First Berlin Lecture

We also call the intellectual soul the soul of feeling, because this soul is really a duality, because in human nature in the period we call the fourth post-Atlantic one, just as the intellect also the mind, the feeling, the sensation was effective. Because the soul also worked, what was closed to the intellect could be felt by the heart, and there arose that feeling understanding, which can also be called faith, for the Mystery of Golgotha; that is to say, the human soul inwardly felt the Christ Impulse. People felt the Christ impulse within them; they felt inwardly, spiritually connected to the Christ impulse, even if they could not understand its meaning, its essence. For them, Christ was there. But this presence had to fade away even more in the age of the “I-culture” in which we now find ourselves, because the “I” must, in order to fully grasp itself in its isolation, close itself off from all spiritual impulses that directly reach the soul. So we see a very strange spectacle. With the advent of the new period, we see quite clearly, even as it announces itself, how a new lack of understanding is added to the old lack of understanding, indeed, a lack of understanding that goes even further than the old one. Anyone who examines the facts of spiritual life must find it understandable that the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period could only receive the Christ impulse with the mind, but could not really grasp it spiritually. But from what could be received, it was known that the Christ is there, that He is effective in the evolution of humanity. It was felt.