The Story of My Life
GA 28
Chapter XXVII
[ 1 ] The thought then hovered before me that the turn of the century must bring a new spiritual light to humanity. It seemed to me that the exclusion of human thinking and willing from the spirit had reached a climax. A revolutionary change in the process of human evolution seemed to me a matter of necessity.
[ 2 ] Many were talking in this way. But they did not see that man will seek to direct his eyes toward a world of real spirit as he directs them through the senses toward nature. They only supposed that the subjective spiritual temper of the soul would undergo a revolution. That a real, new objective world could be revealed – such a thought lay beyond the range of vision of that time.
[ 3 ] With the experiences that came to me from my perspective of the future and from the impressions received from the world about me, I was forced to turn the eyes of my mind more and more to the development which marked the nineteenth century.
[ 4 ] I saw how, with the time of Goethe and Hegel, everything disappeared which knowingly takes up conceptions of a spiritual world into human forms of thought. Thenceforth knowledge must not be “confused” by conceptions from the spiritual world. These conceptions are assigned to the sphere of faith and “mystical” experience.
[ 5 ] In Hegel I perceived the greatest thinker of the new age. But he was just that – only a thinker. To him the world of spirit was in thinking. Even while I admired immeasurably the way in which he gave form to all his thinking, yet I perceived that he had no feeling for the world of spirit which I beheld and which is revealed behind thinking only when thinking is empowered to become an experience whose body, in a certain measure, is thought, and which takes up into itself as soul the Spirit of the world.
[ 6 ] Since in Hegelianism everything spiritual has become thought, Hegel represented to me the person who brought the ultimate twilight of the ancient spiritual light into a period in which the spirit became hidden in darkness from human knowledge.
[ 7 ] All this appeared thus before me whether I looked into the spiritual world or looked back in the physical world upon the century drawing to an end. But now there came forth in this century a figure which I could not trace on into the spiritual world – Max Stirner.
[ 8 ] Hegel was wholly the man of thought, who in his inner unfolding strives after a thinking which goes ever deeper, and in going deeper extends to farther horizons. This thinking, in its deepening and broadening, becomes at last one with the thinking of the World-Spirit which includes the whole world-content. And Stirner was all that man unfolds from himself, bringing this wholly from his individual personal will. What exists in humanity lies only in the juxtaposition of single personalities.
[ 9 ] I dared not just at that time fall into one-sidedness. As I stood completely within Hegelianism experiencing this in my soul as my own inner experience, so must I also wholly submerge myself inwardly in this opposite.
[ 10 ] Against the one-sidedness of endowing the World-Spirit merely with knowledge must, indeed, the opposite appear, the assertion of man merely as a will-being.
[ 11 ] Had the situation been such that this opposition had simply appeared in me as an experience of my own mind in its evolution, I would never have permitted anything of this to enter into my writing or lecturing. I have always observed this rule with regard to such mental experiences. But this particular contradiction – Hegel and Stirner – belonged to the century. Through this the century expressed itself.
[ 12 ] And, indeed, it is true that philosophers are not to be principally considered in relation to their influence on their times. Certainly one can mention very strong influences proceeding from Hegel. But this is not the main thing. Philosophers show in the content of their thinking the spirit of their age as a thermometer shows the warmth of a place. In the philosophers that becomes conscious which lives unconsciously in the age.
[ 13 ] And so the nineteenth century in its two extremes lived through the impulses expressing themselves through Hegel and Stirner: impersonal thinking which most delights to yield itself to a contemplation of the world in which man with his inner creative powers has no part; and wholly personal will with little feeling for the harmonious co-operation of men. To be sure, all possible “social ideals” appear, but they have no power to influence reality. This more and more takes on the form of what can come about when the wills of individuals work side by side.
[ 14 ] Hegel would have the thought of the moral take objective form more and more in the associated life of men; Stirner feels that the “individuals” (single persons) are harmed by everything which thus gives harmonious form to the life of men.
