Background to the Gospel of Mark. Lecture 3.
Rudolf Steiner, November 7, 1910: We have often spoken of that period of human evolution that has passed since the Atlantean catastrophe. We have dealt with the various epochs of this evolution — the original Indian, original Persian, Egypto-Chaldean and Greco-Latin — and then with our own, the fifth epoch of post-Atlantean civilization. We have also shown that two further epochs will pass before the coming of another great catastrophe, so that we have to reckon in all seven such epochs of earthly humanity.
It is
comprehensible that these epochs should be described differently. For as men of
the present day we desire to find how we stand as regards our own mission, we
can only gain some idea of what lies before us in the future when we know how
far we have participated in these different epochs in the past.
I have often
explained how we can distinguish between the separate human being, the little
world, or microcosm, and the great world, or macrocosm; I have shown how man,
the little cosmos, is a copy of the great world or macrocosm. Though this is a
truth, yet it is a very abstract truth, and as generally stated does not mean
very much. You will therefore find it helpful if we go into particulars
regarding this, and show how certain things met with in mankind have really to
be accepted as a little world, and can be compared with another, a greater
world.
The man of the
present day really belongs to all seven ages of the post-Atlantean epoch. We
have passed through all the earlier ages in former incarnations, and will pass
through all the later ages in later ones. In each incarnation we receive what
the age in question has to give. Because we receive this we bear within us, in a
certain sense, the fruits of former evolutions, and the most intimate things
within us are really those we have acquired during the ages mentioned. What each
of us has acquired in the course of these ages is more or less within human
consciousness today; while what we acquired generally in our Atlantean
incarnations, when the state of consciousness was very different, has sunk more
or less into our subconsciousness, and no longer reverberates within us as that
does which we have acquired in post-Atlantean times. In Atlantean times man was
more shielded from having his evolution injured in one way or another, because
his consciousness was not then so awake as it was in post-Atlantean times. For
this reason all we bear within us as the fruits of our Atlantean evolution is
more in accordance with the ordering of the world than is that which had its
origin in an age when we were already capable of bringing certain things in us
into disorder. Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings certainly influenced man in
Atlantean times, but they then worked quite differently, for man was not then
capable of shielding himself from them.
That men grew
ever more and more conscious is the most important fact of post-Atlantean
culture. In this respect human evolution from the Atlantean catastrophe until
the next great catastrophe is macrocosmic. Humanity evolves like one great man
throughout the seven post-Atlantean periods; and the most important things that
were to arise in human consciousness during these seven periods resemble what a
single individual experiences in the seven periods of his individual life.
The different
ages in the life of a man have been described as follows: The first seven
years, from birth to the change of teeth, is described as the first age. In it
man's physical body receives its form, is endowed with it as a gift. With the
coming of the second teeth this form, in all its essentials, is fixed. The man
then continues to grow within this form, which has received its essential
direction. What is accomplished during the first seven years is the construction
of the form. This period has to be understood from all sides. We must,
for instance, distinguish the first teeth, which the child develops early and
which fall out, from the second teeth which replace them. These two kinds of
teeth, with respect to the laws of the body, are quite different — the first are
inherited, they appear as the fruits of the organisms of the man's ancestors,
but the second teeth appear as the outcome of the laws of the man's own physical
being! This has to be realized. It is only when we go into such particulars that
we observe this difference. We receive our first teeth because our ancestors
pass them on to us with our organism; we acquire our second teeth because our
own physical organism is so constituted that we acquire them through it. In the
first period the teeth are directly bequeathed, in the second the physical
organism is bequeathed, and it produces the second teeth.
After this we
distinguish a second period of life, that from the change of teeth until
puberty, to about the 14th or 15th year. What is significant in it is the
development of the etheric body. The third period, to about the 21st year,
represents the development of the astral body. Then follows the development of
the ego, and this progresses from the development of the sentient soul to that
of the rational soul and on to the consciousness soul. It is thus we distinguish
the different ages in the life of a man. In this life, as you know well, only
that period is really ordered and regulated which falls within the first seven
years. This is, and must be so, as regards the man of the present day. Such
regular differentiations as we find in the first three periods of a man's life
do not occur later; neither is the time they last so clearly defined. If we
enquire into the causes of this we have to understand that in the evolution of
the world a middle period always comes after the first three of any seven
periods.
