Cultural Evolution Embodied in Architectural Symbols

GA 287 — 19 October 1914, Dornach

Second Lecture

Our friends should perceive the universality of style in our building in Dornach. To this end, however, it is necessary that our friends try to transform everything that we have brought to our souls over the years through spiritual scientific research into feeling, so that we come to understand the forms of our building as universal and thus also ambiguous symbols out of inner feeling.

When I spoke here last time, I drew attention to the way in which handling reveals itself to us for a universal feeling of human evolution. I pointed out how we can perceive Homer as a transitional figure, how we can perceive in him the transition from ancient times, when everything in human development and human culture was still based on a certain clairvoyance, to the time in which we ourselves live, and into which the mystery of Golgotha shone with the first rays of light that were to emanate from him.

I said that Homer created figures in Agamemnon and Achilles in which he showed how the old clairvoyant life of human knowledge transitions into a different, new way of feeling, thinking, seeing, willing, and also acting.

Basically, everything that has happened to us since the blossoming of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, the Greco-Latin period, and also what has emerged as the goal of today's striving among the various peoples, can only be understood if one grasps it as resting on the foundation of the ancient clairvoyant culture.

Certainly, much has been newly developed in the fourth post-Atlantic period and in the part of the fifth post-Atlantic period that we have lived through. But in the fundamental impulses of what lives in the fourth and fifth post-Atlantic periods, what has come over from ancient times is still alive and can be clearly felt – for those who are willing to feel it.

It is not so easy to recognize this ancient foundation and heritage of human development from the surface of history. But if one allows oneself to look a little at what is more or less unconsciously at work in human nature, so that it enters into the newer development, one notices everywhere how this newer humanity, which fills the fifth post-Atlantic period, has, one might say, in its nerves and blood what has come down to our time from the first post-Atlantean, the ancient Indian cultural epoch, from the second, the ancient Persian, from the third, the Egyptian-Babylonian-Chaldean cultural epoch, and especially from the fourth, the Greek-Latin cultural epoch. Everything that happened in these cultural epochs, everything that humanity has achieved, is less evident in the external history of humanity; but it can be sensed and felt in human characters, in the way people think and feel – “must” I say – it must be felt and sensed. The human being of the fifth cultural epoch in which we live is such that his nerves, his blood, his etheric and astral bodies contain what he has inherited from ancient times. It lives in them. It lives as a feeling, as a fundamental impulse within them. To this they have added what comes from the higher worlds.

Since we live in a time when the ego is developing, a time when external intellectual culture must set the tone, when external philosophy must prevail, what comes from above, from the guidance and leadership of the spiritual worlds, into the impulses of human beings in the physical world, meets with little understanding.

And if we want to indicate with a symbol our, I would say, dynamic feeling of how modern human beings, the human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period, fit into the overall development of humanity, then we can choose this symbol to indicate it with a few strokes (the lower symbol in Figure 1 is drawn on the board), representing a force acting from below upwards, which actually illustrates all those impulses that human beings carry in their blood and nerves, in their etheric and astral bodies, originating from the epoch preceding the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch.

And in a force descending from above, in an impulse descending from above, we can indicate that which, in our own intuition, works down from the spiritual world with a force that is weaker than that which human beings carry within themselves from ancient times (the upper symbol in Figure 1 is drawn on the blackboard):

Our spiritual scientific research provides us with a guideline for understanding the world in which we live. We need only think of how attempts have been made, based on this spiritual scientific research, to recognize how the leading peoples of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch embody the various soul members of the human being in the impulses of their culture; we need only think of how, for example, the peoples who inhabit the Italian and Spanish peninsulas—as peoples, not as individuals, as has already been repeatedly explained here—incorporate into their culture everything connected with the sentient soul, so that what we feel as the character of the sentient soul lives primarily in the peoples who inhabit the Italian and Spanish peninsulas. These peoples represent, in a sense, a special development of the main process indicated by this sign (the lower sign in Figure 1). They show, in a certain way, more concretely and more sharply developed, what lives in the impulses of the blood and the nerves, of the etheric and astral bodies, in the sense indicated above. One might say that everything that came over from ancient times is expressed in these peoples and their fundamental impulses in such a way that the forces striving upward from below take on a clearer form. This lower sign has something still inorganic, merely dynamic; it contains only hints of the impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

