The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit

GA 68b — 30 March 1908, Stockholm

23. Goethe's Esoteric Answer to the Riddle of the World

Report in “Svenska Dagbladet,” No. 88, March 31, 1908.

Goethe's answer to the riddle of the world. On Monday evening, in the beautiful room of the Swedish Medical Association on Klara Östra Kyrkogata, Dr. Rudolf Steiner began the series of lectures here with the topic “Goethe's answer to the riddle of the world”.

The title was perhaps not entirely appropriate, since the presentation was more of an account of the similarities between Goethe's world view and modern theosophy. This mystical view is based on the assumption that human knowledge is not limited to what the senses and the intellectual faculties dependent on them have at hand, but that man is able to train spiritual senses that exist on the spiritual plane to a perfection that corresponds to that possessed by the physical senses on the physical plane. This was a given truth for Goethe; from birth he possessed the sense that enables man to come into intimate contact with the divine spirit that flows through the universe. Through this gift, which was expressed in him from an early age, he became not only the great poet but also the great naturalist. He feels at one with nature, “which creates a thousand tongues and languages through which it speaks.”

The basis of Goethe's study of nature is Linne€, who, according to Goethe's own statement, together with Spinoza and Shakespeare, had the greatest influence on his development. It was particularly during his first period in Weimar that Goethe experienced strong impressions through his Linné studies. The great Swedish scientist gave him a wide range of images of individual natural objects, and from these Goethe tried to find the spiritual unity. He derived from this the idea of the primal plant, the primal animal, because this concept becomes an idea for him, not a unique, sensually perceptible being, and he finds that “nature had to go through many, many stages before it rose to man”.

Nature becomes for him a mirror of the divine, and art in its order invents nothing, except merely another language of real (spiritual) truth - a higher language of nature. “In the works of art there is necessity - there is God,” he writes from Italy; and in another context he says, “I suppose the Greeks created their works of art according to the same laws as the Creator created his work.”

Goethe saw the ideas of these things in their inner sense. For him, they were not in contrast to experience, but were experience, and in their light he seeks the various stages of development of spirit to man. At the bosom of nature he feels as with a friend.

In particular, in Faust, the great spiritual reality shines through behind the surface of the physical world. The parts are mainly elements added later during the creation of the work. Through a multitude of examples, especially from the second part of Faust, Dr. Steiner tried to show how Goethe was one of the “initiates” and that many of the images he uses, like any true mystic, symbolize realities that do not exist for the general consciousness but are recognized as such by theosophical knowledge, including the doctrine of reincarnation (Helena episode).

The lecturer concluded that, in every respect, Goethe introduces us to a worldview that sees true reality in the spiritual and maintains that man has the ability to make contact with the divine, since it is itself a drop of the ocean. Goethe's motto can also be that of Theosophy.

If the eye were not sun-like,
How could we behold the light?
Is not the power of God within us,
How can we be enraptured by the divine?

The lecture, which was listened to with rapt attention, was met with applause from the full auditorium, which consisted mostly of members of the German colony.