We are living at
present in the post-Atlantean age; we have already within us the fruits of the
first three periods, and of the fourth, for we are now in the fifth
post-Atlantean age, and are living on toward the sixth.
We are entirely
justified in finding a resemblance between the evolution of the various
post-Atlantean periods and that of the ages in the life of separate individuals,
so that here also it is possible to distinguish between what is macrocosmic and
what is microcosmic.
Let us take that
which is most characteristic of the first post-Atlantean period, the one we call
the Old-Indian; for in this the character of the post-Atlantean evolution was
most strongly expressed. In this first period an exalted and most clearly
differentiated wisdom existed, a primeval wisdom. What was taught in India by
the Seven Holy Rishis was in principle the same as was actually beheld in the
spiritual world by natural seers, and also by a large part of the people at that
time. This ancient wisdom was present in the first Indian period as an
inheritance. It was experienced clairvoyantly in Atlantean times, but now it had
become more of an inherited primeval wisdom, preserved and given out again by
those who, like the Rishis, had risen to spiritual worlds by initiation. What
had entered thus into human consciousness was essentially and absolutely an
inheritance. It was therefore entirely different in character from present-day
wisdom. People make a great mistake when they try to express the important
matters given out by the Holy Rishis in the first post-Atlantean period in
forms similar to those employed by the science of today. This is hardly
possible. The scientific forms in use today appeared first in the course of
post-Atlantean culture. The knowledge of the Ancient Rishis was of a very
different kind. Those who communicated it felt how it worked in them, how it
rose within them on the instant. If we are to understand what knowledge was at
that time, we must realize that its most marked characteristic was that it did
not spring in any way from memory. Memory played no part as yet in knowledge. I
pray you to keep this in mind. Today memory plays a main part in the passing on
of knowledge. When a university professor mounts the platform, or a public
speaker addresses an audience, he must be careful to consider beforehand what he
is to speak about, and retain it in his memory. Certainly, there are people who
say they do not require to do this, they follow their genius; but this does not
take them very far. At the present day the passing on of knowledge depends
really very largely on memory.
We gain a
correct perception of how knowledge was communicated in the ancient Indian epoch
if we grant that knowledge first rose in the head of him who communicated it at
the moment he passed it on to others. In former times knowledge was not prepared
before-hand as it is today. The Rishis did not prepare what they had to say,
so that their memory might retain it. They prepared themselves by attuning
themselves to what they were about to communicate. They said: “This knowledge
[Wissen] is not built on memory in any way. Memory has no part in it, my soul
must first enter into a holy atmosphere, it must be attuned to piety!” They
prepared this atmosphere, this feeling, but not what they were to say. At the
moment of communication it resembled rather a reading aloud from an invisible
script. Listeners who took down in writing what was said would have been
unthinkable at that time. This would have been an impossibility; anything
preserved by such means would have been regarded at that time as worthless. Only
those things were considered of value which a man preserved within his soul, and
which his soul then moved him to reproduce and impart to others in the same way
as he had received them. It would have been regarded as desecration to write
down these communications. Why? Because in the opinion of that day it was
thought that what was written on paper could not be the same as what was
communicated by word of mouth.
