The Eternal in the Human Soul

GA 67 — 14 March 1918, Berlin

6. The Historical Life of Humanity and Its Mysteries in the Light of Spiritual Research

In the present time, when so many souls have the only too understandable need to orient themselves in some direction in the face of the great, world-shaking events, to obtain clarification about the meaning of one fact or another, one often hears that history “teaches” this or that. People believe that they can judge some fact of the present from what they have learned about a similar fact from history, as they know it. Well, if one asks oneself a little about the possibilities available to people for judging this or that within the world situation or even in their immediate lives on the basis of the experiences of history, then one does indeed arrive at a somewhat dubious judgment about what, one might say, history “teaches.”

I would like to point out just two things, for example, but there are hundreds more. I would like to point out that at the beginning of this world catastrophe, which had such a profound impact on the fate of humanity, there were a number of people, truly discerning people, who believed they had learned from history and who were of the opinion that these critical events could last four, or at most six, months. Such a judgment was considered to be fully justified from a historical perspective, namely the historical circumstances of humanity. And one cannot even say that those who made such a judgment did not take all logical precautions to make such a judgment based on a certain insight—what one calls insight. Well, the facts themselves have thoroughly taught such people the opposite of what they believed. It is precisely in such a case that one can see how closely what history is supposed to teach is connected with the assessment of social or other world conditions, so that one can expect from a consideration of the historical life of humanity that some light will also be shed on the power of judgment that can be brought to bear on the social and economic coexistence of human beings.

But one can cite an even more striking example, I would say, of the limited validity of the statement that history “teaches” this or that. More than a hundred years ago, a personality whose genius is beyond doubt took up a teaching position as a professor of history at a German university. Truly based on a brilliant understanding of what history is and what can be applied from it to human life, this personality uttered words that sounded something like this: In the course of human progress, as history teaches us, the individual nations of Europe have become one big family, whose individual members may still feud with each other, but can never tear each other apart. Truly, no insignificant figure believed he could make such a judgment based on his insight into the course of history when he took up a professorship in history. This figure was Friedrich Schiller, and he spoke these words when he took up his professorship in Jena. He spoke them on the eve of the French Revolution, which contributed so much to what can be called the tearing apart of the European peoples, and if he could see what is happening in our present time, he would probably realize how little it is possible to adhere to the statement that history “teaches” us this or that about understanding life. It seems to me that such facts must have given Goethe the feeling he expressed in a wonderful sentence. The sentence reads: “The best thing we have from history is the enthusiasm it arouses.” It seems as if Goethe made this statement precisely to reject the other fruits of so-called historical knowledge and to acknowledge only that which can emerge from the documents of history as enthusiasm, that is, as a certain positive state of mind.

Today we want to see what position the spiritual science represented in this lecture series takes with regard to the two opinions: that history can be the great teacher for understanding life, and the other: that the best thing we can gain from history is the enthusiasm it arouses. Now, when considering the historical life of humanity and the conclusions that can be drawn from this consideration, it will be interesting for the assessment of social life to take a preliminary look at the view of historical development that has been arrived at in the present day outside of spiritual science. For the historical life of humanity is closely connected with what passes through every individual human soul as the stream of human development, because every human being is woven into historical development. And indeed, it is particularly significant at the present time to look at this judgment of our contemporaries, because discerning observers of history believe that the judgment of how to view historical life and how to establish the science of history is currently in crisis. I do not want to talk in abstractions, but rather link my observations to realities. To do this, one must stick to examples, which of course must be individual examples from so many cases.

I would like to stick, for example, to the judgment on historical science, as it is to be newly founded in the present, which was made by the famous Leipzig professor Karl Lamprecht. What one can glean from Lamprecht's grand, monumental history of Germany can be conveniently summarized in his lectures on “Modern Historical Science,” which Lamprecht gave partly in St. Louis and partly in New York at the invitation of Columbia University. In these lectures, he attempts to summarize his conclusions about how history should be taught in light of the demands of the present. It is even easier to get an idea of what this famous historian actually wanted to say, as he dealt with a section of the historical development of humanity in a compendious and extremely clear manner in the second of these lectures on “Modern Historical Science.” Lamprecht briefly recounted to the Americans the entire course of German development from the first Christian centuries to the present day, in the manner in which he believed historical science should be conducted in accordance with the demands of the present. Now, such things can only really be judged exhaustively if they can be compared in some way. There is a parallel to Professor Lamprecht's lectures on the development of German life in a lecture that Woodrow Wilson gave — naturally also for Americans — on the development of North American life, so that one can compare two minds that are far apart in spirit and space, as they direct the historian's gaze to the history of their own people.

Forgive me if I — truly not out of politeness, but for stylistic reasons — give precedence to Woodrow Wilson's observations. No one who knows me well will accuse me of overestimating Wilson. I would also like to point out that I already expressed my opinion of Wilson in a series of lectures I gave in Helsingfors some time before this war, but at a time when the world already had the honor of having Wilson as president of the North American states. At that time, I already explained how regrettable it was that such an important position, a position on which so much depends for the future of humanity, was held at that particular moment by a personality whose judgment was so terribly limited. For although at that time, even among us, there were still numerous enthusiastic admirers due to the publication of Wilson's books “The New Freedom” and “Only Literature” — for what are there no enthusiastic admirers today! — it could be proven that his own independent judgment, flowing from Wilson's personality, was inwardly very limited. Without any influence from any political position, without any influence from what is happening in world history today, I must stand by what I said before the war about this personality, who was so misunderstood at the time, even in Central Europe, that is, overestimated. I must say this up front so that no one doubts the objectivity of what I still want to say about Wilson, the observer of history.

