The Michael Mystery
GA 26
XXVII. The Apparent Extinction of the Knowledge of the Spirit in the New Age
[ 1 ] Whoever would form a just estimate of Anthroposophy and the relation it bears to the evolution of the Spiritual soul, must look ever and again at the particular constitution of mind among civilized humanity, which began with the rise of the natural sciences and reached its culmination in the nineteenth century.
[ 2 ] Let him but place the peculiar character of this age before his soul's eye, and compare it with that of earlier ages. At all times during mankind's conscious evolution, Knowledge was regarded as being that which brings Man together with the world of Spirit. Whatever a man was in relation to the Spirit, that he ascribed to Knowledge. In Art, as in Religion, Knowledge lived.
[ 3 ] A change came with the first dawning gleams of the Age of Consciousness. Knowledge now began no more to concern itself with a great part of human soul-life. It was bent upon investigating the kind of relation which Man develops towards external existence when he directs his senses and his reasoning mind on to the world of ‘Nature.’ But it refused any longer to concern itself with the relations which Man develops towards the Spirit-world when he makes the same use of his inner faculties of perception as he does of his outer senses.
[ 4 ] Thus it came about of necessity that the spiritual life of Man became linked, not with the Knowing of the present age, but with the Knowledge of past ages—with Tradition.
[ 5 ] A split came into Man's soul-life; it fell into two. Before him was Nature-knowledge on the one side, striving ever further and further afield, unfolding its powers in the actual and living present. On the other side was the inner life, with its feeling-experience of a relation to the Spirit-world that once, in olden times, had been fed from a corresponding fount of knowledge. From this feeling-experience there gradually faded away all understanding as to how, in olden times, the corresponding knowledge had come about. Men possessed the tradition, but no longer the way by which the truths handed down by tradition had been known. They could only believe in the tradition.
[ 6 ] Anyone who considered the spiritual situation with a perfectly calm and luminous mind, about the middle of the nineteenth century, could not but have said to himself: “Humanity has reached a point when the only knowledge which it still thinks itself capable of developing has nothing to do with the spirit. Whatever it is possible to know about the spirit, mankind in former times was able to discover to-day the capacity for such discovery has gone from the human soul.”
[ 7 ] In all its force and bearings, however, people did not place the situation thus clearly before the mind's eye. They confined themselves to saying, “Knowledge simply does not reach to the spiritual world; the spiritual world can only be an object of Faith.”
[ 8 ] It may shed some light on the matter, if we look back into the times when Grecian wisdom was forced to yield place to the Christianized Roman world. When the last schools of Greek Philosophy were closed by the Roman emperor, the last treasures too of ancient spiritual learnings wandered away from the soil on which henceforth the European spirit developed its life and thought. They found connection with the Academy of Gondi Shapur, in Asia. This was one of the places where, owing to the deeds of Alexander, the tradition of the ancient learning had remained preserved in the East. In the form which Aristotle had been able to give it, this ancient learning was still living there.
[ 9 ] It was caught however in the tide of that eastern stream which one may name Arabism. Arabism is, in one aspect of its character, a premature development of the Spiritual Soul. Through a soul-life working prematurely in the direction of the Spiritual Soul, Arabism afforded the opportunity for a spiritual wave to pour itself from Asia through this channel over Africa, Southern Europe, Western Europe,—and so to fill certain members of European humanity with an intellectualism which ought only to have come later. Southern and Western Europe received, in the seventh and eighth centuries, spiritual impulses which should really not have come until the age of the Spiritual Soul.
[ 10 ] This spiritual wave could awaken the intellectual life in Man, but not that deeper level of experience by which the soul enters into the spiritual world.
[ 11 ] And so, when Man was exercising his faculties of knowledge in the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, he could only go down to a depth of soul not deep enough for him to light upon the spiritual world.
[ 12 ] The Arabism by which European spiritual life was invaded kept human souls in their life of Knowledge back from the spiritual world. Prematurely, it brought into action that intellect which can only take hold of external Nature.
