Fifth Lecture

What was it, then, that, until the 15th century, and in its after-effects even further, was the basis of what worked from general human education into the consciousness of the souls of the civilized world? All this was based on the fact that, during these centuries, human beings were able to assimilate supersensuous knowledge into their imaginative life, not in the way it is to be assimilated now through spiritual science, but in the way they were able to assimilate it at that time, according to their still atavistic states of consciousness. A fundamental fact filled human souls. It was the fundamental fact that is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. In the way people thought at that time, they knew that the Christ-Being had descended from supermundane heights, had been embodied in the man Jesus of Nazareth, and that something had happened in the Mystery of Golgotha that could not have happened according to ordinary laws discoverable by the knowledge of nature. The concepts and ideas that people had of the Mystery of Golgotha had such ideas and such conceptions that went beyond the earthly sphere.