The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. the realistic attempts to solve the social questions and necessities demanded by life

[ 1 ] The characteristic feature that has led to the particular form of the social question in recent times can be expressed by saying: economic life, supported by technology, modern capitalism, have acted with a certain natural self-evidence and have brought modern society into a certain inner order. In addition to the claiming of human attention for that which technology and capitalism have brought, attention has been diverted to other branches, other areas of the social organism. These must just as necessarily be given the right effectiveness by human consciousness if the social organism is to be healthy.

[ 2 ] I may perhaps start from a comparison in order to clearly state what is to be characterized here as the driving impulse of a comprehensive, all-round observation of the social question. But it should be noted that this comparison means nothing other than a comparison. Such a comparison can support human understanding in order to bring it in precisely the direction that is necessary in order to form ideas about the health of the social organism. Whoever has to look at the most complicated natural organism, the human organism, from the point of view adopted here, must direct his attention to the fact that the whole essence of this human organism has three systems working side by side, each of which acts with a certain independence. These three systems working side by side can be characterized as follows. In the human natural organism, the system that includes nervous life and sensory life acts as one area. It could also be called the head organism after the most important member of the organism, where nervous and sensory life are to a certain extent centralized.

[ 3 ] The second member of the human organization that must be recognized if we want to gain a real understanding of it is what I would like to call the rhythmic system. It consists of respiration, blood circulation, of everything that expresses itself in rhythmic processes of the human organism.

[ 4 ] The third system to be recognized is everything that is connected as organs and activities with the actual metabolism.

[ 5 ] These three systems contain everything that, when organized in a healthy way, maintains the overall process of the human organism. ^{1The division meant here is not one according to spatially delimitable body members, but one according to activities (functions) of the organism "head organism" can only be used if one is aware that the nervous-sensory life is primarily centralized in the head. However, rhythmic and metabolic activity is of course also present in the head. Nevertheless, the three types of activity are strictly separated according to their essence.}

[ 6 ] I have attempted to characterize this threefold structure of the human natural organism, at least initially in sketch form, in my book "Von Seelenrätseln" (Of Riddles of the Soul), in full agreement with everything that scientific research can already say today. I am aware that in the very near future biology, physiology, the whole of natural science in relation to the human being will push towards such a view of the human organism which will see through how these three members - head system, circulatory system or thoracic system and metabolic system - maintain the overall process in the human organism by the fact that they work in a certain independence, that there is no absolute centralization of the human organism, that each of these systems also has a special, independent relationship to the outside world. The head system through the senses, the circulatory system or rhythmic system through respiration, and the metabolic system through the organs of nutrition and movement.

[ 7 ] With regard to scientific methods, we have not yet quite reached the point where what I have indicated here, what I have sought to utilize for the natural sciences from the background of the humanities, can be generally recognized within scientific circles to the extent that may appear desirable for the advancement of knowledge. This means, however, that our habits of thought, our whole way of conceiving the world, is not yet fully adequate to what, for example, presents itself in the human organism as the inner essence of natural action. One could well say: Well, natural science can wait, it will gradually move towards its ideals, it will come to recognize such a way of looking at the world as its own. But with regard to the observation and especially the workings of the social organism, one cannot wait. There must be at least an instinctive realization in every human soul - for every human soul participates in the working of the social organism - of what is necessary for this social organism. A healthy thinking and feeling, a healthy will and desire with regard to the shaping of the social organism can only develop if one is clear, even if it is more or less merely instinctive, that this social organism, if it is to be healthy, must be just as tripartite as the natural organism.

[ 8 ] Since Schäffle wrote his book on the structure of the social organism, attempts have been made to find analogies between the organization of a natural being - let us say the organization of man - and human society as such. They wanted to find out what the cell is in the social organism, what cell structures are, what tissues are and so on! Only recently a book was published by Meray, "World Mutation", in which certain scientific facts and scientific laws are simply transferred to - as one thinks - the human social organism. What is meant here has absolutely nothing to do with all these things, with all these analogies. And whoever thinks that such a game of analogies between the natural organism and the social organism is being played in these considerations will only prove that he has not penetrated into the spirit of what is meant here. For the aim here is not to transplant some truth suitable for natural scientific facts to the social organism; but the completely different one, that human thinking, human feeling, learns to feel what is possible in the observation of the natural organism and can then apply this way of feeling to the social organism. If one simply transfers what one believes one has learned from the natural organism to the social organism, as often happens, one only shows that one does not want to acquire the ability to look at the social organism just as independently, just as for oneself, to research its own laws, as one needs to do in order to understand the natural organism. At the moment when one really confronts the natural organism objectively, as the natural scientist confronts the natural organism, confronts the social organism in its independence, in order to perceive its own laws, at this moment every analogy game ceases in the face of the seriousness of observation.

