I. The Relationship of Anthroposophy to Religious Life

GA 343/anthroposophy_and_religious_life/p034 ·1921-09-26 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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Human evolution is penetrated by more and more things. Something is continuously developing which belongs to the Jews in particular: the awareness of personality, which is urged by ego development. With the Greeks there developed a mighty inner world beside the outer world of observed nature but this inner world could raise doubts, because it was observed merely as a world of mythology. Sensing the religious element rising in Hellenism, which lives in Greek mythology, through mythological fantasy, which people are searching for—because it was not to be found in nature—is what rises up in man. The Greek however didn't grasp the actual important point within the human inner life, resulting from mythological fantasy, which the Romans evolved into abstract thinking, which certainly already started with Aristotle, but which was developed particularly in Rome. This abstract way of thinking which is so powerful as to being people to the point of their I, bringing them to self-consciousness, to I-consciousness, this is something which we today still carry in us today and we carry it heavily in us, in the form of modern agnosticism.

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Cite: GA 343/anthroposophy_and_religious_life/p034 · edition English