Human History in the Light of Spiritual Investigation

GA 61 — 15 February 1912, Berlin

Copernicus and His Time

There are people who see in Copernicus's work the greatest intellectual revolution that humanity has ever experienced, as far back as historical memory can recall. And one must admit that the impact and influence of this intellectual revolution on all external human thought was so significant, so magnificent, that in fact hardly anything else can compare with it in terms of its urgency and effectiveness. It is also very easy to understand what it must have meant for the world of the sixteenth century, in relation to the Earth, the planet on which people had believed for thousands of years that they were firmly anchored in the universe, not only to have to relearn the relationship of this planet, their own place of residence, to the sun, but basically to the entire universe. At that time, the ground beneath people's feet was literally shaken in terms of their worldview. What they had firmly believed until then, so firmly that they thought the sun and the entire starry sky revolved around this fixed earthly dwelling place, and that everything spread out in space was only there for the sake of the goals and peculiarities of this earthly dwelling place, they now had to learn to think that it was itself something rushing through space at breakneck speed. They had to learn to think of the moving sun as something in relation to the earth and the earth itself as something movable. Even though the time since the wave of spiritual life marked by this swept over humanity is relatively short, today we no longer realize what a change in thinking and relearning was necessary in order to adapt to the new way of thinking in this area. But it is also necessary to realize that hardly any other idea has taken hold of the whole of human education and intellectual culture in such a relatively short time and become so ingrained that we can no longer think otherwise than that children learn about the Copernican world system at school in their earliest childhood as part of the most elementary teachings and knowledge. When we consider this significance and effectiveness, it becomes doubly interesting to ask ourselves: How does this progress fit into the overall development of the human spirit, into the development of culture as a whole?

In my last lecture, I took the liberty of speaking here about “Human History, Present and Future in the Light of Spiritual Science.” And what appeared to us at that time as the greatest event in human development presents itself to us in a beautiful and special case when we look at the work of Copernicus. What actually happened in the sixteenth century, when, after Copernicus' death, his great work on the revolution of the heavenly bodies was presented to the educated world, which Copernicus himself believed so much in accordance with his own position as a Catholic canon that he dedicated it to the Pope, and yet remained on the Catholic Church's Index of Prohibited Books until 1821?

Copernicus's achievement can only really be understood in the context of the culture and intellectual climate of the time, and only if one takes into account that in the centuries leading up to Copernicus's appearance on the intellectual scene, insofar as it believed itself to be scientific, what can be called Aristotelianism prevailed, the worldview of this great Greek sage of pre-Christian culture. For those medieval thinkers and researchers who preceded Copernicus stood firmly on the ground of what Aristotle had produced as scientific spirit centuries before the Christian era. And insofar as these sages, these philosophers and researchers of the Middle Ages were Christian, they harmoniously combined Christian teachings with what they had absorbed as Aristotle's scientific way of thinking. And Copernicus' teaching is, in a certain sense, a break, not with Aristotle's teaching, but with what became of Aristotle in the Middle Ages through researchers, namely Christian researchers. These Christian researchers called Aristotle a “precursor of the Lord,” of Christ himself, in matters of the natural world order. For them, the entire worldview fell into two parts: one part that could only come from Christian revelation itself, from the tradition of the Scriptures. This part dealt with what, according to the beliefs of the time, was completely inaccessible to human reason. They took the second part of their worldview entirely from Aristotle, and they imbued everything they considered scientific—everything that could be known, everything that humans could achieve through research and science—with Aristotelian thinking and Aristotelian attitudes. When we see Aristotle continuing to influence the intellectual culture of the Middle Ages, and when we see him being replaced by Copernicus and his great successors Kepler, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and so on, we must ask ourselves: What was the original Aristotle really like, and what about the teachings that were considered Aristotelian by Christian scholars of the Middle Ages?

If one delves into Aristotle's achievements, which are presented to us in his comprehensive, magnificent works, one finds that Aristotle's achievements summarize, as if reborn from a powerful mind, the thinking of previous cultural epochs. But in Aristotle it comes to light in a remarkable way. Of course, it is not possible to go into Aristotle's teachings in detail here, but one thing should be pointed out that is necessary for us in the field of spiritual science in order to understand Copernicus's work and the character of his age.