[ 13 ] And this Arabism proved very powerful. Upon whomsoever it laid its grasp, an inward and for the most part all-unconscious arrogance began to take hold of this person's soul. He felt the power of intellectualism, but did not feel the inability of the mere intellect to penetrate into reality. So he abandoned himself to that external reality which comes of its own accord to men and works upon their senses. He never thought of taking any step towards the spiritual reality.
[ 14 ] This was the situation with which the spiritual life of the Middle Ages was faced. It had inherited the mighty traditions of the spirit-world; but all its soul-life was so steeped in intellectualism through—one might say—the covert influence of Arabism, that knowledge found no access to the sources whence the inherited traditions, after all, drew their substance.
[ 15 ] Thenceforth, from the early Middle Ages on, there was a constant struggle between what was instinctively felt in men's minds as a link with the Spirit, and the form which Thought had assumed under Arabism.
[ 16 ] Men felt within them the world of ideas. To their inner life it was an immediate reality. But they could not find in their souls the power to experience, within the Ideas, the living Spirit.
Thus arose the Realist philosophy, which felt a reality in the Ideas, but could not find this reality. This Realist philosophy heard in the Idea-world the speech of the Cosmic Word, but was not able to understand its language.
[ 17 ] The Nominalist philosophy, on the other hand, contended that since the speech was not understandable it was not there at all. For Nominalism, the world of Ideas was only a collection of formulae in the human soul, without root in any spiritual reality.
[ 18 ] What was here surging in these two opposing currents, lived on into the nineteenth century. Nominalism became the scientific school of thought, for the knowledge of the natural world. From external data of the sense-world it built up a grand conceptual structure, but it reduced to nothing all insight into the inner being of the world of Ideas. ‘Realism’ lived a dead existence. It knew of the reality of the world of Ideas, but could not attain to it in living and perceptive knowledge.
[ 19 ] Men will however attain to it when Anthroposophy finds the way to a living experience of the Spirit in the Ideas. Side by side with the Nominalism of the natural sciences must stand a Realism truly advanced and developed, bringing a way of knowledge which shows that the knowledge of spiritual things has not died out in mankind, but can rise anew from new-opened sources in the human soul, and flow once more through human evolution.
Leading Thoughts
[ 20 ] Anyone who turns the eyes of his soul upon the course of human evolution in the age of Natural Science, is met at first sight by a gloomy prospect. Splendid is the growth of Man's knowledge in respect to all things of the external world. But there comes over him, in return, a peculiar form of consciousness, as though a knowledge of the spiritual world had ceased to be possible at all.
[ 21 ] It seems as though such Knowledge could only have been possessed by men in olden times, and as though with regard to the spiritual world people must simply remain content to accept the old traditions and make them an object of Belief.
[ 22 ] From the resulting uncertainty during the Middle Ages concerning Man's relation to the spiritual world, there arose on the one hand a disbelief in the real spirit-content of Ideas—represented by Nominalism, of which the modern scientific view of Nature is a continuation—and on the other hand, as a knowledge of the reality of Ideas, Realism, which, however can only find its fulfillment in Anthroposophy.
Das scheinbare Erlöschen der Geist-Erkenntnis in der Neuzeit
(Goetheanum, März 1925)
[ 1 ] Wer die Anthroposophie in ihrem Verhältnis zur Entwickelung der Bewußtseinsseele richtig beurteilen will, der muß immer von neuem den Blick auf diejenige Geistesverfassung der Kulturmenschheit lenken, die mit dem Aufblühen der Naturwissenschaften beginnt und die im neunzehnten Jahrhundert ihren Höhepunkt erreicht.