It is very strange, when one considers, especially in comparison with what Lamprecht says about the history of Central Europe, how Wilson views the history of his people. One finds that he identifies the most concise point, one might say through a certain instinctive intuition, in order to answer the question: When did we actually become Americans, and how did we become Americans? How did this happen historically? He distinguishes, not finely, but extremely aptly, between all those who were once part of the Union, but whom he regards as “not yet Americans” but as “New Englanders,” who are “New Englanders” in their entire disposition and spirit, and the later “true Americans.” And here he distinguishes very precisely between the prehistory of the Union and then lets the Union begin in its historical development when the eastern population is increasingly drawn to the west of America, when the population crowded together in a narrow space in the east spreads out to the western side of America, when the people who undertook to spread out to the west developed what he calls the frontier spirit. And now he shows how the history of America, both externally and spiritually, actually consists of the east spreading westward, and he shows in a remarkably illuminating way how the regulation of the land question, the distribution of land, the regulation of the tariff question, even the regulation of the slave question, which he attributes not to any humanitarian principles but to the necessities that arose from the settlement and conquest of the West by the East, how all these questions fit into what the development of modern America demands. Now, one could say a great deal about the short lecture that Wilson gave, but the essential point is that he shows so clearly how, out of an external situation, historical developments have affected a group of people, and what is happening to these people can basically be understood by pointing to what people had to do under the influence of the circumstances described. Many things are interesting when one follows Wilson's observations and what Wilson has otherwise accomplished as a historical observer. In order to gain insight into various ideas related to the topic of today's lecture, it is very useful to compare what Wilson says about various historical subjects with what Europeans say. I must say that I was extremely struck at various points in Wilson's remarks when I saw a remarkable agreement — remarkable to me because I would have preferred it not to be so — in the content of the sentences, in the content of the thoughts expressed by Wilson on a wide variety of subjects, and in what, for example, the witty it were not so—in the content of the sentences, in the content of the thoughts of what Wilson says about a wide variety of subjects, and what, for example, the witty, incisive German art historian Herman Grimm, who has already been mentioned here several times, has said about many things in the course of human history.

If you consider Herman Grimm as witty as I do, and Wilson as clever as I must, then it can be unpleasant when you sometimes read Wilson and say to yourself: Strange, there's a sentence there that could also be in Grimm! And yet, despite this being the case, despite my having tested this on judgments that Wilson and Grimm made about the same personalities, about Macaulay, Gibbon, and others, despite the often almost literal agreement, without them having any connection to each other, it nevertheless becomes apparent that in reality the intellectual disposition of these two personalities is fundamentally different. It is precisely on such occasions that one can see how two people can say the same thing in terms of external content, yet from completely different spiritual backgrounds. In this case, it is particularly interesting because the coloring that the judgment takes on in one case and the other is related to the roots of one or the other personality in one or the other culture. It is precisely by noticing such similarities that one subsequently discovers that one is American and the other German.

The difference is already apparent from the outside. There is a volume of Grimm's essays from the last period of his life, on which Grimm's picture is preprinted, as is so often the case today. Similarly, the German edition of Wilson's lectures “Nur Literatur” (Only Literature) also has Wilson's picture preprinted on it. So you can also compare the pictures. For those who know how to judge such things, this alone is quite remarkable. After immersing yourself in what Grimm says, especially what he says as a historian, take a look at Grimm's picture: Every feature of the face that shines out at you expresses the same thing: every sentence and every turn of phrase is intimately connected with everything this man has wrested from his soul. Then, after you have first absorbed what is written in the book, you look at the portrait of Wilson: it seems as if the personality could not have been present at all in what has been judged in the book; a certain strangeness strikes you. When you see this, a mystery dawns on you about the way in which two people view history in this case, and you can ask yourself the question: what about this similarity, what about this fundamental difference, which is also strongly felt? Something very strange then becomes apparent. Precisely what Wilson says about Americanism is immediately obvious, so that one knows that it accurately describes the course of the development of Americanism as he wants to portray it. But one gradually comes to realize—and this is something that can only be revealed by psychological observation—that this personality is not as deeply rooted in his judgment as we imagine it to be within Central Europe. There is a completely different relationship between judgment and personality than we are accustomed to here.