[ 9 ] One could also think that the description given here is based on the belief that the social organism should be "constructed" from a gray theory modeled on natural science. However, this is as far removed as possible from what is being discussed here. We are pointing to something quite different. The present historical crisis of humanity demands that certain perceptions arise in each individual human being, that the stimulus for these perceptions be given by the educational and school system in the same way as that for learning the four kinds of arithmetic. What has hitherto produced the old forms of the social organism without conscious absorption into the life of the human soul will no longer be effective in the future. It is one of the impulses of development that want to enter human life anew from the present that the sensations indicated are demanded of the individual in the same way as a certain school education has long been demanded. That one must learn to feel in a healthy way how the forces of the social organism should work, so that it proves itself viable, is demanded of man from the present. One will have to acquire a feeling that it is unhealthy, anti-social, not to want to place oneself in this organism with such feelings.

[ 10 ] Today one can hear talk of "socialization" as what is needed for the time being. This socialization will not be a process of healing, but a process of curing the social organism, perhaps even a process of destruction, unless at least the instinctive realization of the necessity of the triple structure of the social organism enters into human hearts and souls. This social organism must, if it is to function healthily, develop three such members in accordance with the law.

[ 11 ] One of these members is economic life. Here we shall begin with its consideration, because it has quite obviously formed itself into human society through modern technology and modern capitalism, dominating all other life. This economic life must be an independent member in its own right within the social organism, as relatively independent as the nervous-sensory system is relatively independent in the human organism. This economic life has to do with everything that is commodity production, commodity circulation, commodity consumption.

[ 12 ] The second member of the social organism is the life of public law, the actual political life. It includes that which, in the sense of the old constitutional state, could be described as the actual life of the state. While economic life has to do with everything that man needs from nature and from his own production, with goods, the circulation of goods and the consumption of goods, this second element of the social organism can only have to do with everything that relates to the relationship of man to man from a purely human background. It is essential for the knowledge of the members of the social organism that one knows what difference there is between the system of public law, which can only have to do with the relation of man to man from human foundations, and the economic system, which has to do only with commodity production, commodity circulation, commodity consumption. One must distinguish this in life by feeling, so that as a consequence of this feeling, economic life is separated from legal life, just as in the human natural organism the activity of the lungs for processing the external air is separated from the processes in the nervous-sensory life.

[ 13 ] The third link in the social organism, which must also stand independently alongside the other two links, is that which relates to spiritual life. One could say even more precisely, because perhaps the term "spiritual culture" or everything that relates to the spiritual life is not quite accurate, everything that is based on the natural endowment of the individual human being that must enter the social organism on the basis of this natural endowment, both the spiritual and the physical endowment of the individual human being. The first system, the economic system, has to do with everything that must be there so that man can regulate his material relationship to the outside world The second system has to do with what must be there in the social organism because of the relationship of man to man The third system has to do with everything that must sprout forth and be incorporated into the social organism out of the single human individuality.

[ 14 ] As true as it is that modern technology and modern capitalism have actually shaped our social life in recent times, it is equally necessary that the wounds that have necessarily been inflicted on human society from this side be healed by bringing man and human community life into a correct relationship with the three members of this social organism. Economic life has simply by itself assumed quite definite forms in modern times. It has introduced itself into human life in a particularly powerful way through its one-sided effectiveness. The other two elements of social life have not yet been able to integrate themselves into the social organism with the same naturalness and according to their own laws. For them it is necessary that man, out of the sentiments indicated above, undertakes the social organization, each in his own place, in the place where he happens to be. For in the sense of those attempts to solve the social questions that are meant here, each individual person has his social task in the present and in the near future.

