetan constitution, his other brothers are also fathers, because a kind of polygamy exists there. When a man marries in Tibet, his brothers also marry the same woman at the same time. The father's brothers are therefore also fathers, only one of them is the main father. — The caravan is beautifully presented in the “Maha Guru”: the fathers are lined up at the front, as if in a circle, then the main father — in this case our sinner — and the lovely girl, the daughter of this sinner. When she was still a child and had just begun to help her father, this daughter of the sinner had a childhood friend with whom she enjoyed playing according to Tibetan customs, whom she had loved very much at the time, and whom she still remembered fondly. The chief shaman of the shouting, blowing procession had also been among her childhood playmates, and this shaman was again a brother of the girl's childhood playmate just mentioned. I had to insert this so that what follows will be easier to understand.

Now the whole caravan sets off for Lhasa, and when they enter Lhasa, they hear that the new Maha Guru, the new Dalai Lama, has already been installed in his dignity. First, however, we are informed that our great sinner, who made the distance between the nose and upper lip of one of the main gods of Tibet too long, is being brought before the black tribunal. In the terrible trial that took place, it turns out that this is a sin that can only be atoned for with death. Meanwhile, the sinner and his family are thrown into prison so that another trial can take place later, in which everything this man has sinned will be revealed. I must expressly note that until then he had committed no other sin than making the distance between the nostril and the upper lip of the chief god barely a millimeter too long. But that is already a sin worthy of death there.

Now it turns out that, amid great pomp and circumstance, the new Dalai Lama is first inaugurated into office. We are introduced to all kinds of Tibetan customs, including all kinds of things that take place around the court of Lhasa. Detailed descriptions are given and many words are spoken about this. Within this framework, with the dignity of a Chinese envoy to the court of Lhasa, there was also a man who had a charming young sister and who held a special rank among the mandarins. He was in the sixth rank, but hoped to rise higher soon; his particular ideal was even to receive the Order of the Peacock Feather. But now, while this Chinese envoy pursues his dreams, the boldest of which is to acquire the high Order of the Peacock Feather, the new Dalai Lama has been installed in his dignity. The new Dalai Lama knows that he made the sun, the moon, the stars, the lightning, and the clouds, the plants and the stones, and he explains to those who now pay their respective visits how he did this, how he is the creator of what is visible in the vast universe, and also of what is invisible. So he is the creator of the visible world, and also of what is added to the visible world as invisible worlds.

There are now two parties in Tibet. There are also parties elsewhere, but these two parties are even more closely connected with the entire traditional spiritual development of humanity. These two parties, to which priesthoods of various sects belong, are usually referred to by the names of their headgear. One party is called the Yellow Hats, and the other the Red Tassels. These are in constant conflict with each other. In our language we would say – it is really closely connected with the spiritual there – that the Yellow Hats are connected with the Luciferic element of life, and the Red Tassels more with the Ahrimanic element. This is evident in their teachings, but also in their actions. Thus, the teachings and actions of the Yellow Hats are shaped and formed in such a way that the Luciferic element prevails in them, and in everything that the Red Tassels accomplish, the Ahrimanic element prevails more. It follows from this — and to explain why this follows would take us too far afield — that the Red Tassels place their main emphasis on the Dalai Lama of Lhasa being regarded as the rightful god who brought forth the plants, animals, and human beings. They have an interest in finding the new Dalai Lama and in ensuring that everyone in the country believes that he is the rightful god, while the Yellow Hats, once the Dalai Lama has been found and sits on the throne, are constantly outraged by this. For in Tibet, apart from the Dalai Lama, there is a Teschu Lama who is more recognized by the northern Tibetans and the Mongol tribes, who therefore exists alongside the Dalai Lama and who strives throughout his life to overthrow the other and put himself on the throne. The Yellow Hats are therefore those who support the Teschu Lama and seek to put him on the throne.

