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Education as a Social Problem
GA 296

10 August 1919, Dornach

II. The Social Structure in Ancient Greece and Rome

If we wish to understand the task of the anthroposophical science of the spirit in the present and immediate future we must consider the character of mankind's evolution since the middle of the fifteenth century. Everything that happens now depends on the fact that since that time there lives in mankind the impulse for each single individuality to attain the pinnacle of personality, to become a whole personality. This was not possible, nor was it the task of mankind in earlier epochs of our post-Atlantean evolution. If we want to understand this great change in the middle of which we find ourselves, we must focus our attention still more precisely upon such matters as I characterized yesterday.

I said that in our spiritual life we still have a Greek constitution of soul. The way we form our thoughts, the manner in which we are accustomed to think about the world, is an echo of the Greek soul. And the way we are accustomed to look at civic rights and everything connected with them is an echo of the soul-constitution of the Roman. In the State we still see the structure as it existed in the Roman Empire. Only if people will realize that the impulse of the threefold social order must enter our chaotic present will there be clarity in thinking and willing.

The soul-nature of the Greek was chiefly determined by the fact that in Greece there existed in the highest degree what were the leading characteristics of historical development right up to the middle of the fifteenth century. Across the Greek territory there were spread a subject population and their conquerors. These latter claimed the land for themselves; but also, through their blood inheritance, they determined the spirituality of ancient Greece. We cannot grasp the soul-nature of the ancient Greeks unless we keep in mind that it was considered justified to think about human relationships in the way that resulted from the blood characteristics of the Aryan conqueror population. Naturally, modern man has outgrown what thus lay at the basis of Greek culture. With the Greeks it was self-evident that there were two kinds of people: those who had to worship Mercury, and those who had to worship Zeus. These two classes were strictly separated. But, people thought about the world and the Gods in the way the conqueror population had to think because of its blood characteristics. Everything resulted from the clash of a conquered and conquering people. One who looks more closely into what lives socially among men of our time will recognize that in our feelings and our subconscious soul-life we no longer have this aristocratic attitude in viewing our world. Yet it still lives in our ideas and concepts, especially if we are educated in the schools of higher learning. These schools, especially the classical schools, shape their instruction in a way that represents a renaissance, and echo of Hellenism. And this is even more the case with our universities, with the exception of the technical and agricultural colleges which have sprung from modern life. Even they imitate in their outer form the structure of universities derived from Hellenism. Through the very fact that we have a high esteem for Hellenism in its time, and for its time, we must also be quite clear about the necessity for our age of a renewal of spiritual life. It will become more and more unbearable for humanity to be led by souls who have acquired the form of their concepts in our classical schools. And today, in almost all leading positions, you find people who did receive the forming of their ideas in the classical schools. It has become necessary today to realize that the time of “settling accounts,” not minor but major accounts, is at hand, and that we must think about such matters factually and stop clinging to old habits of thought.

You know that what was formed out of the blood in Hellenism became abstract in Romanism. I have mentioned this here before. The Greek social organism, which cannot be called a State organism, shaped itself out of forces descending through the blood. But this did not pass over to Romanism. What did pass over was the urge to organize as the Greeks had organized, but the cause of this organizing was no longer felt to be in the blood. While it would never have occurred to an ancient Greek to doubt that there are people of a “lower sort,” those in a conquered people, and others being of a “higher sort,” the Aryans, this was not the case with the Romans. Within the Roman Empire there was the strong consciousness that the order of the social organism had been arrived at through power, through might. You need only remind yourselves that the Romans trace their origin to that assembly of robbers in the neighborhood of Rome that had been called together in order, as a robber band, to found Rome; and that the founder of Rome was not suckled with delicate mother's milk but, as you know, was suckled in the forest by an animal, a wolf.

These are the influences that were taken up into the Roman nature and led to the formation of the social order in Rome largely out of abstract concepts. What has remained as our heritage in regard to the concepts of rights and the State has thus come from the Roman constitution of soul.

In this connection I am always reminded of an old friend of mine. I met him when he was already quite advanced in years. In his youth, at the age of eighteen, he had fallen in love with a girl and they had secretly become engaged. But they were too poor to marry, so they waited and remained faithful to each other. When he finally could consider marriage, he was sixty-four years old, for only then had he acquired enough means to risk taking such a step. So, he went to his home town near Salzburg ready to marry his chosen one of so long ago. But alas, the church and the rectory had burned down, and he could not get his baptismal certificate. There was no record of his baptism anywhere, so there was no proof that he had been born. I remember vividly the day his letter arrived. It stated, “Well, I believe it is quite evident that I was born, for after all I exist. But these people do not believe I was born because there is no baptismal certificate to prove it.”

I once had a conversation with a lawyer who said, “In a lawsuit it is not so important whether or not a man is present; all we need is his birth certificate.”

Continually one meets such grotesque incidents. The mood living in them shows that our entire public life has been built to a greater or lesser degree on Romanism. We are citizens of the world not through the fact we have become and exist as human beings but because we are recorded and recognized in a certain office. These things all lead back to Romanism. The descent by blood has passed over into registration.

Today the situation is such that many men no longer consider their value determined by what they are as human beings but by the rank they have reached in the hierarchy of officialdom. One prefers to be something impersonal, out of Roman rights-concepts, rather than a personality. Since the fifteenth century, however, there exists in mankind the subconscious striving to base everything on the pinnacle of personality. This shows us that in regard to spiritual life and the life of rights the times have changed, and we need a renewal of both, a real renewal. This is connected with many deeper impulses of mankind's evolution.

Just consider the fact that since the middle of the fifteenth century the evolution of modern man has been filled with the natural-scientific mode of thought which is based on abstract laws of nature, upon sense perception and the thoughts developed around it. Only what is derived from sense perception is considered valid. Yesterday I drew your attention to the fact that today there are quite a number of people who are convinced, justifiably so, that a view of nature acquired in this way can only lead to a ghost-like image of nature. A picture of the world formed by a student of nature is a specter of the world, not the real world. So, we have to say that humanity finds itself in the position of developing a specter-image of the world in regard to one half of it. For the science of initiation something profound is concealed behind this, and what this is we must now consider.

Sense perception as such cannot be altered; whether we consider it to be maya or something else is of no concern to a deeper world view. A red flower is a red flower whether or not we think it maya or reality. It is what it is. Likewise, all sense perception is what it is. Discussion starts only when we begin to form thoughts about it, when we consider it to be this or that, when we interpret it. Only then the difficulty begins. It begins because the concepts we as men have to form since the fifteenth century are different from those of earlier mankind. No attention is paid to this in modern history, which is a fable convenue, as I have often stated. Whoever is able to understand the concepts of mankind prior to the middle of the fifteenth century knows that they were full of imagery, that they actually were imaginations. The present abstraction of concepts exists only since that time.

Now why has our human nature so developed that we have these abstract concepts we are so proud of today and that we constantly employ? They have the peculiar character that, although we make use of them in the sense world they are not suited to this sense world. They are worthless there. In my book, Riddles of Philosophy, I have expressed this by saying that the way man forms his concepts regarding the external world constitutes a side-stream of his soul development. Think of a seed in the earth; it is destined by nature to become a plant. But we take many seeds and grind them into flour and eat them as bread. This, however, is not what the seed is meant for; it is a lateral development. If we ask, doesn't the seed contain those chemical elements we need for building up our body? we must say that it does not lie in the nature of the grain of wheat or rye to nourish us but to bring forth new grain. Likewise, it does not lie in our nature to grasp the outer world through the concepts we have acquired since the fifteenth century. We shall reap something different from those concepts if we enter into their nature properly. These modern concepts are the shadow images of what we have experienced in the spiritual world before birth—more exactly, before conception. Our concepts, the forces in them, are the echoes of what we have experienced before birth. We misuse our system of concepts in applying it to the outer sense world.

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This is the basis of Goethe's concept of nature. He does not want to express the laws of nature by means of concepts; he strives for the primal phenomena. That is to say, he strives for the assembled outer perceptions, because he feels that our conceptual ability cannot be applied to external nature. We have to develop our conceptual ability as pure thinking. If we do so, it points us toward our spiritual existence prior to birth. Our modern thinking has been bestowed upon us so that we may reach with this pure thinking our spiritual nature as it existed before we were clothed with a physical body. If mankind does not comprehend the fact that it possesses thinking in order to apprehend itself as spirit, it does not take hold of the task of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Our natural science was inserted, so to say, into mankind's destiny so that we might remain with pure nature and not speculate about it. We were to employ our concepts to perceive it in the right way, and then develop our concepts in order to behold ourselves as we existed in spirit before we descended into the physical body. Men still believe today that they should only employ their conceptual ability for classifying external sense perceptions, and so on. However, they will only act correctly if they employ the thoughts they have had since the middle of the fifteenth century for perceiving the spiritual world in which they existed before they acquired a physical body.

In this way man of the fifth post-Atlantean era is forced toward the spiritual, toward the existence before birth. And still another factor places him in a peculiar situation which he must develop. Parallel to the specter-concepts of natural science runs industrialism, as I mentioned yesterday. Its chief characteristic is the fact that the machine, the bearer of industrialism, is spiritually transparent. Nothing of it remains incomprehensible. As a consequence, the human will directed toward the machine is, in truth, not directed toward a reality. In terms of comprehensive world-reality the machine is a chimera. Industrialism introduces something into our lives which in a higher sense makes man's will meaningless. There will be a significant impact on social life when modern men become convinced that the machine and everything resulting from it, such as industrialism, makes the human will meaningless. We have already reached the pinnacle of machine activity. Today a quarter of all production on earth is not being produced by human will but by machine power.1By 1969 this amount, of course, has been greatly increased.—Tr. This signifies something extraordinary. Human will is no longer meaningful on earth.

If you read, for instance, the speeches of Rabindranath Tagore, you ought to sense something in them that remains incomprehensible to the European who employs his ordinary intellect. There is a different tone in what an educated Asiatic has to say today, because in him this adaptation of the European spirit to the machine is completely incomprehensible. To the Oriental the activity of working by means of machines, by means of industrialism, has no meaning. The European may believe it or not, but European politics born in the machine age is also just as senseless to the Oriental. In the educated Oriental's statements there is clearly expressed that this one-fourth of human labor in the present age is felt by him as senseless work—this quarter which is not carried out by the educated Orientals but only by Occidentals and their imitators, the Japanese. The Oriental feels so because, as he still possesses much clairvoyant vision, he knows that labor performed by machines has a definite peculiarity. When a man plows his field with his horse—man and beast straining themselves in labor—this work in which natural forces are involved has a meaning beyond the immediate present; it has cosmic meaning. When a man kindles fire by using a flint, making the sparks ignite the tinder, he is connected with nature. When the wasp builds its house this natural activity too has cosmic meaning. Through modern industrialism we have abandoned cosmic value. In our kindling of electric flames there no longer lives any cosmic significance. It has been driven out. A completely mechanized factory is a hole in the cosmos, it has no meaning for cosmic evolution. If you go into the woods and collect firewood this has cosmic meaning beyond earth evolution; but a modern factory and everything it contains has no significance beyond earth development. The human will is inserted in it without its having any cosmic value. Just consider what this means. It means that since the middle of the fifteenth century we have developed a knowledge that is specter-like and does not touch reality. More and more we employ machines and carry out an industrial activity, and the will inserted into this activity is senseless for world evolution.

The great question now confronts us: Is there nevertheless a meaning for mankind's evolution as a whole in the fact that our knowledge is ghost-like, and our will to a great extent senseless? Indeed, there is meaning in it, significant meaning. Mankind thereby is to be urged to penetrate beyond ghost-like thinking to a knowledge of reality that does not stop with the perception of nature but enters into the spiritual behind nature. So long as men received the spirit simultaneously with their concepts they did not need to make efforts to gain the spirit. Since in the modern age men have only retained concepts devoid of spirit, but that also contain the possibility of working one's way up to the spirit as I have stated, there is present in man the impulse to proceed from abstract knowledge and to penetrate into genuine spiritual knowledge. Therefore, since we have industrialism with its senselessness we must seek another meaning for human will. This we can only do if we arouse ourselves to a world view that brings sense into what is senseless—let us call it industrialism—by deriving meaning from the spiritual, saying: We seek tasks that stem from the spirit. Formerly, when willing could derive its impulses from the spirit instinctively, we did not need to arouse ourselves especially in order to will from out the spirit. Today it is necessary that we make a special effort to do this. The senseless industrial willing has to be confronted with a meaningful willing-out-of-the-spirit.