[ 2 ] Man stelle sich doch den Charakter dieses Zeitalters vor das Seelenauge hin und vergleiche ihn mit dem früherer Zeitalter. In aller Zeit der bewußten Menschheitsentwickelung war die Erkenntnis als das angesehen, was den Menschen mit der Geistwelt zusammenbringt. Was man im Verhältnis zum Geiste war, das schrieb man der Erkenntnis zu. In Kunst, in Religion lebte die Erkenntnis.
[ 3 ] Das wurde anders, als die Morgendämmerung des Bewußtseinszeitalters begann. Da fing die Erkenntnis an, sich um einen großen Teil des menschlichen Seelenlebens nicht mehr zu kümmern. Sie wollte erforschen, was der Mensch als Verhältnis zum Dasein entwickelt, wenn er seine Sinne und seinen beurteilenden Verstand nach der «Natur» richtet. Aber sie wollte sich nicht mehr mit dem beschäftigen, was der Mensch als Verhältnis zur Geist-Welt entwickelt, wenn er sein inneres Wahrnehmungsvermögen so gebraucht wie die Sinne.
[ 4 ] So entstand die Notwendigkeit, das geistige Leben des Menschen nicht an das Erkennen der Gegenwart anzuschließen, sondern an Erkenntnisse der Vergangenheit, an Traditionen.
[ 5 ] Entzwei gespalten wurde das menschliche Seelenleben. Vor dem Menschen stand die Natur-Erkenntnis, immer weiter strebend auf der einen Seite, in lebendiger Gegenwart sich entfaltend. Auf der ändern Seite war das Erleben eines Verhältnisses zur geistigen Welt, für das die entsprechende Erkenntnis in älteren Zeiten erflossen war. Für dieses Erleben verlor sich allmählich alles Verständnis, wie die entsprechende Erkenntnis in der Vorzeit zustande gekommen ist. Man hatte die Überlieferung, aber nicht mehr den Weg, auf dem die überlieferten Wahrheiten erkannt worden sind. Man konnte nur an die Überlieferung glauben.
[ 6 ]
Der Mensch, der sich in voller Besonnenheit etwa um die Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts die geistige Situation überlegte, hätte sich sagen müssen: Die Menschheit ist dazu gekommen, sich nur noch für fähig zu halten, eine Erkenntnis zu entfalten, die mit dem Geiste nichts zu tun hat. Was über den Geist gewußt werden kann, hat eine frühere Menschheit erforschen können; die Fähigkeit zu dieser Erforschung ist aber der menschlichen Seele verlorengegangen.[ 7 ] In der ganzen Tragweite stellte man sich nicht vor das Seelenauge, was da eigentlich vorlag. — Man beschränkte sich darauf, zu sagen: Erkenntnis reicht eben nicht bis zur geistigen Welt; diese kann nur Gegenstand des Glaubens sein.
[ 8 ] Man blicke, um etwas Licht für diese Tatsache zu bekommen, in die Zeiten, in denen die griechische Weisheit vor dem christlich gewordenen Römertum zurückweichen mußte. Als die letzten griechischen Philosophenschulen durch den Kaiser Justinian geschlossen wurden, wanderten auch die letzten Bewahrer alten Wissens aus dem Gebiete fort, auf dem nun das europäische Geisteswesen sich entwickelte. Sie fanden Anschluß bei der Akademie von Gondischapur in Asien. Sie war eine der Stätten, wo im Osten durch die Taten Alexanders die Überlieferung von dem alten Wissen sich erhalten hatte. In der Form, die Aristoteles diesem alten Wissen hat geben können, lebte es da.
[ 9 ] Aber es wurde ergriffen von derjenigen orientalischen Strömung, die man als Arabismus bezeichnen kann. Der Arabismus ist nach der einen Seite seines Wesens eine verfrühte Entfaltung der Bewußtseinsseele. Er bot durch das in der Richtung der Bewußtseinsseele zu früh wirkende Seelenleben die Möglichkeit, daß sich in ihm von Asien aus über Afrika, Südeuropa, Westeuropa eine geistige Welle ergoß, die gewisse europäische Menschen mit einem Intellektualismus erfüllte, der erst später kommen durfte; Süd- und Westeuropa bekamen im siebenten, achten Jahrhundert geistige Impulse, die erst im Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele hätten kommen dürfen.
