Education as a Social Problem
GA 296
17 August 1919, Dornach
VI. The Inexpressible Name, Spirits of Space and Time, Conquering Egotism
What I said yesterday about the path of the human intellect toward the future, rests upon definite facts that can be brought to light through spiritual-scientific knowledge. Today we shall deal with some of these facts. You must be conscious in a practical way, I might say, of the following.
When a man confronts you, he is that being we speak about in spiritual science. That is to say, above everything we must always be aware that he is a four-membered being, as you know from my book Theosophy. We have before us the ego, the astral body, ether body, and physical body. The fact that every time a person stands before us we are confronted by these four members of the human entity, brings it about that ordinary human perception does not know what it faces in man. Ordinarily one thinks: “What I see before me, filling space, is the physical body.” But what is physical in it we would not see as we usually see it if it were to confront us merely as physical body. We see it as it usually is today only because it is permeated by the ether body, the astral body, and ego. Strange as it may sound, that which is the physical body proper is a corpse, even during our lifetime. When we are confronted by a human corpse we are actually confronted by the physical body. In the corpse we have physical man not permeated by ether and astral body and ego. It is forsaken by them and shows its true nature. You do not visualize yourself properly if you believe you carry what you consider to be the physical body of man with you through space. A more correct view would be if you thought of yourself as a corpse with your ego, astral and etheric bodies carrying this corpse through space.
A consciousness of the true nature of man's being becomes more and more important for our age. For the conditions existing in the present cycle of mankind's evolution were not the same in earlier periods. What I am now relating cannot be ascertained by outer physical science, but spiritual-scientific cognition does observe these facts. As you know, the fourth post Atlantean age begins in the eighth century B.C.; further back we come to the Egypto-Chaldean period. At that time human bodies had a constitution different from that of today. Those you find now in the museum as mummies had a much more delicate constitution than present-day human bodies. They were much more permeated by the plant element; they were not so completely corpse as is the modern human body. As physical bodies they were akin to plant nature, whereas the present-day physical body, since the Greco-Latin age, is akin to the mineral world. If through some cosmic miracle the bodies of that ancient population were to be bestowed upon us, we would all be ill. We would carry proliferating growths in our body. Many a disease consists in the fact that the human body atavistically returns to conditions that were the normal ones in the Egypto-Chaldean age. Today we find tumorous formations in the body which are caused by the fact that a part of this or that person's body develops the tendency to become what the whole body was for the ancient Egypto-Chaldean population.
This is closely connected with human evolution. We as modern men carry a corpse in our body. The ancient Egyptian carried as his body something of a plant-like nature. The result was that his knowledge was different from ours, his intelligence acted differently. What do we know through our science that we are so proud of? Only that which is dead. Science shows that life cannot be grasped with ordinary intelligence. To be sure, certain research scientists believe that if they continue with their chemical experiments the moment will come when they will be able, through complicated combinations of atoms, molecules, and their interactions, to know the processes of life. This moment will never come. On the chemico-physical path one will only be able to grasp the minerally dead; that is to say, one will only grasp that aspect of the living which is a corpse.
Yet, what in man is intelligent and gains knowledge is nevertheless this physical body, this corpse. What then does this corpse do as we carry it about? It achieves most in a knowledge of mathematics and geometry. Everything is transparent there. The further we move from the mathematical-geometrical the more un-transparent do matters become. The reason for this is that the human corpse is the real knower today; the dead can only recognize the dead. Today what the ether body is, the astral body, the ego, does not think in man; it remains in obscurity. If the ether body would be able to know in the same way that the physical body knows the dead, it would know the life of the plant world. This was the peculiar thing with the Egyptian, that with his plant-like, living body he had knowledge of the plant world in a way quite different from ours. Much instinctive knowledge of the plant world can be traced back to what was embodied in Egyptian culture through their instinctively knowing consciousness. Even what is known today in botany about substances for medicinal use comes often from traditions originating in ancient Egyptian wisdom. You know how a number of so-called lodges, not founded on genuine fundamentals, call themselves Egyptian lodges. That is because they refer back to Egypt if they want to impart certain knowledge—which, however, is no longer very valuable. In these circles there still live certain traditions stemming from the wisdom which could be had through the Egyptian body. One can say, as humanity gradually progresses into the Greco-Latin period the living, human plant-body gradually died out. We carry an extremely dead body in us; especially is this true for the head. The science of the initiates perceives the human head as a corpse, as something continually dying. More and more will humanity become conscious of the fact that its vehicle for knowledge is a corpse; that it therefore knows only what is dead.
For this reason, the further we go into the future the more intensively will we feel a longing to know what is living. But the living will not be known through ordinary intelligence bound to the corpse. Much will be needed to make it possible for man again to penetrate the world in a living way. We must know today what it is that man has lost. When he passed over from the Atlantean to the post Atlantean age there was much he could not do that he can do today. Since a certain time in your childhood you are able to say “I” in referring to yourself. You may say it without any great respect. But in former ages of mankind's evolution this “I” was not referred to with so little respect. There were times, prior to the Egyptian age, when a name for “I” was used which, when pronounced, stupefied a person. Pronouncing it, therefore, was avoided. If people right after the Atlantean epoch had experienced the pronouncing of the name for “I”—at that time it was only known to the initiates—the whole congregation would have fainted, so powerful was the effect of uttering this name for “I.” An echo of this fact lingered with the ancient Hebrews who spoke of the unutterable name of the Deity in the soul; a word which only the initiates were permitted to speak, or that was expressed before the congregation in a kind of eurythmy.
The ineffable name of God had its origin in what I have just told you. Gradually this fact was lost, and the deep effect of such practices diminished. In the first post-Atlantean epoch a deep effect in the ego; in the second epoch a deep effect in the astral body; in the third epoch a deep effect in the ether body, but the effect was bearable—an effect which, as I stated yesterday, brought men into connection with the cosmos. Today we can say “I”—we can say anything—without its having a deep effect upon us, because we grasp the world with our corpse. That is to say, we grasp what is dead, what is mineral in the world. But we must arouse ourselves to rise again to those regions in which we can take hold of the living. Whereas the Greco-Latin period created more and more dead knowledge for the corpse, in our time intelligence follows the path I mentioned yesterday. We must, therefore, resist mere intelligence; we must add something to it. It is in the nature of our time that we have to retrace the path of development, so that in the fifth post-Atlantean period we learn to know the plant, in the sixth period the animal, and in the seventh the truly human. Thus, it will be our present task to pass beyond a knowledge of the mineral and learn to know the plant element.
Now after realizing this, ask yourself who is the person who exemplifies this search for plant knowledge. It is Goethe. Contrary to the preoccupation of all outer science with what is dead, he occupied himself with the life, the growth, the metamorphosis of plants. Thus, he was the man of the fifth post-Atlantean period in its elementary beginnings. In his small treatise of the year 1790, An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants, you will see how Goethe tries to comprehend the plant from leaf to leaf as something developing, unfolding, not as something completed, dead. That is the beginning of the knowledge that should be sought in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.
In Goetheanism we have the keynote for this. Science will have to wake up in the Goethean sense, will have to pass from the dead to the living. This is what is meant when I say again and again that we must acquire the ability to leave behind the dead, abstract concepts and arrive at those that are living and concrete. What I said two days ago and yesterday is basically the way to these living, concrete concepts.
It will not be possible to enter into these concepts and ideas if we are not ready to develop our general world view and concept of life as a unity. Through the special con-figuration of our culture we are forced to let the various currents of our world view run side by side in a disorganized fashion. Just think how man's religious view of the world and his scientific view often run parallel, completely disconnected. He builds no bridge between the two; in-deed, he is afraid of doing so. We must make it clear that this state of affairs cannot continue.
I have drawn your attention to the egotistical way man forms his world view at the present time. I have described how men today are chiefly interested in the life of the soul after death. This interest springs from pure egotism. I have said we must pass on to interest in the life of the soul from birth onward, seeing it as a continuation of the life prior to birth. If we were to observe the child's growth into the world as a continuation of his pre-natal existence, with the same concern we feel for his soul after death, our thinking about the world would be much less egotistical than it is today. But this egotism in our world view is connected with many other things.
Here I come to a point where men today must become ever more clear about underlying facts. In the period of time culminating in our age the egotistic element was chiefly developed. The ego has permeated man's viewing of the world; it has also permeated his will. We must not deceive ourselves about that. The religious denominations in particular have become egotistical. This you can see even in externalities. Just consider how modern preachers have to reckon with people's egotism. The more they make promises concerning the life of the soul after death the more they reach their goal. People today have little interest in other spiritual questions; in, for instance, that creative flow of life which shows itself so wonderfully after birth in the soul that previously was in the spiritual world.
A result of this lack of interest is the way man thinks about the Divine in the various religious denominations. The fact that we visualize a God as The Highest has no special meaning. Here it is essential that we free ourselves from deception. What do most people mean today if they say “God?“ What kind of being do people refer to when they speak of God? It is an Angel; nothing else but their own Angel whom they call God. People have just a bare intimation that a protective spirit guides their life; they look up to him and call him their God. This is the egotism of the churches, that they do not pass beyond the Angel with their concept of God. A narrowing of interests is caused by egotism; and this narrowing of interests is to be clearly seen in public life.
Do people today ask about the general destiny of man-kind? Oh! it is often very sad if one wants to speak to people about human destiny. No one has any idea of the degree of change that has taken place in this respect in a comparatively short time. Today we may say to people: The military conflict that has spread over the earth during the last four or five years will be followed by the mightiest spiritual battle, which will cover the earth in a form never experienced before. Its origin lies in the fact of the Occident naming as illusion or ideology what the Orient calls reality, and the Orient feeling as reality what the Occident calls ideology. We may draw people's attention to this weighty matter and it does not even dawn on them that if something similar had been said only a hundred years ago it would have so taken hold of people's souls that they would never have gotten over it.
This change in humanity, this growing indifference to the great questions of destiny, is the most striking phenomenon. Everything bounces off mankind, so to say. The most comprehensive, incisive facts are accepted like a sensation. People are not deeply shaken by them. The reason for this is the clever, ever increasing egotism that constricts men's interests. We may have whatever fine democracies where men meet in parliaments, but concern for the fate of man-kind does not permeate them, because the people who are elected to these parliaments do not feel the urgency to know mankind's destiny. Egotistical interests hold sway. Every-one has his own egotistical interest. Similarities in outer interests such as often arise from one's profession, lead people to form groups. When the groups are large enough, majorities arise. In this way a concern not for human destinies but only for egotism, multiplied by the number of persons involved, becomes active in parliaments and men's proposals.
Because of the way egotism lives in people now, even their religious professions are under its influence. They will have their necessary renewal if people's interests broaden; that is, if men will again look beyond their personal destiny to the destiny of mankind; if they will be deeply moved when one tells them that in the West a culture develops that is different from that of the East, and that the culture of the Middle is again different from that of both East and West. Or if one tells them that in the West the great goals of mankind are sought, when they are sought, through the use of mediums who are put into a trance and are thereby consciously brought into a sub-earthly relationship to the spiritual worlds, out of which they speak of great historical aims. We could tell this repeatedly to Europeans, yet they will not believe that in English-American countries there really exist societies in which the attempt is made to find out through questions cleverly put to mediums what the great goals of mankind are. People likewise do not believe that the Oriental obtains knowledge about the destiny of mankind not through mediums but on the mystical path. In the beautiful speeches of Rabindranath Tagore, easily available today, you can read what the Oriental thinks on a grand scale about the goals of mankind. These speeches are read as one reads the feature articles of any hack journalist; because today people distinguish little between a journalistic hack and persons of great spirituality like Rabindranath Tagore. They are not aware, I might say, that different racial substances can live side by side. What is valid for Middle Europe I have put forward in public lectures for many years. It was not received as it should have been.
