Second Lecture

Much of what appears as spiritual in Central Europe—as in Jakob Böhme—is rooted in the ego. In his work, the ego often cannot find the words; the conscious soul finds the words, finds what can have an external effect. Try to grasp how, in Goethe, the natural course of the development of ego culture in Central Europe strives upward. How Goethe finds what can be called ego culture is not immediately comprehensible to the outside observer: the profound theory of natural development from the simplest to the highest being. But the people of his time do not understand it. Then Darwin comes along and gives birth to the same thing from the consciousness soul that Goethe had formed from the ego, and the whole world understands it, even the ego culture understands it.