Lecture One

Where historical life is concerned it is always Luciferic forces that lead us to hatch out far-reaching world-dreams which fail to reckon with the nature of man. In the course of human thought what a vast number of ideas have been devised for making the world happy! And in the firm opinion of those who devise them, the world can become happy only through these particular ideas. This is because such Luciferic thinking is of an airy kind, soaring aloft and taking no account of all that is swarming around below, and believing that the world can be organised on the lines of these airy notions. Such ideas of how to make the world happy, resting always upon a defective knowledge of man, are of a Luciferic nature; dreams of world power derived from particular realms of human activity are of an Ahrimanic kind. For these dreams are developed out of the subconscious. It is Ahrimanic to take a certain realm of human activity and to wish to bring the whole world under its aegis. All that is connected with man's lust for ruling over his fellows, all that is in opposition to healthy social impulses, is of an Ahrimanic nature. The man of whom it could be said—not in a superstitious way but in our own sense—that he is possessed by Lucifer, loses interest in his fellow-men. The man possessed by Ahriman would like to have as many men as possible in his power and then to proceed—if he is clever—to make use of human frailty in order to rule over men. It is Ahrimanic to seek in the sub-earthly, in the subconscious, for human weaknesses as a means of ruling men.