[ 15 ] My own consideration of Stirner was connected at that time with a friendship which had a decisive effect upon very much in what we are here considering. This was my friendship with the important Stirner scholar and editor J. H. Mackay. It was while still in Weimar that I was brought in contact by Gabrielle Reuter with this personality, to me likewise altogether congenial. He had occupied himself with those chapters in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity which deal with ethical individualism. He found a harmony between my discussions and his own social views.
[ 16 ] At first it was the personal impression I received from; J. H. Mackay that filled my soul when in company with him. He bore the “world” in him. In his whole inner and outer bearing there spoke world-experience. He had spent some time in both England and America. All this was suffused with a boundless amiability. I conceived a great affection for him.
[ 17 ] When, therefore, J. H. Mackay came to reside permanently at Berlin, there developed a delightful friendship between us. This also, unfortunately, has been destroyed by life and especially by my public discussion of anthroposophy.
[ 18 ] In this instance I must only describe quite objectively how the work of J. H. Mackay seemed to me at that time, and still seems, and what effect it had upon me. For I am aware that he would express himself quite differently about it.
Profoundly hateful to this man was everything in human social life which is force, Archie. The greatest failure, he felt, was the introduction of force into social control. In “communistic anarchy” he saw a social idea in the highest degree objectionable because this proposed to bring about a better state of humanity through the employment of force.
[ 19 ] Now it was a risky thing for J. H. Mackay to battle against this idea and the agitation based upon it while choosing for his own social thought the same name which his opponents had, only with another adjective preceding it. “Individualistic anarchy” was his name for what he himself represented, and that, too, as the very opposite of what was then called “anarchy.” This naturally led the public to form nothing but biased view concerning Mackay's ideas. He was in accord with the American, B. Tucker, who stood for the same conception. Tucker visited Mackay at Berlin, and in this way I came to know him.
[ 20 ] Mackay is also a poet of his conception of life. He wrote a novel Die Anarchisten.1The Anarchist. I read this after I had become acquainted with the author. This is a noble work based upon faith in the individual man. It describes penetratingly and with great vividness the social condition of the poorest of the poor. But it also sets forth how out of the world's misery those men will find a way to improvement who, being wholly devoted to the good forces, so bring these forces to their unfolding that they become effective in the free association of men rendering compulsion unnecessary. Mackay had the noble confidence that men could of themselves create a harmonious order of life. He considered, however, that this would be possible only after a long time, when by spiritual ways a requisite revolution should have been completed within men. He therefore demanded for the present that those individuals who were far enough advanced should propagate the idea of this spiritual way. A social idea, therefore, which would employ only spiritual means.
[ 22 ] Destiny had now given such a turn to my experience with J. H. Mackay and Stirner that here also I had to submerge myself in a thought-world which became to me a spiritual testing. My ethical individualism I felt to be a pure inner experience of man. It was by no means my intention when I formulated this to make it the basis of a philosophy of politics. Now at this time, about 1898, a sort of abyss had to be opened in my mind in regard to this purely ethical individualism. It had to be changed from something purely human and inward to something external. The esoteric must be shifted to the exoteric.
[ 23 ] Then, in the beginning of the new century, when I had succeeded in stating my experience of the spiritual in Die Mystik im Aufgange2Mysticism at the Beginning of the Modern Spiritual Life. and Christianity as Mystical Fact, ethical individualism again stood after the test in its rightful place.
Yet the testing took such a course that the outward expression played no part in full consciousness. It took its course just below this full consciousness, and because of this very proximity it could influence the forms of expression in which, during the last years of the past century, I spoke regarding things social. Certain discussions of that time, however, which seem all too radical must be compared with others in order to arrive at a correct conception.
[ 24 ] One who sees into the spiritual world always finds his own being externalized when he ought to express opinions and conceptions. He enters the spiritual world, not in abstractions, but in living perceptions. Nature likewise, which is the sensible copy of the spiritual, does not represent opinions and conceptions, but places these before the world in their forming and becoming.
[ 25 ] A state of inner movement, which drove into billows and waves all the forces of my soul, was at that time my inner experience.