I know that I am expressing something paradoxical, but it is closely related to what I would like to say today about the nature of the historical development of humanity. If it did not sound like a superstitious expression, I would say: one comes to the conclusion that a nature such as Wilson's, when it makes such apt judgments as in this view of history and also in other places, is possessed by something in its own soul, does not judge for itself. Using an expression that is less likely to be accused of superstition, I would like to say: With a personality such as Wilson's, one has the impression that there is something in the soul that suggests this judgment from within the soul. One does not have the impression, the feeling, that it is entirely the result of his own individuality, his own personality; rather, one has the feeling that it is something like a second personality, a second entity in the soul, which suggests this to the soul. If, on the other hand, one looks at judgments that are undoubtedly accurate, which Wilson has made about the character of Americanism, where he says that even in outward appearance and behavior one can recognize the true American by his quick, mobile eyes, by his inclination to quickly grasp bold but also adventurous trains of thought, and by his lack of inclination to their homeland as other peoples do, that they are rather very fond of making plans that can be carried out anywhere—if one considers this characteristic, then one finds that Wilson himself has expressed it as the character of the people who made American history and of its most important men, that they basically have something inside them that they are outwardly forced to reveal: Not the meaningful, calm eye—the other characteristics cited by Wilson could also be used—but the quick, mobile eye is a sign that something is forcing Americans from within, and such suggestions are effective when the judgment is as accurate as Wilson's.

Let us compare what I had to say with a view of history that is spatially and — as we shall see — also emotionally somewhat distant, with what Lamprecht puts forward as his ideas about the course of Central European history. These are, in essence, original ideas. He attempts to clarify: How did the essence of the Central European people actually develop gradually over the centuries, from around the third century to the present day? Everything he says, as one can tell, has been achieved and worked out internally. There is much with which one disagrees, especially as a humanities scholar; we will discuss this in a moment. But it is all achieved, it all comes from his immediate personality. It would be complete nonsense to say that some inner power is suggesting something. This personality does not have it so easy. This personality must conquer each thought piece by piece, not just one thought after another, but go through the process of overcoming thoughts in order to arrive at a judgment. Only then does it arrive at a conception of historical development that is relatively new, new even according to the conception of Ranke and Sybels, new in the sense that Lamprecht understands historical development as the development of the entire soul. Lamprecht attempts to trace what is predisposed in the soul of the people, what struggles for existence there, as expressions of the soul, just as the psychologist traces the spiritual development of each individual human being.

According to Lamprecht, the German people developed in such a way until the third century that one can say that this development shows a symbolizing direction of the soul. Even their external actions and political development proceeded in such a way that one can see it stemmed from the soul's desire to interpret world phenomena symbolically, to see symbols everywhere, even to make heroes into symbols and worship them as such, just as living personal symbols are worshipped in real life. Then came the period from the third century to the eleventh or twelfth century. Lamprecht calls it the typifying period. There is no longer the longing of the soul to see symbols, to realize symbols, but rather to establish types. Even the people one reveres, the people one obeys, one reveres them and obeys them in such a way that they do not appear as individual personalities, but as types of an entire tribe, an entire city. Then comes — I must describe these things briefly — from the twelfth to about the thirteenth century, the period in which knighthood developed, which Lamprecht calls the conventional period, in which people no longer typified, but judged and felt their impulses of will as dictated by convention from person to person, from class to class, from people to people, the period of conventionalism. Then follows — and it is significant that Lamprecht notes this, although, as we shall see, he — around the turn of the fifteenth century, the conventional age is followed by the individualistic age, in which people truly feel themselves to be individuals within the community, and in which events are to be judged in such a way that they are derived from what is the assertion of man as an individual. This lasts until about the middle of the eighteenth century. For Lamprecht, this marks the beginning of the age in which we still find ourselves, the age of subjectivism, where people try to internalize themselves, their thoughts, their emotions, where they do not merely act as personalities, but act, think, and will from the depths of their personality, from the depths of the subject. Lamprecht divides this era into two parts: the first part lasts until about the 1870s and includes the great classical period of Goethe, Schiller, and Herder, and the second part, from the 1870s to the present day, is our era, according to Lamprecht.

Now it is strange that Lamprecht, perhaps the most important historian of the present day, is quite clear that he must first seek an impulse to see how the course of history actually continues, and this—as can already be seen in his German History—preoccupied him incessantly: to investigate how one should actually begin to arrange what the documents, monuments, and archives provide in such a way, to connect them in a narrative and descriptive manner, that it becomes what one can call history. So the most important question of history, the question of existence, became relevant for Lamprecht. He told himself that one can only arrive at history—he does not consider the historiography of Ranke, Sybels, and so on to be history—if one attempts to describe the spiritual development of a people or of humanity as a whole. But then one must have the opportunity to observe this spiritual development, to find certain laws in this spiritual development. It is interesting to note that a remarkable contradiction in Lamprecht's entire approach confronts us, given the thinking habits of the present day. In accordance with the habits of thought necessitated by the circumstances of the time, Lamprecht said to himself that the earlier, purely individualistic approach, in which one simply took what the archives provided in order to characterize personalities or facts in a somewhat external way, could not remain. How can one bring order to the facts at all? He tells himself that one must view the spiritual in the course of development in such a way that it is described in social-psychological terms. This results for him from a necessary way of thinking in modern times, namely to observe social life, the communal togetherness of people. That is what he tells himself on the one hand. But now he has no way of looking at the social in the life of the soul or, in other words, the soul in social life in a lawful way. So he turns to the soul researchers and asks how soul researchers today view individual souls. Here they see thoughts socializing, feelings rising, and impulses of will developing in the individual soul. Then he wants to apply this to the way events in historical development affect people, how the thoughts of one person affect the whole tribe, how thoughts socialize externally, how one thought socializes with another in individual psychology. So he wants to look at history from a social-psychological perspective, following the model of individual psychology. As I indicated, this results in a very remarkable contradiction. He wants to move away from the individual view of history and arrive at a social-psychological one; but he takes what is to serve as a means to this end from the view of individual psychology. A strange contradiction that he does not even notice.