[ 15 ] That which is the first member of the social organism, economic life, rests first of all on the basis of nature, just as the individual human being rests on the endowment of his spiritual and physical organism with regard to what he can become for himself through learning, through education, through life. This natural basis simply imprints its imprint on economic life and thus on the entire social organism. But this natural basis is there without being able to be affected in an original way by any social organization, by any socialization. It must be taken as a basis for the life of the social organism in the same way that the education of man must be based on the talents he has in the various fields, on his natural physical and mental abilities. Every socialization, every attempt to give an economic form to human coexistence, must take into account the natural basis. For all circulation of goods and also all human labor and also all spiritual life is based, as a first elementary originality, on that which chains man to a certain part of nature. One must think about the connection of the social organism with the natural basis, just as one must think about the relationship of the individual to his talents in relation to learning. This can be made clear in extreme cases. One need only consider, for example, that in certain regions of the earth where the banana is an obvious foodstuff for people, the labor that must be expended in order to bring the banana from its place of origin to a destination and to make it a means of consumption comes into consideration for human coexistence. If one compares the human labor that must be expended to make the banana fit for consumption by human society with the labor that must be expended, say in our regions of Central Europe, to make wheat fit for consumption, the labor required for the banana is, on a small scale, three hundred times less than for wheat.

[ 16 ] To be sure, this is an extreme case. But such differences with regard to the necessary amount of labor in relation to the natural basis are also there among the branches of production represented in any social organism of Europe - not in this radical difference as with bananas and wheat, but they are there as differences. Thus it is in the economic organism that man's relationship to the natural basis of his economic activity determines the amount of labor he must bring into the economic process. And one need only compare, for example: in Germany, in regions of medium productivity, the yield of wheat culture is such that seven to eight times the amount sown is brought in by the harvest; in Chile the twelvefold comes in, in Northern Mexico the seventeenfold, in Peru the twentyfold. (Compare Jentsch, Volkswirtschaftslehre, p.64.)

[ 17 ] This whole interrelated being, which runs in processes that begin with the relationship of man to nature, which continue in all that man has to do to transform the products of nature and bring them to the point where they can be consumed, all these processes and only these encompass its economic element for a healthy social organism. This stands within the social organism like the head system, from which the individual talents are conditioned, stands within the human organism as a whole. But just as this head system is dependent on the lung-heart system, so the economic system is dependent on human work performance. Just as the head cannot independently regulate breathing, the human work system should not be regulated by the forces at work in economic life itself.

[ 18 ] Man stands in economic life through his interests. These have their basis in his mental and spiritual needs. How these interests can be met in the most appropriate way within a social organism, so that the individual can satisfy his interests through this organism in the best possible way, and can also place himself in the economy in the most advantageous way: this question must be solved practically in the institutions of the economic body. This can only be achieved if interests can really assert themselves freely and if the will and the possibility arise to do what is necessary to satisfy them. The emergence of interests lies outside the circle that circumscribes economic life. They are formed with the development of the spiritual and natural human being. That institutions exist to satisfy them is the task of economic life. These institutions can have to do with nothing else but the production and exchange of commodities, that is, of goods which derive their value from human need. The commodity has its value through the person who consumes it. Because the commodity receives its value through the consumer, it stands in the social organism in a quite different way from other things which have value for man as a member of this organism. We should take an impartial view of economic life, in the sphere of which the production, exchange and consumption of commodities belong. One will not notice the essential difference, which exists between the relation of man to man, in that one produces goods for the other, and that which must be based on a legal relation. From this consideration one will arrive at the practical demand that in the social organism the legal life must be kept entirely separate from the economic life. The activities which men have to develop within the institutions which serve the production and exchange of commodities cannot directly give rise to the best possible impulses for the legal relations which must exist among men. Within the economic institutions, man turns to man because the one serves the interest of the other; fundamentally different from this is the relationship that one man has to the other within legal life.

[ 19 ] One could now believe that this distinction demanded by life would already be satisfied if, within the institutions that serve economic life, provision were also made for the rights that must exist in the relationships between the people involved in this economic life. - Such a belief is not rooted in the reality of life. Man can only properly experience the legal relationship which must exist between himself and other men, if he experiences this relationship not in the economic sphere, but on ground entirely separate from it. Therefore, in a healthy social organism, a life must unfold alongside the economic life and in independence, in which the rights that exist from man to man arise and are administered. Legal life, however, is that of the actual political sphere, the state. If men carry into the legislation and administration of the constitutional state those interests which they must serve in their economic life, then the rights which arise will only be the expression of these economic interests. If the constitutional state is itself an economist, it loses the ability to regulate people's legal lives. For its measures and institutions will have to serve the human need for goods; they will thus be pushed away from the impulses that are directed towards legal life.