When studying Aristotle, one finds everywhere in his logical, purely rational manner that he has processed and turned into ideas what one must say Aristotle took over from ancient times. If one were to rely solely on what human reason could have understood in Aristotle, one would by no means find that the ideas of human reason encompass everything that we see before our eyes in Aristotle's teachings. In him we find a worldview that animates and spiritualizes the universe, indeed all of nature, right out to the furthest reaches of space. We find him clearly stating that not only the human physical body, but also what we must call the spiritual-soul aspect of man, were born out of the universe, that both originated in it, if we may use this expression. The human body because what we call matter or substance with its laws is spread out in the universe. But for Aristotle, the spiritual-soul aspect sprang from the universe because he thinks of this universe itself as spiritualized, animated. What we see in the stars is not merely an accumulation of matter for Aristotle, but in each star he sees at the same time the expression, the material embodiment of a soul being, and the course of a star through the universe is not for Aristotle the result of mere mechanical or physical forces, but the expression of the will of the star spirit or the star soul. And if one delves deeper into what he says in detail, one finds something very peculiar shining through everywhere. Through his purely logical, one might say abstract, arguments, one finds illuminated, to put it briefly, what was still handed down to the Greeks as ancient knowledge, as ancient insight, and what Aristotle brought into the realm of reason, into intellectual ideas. And one cannot really understand Aristotle except by taking as a basis what was said here in the last lecture: The entire course of human development is such that humanity started from a completely different consciousness than the one we have in the present and which, since the dawn of modern times, can be called normal human consciousness, which is organized primarily around the intellect and reason. This was not the case in ancient times. In ancient times, there was a kind of clairvoyance at the bottom of every human soul, which was innate to human beings, and which, as we have explained in previous lectures, can also be achieved today through training, as is further described in the book “How to Gain Knowledge of Higher Worlds.”

This clairvoyant knowledge, which does not depend on what the senses see and what the combining mind, which is bound to the human brain, can recognize, is something from which humanity has developed, which was present in ancient times and has become weaker and weaker in the course of human development. In ancient times, humanity was able to look into what is deeper in things and within things than what the senses could see and the mind could comprehend. Everywhere, at the foundation of human cultures, one finds hidden a primordial knowledge, a knowledge gained through intuition, inspiration, and imagination. But it is the course of human development that this primordial knowledge had to be gradually lost, for only under that condition could what we today call the intellectual element, intellectual culture, develop. What we today call the fundamental nerve of all scientific thinking and all scientific worldviews could only develop because the old, dim, clairvoyant knowledge, born like the images of a dream from the depths of the soul, gradually transformed itself into our present knowledge for the human soul. For what we can call logical thinking, the intellectual element, which makes our present-day science great and significant, was still completely absent from the old clairvoyant consciousness. But what was known at that time, what the originally clairvoyant human soul had conquered, was carried on into Greek times. This primordial knowledge of humanity still shines through so remarkably, even verifiable to external knowledge, in a mind such as that of Plato, the teacher of Aristotle. We find this primordial knowledge of humanity, in a form that modern humans can no longer attain for themselves, developed in Oriental cultures, especially in ancient Indian culture. And it is interesting to see how, in Indian culture, something similar to what we find in Aristotle emerges from the ancient primordial culture of humanity, which was able to look into the spiritual world. In Indian culture, the final result of what people have gained, as it were, through education over thousands of years, can be called human internalization to the point of logical thinking, to the point of thinking that now wants to arrive at an explanation of the world purely through itself, without clairvoyance, without looking into the spiritual world through imagination, inspiration, or intuition. We see how this ancient culture retains its ancient insights, but educates the soul in such a way that what has been handed down is expressed in logical formulas, in rational ideas. In Indian culture, we see the interesting fact that the people of the East remain at this stage, that since reaching it, they have not progressed beyond it, a stage that has existed for centuries before our Christian era. In Aristotle, the representative in this regard, we see how, through the development of ancient clairvoyant knowledge, logical culture, that is, intellectual culture, takes on a completely different character. We see how what can be called the doctrine of the animation of the world still resonates. But as humanity develops the culture of thought from ancient clairvoyance, where man wants to comprehend the world through thought, Aristotle develops a kind of separate science for reason: logic, whereby logic can now become the instrument for a completely different kind of research.