When you really delve into what one of the most modern historians is doing, when he so vividly describes how one cultural era, which I have listed for you in his sense, transitions into another, when he describes how people's feelings explode during such transitions, how thoughts connect and separate, how they rush headlong, how new feelings are formed, how impulses of will take effect, one has the feeling that this man cannot see the trees for the forest. I do not believe in the saying that someone cannot see the forest for the trees. I would like to know how someone could be in the forest, have the trees in front of them through their healthy perception, and still want to see the forest! You have to go far away to see the forest. One has the strange feeling that Lamprecht cannot precisely work out the differences, the distinctions between the individual ages, the symbolizing, the typifying, and so on. In short, one comes to the conclusion that this is a researcher who has struggled through difficult inner battles to gain an insight into the historical development of humanity, but who, within the spiritual life of the present, within what the present has to offer in terms of observations about spiritual life, could not find the means to even ask himself the question: What actually is this historical development of humanity? Is what can be gleaned from documents and archives already history, or are we perhaps searching for something else entirely through all of this?

This is where we must begin if we want to consider historical life and its mysteries in the light of spiritual science. We must ask ourselves the question: Has the object of history already been found in the general consciousness? Do we already know what we actually want to judge when we approach history? In order to answer these questions from observation, I must now draw on some aspects of spiritual science that are related to things I have discussed here in earlier lectures.

When we consider the individual human soul life, we see that it is caught up in the alternation between waking and sleeping. We have tried to bring the meaning of waking and sleeping before the soul in earlier considerations. Now, however, what occurs as alternating states between sleeping and waking is usually viewed in a one-sided way, in that it is said that human beings spend two-thirds or even more of their lives awake and one-third asleep. But things are not so simple when viewed from the perspective of spiritual science. It is only clear that the state of sleep continues into waking life, that in a certain sense we are only partially awake from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep. In reality, we are consciously awake only to our perceptions of the outside world and the ideas we form from these perceptions. But just compare — something that psychology today does not usually do — the way in which feelings are experienced in addition to perceptions and ideas. Those who gradually learn to observe the way feelings arise in the human soul — I will return to this topic in the next lecture on “The Revelations of the Unconscious” and will now only say a few things in principle — learn to compare what emotional life is, what affect is, what passionate life is, with dream life. The dream life, which wells up from the life of sleep, presents images to the soul without these images of the dream being permeated by logic and certain moral impulses that we only have in waking life. Now, dream images certainly differ from feelings, from the ebbing and flowing passions and emotions, but there is something in which both are similar in relation to the soul: that is the degree of consciousness in which we are absorbed in the weaving, surging dream images. We have the same degree of consciousness when we are absorbed in our feelings, except that we accompany our feelings with ideas. The moment we form an idea about a dream image we have had, the light of the idea falls on the dream; then the dream becomes fully conscious, and we can classify it correctly in human life. We do this constantly with our emotional life. We classify our feelings in life through the ideas that run parallel to them, but these feelings are experienced in no other intensity, in no other relationship to the life of the soul than dreams, so that we can say: dream life continues into our waking consciousness and becomes our emotional world in dreams. It is easy to see that deep, dreamless sleep life also continues into our waking life, namely as our impulses of will. In ordinary waking consciousness, we are only aware of these impulses of will insofar as they are accompanied by ideas. We imagine our actions, we imagine what we should do; but how that which flows out of us as impulses of will, as action, develops from the idea, how it passes from the idea into the impulse of will, remains as unconscious to us in our most awake ordinary daily consciousness as our life in the deepest sleep remains unconscious to us. Only because we can imagine our impulses of will can we accompany these sleeping impulses with our waking life. Thus, the life of sleep continues uninterrupted into our waking daily life.

Even if our feelings, our emotions, our passions are only dreamed by us, our emotional life is nevertheless connected to an objective spiritual-soul life as well as to our own spiritual-soul life, to the content of our imagination and perception. Only the connections between the contents of our feelings and will and the objective spiritual realm lie in the subconscious. We sleep through this connection with the spiritual-soul realm, and only that which we experience through our ideas and perceptions protrudes from the sea in which we are so embedded. If, by awakening the powers slumbering in the soul, we learn to look into the spiritual world, then we know that the world into which our feelings plunge, precisely with that part of our soul that remains unconscious to our ordinary consciousness, cannot be perceived by ordinary consciousness, but can be perceived by awakened, contemplative consciousness. perceived by the soul through the strengthened, powerful will or the thinking power imbued with the impulses of the will, which can form images from contact with this spiritual world, and in this is formed what is called imaginative cognition. This imaginative cognition is the first stage of supersensible perception, through which one enters the real spiritual world. If I were to give you an external comparison, I would have to say that this imaginative cognition is the fully conscious insight into a spiritual reality, so that the imaginings are not figments of the imagination, but a reproduction of spiritual reality, although their weaving is no denser before the soul than dream images, except that one knows that dream images have no value in reality, but that what is given in the imagination points to an objective spiritual reality outside ourselves. One learns to recognize what the human emotional world is connected with, what is only dreamed of in ordinary consciousness; one learns to recognize this in its reality through imaginative contemplation of the world. One learns further to recognize in the same way that in which the impulses of the will are embedded, through the second stage of higher consciousness, through inspired consciousness, thereby learning to recognize the spiritual world, insofar as the impulses of the human will, which otherwise remain subconscious, are also embedded in an objective spiritual reality.

