;;
The
East in the Light of the
West
His son, Orestes, who is vengeance upon his mother for the death of his father, because one of the gods demands that he shall do so ; his act is in harmony with the national feeling of those times that declares that his act is righteous and that he has done his duty. But as the result of the murder of his mother, Orestes sees the Erinyes, the avenging goddesses, approaching. These avenging goddesses of Greek mythology are simply a pictorial image of what has just been
his
unfaithful wife. returns and
absent,
described
as
And now
let us see
a
takes
reality
for
spiritual
perception.
whether in this old drama there is any phenomenon which could be described by the modern word conscience. There is not even a word for it in any ancient language, as research would testify. In the poem of Euripides who used the same story a few decades later, we find no Furies, no avenging goddesses
men
hear instead the inner voice of conConcretely perceptible, in the interval between the lives of these two poets, conscience arose. Clairvoyance was so vivid and real in human evolution before this age, that the feeling experienced by man as the result of an unrighteous act was entirely different from what it became Man's clairvoyant vision was still open later. he saw in his environment what I have described The inner feeling in Greece as the Erinyes. presence of this vision experienced in which he with the character of the was one in accordance there
science.
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