[ 26 ] My external private life became one of absolute satisfaction by reason of the fact that the Eunicke family was drawn to Berlin and I could live with them under the best of care after having experienced for a short time the utter misery of living in a home of my own. My friendship with Frau Eunicke was soon thereafter transformed into a civil marriage. Only this shall be said concerning this private affair. Of my private life I do not wish to introduce anything into this biography except what concerns my process of development. Living in the Eunicke home enabled me to have an undisturbed basis for a life of inner and outer movement. Otherwise, private relationships do not belong to the public. It is not concerned in these.
[ 27 ] Indeed, my spiritual development is, in reality, utterly independent of all private relationships. I am conscious of the fact that this would have been quite the same had the shaping of my private life been entirely different.
[ 28 ] Amid all the movement in my life at that time came now the continual anxiety concerning the possibility of an existence for the Magazine. In spite of all the difficulties I faced, it would have gained a circulation if there had been available to me the material means. But a periodical which at the utmost could afford only sufficient compensation to give me the bare necessities of a material existence, and for which nothing whatever could be done to make it known, could not thrive upon the limited circulation it had when I took it over.
[ 29 ] So long as I edited the Magazine it was a constant source of anxiety to me.
Chapter XXVII
[ 1 ] Mir schwebte damals vor, wie die Jahrhundertwende ein neues geistiges Licht der Menschheit bringen müsse. Es schien mir, daß die Abgeschlossenheit des menschlichen Denkens und Wollens vom Geiste einen Höhepunkt erreicht hätte. Ein Umschlagen des Werdeganges der Menschheitsentwickelung schien mir eine Notwendigkeit.
[ 2 ] In diesem Sinne sprachen viele. Aber sie hatten nicht im Auge, daß der Mensch suchen werde, auf eine wirkliche Geistwelt seine Aufmerksamkeit zu richten, wie er sie durch die Sinne auf die Natur richtet. Sie vermeinten nur, daß die subjektive Geistesverfassung der Seelen einen Umschwung erfahren werde. Daß eine wirkliche neue, objektive Welt sich offenbaren könne, das zu denken, lag außerhalb des damaligen Gesichtskreises.
[ 3 ] Mit den Empfindungen, die aus meiner Zukunftsperspektive und aus den Eindrücken der Umwelt sich ergaben, mußte ich immer wieder den Geistesblick in das Werden des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts zurückwenden.
[ 4 ] Ich sah, wie mit der Goethe- und Hegel-Zeit alles verschwindet, was in die menschliche Denkungsart erkennend Vorstellungen von einer geistigen Welt aufnimmt. Das Erkennen sollte fortan durch Vorstellungen von der geistigen Welt nicht «verwirrt» werden. Diese Vorstellungen verwies man in das Gebiet des Glaubens und des «mystischen» Erlebens.
[ 5 ] In Hegel erblickte ich den größten Denker der neuen Zeit. Aber er war eben nur Denker. Für ihn war die Geistwelt im Denken. Gerade, indem ich restlos bewunderte, wie er allem Denken Gestaltung gab, empfand ich doch, daß er kein Gefühl für die Geistwelt hatte, die ich schaute, und die erst hinter dem Denken offenbar wird, wenn das Denken sich erkraftet zu einem Erleben, dessen Leib gewissermaßen Denken ist, und der als Seele in sich den Geist der Welt aufnimmt.
[ 6 ] Weil im Hegeltum alles Geistige zum Denken geworden ist, stellte sich mir Hegel als die Persönlichkeit dar, die ein allerletztes Aufdämmern alten Geisteslichtes in eine Zeit brachte, in der sich für das Erkennen der Menschheit der Geist in Finsternis hüllte.
[ 7 ] All dies stand so vor mir, ob ich in die geistige Welt schaute, oder ob ich in der physischen Welt auf das ablaufende Jahrhundert zurücksah. Aber nun trat eine Gestalt in diesem Jahrhundert auf, die ich nicht bis in die geistige Welt hinein verfolgen konnte: Max Stirner.