This tradition
endured for a long time, for such things are retained far longer in the feelings
than in the understanding of men, and when in the Middle Ages the art of
printing was added to that of writing many people regarded it for long as a
black art. The old feeling survived that what passed in a living way from one
soul to another should not be preserved in such a grotesquely profane way as was
the case when black printer's ink traced spoken words on a white page, thus
changing them into something lifeless, in order that later they might be revived
in a way perhaps that was far from edifying. We must therefore regard the direct
outpouring [Strömung] from soul to soul as a characteristic feature of the time
we are considering. This was an outstanding tendency of the first post-Atlantean
epoch, and must be realized if we are to understand, for instance, the old
Grecian and Germanic rhapsodists, who moved from place to place reciting their
very long poems. If they had employed memory they could never have recited these
poems again and again in the same way. It was a soul-force, a soul-attribute, far
more living than memory that lay behind these long recitations. Today if
anyone recites a poem he must have learnt it beforehand, but these people
experienced what they recited, it was as if newly created at the moment. This
was strengthened by the fact that in quite other ways than is the case today
the soul-element was then more in evidence. In our day, with some justification,
everything of a soul nature is more suppressed. When recitations or lectures are
given today what matters is the meaning; care is taken as to the meaning of the
words. This was not the case when in the Middle Ages a minstrel recited the
Nibelungenlied, for example. He had still a certain feeling for the inner rhythm,
he even stamped with his foot as he marked its rise and fall. These things were
but the echoes of what existed in more ancient times. But you would form no true
picture of the Rishis of India and their pupils if you thought they did not
communicate the ancient knowledge of Atlantis faithfully. The high-school pupil
of today, even if he wrote out the whole lecture, would not have reproduced
what had been said as faithfully as the Indian Rishis reproduced the ancient
knowledge in their day.
The
characteristic feature of the ages that followed is that Atlantean knowledge had
ceased to affect them. Up to the decline of the first period, that of the ancient
Indian culture, the legacy of knowledge man had received continued. Knowledge
continued to increase. This came to an end, however, with the first
post-Atlantean period, and afterwards hardly anything new came forth from human
nature. Increase in knowledge was therefore only possible in the first period,
the early Indian, after that it ceased. In the Persian period among those who
were influenced by the teaching of Zarathustra what we can compare with the
second age of development in the life of a man began, and it is best understood
when so compared. The first period of Indian culture can well be likened to the
first part of the life of a man — that from birth to the seventh year — when
everything of the nature of form receives its shape; later there is only growth
within the established form. Thus it was with the spirit in the first
post-Atlantean epoch. What follows later, how man develops the teaching that
comes to him in the second part of his life, can be likened to the first period
of ancient Persian development and with the instruction then received, only we
must be clear as to who the scholars were and who the teachers. I would like to
point out something here. Does it not strike you as strange how very differently
Zarathustra, the leader of the second post-Atlantean epoch, comes before us to
the way, for instance, the Indian Rishis do? While the Rishis appear like holy
initiated persons of a far distant age, into whom all the knowledge of ancient
Atlantis had poured, Zarathustra comes before us as the first initiate of
post-Atlantean times. Something new enters with him. Zarathustra is actually the
first historical personality of post-Atlantean times to be initiated into that
form of Mystery-knowledge (truly post-Atlantean) in which knowledge was
presented in such a way that it was actually comprehensible to the rational
understanding of man. What pupils received in those early days in the schools of
Zarathustra was pre-eminently a supersensible knowledge, but it dawned in them
so that for the first time it took the form of human conceptions. While it is
not possible to reproduce the knowledge of the ancient Rishis in the forms of
modern science, this is possible with the knowledge of Zarathustra. Certainly
this is a purely supersensible knowledge, dealing as it does with the
supersensible worlds, but it is clothed in conceptions similar to the
conceptions and ideas of post-Atlantean times. Among the followers of
Zarathustra a teaching arose of which we can say: “It was constructed
systematically in accordance with the rational conceptions of man.” This means
it sprang from the ancient holy treasures of wisdom which evolved up to the end
of the Indian period, and continued from generation to generation; no new thing
was later added to this, but the old was elaborated further. The mission of the
Mysteries of the second post-Atlantean period can be realized through a
comparison: we can compare it with the publishing of some occult book. Any book
that is the result of investigations into higher world can be clothed in a
logical arrangement, thus bringing it down to the physical plane. It is possible
to do this. But if my “Outline of
Occult Science” had been treated in this way a book of fifty volumes would
have resulted, each as large as the book itself. If this had been done, each
section would have been presented in strictly logical form; this is in the book,
and it might have been treated in this way. But it is also possible to proceed
otherwise. One can, for instance, leave something to the reader; leave him to
think matters out for himself. People must try to do this today; otherwise the
work of occultism could not progress.
Now, in the
fifth post-Atlantean period, with his acquired powers of forming conceptions, it
is possible for man to approach occult knowledge and to increase it, but at the
time of Zarathustra, thoughts had first to be discovered capable of dealing with
these facts. At that time knowledge such as we have today did not exist.