Once one has seen through these things and the question of the actual object of historical development arises in one's soul, then what is significant is that one then realizes what historical development actually is. It is not experienced in the same way as the development that passes from person to person, that is experienced in everyday life when we ourselves come into personal contact with the object. No, this historical becoming is something else, something that contains just as much that is unknown as what human beings experience as feeling, as impulses of the will. Just as human beings dream away their emotional world, so they dream away what is the real stream of historical becoming. This insight is the shocking result of that observation which turns away from human beings toward historical becoming, and it shows that we cannot use these ideas, which govern our outer conscious life, to grasp historical life in any way. For what we experience in our everyday consciousness as individual human beings is experienced while awake. But in this whole waking daily life, what history is is not contained at all. History is not experienced by human beings while awake; history is dreamed. The great dream of the development of humanity is history, and history never enters into ordinary consciousness. One can possess ordinary consciousness in a very astute way, one can be the most eminent natural scientist with precisely the intellect that is suited to arranging things according to cause and effect, one can have the state of mind that makes one particularly capable of seeing and characterizing external nature correctly in its regularity. When one learns to recognize what the stream of historical becoming really is, one says to oneself: with all the mental faculties that are suited to understanding external nature, indeed, that are precisely fruitful for understanding external nature, one cannot look into historical becoming. This is not experienced in ordinary consciousness as nature is, but only in the degree of consciousness that is also characteristic of dreams. It will one day be one of the most significant results for the study of history when it is realized that one must first find the object of historical observation, that the stream of historical becoming is not there in the same way as nature, that therefore even that which is there in the same way as nature, namely the facts recorded in the archives, the facts contained in the documents that are usually already referred to as history, are not yet history at all, that history in reality lies behind them, that these facts only stand out from historical becoming, but are not themselves this historical becoming.

Herman Grimm once told me, when I was talking to him at length about historical questions in Weimar, that one could only really observe the historical life of human beings by following the development of the popular imagination. One could say that Herman Grimm was close to making a discovery, but he did not want to make the transition to spiritual science, and so it seemed to him that the only fruitful approach was not to consider external events alone and arrange them in the same way that a natural scientist arranges external events according to the laws of causality, but to consider them in such a way that he could really see through them the evolving, flowing imagination of humanity. It was an imperfect expression of what he could have recognized: that historical development does not take place in what the imagination experiences, but lies much deeper, deep in the subconscious grounds where dreams are woven. It only surges upward. Just as the depths of the sea surge upward in the waves that rise to the surface, so it surges upward in individual events. When we apply our ordinary understanding, our ordinary external knowledge, which is so useful to us in observing nature and in our external, practical, individual lives, to historical development, then, strangely enough, we actually encounter only those forces in historical development that bring about decline, that cause downward development. Herman Grimm once asked himself how it came about that the historian Gibbon, in describing the first centuries of Christianity, only describes the decline of the Roman Empire, not the growth, not the rise of Christianity. Grimm made a correct observation here, but did not come up with the reason for it. The reason is that Gibbon, although profound, applies to his view of history the same intellect that is otherwise applied to the observation of nature. He could therefore only observe the decline, not that which sprouts and blossoms, not that which rises; for that which rises can only be dreamed. But just as what can still be studied as a physical body in death is organized within living human beings, so that human beings can turn to the dead body and observe what was organized into life, just as one cannot do this with the course of history, because the corpse is not separated from the living, but both are intertwined, because what is rising, growing, sprouting is alive and connected with what is in decline, in the process of dying. Therefore, with the ordinary mind, one can only observe what is dead in historical becoming. If we apply to the observation of history what we have hitherto believed must also be applied to the observation of history, what is so fruitful in natural science, we find only those forces in historical development that lead to death, decline, and downfall. So what is needed if we want to recognize in historical development that which grows and flourishes, that which advances humanity?

In earlier times, when people had a different state of mind, they actually looked more deeply into this relationship, but in the old way. They did not tell history, they told myths and legends. These myths and legends, which were intended to reflect the historical dreams of humanity, were truer history than so-called pragmatic history, which applies the same understanding to historical events that is appropriate for nature. But we cannot go back in the development of humanity and compose myths and legends about historical events. However, there is something else we can do. We can decide to bring up what remains dormant in the subconscious as mere dreams for ordinary consciousness by applying imaginative knowledge to historical development. In historical development, humanity and science will recognize that they cannot even reach the object of observation unless they are willing to move on to spiritual scientific observation. What works in history remains below consciousness if one does not bring the dream up into consciousness. But then one must bring the dream up into spiritual consciousness, into supersensible consciousness, which does not merely think objectively, as one does in relation to nature and ordinary practical life, but which can imagine the spiritual. Imaginative cognition will first create history.