[ 8 ] Hegel ganz Denkrnensch, der in der inneren Entfaltung ein Denken anstrebte, das zugleich sich immer mehr vertiefte und im Vertiefen über größere Horizonte erweiterte. Dieses Denken sollte zuletzt im Vertiefen und Erweitern Eins werden mit dem Denken des Weltgeistes, das allen Welt-Inhalt einschließt. Und Stirner, alles, was der Mensch aus sich entfaltet, ganz aus dem individuell-persönlichen Willen holend. Was in der Menschheit entsteht, nur im Nebeneinander der einzelnen Persönlichkeiten.
[ 9 ] Ich durfte gerade in jener Zeit nicht in Einseitigkeit verfallen. Wie ich im Hegeltum ganz darinnen stand, es in meiner Seele erlebend wie mein eigenes inneres Erleben, so mußte ich auch in diesen Gegensatz innerlich ganz untertauchen.
[ 10 ] Gegenüber der Einseitigkeit, den Weltgeist bloß mit Wissen auszustatten, mußte ja die andere auftreten, den einzelnen Menschen bloß als Willenswesen geltend zu machen.
[ 11 ] Hätte nun die Sache so gelegen, daß diese Gegensätze nur in mir, als Seelenerlebnisse meiner Entwickelung aufgetreten wären, so hätte ich davon nichts einfließen lassen in meine Schriften oder Reden. Ich habe es mit solchen Seelenerlebnissen immer so gehalten. Aber dieser Gegensatz: Hegel und Stirner gehörten dem Jahrhundert an. Das Jahrhundert sprach sich durch sie aus. Und es ist ja so, daß Philosophen im wesentlichen nicht durch ihre Wirkung auf ihre Zeit in Betracht kommen.
[ 12 ] Man kann zwar gerade bei Hegel von starken Wirkungen sprechen. Aber das ist nicht die Hauptsache. Philosophen zeigen durch den Inhalt ihrer Gedanken den Geist ihres Zeitalters an, wie das Thermometer die Wärme eines Ortes anzeigt. In den Philosophen wird bewußt, was unterbewußt in dem Zeitalter lebt.
[ 13 ] Und so lebt das neunzehnte Jahrhundert in seinen Extremen durch die Impulse, die durch Hegel und Stirner sich ausdrücken: unpersönliches Denken, das am liebsten in einer Weltbetrachtung sich ergeht, an der der Mensch mit den schaffenden Kräften seines Innern keinen Anteil hat; ganz persönliches Wollen, das für harmonisches Zusammenwirken der Menschen wenig Sinn hat. Zwar treten alle möglichen «Gesellschafts-Ideale» auf; aber sie haben keine Kraft, die Wirklichkeit zu beeinflussen. Diese gestaltet sich immer mehr zu dem, was entstehen kann, wenn die Willen Einzelner nebeneinander wirken.
[ 14 ] Hegel will, daß im Zusammenleben der Menschen der Gedanke des Sittlichen objektive Gestalt annimmt; Stirner fühlt den «Einzelnen» (Einzigen) beirrt durch alles, was so dem Leben der Menschen harmonisierte Gestalt geben kann.
[ 15 ] Bei mir verband sich mit der Betrachtung Stirners damals eine Freundschaft, die bestimmend auf so manches in dieser Betrachtung wirkte. Es ist die Freundschaft zu dem bedeutenden Stirner-Kenner und -Herausgeber J. H. Mackay. Es war noch in Weimar, da brachte mich Gabriele Reuter mit dieser mir sogleich durch und durch sympathischen Persönlichkeit zusammen. Er hatte sich in meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit» mit den Abschnitten befaßt, die vom ethischen Individualismus sprechen. Er fand eine Harmonie zwischen meinen Ausführungen und seinen eigenen sozialen Anschauungen.
[ 16 ] Mir war zunächst der persönliche Eindruck, den ich von J. H. Mackay hatte, das meine Seele ihm gegenüber Erfüllende. Er trug «Welt» in sich. In seiner ganzen äußern und innern Haltung sprach Welterfahrung. Er hatte Zeiten in England, in Amerika zugebracht. Das alles war in eine grenzenlose Liebenswürdigkeit getaucht. Ich faßte eine große Liebe zu dem Manne.