With this I only wish to point out that one may become aware of something that reaches beyond the egotistical fate of a man and is connected with the destiny of groups of men, so that we can make specific differentiations across the face of the earth. If one lifts his view toward comprehending human destiny in mankind as a whole, if one concerns himself intensely with what thus passes beyond personal destiny, then one tunes his soul to comprehending a higher reality than the Angel; actually, that of the Archangel. Thoughts concerning the significance of an Archangel do not arise in one's soul if one remains in the regions concerned with egotistical man. Preachers may talk ever so much about the Divine; if they only preach within the confines of egotistical man they speak merely of the Angel. Calling it by a different name is just an untruth; it does not put the matter straight. Only if one begins to be interested in man's destiny as a unity over the whole earth does his soul begin to elevate itself to the Archangel.
Now let us pass on to something else. Let us feel what I have indicated in these lectures about the successive impulses of mankind's evolution. You will find that most of our leading citizens were educated in the classical schools—Gymnasium—during the years when the soul is pliable and flexible. These classical schools were not born out of the culture of our age but of the Greco-Latin age. If those Greeks and Romans had done what we did, they would have established Egypto-Chaldean classical schools. They didn't do that; they took the subjects for their teaching from immediate life. We take them from the previous period and educate people accordingly. This is very significant, but we haven't recognized it. Had we done so a note would have sounded within the feminist movement that did not resound, and that is: Men, if their intelligence is to be specially trained, are sent into antiquated schools. There their brains become hardened. Women have the good fortune of not being admitted into the classical schools. We want to develop our intelligence in an original way; we want to show what can be developed in the present age if we are not made dull in our youth by Greco-Latin classical education.
These words did not resound, but in their place: Men have crept into and hidden under the Greco-Latin classical education, let us women do the same. Let us also become students of the classical schools.
So little has understanding spread for what is necessary! We must realize that in our present time we are not educated for our age but for the Greco-Latin culture. This is inserted into our lives. We must sense it. We must sense what, as Greco-Latin culture, acts in the leading people of today, in the so-called intellectuals. This is one aspect of what we carry within us in our spiritual education. We read no newspaper that does not contain Greco-Latin education; because, although writing in our national idiom, we actually write in the Greco-Latin form.
And in regard to our concept of rights we live in Romanism, again something antiquated. To be sure, the old national rights battle at times against Roman law, but they do not prevail. We must feel how a time that has passed lives in what man calls right and wrong in public life.
Only in economic life do we live in the present. This is a significant statement. Perhaps I may say in passing that many women use the concepts of the present in their cooking, in managing their households. In doing so they actually are the people of the present age; everything else that is carried into the present is antiquated. I do not present this matter of their cooking as something particularly desirable, but the other aspect is much less desirable, namely, that the souls of women also want to go back from the present to antiquated cultures. In looking upon our cultural surroundings we have not only what acts in space but also the effects of bygone eras. If we acquire a feeling for this, not only the past affects us but the future as well. It is our task to let the future work into us. Because, if there did not live in every person, however slightly aware of it, a kind of rebellion against the Hellenism of education and the Romanism of rights, if the future were not to ray in upon us, we would be pathetic creatures, really very pathetic creatures.
Besides space we must also consider time in our culture; that is to say, what as history reaches over into our present from the past and from the future. We, as people of the present, must realize that past and future play into our souls. Just as America, England, Asia, China, India—the East and the West as two opposites—have their effect upon us as Europeans, so do we carry Greece, Rome, and the future in us. If we are willing to focus our attention on the future by becoming aware of how what is past and what is coming into being live in our souls, then another attitude arises in us concerning human destiny, an attitude that transcends egotism and is different from what is aroused by a merely spatial consideration. Only if we develop this soul attitude is it possible for us to form concepts about the sphere of the Time Spirits, the Archai. That is to say, we come to the third rank of divine beings in the order of the Hierarchies.
It is good if man by such means places before himself these three Hierarchies in concepts and ideas, because the Spirits of Form who come next are much harder to comprehend. But it suffices for modern man if he attempts to penetrate beyond egotism into the sphere of the unegotistic, doing this repeatedly, and occupying himself with what I have just explained. I must emphasize again, that especially the training of teachers should make use of these facts. A teacher should not be permitted to instruct and educate without having acquired an idea of the egotism that strives toward the closest God, the Angel; without also having acquired a concept of the unegotistic, destiny-determining powers who are side by side in space above the earth, the Archangel beings; and without having acquired a concept of how past and future reach over into our culture, the Roman life of rights, the Greek spiritual substance, and the undefined rebel of the future, which saves us.
Mankind at present has little inclination to enter into these matters. Some time ago I repeatedly emphasized that it is one of our social tasks to derive from the present our educational subjects to be used during the time spent today in classical schools. To do as the Greeks themselves did, namely, take the subjects for education from present-day life.
Shortly after the time, and in the same place where I had spoken about the social importance of this problem (I do not wish to imply a causal connection, but the matter has symptomatic meaning) there appeared in all the news-papers in that place a number of advertisements propagandizing the modern classical schools. I had delivered lectures characterizing classical education in the way I have done here. The advertisements declared what the German nation owes to the classical education of its youth, for “strengthening the national consciousness,” “the national power,” and so on. This was a few weeks before the Treaty of Versailles. These advertisements were signed by a variety of local figures from the schools and the department of education. What has to be brought out today as to the factual basis of mankind's evolution, is rejected. People let it bounce off; it does not touch the depths of the soul. For this reason, it is so difficult to be active in the social sphere. One will never be able to take hold of the social question with the superficialities employed today. It is a deeply significant question that cannot be grasped if one will not look deeply into the nature of man and the world. Because this is so it should be evident how important are certain proposals offered by the threefold social order.
We must acquire an organ for what is necessary for our age, and it is difficult to acquire this organ in the spiritual sphere. For an education that has gradually been taken over by the State has deprived man of active striving; it has made him into a devoted member of the State structure. How do the majority of people live? Up to the sixth year of age man may live unhindered because the State does not yet consider him sanitary enough. The State would not like to devote itself to the tasks that have to be carried out in the first childhood years. Man is still left to the powers outside the State. But then it lays claim to him and he is trained to fit the pattern of the State; he ceases to be a person and bears the stamp of the State. He strives to fit this pattern because it is instilled in him. He not only gets his keep from the State while he works but beyond the working age up to his death, in the form of a pension. It is the ideal of many people today to have a position that entitles them to a pension. The soul too becomes entitled to a pension, even beyond death, without any effort on its part, because it receives eternal bliss through the activity of the church. The church sees to that. Now it is very uncomfortable to hear that salvation lies in free spiritual striving which must be independent of the State. The State must only serve civil rights, where there will be no claim to a pension. This is reason enough for many to reject it, as we have occasion to notice again and again.
Concerning the most intimate spiritual life, the religious life, the world of the future will demand of man that he work for his immortality; that he let his soul be active so that it may receive into itself, through activity, the Divine, the Christ-impulse.
In the course of my life I have received many letters from church people who state that anthroposophy is fundamentally a fine thing, but it contradicts the simple Christian faith; that Christ has redeemed the soul, that one can attain salvation in Christ without any effort on one's part. People cannot let go of the “simple belief in the attainment of salvation through Christ.” They believe themselves to be especially pious if they say or write something like that. But they are egotistical, extremely egotistical. They want to be passive in their souls and let it be the concern of the Divine to transport the soul, nicely pensioned, through the portal of death.
Matters are not so easy in that world conception in which, in future, the religious element must be created. Here one must understand that the presence of the Divine in the soul must be worked for. One will no longer be able just to surrender passively to the churches, which promise to carry the souls into the beyond. (The involvement of money for such service, a scandal in the past, has now fallen into disuse, but secretly it still plays a role in this process, also in obtaining special blessings.) But the transition to inner activity is what is needed for mankind, something it doesn't yet cherish very much.
In order to gain a feeling for what is necessary in this regard we must keep in mind, first, the metamorphosis of humanity since the time of ancient Egypt when the body was more of a plant-like nature. Should there be a relapse into that state in the present age, man would become sick and develop tumors and such things. Secondly, the fact that we carry our body as a corpse which can think, can under-stand. In this way we gain a feeling for what mankind needs, which is, to advance in the solving of social problems in the way this has to be done in the present time. We must no longer allow ourselves to consider such a matter as the social question as being utterly simple.
You see, this is what is so difficult at present: That people would like to be enlightened on the most important aspects of life by a few abstract statements. If a book like The Threefold Social Order contains more than a few abstract statements, if it contains the results of an observation of life, then people say they do not understand it. They consider it confusing. But this is the misfortune at present, that people do not wish to enter into what precisely they ought to enter into. For abstract sentences, completely lucid, refer to what is dead; the social element, however, ought to be alive. Here we must employ flexible ideas, flexible sentences, flexible forms. Therefore, it is necessary that we not only reflect upon the transformation of single institutions, but that we really adjust ourselves to a genuine transformation in our thinking and learning, down to their innermost structure.
This is what I would like to leave with you today when I have to leave again for a few weeks. We must feel ourselves influenced by the working together of our anthroposophical and our social movement. I should like you to comprehend more and more why it is that the anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit must flow into the souls of men if anything is to be achieved in the social field. And I would bring close to your hearts what I have said repeatedly in various ways: It is of utmost importance to acknowledge that what we can acquire of anthroposophical knowledge is the true guide-line now for all action and striving; that we must have the courage to will to prevail with anthroposophy. The worst thing is that people in these days have so little courage for willing to prevail with what is needed. They permit their best will-forces to break down; though it is so necessary they do not will to carry through.
Learn to represent anthroposophy with courage. Receive graciously the people who show an interest in looking at this building which represents our spiritual striving. Rejoice in every single individual who shows even a little understanding. Meet with him. But do not take it to heart if your efforts are fruitless, and people meet our activities with evil intention, or, what is more frequent, with lack of understanding. Just resist it suitably. It is courage that is needed to bring our efforts through to good results. Let us think of ourselves as the handful of people whose destiny it is to know and to communicate to the world what it so sorely needs today. Let the people ridicule us and say that it is presumption to believe all this. It is true nevertheless. Saying to oneself, “It is true nevertheless,”—saying it so earnestly that it fills one's whole soul, this needs the inner courage we must have. May it permeate us as anthroposophical substance. Then we shall do what we have to do, everyone at the place where he is. This I wanted to say to you today.
We are longing for the day when our activity through this building brings us closer to the outside world; our activity which in any case is very difficult. This building is the only one that takes into account the great destinies of mankind even in its forms, and it is very gratifying to see that attention is being paid to it. Something else, however, is necessary for favorable progress in social problems, and that is, that this building through its very forms, which are stronger than other modern architectural forms, should aid in the strengthening of humanity's spiritual powers; making men more amenable to what one wishes them to know, so that they may rise not only to the nature of the Angel, but to the Archangel, and to the Spirit of the Time.
With these words I take leave of you for a few weeks. I hope to be able then to continue these considerations, and that during this time we shall come into an intensive activity for our building itself. Because, my dear friends, we are justified in emphasizing on every hand that readiness for work, that joy in work is needed for all men. This will not come if people are not moved by great purposes. I believe that if people can be convinced that through the three-folding of the social organism they can attain an existence worthy of man, they will begin to work again. Otherwise they will continue to strike. For in the field of physical labor people need an impulse that takes hold of them in their inmost souls.
But we must show that our work has been fruitful in attaining at least one objective, and this radiates into the world. Only then can we give the impulse to mankind to overcome spiritually what is dead in our time. Let us think this over, my dear friends, until the time when we are together again and can speak further about these questions.