If we now want to consider the special characteristics of the peoples of the Italian and Spanish peninsulas, we must be clear that they develop more specifically and concretely the impulses that live in the blood, in the nerves, in the etheric and astral bodies, in order to consciously welcome the new era, but they do so with the power of the old. In short, we come to indicate the special impulse that goes from below to above in these peoples by developing this sign (the lower one in Figure 1) more, by shaping it, as it were, like a flower opening upwards, and that we, in what comes from the spiritual guidance from above, indicate more only that which lives in the comprehension of these peoples in relation to the higher realms. (In the course of the further explanations, Figure 2 is gradually drawn on the board, see page 33.)

These peoples still have little understanding of what we have expressed here with the symbol (the upper one in Figure 2), but they fully absorb everything that the sentient soul can take in from ancient times. They absorb all the secrets of the ancient forms, I would say, the secrets of the ancient artistic characters. This must be indicated [in the drawing] by allowing everything that has been shaped in the forms of earlier times to come down as a renewed gift from above. One might say: everything that lives in the character of these peoples rests as if on a pillar, so that it is expressed by this sign, which I have drawn on the board as a second sign (see Figure 2, page 33).

Everything that we recognize in this way from spiritual science must be confirmed in the facts of the outer world when we survey them. And we must survey them if we want to take in spiritual science in the right sense. But we must first take what spiritual science says to our hearts and souls, and then ask the world whether what spiritual science says is really realized and actualized in the world. That is to say, if spiritual science is to be verified in the sense indicated, we must find in the outer culture of the peoples that which lives primarily in the feeling soul; we would have to find in the culture of the peoples of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch a kind of resurrection of what was already present in earlier times and what the aforementioned feeling soul peoples express in themselves. As a repetition, we would therefore have to find what lived in the Egyptian-Babylonian-Chaldean epoch, but reborn in a way that corresponds to our time.

Now, what lived in the souls of the Egyptian-Babylonian-Chaldean peoples? A devotion to the outer world, as befits the character of the sentient soul, a devotion to the stars. And in the relationship between the stars, which are at rest in the universe, and the wandering stars, the planets, people felt something like an innate, truly sublime astrology. They looked out into the structure of the world and found in what the stars expressed the mystery of spiritual events.

Now the first part of the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch was to repeat from the soul what lay in this culture of the sentient soul. We could therefore expect, if we were to follow the guidance offered by spiritual science, that something would arise within the community of the Italian and Spanish peninsulas which, on the one hand, would express the feeling-soul character of the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, but on the other hand would correspond to the internalization that took place through the mystery of Golgotha. We would have to experience something that recreates the old in a new form. -Chaldean epoch, but on the other hand corresponds to the internalization that took place through the Mystery of Golgotha. We would have to experience something that recreates the old spiritual astrology, but now applied to the inner life, to the human soul. By looking at the simple forms of Egyptian-Chaldean culture, we should find special flower-like forms emerging, so that the rising impulses shown by human beings would be realized in this sign (Figure 2, below), and in the upper sign, that which comes in from the stars, that is, from the spiritual world. There must be something within the culture of the southern peoples that represents a “soulful” culture, an Egyptian-Babylonian-Chaldean astrology brought back to us, but imbued with soul, filled with soul.

My dear friends, it goes without saying that you are all thinking of what I have just spoken about in the fullest sense. It is nothing other than what Dante recorded in the Divine Comedy. Dante is the spirit who revived the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, imbued with soul.

It will be easy for you to describe what is connected in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch with the fundamental and primordial impulses of ancient times as Saturnic. (The word “Saturnic” is written on the blackboard in Figure 1, see page 33.) The basic feature of all connections between the cultures of the fifth post-Atlantean period and the ancient cultures bears the Saturnian character. The Saturnian works out of the fundamental impulses of the human soul and receives impulses from above, through which the culture of the sentient soul, the culture of the intellectual and emotional soul, and the culture of the ego can flourish.