[ 17 ] Als dann 1898 J. H. Mackay in Berlin zu dauerndem Aufenthalte erschien, entwickelte sich eine schöne Freundschaft zwischen uns. Leider ist auch diese durch das Leben und namentlich durch mein öffentliches Vertreten der Anthroposophie zerstört worden.
[ 18 ] Ich darf in diesem Falle nur ganz subjektiv schildern, wie mir J. H. Mackays Werk damals erschien und heute noch immer erscheint, und wie es damals in mir gewirkt hat. Denn ich weiß, daß er sich selbst darüber ganz anders aussprechen würde. Tief verhaßt war diesem Manne im sozialen Leben der Menschen alles, was Gewalt (Archie) ist. Die größte Verfehlung sah er in dem Eingreifen der Gewalt in die soziale Verwaltung. In dem «kommunistischen Anarchismus» sah er eine soziale Idee, die im höchsten Grade verwerflich ist, weil sie bessere Menschheitszustände mit Anwendung von Gewaltmitteln herbeiführen wollte.
[ 19 ] Nun war das Bedenkliche, daß J. H. Mackay diese Idee und die auf sie gegründete Agitation bekämpfte, indem er für seine eigenen sozialen Gedanken denselben Namen wählte, den die Gegner hatten, nur mit einem andern Eigenschaftswort davor. «Individualistischer Anarchismus» nannte er, was er selber vertrat, und zwar als Gegenteil dessen, was man damals Anarchismus nannte. Das gab natürlich dazu Anlaß, daß in der Öffentlichkeit nur schiefe Urteile über Mackays Ideen sich bilden konnten. Er stand im Einklange mit dem Amerikaner B. Tucker, der die gleiche Ansicht vertrat. Tucker besuchte Mackay in Berlin, wobei ich ihn kennen lernte.
[ 20 ] Mackay ist zugleich Dichter seiner Lebensauffassung. Er schrieb einen Roman: «Die Anarchisten». Ich las ihn, nachdem ich den Verfasser kennen gelernt hatte. Es ist dies ein edles Werk des Vertrauens in den einzelnen Menschen. Es schildert eindringlich und mit großer Anschaulichkeit die sozialen Zustände der Ärmsten der Armen. Es schildert aber auch, wie aus dem Weltelend heraus die Menschen den Weg zur Besserung finden werden, die ganz den guten Kräften der Menschennatur hingegeben, diese so zur Entfaltung bringen, daß sie im freien Zusammensein der Menschen sozial, ohne Gewalt notwendig zu machen, wirken. Mackay hatte das edle Vertrauen in die Menschen, daß sie durch sich selbst eine harmonische Lebensordnung schaffen können. Allerdings hielt er dafür, daß dies erst nach langer Zeit möglich sein werde, wenn auf geistigem Wege im Innern der Menschen sich der entsprechende Umschwung vollzogen haben werde. Deshalb forderte er für die Gegenwart von dem Einzelnen, der weit genug dazu ist, die Verbreitung der Gedanken von diesem geistigen Wege. Eine soziale Idee also, die nur mit geistigen Mitteln arbeiten wollte.
[ 21 ] J. H. Mackay gab seiner Lebensansicht auch in Gedichten Ausdruck. Freunde sahen darinnen etwas Lehrhaftes und Theoretisches, das unkünstlerisch sei. Ich hatte diese Gedichte sehr lieb.
[ 22 ] Das Schicksal hatte nun mein Erlebnis mit J. H. Mackay und mit Stirner so gewendet, daß ich auch da untertauchen mußte in eine Gedankenwelt, die mir zur geistigen Prüfung wurde. Mein ethischer Individualismus war als reines Innen-Erlebnis des Menschen empfunden. Mir lag ganz fern, als ich ihn ausbildete, ihn zur Grundlage einer politischen Anschauung zu machen. Damals nun, um 1898 herum, sollte meine Seele mit dem rein ethischen Individualismus in eine Art Abgrund gerissen werden. Er sollte aus einem rein-menschlich Innerlichen zu etwas Äußerlichem gemacht werden. Das Esoterische sollte ins Exoterische abgelenkt werden.