Sechster Vortrag
Wenn ich Ihnen gestern ausgeführt habe, welches der Weg des menschlichen Intellektes, der menschlichen Intelligenz gegen die Zukunft hin sein wird, so beruht diese Auseinandersetzung auf ganz bestimmten Tatsachen, welche durch geisteswissenschaftliche Erkenntnis an den Tag gefördert werden können, und von denen wir heute einige anführen wollen. Sie müssen sich, ich möchte sagen, praktisch bewußt sein: Wenn der Mensch vor Ihnen steht, so ist dieser Mensch eben durchaus dasjenige Wesen, von dem wir in der anthroposophischen Geisteswissenschaft sprechen. Das heißt, wir haben zunächst Sie kennen ja diese Dinge aus meiner « Theosophie» —, dessen müssen Sie sich immer bewußt sein, ein viergliedriges Wesen vor uns. Wir haben vor uns das Ich, den sogenannten astralischen Leib, den Ätherleib und den physischen Leib. Der Umstand, daß wir diese vier Glieder der menschlichen Wesenheit jedes Mal vor uns haben, wenn sozusagen der Mensch vor uns steht, das bewirkt, daß für das gewöhnliche heutige menschliche Anschauen man eigentlich nicht weiß, was man mit dem Menschen vor sich hat. Man weiß es eigentlich wirklich nicht. Man denkt: das, was man vor sich stehen sieht, den Raum erfüllend, das sei der physische Leib. Allein, was da dran physisch ist, das würde man nicht so sehen, wie man es sieht mit gewöhnlichen Augen, wenn es eben nur als physischer Leib vor uns stünde. Wir sehen dasjenige mit gewöhnlichen Augen, was als physischer Leib vor uns steht, so wie es ist, nur deshalb, weil es durchdrungen ist von Ätherleib, astralischem Leib und Ich. Dasjenige, was physischer Leib ist, das ist, so sonderbar das klingen mag, auch so lange wir leben zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode, Leichnam. Und eigentlich, wenn wir einen menschlichen Leichnam vor uns haben, so haben wir in Wahrheit den physischen Leib des Menschen vor uns. Wenn Sie den Leichnam sehen, dann haben Sie den physischen Menschen, ohne daß er durchdrungen ist von Ätherleib, astralischem Leib und Ich. Er ist von diesen verlassen und zeigt gewissermaßen seine wahre Wesenheit.
Sie stellen sich selber daher nicht richtig vor, wenn Sie das, was Sie vermeinen als den physischen Leib des Menschen aufzufassen, glauben mit sich durch den Raum herumzutragen; Sie würden viel richtiger sich selber vorstellen, wenn Sie sich als Leichnam dächten und sich so begreifen würden, daß Ihr Ich, Ihr astralischer Leib, Ihr Ätherleib diesen Leichnam durch den Raum trägt.
Dieses Bewußtsein von der wahren Natur der menschlichen Wesenheit wird für unsere Zeit immer wichtiger und wichtiger. Denn sehen Sie, so wie das heute ist im gegenwärtigen Entwickelungszyklus der Menschheit und schon lange her, so war es nicht immer. Natürlich kann man diese Dinge, die ich jetzt erzähle, nicht durch die äußere physische Wissenschaft konstatieren, aber geisteswissenschaftliche Erkenntnis liefert eben diese Tatsache. Wenn man zurückgeht hinter das achte vorchristliche Jahrhundert, mit dem, wie Sie wissen, der vierte nachatlantische Zeitraum beginnt, dann würde man kommen, wie Sie wiederum wissen, in die ägyptisch-chaldäische Erdenperiode. Ja, da waren die menschlichen Leiber anders beschaffen, als sie heute beschaffen sind. Das, was menschliche Leiber waren, die Ihnen jetzt in den Museen als Mumien gezeigt werden, die waren in ihrer feineren Beschaffenheit wirklich nicht so beschaffen, wie der heutige menschliche Leib ist. Sie waren viel mehr durchsetzt von Pflanzlichkeit, sie waren nicht so vollständig Leichnam wie der heutige menschliche Leib Leichnam ist. Sie waren gewissermaßen als physischer Leib ähnlicher der Pflanzennatur, während der heutige physische Leib des Menschen - und schon seit der griechisch-lateinischen Zeit — ähnlicher ist der mineralischen Welt. Würden wir heute durch irgendein kosmisches Wunder dieselben Leiber bekommen, welche die ägyptisch-chaldäische Bevölkerung hatte, so würden wir alle krank sein. Das würde für uns eine Krankheit bedeuten. Wir würden wuchernde Gewebe im Leibe mit herumtragen. Und manche Krankheit besteht einfach darinnen, daß der menschliche Leib atavistisch teilweise zurückgeht in Zustände, welche die normalen waren während der ägyptisch-chaldäischen Zeit. Es gibt heute geschwürige Bildungen des menschlichen Leibes, welche einfach davon herrühren, daß ein Stück eines Leibes bei dem oder jenem Menschen die Neigung bekommt, so zu werden, wie der ganze Leib bei der ägyptisch-chaldäischen Bevölkerung war.
Nun hängt das, was ich eben gesagt habe, mit der Entwickelung der Menschheit ganz wesentlich zusammen. Wir tragen also als gegenwärtige Menschen einen Leichnam herum. Der Ägypter noch nicht; der Ägypter trug etwas Pflanzenartiges mit sich herum. Davon war eben die Folge, daß seine Erkenntnis eine andere war als unsere Erkenntnis, seine Intelligenz anders wirkte als unsere Intelligenz wirkt. Bedenken Sie jetzt ganz genau: Was eigentlich erkennt denn der Mensch mit dem, was er heute seine Wissenschaft nennt, und worauf er so ungeheuer stolz ist? Nur das Tote! Es wird ja immer in der Wissenschaft betont: DasLeben wird mit der gewöhnlichen Intelligenz nicht begriffen. Zwar glauben diese und jene Forscher, wenn sie chemisch immer weiter und weiter experimentieren, dann werde einmal der Zustand eintreten, daß man durch komplizierte Kombinationen der Atome, Moleküle und deren Wechselkräfte das Wechselspiel des Lebens kennenlernen werde, Dieser Zustand wird niemals eintreten. Man wird auf chemisch-physischem Wege nur das mineralisch Tote begreifen, das heißt, man wird so viel begreifen an dem Lebendigen, als an dem Lebendigen heute Leichnam ist.
Aber was im Menschen intelligent ist und erkennt, das ist trotzdem dieser physische Leib, das heißt der Leichnam. Was tut denn eigentlich dieser Leichnam, den wir mit uns herumtragen? Er bringt es am weitesten in der mathematischen, geometrischen Erkenntnis. Da ist alles durchsichtig; dann wird es immer undurchsichtiger, je weiter man sich vom Mathematisch-Geometrischen entfernt. Das rührt davon her, daß der menschliche Leichnam der wirkliche Erkenner für uns heute ist, und daß das Tote nur das Tote erkennen kann. Was Ätherleib ist, was astralischer Leib ist, was Ich ist, das erkennt heute im Menschen nicht, das bleibt sozusagen im Dunkel stehen. Würde der Ätherleib ebenso erkennen können, wie der physische Leib das Tote erkennt, so würde der Ätherleib das Lebende der Pflanzenwelt zunächst erkennen. Das war aber das eigentümliche, daß im pflanzlich-lebendigen Leib der Ägypter diese Ägypter die Pflanzenwelt in einer ganz anderen Weise erkannten als der gegen iinNn wärtige Mensch. Und manche instinktive Erkenntnis aus der Pflanzenwelt, sie ist noch zurückzuführen auf die ägyptische Einsicht in dasjenige, was aus einem instinktiven Erkenntnisbewußtsein heraus der ägyptischen Kultur einverleibt worden ist. Selbst dasjenige, was heute in der Botanik für die Medizin gewußt wird, beruht vielfach noch auf Traditionen der alten ägyptischen Weisheit. Deshalb kommt es so oft dem Laienurteile dilettantisch vor, daß man sich gar zu gerne beruft auf irgendwelches Ägyptische, wenn man eine ja nicht sehr wertvolle Erkenntnis heute den Menschen vermitteln will. Sie wissen ja, wie sich manche gar nicht auf richtigem Fundamente ruhende sogenannte Logen «ägyptische Logen» nennen. Das rührt aber nur davon her, weil in diesen Kreisen noch Traditionen leben von der Weisheit, die durch den ägyptischen Leib zu erlangen war. Sehen Sie, man kann sagen: Mit dem allmählichen Eintritt der Menschen in die griechisch-lateinische Zeit ist der lebendige menschliche Pflanzenleib abgestorben, denn schon im Griechentum war der lebendige Pflanzenleib abgestorben, oder starb wenigstens allmählich ab. Wir tragen schon einen sehr stark toten Leib in uns, und insbesondere ist dieses Totsein für das menschliche Haupt richtig — wie ich Ihnen ja von einem anderen Gesichtspunkte auseinandergesetzt habe, daß das menschliche Haupt überhaupt für die Wissenschaft der Eingeweihten als Leichnam, als Totes, als fortwährend Sterbendes wahrgenommen wird. Dessen wird sich immer mehr und mehr bewußt werden die Menschheit: daß sie eigentlich nur mit dem Leichnam erkennt und deshalb das Tote erkennt.
Ebenso intensiv wird entstehen, je weiter wir der Zukunft entgegengehen, die Sehnsucht, wiederum das Lebendige zu erkennen. Aber man wird dieses Lebendige nicht durch die gewöhnliche Intelligenz, die an den Leichnam gebunden ist, erkennen. Es wird mancherlei notwendig sein, damit der Mensch, der verloren hat die Möglichkeit, auf lebendige Art in die Welt einzudringen, wiederum in solcher Weise in die Welt kommt. Man muß heute schon wissen, was der Mensch eigentlich alles verloren hat. Als der Mensch herüberkam aus der atlantischen Zeit in die nachatlantische Zeit, da konnte man manches nicht, was man heute kann. Sehen Sie, Sie können, jeder einzelne, wenn Sie sich meinen, seit einer gewissen Zeit in Ihrer Kindheit zu sich Ich sagen. Sie sagen dieses Ich recht respektlos. Dieses Ich wurde in der Menschheitsentwickelung nicht immer so respektlos gesagt. Es gab ältere Zeiten der Menschheitsentwickelung, wenn die auch schon zum Teil verglommen waren selbst in der ägyptischen Zeit - es gab ältere Zeiten, da wurde für das, was das Ich ausdrückte, ein Name gebraucht, der, ausgesprochen, den Menschen betäubte. Daher vermied man, diesen Namen auszusprechen. Hätte die erste Bevölkerung gleich nach der atlantischen Katastrophe es erlebt, daß der bei ihnen geltende und nur den Eingeweihten bekannte Name für das Ich ausgesprochen worden wäre, die ganze Versammlung würde betäubt worden sein, würde umgefallen sein, so stark hätte der Name für das Ich gewirkt. Ein Nachklang dieser Tatsache ist noch vorhanden in der alten Hebräerzeit, wo man spricht von dem unaussprechlichen Namen des Gottes in der Seele, der ja nur ausgesprochen werden durfte von Eingeweihten oder aber vor der Gemeinde eurythmisiert wurde. Der unaussprechliche Name des Gottes, er hat seinen Ursprung in dem, was ich Ihnen eben erzählt habe. Allmählich ist dies immer mehr verlorengegangen. Dafür lähmten sich ab die tiefen Wirkungen, die von solchen Dingen ausgingen. In der ersten nachatlantischen Zeit: tiefe Wirkung von dem Ich; in der zweiten nachatlantischen Zeit: tiefe Wirkung von dem astralischen Leib; in der dritten nachatlantischen Zeit: tiefe Wirkung von dem Ätherleibe, aber nun schon eine erträgliche Wirkung, eine Wirkung, die — wie ich Ihren gestern auseinandergesetzt habe — den Menschen in Zusammenhang bringt, in Verwandtschaft bringt mit dem Kosmos. Jetzt können wir das Ich, wir können alles Mögliche aussprechen, aber die Dinge wirken nicht mehr auf uns, weil wir dasjenige, was wir von der Welt erfassen, mit unserem Leichnam erfassen. Das heißt, wir erfassen von der Welt das Tote, Mineralische. Aber wir müssen uns: wiederum aufschwingen, zurückzukehren in jene Regionen, in denen wir das Lebendige erfassen. Und während der griechisch-lateinische Zeitraum vom 8. vorchristlichen Jahrhundert bis in die Mitte des 15. nachchristlichen Jahrhunderts vorzugsweise darauf angelegt war, immer mehr tote Erkenntnis für den Leichnam zu schaffen, geht bei uns jetzt die Intelligenz den Weg, von dem ich gestern gesprochen habe. Daher müssen wir uns aber stemmen gegen die bloße Intelligenz. Wir müssen zu der Intelligenz anderes hinzufügen.