And furthermore, it will be easy for you to describe the next symbol (Figure 2) as solar. (The word “solar” is written on the blackboard next to Figure 2, see page 33.) I have just hinted at the solar aspect in an important impulse of Latin-Italian culture, in Dante. We need only add that Italy is the motherland of all form, of everything solar that must come to human beings through the feeling soul. We might even expect that a thinker with a very specific character would appear within this culture, who speaks out of unconscious impulses in such a way that one is reminded of this solar nature. We might find this quite natural from the perspective of spiritual science.

For example, a philosopher might arise who—even if he might not be philosophically clear about the impulse that is in his soul, but feels it and allows himself to be ruled by it—might say: External state life must also be organized in such a way that the sunny aspect of culture shines through this external state life. A philosopher might have a feeling about this, so that he speaks of the sun-like nature of this culture, even in the external social life of human beings. We need not be surprised when we find this. Campanella wrote a philosophical work which he titled “The City of the Sun.”

You will become more and more convinced that everything, every single thing, is in harmony with what spiritual science brings down from the spiritual heights, and that if you really want to understand life, you cannot understand it in any other way than by illuminating it with the results of spiritual science.

Moving on, we come to the culture which, according to the findings of spiritual science, we must describe as the culture of the intellectual or emotional soul, which developed in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period, primarily in the area of present-day France. This culture was destined, in a more concrete sense than was previously the case, namely as was the case at some point in the Italian-Spanish culture, to take up what comes from above and, precisely through this, to bring the intellectual or emotional soul to greater development, to a certain flowering. If one wants to have a correct symbol for this culture, one would have to characterize this symbol as follows:

Here (Figure 3, left) is a form for what comes from above, and here is a form for what comes from below. The intellectual or emotional soul culture, which previously existed in abstracto, is triggered in concreto and proves to be particularly suitable for absorbing this higher culture.

Anyone who allows the characteristics of French culture to work on their soul will truly discover how this culture is particularly suited to absorbing what was Greek-Latin culture, and will discover how the fourth post-Atlantic cultural epoch is revived in French culture. One might say that it trickles into this French culture and permeates it, like a liquid trickling into a chalice.

Thus Spanish-Italian culture passes into French culture, but in such a way that Greek culture is revived in French culture. I do not believe that a better symbol can be found for the transition of Spanish-Italian culture into French culture than this one, which is enclosed on the left and right by such lines (Figure 3, right).

Anyone who would now raise the question of whether what emerges from the guidelines of spiritual science is also evident in external reality can easily find an answer by looking a little at the actual circumstances. However, it is necessary to emphasize, especially in such matters, that anyone who wants to judge these things must judge on the basis of facts, not on the basis of preconceived opinions.

This must be emphasized again and again in our time, because everyone wants to judge everything without regard to the facts, which are difficult to acquire in life. But if you want to understand the very peculiar character with which the Greek essence flows into the essence of French culture, I advise you to study how the figure of Oedipus has entered French poetry, how Sophocles' Oedipus is revived in the Oedipus poems of Corneille and Voltaire. What I have just said can be confirmed in detail. But this single example is not the only one that confirms it; many other examples could be cited. However, one must really engage with it.

However, the fact remains that in most editions of Corneille's works, the Oedipus poem is no longer to be found, and that Voltaire's work is no longer appreciated either. But anyone who studies these works will find that the transformation of the Oedipus poem by Corneille and Voltaire signifies the revival of the Greek era in French culture.

One will find that Sophocles incorporated into his heroic poetry what was still alive in the Greek-Latin cultural epoch from ancient clairvoyance, while in Corneille and Voltaire everything has simply become a matter of the human soul. One must completely disregard whether Sophocles' Oedipus is more appealing than what later became of it. One must look purely at the transformation that has taken place. However, it must be noted that this transformation aims to remove Oedipus entirely from the personal nature of man in modern times.