Yesterday I gave you an example of the way we ought to educate. We should recognize that up to the seventh year man is an imitator since he develops chiefly his physical body during this period. Imitation, therefore, ought to become the basis for that period of education. We should know that from the seventh to the fourteenth year we have to develop man by the principle of authority. This spiritual knowledge, which we gain by knowing how the etheric body develops during that time, must be made the impulse of education then. We should know also how the astral body develops from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, and that this knowledge must lie behind education for that, period. Then, only then, do we will out of the spirit.

Up to the middle of the fifteenth century man willed instinctively out of the spirit. In external life we tend to immerse ourselves in machines, in mechanism; this is so even in politics, which gradually has turned governments into machines. We must strive for a spirit-ensouled willing. To that end we must accept the idea of a science of the spirit. We must, for instance, base education on what we know out of spiritual facts, out of what we learn from anthroposophical spiritual science. Through the stronger, more conscious emphasizing of willing out of the spirit we establish a counter-image to the senseless willing of industrialism.

Thus, industrialism with all its devastation of the human soul, is given us in order that in this devastation we may rouse ourselves to will out of the spirit. Our thinking has to be changed in many ways in our modern age. This requires a careful, intimately developed feeling for truth. We must become conscious that the feeling for truth has to be gradually applied in places where we are not yet accustomed to apply it. I believe many a person will be astonished today if he is told: You are right if you venerate Raphael highly because of his pictures, but if you demand that people paint the way Raphael painted then, you are mistaken. Only he has a right to admire Raphael who knows that whoever paints today the way he painted is a bad painter, because he does not paint as the impulses of our time demand. One does not feel with the times if one does not deeply sense the tasks of a given age. It is necessary that we acquire in our time an intimate feeling for truth in this regard. But here also modern humanity is caught up in what is the very opposite. One gets the impression that the feeling for truth has everywhere sprung a leak and does not function. People are shying away from calling right what is right, and wrong what is wrong; they recoil from designating a lie a lie. We experience today the most abominable things, and people are indifferent to them. The point is that we should have such a feeling for truth that we know, for example, that Raphael's painting no longer fits our present age; that it must be considered as something of the past and admired as such. It is particularly necessary now to pay attention to such things when out of the depths of the soul the impulse for truth comes over us. I am often reminded of a beautiful passage in Herman Grimm's biography of Michelangelo in which he speaks of his Last Judgment. He says that many such Last Judgment pictures were painted at that time and that the people experienced in full reality the truth of what was painted on the walls. They lived in the truth of those pictures. Today we should not look at such a picture as Michelangelo's Last Judgment without being aware that we do not feel as those people did for whom the artist painted it; that we have lost their feeling and at best can say: This is the picture of something we no longer believe in as an immediate reality.

Just consider how differently man confronts such a picture with his modern consciousness. He no longer thinks that angels really descend, or that the devils carry on as they do in Michelangelo's picture. If, however, one is aware that what modern man feels when looking at this picture is something gray and abstract, then one is called upon inwardly to experience the whole living movement in these pictures on the wall of the Sistine Chapel. One is stirred to asking how it was possible for the people of Michelangelo's time (although he painted after the decline of the fourth post-Atlantean period his paintings originated in the spirit of that period since he stood at the boundary of the fourth and fifth periods)—how was it possible for people like him and his contemporaries to experience such tremendous imaginations, such mighty pictures? This question confronts us in all its magnitude if one is conscious of how drab and lifeless is what man feels today in front of such a picture by Michelangelo. We must ask: What caused human souls of that time to conceive of the earth's end in such a way? Whence came the structure of these pictures?

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The reason lies in the following: Since the time when the Mystery of Golgotha entered earth evolution and had given it its meaning, certain things that existed in the ancient manner had to recede into the background and were destined to be regained by mankind later on. One of these was the idea of repeated earth lives. The totality of human life takes its course through earth life, then life in the spiritual world, then earth life again, and so on. This course of the total life of man was the content of the atavistic, instinctive world-view in ancient times. Christianity had to arouse in man concepts different from those of ancient wisdom. By what means, above all, has Christianity accomplished this? It directed human consciousness only to a certain point in time, namely, to the beginning of one's life on earth. It did not consider man as an individuality prior to birth or conception but merely as a thought of the Godhead. Before earth-life man proceeds out of the spiritual world as a thought of the Godhead, only at birth did he begin to be a real human being. Then, after his life on earth, the life after death. In the first period of the development of Christianity the experience of repeated earth lives was, so to say, misplaced. Human experience was limited to looking into the origin of man and the life after death. This, however, supplied the equilibrium out of which the pictures of the Last Judgment were created. Through the fact that Christianity first eradicated from human feeling the teaching of pre-existence, the pictures of the Last Judgment could arise. Today there wells up again out of the deep recesses of the human soul the longing for a recognition of repeated earth lives. Therefore, those pictures fade away which only focus their attention upon the one earth life and a vague spiritual world before and after it. Now there exists the most intense longing to enlarge the Christian world-view of the early ages. The Mystery of Golgotha is not merely effective for those who believe only in one earth life, it is also valid for those who know of repeated earth lives. The present age is in need of this enlargement. Therefore, we should see clearly that we live in a period when we must use the ghost-like nature of ordinary conceptual knowledge, and the senselessness of willing released by industrialism, in order to rise to spiritual knowledge and spirit-permeated willing, as I have described it; and also, in order to enlarge religious consciousness so as to include repeated earth lives.

The great and full importance of this enlargement of human consciousness in the present time should be deeply inscribed in the soul of modern men, for upon this depends whether they really understand how to live in the present, and how to prepare the future in the right sense. Everyone, in the situation in which life has placed him, can make use of this enlarged consciousness. Even the external knowledge people gain will cause him to demand something that today plays a large role in the subconscious depths of soul life but that has difficulty in rising and sounding out into full consciousness. Truly, the most striking fact of modern life is that there are so many torn human souls; souls full of problems who do not know what to do with life, who ask again and again, “What precisely is my task? What does life mean to do specifically with me?” They start this or that and yet are never satisfied. The number of these problematic natures increases steadily. What is the reason for it? It comes from a lack in our educational system. Today we educate our children in a way which does not awaken in them the forces that make man strong for life. Man becomes strong through being an imitator up to his seventh year; through following a worthy authority up to the fourteenth year; and through the fact that his capacity for love is developed in the right way up to the twenty-first year. Later on this strength cannot be developed. What a person lacks because the forces were not awakened which should have been awakened in definite periods of his youth—this is what makes him a problem-filled nature. This fact must be made known!

For this reason, I had to say yesterday that if we will to bring about a true form of society in future it must be prepared through people's education. To this end we must not proceed in a small way but on a large scale; for our educational system has gradually taken on a character that leads directly to what I described yesterday as mechanization of the spirit, vegetizing of the soul, and animalization of the body.

We must not follow this direction. We must strongly develop the forces that can be developed in a child's soul, so that later on he can harvest the fruits of his childhood learning. Today he looks back and feels what his childhood was and cannot gather anything from it because nothing was developed there. Our educational principles must be fundamentally changed if we want to do the right thing for children. Above everything we must listen very carefully to much that at present is highly praised and considered especially wholesome.

So, it is necessary that, without undue strain and exertion but through an economy of educational effort, children acquire concentration. This can be achieved, in the way modern man needs it, only by abolishing what is so greatly favored today, namely, the cursed curriculum of the schools; this instrument of murder for the real development of human forces. Just consider what it means: From 7 to 8 A.M. arithmetic, from 8 to 9 grammar, from 9 to 10 geography, from 10 to 11 history. Everything that has moved through the soul from 7 to 8 is extinguished from 8 to 9, and so on. Now here it is necessary to get down to the bottom of things. We must no longer think that subjects exist in order to be taught as subjects. On the contrary, we must have clearly in mind that in children from the seventh to fourteenth year, thinking, feeling, and willing have to be developed in the right way. Geography, arithmetic, everything must be employed so that these faculties can be properly developed.

Much is said in modern pedagogy about the need of developing individualities, of paying attention to a child's nature in order to know which faculties should be developed. This is empty talk. These questions take on meaning only when they are discussed from the point of view of spiritual science, otherwise they are mere phrases. In the future it will be necessary to say that for a certain age group we must impart a certain amount of arithmetic. Two or three months are to be devoted to teaching arithmetic in the forenoon. Not a plan of study that contains everything jumbled up but arithmetic for an extended time, then on to another subject. Arrange things as they are indicated by human nature itself for definite points in time.

You see the tasks that arise for a pedagogy which works toward the future. Here lie the positive problems for those who seriously think about the social future. As yet there is little understanding for these problems. In Stuttgart, connected with our previous activities, a school is to be built up as far as possible within the present school system. Mr. Molt has decided to found such a school for the children of his employees in the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Factory.2In the course of the next ten years this “Waldorf School” became the largest private school in Germany, with a waiting list of applicants from several European countries and the United States. Other children will be able to come, but at first of course only in limited numbers. Naturally, we will have to take into account the educational goals of the State. The children will have to achieve this and that by the end of a year, and we will have to make certain compromises. But we will be able to intermix something with what the State requires, because, according to socialistic ideas, the State is the especially clever idol. So, we shall have to intermix with what it demands that which is required by the real nature of man. This has to be recognized. But who today thinks of the fact that the prevailing plan of study is the murderer of truly human education? There are people whose thoughts in this direction are such that one is inclined to say: The world stands on its head, one has to turn it back on its legs. For many would shorten the lessons and change the subjects every half hour. This today is considered ideal. Just imagine: Religion, arithmetic, geography, drawing, singing, one after the other. In our heads they tumble through each other like the stones of a kaleidoscope. Only the outer world says, “Now that's something like it!”—because there is not the slightest interrelating between these subjects.

Few believe it is necessary now to think on a large scale; not to think petty thoughts but to have great, comprehensive views. We experience again and again that people finally have become accustomed to saying, “Indeed, revolution is necessary!” Even a large part of the bourgeoisie believes today in revolution. I do not know if that is the case here, but there are large areas where a majority of the bourgeoisie believes revolution to be necessary. But if we offer them such things as are stated in my book, The Threefold Social Order, they say: “We do not understand this. It is too complicated.” Lichtenberg once said, “If a head and a book strike together and a hollow sound results it is not necessarily the fault of the book.” But people do not believe this, because—it is not self-knowledge that is chiefly produced in men's souls. One can experience that throughout extensive regions the philistines believe in revolution, yet they say, “O no, we cannot enter into such deep questions, such comprehensive thoughts; you must tell us how shoe production can be socialized, how the pharmacies are to be socialized,” and so on. “You must tell us how, in the revolutionized State, I can sell my spices.”

One gradually discovers then what these people really mean. They mean that they agree there must be a revolution, but everything should remain as it has been, nothing should be changed by it. Many a person asks, how can we make the world over?—but so that nothing is changed! The most remarkable ones in this respect are the so-called intellectuals. With them one can have the most extraordinary experiences. One heard it repeatedly stated, “Very well, three members—autonomous universities, a spiritual life that governs itself—but then, how shall we live? Who will pay our salaries if the State no longer pays us?”

Today we really have to confront these things. It is necessary that we stop turning away from these questions again and again. Precisely in the sphere of the spiritual life a change must be brought about.

Zweiter Vortrag

Will man verstehen, was anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft als Aufgabe in der Gegenwart und nächsten Zukunft hat, dann muß man, wie wir das vor einiger Zeit und auch gestern wieder gehört haben, in Betracht ziehen, welchen Charakter die Menschheitsentwickelung gerade seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts angenommen hat. Schließlich hängt ja alles dasjenige, was in der Gegenwart geschieht, davon ab, daß seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts in der Menschheit der Antrieb lebt, sich als einzelmenschliche Individualität auf die Spitze der Persönlichkeit zu stellen, eine ganze Persönlichkeit zu werden. Solches war nicht möglich, und es war gar nicht die Aufgabe der Menschheit in früheren Epochen unserer nachatlantischen Menschheitsentwickelung. Will man den großen Umschwung verstehen, in dem wir drinnen stehen, dann muß man solche Dinge noch genauer ins Auge fassen, wie die sind, die ich gestern wieder charakterisiert habe.

