The Rudolf Steiner Archive

20. The Thirst of Time for Thoughts

[ 1 ] Good thoughts do not make bread. This is the essence of the wisdom that is often heard today when people talk about ideas such as those underlying the demand for the threefolding of the social organism. In view of the seriousness of the times, one would like to add this wisdom to another that can often be heard today: once people start working again, the social question will take on a different face.

[ 2 ] If these two words of wisdom are not ringing in your ears at the moment, then you have no ears for the language that has become commonplace in many circles. Even if they are not spoken directly, they still resound through much that is said in public.

[ 3 ] The reason why it is so difficult to counter objections that stem from these sources of wisdom with the ideas demanded by the times is that they are so incomparably "plausible". All someone has to do is say: refute these objections for me; and the best thinker will have to confess his impotence. For of course they cannot be refuted. They are, of course, correct.

[ 4 ] But does life only depend on saying the right thing in any given situation? Doesn't everything depend on finding the thoughts that can set things in motion? It is a phenomenon in today's public life that does it the most serious harm that people do not want to connect a sense of reality with thinking.

[ 5 ] It is only this lack of a sense of reality that is a hindrance when one wants to address the social needs of the present with fruitful ideas. But we have long become accustomed to thinking in terms of this lack. Now it is truly necessary to thoroughly relearn precisely this aspect of human life.

[ 6 ] You only have to see how you have allowed yourself to slip into this kind of thinking. You have to look at popular trains of thought in recent times.

[ 7 ] One such popular train of thought in the social sphere is that which arises from the habits of primitive peoples. One seeks to investigate how a certain communism and the like prevailed in "primeval times" and draws certain conclusions from this for what should be done today. This line of thought has become very common in writings that deal with the social question. And from there it has taken hold of wide circles. It lives on today in much of what is thought by the masses in the "social question".

[ 8 ] This train of thought could really have been achieved more cheaply than it has been on many sides. One could have compared the social life of humans with the habits of wild animal forms. There one would have found how instincts lead to the satisfaction of the needs of life, and how these instincts lead to the corresponding appropriation of what nature provides for the needs of life.

[ 9 ] The essential point is that man must replace the instinctive faculty with conscious, goal-oriented thinking. He must build on the basis of nature, like every being that must eat to live. The bread question is a question of the natural basis. But this is present for every being in need of nourishment. With regard to it, there can be no talk of "social thinking". This only begins with the activities to which man subjects the natural basis through his thinking. Through his thinking he masters the forces of nature, through his thinking he brings himself into a working context with other people, which weaves the "bread" wrested from nature into social life. For this life, the question of bread is a question of thought. It can only be a matter of answering the question: What are the fruitful thoughts which, brought to realization, allow the satisfaction of human needs to emerge from human labour?

[ 10 ] You can agree with anyone who, after hearing such arguments, says: this is truly primitive wisdom. Why do we say such self-evident things in the first place? Oh, one would be quite happy to refrain from saying them if it were not for those people who think that it is superfluous to say them and who, to the detriment of healthy social thinking, throw them to the winds with their wisdom that "thoughts cannot produce bread".

[ 11 ] And so it is with the other piece of wisdom by which one would like to get away from the seriousness of the social question: it is above all a question of people working again. Man works when the thought germinates in his soul that drives him to work. If he is to work in the context of social life, he will only feel that his existence is worthy of human dignity if thoughts prevail in this life which make his work appear to him in the light of this human dignity. However, certain circles, including those with a socialist orientation, would like to replace this drive to work with the compulsion to work. This is just their way of avoiding the insight into the necessity of fruitful social ideas.

[ 12 ] The world has got into the situation in which it finds itself through those who make the effectiveness of ideas impossible by fleeing from them. Rescue is only possible if those who can still develop a sufficient awareness of this fact within themselves gather together to form a strong force. These must not become fainthearted in these serious times. Today, they will still be muttering the epithets: impractical idealist, fantastic utopian. They will do their duty if they build while the scornful destroy. For those who have built or still want to build their "practice" on the swampy ground of a deceptive "reality" in the name of the flight of ideas will fall, in which they have "come so wonderfully far". The only thinking they do today is to create illusions about their "practice" and to create a cheap inner satisfaction for themselves by mocking true life practice. To look clearly into what presents itself to the unbiased mind in this direction is today the most important task in life for all those who do not shy away from rethinking many things. The life of time thirsts for creative thoughts; the thirst will not disappear, no matter how loudly the thoughtless posturing of the enemies of thought would like to ensure its numbing.