[ 23 ] Als ich dann, im Beginne des neuen Jahrhunderts, in Schriften wie «Die Mystik im Aufgange» und das «Christentum als mystische Tatsache» mein Erleben des Geistigen geben konnte, stand, nach der Prüfung, der «ethische Individualismus» wieder an seinem richtigen Orte. Doch verlief auch da die Prüfung so, daß im Vollbewußtsein die Veräußerlichung keine Rolle spielte. Sie lief unmittelbar unter diesem Vollbewußtsein ab, und konnte ja gerade wegen dieser Nähe in die Ausdrucksformen einfließen, in denen ich in den letzten Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts von sozialen Dingen sprach. Doch muß man auch da gewissen, allzu radikal erscheinenden Ausführungen andere gegenüberstellen, um ein rechtes Bild zu erhalten.
[ 24 ] Der in die Geistwelt Schauende findet sein eigenes Wesen immer veräußerlicht, wenn er Meinungen, Ansichten aussprechen soll. Er tritt in die Geistwelt nicht in Abstraktionen, sondern in lebendigen Anschauungen. Auch die Natur, die ja das sinnenfällige Abbild des Geistigen ist, stellt nicht Meinungen, Ansichten auf, sondern sie stellt ihre Gestalten und ihr Werden vor die Welt hin.
[ 25 ] Ein inneres Bewegtsein, das alle meine Seelenkräfte in Wogen und Wellen brachte, war damals mein inneres Erlebnis.
[ 26 ] Mein äußeres Privatleben wurde mir dadurch zu einem äußerst befriedigenden gemacht, daß die Familie Eunike nach Berlin gezogen ist, und ich bei ihr unter bester Pflege wohnen konnte, nachdem ich kurze Zeit das ganze Elend des Wohnens in einer eigenen Wohnung durchgemacht hatte. Die Freundschaft zu Frau Eunike wurde bald darauf in eine bürgerliche Ehe umgewandelt. Nur dieses sei über diese Privatverhältnisse gesagt. Ich will von dem Privatleben in diesem «Lebensgange» nirgends etwas anderes erwähnen, als was in meinen Werdegang hineinspielt Und das Leben im Eunike'schen Hause gab mir damals die Möglichkeit, eine ungestörte Grundlage für ein innerlich und äußerlich bewegtes Leben zu haben. Im übrigen gehören Privatverhältnisse nicht in die Öffentlichkeit. Sie gehen sie nichts an.
[ 27 ] Und mein geistiger Werdegang ist ja ganz und gar unabhängig von allen Privatverhältnissen. Ich habe das Bewußtsein, er wäre der ganz gleiche gewesen bei ganz anderer Gestaltung meines Privatlebens.
[ 28 ] In alle Bewegtheit des damaligen Lebens fiel nun die fortwährende Sorge um die Existenzmöglichkeit des «Magazins» hinein. Trotz all der Schwierigkeiten, die ich hatte, wäre die Wochenschrift zur Verbreitung zu bringen gewesen, wenn mir materielle Mittel zur Verfügung gestanden hätten. Aber eine Zeitschrift, die nur äußerst mäßige Honorare zahlen kann, die mir selbst fast gar keine materielle Lebensgrundlage gab, für die gar nichts getan werden konnte, um sie bekannt zu machen: die konnte bei dem geringen Maße von Verbreitung, mit dem ich sie übernommen hatte, nicht gedeihen.
[ 29 ] Ich gab das «Magazin» heraus, indem es für mich eine ständige Sorge war.
Chapter XXVII
[ 1 ] I envisioned at that time how the turn of the century would have to bring a new spiritual light to humanity. It seemed to me that the isolation of human thought and will from the spirit had reached a climax. A reversal of the course of human development seemed to me a necessity.
[ 2 ] Many spoke in this sense. But they did not have in mind that man would seek to direct his attention to a real spiritual world, as he directs it through the senses to nature. They only thought that the subjective spiritual state of souls would undergo a change. To think that a real new, objective world could reveal itself was beyond the realm of vision at the time.
[ 3 ] With the feelings that arose from my perspective of the future and from the impressions of the environment, I had to keep turning my mind's eye back to the development of the nineteenth century.
