Goethe and the Present

GA 68c — 25 October 1909, Berlin

XXVIII. About “Pandora”

We will be hearing more about Goethe's dramatic fragment “Pandora” today. If I wanted to tell you everything there is to know about it, I would have to give several lectures. [With this work by Goethe in particular, it will only ever be possible to make a few remarks about how the poet experienced this figure of Pandora as living forces within himself.] I can only gently hint at the meaning of the individual figures that the poet sensed within himself, as it were, as living forces. Those who immerse themselves in the drama from this perspective will get an inkling that it could not be otherwise than that the forces in question were at work in the poet's soul itself. In the last lecture we saw how Goethe contrasted the two figures of Prometheus and Epimetheus in a powerful way. [Creative powers were in the pre-earthly time, spiritual powers, these two figures, as the poet has portrayed them as human beings.] Already in individual words of the drama one can even feel that creative powers lived in Goethe. Spiritual powers had taken the place of human powers, so to speak, such as originate from the pre-earthly moon-period. You can imagine that those beings, the Angeloi, passed through their stage of humanity under quite different conditions. To pass through the stage as we are passing through it today, requires conditions such as now prevail on earth. They also had to go through a completely different state of consciousness than we have now. But it would be quite difficult to describe the peculiar storms of consciousness that those beings who lived on the old moon and completed their stage of human development there went through. [It was a very peculiar form of consciousness that those beings had as human beings on the old moon. At that time, man had only a dim awareness of images. Those beings who were then human beings certainly had a higher level of consciousness than we do, and this present consciousness of ours cannot be compared with the former consciousness of the moon. [The consciousness of these beings on the old moon is recorded in the consciousness of the beings who then remained above.] It was also an awareness of objects, but at a much higher level. If those entities on the old moon had held on to their consciousness and brought it with them into earthly conditions, they would not have been able to live there at all. That is why those beings had to withdraw to a higher sphere when the actual development of the earth began. They had to renounce, so to speak, the development of the earth. If they had not done so, they would not have been able to see the earthly conditions on earth at all. They would have experienced only what was still present in them as an inheritance from the old lunar conditions. Nor would they have been able to intervene in the course of earthly events. They owe the fact that they were really able to intervene to the circumstance that they renounced the fruits of earthly development and remained on a higher level. Their consciousness had radically changed into a reflective consciousness. If the Elohim had not remained above but had descended to the earth, they would have become Epimetheus natures. Man still retains a part of what he had become on a higher level. This part of his development manifests itself everywhere in his life. Man is subject, as it were, to the tragedy of seeing things afterwards that would have turned out differently if he had been able to see them beforehand.

It has long been known, for example, that Ibsen, who is revered today as a great poet, failed his school-leaving exam. This is just one case of a strange occurrence. Or you just need to let the grandiose example of the irony of the university teachers' day sink in, and you will see that this epimetheic moment is not an isolated case. Should high school students be supported sympathetically or not? Those professors confessed that they had no means of recognizing the gifts of such people.

This epimetheic element is what humans have inherited from the Elohim. But now humans have also conquered the other side, namely the possibility of ascending more or less in the foresight that receives impulses from what one already grasps as the future. In school, this case is rarely represented, as you know from experience. This Promethean moment could only slowly flow into our being, and the Epimethean gradually dries up. [Through the Promethean element, we now have two currents. One that is slowly drying up, the Epimethean, and one that is slowly rising, the Promethean.] In the former ability, however, people have not yet come very far today. But these two intellectual currents are essential for us. [As an example of how this slowly ascending current will shape itself in humanity, it is shown how there are already things today that people can objectively face without personal emotions:] In science, solar and lunar eclipses can be calculated in advance. Man is therefore Promethean in relation to mathematical things. Here, passion is silent and only truth speaks. In everything mathematical, therefore, foresight is possible. Mathematics is the clear, unambiguous and luminous beginning of the Promethean element. This had to develop at a certain pace, and this was brought about by the fact that the leader of this element did not descend to our earth too early. By the highest directive, he had to wait until the conditions were such that he could descend as Prometheus. The Prometheus of whom the myth speaks descended to men too early; therefore, by divine directive, he was chained to the rock. He knew the secret that another would come after him, who would then be the true Prometheus. Prometheus also knew the secret that Zeus would one day be overthrown. But the Prometheus who gradually allows the impulse of foresight to work in humanity is the Christ. (Christ is also the one who then overthrows Zeus.) Prometheus keeps his secret from Zeus, who had him chained to a rock in the Caucasus. (In the present, the two work together.)

Thus, Goethe's drama is at the center of everything we know about world development. One element brings one forward, the other connects one with that which is to be brought forward.

[So we can say: Yes], there is a being who descended to the people, which one must let enter more and more into his soul, [that is the Christ]. Only one must take time for it and always remember what can still come from above. But another part of humanity will take its time to accept the Christ, and will receive him more as a gift from above, where those beings who have not become Epimetheus remain. Thus, what the human being is allowed to receive within himself must merge with what comes from higher realms. In these words, Pandora's story comes to an end!

So you see how deep the shafts are from which we have to draw the feelings in order to understand such poetry. Only the theosophical school of thought teaches us to understand the greatest treasures of humanity correctly. But this movement also shows us that what truly leads forward lies with the gods in the spiritual world, from whence it must be fetched in order to connect it with what lies dormant in the human soul.

What the poets bring us is a gift from above, and with it we must connect what we have within ourselves. The poet gives us the Epimethean, and we in turn bring him the Promethean element from spiritual science. [People who take up Theosophy will become Prometheans. Epimetheans are those who want to be blessed from above. The Promethean element must have become the property of humanity if, three thousand years from now, Maitreya Buddha is to appear on Earth.]