If we then compare Aristotle and Indian culture, we must say: Indian culture reaches a dead end in its course, it runs into a cul-de-sac, so to speak, where the thought that lives in itself must always, when it wants to recognize something positive, turn back to the original culture that is given in the results of ancient clairvoyance. — In Aristotle, on the other hand, we see that the original culture also runs out in thought, but that thought is cultivated in such a way that it can now grasp something else, so that human reason becomes ready to serve as an instrument for something else. Aristotle cannot be properly understood unless his entire world doctrine is viewed in connection with his doctrine of the soul. For Aristotle, it would have been absolutely absurd to believe that the human soul is merely a function, a result of the activity of the human body, just as the candle flame is the result of the material processes in the candle. For him, it was clear that what is assembled in the physical body is, in the individual human being, when he enters earthly existence, directly endowed from the spiritual world with what sits within us as the spiritual-soul core of our being: with the spiritual-soul element. And he would never have allowed himself to believe that human beings are absorbed in what they are, in the inherited characteristics that come from their father and mother and so on. Instead, Aristotle derived the spiritual-soul element in human beings from what he called the world of his God, from which he allowed the most significant inner core content of the soul to emerge. From God, he had the soul joined with the physical-material process that takes place when a human being enters into existence as a physical body. Nor did Aristotle ever allow what comes from the spiritual world as the spiritual-soul essence of the human being to cease with the death of the human being. Rather, he was clear that what lives and works within us and uses the body as a tool continues to live on after the human being has passed through the gate of death. But he was also clear that physical life is by no means superfluous and purposeless, but that that which is released from divine existence as soul must necessarily immerse itself in physical life, because only there can it acquire what it must bring with it when the human being re-enters the spiritual world by passing through the gate of death. And it is interesting how Aristotle links the fate of the human soul core to the fate of life as experienced here between birth and death. He links it to earthly life in such a way that the soul, freed from the body, continues to live in the spiritual world after passing through the gate of death, but must look back on the world in which it was. And as it directs its spiritual gaze downward, it sees what used to be its physical body and how it acted in good or bad, beautiful or ugly, clever or stupid deeds, feelings, or thoughts. Thus, in looking back on physical life, the soul that has passed through the gate of death is bound to this sight, in that what lives of it in the spiritual world is dependent on that with which it sees itself connected as its physical body.

This gives rise to a gloomy thought for Aristotle: what the soul must experience as a bond to its physical body after it has passed through the gate of death, it experiences for all eternity, into all distant eternity. For Aristotle was already too far removed from the original human culture, which still knew something of repeated earthly lives. Therefore, he was unable to show, as is possible within our spiritual science, how the human soul, after passing through the gate of death, reappears in a new human body and utilizes the vision of its last earthly life during its existence in the spiritual world in such a way that it sees what it has done, felt, or thought that was deficient, now transforms it and takes it as the occasion for a new and recurring earthly life, through which what was done badly or imperfectly in earlier, imperfect incarnations of the soul can be balanced out again. With regard to imperfection, the only salvation and consolation lies in the fact that, if this life is not the only one, the soul receives a new incentive to make what was deficient more perfect in the next life. Aristotle did not understand this because he did not recognize that in his time human intellectual culture had reached the point where man researched through the instrument of the brain, which in its physicality and corporeality is also only present between birth and death. Only in this way could Aristotle become the founder of logical, scientific thinking, because he had obscured and clouded the view of repeated earthly lives and life in a spiritual world for his time. He did not go so far as to bind the spiritual-soul to the physical, although for him the prospect of repeated incarnations of the spiritual-soul had been lost. This is particularly evident in a book that has just been published in our time and is undoubtedly one of the best works on Aristotle, if not, in my opinion, the best work on Aristotle's worldview. This book, which I highly recommend, is Aristotle and His Worldview by Franz Brentano (Leipzig 1911). And to quote what Franz Brentano writes about the fate of the soul after man has passed through the gates of death, based on a deep insight into Aristotle's entire way of thinking, I would like to read to you the words of such an excellent Aristotle scholar: "But how? Does this not completely negate the idea of retribution? One might think so, and that would explain why Aristotle, unlike Plato, makes no reference to retribution in the afterlife in his ethics. But that is not the case. We recall the difference we pointed out in the comparison of the sphere spirits with the deity. Similar differences will also exist here, and when the departed human spirits see the world plan and see themselves interwoven with their earthly lives, one recognizes himself as identical with one who practices nobility, and another with one who commits shameful deeds. The knowledge they attain is at once an eternal, glorifying or condemning world judgment, and a world judgment that as such takes place eternally before everyone's eyes. Should this not also be seen as retribution and as being completely proportional to true merit?

Here we see how not only religious belief, but also Aristotle's science, is connected to human life, a connection that, in its uniformity, now lasts forever. And here we have an explanation for why the eternity of reward and punishment is spoken of so persistently, even where medieval teaching claims to be scientific. Looking up to the spiritual, being imbued with the knowledge that a spiritual soul lives in human beings, was an ancient tradition for Aristotle. His mission was to lead the ancient culture out of a spiritual culture.

Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond Copernicus, what remained of Aristotle was not a deep understanding, but basically only the external tradition, the swearing by what was written in Aristotle's works. And so, everywhere in all schools, they taught what they had found in Aristotle. But hidden from external observation, what can be called the instrument of the intellect matured in the souls of human beings. What Aristotle had to report from the ancient spiritual wisdom teachings was misunderstood and interpreted in a sophistical way, so that those who came after him, Kepler, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, could do nothing else but throw what had been taken over from the belief in Aristotle onto the scrap heap. So what Aristotle had handed down in terms of content was lost. But an inner culture of the soul developed, precisely an intellectual culture, a culture of the intellect, of reason. Reason, thinking, is empty in itself if it cannot approach another object of research. In Aristotle, we still find the ancient spiritual wisdom as the object of this research. But this had gradually faded away for humanity. The Middle Ages, so to speak, only had a talent for what could be seen with the senses and understood with the mind, which is bound to the brain. The instrument of the mind itself was also being prepared in the souls. And Copernicus was the one who now directed his gaze out into the world in such a way that he grasped the connection between the worlds in space as it could initially be grasped with the mere external instrument of the intellect, with the instrument that summarized through logic and mathematics what was spreading out there in space. Because the ancient spiritual culture was primarily concerned with understanding human beings as they stand on earth in relation to their spiritual and soul life and in relation to their emergence from the spiritual and soul life of the world, the ancient teaching paid little attention to what must be described as external spatial conditions. The ancient teachings simply accepted the sensory light of what could be seen externally, for they do not provide a means of understanding space and time externally, but rather of recognizing what lives in the depths of the human soul and is born out of the spiritual-soul depths of the universe. Only when the intellect felt alone with its thoughts did it feel the urge to understand reality as it is around us. And if we want to understand the characteristics of the age of Copernicus, we can perhaps see these characteristics even better in a mind that is even greater than Copernicus, even if it did not have as impressive an impact on humanity in the scientific field as Copernicus himself.

Let us imagine a mind that is placed in the dawn of modern times, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, those centuries in which the old spiritual culture had long since receded from the human soul in its greatness, but in which the possibility had developed in the human soul to grasp in a grandiose way what the senses see, what the intellect bound to the brain can comprehend, the outer sensory reality, with the powers of the strong human personality. Let us imagine a personality endowed with precisely this tendency, and we have Copernicus's older contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci, who can truly be called a miracle worker in terms of intellectual contemplation, who was able to grasp immediate reality as it presents itself to the senses with such depth that even from the distortion that exists today, his “Last Supper” in the church in Milan, and also speaks so deeply from the reproductions that are widespread in the world today. But in Leonardo da Vinci we have before us a man who, as an artist, created entirely from the depths of his soul, which contained not only the ability to create paintings, but also to create sculptures, engineering, architecture, and even comprehensive scientific work. His scientific records have a grandiose effect on us when we engage with them. We see in him the greatest representative of the era that developed into the sixteenth century, a man in whose inner being everything that Aristotle had created in directing humanity toward those forces that arise in the soul for the contemplation of the world of reality had become fruitful and powerful. In Leonardo da Vinci, what was abstraction in Aristotle had become immediate, blood-filled, spiritual reality. Thus he stands before us even where he grasps the world as a scientist.

And equipped with what humanity has been able to learn from Aristotle in terms of culture and inner education, there is now also the canon Copernicus, who, in all quietness, in four times nine years, as he himself says, not researching any external facts — that is the characteristic thing, that he did not research external facts — but rather accepting what the senses and external reason had hitherto known about the external facts of the solar system. Tycho Brahe, who appears to be a “half-progressive” compared to Copernicus, seems downright groundbreaking in terms of researching facts of the sensory world, while Copernicus is a personality who represents nothing at all in terms of researching external facts. What did Copernicus do? Anyone who knows him, anyone who really delves into his writings, knows that he did not apply the culture that humanity had achieved through Aristotle to what Aristotle himself had applied it to: to the ancient spiritual culture, to the knowledge of the spiritual-soul nature of man and the spiritual-soul nature of the universe, but to external, physical, sensory reality.

Let us not understand the inner relationship of the stars to the sun as medieval science and Aristotelianism understood it, but let us assume that the sun is at the center and that the planets revolve around it. What would follow if we made this assumption? This is what Copernicus asked himself. And he was able to say to himself: Then we have followed a great principle, a methodical, logical principle of Aristotle more than those who now want to explain what is outwardly visible to the senses. They must assume complicated movements of the individual planets, must seek enormous complications and conceive laws that ultimately constitute the solar system. But an ancient principle, which can be understood by humans precisely through Aristotle's logic, says that we should never use a complicated thought before a simple one can explain the connection between the worlds.

Thus, Copernicus uses the simplest idea, not out of any particular intention. Rather, because he believed in summarizing the external sensory facts, he set about placing the sun at the center of the system and having the planets revolve around it. And what could previously only be explained in a complicated way, the location of a star when it was seen, now became apparent in a simpler way. Thus, although Aristotle was not understood by those who believed themselves to be true Aristotelians of the Middle Ages, he nevertheless provided the impetus that brought humanity to the stage where it conceived the idea of applying the concept of simplicity to the external universe in Copernicus.