[ 4 ] I saw how, with the Goethe and Hegel era, everything that incorporates ideas of a spiritual world into the human way of thinking in a cognitive way disappears. From then on, cognition should not be "confused" by ideas of the spiritual world. These ideas were relegated to the realm of faith and "mystical" experience.
[ 5 ] In Hegel, I saw the greatest thinker of the new age. But he was only a thinker. For him, the spiritual world was in thinking. Precisely because I completely admired how he gave form to all thinking, I nevertheless felt that he had no feeling for the spiritual world that I saw, and which only becomes apparent behind thinking when thinking develops into an experience whose body is, as it were, thinking, and which, as a soul, absorbs the spirit of the world into itself.
[ 6 ] Because in Hegelianism everything spiritual has become thinking, Hegel presented himself to me as the personality who brought a very last dawning of old spiritual light into a time in which the spirit was shrouded in darkness for the cognition of humanity.
[ 7 ] All this stood before me, whether I looked into the spiritual world or whether I looked back in the physical world at the century that was passing. But now a figure appeared in this century whom I could not follow into the spiritual world: Max Stirner.
[ 8 ] Hegel was entirely a thinker who, in his inner development, strove for a way of thinking that simultaneously deepened more and more and, in deepening, expanded over greater horizons. This thinking was ultimately to become one with the thinking of the world spirit in deepening and broadening, which includes all world content. And Stirner, everything that man develops out of himself, he takes entirely from the individual-personal will. What arises in humanity, only in the coexistence of individual personalities.
[ 9 ] I was not allowed to fall into one-sidedness at that time. Just as I was completely immersed in the healing, experiencing it in my soul like my own inner experience, I also had to immerse myself completely in this contrast.
[ 10 ] In contrast to the one-sidedness of endowing the world spirit merely with knowledge, there had to be the other, to assert the individual human being merely as a being of will.
[ 11 ] If the situation had been such that these opposites had only arisen in me, as soul experiences of my development, I would not have allowed any of this to flow into my writings or speeches. I have always kept it that way with such soul experiences. But this contradiction: Hegel and Stirner belonged to the century. The century expressed itself through them. And the fact is that philosophers are essentially not considered by their effect on their time.
[ 12 ] It is true that one can speak of strong effects in the case of Hegel. But that is not the main thing. Philosophers indicate the spirit of their age by the content of their thoughts, just as a thermometer indicates the warmth of a place. In philosophers, what lives subconsciously in the age becomes conscious.
[ 13 ] And so the nineteenth century lives in its extremes through the impulses expressed by Hegel and Stirner: impersonal thinking, which prefers to indulge in a view of the world in which man has no part with the creative forces of his inner being; completely personal will, which has little sense for harmonious cooperation between people. Although all kinds of "social ideals" appear, they have no power to influence reality. This becomes more and more what can arise when the wills of individuals work side by side.
[ 14 ] Hegel wants the idea of morality to take on an objective form in human coexistence; Stirner feels that the "individual" (Einzigen) is disturbed by everything that can thus give harmonized form to human life.
[ 15 ] A friendship connected with my contemplation of Stirner at the time, which had a decisive effect on so many things in this contemplation. It was my friendship with the important Stirner expert and editor J. H. Mackay. It was still in Weimar that Gabriele Reuter brought me together with this personality, who I immediately liked through and through. He had read the sections of my "Philosophy of Freedom" that speak of ethical individualism. He found a harmony between my explanations and his own social views.
[ 16 ] First of all, the personal impression I had of J. H. Mackay was what filled my soul about him. He had "world" in him. His whole outward and inward demeanor spoke of world experience. He had spent time in England, in America. All this was bathed in a boundless kindness. I felt a great love for the man.
[ 17 ] When in 1898 J. H. Mackay came to Berlin for a permanent stay in 1898, a beautiful friendship developed between us. Unfortunately, this too was destroyed by life and in particular by my public advocacy of anthroposophy.