The one with the ideal of the Order of the Peacock Feather now saw that a new Dalai Lama had arrived. China, his country, exercised a kind of supervision over Tibet. But the Teschu Lama wants to contest the other's throne, and there is something to intrigue about. And he is now orchestrating such intrigues. He arranges a kind of caravan, a kind of military campaign, to go to the Teschu Lama and strengthen his power. But in reality, he is not concerned with the Teschu Lama ascending the throne; rather, he wants the Chinese regime to be able to tighten its grip. Amidst all the confusion that ensues, it turns out that the lovely girl, the daughter of our sinner, has been able to escape from prison. And what should never happen happens, what should be completely impossible happens: in the garden where only the god, the Dalai Lama, is allowed to walk, she discovers the Dalai Lama, and lo and behold, the Dalai Lama was her childhood friend, who one day was no longer there, who had suddenly disappeared, and who had since been raised to become the Dalai Lama. He was now the Dalai Lama, and he discovered this girl, the daughter of our terrible sinner. A very interesting dialogue now unfolds. And you can imagine what kind of circumstances might arise when the childhood playmate, who loved her childhood playmates dearly, encounters this childhood playmate, who is convinced that he created the sun, the moon, and the stars, and the childhood playmate is not averse to believing in her god to a certain extent. But then it happened that the priests discovered this terrible thing and threw the girl back into prison. The Dalai Lama, however, sits on his soft silk cushion and other accessories he has, and continues to meditate on how he controls the lightning and the clouds and how he created and continues to sustain the other things related to the visible world.

Later in the novel, we are once again brought before the black tribunal. A terrible scene unfolds, because our sinner, who at first had nothing on his conscience other than having made the distance between his nose and upper lip one millimeter too long, now appears as a great criminal. For in the meantime he had gone mad in prison, had taken what we would call plasticine and made the most curious gods. Now imagine, a Tibetan tribunal has to bring in a whole bunch of gods that he made wrongly in prison! That is a terrible thing. A howl of indignation arises, no matter how he tries to defend himself. For all around are the judges, the people in the wide galleries, and the judges are all monks who tell the people how long the nostrils must be, how large each line on each god may be, how much larger a god's belly may be than that of an ordinary human being, and all the other sins the man has committed with the gods he made in prison. It is a terrible thing. He is torn apart by the fanatical judges of the Inquisition tribunal. The great sinner and his entourage, including his charming little daughter, whose special charm lies in the fact that she does not have overly small feet and thus deviates from the Oriental custom of overly small feet—and she is also a charming creature in other respects—are thrown back into prison. But the followers of the man who aspires to the Order of the Peacock Feather cause confusion in Lhasa, and in this confusion a fire breaks out, and the very house in which the girl is staying burns down. She appears high above the smoke and flames at the very moment when the Dalai Lama and his brother are passing by below. At the right moment, the human heart of the god, the Dalai Lama, is moved. Now he does not send thunder and lightning to help, but throws himself into the flames, rescues the girl, and brings her down. The shaman, his brother, informed of everything, helps him to escape. The Dalai Lama flees with the girl to a lonely mountain region, together with his brother; the Teschu Lama of the Yellow Hats is put in his place. So the girl goes with the Maha Guru and his brother, the shaman, together—because when one marries, according to Tibetan custom, the other marries too—and now he is married to the lovely girl. The shaman dies after only a year. The good Dalai Lama lives to a ripe old age. He thus becomes his wife's only husband, and that has been a long series of years, since the shaman died immediately afterwards. He even outlives this woman, becoming a very lonely old man, having long since given up ruling the lightning and thunder, creating mountains, forests, and rivers, and making the sun, moon, and stars revolve according to his will. In his old age, he becomes a yogi. He seeks to absorb the wisdom through which his soul ascends to the spiritual worlds. He stands on one leg, the other wrapped around it in the shape of a snake, one hand behind him, the other raised: this is how he stands, moving only his lips. People from the valley bring him food, but he never leaves this position. Grasses and vines grow around him, and he awaits death. This final scene is described in a remarkable way in the novel. It describes how the man who became the Dalai Lama actually finds his god in old age, and how his soul dissolves into those elements that he wanted to know and which he believed for a certain period of his life that he had created.

