Inclination to Evil

The inclination to evil is present in every human being in the present consciousness soul age:

„If one wants to look for evil in man, one must look for it not in the evil actions which are carried out within human society, but one must look for it in the evil inclinations, in the inclinations to evil. First of all, one must completely abstract, completely disregard the consequences of these inclinations which more or less occur in one person, one must direct one's gaze to the evil inclinations. And then we can ask: In which people do the evil inclinations work within the fifth post-Atlantean period in which we are standing, those inclinations which, when they are expressed in their side-effects, live out so vividly in the evil actions, in which people do the evil inclinations work?

Yes, you get the answer to this when you try to go beyond the so-called threshold of the guardian and really get to know the human being. That is where the answer to this question arises. And the answer is: In all human beings, since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, there have been in the subconscious the evil inclinations, the inclinations to evil. - Yes, it is precisely in this that man enters the fifth post-Atlantean period, the modern cultural period, that he absorbs the inclinations to evil. Radically, but very correctly, the following can be expressed: He who crosses the threshold into the spiritual world makes the following experience: there is no crime in the world to which every man does not have the inclination in his subconscious, in so far as he is a member of the fifth post-Atlantean period. The inclination has; whether in the one or in the other case the inclination to evil leads outwardly to an evil action, that depends on quite different conditions from this inclination.“ (Lit.:GA 185, p. 110)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Geschichtliche Symptomatologie, GA 185 (1982), ISBN 3-7274-1850-8 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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