[ 10 ] Diese geistige Welle konnte das Intellektuelle im Menschen wecken, nicht aber das tiefere Erleben, durch das die Seele in die Geist-Welt taucht.
[ 11 ] Wenn nun der Mensch im fünfzehnten bis zum neunzehnten Jahrhundert sein Erkenntnisvermögen in Tätigkeit brachte, so konnte er nur bis zu einer Seelentiefe untertauchen, in der er noch nicht auf die geistige Welt stieß.
[ 12 ] Der in das europäische Geistesleben einziehende Arabismus hielt die erkennenden Seelen von der Geist-Welt zurück. Er brachte — verfrüht — den Intellekt zur Wirksamkeit, der nur die äußere Natur fassen konnte.
[ 13 ] Und dieser Arabismus erwies sich als sehr mächtig. Wer von ihm erfaßt wurde, in dem begann ein innerer — zum großen Teile ganz unbewußter — Hochmut die Seele zu ergreifen. Er empfand die Macht des Intellektualismus; aber er empfand nicht das Unvermögen des bloßen Intellektes, in die Wirklichkeit einzudringen. So überließ er sich denn der äußeren sinnenfälligen Wirklichkeit, die sich durch sich selbst vor den Menschen hinstellte; aber er kam gar nicht darauf, an die geistige Wirklichkeit heranzutreten.
[ 14 ] Dieser Lage sah sich das mittelalterliche Geistesleben gegenüber. Es hatte die gewaltigen Überlieferungen von der Geist-Welt; aber sein Seelenleben war durch den — man möchte sagen: im geheimen — wirkenden Arabismus intellektualisch so imprägniert, daß sich der Erkenntnis kein Zugang bot zu den Quellen, aus denen der Inhalt dieser Überlieferung doch zuletzt stammte.
[ 15 ] Es kämpfte nun vom frühen Mittelalter an das, was instinktiv in den Menschen als geistiger Zusammenhang gefühlt wurde, mit der Gestalt, die das Denken durch den Arabismus angenommen hatte.
[ 16 ] Man fühlte die Ideenwelt in sich. Man erlebte sie als etwas Reales. Aber man fand in der Seele nicht die Kraft, in den Ideen den Geist zu erleben. So entstand der Realismus, der die Realität in den Ideen empfand, aber diese Realität nicht finden konnte. Der Realismus hörte in der Ideenwelt das Sprechen des Weltenwortes, er war aber nicht fähig, die Sprache zu verstehen.
[ 17 ] Der Nominalismus, der sich ihm entgegenstellte, leugnete, weil das Sprechen nicht verstanden werden konnte, daß es überhaupt vorhanden sei. Für ihn war die Ideenwelt nur eine Summe von Formeln in der menschlichen Seele ohne eine Wurzelung in einer geistigen Realität.
[ 18 ] Was in diesen Strömungen wogte, es lebte fort bis in das neunzehnte Jahrhundert. Der Nominalismus wurde die Denkungsart der Natur-Erkenntnis. Sie baute ein großartiges System von Anschauungen der sinnenfälligen Welt auf, aber sie vernichtete die Einsicht in das Wesen der Ideenwelt. — Der Realismus lebte ein totes Dasein. Er wußte von der Realität der Ideenwelt; aber er konnte im lebendigen Erkennen nicht zu ihr gelangen.
[ 19 ] Man wird zu ihr gelangen, wenn Anthroposophie den Weg finden wird von den Ideen zu dem Geist-Erleben in den Ideen. In dem wahrhaft fortgebildeten Realismus muß dem naturwissenschaftlichen Nominalismus ein Erkenntnisweg zur Seite treten, der zeigt, daß die Erkenntnis des Geistigen in der Menschheit nicht erloschen ist, sondern in einem neuen Aufstieg aus neu eröffneten menschlichen Seelenquellen in die menschliche Entwickelung wieder eintreten kann.