It is a very strange literary work, a product of the 1830s, in which a relatively young man describes with great insight the customs that exist in Tibet, that strange country: it is what could only remain in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of many things that existed in a completely different way in the fourth, the main Atlantean period of our earth's development. What is significant, at least outwardly, is that such a novel could have been written at this time, that a human soul felt the need to present something that can only be understood if one has at least some inkling of the entire course of human development, including its spiritual side. At least one person in Europe senses that in this remarkable country, in some Tibetan institutions that seem grotesque to us, there is a faithful representation — caricatured, of course — of what existed in a completely different form in the Atlantean world. This is the outwardly significant aspect of the fact that this novel could have been written at that time, that attention was drawn, as it were, to that country where one can see most clearly how even in the so-called Yellow Hats and Red Tassels the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements live on, with which the inhabitants of Atlantis, especially in the fourth Atlantean epoch, with which they worked and labored. But there is something else that is inwardly significant in this “Maha Guru.”

What is inwardly significant is what we can bring before our soul when we once again place before our soul the moment when the trial takes place before the aforementioned black Inquisition tribunal. Our sinner makes a strange speech there in his defense. We already know that he has fabricated countless gods in prison; but he has fabricated them in his madness, he has gone mad. It is beautifully described how the madness is already preparing itself on the journey to Lhasa, how it then spreads more and more and finally breaks out, as I have already described. Now, having gone completely mad, he fabricates all kinds of gods who violate the canon in the most terrible way.

We learn about the Tibetan canon, which Gutzkow has developed in a strangely beautiful and apt manner; but we also learn something else quite remarkable. This great sinner is characterized in the following way. As the son of his fathers and grandfathers, he took on the task of fabricating gods, as one must always say of Tibet. Always, always, the gods he fabricated were such that everything was just right; every distance and arrangement of the limbs was correct, the distance between the upper lip and the nostrils was correct, and so on. Never, never had it happened to him that even the slightest distance between the nostril and the upper lip had somehow become too great. But then it happened to him once, and now he had to expect his death. But now, as a madman, that is, in a state where his soul has already left his body somewhat, he uses his body to create completely heretical gods. And now he gives a long speech in his defense, he who himself has absorbed nothing of art except what is prescribed by the canon—for the gods were always fabricated according to the canon—a speech in which he develops artistic principles out of his madness. It is a deeply moving scene for those who understand such things. So long as this man was intact with his four bodies, only the tiny mistake of a slightly larger distance between his nose and upper lip could happen to him. But now, after the astral body and the etheric body have loosened from the physical body, he becomes an artist and works with grotesque artistic principles. The Inquisition does not understand this and believes that he has allied himself with evil in order to destroy the works of the gods.

Much of what I have said about the human soul straying into one abyss or another comes to mind when one reads the moving scene before the Inquisition tribunal in Gutzkow. This young man also had before his soul how a time could come when people would no longer be able to find their balance. And now he places such people in a religious Tibetan community, because these questions can of course be developed most intensively for the novelist by having the opposites clash abruptly, and because he can thereby show how art suddenly emerges; art emerges from the human soul that has strayed into the abyss, from the human soul that has come close to Lucifer in order to save itself from the Ahrimanic clutches of the red tassels, who stand as heretic judges. From this we see art springing up. It is a wonderfully profound law that is being pointed to here, the connection between human beings and the spiritual world and its abysses: the Luciferic and Ahrimanic worlds.