Thus, what Aristotle still used for spiritual wisdom was born out of the ancient primordial culture of the human soul for science. But this, which was born out of the ancient spiritual culture as an instrument, is now beginning to pour out over the sensory world and to survey it in a lawful manner. And when we then see how the Copernican deed continues to work, how it continues to work in Kepler, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and even Newton, it becomes clear to us everywhere that with the age of Copernicus we have what gave humanity the mission to add to the ancient spiritual culture and science the culture and science of the human sensory world and also of what presents itself in the vastness of space as the sensory world. This, however, requires that human habits of thinking, human dispositions, and impulses of the will be directed toward immediate physical external reality. And this also occurs in a remarkable way, connecting with the deeds of Copernicus. Let us now see how much souls such as Leonardo da Vinci and those who belong to him grow out of what can be called Renaissance culture, out of that culture which breaks with the medieval turning away from nature and allows human beings to develop a joy in immediate reality. This was necessary in order to be able to comprehend external reality directly with the scientific mind, as Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus did.

It is interesting to see how, in one area, it becomes easier for people to find their way into the completely new way of thinking and apply the new ideas to the universe, while in another area it becomes more difficult. We can see how difficult it is for humanity to initially accept external reality as the basis of an intellectual, rational culture in the emergence of that peculiar legend, which certainly also has a historical background, which actually developed in Central Europe at the time when Copernicus's work was done, in the appearance of the Faust legend in the sixteenth century. Here we see how people perceived the new thinking as something that would cause them to lose an old connection with the spiritual world. However distant the Faust figure may seem from the feeling that human beings have been torn out of spiritual culture and must succumb to all the errors and mistakes that arise from the mere personality of human beings, however distant this may be from the idea of the Faust figure just expressed — it is nevertheless reflected in the life of the Middle Ages, of the sixteenth century, as it lives on in popular education, as the consciousness expressed in the well-known saying about Faust. Faust put the Bible behind the bench for a while and became a man of the world and a physician. — The latter represented a researcher in the external world. It is interesting to observe how a — and those who are great bearers of culture are often this — fundamentally naive person, such as Copernicus was, felt within himself: You have done nothing other than bring the idea of simplicity in relation to the solar system to the internalized human soul. — And as a pious man, he had to say to himself: If I recognize the laws of the universe in their true form, I am actually contributing to the recognition of the great thoughts that pulsate through the world as divine thoughts. — In this naivety, he could believe that it was right to dedicate his work to the Pope. Friends, however, had dissuaded him from publishing his work, so that it came to pass that he only received the correction of his first sheet on his deathbed, because he believed that it would not be right to hold it back any longer out of fear. But we now see how peculiar the culture of the time had to be in its response to this. The work was not published until after Copernicus' death. The publisher immediately weakened what Copernicus had wanted to say in a preface in which he stated, as cautiously as possible so as not to cause offense, that this work was not something that directly dealt with the facts of the world, but rather a possible hypothesis among other hypotheses. Now we must be clear that what Copernicus did at that time marked the beginning of a cultural era in which we still find ourselves, for there has been a steady progression from Copernicus to the present day. But it seems strange to us that Copernicus, in his naivety, believed himself to be firmly grounded in the Christian faith. What he achieved at that time strikes us as peculiar when we compare it with what has followed over the centuries. We know this all too well. Copernicus himself escaped all persecution because he only saw his world-revolutionizing work on his deathbed. Those who continued his work, Galileo and Giordano Bruno, fared differently. That is known to the whole world. Here we see, in what emerged from the actions of a brilliant man, how everything that later becomes common knowledge to humanity can only assert itself through resistance and opposition. Truly, one must admit that it feels very strange when one—just as we have done today—considers Copernicus's deed to be a necessity and now sees how this deed continues to have an effect, but also how the attitude that is called up around Copernicus's deed as opposition to it continues to have an effect.

If we consider Copernicus's time a little in this cultural and moral sense, the following emerges. As he himself thought and understood this act, he did not find it in the least bit contradictory to his beliefs, which he believed he had as a man devoted to his church. For when Copernicus's work came into being and the culture of the external sensory world took hold of humanity, there was still enough of the culture of ancient times left that connected humanity with what is spread throughout the universe as spiritual and formed the content of Aristotelian teaching. At the time of Kepler, Galileo, and even Newton, it would not have been remotely possible to be considered a reasonable person if one had claimed that the human soul arose in its activity solely from the interaction of material processes, like the flame from the material processes of the candle. This would have been impossible, especially for the greatest minds. Despite the fact that his teachings later had such a revolutionary effect, Copernicus remained firmly grounded in his belief in a spiritual force that permeates and pervades the entire world. Kepler, the magnificent successor to Copernicus, worked as an astrologer in addition to being a great astronomer. It is important for the characterization of the age of Copernicus that Kepler worked as an astrologer. And it is only from this point of view that one needs to consider that, despite having introduced the three Keplerian laws named after him into science, he was convinced that spiritual-soul forces were at work in all mechanical processes of the universe, so that something could be deduced from the constellations of the stars about the human soul and its destiny. This embedding of the human soul in the spiritual-soul aspects of the world had an effect on Galileo as it did on Kepler. For Galileo told himself that, after what had been experienced through Copernicus and the newly invented telescope—through which he first recognized the moons of Jupiter and the composition of the Milky Way from individual star formations—one should not remain stuck in a science of paper, but should advance to a science of the mind. Galileo, like others of his time, was an opponent of Aristotle, but only of the misunderstood Aristotle. On the contrary, he was imbued with what can be called a culture of thought, an internalization of thought to the point of logical comprehension of external reality. But he never strayed from the idea that through what is recognized as logic, what man has conquered in terms of the laws of thought, the human mind can comprehend in successive moments of time what is spread out in space and time. But in contrast to this human intellect, which can successively recognize the secrets of the universe by weighing up what the senses perceive, Galileo saw the divine spirit, the divine intellect that lives through and interweaves the world, and which he reverently felt to be thinking the universe in a single moment, not reflecting like man. Thus, for Galileo, underlying all worldly phenomena was the spiritual, the divine spirit, which in an instant creates from itself the world thought, whose image is the world, which then, one after another, the human mind and intellect can perhaps comprehend, at least, as Galileo thought, through many, many ages.