Ich sagte Ihnen: Wir haben in unserem Geistesleben noch immer griechische Seelenverfassung. Die Art und Weise, wie wir unsere Gedanken bilden, die Art und Weise, wie wir gewöhnt sind über die Welt zu denken, ist eigentlich ein Nachklang der griechischen Seelenverfassung. Und die Art und Weise, wie wir heute gewöhnt sind das Recht anzuschauen und alles dasjenige, was mit dem Rechte zusammenhängt, das ist ein Nachklang der römischen Seelenverfassung. Unseren Staat sehen wir ja immer noch an als dasjenige Gebilde, das im Grunde das römische Reich war. Und erst wenn man einsehen wird, wie einschlagen muß in diese chaotische Gegenwart die Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus, wird man klar erkennen und klar wollen können.

Griechische Seelenverfassung, sie ist hauptsächlich ja dadurch bestimmt, daß in Griechenland im eminentesten Sinne das vorhanden war, was bis in die Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts tonangebend überhaupt in der geschichtlichen Entwickelung war. Über das griechische Territorium hin war verbreitet eine unterworfene Bevölkerung und die Eroberer, diejenigen, die den Boden für sich in Anspruch nahmen, die aber auch, sich berufend auf ihre Blutsabstammung, die Geistigkeit des alten Griechenland bestimmten. So daß man sich gar. nicht zurechtfindet in der Seelenverfassung des alten Griechenland, wenn man nicht das ins Auge faßt, daß dort es als berechtigt angesehen wurde, so zu denken über die sozialen Menschheitszusammenhänge, wie es sich ergab aus der Blutseigentümlichkeit der arischen Erobererbevölkerung. Natürlich ist die Menschheit der neueren Zeit herausgewachsen über dasjenige, was da bei den Griechen zugrunde lag. Bei den Griechen war es einfach selbstverständlich, daß es Menschen zweier Sorten gab, daß es Menschen gab, die gewissermaßen den Merkur anzubeten, und Menschen, die den Zeus anzubeten hatten. Diese zwei Menschenklassen waren streng voneinander geschieden. Aber man dachte über die Welt und ihre Götter so, wie das Eroberervolk durch seine Blutsabstammung denken mußte. Alles war bestimmt durch das, was sich ergeben hat im Zusammenstoßen eines eroberten und eines Eroberervolkes. Wer genauer zusieht auf dasjenige, was heute in unserer sozialen Gegenwart unter den Menschen lebt, der wird eben erkennen, daß wir zwar nach unserem Gefühl, nach dem, was unterbewußt in unseren Seelen lebt, nicht mehr zugeben diesen Aristokratismus der Weltanschauung; aber dieser Aristokratismus der Weltanschauung, er lebt noch in unseren Ideen, in unseren Begriffen, besonders dann, wenn wir durch die höhere Schule herangebildet werden. Die höhere Schule, namentlich das Gymnasium, bildet alles, was zum Unterricht gehört, so aus, wie es nur eine Renaissance, ein Nachklang des Griechentums ist. Und erst recht die Hochschule, mit Ausnahme der technischen, der landwirtschaftlichen Hochschulen, die ja aus dem neueren Leben heraus gebildet werden mußten, die aber in ihrer äußeren Struktur leider nachgebildet worden sind demjenigen, was als Struktur des Hochschulwesens von Griechenland herübergekommen ist. Gerade wenn man hoch schätzt das Griechentum in seiner Zeit und für seine Zeit, dann muß man auf der anderen Seite sich ganz klar darüber sein, daß für unsere Zeit eine Erneuerung des Geisteslebens notwendig ist, daß für unsere Zeit immer unerträglicher werden wird die Führung der Menschheit durch solche Seelen, welche die Konfiguration ihrer Begriffe, die Artung ihrer Begriffe in unserer Gymnasial-Mittelschule erhalten haben. Und natürlich stecken ja in allen führenden Stellen heute noch diejenigen Leute, die ihre Begriffsbildung bekommen haben aus den Mittelschulen, den Gymnasien. Es ist heute schon notwendig, daß man sich bekannt mache damit, daß die Zeit der großen, nicht die Zeit der kleinen Abrechnung da ist, und daß man über solche Dinge sachgemäß denken muß, nicht festhalten kann an alten Denkgewohnheiten.

Sie wissen ja, daß dann dasjenige, was im Griechentum aus dem Blute heraus sich gebildet hat, im Römertum abstrakt geworden ist. Das habe ich hier schon einmal erwähnt. Während das griechische Sozialwesen — das man ja nicht ein Staatswesen nennen kann - ganz herausgegangen ist, heraus sich gebildet hat aus der Blutsbürtigkeit, ging dieses aus dem Blute stammende auf das Römertum ja nicht mehr über. Auf das Römertum ging über der Drang, noch so zu gliedern, wie man in Griechenland gegliedert hat; aber man fühlte die Ursache zu dieser Gliederung nicht mehr im Blute. Und während es keinem Griechen der älteren Zeit in den Sinn gekommen wäre, daran zu zweifeln, daß es Menschen «niederer» Sorte, Menschen des eroberten Volkes gibt und Menschen «höherer» Sorte, Arier, war das bei den Römern nicht so. Man trug schließlich innerhalb des römischen Imperiums stark in sich das Bewußtsein, daß die Gliederung des sozialen Wesens übertragen worden ist durch Macht, durch Gewalt. Sie brauchen sich nur daran zu erinnern, daß ja schließlich die Römer ihren Ursprung zurückverfolgten bis zu jener Sammlung der Räuber in der Nähe von Rom, die man zusammenberufen hat, um als Räuberbande Rom zu begründen; daß man auch nicht von zarter Muttermilch den Gründer Roms säugen ließ, sondern, wie Sie wissen, im Walde von einem Tiere säugen ließ, von einer Wölfin.

Das alles sind Dinge, die im römischen Wesen so aufgenommen worden sind, und die dazu geführt haben, daß man in Rom mehr aus abstrakten Begriffen alles gegliedert hat, was soziale Gliederung war. Daher ist von römischer Seelenverfassung ausgegangen dasjenige, was uns in bezug auf die Rechts- und Staatsbegriffe geblieben ist.

Sehen Sie, bei solch einer Geschichte muß ich mich immer erinnern an einen alten Freund. Ich lernte ihn kennen, als er schon ziemlich alt geworden war. Er hatte nämlich in der Jugend, mit 18 Jahren, ein Mädchen lieb gewonnen, hatte sich sozusagen im stillen mit ihm verlobt, aber sie hatten beide nichts, konnten nicht heiraten, und so warteten sie, blieben einander treu. Er war 18 Jahre alt, als er sich verlobte, und als er daran denken konnte, sich zu verheiraten, da war er 64 Jahre alt, denn da hatte er sich erst soviel erworben, daß er glauben konnte, jetzt könne er solch einen Schritt wagen. Da ging er denn in seinen Heimatort zurück, es war in der Nähe von Salzburg, und wollte dort die vor so langer Zeit Auserkorene heiraten. Aber siehe da, die Kirche mit dem Pfarrhaus war abgebrannt, und der Taufschein war nicht mehr zu kriegen. Es war nirgends eingetragen, wo der Mann getauft worden war, und so glaubte man ihm nicht, daß er einmal geboren worden ist. Ich weiß mich noch lebhaft zu erinnern, wie sein Brief kam. Ich wohnte dazumal in der Nähe von Wiener-Neustadt, da kam sein Brief, und da sagte er in diesem Brief — er war in Wiener-Neustadt damals beschäftigt gewesen, aber er war in seinen Heimatort in die Nähe von Salzburg gereist —, da sagte er in diesem Brief: Ja, ich glaube doch, daß es ganz evident ist, daß ich geboren worden bin, weil ich nun einmal da bin; aber die Leute, die glauben nicht, daß ich geboren bin, weil kein Taufschein da ist!

Ich hatte auch einmal ein Gespräch mit einem Advokaten, der sagte: Ja, bei einem Prozeß ist es uns gar nicht so sehr wichtig, ob der Mensch vorhanden ist oder nicht, wir brauchen nur den Geburtsschein.

Sehen Sie, an diese Geschichten muß man sich immer wieder erinnern, denn so grotesk treten sie einem natürlich da oder dort einmal entgegen. Aber auch die Stimmung, die in diesen Geschichten lebt, zeigt schließlich, daß auf römisches Wesen noch unser ganzes öffentliches Leben gebaut worden war, in einem Gebiete mehr, in dem anderen Gebiete weniger. Nicht wahr, man ist Bürger in der Welt heute doch nicht dadurch, daß man Mensch geworden ist und als Mensch dasteht, sondern man ist Bürger in der Welt dadurch, daß man als Bürger da oder dort anerkannt und eingeschrieben ist. Diese Dinge, die sind alle zurückzuführen auf römisches Wesen. Die Blutsbürtigkeit ist übergegangen in die Registratur.

Dies führt dazu, daß ja heute, wo diese Dinge in der Dekadenz, im Verfall sind, viele Menschen überhaupt nicht mehr wert zu sein glauben desjenigen, was sie als Mensch wert sind, sondern glauben etwas wert zu sein dadurch, daß sie in irgendeiner Beamtenhierarchie eingereiht sind, diesen oder jenen Beamtenrang haben. Man ist viel lieber etwas Unpersönliches aus den römischen Rechtsbegriffen heraus als eine Persönlichkeit. Nun ist in der Menschheit seit dem 15. Jahrhundert unbewußt, unterbewußt das Streben, alles auf die Spitze der Persönlichkeit zu bauen. Dies bezeugt uns, daß mit Bezug auf unser Geistesleben und mit Bezug auf unser Rechtsleben die Zeiten alt geworden sind, daß wir in bezug auf beide eine Erneuerung brauchen, eine wirkliche Erneuerung brauchen. Es hängt das zusammen, was da als Erneuerung sich in Menschenseelen geltend machen soll, mit vielen tieferen Impulsen der Menschheitsentwickelung überhaupt.

Führen Sie noch einmal vor Ihre Seele, daß seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts die neuere Menschheitsentwickelung in bezug auf die Erkenntnis besonders erfüllt worden ist mit der naturwissenschaftlichen Denkweise, und zwar hauptsächlich mit jener naturwissenschaftlichen Denkweise, die auf abstrakte Naturgesetze gebaut ist, die gebaut ist auf die sinnliche Anschauung und auf die Gedanken, die man sich über diese sinnliche Anschauung macht. Etwas anderes will man nicht gelten lassen als dasjenige, was aus der sinnlichen Anschauung kommt und dasjenige, was man sich an Gedanken über diese sinnliche Anschauung macht. Nun habe ich Sie gestern - ich habe es ja auch vor meinem letzten Weggehen hier erwähnt — wieder aufmerksam darauf gemacht, daß es heute schon genügend viele Leute gibt, welche der rechtmäßigen Auffassung sind, daß mit einer solchen Naturanschauung, wie wir sie in der eben beschriebenen Weise uns aneignen, man nur zu einem Gespensterbild von der Natur kommt. Das, was der Naturforscher als Bild von der Welt sich macht, ist ein Gespenst von der Welt, ist nicht die wirkliche Welt. So daß wir sagen müssen: Die Menschheit ist seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts in der Lage, ein gespenstisches Bild von der Welt sich zu machen mit Bezug auf ihre eine Hälfte. Dahinter steckt aber für die Wissenschaft der Einweihung etwas sehr Tiefes, und dieses müssen wir uns auch einmal vor die Seele führen.