Before I pursue this train of thought further, I would like to make a few remarks about Krasinski's Polish drama, the drama that ends with the words: “You have triumphed, Galilean!” and of which Mickiewicz gives a partial translation in his Paris lectures under the title: “La comédie infernale.” I expressly note that I am not in a position to judge the drama artistically, because I only know the idea and intention behind it. According to the beautiful expression that Adam Mickiewicz gave to this drama in his Paris lectures in 1842, I can only speak about the idea and intention behind it and say nothing about the artistic aspects, only about the idea and intention. You must make this distinction. And one can really speak about the drama in this way, because Mickiewicz analyzed it precisely in terms of its idea and intention. These are such good essays in French that one can easily convince oneself of the greatness and significance of this drama by delving into Mr. Mickiewicz's communications. This becomes even more apparent when one reads Mickiewicz's beautiful preface to this drama about the spirit of poetry, and one becomes convinced that one is dealing with a drama that has emerged from the deepest depths of the human soul. The secrets of the human soul are touched upon in a wonderful way in this drama. Before us stands a Polish count as the main character; speaking to him on his left and right, turning to him, are good angels and evil angels, some of whom want to guide humanity toward the good side of evolution, while others want to guide it toward the bad side of evolution. The relevant scenes have been translated into French and show how, with wonderful simplicity, the Polish poet endeavored to portray these relationships between the geniuses from the hierarchy of the Angeloi and our hero, the Polish count.

Then we learn about the count's family life. The count's family life has suffered as a result of his entire personality. The count lives entirely in the past, which extends into his personal life, in the past of humanity, in the past of what has been at work in the evolution of humanity up to that point; but also in the past that belongs to him in the midst of the old Polish ancestral line, in the midst of the images of his fathers and his ancestors. He cares little about the present, and so he cannot find any connection with his wife. But in what lives in him as hereditary material, which, I would say, has been transplanted into him through the refined blood of many generations, there also lives, in a refined form, an extraordinarily spiritual disposition, a sense for the worlds that float entirely above the earthly, a wholly spiritual sense. And so it happens that he cannot find any connection with his wife. He lives only in the spirit, he lives in such a way that those around him perceive him as a divinely gifted prophet. His wife has just given birth to a son. We are then led to the baptism of his child; but he himself is not there. He cannot find any connection with what is earthly. Through this baptism and everything associated with it, the woman, the child's mother, goes mad. He, the count, had left, and when he returns home after the baptism, he learns that his wife has been placed in an insane asylum, what we would today call a sanatorium.

Strange, we are once again presented with a personality whose human limbs are loosened. We learn what the words were before the woman went mad on the occasion of the child's baptism. When it was to be baptized, the woman grasped the idea of the misfortune that surrounded the child because she had not grown with her talents and her whole humanity to the level at which her husband lived in the spiritual world, and because she had not been able to give birth to a child who could live sufficiently in the spiritual worlds for the father to love it. And she wants to penetrate the spiritual worlds with all the power of her soul, with all her longing, in order to bring down for her son what can be found there. She wished that she could bring everything from the spiritual world in order to give the child a spiritual disposition. She goes mad over this, as it were, bringing down spiritual dispositions for the child. So she is taken to a sanatorium, as we would say today.

There the old count visits her; he finds her, and she speaks to him. And now she says some wonderfully moving words. First she announces that she wants to bring from the spiritual worlds those powers for the child that will make him lovable to his father, and then she says wonderful words, something like this: I can penetrate all worlds; my wings soar into all worlds, I want to gather together everything that dwells and shines in the spiritual worlds to instill it in my child, and I want to gather together everything that lives in the light of the spirit and in the sphere world to shape the soul of the child so that the child becomes a poet. —- One word leads us particularly deeply into the poet's intuitive imagination, into the spiritual worlds, where the poet has the old count, who hears that his wife has gone mad, say: Where is her soul now? Amidst the howling of the insane! This serene spirit, who lived in reverence for the universe, is now darkened. She has sent her thoughts into the desert to seek me!