I said that one must disregard what is unsympathetic. So that is disregarded. However, one can point out quite objectively that in Corneille and Voltaire we encounter something new in Oedipus poetry. In Sophocles, the figure of Oedipus appears to us to be woven into a universal human destiny, which we can only describe with the words used by the poet to describe such a great, gigantic destiny: that it elevates man by crushing him. The magical aura that emanates from Sophocles' Oedipus stems precisely from the fact that in this poetry one can sense the influence of spiritual worlds on the fate of nations, worlds that intervene in human destiny in such a way that humans cannot see through them or penetrate them, and what the gods inflict on humans may seem to them to be the harshest injustice.

One can imagine that every Greek felt something of how inscrutable fate is, in which even the will of the gods is inscrutable. At any moment, the same fate as that of Oedipus can befall any individual. Fate remains inscrutable.

This magical aura of Sophocles' Oedipus tragedy, which emanates from it, has found its way into the most personal works of Corneille and Voltaire. The transition is made in Corneille; the matter is fully developed in Voltaire. In Voltaire's Oedipus drama, we have a development that would have been completely unthinkable in ancient times: Prince Philoktetes, the family friend, who completes the marital alliance to form a triangle. Jocasta knew Philoktetes before her marriage; the affair continued until she became an attractive widow and then married her own son, Oedipus. These are all personal circumstances that would have been impossible in ancient drama.

But we can go further; we can try to penetrate everything that inspired the great French poets, and we will find that the adoption of the Greek element is clearly expressed, both in poetry and in French poetics. We know how Lessing studied the way in which French poetry adopted an aesthetic principle from the great Greeks in relation to their poetics; we know how this aesthetic principle plays a role in Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire as the unity of time, place, and action.

Only those who consider the influence of the ancient Greek spirit on French poetry can understand French classical poetry. And if we want to find the guidelines provided by the humanities clearly realized in this culture, we can do so by asking the question: Where do we actually encounter the essence of this French culture most distinctly? Where is it unmatched? Where does it reach its highest peak? Of course, one must be very objective in order to answer these questions correctly, and people today are not very inclined to be objective, especially in our time. But for those who view things objectively, the highest peak of French culture is Molière's creations. Compared to what has been achieved by Corneille and Racine, or even in more recent French culture, Molière's creations are a perfection that cannot be equaled. Even if any culture may believe that the same can be achieved by another people, objectively speaking, it must be said that perfection of the same kind is certainly possible, and even greater perfection, but not in this particular form. To claim that the uniqueness of Molière, the character of Molière born of the intellectual or emotional soul, could be achieved again, or even that some semblance of it could be achieved, would be a mistake. This is the pinnacle of the essence of that culture which springs from the intellectual or emotional soul.

Molière's comedy is, one might say, “comedy per se,” “comedy in itself,” and it is impossible to understand it internally, spiritually, if one is not clear that the intellectual or emotional soul reigns in it, reigns as it could only reign once in this peculiarity. For everything that arises in the course of human development occurs only once in its characteristic form. Just as one never turns eighteen or twenty-five twice in a lifetime, so humanity will never twice produce what has been achieved in a representative personality such as Molière.

All this can be felt from this sign (Figure 3, page 33).

My dear friends, if we now interrupt ourselves here and refer to what has been said in my lecture cycle on the souls of peoples in relation to the European souls of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch, we can raise new questions in the same vein, questions related to what we have discussed about how Central European culture is the culture of the “I.” All this is important for understanding ego culture, in much the same way that understanding the intellectual or emotional soul is important for understanding the ego, as already indicated in my “Theosophy.”

If this Central European culture is the culture of the I, then it will enter into a similar relationship with the other cultures we have spoken of, as the I in the human being relates to the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul. Here, too, we should be guided by what spiritual science suggests. If Italian culture represents what is taken in by the sentient soul, then it should have a certain relationship to the culture of the I, to Central European culture; that is, this Central European culture, which works primarily from the ego, should be dependent on immersing itself in the sentient soul, living out with it, allowing itself to be fertilized by it, as is the case with the individual human being with the ego and the sentient soul.