Und da ist es charakteristisch, daß wir richtig den Weg zurückmachen müssen, daß wir jetzt im fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraum in gewisser Beziehung das Pflanzliche erkennen, im sechsten das Tierische, im siebenten dann erst das wahrhaft Menschliche. Also es wird eine Aufgabe der Menschheit, gerade über das bloße Erkennen des Mineralischen hinauszugehen und das Pflanzliche zu erkennen.
Und jetzt, nachdem Sie dieses einsehen aus einem tieferen Zusammenhang heraus, bedenken Sie, welches der charakteristische Mensch ist für dieses Suchen der Pflanzenerkenntnis. Das ist Goethe. Denn indem er entgegen aller äußeren Wissenschaft vom Toten herangegangen ist an das Lebendige, an die Metamorphose, an das Werden der Pflanzen, war er der Mann des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraums in seinen elementarischen Anfängen. Wenn Sie daher die kleine Abhandlung von Goethe aus dem Jahre 1790 lesen: «Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären», so finden Sie gerade in dieser Abhandlung, wie Goethe allmählich versucht, die Pflanze werdend zu erfassen, nicht als Totes, Abgeschlossenes, sondern als Werdendes von Blatt zu Blatt. Da sehen Sie den Aufgang jener Erkenntnis, die gerade in diesem fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraum gesucht werden sollte.
Es ist also im Goetheanismus der Grundton angegeben für dasjenige, was gesucht werden soll durch diesen fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraum. Es wird gewissermaßen die Wissenschaft im Goetheschen Sinne aufwachen müssen, vom "Toten zum Lebendigen herüberzugehen. Das ist ja gemeint, wenn ich immer wieder und wiederum sage, wir sollen uns aneignen, aus den toten abstrakten Begriffen herauszukommen, in die lebendigen konkreten Begriffe hinein. Und das, was ich vorgestern und gestern gesagt habe, ist im Grunde genommen der Weg in diese lebendigen konkreten Begriffe hinein.
Nun wird das Hineinkommen in diese Begriffe, in diese Vorstellungen nicht möglich sein, wenn wir uns nicht dazu bequemen, dasjenige, was wir unsere Weltanschauung und Lebensauffassung nennen, als eine Einheit auszubilden. Wir sind heute durch die besondere Konfiguration unserer Kultur genötigt, gewissermaßen unorganisch nebeneinander herlaufen zu lassen die verschiedenen Strömungen unserer Weltanschauung. Denken Sie nur einmal, wie unorganisch nebeneinander herlaufen oftmals die religiösen Weltanschauungen eines Menschen und die naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung. Mancher Mensch hat die eine und die andere; aber er schlägt keine Brücke. Ja, er hat eine gewisse Scheu davor, eine gewisse Angst davor, eine Brücke zu schlagen. Und das müssen wir uns schon klar machen: so kann es nicht bleiben.
Nun habe ich Sie auf eines aufmerksam gemacht während dieses meines Aufenthaltes, darauf, wie egoistisch eigentlich der Mensch heutzutage seine Weltanschauung gestaltet. Ich habe Sie auf die Tarsache hingeführt, daß den Menschen eigentlich heute vorzugsweise interessiert das Leben der Seele nach dem Tode. Aus reinem Egoismus heraus interessiert ihn dieses Leben der Seele nach dem Tode. Ich habe Ihnen gesagt, daß wir übergehen müssen zu dem Interesse des Lebens der Seele von der Geburt an, insofern dieses eine Fortsetzung ist des Lebens vor der Geburt oder vor der Empfängnis. Würden wir mit derselben Sehnsucht, mit demselben Hang und derselben Neigung die Entwickelung des Kindes betrachten, wie es hereinwächst in die Welt als Fortsetzung des vorgeburtlichen geistig-seelischen Daseins, so würde unsere Welterkenntnis einen viel unegoistischeren Charakter annehmen, als sie heute hat. Aber dieser egoistische Charakter unserer Weltanschauung hängt zusammen mit manchem anderen. Und hier komme ich auf einen Punkt, wo die Menschen der Gegenwart sich über den wirklichen Tatbestand, der zugrunde liegt, immer klarer und klarer werden müssen. In dem Zeitraume bis zu unserer Zeit hat sich einmal im Menschen vorzugsweise das Egoistische entwickelt; das Ego hat durchdrungen die Weltanschauung, das Ego hat auch durchdrungen den Willen. Darüber sollten wir uns keiner Täuschung hingeben. Und vor allem sind egoistisch geworden die Religionsbekenntnisse. Daß die Religionsbekenntnisse egoistisch geworden sind, können Sie ja schon an den Äußerlichkeiten erkennen. Denken Sie sich nur, wie die heutigen Prediger angewiesen sind, mit dem Egoismus der Menschen zu rechnen. Je mehr sie schließlich mit dem Egoismus der Menschen rechnen, den Menschen Versprechungen machen können für das Leben der Seele nach dem Tode, desto mehr erreichen sie ihren Zweck, Viel Interesse für andere Dinge ist ja im Grunde genommen in der heutigen Menschheit kaum vorhanden. Und wenig interessieren sich die Menschen für jenes geistige Weben und Leben, das sich so wunderbar nach der Geburt, beziehungsweise nach der Empfängnis, mit der Seele, die vorher in der geistigen Welt war, ankündigt.
Eine Folge davon ist die Art, wie der Mensch heute überhaupt über das Göttliche in verschiedenen Religionsbekenntnissen denkt. Daß wir einen Gott als den Höchsten vorstellen, das will ja noch nichts Besonderes sagen. In dieser Beziehung kommt es darauf an, daß wir durchaus alle Täuschungen hinwegräumen. Die meisten Menschen, die heute «Gott» sagen, was meinen sie denn eigentlich? Ich habe das auch schon einmal hier erwähnt, Welche Art Wesenheit ist das, was sie meinen, wenn sie von Gott sprechen? Ein Angelos ist es, ein Engel, ihr eigener Engel, den nennen sie Gott! Es ist nichts anderes! Die Menschen ahnen gerade noch, daß ein schützender Geist ihr eigenes Leben verfolgt, zu dem sehen sie auf, das nennen sie ihren Gott. Wenn sie es auch nicht Engel nennen, wenn sie es auch Gott nennen, sie meinen nur den Engel. Und das ist im Grunde genommen der Egoismus des religiösen Bekenntnisses, daß man mit der Gottes-Idee nicht über den Engel hinauf kommt. Der Grund davon ist die Einengung der Interessen, die durch den Egoismus bewirkt ist. Diese Einengung der Interessen, wir sehen sie ja ganz deutlich hervortreten heute in unserem Öffentlichen Leben.
Wonach fragen die Menschen heute viel? Fragen sie viel nach den allgemeinen Schicksalen der Menschheit? ‘Oh, es ist in einem gewissen Sinne recht traurig, heute zu reden zu einer Menschheit über allgemeine Menschenschicksale. Man hat auch gar keinen Begriff davon, wie es sich in dieser Beziehung schon in verhältnismäßig kurzen Zeiten geändert hat. Sehen Sie, man kann heute zu den Menschen sagen: Der Waffenkrieg, welcher in den letzten vier bis fünf Jahren die Erde überzogen hat, wird gefolgt sein von dem mächtigsten Geisteskampfe, der über die Erde hingeht, in dieser Gestalt früher nicht hingegangen ist, der davon herkommt, daß das Abendland Maja oder Ideologie nennt, was das Morgenland die Wirklichkeit nennt, und daß das Morgenland Wirklichkeit nennt, was das Abendland Ideologie nennt. Man kann heute die Menschheit aufmerksam machen auf dieses Schwerwiegende, und sie hat nicht einmal ein Bewußtsein davon, daß, wenn ein Gleiches vor nur hundert Jahren gesagt worden wäre, so würde dieses Gleiche vor hundert Jahren die Seelen so ergriffen haben, daß sie nicht wieder losgekommen wären davon!
Diese Änderung der Menschheit, dieses Gleichgültigwerden der Menschheit gegenüber den großen Schicksalen des Daseins, das ist die auffälligste Erscheinung. Es prallt ja alles ab von der Menschheit heute. Die umfassendsten, einschneidendsten, intensivsten Tatsachen nimmt man auf wie eine Sensation. Sie wirken nicht erschütternd genug. Und das rührt nur davon her, weil der immer stärker und stärker werdende intelligente Egoismus die Interessen der Menschen einengt. Daher können die Menschen heute noch so gut Demokratien haben, Parlamente haben — wenn sie schon zusammenkommen in den Parlamenten, die Schicksale der Menschheit wehen nicht durch diese Parlamente, denn die Leute, die zumeist in die Parlamente gewählt werden, werden nicht durchweht von dem Schicksal der Menschheit. Es wehen die egoistischen Interessen. Jeder hat sein eigenes egoistisches Interesse. Äußerliche schematische Ähnlichkeiten in den Interessen, wie sie oftmals durch den Beruf hervorgerufen werden, lassen die Menschen sich gruppieren. Und wenn die Gruppen genügend groß sind, lassen sie sie zu Majoritäten werden. Und dann gehen nicht Menschenschicksale durch die Parlamente oder durch die Menschenvertretungen durch, sondern nur der Egoismus, multipliziert mit so und so vielen Personen. Weil das nur in den Menschen lebt, was den Egoismus betrifft, daher ist selbst das religiöse Bekenntnis in die Sphäre des Egoismus gerückt. Das religiöse Bekenntnis wird die notwendige Auffrischung erfahren, wenn die Interessen der Menschen weiter werden, wenn sie so werden, daß der Mensch wiederum über sein persönliches Schicksal zu dem Menschheitsschicksal aufblicken kann, wenn der Mensch wiederum ergriffen wird, ganz stark ergriffen wird, wenn man ihm sagt: im Westen erblüht eine andere Kultur als im Osten, und in der Mitte wiederum eine andere Kultur als an den beiden Polen im Westen und im Osten; wenn man ihm sagt: im Westen werden die großen Ziele der Menschheit gesucht — wenn sie schon gesucht werden — dadurch, daß man an mediale Menschen sich wendet und diese Menschen in eine Art von Trance bringt, sie dadurch gewissermaßen bewußt unterirdisch in Verbindung bringt mit den geistigen Welten, und dann sich von ihnen auf medialem Wege große historische Ziele sagen läßt. Das könnte man in Europa den Menschen so oft sagen — sie werden es nicht glauben, daß es wirklich Gesellschaften in amerikanisch-englischen Ländern gibt, in denen man versucht, medial veranlagte Menschen in eine Art von Trance zu bringen, um dann durch geschickt an sie gestellte Fragen herauszubekommen, welches die großen Schicksalsziele der Menschheit sind. Man glaubt es einem nicht, daß der Morgenländer ebenfalls über diese großen Schicksalsziele der Menschheit — jetzt nicht auf medialem Wege, sondern auf mystischem Wege — Kunde erhält. Das ist heute fast mit Händen zu greifen, denn überall sind die schönen Reden des Rabindranath Tagore zu haben, in denen man lesen kann, wie ein Morgenländer über Ziele der Menschheit im Großen denkt. Diese Reden werden zwar gelesen wie das Feuilleton von einem beliebigen Zeilenschinder, denn man unterscheidet heute wenig Zeilenschinder von Menschen mit großer Spiritualität, wie des Rabindranath Tagore. Man wird sich nicht bewußt, daß nebeneinander leben, ich möchte sagen, verschiedene Rassensubstantialitäten, Was für Mitteleuropa gilt, es ist ja von mir seit vielen Jahren in öffentlichen Vorträgen gesagt worden. Als das wurde es eben nicht genommen, als das es hätte genommen werden sollen.