Those who can feel what the nerve of spiritual science is and then engage in the struggle of such a soul, as can be observed in Lamprecht, will find that a path is being sought toward a goal. But where is this goal? Why does Lamprecht seek to draw on everything in order to find history in the first place, and yet come to nothing other than applying the ordinary soul doctrine of individual psychology, even though he believes that social psychology, the doctrine of the social soul, must be applied? But what human beings experience in society and through society, what they experience as social beings, what becomes the course of their history, they dream about; this does not fit into individual psychology either. Here we must apply the new psychology that only spiritual science can provide. In Lamprecht you will find the demand, in spiritual science you will find the answer to the great mystery of historical becoming itself, which history has set for humanity today. But what will become of all this for a view of history?

You see, Lamprecht cannot escape the intellectual view of the sequence of events that is appropriate for natural science. He looks at what happened up to the third, eleventh, and so on centuries in sequence, even if he does so in a spiritual way. But he does not manage to assess the events in such a way that he really achieves what lies beneath them, what humans experience only as a dream.

It is easy to find evidence for this; I could cite a hundred examples from Lamprecht's view of history alone. I will mention just one, where Lamprecht comes up to the modern era. Among other things, he asks: What are the most significant cultural phenomena of the modern era? Let us remember that Lamprecht gave this lecture, in which he posed this question, in 1904! He asks: What are the most significant cultural-historical moments that stand out today as achievements of humanity? He therefore wants to cite the most significant characteristic expressions of the soul from the beginning of the twentieth century. What does he cite? The answer is very interesting, especially for someone who attaches so much importance to the spiritual. First, he cites the efforts to bring about a life of selflessness, an altruistic life for humanity, various societies for ethical culture, which came to Europe at that time, especially from England and America, and second, he cites the peace movement as particularly outstanding. This is what a renowned contemporary historian says! He comes to the conclusion that the altruistic movement and the peace movement are particularly significant for the beginning of the twentieth century! Can such a view of history, however much the soul in question struggles, be on the right track? At about the same time, I gave a lecture here on similar ideas—there are still listeners in this hall today who heard that lecture—and I argued that the least characteristic ideas for the beginning of the twentieth century are precisely these two movements: the movements for ethical culture and, in particular, the peace movement. I summarized my lecture at the time by saying: It is precisely characteristic that the time when the peace movement is particularly vocal will be the same time when the greatest wars of humanity will occur. How uncharacteristic this is! But, isn't it true that one was said by a famous historian and the other by a crazy, twisted representative of anthroposophy, and it is obvious in the present day who one should listen to?

It is a matter of recognizing, through this connection between the human soul and that only dreamed-of spirituality that flows as a historical stream, how to use what is available in terms of facts, what has been called history up to now, so that it points everywhere to the deeper currents of human development that are only dreamed of by ordinary consciousness. This can only be done if one replaces Lamprecht's and all other views of history with what I would call a symptomatic view of history, if one permeates oneself with the consciousness that everything that can be learned through archives, documents, monuments, in short, through ordinary conscious understanding, must be used in such a way that it is evaluated and appreciated by relating it to something for which it is a symptom, for which it is an expression. Great men of history, their appearances and their deeds, are not considered for their own sake when one wants to describe the historical development of humanity, but only as symptoms. One is aware that if one can bring the right symptom into imaginative connection with what lies beneath it as a spiritual stream of development, then one is describing history correctly. Symptom history will look very different from history that proceeds by simply stringing together facts and attempting to use individual psychology to explain and analyze these facts, as Lamprecht does. Symptom history will consist of becoming aware of Goethe's conviction that one can only approach a spiritual being from all sides, that one can only get to know it through its symptoms, when one becomes aware that what one has hitherto regarded as history is actually only on the surface and, like the content of a dream, inserts itself into life in a very strange way.

Observe the content of your dreams, and you will see that you often dream something completely different from what is directly related to the most significant events of your daily life. Nevertheless, it is somehow connected to your life as a reminiscence, but in a very hidden way, and it is connected — we will talk about this in eight days — to deeper forces of human life. There is a reason why this or that, which is at work in the subconscious, comes up symptomatically, in that we do not dream something significant that seems important to us in our waking life, but perhaps something that seems insignificant to us. Symptomatic historical research will be compelled to regard events that largely dominate the situation for the outer mind as insignificant for the true course of events, and to regard small, seemingly insignificant events as deeply incisive symptoms. Only in this way will it be possible to penetrate from the outer to the inner in historical life. No matter how much one believes oneself to be scientific, one cannot transfer the individual soul life of human beings to historical development in such an external way.