Goetheanum, März 1925.
Leitsätze Nr. 177 bis 179
(29. März 1925)
(Mit Bezug auf die vorangehende Betrachtung: Das scheinbare Erlöschen der Geist-Erkenntnis in der Neuheit)
[ 20 ] 177. Wer den Seelenblick auf die Entwickelung der Menschheit im naturwissenschaftlichen Zeitalter wirft, dem bietet sich zunächst eine traurige Perspektive. Glänzend wird die Erkenntnis des Menschen in bezug auf alles, was Außenwelt ist. Dagegen tritt eine Art Bewußtsein ein, als ob eine Erkenntnis der Geist-Welt überhaupt nicht mehr möglich sei.
[ 21 ] 178. Es scheint, als ob eine solche Erkenntnis die Menschen nur in alten Zeiten gehabt hätten, und als ob man mit Bezug auf die geistige Welt sich eben damit begnügen müsse, die alten Traditionen aufzunehmen und zu einem Gegenstande des Glaubens zu machen.
[ 22 ] 179. Aus der Unsicherheit, die aus diesem gegenüber dem Verhältnis des Menschen zur geistigen Welt im Mittelalter hervorgeht, entsteht der Unglaube an den Geist-Inhalt der Ideen im Nominalismus, dessen Fortsetzung die moderne Naturanschauung ist, und als Wissen von der Realität der Ideen ein Realismus, der aber erst durch die Anthroposophie seine Erfüllung finden kann.
The apparent extinction of knowledge of the spirit in modern times
(Goetheanum, March 1925)
[ 1 ] Those who wish to judge anthroposophy correctly in its relation to the development of the consciousness soul must always direct their attention anew to that spiritual constitution of cultural humanity which begins with the blossoming of the natural sciences and which reaches its climax in the nineteenth century.
[ 2 ] Put the character of this age before the eye of the soul and compare it with that of earlier ages. In all times of the conscious development of mankind, knowledge was regarded as that which brings man together with the spirit world. What one was in relation to the spirit was ascribed to knowledge. Knowledge lived in art and religion.
[ 3 ] This changed when the dawn of the age of consciousness began. That is when knowledge began to stop caring about a large part of human soul life. It wanted to investigate what man develops as a relationship to existence when he directs his senses and his judgmental intellect towards "nature". But it no longer wanted to concern itself with what man develops as a relationship to the spirit world when he uses his inner perceptive faculty in the same way as the senses.
[ 4 ] So the necessity arose to connect the spiritual life of man not to the knowledge of the present, but to knowledge of the past, to traditions.
[ 5 ] Human spiritual life was split into two. In front of man stood the knowledge of nature, always striving further on the one side, unfolding in the living present. On the other side was the experience of a relationship to the spiritual world, for which the corresponding knowledge had flowed in older times. For this experience, all understanding of how the corresponding knowledge came about in the past was gradually lost. One had the tradition, but no longer the way in which the traditional truths were recognized. One could only believe in the tradition.
[ 6 ] A person who thought about the spiritual situation in full reflection around the middle of the nineteenth century should have said to himself: Humanity has come to consider itself capable only of developing a knowledge that has nothing to do with the spirit. What can be known about the spirit could have been explored by an earlier mankind; but the capacity for this exploration has been lost to the human soul.
[ 7 ] The full extent of what actually existed was not presented to the soul's eye. - One limited oneself to saying: Knowledge does not reach as far as the spiritual world; this can only be the object of faith.
[ 8 ] To shed some light on this fact, look back to the times when Greek wisdom had to retreat before Christianized Romanism. When the last Greek schools of philosophy were closed by the Emperor Justinian, the last keepers of ancient knowledge also migrated away from the area in which the European intellectual system was now developing. They found refuge at the Academy of Gondishapur in Asia. It was one of the places where the tradition of ancient knowledge had been preserved in the East through the deeds of Alexander. It lived there in the form that Aristotle was able to give this ancient knowledge.