Sehen Sie, an der sinnlichen Anschauung als solcher kann man nicht herumkorrigieren; selbst ob man sie als Maja oder sonst etwas ansieht, ist im Grunde genommen für eine tiefere Weltanschauung gleichgültig. An der sinnlichen Anschauung selbst kann man nicht herumkorrigieren; sie ist das, was sie ist. Eine rote Blume ist eine rote Blume; ganz gleichgültig, ob wir sie als Maja oder als eine Wirklichkeit ansehen, sie ist das, was sie ist. Und so ist die ganze sinnliche Anschauung das, was sie ist. Die Diskussion beginnt erst in dem Augenblicke, wo wir uns Gedanken über diese sinnliche Anschauung machen, wo wir diese sinnliche Anschauung als dies oder jenes anschauen, als dies oder jenes interpretieren. Da beginnt erst die Schwierigkeit. Und warum beginnt da die Schwierigkeit? Sie beginnt aus dem Grunde, weil die Begriffe, die wir uns seit dem 15. Jahrhundert als Menschen bilden müssen, andere Begriffe sind als die früheren Menschheitsbegriffe. Das betrachtet man in der heutigen Geschichte, die eine «fable convenue» ist, wie ich öfter gesagt habe, durchaus nicht im richtigen Sinne. Wer die Möglichkeit hat, einzugehen auf die Menschheitsbegriffe vor der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts, der weiß, daß diese Menschheitsbegriffe voller innerer Bildlichkeit waren, daß diese Begriffe eigentlich Imaginationen waren. Die Abstraktheit der Begriffe, sie ist erst so vorhanden, wie sie jetzt ist, seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts.

Warum haben wir uns als Menschheit so entwickelt, daß wir seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts diese abstrakten Begriffe haben, auf die wir heute so stolz sind, in denen wir uns immer wieder und wieder bewegen? Warum entwickeln wir als ganze Menschheit diese abstrakten Begriffe? Sehen Sie, diese abstrakten Begriffe, die wir als ganze Menschheit uns bilden, die haben das Eigentümliche, daß sie auf die sinnliche Welt zwar angewendet werden von uns, aber eigentlich für diese sinnliche Welt gar nicht taugen. Sie taugen nichts für die sinnliche Welt. Ich habe das in meinen «Rätseln der Philosophie» in einer solchen Weise ausgesprochen, daß ich damals sagte: Wie der Mensch sich Erkenntnisbegriffe bildet über die Außenwelt, das ist eine Seitenströmung seiner Seelenentwickelung. Geradeso, wie wenn man sich ein Samenkorn, sagen wir, in der Erde denkt, das ist ja eigentlich von der Natur dazu bestimmt, wiederum Pflanze zu werden; viele Samenkörner aber vermahlen wir zu Mehl und essen sie als Brot. Aber das ist doch nicht im Samenkorn vorausbestimmt! Das ist eine Seitenentwickelung, wenn wir fragen: Enthält das Samenkorn diejenigen chemischen Bestandteile, die wir zum Aufbau unseres Leibes brauchen? Es liegt nicht in der Natur, im Wesen des Samenkorns, des Weizens, des Roggens, uns zu nähren, sondern aus Korn neuen Weizen oder Roggen hervorzubringen. So liegt es nicht in unserer Natur, durch unsere Begriffe, die wir uns seit dem 15. Jahrhundert aneignen, die Außenwelt aufzufassen, sondern etwas anderes soll uns aus diesen Begriffen werden, wenn wir uns richtig in ihr Wesen hineinbegeben. Diese Begriffe, welche die Menschen heute seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts entwickeln, die sind nämlich die Schattenbilder desjenigen, was wir, bevor wir heruntergestiegen sind aus der geistigen Welt durch die Empfängnis, in der geistigen Welt erlebt haben. So daß Sie sich vorstellen können - ich habe schon öfter auf solche Dinge aufmerksam gemacht (es wird gezeichnet): da ist die Geburt oder Empfängnis, das Menschenleben geht so: wenn Sie sich das vorstellen, so sind eigentlich unsere Begriffe, unsere Begriffskräfte, die in uns sind, die Nachklänge desjenigen, was wir erleben vor unserer Geburt oder Empfängnis (siehe Zeichnung). Und wir mißbrauchen eigentlich unser Begriffssystem, indem wir es anwenden auf die äußere Sinneswelt.

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Sehen Sie, das liegt der Goetheschen Naturauffassung zugrunde. Goethe will nicht Naturgesetze durch Begriffe ausdrücken; er will Urphänomene, das heißt zusammengestellte äußere Anschauungen, weil er ein Gefühl dafür hat, daß unser Begriffsvermögen nicht unmittelbar angewendet werden kann auf die äußere Natur. Unser Begriffsvermögen müssen wir als reines Denken ausbilden. Und bilden wir es als reines Denken aus, dann weist es uns auf unser vorgeburtliches geistiges Dasein. Wir haben eigentlich unser heutiges eigentümliches Denken dazu, um unsere geistige Wesenheit, bevor wir mit einem physischen Leib umkleidet worden sind, in diesem reinen Denken zu erreichen. Und ehe die Menschheit nicht begreift, daß sie ihr Denken hat, um sich als Geist zu begreifen, eher ist noch nicht eigentlich die Aufgabe des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraumes in die Menschenseelen eingezogen. Unsere Naturwissenschaft wurde gewissermaßen in unser Menschheitsschicksal hineinverdrängt, damit wir bei der reinen Natur bleiben, nicht über sie spekulieren, sondern nur unsere Begriffe so verwenden, daß wir sie anschauen in der richtigen Weise, dann aber unsere Begriffe ausbilden, um zu schauen, wie wir als Geist waren, bevor wir durch Empfängnis und Geburt mit einem physischen Leib umkleidet worden sind. Die Menschen glauben heute noch, daß sie mit ihrem Begriffsvermögen bloß die äußere sinnliche Anschauung klassifizieren sollen und so weiter; sie werden erst recht tun, wenn sie die Gedanken, welche sie haben seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts, anwenden auf die geistige Welt, in der sie waren, bevor sie mit einem physischen Leib umkleidet worden sind.

So ist der Mensch des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraumes selber gezwungen auf das Geistige, Vorgeburtliche hin, und so ist der Mensch noch durch etwas anderes in eine eigentümliche Situation versetzt, die er ausbilden muß, die er weiterbringen muß. Parallel geht ja der naturwissenschaftlichen Gespensteranschauung der Industrialismus. Ich habe auch darauf schon gestern aufmerksam gemacht. Und das Hauptsächlichste des Industrialismus ist, daß die Maschine, der 'Träger des Industrialismus, geistig durchsichtig ist. Es bleibt nichts unverständlich. Ich habe Sie gestern darauf aufmerksam gemacht, wie am Mineral selbst noch etwas undurchsichtig bleibt; die Maschine ist ja ganz durchsichtig. Das aber hat zur Folge, daß der menschliche Wille, der sich auf die Maschine richtet, sich in Wahrheit nicht auf eine Realität richtet, nicht auf eine Wirklichkeit richtet. Die Maschine ist im Grunde genommen ein Schimäre für die umfassende Weltwirklichkeit. Und der Industrialismus bringt in unser Leben etwas hinein, was den Willen der Menschen sinnlos macht in einem höheren Sinne. Es wird ein tiefer Einschlag sein, wenn einmal voll hineingetragen wird in die neuere Menschheit die Überzeugung, daß die Maschine und alles, was in ihrem Gefolge als Industrialismus ist, den menschlichen Willen sinnlos macht. Wir sind heute schon auf dem Höhepunkt der Maschinenwirksamkeit angekommen, denn ein Viertel von dem, was heute auf der Erde hervorgebracht wird, wird nicht durch Menschenwillen hervorgebracht, sondern durch Maschinenkraft - ein Viertel davon! Das bedeutet etwas Außerordentliches. Der menschliche Wille lebt nicht mehr mit Sinn hier auf der Erde.

Sehen Sie, wenn Sie so etwas wie zum Beispiel die Reden von Rabindranath Tagore lesen, dann müßten Sie eigentlich in diesen Reden etwas verspüren, was dem Europäer, wenn er den gewöhnlichen Europäer-Verstand, den gewöhnlichen Europäer-Intellekt anwendet, unverständlich bleibt. Es herrscht ein anderer Grundton in dem, was heute der gebildete Asiate sagt, weil dem gebildeten Asiaten einfach dieses Angepaßtsein des europäischen Geistes an die Maschine etwas ganz Unverständliches ist, etwas Sinnloses ist. Für den Orientalen ist das Wirken durch die Maschine, durch den Industrialismus, etwas Sinnloses. Und etwas ebenso Sinnloses ist für den Orientalen — ob man es nun in Europa glaubt oder nicht — die im Maschinenzeitalter geborene europäische Politik. Auch damit verbindet der Orientale keinen Sinn. Da kommt es durchaus zum Ausdrucke, wenn der gebildete Orientale spricht, daß für ihn dieses eine Viertel des Geschehens — es wird ja nicht im Oriente von den alten orientalisch gebildeten Menschen, sondern eigentlich nur von den okzidentalischen Menschen und ihren Nachahmern, den Japanern und so weiter getan —, dieses eine Viertel der Arbeit der Menschen der Gegenwart als sinnlose Arbeit empfunden wird, weil der Orientale, der noch viel atavistisches Anschauungsvermögen hat, weiß, daß alles dasjenige, was der Mensch in die Maschine hineinsteckt als Arbeit, eine ganz bestimmte Eigentümlichkeit hat. Wenn der Mensch sein Pferd, das an den Pflug gespannt ist, durch die Ackerfurche fahren läßt und er mit dem Pferde arbeitet, so hat diese Arbeit mit dem Pferde, worinnen noch Naturkraft mitarbeitet, einen Sinn über die unmittelbare Gegenwart hinaus, es hat diese Arbeit einen kosmischen Sinn. Wenn die Wespe ihr Haus baut, so hat dieser Wespenbau einen kosmischen Sinn. Wenn der Mensch das Feuer anzündet, indem er den Feuerstein schlägt, den Funken heraussprühen läßt, damit den Zündschwamm entzündet und dann das Feuer anzündet, steht er mit der Natur im Zusammenhange: es hat einen kosmischen Sinn. Durch den modernen Industrialismus sind wir aus diesem kosmischen Sinn herausgekommen. Da lebt kein kosmischer Sinn mehr, wenn wir unsere elektrischen Lichter anzünden! Da ist der kosmische Sinn heraußen. Und wenn Sie in eine moderne Fabrik hineingehen, die ganz maschinell gestaltet ist, dann ist das ein Loch im Kosmos, hat keine Bedeutung für die kosmische Entwickelung. Wenn Sie in den Wald gehen, Holz sammeln, dann hat das eine kosmische Bedeutung über die Erdenentwickelung hinaus. Wenn Sie eine moderne Fabrik anschauen mit allem, was sie enthält, so hat das keine Bedeutung über die Erdenbildung hinaus. Da hinein wird der menschliche Wille versetzt, ohne daß das einen kosmischen Sinn hat. Bedenken Sie, was das heißt. Das heißt: wir haben seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts eine Erkenntnis zu entwickeln, die gespenstisch ist, die nicht an die Wirklichkeit herankommt. Wir führen immer mehr und mehr von jener Tätigkeit aus, zu der wir uns der Maschine bedienen; immer mehr und mehr vollführen wir aus der industriellen Tätigkeit heraus, und das, was wir an Willen hineinstecken in diese industrielle Tätigkeit, ist für die Weltentwickelung sinnlos.

Die große Frage tritt vor das Menschengemüt hin: Hat der Umstand, daß es so ist, daß unsere Erkenntnisse gespenstisch, unser Wille sinnlos ist in großem Ausmaße, hat das für die Gesamtheit der Menschheitsentwickelung doch einen Sinn? - Ja, es hat einen Sinn, es hat einen bedeutungsvollen Sinn. Es hat den Sinn, daß wir als Menschheit dadurch angehalten werden sollen, über die gespenstische Erkenntnis hinaus zu der Wirklichkeitserkenntnis zu dringen, zu jener Wirklichkeitserkenntnis, die nicht bei der Naturanschauung stehen bleibt, sondern in das Geistige hineindringt, das hinter der Natur ist. Solange die Menschen mit ihren Begriffen zugleich den Geist bekommen haben, konnten sie sich gehen lassen, brauchten sie sich nicht anzustrengen, den Geist von sich aus zu erobern. Da den Menschen nur Begriffe geblieben sind in der neueren Zeit, die den Geist nicht enthalten, aber die Anlagen dazu enthalten sich zum Geiste hinaufzuarbeiten, wie ich gesagt habe, so ist im Menschen der Antrieb vorhanden, aus der abstrakten Erkenntnis in die reale Geist-Erkenntnis hineinzudringen. Und seit wir den Industrialismus haben mit seiner Sinnlosigkeit, müssen wir einen anderen Sinn für den menschlichen Willen suchen. Und den können wir nur suchen, wenn wir uns aufschwingen zu einer solchen Weltanschauung, die dasjenige, was sinnlos ist - nennen wir es Industrialismus —, zum Sinn bringt, indem wir den Sinn aus dem Geistigen heraus nehmen, indem wir uns sagen: Wir suchen uns Aufgaben, die aus dem Geiste stammen. Früher brauchte man sich nicht, weil das Wollen seine Impulse aus dem Geistigen durch Instinkt nehmen konnte, früher brauchte man sich nicht besonders aufzuschwingen, um aus dem Geiste heraus zu wollen. Heute ist es notwendig, daß man sich besonders anstrenge, aus dem Geiste heraus zu wollen. Und wir müssen entgegenstellen dem sinnlosen industriellen Wollen ein sinnerfülltes Aus-dem-Geiste-heraus-Wollen.