Thus we see how, in the age of Copernicus, the awareness that the human soul is founded in the spiritual-soul nature of the universe was not yet lost. And even in Newton we still see how, despite believing that he had explained the forces of the outer universe as mechanical by establishing the law of attraction and gravity, he believed the spiritual-soul nature of man to be so firmly grounded in the spiritual-soul nature of the universe that he, the discoverer of the law of gravity, became at the same time an interpreter, a commentator on the Apocalypse. The leading sources of this age were still imbued with what had faded from ancient science, which still echoed in Aristotle and knew that the spiritual-soul aspect within human beings was connected to the spiritual-soul aspect in the worlds outside. The old knowledge had faded, but the traditions were still there, and one could quietly devote oneself to them, for something lived in the human heart that wanted to devote itself to them. But the habits of thought were different. We see the inner thought, left to itself, becoming impoverished. Where these minds themselves wanted to progress toward an understanding of spiritual and soul life — Kepler, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Newton — all of them were still able to let the traditions reign in the liveliness of their souls. But when they set out to understand the life of the soul with the laws conquered by their intellect, these soul forces, even if they were still so alive, proved to be powerless. Like the glow of a faded primordial wisdom, Galileo's inclination toward the intellect of his God lived on, as he believed it to be and as it existed in the tradition of his faith.

But those who now wanted to search for a lawful connection between the human soul and the spiritual-soul realm of the world in a similar way to how they had searched for a lawful connection between the Earth and the stars, the spatial world, at the time of Copernicus, were initially confronted with the impoverishment of thought left to its own devices. And in one of the most fiery minds of the Copernican age, namely Giordano Bruno, we see this impoverishment of thought, which had struggled its way to such a magnificent penetration of the outer world as we encounter in Kepler and Copernicus. But we now see this impoverishment of thought in relation to the laws of the spiritual world when we take Giordano Bruno, for example, as he stands there as a Renaissance man and points out that where, according to previous views, the so-called “eighth sphere” had been suspected, there is nothing at all, but that everywhere one finds worlds upon worlds, just as the Earth itself is only a small world within the great one. One need only recall Giordano Bruno's wonderful, magnificent worldview, which is as astute as it is enthusiastic, and which demolishes much of what had remained of humanity from ancient times, to see how Giordano Bruno in particular wants to revive the awareness of the spiritual connection between the human soul and the spiritual world. It is clear to him that when one looks at a physical being such as the human being, one must imagine that it emerges from a spiritual universe, that the spiritual essence of the universe has, as it were, contracted in a human body in order to expand again at the death of the human being and then later contract again. This is how he conceives of repeated earthly lives. But his thought does not become rich in content or inner depth. The thought that had found its way into Aristotle, which had proven its momentum and fertility in relation to the external world, shrinks in Giordano Bruno and later in Leibniz, who can be described as Giordano Bruno's successor, to what Giordano Bruno and then Leibniz called a monad. What was a monad? Something that was thought to have been born out of the spiritual world. For Leibniz, a monad even contains something like a reflection of the entire universe. But to move beyond dry abstraction: the monad, a reflection of the universe, something that contracts and expands again to traverse the universe once more — modern culture has not achieved anything more than this. Thus, one could admire the power of Leibniz's philosophy as an effect of Copernicus's deed. But when we delve into Leibniz's philosophy, which conceives of the world as composed of monads, we see that it confronts us in such a way that we do not really know much about the human soul, for it is not enough to say that the soul is a reflection of the universe. When we look at what immediately followed Copernicus's work in the form of philosophy and spiritual science, we see nothing but abstract descriptions that remain vague. And this poverty remains, basically. The ancient spiritual science of Aristotle — as you can see for yourself in the book by Franz Brentano mentioned above — which still had the ancient traditions of the original culture and also an indefinite awareness of it, still speaks of the human being as being composed of different parts of his being, understands him as a structure of rich harmony, relates the various members to the various external conditions and facts, still connects what falls away from man with death with what comes from a spiritual world and goes into a spiritual world, and thus arrives at concrete and meaningful, rich ideas about what is spiritual in the human soul. In Aristotle, then, we still see a real science with a divine content. We still see the spiritual described as one would really describe the spiritual again today. But in the age of Copernicus, it has shrunk to a poor monad. And the same Giordano Bruno, who finds the most fiery words when pointing out to people the greatness and infinity of the world, finds only the poverty of the monad for the individual human soul. A few concepts, strung together, are now supposed to represent the human soul, its essence captured in concepts!