Let us take the relationship of the ego to the sentient soul in human beings. The ego, which contains the impulses of one's own inner life, must immerse itself in the sentient soul, otherwise it remains unfertilized by what can affect it from the outside world through forms. Human beings must repeatedly immerse themselves in their feelings. There must be a confrontation between the impulses of feeling and the ego. Accordingly, we can expect that the members of the ego culture of Central Europe will seek a living connection with the culture of the feeling soul of the South; they will seek expansion outward in political, but also in higher spiritual relations.

Open up the history of the Staufers, open up what is happening between what is present in Central Europe as Staufer, Ghibelline, and Guelph impulses, open up what is told about the continuous journeys of the Saxon and Staufer rulers to Italy. Consider this whole life of Central Europe with Italy, and you have precisely the life of the feeling soul with the ego.

But one can further expect that the ego nature will produce forms from the character of the human being that appear in art; one must expect gnarled, characteristic forms from the ego nature, which are formed more from the ego. These forms can be found in Holbein and Dürer. But in Dürer's case, they can only be found after his stay in Italy, where his art was enriched by his encounter with the Italian culture of the sentient soul.

If we move on to more recent times, we find the same phenomenon everywhere. From Goethe's journey to Italy to Cornelius and Overbeck and up to the present day: everywhere we have the conflict between the culture of the ego and the culture of the sentient soul.

What is happening between Central Europe and Italy is a reflection of what is happening between the ego and the sentient soul of the human being. In every detail, the course of external development proves us right when we examine it according to the guidelines of our spiritual scientific research.

Now let us look at the relationship that exists between the ego part of the soul and the intellectual or emotional soul. We must expect that what is evident within human nature between the ego and the intellectual or emotional soul will also appear in external life.

The relationship between the ego and the sentient soul is such that the ego submerges, one might say uncritically submerges, into the sentient soul, allowing itself to be fertilized by the culture of the sentient soul.

It is quite natural that the relationship between the culture of the ego and the culture of the intellectual or emotional soul must take on a character that is more of an intellectual debate, one might say, an intellectual debate. For the intellectual or emotional soul is that part of the human soul which puts thinking at its service – try to get an idea of its character from my “Theosophy” – it is at the same time that part of the human soul in which the ego is absorbed, with which the ego must grapple for its own sake.

We must therefore expect that there is an intimate relationship between the culture of the intellectual soul and the culture of the ego. One cannot imagine a more appropriate form for this relationship in human beings — it goes without saying that one cannot, but one must say it nonetheless, because it draws attention to what is important — one cannot imagine a more appropriate form than the Central European philosopher Leibniz and his relationship to French culture. Leibniz, who is so immediately Central European in his intellectual character, who transfers everything he accepts from outside — for example, from Giordano Bruno, who embodies the Italian soul of feeling so completely — into Central Europe, Leibniz wrote in French; he shaped much of his philosophy in the way required by the form of the French language.

We also see such a conflict between the culture of the ego and the culture of the intellectual soul or emotional soul when we follow Lessing's peculiar arguments in his “Hamburg Dramaturgy.” There we see the conflict between what Lessing strives for and what in French culture stems from Greek culture, from which he wants to free himself. Lessing polemicizes; he develops an intellectual debate. This is an accurate reflection of the conflict between the ego and the intellectual or emotional soul. Lessing's entire Hamburgische Dramaturgie can only be properly understood if it is understood in this way.

And there is something else that we tend to overlook today: the shape that external circumstances in Central Europe have taken is in many ways connected with the rise of the Prussian state. And who would not associate the rise of the Prussian state with Frederick the Great? But it must be said of him that he was deeply attached to France and adopted much of French culture. He said that he considered Voltaire a greater personality than Homer. He still regarded German culture as something semi-barbaric. He strove for culture through his engagement with French culture, and in this engagement Frederick the Great essentially lives on as a political representative of ego culture. It is difficult to understand many aspects of Prussian culture without considering Frederick the Great's engagement with French culture.

It would be highly desirable, especially today, to consider the real facts of world events before passing judgment, so that the strange kind of judgment that is particularly evident today could be recognized, at least by some people, in all its groundlessness, hollowness, frivolity, and the whole dissolute cynicism of the newspaper and journal business.