Gestern habe ich Ihnen ein Beispiel angeführt in der Art, wie wir erziehen sollen. Wir sollen erkennen, daß bis zum 7. Jahr der Mensch, weil er ja seinen physischen Leib besonders entwickelt, ein Nachahmer ist; wir sollen das zur Grundlage der Erziehung machen. Wir sollen vom 7. bis 14. Jahr wissen, daß wir den Menschen zu entwickeln haben unter dem Prinzip der Autorität, und wir sollen diese Geist-Erkenntnis, die wir gewinnen, wenn wir wissen, wie der Ätherleib vom 7. bis 14. Jahr sich entwickelt, wir sollen diese Geist-Erkenntnis zum Impuls des Erziehungswesens machen. Und wir sollen wissen, wie der astralische Leib vom 14. bis 21. Jahr sich entwickelt, und wir sollen diese Erkenntnis zum Impuls des Erziehungswesens machen. Dann, erst dann wollen wir aus dem Geiste heraus.

Bis in die Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts haben die Menschen instinktiv aus dem Geiste heraus gewollt. Wir wollen im Grunde ganz uns hineinarbeiten im äußerlichen Leben in das Maschinelle, in den Mechanismus — sogar in der Politik, die allmählich die Staaten zu Maschinen gemacht hat. Wir müssen zurückstreben zu einem geistdurchseelten Wollen. Dazu müssen wir aber aufnehmen die Idee der Geisteswissenschaft, müssen zum Beispiel anfangen beim Erziehen so, daß wir zugrunde legen dasjenige, was wir aus der Erkenntnis der geistigen Welt heraus wissen, daß wir so erziehen, wie es uns anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft angibt. Durch dieses stärkere, bewußtere Betonen des Wollens aus dem Geiste heraus setzen wir ein Gegenbild gegen das sinnlose Wollen des Industrialismus.

So ist uns der Industrialismus mit all seinem Menschen- und Seelenverödenden gegeben, damit wir in dieser Ode uns aufraffen dazu, aus dem Geiste heraus zu wollen. Und wir können am besten anfangen, in der Erziehung aus dem Geiste heraus zu wollen, wenn wir so erziehen, wie aus dem Geiste und seiner Erkenntnis heraus erzogen werden soll. Vieles muß in der heutigen Zeit umgedacht werden. Dazu bedarf es aber eines sorgfältig und intim ausgebildeten inneren Wahrheitsgefühls. Wir müssen heute uns klar sein darüber, daß inneres Wahrheitsgefühl auch da, wo wir noch nicht gewohnt sind es anzuwenden, allmählich angewendet werden muß. Sehen Sie, ich glaube, es könnte heute mancher erstaunt sein, wenn man ihm sagt: Du hast recht, wenn du Raffael wegen seiner Bilder besonders verehrst; wenn du aber verlangst, die Leute sollen heute so malen wie Raffael, dann hast du unrecht. Denn nur derjenige hat ein Recht, Raffael zu bewundern, der weiß, daß der heute ein schlechter Maler ist, der so malt, wie Raffael gemalt hat: denn er malt dann nicht so, wie es aus den Impulsen unserer Zeit heraus sein muß. Man empfindet nicht mit der Zeit mit, wenn man diese Dinge nicht so empfindet, daß man die Aufgaben einer bestimmten Zeit jeweilig durch und durch empfindet. Es ist notwendig, daß man in unserer Zeit ein intimes, ein ganz intimes Wahrheitsgefühl nach dieser Richtung hin sich aneignet. Aber die gegenwärtige Menschheit geht auch in dieser

Beziehung durch das Entgegengesetzte durch; denn man hat den Eindruck, daß überall und überall das Wahrheitsgefühl ein Leck bekommen hat, nicht funktioniert, und daß man zurückschreckt heute davor, das Richtige richtig, das Falsche falsch zu nennen, daß man zurückschreckt davor, die Lüge wiederum als Lüge zu kennzeichnen. In dieser Beziehung kann man ja heute das Allerentsetzlichste erfahren, und die Menschen sind gleichgültig über solch Entsetzliches, das man erfahren kann! Aber darum handelt es sich, daß man zum Beispiel so wahr empfindet, daß man weiß: Raffaelsche Malerei gehört nicht mehr in die Gegenwart herein, muß angeschaut werden als etwas Vergangenes — und auch alsetwas Vergangenes bewundert werden. Das ist in unserer Zeit ganz besonders notwendig, daß wir auf solche Dinge achten, wo aus den tiefsten Tiefen der Seele heraus der Impuls, wahr zu sein, uns einmal überkommt. Ich muß oftmals an eine schöne Stelle in Herman Grimms Lebensbeschreibung des Michelangelo denken, wo Herman Grimm über Michelangelos «Jüngstes Gericht» spricht. Wo er zugleich darüber spricht, wieviele solcher Bilder « Jüngstes Gericht» gemalt worden sind in jener Zeit, wo er spricht davon, wie in jener Zeit die Menschen voll in Wirklichkeit erlebt haben die Wahrheit desjenigen, was da an die Wand gemalt worden ist. Die Menschen lebten in diesen Bildern vom «Jüngsten Gerichte» als in einer Wahrheit. Man sollte eigentlich ein solches Bild wie Michelangelos « Jüngstes Gericht» gar nicht anschauen heute, ohne sich bewußt zu sein, daß wir ja nicht so empfinden wie diejenigen Menschen, für die Michelangelo dieses «Jüngste Gericht» gemalt hat, daß wir dieses Empfinden verloren haben, daß wir höchstens uns sagen: Das ist ein Bild von irgend etwas, an das wir aber nicht mehr als an eine unmittelbare Wirklichkeit glauben.

Bedenken Sie doch nur, der Mensch, der das heutige Bewußtsein hat und nicht meint, daß nun wirklich die Engel herunterkommen oder die Teufel so wirtschaften wie auf dem Bilde des Michelangelo, dieser Mensch steht doch anders vor diesem Bilde, als der Mensch jener Zeit, für die Michelangelo gemalt hat, der diese Bilder als Realitäten schaute und vor sich hatte. Gerade dann aber, wenn man sich klar ist, daß dasjenige, was der heutige Mensch vor dem « Jüngsten Gericht» des Michelangelo empfindet, etwas Graues, etwas Abstraktes ist, gerade dann wird man innerlich aufgerufen, nachzufühlen das ganze lebendige Weben in den Bildern, die auf dieser Wand des « Jüngsten Gerichtes» sind. Dann wird man aufgerufen, sich zu fragen: Wie kamen denn die Menschen eines Zeitalters — Michelangelo malte allerdings nach dem Abfluten des vierten nachatlantischen Zeitraumes, aber er malte aus dem Geiste dieses vierten nachatlantischen Zeitraums heraus, stand an der Grenzscheide der beiden Zeiträume, ich habe das einmal in den Kunstvorträgen auseinandergesetzt —, wie kamen die Menschen dazu, solches Gewaltige in Imaginationen, in Bildern zu schauen? Diese Frage, sie tritt einem wirklich in aller Größe entgegen, gerade wenn man sich bewußt ist, wie grau dasjenige, wie unlebendig das ist, was der heutige Mensch vor solch einem Bilde von Michelangelo empfindet. Und dann muß man sich nach der Ursache fragen: Woher kommt es, daß die Menschenseelen damals das Erdenende so anschauen konnten? Woher kam der Aufbau dieser Bilder?

AltName

Der Grund, der liegt in folgendem. In der ersten Zeit des Christentums, seit jener Zeit, da das Mysterium von Golgatha eingeschlagen hat in die Erdenentwickelung, der Erdenentwickelung ihren Sinn gegeben hat, da mußte zunächst zurücktreten manches, was in der alten Weise vorhanden war, was später von der Menschheit wieder erobert werden sollte. Zu diesem gehört die Anschauung von den wiederholten Erdenleben. Wenn wir uns graphisch darstellen dieses . Leben (es wird gezeichnet), so verfließt das menschliche Gesamtleben so: Erdenleben, Leben in der geistigen Welt; Erdenleben, Leben in der geistigen Welt und so weiter. Daß das menschliche Gesamtleben so verfließt, das war ja Inhalt der atavistisch instinktiven Weltanschauung der alten Zeiten. Das Christentum mußte zunächst anderes im Menschen anregen als dasjenige, was man in dieser alten Weisheit geschaut hat. Welcher Mittel hat sich das Christentum zunächst bedient? Es hat das menschliche Leben nur bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt hinauf (siehe Zeichnung: Kreuz) in das menschliche Bewußtsein hineingeführt: das gegenwärtige Erdenleben. — Das vorhergehende Leben bis zum letzten Tode hin, der Mensch aber auch vor der Geburt, vor der Empfängnis: nur ein Gedanke der Gottheit, nicht eine menschliche Individualität, ein Gedanke der Gottheit. Vor dem Menschen die geistige Welt, aus der er als ein Gedanke der Gottheit hervorgeht, als eigentlicher Mensch erst beginnend mit der Geburt. Dann reihte man daran das Leben nach dem Tode. Man hat gewissermaßen in der ersten Zeit der Entwickelung des Christentums «verlegt» das Hinaufschauen: da Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt, Erdenleben, dann wieder Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt, Erdenleben und so weiter; man hat das menschliche Empfinden eingeschränkt, nur hinzuschauen auf die Ursprünge des Menschen, und dann auf das Leben nach dem Tode. Das aber hat auf der anderen Seite das Gleichgewicht gegeben, die Bilder erzeugt von dem «Jüngsten Gericht». Diese Bilder von dem « Jüngsten Gericht» entstanden dadurch, daß das Christentum zuerst die Präexistenzlehre, die Lehre von dem geistigen Existieren vor der Empfängnis und vor der Geburt, aus dem menschlichen Empfinden herausgetrieben hat. Heute strömt wiederum aus den Untergründen des Menschlich-Seelischen das Bedürfnis herauf, die wiederholten Erdenleben zu erkennen. Daher verblassen die Bilder, die nur das eine Erdenleben ins Auge fassen und vorher und nachher die geistige Welt. Es ist das intensivste Bedürfnis vorhanden, die christliche Weltanschauung, wie sie in den ersten Zeiten war, zu erweitern. Das Mysterium von Golgatha hat nicht nur für diejenigen gewirkt, die ein Erdenleben annehmen, sondern das Mysterium von Golgatha ist auch gültig für diejenigen, die von den wiederholten Erdenleben wissen. Dieser Erweiterung bedarf es in der Gegenwart. Und so müssen wir uns klar sein, daß wir in diesem Zeitpunkt drinnen stehen, wo wir benützen sollen die Gespensterhaftigkeit der gewöhnlichen Begriffserkenntnis, die Sinnlosigkeit des durch Industrialismus ausgelösten Wollens zu dem Aufschwung nach geistiger Erkenntnis und nach geistdurchsetztem Wollen, wie ich es geschildert habe; auf der anderen Seite aber auch um das religiöse Bewußtsein zu erweitern über die wiederholten Erdenleben hinaus.