[ 20 ] The healthy social organism requires, as a second member next to the economic body, the independent political life of the state. In the independent economic body, men will, through the forces of economic life, arrive at institutions which serve the production and exchange of goods in the best possible way. In the political body politic, such institutions will come into being which will orient the mutual relations between men and groups of men in such a way that man's consciousness of justice is satisfied.

[ 21 ] The point of view from which the marked demand for the complete separation of the constitutional state from the economic sphere is made here is one that is inherent in real human life. Such a point of view is not adopted by those who want to combine legal life and economic life. People in economic life naturally have a consciousness of law; but they will only from this and not from economic interests legislate and administer in the sense of law, if they have to judge it in the constitutional state, which as such has no part in economic life. Such a constitutional state has its own legislative and administrative body, both of which are structured according to the principles that arise from the legal consciousness of modern times. It will be built on the impulses in the consciousness of mankind which are at present called democratic impulses. The economic area will form its legislative and administrative bodies out of the impulses of economic life. The necessary intercourse between the heads of the legal and economic body will take place approximately as it does at present between the governments of sovereign territories. Through this division, what develops in one body will be able to exert the necessary effect on what develops in the other. This effect is hindered by the fact that one territory wants to develop in itself what is to flow to it from the other.

[ 22 ] Just as economic life is on the one hand subject to the conditions of the natural basis (climate, geographical nature of the area, availability of natural resources and so on), so on the other hand it is dependent on the legal relationships which the state creates between the economic people and groups of people. This defines the limits of what the activity of economic life can and should encompass. Just as nature creates preconditions that lie outside the economic sphere and which the economic man must accept as something given, on which he can first build his economy, so everything that establishes a legal relationship from man to man in the economic sphere should be regulated in the healthy social organism by the rule of law, which, like the natural basis, unfolds as something independently opposite economic life.

[ 23 ] In the social organism that has emerged in the historical development of mankind to date and that has become what gives the social movement its character through the machine age and the modern capitalist economic form, economic life encompasses more than it should in a healthy social organism. At the present time, in the economic cycle, in which only goods are supposed to move, human labor power also moves, and rights also move. At present, in the economic body based on the division of labor, not only goods can be exchanged for goods, but also goods for labor and goods for rights through the same economic process. (I call a commodity any thing which, through human activity, has become what it is at any place to which it is brought by man and which is put to use. Even if this designation may seem offensive or insufficient to some teachers of economics, it can serve well for an understanding of what should belong to economic life.^{2It is not important in an explanation that is made in the service of life to give definitions that originate from a theory, but ideas that visualize what plays a vital role in reality. "Commodity", used in the above sense, points to something that man experiences; every other concept of "commodity" leaves something out or adds something, so that the concept does not coincide with the processes of life in their true reality.}) If someone acquires a plot of land by purchase, this must be regarded as an exchange of the land for commodities, for which the purchase money is to be regarded as a representative. The property itself, however, does not function as a commodity in economic life. It exists in the social organism through the right which man has to its use. This right is something essentially different from the relation in which the producer of a commodity stands to it. It is inherent in the latter relation that it does not extend to the quite different relation of man to man, which is established by the fact that someone is entitled to the exclusive use of a piece of land. The owner makes other people who are employed by him to work on this property for their livelihood, or who have to live on it, dependent on him. By mutually exchanging real goods which are produced or consumed, a dependence does not arise which operates in the same way between man and man.

[ 24 ] Those who see through such a fact of life impartially will realize that it must find its expression in the institutions of the healthy social organism. As long as commodities are exchanged for commodities in economic life, the value of these commodities remains independent of the legal relationship between persons and groups of persons. As soon as goods are exchanged for rights, the legal relationship itself is affected. It is not the exchange as such that is important. This is the necessary element of life in the present social organism, which rests on the division of labor; but it is a question of the right itself being turned into a commodity by the exchange of the right for the commodity, when the right arises within economic life. This is only prevented by the existence in the social organism, on the one hand, of institutions which aim only to bring about the circulation of commodities in the most expedient manner; and, on the other hand, of those which regulate the rights of producing, trading, and consuming persons living in the exchange of commodities. These rights do not differ in their nature from other rights, which must exist in the relation of person to person, quite independent of the exchange of commodities. If I harm or promote my fellow human being through the sale of a good, this belongs to the same area of social life as harm or promotion through an activity or omission that is not directly expressed in an exchange of goods.