Something there was that had remained over like an echo from the time of the
Rishis, and to this was added what was capable of being clothed in human
thoughts. But human conceptions had first to be found, and into them
supersensible facts had to be poured. Different degrees in power to grasp what
was supersensible then first made its appearance. We may say: The Rishis
still spoke absolutely in the way men had always spoken, in a pictorial
language, an imaginative language. They passed on the knowledge they possessed
from soul to soul when speaking in this vital picture-language which came
whenever they had any kind of supersensible knowledge to transmit. With “cause
and effect” and the other ideas we have today with logic in any form — men did
not concern themselves in the least. All that arose later. Then in the second
post-Atlantean period they began to be interested in supersensible knowledge.
They then felt for the first time the opposition, as it were, of the physical
plane; they felt the necessity of giving expression to what was supersensible so
that it might assume forms that thought could grasp on the physical plane. This
was the essential mission of the first period of Persian civilization.
Then followed
the third period, the period of Egyptian culture. People now had supersensible
ideas. This is difficult for the men of today. Try and picture conditions as
they were at that time; there was as yet no physical science, but people had
ideas that had been gained concerning supersensible worlds, and they could speak
of them in the thought-forms of the physical plane.
In the third
epoch people began to direct what they had learnt from supersensible worlds to
the physical world. This can again be compared with the third life-period of a
man. While in the second life-period he learns, he then goes on to employ what
he has learnt. In the third period of their lives most people feel constrained
to direct their learning to the physical plane.
The pupils of
the heavenly knowledge were those who, in the second epoch, had been pupils of
Zarathustra, but they now began to direct what they had learnt to the physical
plane. Put into modern language we can say: men now learnt that all they beheld
through supersensible vision could only be understood if expressed by a
triangle; if they used the triangle as an image to express the supersensible,
they learnt that the supersensible part of human nature which permeates the
physical part can be grasped as a triad. Other conceptions had come to man so
that he now applied physical things to what was non-physical. Geometry, for
example, was first learnt so that it was accepted as symbolic of ideas. Men had
this and made use of it — the Egyptians in the art of surveying and agriculture,
the Chaldeans in the study of the stars and the founding of astrology and
astronomy. What formerly was held to be only supersensible was now applied to
things seen physically. People began to use what had been born in them as
supersensible wisdom on the physical plane. This was first done in the third
cultural period.
In the fourth
period, the Greco-Latin, this became a fact of outstanding importance. Up to
that time men possessed supersensible knowledge, but did not use it as
described. It was not necessary for the Holy Rishis to use it in this way, for
knowledge flowed into them directly from the spiritual world. In the time of
Zarathustra people had only to ponder over spiritual knowledge, and they knew
exactly the form this knowledge would take.
In the
Egypto-Chaldean age they clothed conceptions from spiritual worlds in what they
had gained in physical existence, and in the fourth period they said: Is it
right that what is acquired from the spiritual world should be applied to
physical things? Are the things gained in this way really suited to physical
conditions?
These questions
were only put by man to himself in the fourth period after he had used this
knowledge innocently, and applied it to his physical requirements for a long
time. He then became more self-conscious and asked: “What right have I to
apply spiritual knowledge to physical uses?”
Now it always
happens that in an age when any important task has to be carried out, some
person appears who can fulfill this task. It was such a person to whom it first
occurred to ask the question: “Have I the right to apply my supersensible
ideas to physical facts?” You can see how what I am trying to indicate
developed. You can see, for example, how vital Plato's link still was with the
ancient world, how he still used ideas in the ancient form, applying them to
physical conditions. It was his pupil, Aristotle, who asked the question “Ought one to do this?” For this reason he is regarded as the founder of
logic.
Those who do not
concern themselves in any way with spiritual science might ask: Why did logic
arise first in the fourth epoch? Was there not some reason, seeing that
evolution had gone on indefinitely, for man to ask himself this question at a
specified time?