[ 9 ] But it was seized by the oriental current that can be described as Arabism. Arabism is, on the one hand, a premature development of the soul of consciousness. Through the soul life working too early in the direction of the consciousness soul, it offered the possibility that a spiritual wave poured out in it from Asia via Africa, Southern Europe and Western Europe, which filled certain European people with an intellectualism that was only allowed to come later; Southern and Western Europe received spiritual impulses in the seventh and eighth centuries that should only have come in the age of the consciousness soul.
[ 10 ] This spiritual wave was able to awaken the intellectual in man, but not the deeper experience through which the soul dives into the spirit world.
[ 11 ] When man in the fifteenth to the nineteenth century brought his cognitive faculty into activity, he could only submerge to a depth of soul in which he had not yet encountered the spiritual world.
[ 12 ] The Arabism that entered European intellectual life kept the cognizing souls back from the spiritual world. It brought - prematurely - the intellect into effect, which could only grasp external nature.
[ 13 ] And this Arabism proved to be very powerful. Whoever was seized by it, an inner - for the most part quite unconscious - arrogance began to take hold of his soul. He felt the power of intellectualism; but he did not feel the inability of the mere intellect to penetrate reality. So he left himself to the external sensuous reality, which presented itself to man through itself; but he did not even think of approaching the spiritual reality.
[ 14 ] This was the situation faced by medieval spiritual life. It had the mighty traditions of the spirit world; but its soul life was so intellectually impregnated by the - one might say: secretly - working Arabism that knowledge had no access to the sources from which the content of this tradition ultimately came.
[ 15 ] From the early Middle Ages onwards, what was instinctively felt in people as a spiritual connection struggled with the form that thought had assumed through Arabism.
[ 16 ] One felt the world of ideas within oneself. One experienced it as something real. But one did not find the strength in the soul to experience the spirit in the ideas. This gave rise to realism, which perceived reality in ideas but was unable to find this reality. Realism heard the speaking of the world word in the world of ideas, but was unable to understand the language.
[ 17 ] The nominalism that opposed it denied that speech existed at all because it could not be understood. For him, the world of ideas was merely a sum of formulas in the human soul without a root in a spiritual reality.
[ 18 ] What surged in these currents lived on into the nineteenth century. Nominalism became the way of thinking about the knowledge of nature. It built up a magnificent system of views of the sensory world, but it destroyed insight into the nature of the world of ideas. - Realism lived a dead existence. It knew of the reality of the world of ideas; but it could not arrive at it in living cognition.
[ 19 ] It will be reached when anthroposophy finds the path from the ideas to the experience of spirit in the ideas. In truly advanced realism, a path of knowledge must stand alongside scientific nominalism that shows that the knowledge of the spiritual in humanity has not been extinguished, but can re-enter human development in a new ascent from newly opened human soul sources.
Goetheanum, March 1925.
Guiding Principles No. 177 to 179
(March 29, 1925)
(With reference to the preceding consideration: The apparent extinction of the knowledge of the spirit in novelty)
[ 20 ] 177 Whoever casts a glance at the development of humanity in the scientific age is initially presented with a sad perspective. Man's knowledge of everything that is external becomes brilliant. On the other hand, a kind of consciousness sets in as if knowledge of the spirit world is no longer possible at all.
[ 21 ] 178. It seems as if people had only had such knowledge in ancient times, and as if, with regard to the spiritual world, one had to be content with taking up the old traditions and making them an object of faith.
[ 22 ] 179. From the uncertainty that arises from this towards the relationship of man to the spiritual world in the Middle Ages, the disbelief in the spiritual content of ideas arises in nominalism, the continuation of which is the modern view of nature, and as knowledge of the reality of ideas a realism, which, however, can only find its fulfillment through anthroposophy.