Third Lecture

This is the supplement to what we discussed yesterday. And so it is basically with all evolution, insofar as it develops gradually under the influence of the Christ impulse. For what is happening now in the twentieth century has gradually developed. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ Impulse has entered into the earthly development of mankind, and has worked therein. But if the Christ Impulse had been limited to the way in which people have understood it, it would have been able to accomplish little so far. We are only just beginning to understand; we are only just beginning to grasp something of what the Mystery of Golgotha is through spiritual science. The Christ Impulse has worked. But it has truly worked least of all in the bickering and shouting of theologians. It would have been bad if only as much of the Christ Impulse could have entered into the evolution of the earth as people have grasped with their minds in the various epochs. But I have pointed out how the Christ impulse has worked through the centuries into the unconscious powers of the soul. I have described to you how on October 28, 312 Constantine stood against Maxentius, and how a battle was fought there that decided the fate of Europe. This battle was not fought by the skill of the generals, but by what took place in the subconscious of men. Maxentius consulted the Sibylline books. They seduced him, instead of leaving his armies in safety in Rome, to lead them out of the gates of Rome, to meet the armies of Constantine. But Constantine had the dream: to let the monogram of Christ go in front of his army. Thus it was not the sagacity of the generals that was followed, but dreams, that is to say, the impulses of the subconscious. Europe has been shaped by what emerged from this. The real shaping of the Christ impulse, over which theologians quarrelled, did not come from what the theologians argued about, but from what the living Christ was in the fields where he can work. Not the human concepts of Christ are important, but the living Christ, who works through the impulses that are His. When people did not understand Him, He entered into a realm where there is no need to understand, where one absorbs in dreams what is to pass into the sphere of the will.