Ich will damit aber nur hinweisen, daß man sich bewußt werden kann von etwas, das hinausragt über das egoistische Menschengeschick, das zusammenhängt mit dem Geschick von Menschengruppen, so daß man in konkreter Weise differenziert über die Erde hin. Erhebt man den Seelenblick zu einem solchen Erfassen und Begreifen von Menschenschicksalen im Erdenraume, interessiert man sich intensiv für dies über das persönliche Geschick Hinausgehende, dann stimmt man die Seele, etwas Höheres, Wirklicheres zu begreifen als den bloßen Engel: nämlich den Erzengel. Gedanken, was das Erzengelwesen bedeutet, kommen einem gar nicht, wenn man nur in den Regionen bleibt, die den egoistischen Menschen angehen. Wenn nur in den Regionen des egoistischen Menschen gepredigt wird, dann können die Prediger noch so viel vom Göttlichen reden, sie reden nur von dem Engel. Denn daß man es anders nennt, das ist ja nur eine Unwahrheit, das macht die Sache nicht zu dem, was sie ist. Erst wenn man beginnt, sich zu interessieren für des Menschen Geschick im Raume, dann beginnt die Seele in die Stimmung zu kommen, zum Erzengelwesen sich zu erheben.
Und gehen Sie jetzt über zu noch etwas anderem. Spüren Sie in uns das, was ich in diesen Vorträgen angedeutet habe von den aufeinanderfolgenden Impulsen der Menschheitsentwickelung! Spüren Sie, daß ein großer Teil unserer führenden Menschen ausgebildet werden in den Jahren, in denen die Menschenseele einer gewissen Biegsamkeit zugänglich ist, in den Gymnasien; in den Gymnasien, die nicht herausgeboren sind aus unserer Gegenwartskultur, sondern die, so wie sie sind, noch immer herausgeboren sind aus der Vergangenheitskultur der griechisch-römischen, der griechisch-lateinischen Zeit. Sehen Sie, wenn diese Griechen und Lateiner dasselbe getan hätten wie wir, dann hätten sie ägyptisch-chaldäische Gymnasien eingerichtet. Das haben sie nicht getan. Sie haben ihren Lehrstoff vom unmittelbaren Leben genommen. Wir nehmen ihn vom vorhergehenden Zeitraume, bilden danach die Menschen aus. Das hat eine große Bedeutung für die Menschen; aber wir haben diese Bedeutung nicht erkannt. Hätten wir diese Bedeutung erkannt, dann würde es innerhalb der Frauenbewegung einen Ton geben, den es nicht gegeben hat, dann hätte es innerhalb der Frauenbewegung den Ton gegeben, der so geklungen hätte: Die Männerwelt wird, gerade wenn sie ausgebildet werden soll zur besonderen Handhabung der Intelligenz, in die antiquierten Schulen geschickt. Daher wird ihr Gehirn verhärtet. Uns Frauen ist das gute Geschick zugewachsen, daß man uns in die Gymnasien nicht hat hineingelassen. Wir wollen unsere Intelligenz auf eine ursprüngliche Note stellen, wir wollen zeigen, was man für die Gegenwart entwickeln kann, wenn man nicht abgestumpft wird in seiner Jugend durch die griechisch-lateinische Gymnasialbildung.
Diese Note hat es nicht gegeben. Im Gegenteil, manche Note hat dahin geklungen Die Männer sind untergekrochen unter die griechisch-lateinische Gymnasialbildung, kriechen wir Frauen auch hinein. Werden wir auch Gymnasiasten.
So wenig hat Verständnis Platz gegriffen in bezug auf dasjenige, was not tut. Wir sollen wissen, daß wir in unserer Gegenwart nicht für diese Gegenwart erzogen werden, sondern erzogen werden für griechisch-lateinische Kultur. Die steckt daher in unserem Leben drinnen. Man muß sie spüren. Man muß spüren, was in der Gegenwart an griechisch-lateinischer Kultur gerade bei den führenden Menschen, bei der sogenannten Intelligenz, bei den Intellektuellen waltet; das ist die eine Schicht, die bei uns ist. Sie tragen wir eigentlich in unserer ganzen geistigen Bildung in uns. Wir lesen keine Zeitung, ohne daß nicht griechisch-lateinische Bildung drinnen ist, denn wir schreiben eigentlich in griechisch-lateinischer Form, auch wenn wir in unseren Landessprachen schreiben.
Und in bezug auf unsere Rechtsanschauung, da leben wir, wie ich schon ausgeführt habe, im Römertum drinnen — wiederum etwas Antiquiertes. Da lebt im Recht das Römertum drinnen. Es führen ja manchmal die alten Landesrechte ihren Streit gegen das römische Recht, aber sie kommen nicht auf. Und das muß man wieder fühlen, wie in dem, was der Mensch Recht und Unrecht nennt im öffentlichen Leben, eine verglommene Zeit drinnen lebt.
Nur im Wirtschaftlichen leben wir eigentlich in der Gegenwart. Es will viel sagen, daß wir nur im Wirtschaftlichen in der Gegenwart leben. Daher wird sich wohl etwas sehr modifizieren. Wenn ich das in Parenthese einfügen darf: Von manchen Frauen werden natürlich die Begriffe der Gegenwart aufbewahrt - nur zum Kochen, das heißt zum Wirtschaften, und damit sind sie die eigentlichen Wesen der Gegenwart; das andere ist etwas Antiquiertes, das wir in die Gegenwart hereintragen. Ich sage nicht, daß dies als etwas besonders Wünschenswertes hingestellt werden soll; aber das andere ist jedenfalls nicht das Wünschenswerteste, daß man nun von der Gegenwart eben auch durch die Frauenseelen zurückgeht in antiquierte Kulturen. Wir haben eben, indem wir auf dasjenige schauen, was in unserer Kulturumwelt lebt, nicht nur das, was im Raume wirkt, sondern es wirken auch alte Zeiten herein. Und eignet man sich dafür eine Empfindung an, so wirkt nicht nur die Vergangenheit herein, es wirkt auch schon die Zukunft herein. Ja, es ist unsere Sache, daß die Zukunft hereinwirke. Denn würde nicht in jedem Menschen doch, für das Bewußtsein recht untergeordnet, eine Art Rebell gegen das Griechentum der Bildung und das Römertum des Rechtes sein, und würde da nicht Zukunft hereinleuchten, wir wären traurige Kerle, eigentlich recht traurige Kerle.
Neben dem Raume müssen wir also für das, was in unserer Kultur lebt, auch die Zeit in Betracht ziehen: dasjenige, was an Zeitgeschichte von alters her und von der Zukunft in unsere Gegenwart hereinragt. Wir müssen uns klar sein, daß wir, indem wir als Menschen der Gegenwart leben, hereinspielend haben in diese unsere Menschenseele Vergangenheit und Zukunft. Wie wir hereinspielen haben, indem wir Europäer sind — wie schon erwähnt —, Amerika, England, Asien, China, Indien, den Osten und den Westen, weil das die beiden Pole sind, so haben wir in uns Griechenland, Rom und die Zukunft. Und indem wir uns bequemen, das letztere ins Auge zu fassen, indem wir uns bewußt werden, wie Vergangenes, Werdendes, Entstehendes in unserer Seele lebt, geht in dieser Seele wieder eine andere Stimmung auf über das über den Egoismus hinausgehende Menschenschicksal, eine andere Stimmung als durch die bloße Raumbetrachtung. Und wenn wir diese Seelenstimmung entwickeln, dann erst entwickeln wir die Möglichkeit, Begriffe zu bilden über dieSphäre der Zeitgeister, der Archai. Das heißt, wir kommen zu dem dritten Göttlichen in der Hierarchienreihe. Es ist gut, wenn sich der Mensch zunächst darauf einläßt, diese drei Hierarchien durch die Mittel, die ich eben jetzt angeführt habe, in Begriffen, in Ideen sich vorzuführen. Denn die Formgeister, die dann kommen, sind unendlich viel schwieriger zu erfassen. Aber es genügt schon für den gegenwärtigen Menschen, wenn er den Versuch macht, über den Egoismus hinaus in die Sphäre des Unegoistischen zu dringen, und immer wieder und wiederum zu dringen, sich damit zu beschäftigen, was ich jetzt charakterisiert habe! Insbesondere sollte -— das muß ich nun wiederum besonders sagen — in der Lehrerbildung dieses vorkommen, was ich jetzt auseinandergesetzt habe. Der Lehrer sollte nicht losgelassen werden zu unterrichten und zu erziehen, ohne daß er einen Begriff bekommt von dem Egoismus, welcher aufstrebt zu dem nächsten Gotte, das heißt zum Engel, ohne daß er aber auch einen Begriff bekommt von den unegoistischen, schicksalbestimmenden Mächten, die im Raume über der Erde nebeneinander sind, von den Erzengelwesen, und ohne daß er einen Begriff bekommt von dem, wie in unsere Kultur hereinragen Vergangenes und Zukünftiges, römisches Rechtswesen, griechische Geistessubstanz und der unbestimmte Rebell der Zukunft, der uns rettet.
Aber die Menschheit ist gegenwärtig wenig geneigt, auf diese Dinge einzugehen, Vor einiger Zeit habe ich in Vorträgen immer wieder und wiederum betont, daß es zu den sozialen Aufgaben gehört, unsere Bildungsmittel für die Zeit, die der Mensch heute in Gymnasien zubringt, aus der Gegenwart zu nehmen, es so zu machen, wie es schließlich die Griechen selber gemacht haben: daß sie ihre Bildungsstoffe aus der Gegenwart genommen haben.
Es sind — wenigstens der Zeit nach - an demselben Orte, wo ich über diese Frage immer wieder und wiederum als einer wichtigen sozialen Frage gesprochen habe — bald nachher, ich will nicht einen Kausalzusammenhang konstruieren, aber das ist ja auch gleichgültig, von symptomatischer Bedeutung ist die Sache - in allen Zeitungen des betreffenden Ortes in Massen Annoncen erschienen, worinnen für das gegenwärtige Gymnasium Propaganda gemacht wird. Ich hielt die Vorträge, in denen ich die Gymnasialbildung so charakterisierte, wie ich es Ihnen jetzt charakterisiert habe - in den Zeitungen erschienen überall Annoncen: was das Deutschtum der Gymnasialbildung seiner Jugend verdankt zur «Stärkung des nationalen Bewußtseins», «der nationalen Kraft» und so weiter, ein paar Wochen vor dem Versailler Frieden! Unterschrieben waren diese Annoncen von allen möglichen dortigen lokalen Größen aus den Schulen, aus dem Unterrichtswesen. Es ist eben so, daß immer zurückprallt dasjenige, was man heute aus den wirklich sachlichen Untergründen der Menschheitsentwickelung darzulegen hat. Die Menschen lassen es zurückprallen — es berührt die Tiefen der Seele nicht.
Darauf beruht aber die Schwierigkeit des Wirkens in der sozialen Frage. Denn mit jenen Oberflächlichkeiten, mit denen man gewöhnlich heute der sozialen Frage beikommen will, wird man ihr nie und nimmer beikommen. Die soziale Frage ist eine tief bedeutsame Frage, eine Frage, der man nicht beikommt, wenn man nicht in die Tiefe des Menschen- und Weltwesens hineinschauen will. Gerade an dem Umstande, daß es so ist, könnte man ja ersehen, wie notwendig gewisse Aufstellungen sind, die gerade die Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus macht.
