Part 2 (2/2)
pernicious, stupid, objectionable conception.
A former age could speak of 'nations', when one pictured 'Nations' in such a way that one nation had its guardian spirit in Orion, another in another star, and one knew that one's life was ruled from the star-constellations. One then appealed, as it were, to the ordering in the heavens. Today where there is no longer such ordering in the heavens, there is the appeal to the merely national, the Chauvinistic appeal to the merely national, that is to say, an a.s.serting of an impulse, psycho-s.e.xual in the most p.r.o.nounced sense, a backward luciferic impulse.
If one would see clearly and plainly what is today, one must not shrink from the actual underlying truth. But one can also see from such things why people are so afraid of the truth. Just imagine if, in the outcry on the freedom of nations and so forth that is raised today, people were to hear 'that comes from s.e.xual impulses!' One should just imagine that! One should picture for once the crowing c.o.c.k ... I don't mean any special one, not simply Clemenceau ... one should picture all the
declaimers on this theme ... and imagine that they had to realize that what they crow is after all the mating-voice of the c.o.c.k, however finely it is decked out in national garments.
These are things which mankind must learn to know today, and which they do not want to hear, for, as you know, of things that are black it is a.s.serted that they are white, and of those that are white, that they are black. The point is, that that ancient time of which I have spoken has come now to the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch in which abstraction has gradually developed. There where the boundary lies between the fourth and fifth Post-Atlantean epochs (you can read about this in my book The Riddles of Philosophy), there men strove with all their might over the intellectual value - so to say - of the abstract. Read afterwards in my The Riddles of Philosophy where I speak of the nominalism and realism of the Middle Ages. Abstraction had grown to such a pitch that they asked themselves: When I form a concept, has that any significance for the things outside, or is it only a name in my head? Today
people no longer reflect on such things. Of what interest is it to people to know that men have tormented themselves in the Middle Ages, when the abstractive power of thought was felt, what role the so-called universals, the general ideas, play in the world! That one wrestled and strove about what role abstractions play! Nowadays one thinks no more about it; one has already become used to abstractions; one does not strive to get beyond the abstract impulse but, on the contrary, to get thoroughly within it. The conflict over 'universals' - this ultimately came to the point where it was said: 'Universals, General Ideas, are at first as certain Ideas in G.o.d: those are Universals ante rem; then the Ideas are in the objects: Universals in re; and then the Ideas are in our mind, our soul: post rem - Universals post rem.' That was an expedient, in order to take up a stand on the question: is a man connected with reality when he thinks, when he only thinks ideas?
They still felt something of how in ancient times men had been connected with reality. When they reached maturity they thought over, as it were, what as a child they had formerly perceived; they
knew therefore that only then had the true human being entered in. One had to struggle desperately over the Universals, as to whether, when one thinks, there is still something of reality left in one's thought or whether it is entirely divorced from reality and has nothing to do with it. Since that time people have grown accustomed to take the universals, the abstractions, as abstractions, and are more or less completely cut off from reality in their consciousness.
Such a process is taking place continually on a small scale. Think for a moment: words which are the representatives of concepts, are originally in direct connection with what is seen. For instance, a small group of fighting men has one man at the head, they have this one man before them, they call him the foremost, the first, Furst (Eng: Chief, Prince). There one has it linked directly with what is beheld, later it was set free, it became a word which denoted something without any sort of connection with a direct perception. Just think to how many words this applies! And the next step is that then certain words become privileged, that
speech becomes monopolized, becomes the property of the State. Even in language certain things are developing in this direction, are they not? ... Take the simple case that someone has learnt a great deal, has become wise - let us say, without meaning anything foolish by it - he is a learned man. In a certain naive way one would then say: he is a 'Doctor'. Here we have a connection with fact if we call someone 'doctor'
who is seen to be learned. For it still has a certain significance when there is doc.u.mentary evidence held by a Corporation which gives this recognition. But it loses the significance when it is monopolized ... Yet mankind is enthusiastic about such monopolizing nowadays. All possible words are to be monopolized. A man is not supposed merely through his gifts to be an 'engineer', but this must also become a recognized t.i.tle from heaven knows where. And increasingly things are to be loosed from their connections. There you can see the abstraction-process on a small scale, but it is accomplished wholesale with infinite significance. A family has a father. What is the connection between the pater, who is the father of
the family and the Pater, who is a priest? This tearing loose of what is contained in the word - I wanted to bring it forward as ill.u.s.trating the abstraction-process taking place in humanity.