[ 18 ] In this case I may only describe quite subjectively how J. H. Mackay's work appeared to me at the time and still appears to me today, and how it affected me at the time. For I know that he himself would speak quite differently about it. This man deeply detested everything in the social life of mankind that was violence (Archie). He saw the greatest transgression in the intervention of violence in social administration. In "communist anarchism" he saw a social idea that was highly reprehensible because it sought to bring about better conditions for mankind through the use of violence.
[ 19 ] Now the alarming thing was that J. H. Mackay fought this idea and the agitation based on it by choosing the same name for his own social ideas that his opponents had, only with a different proper noun in front of it. He called what he himself advocated "individualist anarchism" as the opposite of what was then called anarchism. This, of course, gave rise to the fact that the public could only form skewed judgments about Mackay's ideas. He was in agreement with the American B. Tucker, who held the same view. Tucker visited Mackay in Berlin, where I got to know him.
[ 20 ] Mackay is also a poet of his view of life. He wrote a novel: "The Anarchists". I read it after meeting the author. It is a noble work of faith in the individual. It vividly and vividly describes the social conditions of the poorest of the poor. But it also describes how out of the end of the world those people will find the way to improvement who, completely devoted to the good forces of human nature, bring them to fruition in such a way that they work socially in the free togetherness of people without making violence necessary. Mackay had the noble confidence in people that they could create a harmonious order of life by themselves. However, he believed that this would only be possible after a long time, when the necessary spiritual change had taken place within mankind. For the present, therefore, he demanded that individuals who were sufficiently advanced to do so should spread the ideas of this spiritual path. A social idea that only wanted to work with spiritual means.
[ 21 ] J. H. Mackay also expressed his view of life in poems. Friends saw in them something didactic and theoretical that was inartistic. I was very fond of these poems.
[ 22 ] Fate had now turned my experience with J. H. Mackay and with Stirner in such a way that I had to immerse myself in a world of thought that became a spiritual test for me. My ethical individualism was perceived as a pure inner experience of man. When I developed it, I had no intention of making it the basis of a political view. At that time, around 1898, my soul was to be torn into a kind of abyss by purely ethical individualism. It was to be turned from something purely humanly internal into something external. The esoteric was to be diverted into the exoteric.
[ 23 ] When, at the beginning of the new century, I was able to give my experience of the spiritual in writings such as "Mysticism on the Rise" and "Christianity as a Mystical Fact", "ethical individualism" was back in its right place after the test. But even then the test proceeded in such a way that externalization played no role in full consciousness. It took place directly under this full consciousness, and precisely because of this proximity it could flow into the forms of expression in which I spoke of social things in the last years of the last century. But here, too, certain statements that seem all too radical must be contrasted with others in order to get the right picture.
[ 24 ] The person looking into the spiritual world always finds his own being externalized when he expresses opinions, views. He does not enter the spiritual world in abstractions, but in living views. Nature, too, which is the sensory image of the spiritual, does not express opinions and views, but presents its forms and its becoming to the world.
[ 25 ] An inner movement that brought all the powers of my soul into waves and ripples was my inner experience at that time.
[ 26 ] My outer private life was made extremely satisfying for me by the fact that the Eunike family moved to Berlin and I was able to live with them under their best care, after having gone through all the misery of living in my own apartment for a short time. The friendship with Mrs. Eunike was soon transformed into a civil marriage. I will only say this about these private relationships. I don't want to mention anything about private life in this "course of life" other than what plays a part in my career. And living in Eunike's house gave me the opportunity at that time to have an undisturbed basis for an inwardly and outwardly eventful life. Incidentally, private relationships do not belong in public. They are none of her business.
[ 27 ] And my spiritual development is completely independent of all private relationships. I am aware that it would have been quite the same if my private life had been organized quite differently.
[ 28 ] The constant worry about the "magazine's" ability to exist now interfered with all the turbulence of life at the time. Despite all the difficulties I had, I would have been able to distribute the weekly magazine if I had had the material means to do so. But a magazine that can only pay extremely modest fees, that gave me almost no material basis for living, for which nothing at all could be done to publicize it: it could not thrive with the small amount of distribution I had taken on.
[ 29 ] I published the "magazine", as it was a constant concern for me.