Of course, I cannot provide a comprehensive historical overview here to show how this symptomatic view captures the essence of human development, but I can at least hint at a few examples. I said in an earlier lecture: When the spiritual researcher learns to look into the spiritual world and its development, he notices that the results do not usually come as one might expect. As a rule, they come differently than one might expect based on the judgment gained externally in the sensory world. I will give an example of this:

One might expect historical events to unfold in such a way that they could be compared to what happens in the life of an individual human being: childhood, youth, maturity, and old age. Some historians have indeed succumbed to this illusion. These are analogical observations that may be quite ingenious, but they have nothing to do with reality as revealed by spiritual science. Something quite different emerges. The result I have to share with you here has truly been obtained with the same seriousness with which any other scientific result is obtained; but I can only present it as a result. At first glance, it seems paradoxical, but what spiritual science finds is just as paradoxical for humanity today as the Copernican worldview was for humanity at that time. Lamprecht seeks to identify periods of historical development, initially for the German people. I have already indicated that it is thanks to a correct impression that he identifies a transition from one age to another at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is also very significant that he calls precisely that which begins with the fifteenth century the individualistic age. Spiritual scientific research also shows a significant turning point at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But when one looks into the stream of historical development from a spiritual scientific perspective, it becomes clear that one must go further back and initially disregard the boundaries drawn by the development of peoples and tribes. One must consider the general historical development of humanity. This brings together the events throughout the centuries, from the fifteenth century AD to the seventh and eighth centuries BC. This era, from the seventh century before the Mystery of Golgotha to about the fifteenth century afterwards, has its own character. This character changes more than today's humanity believes, for internal reasons, around the fifteenth century. Lamprecht recognizes this, but he does not recognize the full significance of this fact. Others have already pointed out from various points of view that the significant upheaval that took place around this time almost all over the world, but especially in Europe. It is very noteworthy that Konrad Burdach, probably the most important Germanist of the present day, has pointed this out in some very beautiful essays. Based on purely literary-historical, but very far-sighted literary-historical research, Burdach sees how, from the spiritual development of humanity, something completely new has entered into the spiritual configuration, into the whole of humanity's actions, desires, and activities, if one considers it correctly.

We had thus established a period of historical development, the period from the eighth century BC to the fifteenth century AD. We ourselves live in the following period. It is possible, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, to go back even further. Something very strange then becomes apparent. If we consider the impulses that have dominated human beings in their historical existence since the fifteenth century, they are different from those that dominated human beings in the preceding period. But we cannot say that the impulses of the preceding period relate to those of the following period in the same way that one period of an individual human life relates to the next. That is not the case. Rather, something strange emerges: in our age, history has a particular effect on that part of individual human nature which develops up to the age of twenty. This is the mystery of our present becoming, that through historical circumstances we receive a special development of those forces that belong to our individual life in our twenties. In the previous age, which lasted from the eighth century BC to the fifteenth century AD, the historical life of humanity intervened in individual life in such a way that it particularly affected the thirties. One can also describe the matter differently. One can say: We who live in this period since the fifteenth century are psychologically organized in such a way that we develop through childhood into our twenties, and that we then carry what we have developed in our twenties into our future life, so that human beings feel inwardly, as it were, that their period of development is completed in their twenties. One need only mention very external things to prove this. That someone today would still want to study seriously in their thirties is something that would be difficult to claim in an age when even the youngest people write headlines in newspapers. But it is very easy to hear people say that Goethe's Iphigenia, and indeed all the classics, are read in youth but not in later life. One could cite other symptoms as well. But if we go back to the previous period, we find that what we now consider to be continuously sprouting, budding life only lasted until the end of the 1920s, into the 1930s. As paradoxical as it may sound to people today, this is the case, and it will one day be regarded as a proven historical achievement. The Greeks and Romans developed differently from modern humans, and history unfolded differently at that time because people remained capable of development for longer. Spiritual science shows that, going back even further, there were times when people remained capable of development into a higher age, into their forties. So we can say that there are three successive periods in the historical life of humanity: one dating back to before the eighth century BC, in which we find people who feel young into their forties; then comes the period that characterizes the entire Greek and Roman culture from a certain point of view precisely by the fact that people remain capable of development and young into their thirties; then the period in which they are capable of development into their twenties. If you think this through, you will see that the flow of humanity's historical development cannot be compared to the flow of individual lives. In individual lives, people grow older and older, but humanity as such develops in the opposite direction; it becomes younger and younger, that is, it remains younger; it carries youth less and less into later individual ages. Therefore, when viewed from within, culture makes an increasingly younger and younger impression in successive epochs, that is, human beings carry what they achieve in youth more and more into old age. One might have believed, based on preconceptions, that in the period before the eighth century BC, there was a younger humanity, then an older one, and that now, when we have come so far in other respects, according to some people, we have become much more mature and much older. The question must first be answered as to what maturity and age mean in the course of human development, not in individual life. But this process of human development can only be viewed in the way I have just indicated. You see, something quite different from what is usually imagined as the inner laws of cultural development will emerge if one really looks at historical development symptomatically.