Aber man muß sich ein Organ erwerben für dasjenige, was in unserer Zeit notwendig ist. Auf geistigem Gebiete wird es schwer sein, dieses Organ zu erwerben; denn - ich habe es Ihnen schon einmal, glaube ich, auch hier angedeutet: die vom Staate allmählich aufgesogene geistige Bildung im Unterrichtswesen, die hat wirklich herausdestilliert aus den Menschen das Aktive, das tätige Streben, die hat den Menschen zum hingebungsvollen Gliede in der Staatsstruktur gemacht. Ich sagte es ja, wie ich glaube, auch hier: Wie lebt denn eigentlich eine große Anzahl von Menschen? Ausnahmen selbstverständlich immer abgerechnet. Na, bis so zum sechsten Jahre darf der Mensch ungehindert leben, weil da die Menschheit dem Staate noch zu schmutzig ist. Den Aufgaben möchte er sich nicht hingeben, der Staat, denen man sich hingeben muß in den ersten Kinderjahren; da überläßt man von seiten des Staates noch den Menschen den außerstaatlichen Mächten. Dann aber wird der Mensch in Anspruch genommen, wird so dressiert, daß er für die Staatswirtschaft geeignet wird, daß er hineinpaßt in die Schablone, daß er aufhört, Mensch zu sein und das nun wird, was die Abstempelung des Staates gibt. Dann wird er etwas dem Staate. Er strebt danach, denn es wird ihm eingebläut; er bekommt ja nun nicht bloß seine Verpflegung vom Staate während er arbeitet, sondern noch über die Arbeit hinaus bis zum Tode in Form der Pension. Denn was für ein Ideal ist heute für viele Menschen eine pensionsberechtigte Stellung! Dazu verfügen dann die Religionsbekenntnisse die Pensionierung über den Tod hinaus. Die Seele wird pensionsberechtigt; ohne daß sie etwas dazu tun soll, bekommt sie die ewige Seligkeit durch das Wirken der Kirche selber. Die sorgt dafür! Das ist allerdings unbequem, nun zu hören, daß das Heil im freien geistigen Streben liegt, das unabhängig vom Staate sein muß; daß der Staat nur ein Rechtsstaat sein soll. Ja, Pensionsberechtigung wird es ja im Rechtsstaate nicht geben! Das ist schon ein Grund für viele, ihn abzulehnen. Man merkt das immer wieder und wiederum.
Und mit Bezug auf das intimste Geistesleben, das religiöse Leben, wird allerdings die Weltanschauung der Zukunft von dem Menschen verlangen, daß er seine Unsterblichkeit sich erarbeitet, daß er seine Seele tätig sein läßt, damit sie in Tätigkeit das Göttliche, den ChristusImpuls in sich aufnimmt.
Viele, viele Briefe habe ich in meinem Leben bekommen, immer wieder von kirchlichen Leuten, die sagen, die Anthroposophie, oder wie sie es dann schon nennen, ist ja im Grunde eine schöne Sache, aber sie widerspricht dem einfachen, schlichten christlichen Bekenntnisse, daß Christus die Seele erlöst hat, daß man in Christus selig werden kann, ohne daß die Seele etwas dazu tut. Der «schlichte Glaube des Seligwerdens durch den Christus», davon können sie nicht lassen. Die Menschen glauben, wenn sie so etwas sagen oder schreiben, besonders fromm zu sein. Egoistisch sind sie, grundegoistisch sind sie, nichts tun möchten sie in der Seele und das Göttliche dafür sorgen lassen, daß es die Seele hübsch pensionierend hinausträgt durch die Pforte des Todes.
Das ist nicht so bequem in jener Weltanschauung, in der das Religiöse geschaffen werden muß gegen die Zukunft hin. Da muß man begreifen, daß man sich das Innehaben des Göttlichen in der Seele erarbeiten muß. Da wird man nicht sich bloß passiv hingeben können an die Kirchen, welche einem versprechen, die Seelen hinüberzutragen - es ist Ja jetzt abgekommen, was einmal Anstoß gegeben hat - für Geld, obwohl im geheimen das noch immer eine Rolle spielt, auch beim Seligwerden. Aber dieser Übergang zum innerlich Tätigsein, dieses Leben im Hinblicke auf die Welt, zu der man sich hinzurechnen muß, das ist dasjenige, was die Menschheit notwendig hat und was sie noch nicht sehr liebt.
Um uns ein Gefühl für das, was auf diesem Gebiete notwendig ist, anzueignen, müssen eben solche Dinge vor unsere Seele hintreten, wie ich sie heute wieder erwähnt habe: diese Metamorphose der Menschheit seit dem alten Ägyptertum, wo sogar der Körper noch mehr pflanzlicher Natur war, so daß, wenn er zurück verfällt in der Gegenwart, er krank wird, Geschwürbildungen partiell jetzt entwickelt und so weiter, und daß wir einen Leichnam herumtragen, der eigentlich erkennt. Durch diese Dinge eignet man sich an ein Gefühl, eine Empfindung für dasjenige, was der Menschheit notwendig ist: wirklich in der Richtung vorwärtszukommen, wie man gegenwärtig in der sozialen Frage vorwärtskommen muß. Wir dürfen es uns nicht mehr gestatten, so etwas wie die soziale Frage nur in möglichster Einfachheit zu betrachten.
Sehen Sie, das ist eben das außerordentlich Schwierige in der Gegenwart, und das müssen Sie sich klarmachen, dieses Schwierige, daß die Menschen mit ein paar abstrakten Sätzen über die wichtigsten Angelegenheiten des Lebens aufgeklärt sein möchten. Wenn so etwas wie «Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage» mehr enthält als einige abstrakte Sätze, wenn es enthält die Ergebnisse einer Lebensbeobachtung, dann sagen die Leute, das verstehen sie nicht. Das erscheint ihnen sogar verworren. Aber das ist das Unglück der Gegenwart, daß die Menschen nicht eingehen wollen auf dasjenige, auf was sie gerade eingehen sollten. Denn nicht wahr, abstrakte Sätze, die ganz durchsichtig sind, die beziehen sich ja auf das Tote; das Soziale soll aber das Lebendige sein. Da müssen biegsame Anschauungen, biegsame Sätze, biegsame Formen in Anwendung sein. Deshalb ist es schon notwendig, daß wir nicht nur nachdenken, wie ich schon öfter gesagt habe, über die Umwandlung einzelner Einrichtungen, sondern daß wir uns dazu bequemen, wirklich umzudenken und umzulernen mit Bezug auf das innerste Gefüge unseres Denkens und unseres Sinnens.
Das ist dasjenige, was ich Ihnen, da ich ja heute wiederum für ein paar Wochen von Ihnen Abschied nehme, vortragend zurücklassen möchte — jetzt, wo wir im Zeichen des Zusammenwirkens unserer anthroposophischen und sozialen Bewegung uns fühlen müssen. Ich möchte, daß wirklich immer mehr und mehr verstehend durchdrungen werde, wie anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft in die Seelen der Menschen einfließen muß, wenn im Sozialen irgend etwas erreicht werden soll. Und da möchte ich Ihnen eines ans Herz legen, was ich in verschiedenen Formen ja schon immer wiederholt habe: Es handelt sich wirklich darum, dasjenige, was wir in anthroposophischer Erkenntnis uns aneignen können, als wahre Richtschnur für das Wirken und Streben der Gegenwart anzuerkennen, den Mut zu haben, mit dem Anthroposophischen durchdringen zu wollen. Es ist ja dies das Schlimmste, daß die Menschen der Gegenwart so wenig den Mut haben, mit etwas, was not tut, wirklich durchdringen zu wollen. Sie lassen ihre besten Willenskräfte gewissermaßen zerbrechen; sie wollen nicht sie durchbringen, so notwendig dieses wäre.
Lernen Sie es mutvoll zu vertreten, daß diejenigen Menschen, die diesen Bau, den Repräsentanten unseres geistigen Strebens, mit Interesse betrachten, wohl von Ihnen aufgenommen werden; freuen Sie sich über jeden einzelnen, der nur ein bißchen Verständnis zeigt, kommen Sie ihm entgegen, aber bauen Sie gar nichts darauf, als daß Sie es entsprechend zurückweisen, wenn die Menschen mit bösem Willen oder mit dem, was heute noch häufiger ist, Unverstand der Sache entgegenkommen. Um den Mut handelt es sich, diese Dinge durchzubringen. Wir wollen uns so betrachten, daß wir da sind als das kleine Häuflein, das durch sein Schicksal bestimmt ist, dasjenige zu wissen und dasjenige der Welt mitzuteilen, was ihr heute am allernötigsten ist. Mögen uns die Leute auslachen und mögen sie sagen, daß es eine Anmaßung ist das zu glauben; wahr ist es ja doch. Und dieses «wahr ist es ja doch» sich zu sagen, aber ernsthaftig, so daß es die ganze Seele erfüllt, dazu gehört eben ein innerer Mut, den wir haben müssen. Der durchdringe uns als die anthroposophische Substanz. Dann werden wir das machen, was wir machen sollen, jeder an seinem Platze. Das möchte ich heute noch ausgesprochen haben.
Es ist so, daß wir schon, ich möchte sagen herbeisehnen möchten jeden Tag, der uns näher bringt dem Wirken — das ja jetzt außerdem sehr erschwert ist — durch diesen Bau für die Welt. Das ist ja schließlich das einzige, dieser Bau, was mit den großen Schicksalen der Menschen auch in den Formen rechnet. Und es ist erfreulich, daß diesem Bau jetzt schon Aufmerksamkeit zugewendet wird. Aber ein Weiteres ist für ein gedeihliches Fortwirken in der sozialen Frage noch notwendig. Das ist, daß gerade durch so etwas wie diesen Bau, in seinen stärkeren Formen, als heute andere architektonische Formen sind, gewirkt werde auf die geistige Aufbesserung der Menschheitskräfte; daß die Menschen wieder mehr zugänglich werden für dasjenige, wovon man möchte, daß die Menschen es wissen, damit es sie erhebt, nicht nur bis zum Engelhaften: bis zum Erzengelhaften, zum Zeitgeistmäßigen.
Mit diesen Worten möchte ich mich eben wiederum für ein paar Wochen von Ihnen verabschieden. Ich hoffe, daß wir in ein paar Wochen diese Betrachtungen fortsetzen können und daß wir gerade während dieser Zeiten einer regen Wirksamkeit auch für unseren Bau selbst entgegengehen. Denn, meine lieben Freunde, es wird mit Recht betont von allen Seiten in der Welt draußen: Arbeitslust, Arbeitsbereitwilligkeit ist bei den Menschen wiederum notwendig. Die wird nicht kommen, wenn die Menschen nicht überzeugt werden von großen Zielen. Ich glaube, daß wenn die Menschen überzeugt werden können davon, daß sie durch die Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus ein menschenwürdiges Dasein erlangen, dann fangen sie auch wiederum an zu arbeiten. Sonst streiken sie fort. Denn die Menschen gebrauchen einen solchen Antrieb, der sie in tiefster Seele ergreift in unserer gegenwärtigen Zeit. Das auf dem Gebiet der physischen Arbeit.
Aber auch nicht anders als dadurch, daß wir zeigen, wie unsere Arbeit wenigstens an einem Objekte fruchtbar wird und hinausstrahlt in die Welt, werden wir den Antrieb geben können der Menschheit geistig zu überwinden dasjenige, was bloß tot ist in unserer Zeit. Überlegen wir uns das, meine lieben Freunde, bis zu dem Zeitpunkte, wo wir hier wiederum zusammen sprechen werden. Auf Wiedersehen!
Sixth Lecture
When I explained to you yesterday what the path of human intellect, of human intelligence, will be toward the future, this discussion was based on very specific facts that can be brought to light through spiritual scientific knowledge, some of which we would like to cite today. You must be practically aware, I would say, that when a human being stands before you, this human being is precisely the being we speak of in anthroposophical spiritual science. That is to say, we have before us — as you know from my Theosophy — a fourfold being, and you must always be aware of this. We have before us the ego, the so-called astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body. The fact that we have these four members of the human being before us every time a human being stands before us, so to speak, means that from the ordinary human perspective of today, we do not really know what we have before us in a human being. We really do not know. One thinks: what one sees standing before one, filling the space, is the physical body. But what is physical about it would not be seen as one sees it with ordinary eyes if it were standing before us only as a physical body. We see what stands before us as a physical body with ordinary eyes, just as it is, only because it is permeated by the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego. What is the physical body, strange as it may sound, is also a corpse as long as we live between birth and death. And actually, when we have a human corpse before us, we have in truth the physical body of the human being before us. When you see the corpse, you have the physical human being without it being permeated by the etheric body, astral body, and ego. It has been abandoned by these and shows, in a sense, its true essence.
You therefore do not present yourself correctly when you believe that you are carrying what you think of as the physical body of the human being around with you through space; you would present yourself much more correctly if you thought of yourself as a corpse and understood that your ego, your astral body, your etheric body carries this corpse through space.