[ 25 ] The effects of legal institutions flow together with those of purely economic activity in the life of the individual. In a healthy social organism they must come from two different directions. In the economic organization, the necessary points of view for the leading personalities must be provided by the education for a branch of industry and the familiarity with it gained from experience in it. In the legal organization, what is demanded by the legal consciousness as a relationship between individuals or groups of people is realized through law and administration. The economic organization will allow people with the same professional or consumer interests or with similar needs in other respects to unite in cooperatives, which will bring about the overall economy through mutual exchange. This organization will be built on an associative basis and on the relationship of associations. These associations will develop a purely economic activity. The legal basis on which they operate will be provided by the legal organization. If such economic associations can assert their economic interests in the representative and administrative bodies of the economic organization, then they will not develop the urge to penetrate the legislative or administrative leadership of the constitutional state (for example, as a farmers' union, as a party of industrialists, as an economically oriented social democracy) in order to achieve what they are unable to achieve within economic life. And if the constitutional state does not participate in any branch of the economy, then it will only create institutions that stem from the legal consciousness of the people who belong to it. Even if, as is natural, the same persons who are active in economic life sit in the representation of the constitutional state, the division into economic and legal life will not result in an influence of economic life on legal life that undermines the health of the social organism as much as it can be undermined if the state organization itself provides for branches of economic life and if the representatives of economic life pass laws in it out of its interests.

[ 26 ] A typical example of the fusion of economic life with legal life was provided by Austria with the constitution it adopted in the sixties of the nineteenth century. The representatives of the Imperial Council of this territory were elected from the four branches of economic life, from the community of large landowners, the chambers of commerce, the cities, markets and industrial towns and the rural communities. It can be seen that nothing else was primarily thought of for this composition of state representation than that legal life would result from the assertion of economic conditions. It is certain that the divisive forces of its nationalities have contributed significantly to the present disintegration of Austria. But it is equally certain that a legal organization, which could have developed its activities alongside the economic one, would have developed out of legal consciousness a form of social organization in which the coexistence of peoples would have become possible.

[ 27 ] The man who is presently interested in public life usually directs his attention to things which are only secondarily relevant to that life. He does this because his habit of thought leads him to regard the social organism as a unified entity. For such an entity, however, no appropriate mode of choice can be found. For in every mode of election the economic interests and the impulses of legal life must interfere with each other in the representative body. And what flows from the disturbance for social life must lead to upheavals in the social organism. At present, working towards a thoroughgoing separation of economic life and legal organization must be at the top of the list as a necessary objective of public life. By living into this separation, the separating organizations will find from their own foundations the best ways of electing their legislators and administrators. In what is at present pressing for decision, questions of the mode of election, though of fundamental importance as such, come into consideration only secondarily. Where the old relationships are still in place, we would have to work towards the structure outlined above. Where the old has already disintegrated or is in the process of disintegration, individuals and alliances between individuals would have to try to take the initiative for a reorganization that moves in the direction indicated. To want to bring about a transformation of public life from one day to the next is something that even sensible socialists regard as swarming. Such people expect the recovery they mean through a gradual, appropriate transformation. But that the historical developmental forces of mankind currently necessitate a reasonable will in the direction of a social reorganization can be taught to every unbiased person by far more illuminating facts.

[ 28 ] Whoever regards as "practically feasible" only that to which he has become accustomed from a narrow view of life will regard what is indicated here as "impractical". If he cannot convert himself, and if he retains influence in any area of life, then he will not work for the recovery, but for the further illness of the social organism, just as people of his attitude have worked to bring about the present conditions.

[ 29 ] The endeavor with which leading circles of mankind have begun and which has led to the transfer of certain branches of the economy (post office, railroads and so on) into state life must give way to the opposite: the separation of all economic activity from the sphere of political government. Thinkers who believe that they are moving in the direction of a healthy social organism draw the ultimate conclusion from the nationalization efforts of these hitherto leading circles. They want the socialization of all means of economic life, insofar as these are means of production. A healthy development will give economic life its independence and the political state the ability to influence the economic body through the legal system in such a way that the individual does not feel his integration into the social organism to be in conflict with his sense of justice.

