Lecture Four

Remarkable phenomena were planned. If you consider the scientific ideals of to-day and hear people describing the wonderful progress made in recent decades ... just think what sort of picture these people could form of humanity in 2493, when in 1918 they are already so clever! People would not have built machines and so on, would not have made experiments, would not have gone the slow way ... with the forces of genius they would have foreseen everything and would also have created much. This year 666 was intended to deluge humanity with a knowledge and a culture which the primal gods had intended for men only during the third millennium. It cannot be conceived—need not be conceived—into what situation the so-called civilised world would have come if it had been deluged with this wisdom in the year 666! With their lack of self-discipline people would have come utterly to grief. For go to your history books and see what they say about man's unbalanced mood of soul in 666, and you will get some idea of how people would then have behaved if in this way genius had come among them. They have indeed brought things to a wonderful pass in what they have developed up to the year 1914 ... whatever would have become of them had they been deluged with all this wisdom of the Beast? It was nevertheless planned by certain higher spirits, particularly by a being of Ahrimanic nature who was to lead these spirits, that this being should appear, even if not on the physical plane—but he was to appear.