Lecture X

I do not mean that that which lived on as Platonism was therefore to be condemned or harshly criticised. Needless to say the soul of Plato carried over livingly into the following epochs piece by piece and ever more and more, what lay within him. But Plato above all, Plato who was still united with the Mysteries of antiquity, of whom I said that his Doctrine of Ideas contained a certain ancient Persian impulse—Plato found the greatest difficulty in entering a new incarnation. When he had absolved the time between death and a new birth—and in his case it was a fairly long time—he found real difficulty in entering the Christian epoch into which, after all, he had to enter. Thus although in the sense I just explained we may describe Plato as a forerunner of Christianity, nevertheless the whole orientation of his soul was such as to make it extraordinarily difficult for him, when ready to descend to earth again, to find a bodily organism into which he might carry his former impulses in a way that they might now come forth again with a Christian colouring.