When conditions
are really studied, important turning points in evolution are seen to occur at
certain times. One such important turning point in evolution occurred between
the time of Plato and Aristotle. In this age there was still, in a certain
sense, something of the old connection with the spiritual world, as this existed
in Atlantean times. Living knowledge certainly died in the Indian epoch; but it
was replaced by something new that came from above. Man now became critical and
asked: How can I apply what is supersensible to physical things? This means:
he was then first aware that he could himself accomplish something; observing
the world around him he realiaed that he could bring something down into this
world. This was a most important age.
We divine
[spüren] that conceptions and ideas are supersensible things when from their
nature we begin to perceive in them a guarantee for the supersensible world. But
very few people do perceive this. For most people the fabric of conceptions and
ideas is worn very thin and threadbare. Although they may divine that something
lives in these which can give them proof of human immortality, conviction is not
reached, because the conceptions and ideas concerning the solid reality for
which man craves are of such a thin-spun consistency. For most people the fabric
they have spun from conceptions and ideas is very thin and worn; though
something lives in it which can give them consciousness of immortality, they are
incapable of full conviction. But at a time when humanity had sunk to the final
— hardly any longer believed in — shreds of that fabric of ideas which it had
spun from higher worlds, a mighty new impulse came from the spiritual world and
entered into it — this was the Christ-Impulse. The greatest spiritual
Reality entered humanity in our post-Atlantean age at a time when man was least
spiritually gifted, when all that remained to him was the spiritual gift of
ideas.
For anyone who
studies human development in a wide sense, it is a most interesting
consideration — apart from the fact that it affects the soul so overwhelmingly —
it is most interesting (even scientifically) to compare the infinite
spirituality of that essence which entered human evolution with the Christ
Principle with that which, like a last thin-spun thread from spiritual realms,
caused man to ask shortly before: in what way this thread connected him with
spirituality. In other words: when we place Aristotelean logic, this weaving of
abstract conceptions to which mankind had at last attained, alongside that
great Spiritual Outpouring. We can think of no greater disparity than between
the spirituality that came down to the physical plane in the Being of Christ
and that which man had preserved for himself. You can therefore understand that
in the early Christian centuries it was quite impossible for men to grasp the
spiritual nature of Christ with the thin thread of ideas spun from Aristotelean
philosophy. Gradually the endeavor arose to grasp the facts of human and
world events in a way conformable to Aristotelean logic. This was the task that
faced the philosophy of the Middle Ages.
It is important
for us now to compare the fourth post-Atlantean epoch with the fourth period in
the life of a man — that period in which the ego develops — to see how the “I
am” of all humanity entered human evolution at a time when humanity as a whole
was really furthest withdrawn from the spiritual world. This is why man was at
first quite incapable of comprehending Christ except through faith; why
Christianity had at first to be a matter of faith; only later, and by degrees,
was it to become a matter of knowledge. It will become a matter of knowledge;
but we have only now begun to enter with understanding into the study of the
Gospels. For hundreds and hundreds of years Christianity was only a matter of
faith, and had to be so, because man had descended furthest from the spiritual
world.
As this was
man's position in the fourth post-Atlantean period, it was necessary after so
deep a descent that he should begin to rise once more. The fourth period brought
him furthest on the downward path, but also gave him the first great impulse
upward. Naturally this spiritual impulse could not be understood at first; only
in the periods that follow will it be possible for him to understand it. But now
we can at least recognize the task before us: We have to refill our ideas
with spirit from within.
The evolution of
the world is not simple. When, for instance, a ball starts rolling in one
direction, its momentum tends to make it continue rolling in the same direction.
If this is to be changed another impulse must come to give the thrust necessary
to a change of direction.