And in the case of ideas it is much more mischievous than in language; people often make use of concepts without having the least idea of their connection with what is perceived.
Sometimes people then search for the real observation, become comic, frightfully comic in this search! Only remember how there is a whole literature today about the cross-sign, which is really a universal sign, spread over the world.
Most amusing is all the learnedness applied to it!
This sign is traced back to this
That was supposed to have been the cross of former times.
Sometimes they then trace that back by saying: only the parts have been left, the swastika and so on. Yes, it is frightfully clever what has been written about it, quite immensely clever, the way 'cleverness' has been applied to such things.
I do not wish at all to go in for detailed criticism.
But to know what is true, cleverness is not enough.
One ought, of course, to know that the cross-sign means nothing else than that the human being takes his stand, stretches out his arms and then he is the cross. From above downwards goes a stream of existence that binds man with the macrocosm,
and through the outstretched hands too. And the Cross is the sign for Man.
And when you find distinguis.h.i.+ng marks of the a.s.syrian kings or of the Egyptian kings, medallions, for instance, then they are medallions with the cross-sign.
And two other signs (the cross on the medallion is one sign that ancient kings had) were, for instance, these.
The star in the sign is generally made in such a way that one does not immediately recognize the pentagram in it - or is it even a hexagram; - however, that is not the point.
Specially clever people have said: that is the Sun, that is the Cross, that is the moon, that is the star.
But the deeper meaning lies precisely in the fact that it is man, the microcosm, who is compounded of sun and moon. You see from this ordinary cross-sign, how the concept has been separated from the real object. The direct perception is this, the sign is this: man in the form of a cross. People today know so little of how to connect the object with the sign, that, as I have said, an immensely clever literature exists which seeks to find out how this sign is connected with what it wants to express. And so one could write quite clever articles over the most everyday words without discovering how these things, these words, were connected with the realities.
Humanity had to go through the period of abstractions. We know that today we are no longer in the sign of Aries, in which the Sun stood at the beginning of Spring when the transition took place from the old Imaginative time, of which echoes still lingered, to the age of abstractions. We have entered the age of Pisces. A special characteristic
of this age is that man receives the force for abstract ideas out of the macrocosm. Man receives this force today from the macrocosm. But in the meantime man does not know how he is to unite the abstract ideas again with reality. They must be united again with reality.
I said at the beginning of the lecture that in this fifth Post-Atlantean epoch there must be a kind of recapitulation of the time in the Egyptian- Chaldean epoch when one looked back to the ancient Osiris-age, when Imaginations were in existence. The reverse, as it were, must take place: man must find the way back again to the Imaginations. One could say in another form: Osiris must become alive again, we must find ways and means to bring Osiris to life. I have spoken very concretely in these studies by saying that we must find forms of experience which are common to the dead and the living. Since Osiris was slain he has been with the dead; he will remain with the dead, but he will have to come again among the living, when there are concerns which are common to the dead and the living for
the social life of men.
This brings us to the fact that people must understand something which it is above all necessary for our time to understand: how will Osiris be revivified? How can Osiris come to new life? How does man approach again life and experience in the Imaginative consciousness?
We will speak of this tomorrow - how he is to rise again, and how the resurrection is to be brought about. Tomorrow's considerations shall have then, as their subject, the Imaginative consciousness.
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