Die ganze volle Wichtigkeit dieser Erweiterung des menschlichen Bewußtsein in der Gegenwart, die sollte sich der Mensch der Gegenwart ganz tief, tief in die Seele schreiben. Denn davon hängt es im Grunde genommen ab, ob er wirklich versteht, in der Gegenwart zu leben und die Zukunft in richtigem Sinne vorzubereiten. Im Grunde genommen kann ja jeder auf dem Platze, auf dem er im Leben steht, die Anwendung dieser Sache machen. Und schließlich wird schon eine äußere Erkenntnis die Menschen dazu bringen, nach etwas zu verlangen, was gegenwärtig in den unterbewußten Tiefen des Seelenlebens sehr spielt, was aber schwer in das volle Bewußtsein heraufklingt und herauftönt. Sehen Sie, das Auffälligste im Leben der Gegenwart ist ja, daß heute so viele zerrissene Menschenseelen herumgehen, Menschenseelen, die eigentlich problematisch sind, die nicht voll mit dem Leben etwas anzufangen wissen, die immer wieder und wiederum fragen: Was soll gerade ich tun, was meint das Leben gerade mit mir? — die das oder jenes angreifen und doch nicht zu ihrer Befriedigung. Immer mehr und mehr werden der Menschen, die so problematische Naturen sind. Woher kommt das? Das kommt davon, daß dies schon ein Mangel in unserem Erziehungswesen ist. Wir bilden heute unsere Kinder so aus, daß wir nicht diejenigen Kräfte in ihnen erwecken, welche den Menschen stark für das Leben machen: Das, was den Menschen stark macht dadurch, daß er ein Nachahmer ist bis zum 7. Jahre, was ihn stark macht dadurch, daß er einer würdigen Autorität folgt bis zum 14. Jahre; daß er die Liebe in der richtigen Weise bis zum 21. Jahre entwickelt kriegt, denn später kann man es nicht mehr entwickeln. Das, was dem Menschen fehlt dadurch, daß die Kräfte, die in bestimmten jugendlichen Lebensjahren entwickelt werden müssen, nicht erweckt werden, das macht ihn zur problematischen Natur. Das muß man nur wissen!

Deshalb mußte ich gestern sagen: Will man wirklich eine soziale Gestaltung der Zukunft, so muß man wollen diese Sache gerade durch die Erziehung des Menschen vorbereiten. Dazu ist notwendig, daß man nun wirklich in diesen Dingen nicht mit kleinen, sondern mit großen Posten rechnet. Allmählich ist unser Erziehungswesen so geworden, als ob wir gerade schreiten wollten zu dem, was ich gestern charakterisierte als Mechanisierung des Geistes, Vegetarisierung der Seele, Animalisierung der Leiber.

Wir dürfen nicht zu dem schreiten. Wir müssen die Kräfte, die in der menschlichen Kinderseele entwickelt werden können, stark entwickeln, damit der Mensch sie später holen kann aus der Entwickelung seiner Kindheit heraus. Heute schaut er in die Kindheit zurück, fühlt sich in die Kindheit zurück, kann nicht herausholen aus seiner Kindheit etwas, weil eben nichts entwickelt worden ist. Aber unsere Erziehungsgrundsätze müssen sich gründlich ändern, wenn wir in diesem Punkt gerade das Richtige treffen wollen! Wir müssen vor allen Dingen auf vieles sehr aufmerksam hinhorchen, was in der Gegenwart als ganz besonders gepriesen wird, als besonders Heilsames gepriesen wird.

So haben wir nötig, daß, ohne daß der Bogen überspannt wird, nicht durch Anstrengung, sondern durch Okonomie der Erziehung, Konzentration bei den Kindern erreicht werden soll. Dies können wir in der Weise, wie es der heutige Mensch braucht, nur erreichen, wenn wir etwas abschaffen, was heute noch sehr beliebt ist: wenn wir den verfluchten Stundenplan in den Schulen abschaffen, dieses Mordmittel für eine wirkliche Entwickelung der menschlichen Kräfte. Man denke nur einmal nach, was es heißt: von 7-8 Rechnen, von 8-9 Sprachlehre, von 9-10 Geographie, von 10-11 Geschichte! Alles dasjenige, was von 7-8 die Seele durchwogt hat, wird ausgelöscht von 8-9 und so weiter. In diesen Dingen ist es heute notwendig, den Sachen auf den Grund zu gehen. Wir dürfen überhaupt nicht mehr daran denken, daß Lehrfächer da sind, damit «Lehrfächer» gelehrt werden; sondern wir müssen uns klar sein: im Menschen vom 7. bis 14. Jahre müssen entwickelt werden in der richtigen Weise Denken, Fühlen und Wollen. Geographie, Rechnen, alles muß so verwendet werden, daß in der richtigen Weise Denken, Fühlen, Wollen entwickelt werden.

Viel spricht man in der heutigen Pädagogik davon, man soll die Individualitäten entwickeln, man soll der Natur ablauschen, welche Fähigkeiten man entwickeln soll. Alles Phrasen! — weil diese Dinge nur einen Sinn bekommen können, wenn man die Sache aus der Geisteswissenschaft heraus bespricht; sonst bleibt es Phrase. Es wird daher in der Zukunft notwendig sein, daß man sich sagt: Für ein bestimmtes Lebensalter ist zum Beispiel vor allen Dingen notwendig, etwas Rechnen beizubringen. Dazu muß man zwei, drei Monate verwenden, um an den Vormittagen Rechnen beizubringen. Nicht einen Stundenplan, der alles durcheinander enthält, sondern der Rechnen eine Zeitlang treibt — dann weitergehen. Und genau die Dinge so einstellen, daß sie eingestellt sind auf das, was die Menschennatur in einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt verlangt!

Sie sehen, welche Aufgaben eine in die Zukunft hin arbeitende Pädagogik eigentlich hat. In diesen Dingen liegen die positiven Probleme, die heute den Menschen gestellt werden, die über das soziale Werden ernsthaftig nachdenken. Davon ist noch wenig Verständnis vorhanden. In Stuttgart soll nun, sich anschließend an unsere bisherige soziale Tätigkeit, eine Schule, so weit man sie innerhalb des heutigen Schulsystems haben kann, aufgebaut werden. Herr Molt hat beschlossen, für die Kinder seiner Fabrik, der Waldorf-AstoriaFabrik, eine solche Schule zu begründen; andere Kinder werden sich anschließen können, aber natürlich zunächst nur eine begrenzte Zahl. Man wird selbstverständlich zu rechnen haben heute noch mit den Lehrzielen, die der sogenannte Staat stellt. Man wird die Kinder bis zu diesem Jahr da und dorthin bringen müssen, man wird also Kompromisse schließen müssen, aber man wird schon hineinmischen können in dasjenige, was der Staat nun einmal schon verlangt, weil der nun nach sozialistischen Anschauungen der ganz besonders gescheite Götze ist - man wird hineinmischen müssen in das, was von dieser Seite gefordert wird, dasjenige, was die wirkliche Menschennatur verlangt. Das muß aber vor allen Dingen einmal erkannt werden. Wer denkt denn heute daran, daß der Stundenplan der Mord ist der wirklichen Erziehung des Menschen? Es gibt Leute, die denken in dieser Richtung so, daß man sagen möchte: Die Welt steht auf dem Kopf, und man muß sie wieder auf die Beine stellen; denn es gibt heute Leute, die möchten die Stunden noch abkürzen, halbstündig die Gegenstände lehren und aufeinanderfolgen lassen. Das betrachten heute manche als ein Ideal. Man soll sich nur vorstellen, was das für ein ungeheures Kaleidoskop gibt, hintereinander: Religion, Rechnen, Geographie, Zeichnen, Singen! Da drinnen — im Kopfe — schaut es dann aus, wie wenn die Steine in einem Kaleidoskop durcheinandergeworfen sind; nur für die Außenwelt «schaut es nach was aus”, denn es ist da nicht der geringste Zusammenhang. Man will es eben durchaus nicht glauben, daß es heute notwendig ist, ins Große zu denken, nicht ins Kleine zu denken, große Gesichtspunkte, umfassende Gesichtspunkte zu haben. Man erlebt ja heute immer wieder und wiederum, daß die Leute nun sich endlich bequemt haben, zu sagen: Ja, Revolution muß sein! Selbst ein großer Teil der Spießer glaubt heute schon an die Revolution. Ich weiß nicht, ob es gerade hier so ist, aber es gibt weite Gegenden, wo selbst ein großer Teil der Spießer an die Norwendigkeit der Revolution glaubt. Aber wenn man ihnen dann mit solchen Sachen kommt, wie sie zum Beispiel in meinem Buch «Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage» über die Dreigliederung stehen, sagen sie: Das verstehen wir nicht, das ist kompliziert. — Schon der Lichtenberg hat zwar gesagt: Wenn ein Kopf und ein Buch zusammenkommen und es klingt hohl, muß nicht immer gerade die Schuld an dem Buch liegen. Aber, nicht wahr, diese Dinge glauben die Leute heute nicht, weil nicht immer die Selbsterkenntnis dasjenige ist, was in den Seelen am meisten erzeugt wird. Doch man erlebt es ja auch, daß selbstschon über weite Gegenden hin die Spießer an die Revolution glauben. Aber dann sagen sie: Na ja, auf so große Sachen, auf solche Gedanken, da kann man sich nicht einlassen, du mußt uns sagen — ja, wie das Schuhemachen sozialisiert werden soll, wie die Apotheken sozialisiert werden sollen, wie das und das sozialisiert wird; du sollst uns sagen, wie im revolutionierten Staate ich meine Gewürze verkaufen werde. Man merkt dann allmählich, was die Leute eigentlich meinen mit einer solchen Sache, Sie meinen also, es müsse revolutioniert werden — damit sind sie schon ganz einverstanden — aber so, daß alles beim alten bleibt, so daß nichts sich eigentlich verändert. Wie können wir die Welt drunter und drüber machen?, sagt mancher, aber daß sich ja nichts verändert! Und diejenigen, die in dieser Beziehung am merkwürdigsten sind, das sind gerade die sogenannten Intellektuellen. Ja, da kann man ganz besonders merkwürdige Erfahrungen machen. Eine Erfahrung die man immer wieder machen mußte, war, daß man zu hören bekam: Ja, drei Glieder — Universitäten autonom, das Geistesleben soll sich selbst verwalten —, wovon werden wir dann leben? Wer wird uns unsere Gehälter bezahlen, wenn uns der Staat nicht mehr unsere Gehälter bezahlt?

Aber diesen Dingen muß heute ins Auge geschaut werden. Es ist doch notwendig, daß man nicht immer wieder und wiederum über diese Dinge hinweggeht. Gerade auf dem Gebiet des Geisteslebens muß Wandel geschaffen werden.

Second Lecture

If we want to understand the task of anthroposophical spiritual science in the present and the near future, we must, as we heard some time ago and again yesterday, consider the character that human development has taken on since the middle of the 15th century. After all, everything that is happening in the present depends on the fact that since the middle of the 15th century, humanity has been driven to place itself at the pinnacle of personality as individual human beings, to become a whole personality. This was not possible, and it was not the task of humanity in earlier epochs of our post-Atlantic human development. If we want to understand the great upheaval in which we find ourselves, we must take a closer look at things such as those I characterized again yesterday.

I told you: we still have a Greek soul disposition in our spiritual life. The way we form our thoughts, the way we are accustomed to thinking about the world, is actually an echo of the Greek state of mind. And the way we are accustomed today to looking at the law and everything connected with the law is an echo of the Roman state of mind. We still see our state as the entity that was basically the Roman Empire. And only when we realize how the threefold social organism must impact this chaotic present will we be able to see clearly and want clearly.