Pre-Christian
culture had the tendency to continue the downward plunge into the physical
world, and has continued to do so to our day. The upward tendency is only
beginning, hence the need of a constant incentive to this upward direction. We
can see this downward tendency more especially in men's thoughts. The greater
part of what is called philosophy today is nothing more than the continued
downward roll of the ball. Aristotle divined something of this; he grasped the
fact that there was a spiritual reality in the fabric of human thoughts. But a
couple of centuries after his day, men were no longer capable of realizing that
the content of the human head was connected with reality. The driest, most
desiccated ideas of the old philosophy are those of Kant and everything
associated with Kantism. Kant's philosophy puts the main question in such a way
that he cuts every link between what man evolves as ideas, between perceptions
as an inner life, and that which ideas really are. All this is old and dead, and
is therefore not fitted to give any vital uplift for the future. You will now no
longer wonder that the conclusion of my lectures on psychology had a
theosophical background. I explained that in all we strive for, more especially
as regards knowledge of the soul, our task must be to allow ourselves to be so
stimulated by this knowledge, given to us formerly by the Gods and brought down
by us to Earth, that we can offer it up again on the altars of the Gods.: We
have only to make the ideas that come to us from the spiritual world once more
our own.
It is not from
any want of modesty that I say: Teaching regarding the soul must of necessity
be a scientific teaching, that it must rise again from the frozen state into
which it has fallen. There have been many psychologists in the past and there
are many still today, but the ideas they use are void of spiritual life. It is
a significant sign that a man like Franz Brentano allowed the first volume of
his book on psychology to appear in 1874. Though much it contains is distorted,
it is on the whole correct. The second volume was ready, and was to have been
published that year, but he was unable to complete it, he stuck in it. He still
could give an outline of his teaching, but the spiritual impulse necessary if
the work was to be brought to a conclusion was wanting.
Such
psychologists as we have today — Von Wundt and Lipps, for example — are not really
psychologists, for they work only with preconceived ideas; from the first they
were incapable of producing anything. Brentano's psychology was fitted to do
this, but it remained incomplete. This is the fate of all knowledge that is
dying. Death does not enter the domain of natural science so quickly. Here
people can work with ideas, for the facts they have accumulated speak for
themselves. In the Science of Spirit this does not happen so easily. The whole
substratum is immediately lost if people employ ordinary ideas. The muscles of
the heart do not immediately cease to beat even if analyzed like a mineral
product without any recognition of their true nature; but the soul cannot be
analyzed in this way.
Thus science
dies from above downwards, and men will gradually reach a point where they will
certainly be able to appreciate natural laws, but in a way entirely independent
of science. The construction of machines, instruments, telephones and the like,
is something very different from understanding science in the right way or
carrying it a step further. Anyone can make use of an electric apparatus without
necessarily understanding it. True science is gradually dying. We have now
reached a point where external science must receive new life from spiritual
science. Our fifth period of culture is that in which the ball of science rolls
slowly downhill.
When it can roll
no further its activity will cease, as in the case of Brentano. At the same time
the upward progress of humanity must receive ever more life. And it will receive
it. This can only happen when efforts are made by which knowledge, even if this
has been gained outwardly, becomes fruitful through what occult investigation
has to give. Our age, the fifth period, will increasingly assume a character
which will show that the ancient Egypto-Chaldean epoch is repeated in it; as yet
we have not gone very far with this repetition, it is only beginning. That this
is the case can be gathered from what occurred at our annual general meeting. On
that occasion Herr Seiler spoke about “Astrology,” showing that as spiritual
scientists you were in a position to connect certain conceptions with
astrological ideas, whereas this was not possible with the ideas of modern
astronomy. Modern astronomy would consider these ideas to be nonsense. This is
not because of what astronomical science is in itself — for this science has a
better opportunity than any other of being led back to what is spiritual — but
because men's thoughts are far removed from any return to spirituality. There is
a means, through what astronomy has to offer, by which such a return might
easily be made to the fundamental truths of astrology, so undervalued today. But
some time must elapse before a bridge can be formed between these two. During
this time all kinds of theories will be devised, theories by which the movements
of the planets, for instance, will be explained in a purely materialistic way.
Things will be still more difficult in the domain of chemistry, and in
everything connected with life. Here it will he still more difficult to build
the bridge. It will he done most easily in the domain of soul-knowledge. To do
so it is necessary that people should understand what was stated at the
conclusion of my lecture on psychology. There I showed that the stream of
soul-life does not only flow from the past toward the future, but also from the
future into the past; that we have two time-streams — the etheric part of the
life of the soul goes toward the future, the astral part of us on the other
hand flows back toward the past. (There is probably no one on the Earth today
who is conscious of this unless he has an impulse toward what is spiritual.) We
are first able to form a conception of the life of the soul when we realize
that something comes continually to meet us out of the future. Otherwise this is
quite impossible. We must be able to form such a conception, and for this, when
speaking of cause and effect, we must break with those ordinary methods of
thought which deal mainly with the past. We must not only reckon with the past
in such connections, but must speak of the future as something real; something
that comes toward us in just as real a way as the past slips from us. But it
will be a long time yet before such ideas become prevalent, and till they do
there will be no psychology.
