The History of Mankind in the Light of Supersensible Reality Research

Herman Grimm made some very correct remarks about this and he understood many things very correctly in relation to the history of mankind and felt very clearly how the spirit of science can emerge again. He thought - and he discussed this subject very thoroughly with me - that his ideal would be to look at human history in such a way that the impulses present themselves as a world-effective imagination. It is not correct that the impulses present themselves in this way, but nevertheless Grimm has instinctively come up with a very curious fact. He first asks himself: What, for example, is Gibbon's way of presenting history? Gibbon wrote the history of the decline of the Roman Empire, and his way of looking at it can be compared to the [scientific] way of knowing of the present day [it is the application of knowledge of nature to history]. Gibbon describes the decline of the Roman Empire and all the forces that worked to bring about its downfall. He does not grasp what was an emerging impulse at the time, because he cannot grasp emerging impulses with the intellect and the scientific way of looking at things. Thus he can grasp only that which does not make historical life, but only that which has arisen when historical impulses have already expired.