[ 30 ] One can see how the ideas put forward here are founded in the real life of mankind if one directs one's attention to the work which man performs for the social organism through his physical labor. Within the capitalist economic form, this labor has been incorporated into the social organism in such a way that it is bought by the employer from the employee like a commodity. An exchange is made between money (as the representative of commodities) and labor. But such an exchange cannot in reality take place. It only appears to take place.^{3It is quite possible that in life processes are not only explained in a false sense, but that they take place in a false sense. Money and work are not interchangeable values, but only money and the product of work. If I therefore give money for work, I am doing something wrong. I am creating an illusory process. For in reality I can only give money for the product of labor.} In reality, the employer receives goods from the worker that can only be produced if the worker gives his labor power for their production. From the equivalent value of these goods, the worker receives one share and the employer the other. The production of goods takes place through the cooperation of the employer and employee. The product of their joint work first enters the cycle of economic life. A legal relationship between worker and entrepreneur is necessary for the production of the product. But this can be transformed by the capitalist mode of economy into one which is conditioned by the economic superiority of the employer over the worker. In a healthy social organism it must become evident that labor cannot be paid. For it cannot be given an economic value in comparison with a commodity. Only the commodity produced by labor has such a value in comparison with other commodities. The way in which, and the extent to which, a person has to work for the existence of the social organism must be regulated by his ability and by the conditions of a humane existence. This can only happen if this regulation is carried out by the political state independently of the administrations of economic life.

[ 31 ] Through such regulation, a basis of value is created for the commodity which can be compared with the other, which exists in the conditions of nature. As the value of one commodity increases in comparison with another by the fact that the extraction of the raw products is more difficult for the one than for the other, so the value of the commodity must become dependent on the kind and amount of labor that may be applied to the production of the commodity according to the legal system. ^{4Such a relation of labor to the legal order will compel the associations active in economic life to reckon with what is "right" as a presupposition. Soch is achieved by the fact that the economic organization is dependent on man, not man on the economic order.}

[ 32 ] In this way, economic life is subjected to its necessary conditions from two sides: from the side of the natural basis, which humanity must accept as it is given to it, and from the side of the legal basis, which should be created out of legal consciousness on the ground of the political state, which is independent of economic life.

[ 33 ] It is easy to see that through such a management of the social organism the economic prosperity will fall and rise according to the amount of work that is expended out of legal consciousness. Only such a dependence of economic prosperity is necessary in a healthy social organism. It alone can prevent man from being so consumed by economic life that he can no longer feel his existence to be worthy of man. And in truth, all upheavals in the social organism are based on the existence of the feeling of an existence unworthy of human beings.

[ 34 ] One possibility of not reducing the prosperity of the national economy too much from the legal point of view is similar to that of improving the natural basis. One can make a less productive soil more productive by technical means; one can, prompted by the excessive reduction of prosperity, change the nature and measure of labor. But this change should not come directly from the cycle of economic life, but from the insight that develops on the basis of legal life, which is independent of economic life.

[ 35 ] Everything that is produced by economic life and legal consciousness in the organization of social life is influenced by a third source: the individual faculties of the individual human being. This field includes everything from the highest intellectual achievements to that which flows into human works through the better or lesser physical aptitude of the human being for achievements that serve the social organism. What comes from this source must flow into the healthy social organism in a quite different way from that which lives in the exchange of goods and that which can flow from state life. There is no other way to bring about this absorption in a healthy way than to make it dependent on the free receptivity of human beings and on the impulses that come from the individual faculties themselves. If the human achievements arising from such abilities are artificially influenced by economic life or by the organization of the state, the true basis of their own life is for the most part taken away from them. This basis can only consist in the power which human achievements must develop from within themselves. If the receipt of such services is directly conditioned by economic life, or organized by the state, the free receptivity for them is paralysed. It is, however, the only way to allow them to flow into the social organism in a healthy form. For the spiritual life, with which the development of the other individual faculties in human life is also connected by an immense number of threads, there is only a healthy possibility of development if it is left to its own impulses in its production and if it is in an understanding relationship with the people who receive its achievements.