Then the father goes to the child. The child was born physically blind, but has become clairvoyant, and speaks of his mother. The child remains blind at first, and where he speaks, some time after this scene, the count utters strange words. The mother has died in the meantime. The child tells the father that its soul can always rise, as if on wings, to where its mother is, the mother it never knew. And so the child tells, describing how it looks into the spiritual world, what the child of course did not hear, but what the father heard from the insane woman as her last wish. Then the count says another strange thing, strange for those who can look into these things with spiritual science: Is it possible that someone who has passed through death retains for a while in the spiritual world the ideas they last had here before passing through the gate of death?

So we see how mother and child physically collapse and how they are carried into the spiritual world in a certain abnormal, atavistic way. Surrounded by the count, who lives entirely in the past with his spirit, they collapse, but atavistically they are carried into the spiritual world.

One cannot help but find an inner connection between the atavistic carrying into the spiritual world of those who are close to the Polish count and the carrying in of the god-maker, this great sinner in the “Maha Guru,” who describes his art, who conjured up a whole new world of gods when he went mad and physically collapsed. One hears the cry of humanity almost more in the Polish drama than in the “Maha Guru”: What will become of us if human souls cannot receive the teachings of the spiritual worlds in their true and pure form? What will become of humanity in the future? Must people break down physically in order to enter the spiritual world?

Those who were serious had to ask these serious questions of fate. And when you read the preface to this “Comédie infernale,” you get the feeling that the Polish poet was deeply preoccupied with the questions I have just raised. There is perhaps no finer, more intense description of this tragedy in poetry than that given in this preface to the “Comédie infernale.” Then, further on, the count, who thus physically has his family around him, is confronted with a personality whom the poet presents to the world as a powerful figure who wants nothing to do with the past; internally a completely Tatar-Mongolian character, externally a personality who has taken up the socialist teachings of Fourier, Saint-Simon, and others, who wants to do everything in his power to destroy what is there and give humanity a new social life. He says: What is there, in which the count lives, must be thoroughly wiped off the face of the earth. People are made aware of this violent man who wants to destroy everything, who cannot tolerate things as they are. And a struggle ensues between the bearer of the past and the bearer of the present, a struggle of great intensity, which is described in a brilliant manner. The individual scenes, which have been translated into French, are such that one can certainly speak in this way.

Then we are also given a dialogue between the violent man and the old count, a dialogue that can only be conducted by people in whose souls live and confront each other: world destiny versus world destiny. A battle ensues, in which even the old count appears with the clairvoyant child. The result is that the child perishes, the old Polish count perishes, and the violent man has triumphed. The servants, the entire entourage of the count, are destroyed. The old has been overcome, the violent man has the upper hand, the present has triumphed over the past.

The description of the battlefield is truly magnificent. Then we are presented with another scene: after the battle, the violent man stands there with a friend, looking up at the sky, or perhaps, more accurately, at a rock behind which the sun is setting, gilding it as it sinks, and suddenly he has a vision. His friend sees nothing special, only the rock glowing in the sun; but the violent man, who has carried so much in his soul, who has been impressed by a man who has experienced so much in his life as the old count, stands there and sees the image of Christ Jesus appear on this mountain peak.

From this moment on, he knows that neither the old count, the representative of the past, who has only come to an atavistic life in spirit, has been able to save the past that is collapsing around him, nor that he, who lives in the present world, will be victorious. He realizes that a struggle will unfold, but that neither of these two may prevail: neither the past, which can only bring atavism in relation to life in the spiritual world, nor the present, represented by the violent man. The present, built on the teachings of Fourier and Saint-Simon, which mocks the angels and the teachings of God. Christ Jesus, who now appears to him, shows him that victory lies neither on one side nor the other, but in that which stands above both. And what the violent man now sees above the rocky crag bathed in sunlight, Christ Jesus, causes him to say: “You have conquered, Galilean!” Thus the violent man cries out and falls down dead. This great tragic consequence arises from that which is higher than the two currents that are so magnificently opposed to each other in this drama. In this wonderful drama of Polish literature, as can be seen from the individual scenes, we learn about a significant manifestation of Polish messianism. We see how, with the advent of modern times, people must ask big questions about the fate of their race.