Here we see how the ages work, how human missions work. Humanity could never have attained its present culture if Copernicanism had not come along, but at the same time we see how spiritual science first had to become impoverished. Only in our time do we now see something emerging — and this is what spiritual science in the spirit of our time wants to be — which will now show once again that, after human thought wanted for a while to be merely an instrument for comprehending the outer sensory world, this human thought will also become a means of reaching an inner world that goes beyond mere thought. For what purpose has thought served since Copernicus's discovery, throughout the entire Copernican era, and even to this day? It has served as a means of comprehending the external sensory world; it has been the instrument of external facts that can be seen with the eyes and grasped with the instrument of the brain. Thought had to serve this purpose in order to obtain as objective and clear a picture as possible of what unfolds in the sensory world. Now that this state of mind has become established in human culture, thought can once again become something else, something that educates the human soul within itself. Human beings must no longer use thought merely as a reflection of external reality, but must detach it in such a way that it perhaps does not reflect any external reality at all, but instead works when the soul excludes everything external in meditation and concentration, so that thought becomes creatively internal from the inner depths, and the soul arrives at a different content than that of the shrunken monad. From its mission, adopted in the age of Copernicus, of being a reflection of external reality, thought will now move on to preparing the soul, bringing forth inner hidden powers from the depths of the soul, whereby the soul will now be able to see again what underlies the ancient Aristotelian culture. It will not be old, traditional thoughts that will be most fruitful. No, it will be the thoughts that have been found through the age of natural science. It is precisely the thoughts that are based on the age of Copernicus that have an opening effect on the soul, since they bring forth from our soul those forces that allow the soul to see itself and then the spiritual-soul aspect of the world space, of the universe. Thus, the human soul, which has been shown by Copernicus that it can obtain a picture of the outer world through the powers it develops in thought, must now unfold the idea in its other mission, taking thought as a means of educating the soul to a culture of the higher self, to a vision once again in the spiritual world.

We stand at this turning point today, and this turning point in human culture must take place. And if we understand the necessity that gave birth to the age of Copernicus, we can also understand the necessity that the times must change into a new age in which thought goes beyond itself, and in which, when we speak of the soul, we no longer speak in abstractions, but in real descriptions of deeds, qualities, and characteristic features, arriving at the whole nature of the human soul. If we look at spiritual science in this way, then perhaps those who today follow anyone who claims to know something about spiritual science will not get their due. We live today not only in a critical age, but also in an age where many people, without checking, immediately follow every prophecy and so on. Just as part of humanity today is overly critical, so the other part is overly credulous and accepts everything as if it were a revelation from spiritual worlds. But true spiritual science wants nothing to do with what springs from such a need for all kinds of prophecies and revelations. For it is not possible today for spiritual science to bring people to an understanding of our age unless an attempt is made to penetrate it and comprehend what the laws of humanity and evolution actually are. That is why, when a spirit once set out to survey the development of humanity in the same way that Copernicus had surveyed the laws of space, this spirit, Lessing, arrived at the hypothesis of repeated earthly lives. How will things go for those who are serious about spiritual science in spiritual culture?

This is precisely where we can learn a great deal from Copernicus. I have already mentioned what happened to Galileo, a true follower of Aristotle. One of his friends believed, based on an Aristotle who was no longer understood — and this was justified in the sense of Aristotelianism at that time — that Aristotle had taught that the nerves of the human being originate in the heart. Galileo, who stood on the ground of genuine sensory observation, said to the person in question: I will take you to a corpse and show you that Aristotle was not right, because human nerves originate in the brain. — In fact, the man who adhered to Aristotelianism in this sense looked at the corpse and then said: When I look at nature, it seems to me that the nerves originate in the brain, but I know from Aristotle that the nerves originate in the heart, and if nature contradicts Aristotle, I believe Aristotle and not nature! — This is not a fairy tale, it is a fact that clearly shows how great truths must become part of human culture despite all opponents. Therefore, we should not be surprised if something appeared in our time that could be characterized in the following way. Someone might want to show another person, through the entire course of a child's development, how everything that a human being carries within themselves cannot originate from mere physical inheritance. This could take place in such a way that he points out to the other person: Look at everything that spiritual science has said about this field. — One might then imagine that someone very intelligent would reply: Yes, when you spiritual scientists talk like that, it seems as if what is evident in the growing human being comes from a previous life on earth. But monism says something different. And if spiritual observations contradict monism, I believe monism and not spiritual observation.