This awareness of the true nature of the human being is becoming increasingly important in our time. For you see, the way things are today in the current cycle of human development, and have been for a long time, has not always been the case. Of course, the things I am telling you now cannot be verified by external physical science, but spiritual scientific knowledge provides precisely this fact. If you go back beyond the eighth century BC, which, as you know, marks the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantean period, you would arrive, as you also know, at the Egyptian-Chaldean earth period. Yes, human bodies were different then than they are today. The human bodies that are now shown to you in museums as mummies were not really of the same fine constitution as today's human body. They were much more permeated by plant life; they were not as completely corporeal as today's human body is corporeal. In a sense, as physical bodies, they were more similar to the nature of plants, whereas today's physical human body — and this has been the case since Greek-Latin times — is more similar to the mineral world. If, through some cosmic miracle, we were to acquire the same bodies that the Egyptian-Chaldean population had, we would all be sick. That would mean illness for us. We would carry around proliferating tissue in our bodies. And some illnesses simply consist of the human body atavistically regressing in part to conditions that were normal during the Egyptian-Chaldean period. Today, there are ulcerous formations in the human body that simply result from a part of the body in this or that person developing a tendency to become like the whole body was in the Egyptian-Chaldean population.
Now, what I have just said is very much connected with the development of humanity. As present-day human beings, we carry around a corpse. The Egyptians did not yet; the Egyptians carried something plant-like around with them. The consequence of this was that their knowledge was different from our knowledge, their intelligence worked differently from our intelligence. Now consider very carefully: what does man actually recognize with what he today calls his science, and of which he is so immensely proud? Only what is dead! It is always emphasized in science that life cannot be understood with ordinary intelligence. Although some researchers believe that if they continue to experiment with chemistry, a state will eventually be reached where the interplay of life will be understood through complicated combinations of atoms, molecules, and their interacting forces, this state will never be reached. Chemical and physical methods will only enable us to understand mineral death, that is, we will understand as much about living things as we understand about the living things that are now corpses.
But what is intelligent and cognizant in human beings is nevertheless this physical body, that is, the corpse. What does this corpse that we carry around with us actually do? It goes furthest in mathematical, geometric knowledge. There, everything is transparent; then it becomes more and more opaque the further one moves away from the mathematical-geometric. This stems from the fact that the human corpse is the real knower for us today, and that only the dead can recognize the dead. What the etheric body is, what the astral body is, what the I is, is not recognized in human beings today; it remains, so to speak, in the dark. If the etheric body could perceive in the same way as the physical body perceives the dead, then the etheric body would first perceive the living in the plant world. But what was peculiar was that in the plant-living body of the Egyptians, these Egyptians perceived the plant world in a completely different way than we do today. And some instinctive knowledge of the plant world can still be traced back to the Egyptian insight into what was incorporated into Egyptian culture out of an instinctive consciousness of knowledge. Even what is known today in botany for medicine is still based in many cases on traditions of ancient Egyptian wisdom. That is why it so often seems amateurish to the layman that people are all too happy to refer to something Egyptian when they want to convey knowledge that is not very valuable to people today. You know how some so-called lodges that are not based on proper foundations call themselves “Egyptian lodges.” But this is only because traditions of the wisdom that could be attained through the Egyptian body still live on in these circles. You see, one can say that with the gradual entry of human beings into the Greco-Latin era, the living human plant body died, for even in Greek culture the living plant body had already died, or at least was gradually dying. We already carry a very dead body within us, and this deadness is particularly true of the human head — as I have explained to you from another point of view, that the human head is generally perceived by the science of the initiates as a corpse, as something dead, as something that is constantly dying. Humanity will become more and more aware of this: that it actually only perceives with the corpse and therefore perceives the dead.
The further we move toward the future, the more intense will be the longing to recognize the living again. But this living will not be recognized through the ordinary intelligence that is bound to the corpse. Many things will be necessary so that the human being who has lost the ability to enter the world in a living way may once again come into the world in such a way. We must already know today what human beings have actually lost. When human beings came over from the Atlantean era into the post-Atlantean era, there were many things they could not do that they can do today. You see, each and every one of you, if you think about it, has been able to say “I” to yourselves since a certain time in your childhood. You say this ‘I’ quite disrespectfully. This “I” was not always said so disrespectfully in the course of human evolution. There were earlier times in human development, even if they had already been partly forgotten in Egyptian times — there were earlier times when a name was used for what the I expressed, a name which, when spoken, stunned people. Therefore, people avoided pronouncing this name. If the first population immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe had experienced the name for the I, which was valid for them and known only to the initiated, being pronounced, the whole assembly would have been stunned, would have fallen down, so strong would the name for the I have been. An echo of this fact can still be found in ancient Hebrew times, where there is talk of the unpronounceable name of God in the soul, which could only be spoken by initiates or was eurythmized before the congregation. The unpronounceable name of God has its origin in what I have just told you. Gradually, this has been lost more and more. In return, the deep effects that emanated from such things have been paralyzed. In the first post-Atlantean epoch: the profound effect of the ego; in the second post-Atlantean epoch: the profound effect of the astral body; in the third post-Atlantean epoch: the profound effect of the etheric body, but now already a tolerable effect, an effect that — as I explained to you yesterday — brings human beings into connection, into kinship with the cosmos. Now we can express the ego, we can express all kinds of things, but things no longer have an effect on us because we perceive what we grasp of the world with our corpse. That is, we perceive the dead, the mineral aspect of the world. But we must lift ourselves up again, return to those regions where we perceive the living. And while the Greek-Latin period from the 8th century BC to the middle of the 15th century AD was primarily designed to create more and more dead knowledge for the corpse, our intelligence is now following the path I spoke of yesterday. Therefore, we must resist mere intelligence. We must add something else to intelligence.
And it is characteristic that we must take the right path back, that we now, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, recognize the plant world in a certain way, in the sixth the animal world, and only in the seventh the truly human world. So it becomes a task for humanity to go beyond the mere recognition of the mineral world and to recognize the plant world.
And now, after you have understood this from a deeper context, consider who is the characteristic human being for this search for plant knowledge. It is Goethe. For by approaching the living, the metamorphosis, the becoming of plants from the dead, contrary to all external science, he was the man of the fifth post-Atlantean period in its elementary beginnings. If you read Goethe's short treatise from 1790, “An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants,” you will find in this treatise how Goethe gradually attempts to grasp the plant in the process of becoming, not as something dead and finished, but as something becoming from leaf to leaf. There you will see the dawn of the knowledge that should be sought in this fifth post-Atlantic epoch.
Goetheanism thus sets the tone for what should be sought in this fifth post-Atlantic epoch. In a sense, science in the Goethean sense will have to awaken, to move from the dead to the living. This is what I mean when I say again and again that we should learn to move away from dead, abstract concepts and into living, concrete concepts. And what I said the day before yesterday and yesterday is basically the path into these living, concrete concepts.
Now, it will not be possible to enter into these concepts, these mental images, if we do not make the effort to develop what we call our worldview and conception of life as a unity. Today, the particular configuration of our culture compels us to allow the various currents of our worldview to run alongside each other in a somewhat inorganic manner. Just think how inorganic the religious worldviews of a person and the scientific worldview often run side by side. Some people have one and the other, but they do not build a bridge between them. Indeed, they have a certain aversion to it, a certain fear of building a bridge. And we must realize that this cannot remain so.
Now I have drawn your attention to one thing during my stay here, namely how selfishly people today actually shape their worldview. I have led you to the fact that people today are primarily interested in the life of the soul after death. Out of pure selfishness, they are interested in this life of the soul after death. I have told you that we must move on to an interest in the life of the soul from birth, insofar as this is a continuation of life before birth or before conception. If we were to view the development of the child as it grows into the world as a continuation of its pre-birth spiritual and soul existence with the same longing, the same inclination, and the same tendency, our understanding of the world would take on a much less selfish character than it has today. But this selfish character of our worldview is connected with many other things. And here I come to a point where people of the present must become clearer and clearer about the real facts that underlie it. In the period leading up to our time, selfishness has developed predominantly in human beings; the ego has permeated our worldview, and the ego has also permeated our will. We should not delude ourselves about this. Above all, religious beliefs have become selfish. You can already see from outward appearances that religious beliefs have become selfish. Just think how today's preachers are instructed to reckon with people's egoism. The more they reckon with people's egoism, the more they can make promises to people about the life of the soul after death, the more they achieve their purpose. After all, there is hardly any interest in other things in today's humanity. And people are not very interested in that spiritual weaving and life that announces itself so wonderfully after birth, or rather after conception, with the soul that was previously in the spiritual world.
One consequence of this is the way people today think about the divine in different religious denominations. The fact that we imagine God as the Supreme Being does not mean anything special. In this regard, it is important that we dispel all illusions. What do most people who say “God” today actually mean? I have already mentioned this here once before: What kind of being do they mean when they speak of God? It is an angel, their own angel, whom they call God! It is nothing else! People just about sense that a protective spirit follows their own lives, they look up to it, they call it their God. Even if they do not call it an angel, even if they call it God, they only mean the angel. And that is basically the selfishness of religious belief, that with the idea of God one cannot rise above the angel. The reason for this is the narrowing of interests caused by selfishness. We see this narrowing of interests very clearly in our public life today.
What do people ask about a lot today? Do they ask a lot about the general fate of humanity? 'Oh, in a sense it is quite sad to talk to humanity today about general human destinies. One has no idea how much things have changed in this respect in a relatively short time. You see, today one can say to people: The armed conflict that has engulfed the earth for the last four to five years will be followed by the most powerful spiritual struggle that has ever swept across the earth, one that has never been seen before in this form, one that stems from the fact that the West calls maya or ideology what the East calls reality, and that the East calls reality what the West calls ideology. Today, we can draw humanity's attention to this serious matter, and they are not even aware that if the same thing had been said only a hundred years ago, it would have gripped their souls so deeply that they would not have been able to let go of it!
This change in humanity, this indifference of humanity towards the great destinies of existence, is the most striking phenomenon. Everything bounces off humanity today. The most comprehensive, most incisive, most intense facts are taken in as a sensation. They do not have a sufficiently shattering effect. And this is only because the ever-increasing intelligent egoism is narrowing people's interests. Therefore, even though people today may have democracies and parliaments, when they come together in parliaments, the destinies of humanity do not blow through these parliaments, because the people who are usually elected to parliaments are not blown through by the destiny of humanity. What is affected are selfish interests. Everyone has their own selfish interests. Outward, schematic similarities in interests, often caused by profession, cause people to group together. And when the groups are large enough, they become majorities. And then it is not human destinies that pass through the parliaments or through the representatives of the people, but only selfishness, multiplied by so many people. Because only selfishness lives in human beings, even religious belief has moved into the sphere of selfishness. Religious belief will undergo the necessary renewal when people's interests broaden, when they become such that people can once again look beyond their personal fate to the fate of humanity, when people are once again moved, deeply moved, when they are told: in the West a different culture is flourishing than in the East, and in the middle again a different culture than at the two poles in the West and in the East; when they are told: in the West, the great goals of humanity are sought — if they are sought at all — by turning to mediumistic people and putting them into a kind of trance, thereby consciously connecting them underground, as it were, with the spiritual worlds, and then having them reveal great historical goals through mediumistic means. You could tell people in Europe this as often as you like — they will not believe that there really are societies in American and English-speaking countries where attempts are made to put people with mediumistic abilities into a kind of trance in order to find out, by asking them clever questions, what the great goals of humanity's destiny are. People don't believe that Easterners also receive knowledge about these great goals of humanity's destiny — not through mediums, but through mystical means. Today, this is almost tangible, because Rabindranath Tagore's beautiful speeches are available everywhere, in which one can read how an Easterner thinks about the goals of humanity in the grand scheme of things. These speeches are read like the arts section by any hack writer, because today there is little distinction between hack writers and people of great spirituality, such as Rabindranath Tagore. People are not aware that different racial substantialities, so to speak, exist side by side. What applies to Central Europe has been said by me for many years in public lectures. But it was not taken as it should have been taken.