The Greek state of mind is mainly determined by the fact that Greece was, in the most eminent sense, the center of what set the tone for historical development until the middle of the 15th century. Throughout Greek territory there was a subjugated population and the conquerors, those who claimed the land for themselves, but who also, invoking their bloodline, determined the spirituality of ancient Greece. So that one cannot understand the state of mind of ancient Greece unless one takes into account that it was considered legitimate there to think about social human relationships in terms of the blood characteristics of the Aryan conqueror population. Of course, modern humanity has outgrown what was fundamental to the Greeks. For the Greeks, it was simply a matter of course that there were two kinds of people: those who worshipped Mercury, so to speak, and those who worshipped Zeus. These two classes of people were strictly separated from each other. But people thought about the world and its gods in the way that the conquering people had to think because of their bloodline. Everything was determined by what resulted from the clash between a conquered people and a conquering people. Anyone who takes a closer look at what is alive among people in our social present will recognize that, according to our feelings, according to what lives subconsciously in our souls, we no longer admit this aristocratism of worldview; but this aristocratic worldview still lives on in our ideas, in our concepts, especially when we are educated at secondary school. Secondary school, namely grammar school, teaches everything that belongs to education in such a way that it is nothing more than a renaissance, an echo of Greek culture. And this is even more true of universities, with the exception of technical and agricultural universities, which had to be formed out of modern life, but which, unfortunately, have been modeled in their external structure on what has come down to us from Greece as the structure of higher education. Precisely when one highly values Greek culture in its time and for its time, one must, on the other hand, be quite clear that a renewal of intellectual life is necessary for our time, that it will become increasingly unbearable for our time to have humanity led by such souls who have received the configuration of their concepts, the nature of their concepts, in our secondary schools. And, of course, all the leading positions today are still occupied by people who formed their concepts in secondary schools and high schools. It is already necessary today to realize that the time of the great reckoning, not the time of the small reckoning, is here, and that one must think about such things appropriately and cannot cling to old habits of thinking.

You know that what was formed in Greek culture out of blood became abstract in Roman culture. I have already mentioned this here once before. While the Greek social system—which cannot be called a state system—emerged entirely from blood ties, this blood-based system was no longer transferred to Roman culture. The urge to organize society in the same way as in Greece was transferred to Roman civilization, but the cause of this organization was no longer felt to lie in blood. And while it would never have occurred to any Greek of the older era to doubt that there were people of a “lower” sort, people of the conquered people, and people of a “higher” sort, Aryans, this was not the case with the Romans. After all, within the Roman Empire, there was a strong awareness that the structure of social being had been transferred through power, through force. You need only remember that the Romans traced their origins back to that gathering of robbers near Rome who were called together to found Rome as a band of robbers; that the founder of Rome was not nursed on tender mother's milk, but, as you know, was nursed in the forest by an animal, by a she-wolf.

These are all things that were absorbed into the Roman character and led to everything that was social structure being organized in Rome more on the basis of abstract concepts. Therefore, what has remained with us in terms of concepts of law and the state originated from the Roman mindset.

You see, stories like this always remind me of an old friend. I met him when he was already quite old. In his youth, at the age of 18, he had fallen in love with a girl and had, so to speak, quietly become engaged to her, but they both had nothing and could not marry, so they waited, remaining faithful to each other. He was 18 when he got engaged, and when he was able to think about getting married, he was 64, because only then had he acquired enough to believe that he could now take such a step. So he returned to his hometown, which was near Salzburg, and wanted to marry the woman he had chosen so long ago. But lo and behold, the church and the rectory had burned down, and his baptismal certificate was no longer available. There was no record of where the man had been baptized, and so no one believed that he had ever been born. I still vividly remember when his letter arrived. I was living near Wiener Neustadt at the time, and his letter arrived, and in it he said—he had been working in Wiener Neustadt at the time, but he had traveled to his hometown near Salzburg—in this letter he said: Yes, I believe it is quite evident that I was born, because I am here; but people don't believe that I was born because there is no baptismal certificate!

I once had a conversation with a lawyer who said: Yes, in a trial, it is not so important to us whether the person is present or not, we only need the birth certificate.

You see, we must always remember these stories, because they naturally strike us as grotesque here and there. But the mood that pervades these stories also shows that our entire public life was still based on Roman principles, in some areas more than others. It is not true that one is a citizen of the world today because one has become human and stands as a human being, but rather one is a citizen of the world because one is recognized and registered as a citizen here or there. These things can all be traced back to Roman essence. Blood lineage has been transferred to the registry.

This leads to the fact that today, when these things are in decline, many people no longer believe that they are worth anything as human beings, but believe that they are worth something because they are ranked in some official hierarchy, because they have this or that official rank. People much prefer to be something impersonal from Roman legal concepts than a personality. Now, since the 15th century, humanity has unconsciously, subconsciously strived to build everything on the basis of personality. This shows us that, with regard to our spiritual life and our legal life, the times have grown old, that we need a renewal in both respects, a real renewal. What is to assert itself as renewal in human souls is connected with many deeper impulses of human development in general.

Bring to mind once again that since the middle of the 15th century, recent human development in terms of knowledge has been particularly filled with the scientific way of thinking, and mainly with that scientific way of thinking that is based on abstract laws of nature, which is based on sensory perception and on the thoughts that one forms about this sensory perception. Nothing else is accepted except what comes from sensory perception and the thoughts that are formed about this sensory perception. Yesterday, I drew your attention once again — as I also mentioned before I left here last time — to the fact that there are already enough people today who rightly believe that with such a view of nature as we acquire in the manner just described, one can only arrive at a ghostly image of nature. What the natural scientist forms as an image of the world is a ghost of the world, not the real world. So we must say: since the middle of the 15th century, humanity has been in a position to form a ghostly image of the world with regard to one half of it. But behind this lies something very profound for the science of initiation, and we must also bring this before our soul.

You see, one cannot correct sensory perception as such; even whether one regards it as maya or something else is, in essence, irrelevant to a deeper worldview. Sensory perception itself cannot be corrected; it is what it is. A red flower is a red flower; regardless of whether we regard it as maya or as reality, it is what it is. And so the whole of sensory perception is what it is. The discussion only begins at the moment when we start to think about this sensory perception, when we view this sensory perception as this or that, when we interpret it as this or that. That is where the difficulty begins. And why does the difficulty begin there? It begins because the concepts that we as human beings have had to form since the 15th century are different from the earlier concepts of humanity. This is not viewed in the right way in today's history, which is a “fable convenue,” as I have often said. Anyone who has the opportunity to explore the concepts of humanity before the middle of the 15th century knows that these concepts of humanity were full of inner imagery, that these concepts were actually imaginations. The abstract nature of the concepts has only existed as it is now since the middle of the 15th century.

Why have we as humanity developed in such a way that since the middle of the 15th century we have had these abstract concepts, of which we are so proud today, and in which we move again and again? Why do we as humanity develop these abstract concepts? You see, these abstract concepts that we as humanity form have the peculiarity that although we apply them to the sensory world, they are actually not at all suitable for this sensory world. They are useless for the sensory world. I expressed this in my “Riddles of Philosophy” in such a way that I said at the time: The way in which human beings form concepts of knowledge about the outside world is a side current of their soul development. Just as when we think of a seed, say, in the ground, which is actually destined by nature to become a plant again; but we grind many seeds into flour and eat them as bread. But that is not predetermined in the seed! It is a side development when we ask: Does the seed contain the chemical components we need to build our bodies? It is not in the nature, in the essence of the seed, of wheat, of rye, to nourish us, but to produce new wheat or rye from grain. So it is not in our nature to perceive the outside world through the concepts we have acquired since the 15th century, but something else should become of these concepts when we properly enter into their essence. These concepts, which people have been developing since the middle of the 15th century, are in fact the shadow images of what we experienced in the spiritual world before we descended from it through conception. So you can form a mental image – I have often drawn attention to such things (sketch is being drawn): there is birth or conception, human life goes like this: if you form a mental image of this, then our concepts, our conceptual powers that are within us, are actually the echoes of what we experience before our birth or conception (see sketch). And we actually misuse our conceptual system by applying it to the external sensory world.

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You see, this is the basis of Goethe's view of nature. Goethe does not want to express the laws of nature through concepts; he wants primordial phenomena, that is, composite external perceptions, because he has a feeling that our conceptual faculty cannot be applied directly to external nature. We must develop our conceptual faculty as pure thinking. And if we develop it as pure thinking, then it points us to our pre-birth spiritual existence. We actually have our present peculiar thinking in order to attain our spiritual essence in this pure thinking before we were clothed with a physical body. And until humanity understands that it has its thinking in order to understand itself as spirit, the task of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch has not yet really entered into human souls. Our natural science has, in a sense, been pushed into our human destiny so that we remain with pure nature, do not speculate about it, but only use our concepts in such a way that we view it in the right way, and then develop our concepts in order to see how we were as spirits before we were clothed with a physical body through conception and birth. People today still believe that their powers of understanding are only meant to classify external sensory perception and so on; they will do even better if they apply the thoughts they have had since the middle of the 15th century to the spiritual world in which they were before they were clothed in a physical body.

Thus, the human being of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is himself compelled to turn to the spiritual, prenatal, and thus the human being is placed in a peculiar situation by something else, which he must develop, which he must advance. Parallel to this is the scientific view of ghosts in industrialism. I already drew attention to this yesterday. And the main thing about industrialism is that the machine, the ‘bearer of industrialism’, is spiritually transparent. Nothing remains incomprehensible. Yesterday I drew your attention to how something remains opaque in the mineral itself; the machine is completely transparent. But this has the consequence that the human will, which is directed towards the machine, is in truth not directed towards a reality, not directed towards a reality. The machine is basically a chimera for the comprehensive reality of the world. And industrialism brings something into our lives that renders the will of human beings meaningless in a higher sense. It will have a profound impact when the conviction that the machine and everything that follows in its wake as industrialism renders the human will meaningless is fully carried over into the newer humanity. We have already reached the peak of machine efficiency today, because a quarter of what is produced on earth today is not produced by human will, but by machine power – a quarter of it! That is something extraordinary. The human will no longer lives with meaning here on earth.

You see, when you read something like the speeches of Rabindranath Tagore, for example, you should actually sense something in these speeches that remains incomprehensible to Europeans when they apply the ordinary European mind, the ordinary European intellect. There is a different underlying tone in what educated Asians say today, because for educated Asians, this adaptation of the European spirit to the machine is simply something completely incomprehensible, something meaningless. For Orientals, working through machines, through industrialism, is something meaningless. And something equally meaningless for Orientals — whether one believes it in Europe or not — is European politics born in the machine age. The Oriental also sees no sense in this. This is clearly expressed when the educated Oriental says that for him, this quarter of human activity — which is not practiced in the Orient by the old Oriental educated people, but actually only by Western people and their imitators, the Japanese and so on — this one quarter of the work of contemporary people is perceived as meaningless work, because Orientals, who still have a great deal of atavistic perception, know that everything that humans put into machines as work has a very specific characteristic. When man lets his horse, which is harnessed to the plow, pull the plow through the furrow and works with the horse, this work with the horse, in which natural forces are still at work, has a meaning beyond the immediate present; this work has a cosmic meaning. When the wasp builds its house, this wasp building has a cosmic meaning. When a person lights a fire by striking flint, causing sparks to fly, igniting tinder, and then lighting the fire, they are connected to nature: it has a cosmic meaning. Modern industrialism has taken us away from this cosmic meaning. There is no longer any cosmic meaning when we turn on our electric lights! The cosmic meaning is gone. And when you walk into a modern factory, which is designed entirely by machines, it is a hole in the cosmos, it has no meaning for cosmic development. When you go into the forest and collect wood, it has a cosmic meaning beyond the development of the earth. When you look at a modern factory with everything it contains, it has no meaning beyond the formation of the earth. Human will is transferred into it without any cosmic meaning. Consider what that means. It means that since the middle of the 15th century, we have had to develop a knowledge that is ghostly, that does not come close to reality. We are carrying out more and more of the activities for which we use machines; we are doing more and more industrial work, and the will we put into this industrial activity is meaningless for the development of the world.

The great question arises in the human mind: Does the fact that our knowledge is ghostly and our will is largely meaningless have any meaning for the development of humanity as a whole? Yes, it has meaning, it has significant meaning. It has meaning in that it is intended to urge us as humanity to go beyond ghostly knowledge to the knowledge of reality, to that knowledge of reality which does not stop at the observation of nature, but penetrates into the spiritual realm that lies behind nature. As long as people received the spirit along with their concepts, they could let themselves go; they did not need to make an effort to conquer the spirit on their own. Since, in recent times, people have been left with only concepts that do not contain the spirit, but do contain the predisposition to work their way up to the spirit, as I have said, there is a drive within human beings to penetrate from abstract knowledge into real spiritual knowledge. And since we have industrialism with its meaninglessness, we must seek another meaning for the human will. And we can only seek it if we rise to a worldview that gives meaning to what is meaningless — let's call it industrialism — by taking meaning from the spiritual, by saying to ourselves: We seek tasks that originate from the spirit. In the past, this was not necessary because the will could draw its impulses from the spiritual through instinct; in the past, it was not necessary to make a special effort to will from the spirit. Today, it is necessary to make a special effort to will from the spirit. And we must counter senseless industrial will with meaningful will that comes from the spirit.