The nineteenth
century produced a smart idea: “Psychology without souls.” People were very
proud of this idea, and with it they declared: “We simply study the
revelations of the human soul, but do not concern ourselves with the soul that
is the cause of these!”
A Soul-teaching
without Souls! This can he carried further; but what results (to use a common
comparison) is nothing else than a mealtime without food. Such is psychology!
Now people are of course not satisfied when dinnertime comes and the plates are
empty; but the science of the nineteenth century was strangely satisfied with
the psychology put before it, which was in no way concerned with the soul. This
began comparatively early — but into every part of it spiritual life must
flow.
Therefore we
have to record the beginning among us of an entirely new life. The old in a
certain sense is finished and a new life must begin. We must feel this. We must
feel that a primeval wisdom came to us from ancient Atlantean times, that this
gradually declined, and we are now faced with the task of beginning in our
present incarnation to gather more and more new wisdom, which will be the wisdom
of the men of a later day. The coming of the Christ-Impulse made this possible.
It will continually develop a living activity, and from it men will perhaps be
able best to evolve toward the real, historic Christ, when all tradition
concerning Him and all that is outwardly connected with these traditions has
died away.
From what has
been said you can see how the post-Atlantean evolution can actually he compared
with the life of a single man; how it is indeed a kind of macrocosm facing man,
the microcosm. But the individual man is in a very strange position. What is
left to him for the second half of his life of all he acquired in the first
half, which when used up is followed by death?
The spirit alone
can conquer death and carry on to a new incarnation that which gradually begins
to decay when we have passed the first half of our life. Our evolution advances
until our thirty-fifth year, then it begins to decline. But the spirit then
first begins truly to rise! What it is unable to develop further in the second
half of life within the body, it brings to completion in a succeeding
incarnation. Thus we see the body gradually decline, but the spirit blossom more
and more.
The macrocosm
reveals a picture similar to that of man: Up to the fourth post-Atlantean
epoch we have a youthful upward striving cultural development; from then onwards
a real decline; death everywhere as regards the development of human
consciousness; but at the same time the dawn of a new spiritual life. The
spiritual life of man will be born again in the age following our present one.
But he will have to work with full consciousness on what is to be reincarnated.
When this happens the other must die, truly die. We gaze prophetically into the
future; many sciences have arisen and will arise for the benefit of
post-Atlantean civilization — they, however, belong to what is dying. The life
that streamed directly into human life along with the Impulse of Christ will in
future rise in man in the same way as Atlantean knowledge rose within
the holy Rishis.
What ordinary
science knows of Copernicus today is but the external part of his knowledge,
the part belonging to decline. That which will live on, that will be fruitful,
not only the part through which he has already worked for four centuries, this
part man must win for himself. The teaching of Copernicus as given today is not
so very true; its truth will first be revealed by spiritual science.
So it is as
regards much that is held to be most true in astronomy, and so it will be with
everything else which men value as knowledge today. Certainly, what science
discovers today is profitable. Therein lies its usefulness. In so far as the
science of today is technical it is justified; but in so far as it has
something to contribute to human knowledge, it is a dead product. It is useful
for trade, but for that no spiritual content is required. In so far as it seeks
to discover anything concerning the mysteries of the universe, it belongs to
declining civilization. In order to enrich our knowledge of the secrets of the
universe, external science must superimpose on all it has to offer the wisdom
derived from spiritual science.
What I have said
today can form an introduction to our studies on the Gospel of Mark, which are
about to begin. But first I had to speak of the necessity for the entrance into
humanity of the greatest Spiritual Impulse of all time at a moment when only the
last faint shreds of spirituality remained to it.
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