However, I only want to point out that one can become aware of something that transcends selfish human destiny, something that is connected with the destiny of groups of people, so that one can differentiate in a concrete way across the earth. If one raises one's soul's gaze to such a grasp and understanding of human destinies in the earthly realm, if one takes an intense interest in that which goes beyond personal destiny, then one attunes one's soul to comprehend something higher and more real than the mere angel: namely, the archangel. Thoughts about what the archangel being means do not occur to one at all if one remains only in the regions that concern the selfish human being. If preaching takes place only in the regions of the selfish human being, then no matter how much the preachers talk about the divine, they are only talking about the angel. For to call it something else is only a falsehood; it does not make the thing what it is. Only when one begins to take an interest in the fate of human beings in space does the soul begin to enter into the mood of rising to the archangelic being.
And now move on to something else. Feel within yourselves what I have indicated in these lectures about the successive impulses of human development! Feel that a large part of our leading people are educated in the years when the human soul is accessible to a certain flexibility, in the high schools; in the high schools that are not born out of our contemporary culture, but which, as they are, are still born out of the past culture of the Greco-Roman, the Greco-Latin era. You see, if these Greeks and Latins had done the same as we do, they would have established Egyptian-Chaldean secondary schools. They did not do that. They took their teaching material from immediate life. We take it from the previous period and educate people accordingly. This has great significance for people, but we have not recognized this significance. If we had recognized this significance, there would have been a tone within the women's movement that did not exist, a tone that would have sounded like this: The male world, precisely when it should be trained in the special handling of intelligence, is sent to antiquated schools. This hardens their brains. We women have been fortunate that we were not allowed into high schools. We want to put our intelligence on an original note; we want to show what can be developed for the present if one is not dulled in one's youth by Greek and Latin high school education.
This note has not been heard. On the contrary, some notes have sounded: Men have crawled under the Greek-Latin high school education, let us women crawl in too. Let us also become college students.
So little understanding has taken hold with regard to what is necessary. We should know that in our present we are not being educated for this present, but are being educated for Greek-Latin culture. That is therefore part of our lives. One must feel it. One must feel what is happening in Greek-Latin culture in the present, especially among the leading people, among the so-called intelligentsia, among the intellectuals; that is the one class that is with us. We actually carry it within us in our entire intellectual education. We cannot read a newspaper without encountering Greek-Latin education, because we actually write in Greek-Latin form, even when we write in our national languages.
And with regard to our view of law, as I have already explained, we live within Roman culture — again, something antiquated. Roman culture lives within the law. Sometimes the old state laws argue against Roman law, but they do not prevail. And one must feel again how, in what people call right and wrong in public life, a bygone era lives on.
Only in economic matters do we actually live in the present. It says a lot that we only live in the present in economic matters. Therefore, something will probably change significantly. If I may add this as a parenthesis: some women naturally preserve the concepts of the present – only for cooking, that is, for housekeeping, and thus they are the true essence of the present; the other is something antiquated that we carry into the present. I am not saying that this should be presented as something particularly desirable; but the other is certainly not the most desirable, that we now go back from the present, through the souls of women, to antiquated cultures. By looking at what lives in our cultural environment, we see not only what is at work in the present, but also the influence of ancient times. And if we acquire a feeling for this, it is not only the past that influences us, but also the future. Yes, it is our business to let the future influence us. For if there were not in every human being, quite subordinate to consciousness, a kind of rebel against the Greekness of education and the Romanity of law, and if the future did not shine in, we would be sad fellows, really quite sad fellows.
In addition to space, we must also consider time for what lives in our culture: that which protrudes into our present from ancient history and from the future. We must be clear that, as people living in the present, we have brought the past and the future into our human soul. Just as we have brought in America, England, Asia, China, India, the East, and the West by being Europeans—as already mentioned—because these are the two poles, so we have Greece, Rome, and the future within us. And by allowing ourselves to contemplate the latter, by becoming aware of how the past, the becoming, and the emerging live in our soul, another mood arises in this soul about the human destiny that transcends egoism, a mood different from that which arises from the mere observation of space. And when we develop this mood of the soul, only then do we develop the ability to form concepts about the sphere of the spirits of the age, the archai. That is, we come to the third divine in the hierarchy. It is good if human beings first allow themselves to present these three hierarchies in concepts and ideas using the means I have just mentioned. For the form spirits that then come are infinitely more difficult to grasp. But it is enough for the present human being to make the attempt to penetrate beyond egoism into the sphere of the unselfish, and to penetrate again and again, to occupy himself with what I have now characterized! In particular, I must say again, what I have now discussed should be included in teacher training. Teachers should not be allowed to teach and educate without gaining an understanding of egoism, which strives toward the next god, that is, toward the angel, but also without gaining an understanding of the unselfish, fate-determining powers that exist side by side in the space above the earth, of the archangelic beings, and without them gaining an understanding of how the past and future, Roman law, Greek intellectual substance, and the undefined rebel of the future who will save us, all intrude into our culture.
But humanity is currently not very inclined to engage with these things. Some time ago, I repeatedly emphasized in lectures that one of our social tasks is to take our educational resources for the time that people spend in high schools today from the present, to do as the Greeks themselves did: they took their educational material from the present.
It is — at least in terms of time — in the same place where I have repeatedly spoken about this issue as an important social issue — shortly afterwards, I do not want to construct a causal connection, but that is irrelevant, the matter is of symptomatic significance – advertisements appeared en masse in all the newspapers of the place in question, promoting the current high school system. I gave lectures in which I characterized high school education as I have just characterized it to you—and advertisements appeared everywhere in the newspapers: what German culture owes to high school education for its youth, for the “strengthening of national consciousness,” “national power,” and so on, a few weeks before the Treaty of Versailles! These advertisements were signed by all kinds of local dignitaries from the schools and the education system. The fact is that what we have to explain today from the truly objective foundations of human development always rebounds. People let it rebound—it does not touch the depths of the soul.
This is the basis of the difficulty of working on the social question. For with the superficial approaches that are usually taken to the social question today, it will never, ever be solved. The social question is a deeply significant question, a question that cannot be solved unless one is willing to look into the depths of human and world existence. Precisely because this is the case, one can see how necessary certain arrangements are, which are precisely what the threefold social organism provides.
But we must acquire an organ for what is necessary in our time. It will be difficult to acquire this faculty in the spiritual realm, because – as I believe I have already indicated here once before – the spiritual education in the school system, which has gradually been absorbed by the state, has really distilled out of people their active, energetic striving, and has made them devoted members of the state structure. I believe I have already said here: how does a large number of people actually live? Exceptions aside, of course. Well, until the age of six, people are allowed to live unhindered, because at that age humanity is still too dirty for the state. They do not want to devote themselves to the tasks that must be devoted to in the early years of childhood; because the state still leaves people to the non-state powers. But then people are called upon, trained to become suitable for the state economy, to fit into the mold, to cease being human and become what the state stamps on them. Then they become something to the state. They strive for this because it is drummed into them; after all, they not only receive their sustenance from the state while they work, but also beyond their working life, in the form of a pension. For what an ideal a pensionable position is for many people today! In addition, religious beliefs provide for retirement beyond death. The soul becomes eligible for a pension; without having to do anything, it receives eternal bliss through the work of the church itself. The church takes care of that! It is certainly uncomfortable to hear that salvation lies in free spiritual striving, which must be independent of the state; that the state should only be a constitutional state. Yes, there will be no pension entitlement in a constitutional state! That is already a reason for many to reject it. One notices this again and again.
And with regard to the most intimate spiritual life, religious life, the worldview of the future will indeed require people to work for their immortality, to let their souls be active so that in activity they take in the divine, the Christ impulse.
I have received many, many letters in my life, again and again from church people who say that anthroposophy, or whatever they call it, is basically a beautiful thing, but it contradicts the simple, plain Christian creed that Christ redeemed the soul, that one can be saved in Christ without the soul doing anything. They cannot let go of the “simple belief in salvation through Christ.” When people say or write such things, they believe themselves to be particularly pious. They are selfish, fundamentally selfish; they want to do nothing in their souls and let the divine take care of it, carrying the soul out through the gate of death as if it were retiring.
This is not so convenient in that worldview in which the religious must be created for the future. One must understand that one must work to attain the divine in one's soul. One cannot simply passively surrender oneself to the churches, which promise to carry one's soul across – what once caused offense has now been abandoned – for money, although in secret this still plays a role, even in becoming blessed. But this transition to inner activity, this life with a view to the world to which one must belong, is what humanity needs and does not yet love very much.
In order to acquire a feeling for what is necessary in this area, things such as those I have mentioned again today must come before our soul: this metamorphosis of humanity since ancient Egypt, where even the body was still more plant-like in nature, so that when it degenerates in the present, it becomes ill, ulcers develop in some areas, and so on, and we carry around a corpse that actually recognizes. Through these things, one acquires a feeling, a sense of what is necessary for humanity: to really move forward in the direction in which we must currently move forward in the social question. We can no longer allow ourselves to view something like the social question in the simplest possible terms.
You see, that is precisely what is so extraordinarily difficult at present, and you must realize this difficulty, that people want to be enlightened about the most important matters of life with a few abstract sentences. When something like “The Key Points of the Social Question” contains more than a few abstract sentences, when it contains the results of an observation of life, then people say they don't understand it. It even seems confusing to them. But that is the misfortune of the present day, that people do not want to engage with what they should be engaging with. For it is true that abstract sentences, which are completely transparent, refer to the dead; but the social should be the living. Flexible views, flexible sentences, flexible forms must be applied. That is why it is necessary, as I have often said, not only to think about the transformation of individual institutions, but also to bring ourselves to really rethink and relearn with regard to the innermost structure of our thinking and our senses.
This is what I would like to leave you with today, as I take my leave of you again for a few weeks — now that we must feel ourselves under the sign of the cooperation between our anthroposophical and social movements. I would like you to understand more and more deeply how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must flow into people's souls if anything is to be achieved in the social sphere. And here I would like to urge you to take to heart something that I have already repeated many times in various forms: It is really a matter of recognizing what we can acquire through anthroposophical knowledge as a true guideline for the work and striving of the present, of having the courage to want to permeate everything with anthroposophy. The worst thing is that people today have so little courage to really want to permeate everything with something that is necessary. They allow their best powers of will to be broken, so to speak; they do not want to carry them through, however necessary this may be.
Learn to courageously stand up for the fact that those people who view this building, the representative of our spiritual striving, with interest, are well received by you; rejoice over every single person who shows even a little understanding, meet them halfway, but do not build on anything other than rejecting them accordingly when people approach the matter with ill will or, as is even more common today, with a lack of understanding. It is a matter of courage to carry these things through. Let us see ourselves as a small group of people whose destiny is to know and to communicate to the world what it needs most today. People may laugh at us and say that it is presumptuous to believe this, but it is true nonetheless. And to say to ourselves, “But it is true,” seriously, so that it fills our whole soul, requires an inner courage that we must have. May it permeate us as the anthroposophical substance. Then we will do what we are supposed to do, each in his or her place. I wanted to say that today.
The fact is that we already long for every day that brings us closer to working for the world through this building, which is now very difficult. After all, this building is the only thing that takes into account the great destinies of human beings, even in its forms. And it is gratifying that attention is already being paid to this building. But something else is necessary for a prosperous continuation of the social question. That is, precisely through something like this building, in its stronger forms than other architectural forms today, an effect should be made on the spiritual improvement of the forces of humanity; that people should once again become more receptive to that which one would like them to know, so that it elevates them, not only to the angelic, but to the archangelic, to the spirit of the times.
With these words, I would like to take my leave of you again for a few weeks. I hope that we will be able to continue these reflections in a few weeks and that, especially during these times of lively activity, we will also move toward our own building. For, my dear friends, it is rightly emphasized from all sides in the world outside: the desire to work, the willingness to work, is once again necessary among people. This will not come about unless people are convinced of great goals. I believe that if people can be convinced that they can achieve a dignified existence through the threefold social organism, then they will start working again. Otherwise, they will continue to strike. For people need such motivation, which touches them in the depths of their souls in our present time. This applies to the field of physical work.
But it is also only by showing how our work is fruitful, at least in one area, and how it radiates out into the world, that we will be able to give humanity the impetus to spiritually overcome what is merely dead in our time. Let us think about this, my dear friends, until the time when we meet again here to talk. Goodbye!