If we try to go further in the evolution of humanity, in the evolution that concerns the fifth post-Atlantean period, we necessarily come to progress in the sign (transition from Figure 3 to Figure 4). This progress can be expressed in the sign by the fact that what comes from above into the culture of the intellectual soul powerfully shapes it, so that a certain closure towards the spiritual being occurs, which could be indicated by allowing a concluding motif to flow into the continuation of this motif above.

So while what comes from above flows in in a still concrete way, fully expressing the character of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, it closes itself off here above in a certain way from the character of the downward flow. We encounter the preparatory culture of the consciousness soul, which must be particularly characteristic of the fifth post-Atlantean period. While Italian culture is a revival of the Egyptian-Chaldean period, while the culture of the intellectual or emotional soul, which had its heyday in the Greek -Latin period, the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, which still veiled the consciousness soul, flowed into French culture, we now come to something that expresses very particularly the character of the fifth epoch of post-Atlantean culture, in which human beings are entirely on their own.

How must this culture relate to the outside world? The human being who is left to his own devices becomes a spectator, and thus he will have such a relationship to the world that, as a spectator, he will be able to look deeply into the configuration of beings, into their organism and mechanism, in order to create them from within, so that they stand there as if created by nature itself. We find here a culture of spectatorship, a culture of keen observation and immersion in beings, so that one describes things as if from the spectator's point of view. When this culture becomes great, what will it be like?

One need only mention one name: Shakespeare. He is great, unsurpassed as an observer of the world, and what Shakespeare created would have been unthinkable in an earlier culture, unthinkable also in a later, subsequent culture.

When I had to describe the characteristic English philosopher in the first edition of my “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen” (World and Life Views) fifteen years ago, I did not use the consideration that I am giving here today; but at that time I sought a concise word. You can find it in the second volume of my “Rätsel der Philosophie” (Riddles of Philosophy). I sought a concise word for John Stuart Mill that expressed the fundamental character of his philosophy. I had to choose the word “spectator,” “spectator of the world.” This truly expresses everything in external reality that constitutes the guiding principles of spiritual science.

If we now raise the other question again, that of the conflict between the ego and the consciousness soul, something very peculiar becomes apparent. We can expect that, because the consciousness soul itself is supposed to nurture and cultivate the ego, what the ego wants often comes from the consciousness soul; we can expect that much flows from the consciousness soul into the ego; but because the ego wants to preserve and protect its independence, it must ward off much.

It is magnificent to observe the process by which modern physics is shaped by Newton, and how in Goethe the European culture of the I rebels against the culture of the consciousness soul. Read Goethe's Theory of Colors; it is magnificent how Goethe opposes Newton there. This reflects the conflict between the I and the consciousness soul.

Much of what appears as spiritual in Central Europe—as in Jakob Böhme—is rooted in the ego. In his work, the ego often cannot find the words; the conscious soul finds the words, finds what can have an external effect. Try to grasp how, in Goethe, the natural course of the development of ego culture in Central Europe strives upward. How Goethe finds what can be called ego culture is not immediately comprehensible to the outside observer: the profound theory of natural development from the simplest to the highest being. But the people of his time do not understand it. Then Darwin comes along and gives birth to the same thing from the consciousness soul that Goethe had formed from the ego, and the whole world understands it, even the ego culture understands it.

If one wants to point to the spectacle of true human evolution, one can only do so if one is able to recognize the connections from the guidelines of spiritual science. That which lives in human evolution lives in such a way that, culture after culture, it stands as if resting on the eternal pillars of the primordial laws of humanity.

And from these signs we can sense the progression from the Saturnian nature of the fifth post-Atlantean culture to the solar nature of the culture of southern Italy and Spain, which still retains the lunar nature, and which develops further into the Martian culture on the British Isles (Figure 4, page 33). And there is no other way to understand what is to be understood – the harmony of the post-Atlantean cultures as in a choir – than by feeling the peculiarities of these post-Atlantean cultures. For those who live with our spiritual science should feel this entirely out of their becoming human.