Yesterday I gave you an example of how we should educate. We should recognize that up to the age of 7, because the human being is developing his physical body in particular, he is an imitator; we should make this the basis of education. From the age of 7 to 14, we should know that we have to develop the human being under the principle of authority, and we should make this spiritual insight, which we gain when we know how the etheric body develops from the age of 7 to 14, the impulse of education. And we should know how the astral body develops from the ages of 14 to 21, and we should make this knowledge the impulse of education. Then, and only then, will we want to act out of the spirit.

Until the middle of the 15th century, people instinctively wanted to act out of the spirit. We basically want to work our way into the external life, into the mechanical, into the mechanism — even into politics, which has gradually turned states into machines. We must strive to return to a spirit-filled will. To do this, however, we must take up the idea of spiritual science, must begin, for example, by educating in such a way that we base ourselves on what we know from our knowledge of the spiritual world, that we educate as anthroposophical spiritual science instructs us. Through this stronger, more conscious emphasis on willing out of the spirit, we set up a counter-image to the senseless willing of industrialism.

Thus, industrialism, with all its desolating effects on people and souls, is given to us so that we may rouse ourselves in this ode to will from the spirit. And we can best begin to will from the spirit in education if we educate in the way that education from the spirit and its knowledge should be. Much needs to be rethought in today's world. However, this requires a carefully and intimately developed inner sense of truth. We must be clear today that inner truthfulness must gradually be applied even where we are not yet accustomed to applying it. You see, I think some people today might be surprised if you told them: You are right to particularly admire Raphael for his paintings; but if you demand that people today should paint like Raphael, then you are wrong. For only those who know that today a painter who paints like Raphael is a bad painter have the right to admire Raphael: for then he does not paint as he must from the impulses of our time. One does not feel with the times if one does not feel these things in such a way that one feels the tasks of a particular time thoroughly and completely. It is necessary in our time to acquire an intimate, a very intimate sense of truth in this direction. But contemporary humanity also goes in this direction through its opposite; for one has the impression that everywhere and everywhere the sense of truth has sprung a leak, does not function, and that people today shy away from it.

relationship in this direction; for one has the impression that everywhere and everywhere the sense of truth has sprung a leak, does not function, and that today people shy away from calling right right and wrong wrong, that they shy away from identifying a lie as a lie. In this respect, one can experience the most appalling things today, and people are indifferent to such appalling things that one can experience! But the point is that one feels so truly, for example, that one knows: Raphael's painting no longer belongs in the present, must be viewed as something of the past — and also admired as something of the past. In our time, it is particularly necessary that we pay attention to such things, where the impulse to be true comes to us from the deepest depths of the soul. I often think of a beautiful passage in Herman Grimm's biography of Michelangelo, where Herman Grimm talks about Michelangelo's “Last Judgment.” He also talks about how many such paintings of the Last Judgment were painted at that time, and how people at that time experienced the truth of what was painted on the wall as reality. People lived in these paintings of the Last Judgment as if they were truth. One should not really look at a painting like Michelangelo's “Last Judgment” today without being aware that we do not feel the same way as the people for whom Michelangelo painted this “Last Judgment,” that we have lost this feeling, that we can at most say to ourselves: This is a picture of something, but we no longer believe in it as an immediate reality.

Just consider this: a person who has today's consciousness and does not believe that angels really come down or that devils act as they do in Michelangelo's painting stands before this painting differently than the people of the time for whom Michelangelo painted, who saw these images as realities and had them before their eyes. But precisely when one realizes that what people today feel when they look at Michelangelo's “Last Judgment” is something vague, something abstract, precisely then one is called upon inwardly to feel the whole living weaving in the images that are on this wall of the “Last Judgment.” Then one is called upon to ask oneself: How did the people of an age—Michelangelo painted after the fourth post-Atlantean period had ended, but he painted from the spirit of this fourth post-Atlantean period, standing at the boundary between the two periods, as I once discussed in my art lectures—how did the people of that age come to see such mighty things in their imaginations, in pictures? This question really confronts us in all its magnitude, especially when we are aware of how gray, how lifeless, is what people today feel when they look at such a picture by Michelangelo. And then we must ask ourselves the cause: Where did it come from that the souls of people at that time were able to see the end of the earth in this way? Where did the structure of these images come from?

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The reason lies in the following. In the early days of Christianity, since the time when the mystery of Golgotha entered into earthly development and gave it its meaning, many things that had existed in the old way had to recede at first, things that would later be recaptured by humanity. Among these is the view of repeated earthly lives. If we represent this life graphically (it is drawn), the whole of human life flows as follows: life on earth, life in the spiritual world; life on earth, life in the spiritual world, and so on. That the whole of human life flows in this way was the content of the atavistic, instinctive worldview of ancient times. Christianity initially had to inspire something in human beings other than what was seen in this ancient wisdom. What means did Christianity initially use? It brought human life into human consciousness only up to this point (see drawing: cross): the present earthly life. — The previous life up to the last death, but also the human being before birth, before conception: only a thought of the Godhead, not a human individuality, a thought of the Godhead. Before the human being is the spiritual world from which he emerges as a thought of the Godhead, only beginning as an actual human being with birth. Then life after death was added to this. In the early days of Christianity, people “misplaced” their upward gaze, so to speak: life between death and new birth, earthly life, then again life between death and new birth, earthly life, and so on; they limited human perception to looking only at the origins of man and then at life after death. But on the other hand, this created a balance, producing images of the “Last Judgment.” These images of the “Last Judgment” arose because Christianity first drove the doctrine of pre-existence, the doctrine of spiritual existence before conception and before birth, out of human feeling. Today, the need to recognize repeated earthly lives is once again rising from the depths of the human soul. Therefore, the images that only consider one earthly life and the spiritual world before and after are fading. There is an intense need to expand the Christian worldview as it was in the early days. The mystery of Golgotha has not only worked for those who accept one earthly life, but the mystery of Golgotha is also valid for those who know of repeated earthly lives. This expansion is necessary in the present. And so we must be clear that we are at a point in time where we should use the ghostliness of ordinary conceptual knowledge, the futility of the will triggered by industrialism, for the upswing toward spiritual knowledge and spirit-imbued will, as I have described; but also, on the other hand, to expand religious consciousness beyond repeated earthly lives.

The full importance of this expansion of human consciousness in the present should be deeply engraved in the soul of the people of today. For it is on this that it basically depends whether they really understand how to live in the present and prepare for the future in the right sense. Basically, everyone can apply this principle in their own place in life. And ultimately, external knowledge will lead people to desire something that currently plays a major role in the subconscious depths of their soul life, but which is difficult to bring up into full consciousness. You see, the most striking thing in life today is that there are so many torn human souls walking around, human souls that are actually problematic, that don't know what to do with life, that ask again and again: What should I do, what does life mean for me right now? — who try this or that and yet are not satisfied. More and more people are becoming such problematic characters. Where does this come from? It comes from the fact that this is already a deficiency in our education system. Today, we educate our children in such a way that we do not awaken in them the forces that make people strong for life: What makes people strong is that they are imitators until the age of 7, that they follow a worthy authority until the age of 14, and that they develop love in the right way until the age of 21, because later it can no longer be developed. What people lack because the forces that need to be developed in certain years of youth are not awakened makes them problematic by nature. One only needs to know this!

That is why I had to say yesterday: if we really want to shape the future socially, we must be willing to prepare for this through the education of human beings. To do this, it is necessary to think in terms of large rather than small steps. Gradually, our education system has become as if we wanted to move towards what I characterized yesterday as the mechanization of the mind, the vegetarization of the soul, and the animalization of the body.

We must not move in that direction. We must strongly develop the powers that can be developed in the human child's soul, so that the human being can later draw on them from the development of his childhood. Today, he looks back on his childhood, feels his way back to his childhood, but cannot draw anything from his childhood because nothing has been developed. But our educational principles must change thoroughly if we want to do the right thing in this regard! Above all, we must listen very carefully to many things that are currently praised as particularly beneficial, as particularly healing.

So we need to achieve concentration in children without overdoing it, not through effort but through economy in education. We can only achieve this in the way that people today need if we abolish something that is still very popular today: if we abolish the cursed timetable in schools, this murderous tool for the real development of human powers. Just think about what it means: arithmetic from 7 to 8, language from 8 to 9, geography from 9 to 10, history from 10 to 11! Everything that has stirred the soul from 7 to 8 is wiped out from 8 to 9, and so on. In these matters, it is necessary today to get to the bottom of things. We must no longer think that subjects are there to be taught as “subjects”; rather, we must be clear that in humans from the ages of 7 to 14, thinking, feeling, and willing must be developed in the right way. Geography, arithmetic, everything must be used in such a way that thinking, feeling, and willing are developed in the right way.

In today's pedagogy, there is much talk about developing individuality and listening to nature to find out which abilities should be developed. All empty phrases! — because these things can only make sense if they are discussed from the perspective of spiritual science; otherwise they remain empty phrases. In the future, it will therefore be necessary to say: for a certain age, for example, it is above all necessary to teach arithmetic. To do this, two or three months must be spent teaching arithmetic in the mornings. Not a timetable that contains everything jumbled together, but one that focuses on arithmetic for a while — then moves on. And arrange things precisely so that they are geared to what human nature requires at a particular point in time!

You can see what tasks a pedagogy working toward the future actually has. These things are the positive problems that people who are seriously thinking about social development are faced with today. There is still little understanding of this. In Stuttgart, following on from our previous social activities, a school is now to be established, as far as this is possible within the current school system. Mr. Molt has decided to establish such a school for the children of his factory, the Waldorf-Astoria factory; other children will be able to join, but of course only a limited number at first. Of course, we will still have to reckon with the educational goals set by the so-called state. The children will have to be taken there and back until this year, so compromises will have to be made, but it will be possible to interfere in what the state already demands, because according to socialist views, it is the particularly clever idol – it will be necessary to interfere in what is demanded by this side, what real human nature demands. But first of all, this must be recognized. Who today thinks that the timetable is the murder of real human education? There are people who think along these lines, so that one would like to say: The world is upside down, and we must put it back on its feet; for there are people today who would like to shorten the lessons even more, teach the subjects in half-hour intervals and have them follow one another. Some people today consider this an ideal. Just form a mental image of what a tremendous kaleidoscope this would be, one subject after another: religion, arithmetic, geography, drawing, singing! Inside — in the mind — it would look as if the pieces in a kaleidoscope had been thrown into confusion; only for the outside world does it “look like something,” because there is not the slightest connection. People simply do not want to believe that today it is necessary to think big, not small, to have broad perspectives, comprehensive perspectives. Today, we see again and again that people have finally deigned to say: Yes, revolution is necessary! Even a large proportion of the bourgeoisie already believe in revolution today. I don't know if this is the case here, but there are large areas where even a large proportion of the bourgeoisie believe in the necessity of revolution. But when you present them with things like what I write about the threefold social order in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question,” they say: We don't understand that, it's too complicated. Lichtenberg already said: When a head and a book come together and it sounds hollow, it is not always the book that is to blame. But, you see, people today do not believe these things because self-knowledge is not always what is most produced in the soul. Yet we also see that even across large areas, the bourgeoisie believe in revolution. But then they say: Well, you can't get involved in such big things, such ideas, you have to tell us — yes, how shoemaking is to be socialized, how pharmacies are to be socialized, how this and that is to be socialized; you have to tell us how I will sell my spices in the revolutionized state. Then you gradually realize what people actually mean by such a thing. They mean that there must be a revolution—they are quite agreeable to that—but in such a way that everything remains the same, so that nothing actually changes. How can we turn the world upside down, some say, but nothing must change! And those who are most remarkable in this regard are precisely the so-called intellectuals. Yes, one can have some particularly remarkable experiences. One experience that one had to have again and again was to hear: Yes, three elements — autonomous universities, intellectual life should administer itself — but what will we live on then? Who will pay our salaries if the state no longer pays our salaries?"

But these things must be faced today. It is necessary not to keep ignoring these things. Change must be brought about, especially in the field of intellectual life.