Christ Impulse and Human Evolution Beyond the Abyss

This may be illustrated by the most mundane things. I could prove it to you, for example, in the details of the development of banking affairs in the second half of the nineteenth century. Perhaps it is only for future historians to show clearly that a fundamental change then came about which we may describe by saying that in banking affairs the personality was gradually shattered. I should have to draw your attention to the time when the four Rothschild's went out into the world from Frankfurt, one to Vienna, another to Naples, the third to London, the fourth to Paris. The whole of banking affairs was then brought into a personal sphere by the personal talent directed to them. The personality immersed itself in finance. To-day you see banking affairs becoming impersonal, they are passing into joint stock companies; capital is no longer managed by a single personality. Capital begins to control itself. Purely objective forces are working in capital, and there are already forces in this realm which draw the will of the personality to themselves, so that the personality has become powerless. Thus with seeing eyes one can penetrate into these mundane things and one can see everywhere how humanity, as regards the personality, has descended to the lowest depth. Now the personality may save itself and ascend again. It can save itself, for example, by really learning to strengthen its inner soul-forces and depend upon itself and make itself independent of the objective forces of capital. But the personality may also throw itself into these forces, it may in a certain way sail into and plunge into the abyss by allowing itself to be ensnared by the forces active in capital. The most important point of time, when the human personality descends to the earth and would have to turn back again, is the point of time of the appearance of Christ Jesus on the earth. He gave to the earth the power which made it possible for man to rise again; and he rises to the extent to which he has fellowship with Christ Jesus. Humanity will ascend to the point where the understanding dawns of what this event signified, so that for a large part of humanity this Christ impulse becomes the innermost impulse of their being, from which they work in life. Men must learn to understand more and more what Paul said: It is not I who work; but Christ works in me.