[ 36 ] What is being pointed to here as the healthy conditions for the development of spiritual life is not seen through at present, because the right view of it is clouded by the fusion of a large part of this life with political state life. This fusion has developed over the last few centuries and people have become accustomed to it. One speaks of "freedom of science and teaching". But it is taken for granted that the political state administers "free science" and "free teaching". No feeling is developed for the way in which this state makes intellectual life dependent on the needs of the state. One thinks that the state creates the places where teaching takes place; then those who occupy these places can develop intellectual life "freely". In becoming accustomed to such an opinion, one does not take into account how closely the content of spiritual life is connected with the innermost being of man in which it unfolds. How this unfolding can only be a free one if it is placed in the social organism by no other impulses than those which come from the spiritual life itself. It is not only the administration of science and that part of intellectual life which is connected with it that has been characterized in recent centuries by its fusion with state life, but also the content itself. Certainly, what is produced in mathematics or physics cannot be directly influenced by the state. But think of history, of the other cultural sciences. Have they not become a reflection of what has arisen from the connection of their bearers with state life, from the needs of this life? It is precisely because of this imprinted character that the current scientifically oriented ideas that dominate intellectual life have had an effect on the proletariat as an ideology. The latter noticed how a certain character is imprinted on human ideas by the needs of state life, in which the interests of the ruling classes are met. The proletarian thinker saw a reflection of material interests and struggles for interests. This gave him the impression that all intellectual life was ideology, a reflection of economic organization.

[ 37 ] Such a view, which desolates the spiritual life of man, ceases when sentiment can arise: In the spiritual realm there reigns a reality which transcends the material external life and which carries its content within itself. It is impossible for such a feeling to arise if the spiritual life does not develop and administer itself freely within the social organism out of its own impulses. Only those bearers of spiritual life who stand within such a development and administration have the power to give this life the weight it deserves in the social organism. Art, science, ideology and all that is connected with them require such an independent position in human society. For in spiritual life everything is connected. The freedom of the one cannot flourish without the freedom of the other, even if the content of mathematics and physics cannot be directly influenced by the needs of the state: What is developed of them, what people think of their value, what effect their cultivation may have on the whole of the rest of intellectual life, and many other things are conditioned by these needs when the state administers branches of intellectual life. It is another thing when the teacher who looks after the lowest school level follows the impulses of state life; it is another when he receives these impulses from an intellectual life that is left to its own devices. In this field, too, Social Democracy has only inherited the habits of thought and customs of the leading circles. It regards it as its ideal to incorporate spiritual life into the social body built on economic life. If it were to achieve the goal it has set itself, it could only continue on the path along which intellectual life has been devalued. It has unilaterally developed a correct sentiment with its demand that religion must be a private matter. For in a healthy social organism, all spiritual life must be a "private matter" vis-à-vis the state and the economy in the sense indicated here. But in relegating religion to the private sphere, Social Democracy does not proceed from the opinion that a spiritual good will thereby be given a position within the social organism through which it will achieve a more desirable, higher development than under the influence of the state. It is of the opinion that the social organism may only cultivate by its means what is its vital need. And religious spiritual goods are not such a need. In this way, unilaterally removed from public life, one branch of spiritual life cannot flourish if the other spiritual good is shackled. The religious life of the newer humanity will develop its soul-bearing power for this humanity in connection with all liberated spiritual life.

[ 38 ] Not only the production, but also the reception of this spiritual life by humanity must be based on the free need of the soul. Teachers, artists and so on, who in their social position are only in direct connection with a legislation and administration which arise from the spiritual life itself and which are only carried by its impulses, will, by the nature of their work, be able to develop the receptivity for their achievements in people who are protected by the political state, which acts out of itself, from being subject only to the compulsion to work, but to whom the law also gives the leisure which awakens the understanding for spiritual goods. People who think of themselves as "practitioners of life" may believe such thoughts: People will drink away their leisure time and people will fall back into illiteracy if the state provides such leisure, and if attending school is left to people's free understanding. Let such "pessimists" wait and see what happens when the world is no longer under their influence. This is all too often determined by a certain feeling that quietly whispers to them how they use their leisure time and what they needed to acquire a little "education". They cannot count on the igniting force that a truly self-reliant spiritual life has in the social organism, because the shackled one they know has never been able to exert such an igniting force on them.

[ 39 ] Both the political state and economic life will receive the influx from spiritual life that they need from the self-governing spiritual organism. Practical education for economic life, too, will only be able to develop its full power through the free interaction of the latter with the spiritual organism. Suitably educated people will enliven the experiences they can make in the economic sphere through the power that comes to them from the liberated spiritual material. People with experience gained from economic life will find the transition into the spiritual organization and have a fertilizing effect on that which must be fertilized in this way.