Perhaps something similar to what happened when the age of Copernicus was introduced to humanity could happen again in our time. Many people today might say: We must regard the teaching of repeated earthly lives as a hypothesis that explains human life in a rational way, but we cannot yet be convinced of it. It is said that those who have developed inner vision themselves see the soul in a state that shows it to belong to a lawful spiritual world that transcends birth and death, but what use is it to us, who cannot eavesdrop on the human soul as it reveals itself in its true form throughout repeated earthly lives, when we are told the laws of spiritual science and must accept the doctrine of repeated earthly lives as a hypothesis?

Anyone who could say this from a materialistic-monistic point of view would thereby prove that they have not even progressed as far as the Catholic Church did decades ago with regard to the Copernican doctrine, which it did not treat lightly. For what did people have to accept the Copernican doctrine as? Copernicus did nothing more than formulate a thought, formulate it as simply as possible, and base it on the phenomena. With this thought, he developed a proof, not with investigations into what is going on. And if one takes his thought, one will say: That is true. The same is true today for those who cannot or do not want to find their way to spiritual insight into the human soul and its immediate nature. For today, spiritual science also shows that everything that presents itself as human destiny, as human activity, and as the laws of this activity can only be explained if one accepts the law of repeated earthly lives and karma. And it is shown that by accepting these laws, one can have the same certainty today with regard to the spiritual and soul aspects of the human being as Aristotle could have certainty through his logic with regard to the content of his teaching, which flowed from primordial wisdom, and as the followers of Copernicus had certainty about his teaching with regard to the external phenomena in space.

In 1543, Copernicus' work was published. It was not until 1851 that what can be called real proof of Copernicus's teachings became possible, for it was only then that Foucault's pendulum proof was found, which shows how a large pendulum, when swung, always swings in one plane, and from this, because the pendulum actually rotates in one plane, the rotation of the earth must result. It was not until 1851 that the constancy of the pendulum's rotations provided internal proof of Copernicus's theory. This is how it is with regard to external facts. With regard to internal facts, with regard to repeated earth lives, human beings can at any time set out on the path that leads them to spiritual vision and shows them where the life force that passes through human beings from life to life comes from. The internal proof that was only provided for Copernicanism after centuries can be provided at any time for repeated earthly lives. But it is just as unnecessary for the acceptance of the law of repeated earthly lives and karma that someone should have this spiritual vision, as it was unnecessary for the acceptance of Copernicanism that the inner proof should already have been provided by Foucault's pendulum experiment. And I said: Anyone who, for the reasons stated, would reject the doctrine of repeated earthly lives and karma would prove to be even more intolerant than the Catholic Church, which did not wait until 1851 to withdraw the decree of banishment against Copernicus' work, but withdrew it as early as 1821. — Perhaps the banishment monists will be gracious enough to withdraw their contradictions earlier than the Catholic Church was gracious in withdrawing the banishment decree against the Copernican doctrine decades before Foucault's pendulum proof.

But we, who stand on the ground of spiritual science, can learn from figures such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno how that which must become established in human culture will become established despite all heresy trials. For the attitudes that opposed Copernicus, Kepler, Giordano Bruno, and others are still present today, albeit on the part of those who regard spiritual science as dreamery, fantasy, even folly, even though they belong to the “enlightened” classes. They may not write or print an index, but they place spiritual science on the index of monism, just as the Catholic Church placed Copernicus' teachings on the index.

One can resist human progress, but one cannot prevent it. And those who today call spiritual science a fantasy will have to retract their edicts just as the edicts against Copernicanism were retracted. But spiritual science, imbued with its truth, can wait for this year “1821” of the materialistic monists, and it will wait. It will wait by speaking to those who will already understand how spiritual science opens people's eyes to the spiritual worlds, which are so closely connected to the innermost, essential nature of human beings that the human soul — understanding the world and itself and giving itself inner strength — gives itself hope, confidence, and strength for life.

What I tried to express in my second mystery drama, “The Test of the Soul,” in relation to feeling oneself together with the spiritual of the universe, the soul can say to itself about the connection of all its powers with the existence of the world:

World thoughts live in your thinking,
World forces weave in your feelings,
World beings work in your will.
Lose yourself in world thoughts,
Experience yourself through world forces,
Create yourself from beings of will.
Do not end in world remoteness
Through the play of thought dreams—;
Begin in the expanses of the spirit,
And end in the depths of your own soul.
You will find divine goals
By recognizing yourself within yourself.