I would like to emphasize one more thing in conclusion. If one understands how to see through the symptoms, one can also understand the whole nature of human beings in two such successive periods. We see that in the period beginning with the eighth century BC and ending with the fifteenth century AD, the structure of the human soul was quite different from what it is in the present period. If we consider the human soul from a spiritual scientific point of view, we do not have it as easy as trivial soul research. One must then realize that there are three very different shades of soul in the whole soul, and therefore one distinguishes three soul members in the human being. I call one of them the sentient soul. The instincts and passions are anchored in it, but it also connects the human being sensually with the outer nature; Then a distinction must be made between the intellectual and emotional soul, and thirdly, the conscious soul, the soul in which actual self-consciousness is anchored. As different forces intervene in the human soul in the stream of historical development, which I have described as the ever-increasing youthfulness of the human being, the following emerges: During the period from the eighth century BC to the fifteenth century AD, when European culture was particularly influenced by Greek and Roman culture, the intellectual and emotional souls were particularly active. Therefore, everything that human beings accomplish in the stream of historical development and also in their outer lives, in social and economic life, appears to us as if their intellect and emotions were acting instinctively, as if they were directly grasping the outer world with equal strength of body and spirit. During this period, human beings have a balance between body and spirit, and the spirit itself acts instinctively. This changes different around the great upheaval of the fifteenth century. This is when self-awareness, feeling, and the inner perception of the human personality emerge. The consciousness soul becomes particularly strong, humans no longer have instinctive understanding, and they must reflect on everything. Individuality begins to form. Humans no longer feel instinctively when they encounter another human being: you must behave in such and such a way toward them. They think things through, turning to their inner personality. So we can say that the entire historical structure since the fifteenth century throughout the world has been characterized by the fact that since that time the consciousness soul of the human being has been at work, whereas before that time the more instinctive mind or soul of feeling had been at work. One cannot properly understand Roman law, or anything that comes from antiquity, unless one takes into account this difference between the instinctive intellect, the instinctive, impulsive mind, and that which is intellectual, reflective, and has been at work in more recent times.

It becomes apparent that what Lamprecht seeks up to the fifteenth century is precisely, I would say, the preparation taking place in the natural foundation of the German soul for what is to develop into the consciousness soul. When other times have come, it will truly be recognized, not as a chauvinistic statement, but as an objective insight, that what developed out of that period, which I have limited to the eighth century BC, prepared itself in the German national soul as in a natural womb. It carried into the coming period what had flowed up from the south, precisely because it was predisposed to carry forward the stream of historical becoming from the intellectual or emotional soul into the consciousness soul and its various nuances.

If we learn to recognize what is actually at work here, then this becomes clear down to the smallest details. Then we can ask ourselves: What, for example, does Wilson describe in his view of history as the true essence of Americanism? This is another nuance of the consciousness soul. The Western nuance is experienced in its original phenomenon, in its original characteristic, here in Central Europe. Here, the struggling ego of the human being is truly experienced, which behaves quite consciously toward the consciousness soul, which wants to penetrate with all the forces of the personality that which wants to enter life here in full consciousness. This appears in a different nuance, where the human soul is obsessed with itself, in Americanism. It is sometimes unpleasant to look into the truth. But it is precisely the catastrophic events of our time that will make a certain objectivity necessary, make it necessary to hear in unvarnished truth what characterizes human beings themselves, and not just natural events or indifferent facts. The light that spiritual science can shed on the historical development of humanity shines even into the character of the historian Wilson.

Of course, I could only hint at a few things today. I could only show in principle the direction that historical science must take if it is fertilized by spiritual science in the same sense as I tried to show for natural science eight days ago. Only when history is viewed in this way will we gain an insight into how human beings are actually connected to the stream of historical development that otherwise only exists in their dreams. Then it will become apparent that what is known in an imaginative way through the symptomatic view of history is intrinsically related to what human beings are as historical beings. Then we will see how it is not the intellect, not ordinary consciousness, but the subconscious, the dreamlike life of feeling itself, that is connected with historical becoming. Imagination will teach what is not in the intellect, what is not in everyday consciousness, but what works in the mind and in the impulses of the will of human beings as they stand in the stream of historical becoming. Then something else will emerge than the belief that history can teach this or that. If it could teach as we usually imagine and as we have had to show today to be erroneous in so many cases, then one would have to be able to find a connection between history and this ordinary mind. But there is no such connection. The connection is there with what works in the depths of the soul, in the subconscious. So, although human beings cannot learn from history with their ordinary understanding, when true history is increasingly shaped by the view of the spirit in history itself, the historical impulses will live their way into human beings' feelings and emotions. They will not be able to say in an external way that history teaches this or that, but when they are faced with a fact, when they are called upon to act, to feel correctly towards a fact within social life, then their feelings, their sensibilities will guide them correctly. Then it will not be their intellect, but their whole soul that will be taught by such a view of history.

Let me briefly summarize this observation. Goethe felt this when, out of his great intuition, he rejected the common view that one can learn from history intellectually. He sensed that history, when recognized in its truth, has an effect on the mind, on the feeling that it has an effect when enthusiasm arises in the right way, when antipathies or sympathies arise for what should be done or omitted in a social situation. In short, Goethe said, based on his correct intuition of what spiritual science must bring to the surface: the best we can get from history is the enthusiasm it arouses. Yes, it is not intellectual judgment, but enthusiasm that we can perceive as the fruit of history when we are able to observe and recognize what historical development really is.