[ 40 ] In the field of the political state, the necessary healthy views will be formed through such a free effect of the spiritual good. Through the influence of such spiritual goods, the manual worker will be able to acquire a satisfactory perception of the position of his work in the social organism. He will come to understand how the social organism cannot support him without the leadership that organizes the work of the craftsman according to its purpose. He will be able to assimilate the feeling that his work belongs together with the organizing forces that stem from the development of individual human abilities. On the soil of the political state he will form the rights which will secure him a share in the proceeds of the commodities which he produces; and he will freely grant that share to the intellectual property which belongs to him which will make its production possible. In the field of intellectual life the possibility will arise that its producers will also live from the proceeds of their achievements. What someone does for himself in the field of spiritual life will remain his most intimate private matter; what someone is able to accomplish for the social organism will be able to count on the free compensation of those for whom the spiritual good is a need. Whoever cannot find what he needs through such compensation within the intellectual organization will have to pass over to the realm of the political state or economic life.

[ 41 ] The technical ideas originating in the spiritual life flow into economic life. They originate from the spiritual life, even if they come directly from members of the state or economic area. Hence come all the organizational ideas and forces which fertilize economic and state life. The compensation for this influx into the two social spheres will either also come about through the free understanding of those who are dependent on this influx, or it will find its regulation through rights which are developed in the sphere of the political state. What this political state itself requires for its maintenance will be provided by the right of taxation. This will develop through a harmonization of the demands of legal consciousness with those of economic life.

[ 42 ] In addition to the political and economic realms, the spiritual realm, which is set upon itself, must work in the healthy social organism. The direction of the developmental forces of modern humanity points to the threefold structure of this organism. As long as social life was essentially guided by the instinctive forces of a large part of mankind, the urge for this decisive organization did not arise. In a certain dullness of social life there acted together what in principle always came from three sources. Modern times demand a conscious integration of man into the social organism. This consciousness can only give a healthy form to the behavior and the whole life of man if it is oriented from three sides. Modern humanity strives for this orientation in the unconscious depths of the soul; and what lives itself out as a social movement is only the clouded reflection of this striving.

[ 43 ] From other foundations than those in which we live today, the call for a reorganization of human nature emerged from deep undergrounds at the end of the 1st century. Century the call for a reorganization of the social human organism emerged. The three words fraternity, equality and liberty were heard as the motto of this reorganization. Now, of course, anyone with an unprejudiced mind and a healthy sense of humanity, who is open to the reality of human development, cannot help but understand everything that these words point to. Nevertheless, there were perceptive thinkers who, in the course of the 19th century, took pains to show how it is impossible to realize these ideas of brotherhood, equality and freedom in a unified social organism. They believed they recognized that these three impulses, if they were to be realized, must contradict each other in the social organism. It has been astutely demonstrated, for example, how impossible it is, if the impulse of equality is realized, that the freedom necessarily founded in every human being will then also come to fruition. And one cannot but agree with those who find this contradiction; and yet, at the same time, one must sympathize with each of these three ideals out of a general human feeling!

[ 44 ] This contradiction exists for the reason that the true social meaning of these three ideals only comes to light by seeing through the necessary threefold structure of the social organism. The three links should not be combined and centralized in an abstract, theoretical Reichstag or other unity. They should be a living reality. Each of the three social links should be centralized in itself; and it is only through their living coexistence and interaction that the unity of the overall social organism can emerge. In real life, what appears to be contradictory works together to form a unity. Therefore, one will arrive at a grasp of the life of the social organism if one is able to see through the real organization of this social organism with reference to brotherhood, equality and freedom. Then one will recognize that the cooperation of men in economic life must rest on that fraternity which arises out of associations. In the second link, in the system of public law, where one has to do with the purely human relationship of person to person, one has to strive for the realization of the idea of equality. And in the spiritual sphere, which stands in relative independence in the social organism, one has to do with the realization of the impulse of freedom. Viewed in this way, these three ideals show their real value. They cannot be realized in a chaotic social life, but only in a healthy tripartite social organism. Not an abstract, centralized social structure can realize the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, but each of the three members of the social organism can draw its strength from one of these impulses. And it will then be able to work together with the other members in a fruitful way.

[ 45 ] Those people who at the end of the 18th century raised the demand for the realization of the three ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity, and also those who repeated them later, could darkly sense where the forces of development of modern humanity were pointing. But at the same time they did not overcome their belief in the unitary state. For them, their ideas meant something contradictory. They embraced the contradictory because in the subconscious depths of their souls the urge for the tripartite organization of the social organism was at work, in which the trinity of their ideas can only become a higher unity. The clearly speaking social facts of the present demand that the forces of development, which in the development of modern humanity urge towards this threefold structure, be turned into a conscious social will.