A dome should form above their head, rising above the forms of feelings that approach our soul from following the evolution of humanity, showing us how people and nations interact, and how this is a reflection of the interaction of the soul forces within the human being themselves. It will have an effect on the soul when we enter our building with the feeling understanding of our soul. For it has been attempted in our building to disregard everything personal and human and to reflect in every line, in every form, not what flows from individual human nature, but what the spiritual worlds reveal when they want to shape in forms what is happening, so that human beings can feel the meaning and significance of events.

It must be said that the world today is still far, very far from transforming into living feeling that which has been spoken of again today. For this to happen, spiritual science must become increasingly widespread; for this to happen, a new architectural style connected with the mysteries of the world order – as has been attempted in the style of our building – must be understood more and more. Our building can naturally only be a weak beginning, nothing more. Nevertheless, what can provide material for such an understanding of the harmony of the individual cultures, namely the living cultures of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, lives unconsciously in individual human beings to a greater or lesser extent.

Therefore, even in our present time of suffering, many things can be welcomed with a certain sense of elation, because we must seek out in what is currently coming to light that which promises something for a true, not idle, but energetic culture of peace, which can only be understood if we strive for mutual understanding of the concrete contents of the individual folk cultures.

Even if what actually exists in the purely egoistic context of this or that folk culture falls far short of the ideal of spiritual science, it is nevertheless a source of some satisfaction when some insight is gained into “what is the connecting factor, for that is what is truly creative.”

Therefore, in addition to the many things that are so painful for us, we should also consider other voices that are encouraging because they show that even those outside our circle can appreciate the humanities. At present, few people want to know anything about the humanities. But as I indicated with Herman Grimm, that he has a longing for spiritual science, I can also indicate this about others.

Of the many voices, I would like to mention just one. When it was decided that some of the young people at a Central European university should go to war and some should stay at home, a Central European university teacher spoke words that are worth remembering and deserve to be made known because, although he had no knowledge of spiritual science, they reveal impulses of hope and longing for the mutual interaction of peoples that must come about one day. He said: "You will learn that nothing attunes the educated soul more deeply to beauty than the effort of heroic deeds. You will learn that nothing better calls and steels it to new efforts, and that there is no purer connection between soul and soul than in the sacred realm of beauty. Yes, if the most terrible consequence of this war is that hatred between peoples remains, the likes of which has never been seen before, you will not forget, in your enmity, your love for the better soul of your enemy. You are fighting a good fight for the truth. You do not need the incitement and slander of those who have gone astray. Among the good spirits of German education, you will welcome Shakespeare as a guest and know that, just as he is ours, so much of English thought irrevocably belongs to our spiritual world. You will remember the noble struggle of the French spirit for the finest aesthetic culture. You will remember how Russia in our time got both its Homer and its Shakespeare in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Of course, the Russian state brought only suffering and sometimes inhuman persecution to these two greatest sons of Russia. How they would look upon this development of the times! But through them speaks, unforgettable in its intimacy and simplicity, the eternal gospel of the people of God, the kingdom of helping human love. The meaning of war lies in the peace to which it leads. As warriors, carry within you the high meaning of the coming peace, that the hatred of nations may nevertheless end in a new kingdom of love. This is the deepest German way, to love in everything that bears the face of man, and in every type of people, a unique form of humanity and in it a revelation of God. The kingdom of understanding human love is the kingdom of the German spirit."

These words were spoken by university professor Eugen Kühnemann on August 18, 1914, words he gave to his students who were going to war. It is a joyful expression in this great time, in which so many unpleasant and difficult things are being experienced; these words reveal a deep understanding of Shakespeare, which is also ours, so that English thought belongs to our intellectual world just as much as French intellectual culture. They emphasize what Tolstoy and Dostoevsky mean for the new intellectual culture; it is better to emphasize this than what we so often hear from other quarters today.

May such an attitude not disappear in our day! And perhaps our friends in particular could do something to point out that such an attitude does exist and that, as I may emphasize, such an attitude is not so rare in Central Europe.

I will now conclude these reflections and return tomorrow at seven o'clock to speak about further developments—concerning Central Europe and the Russian spirit—as expressed in our pillars.