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Anthroposophy has Something to Add to Modern Sciences
GA 73

17 October 1918, Zurich

VIII. Recent history in the light of spiritual scientific investigation

Today I will have to say a few things about more recent historical developments from the point of view of the spiritual science which we are considering in these lectures. It will be necessary to take as read some of the things I said in the earlier lectures. Essentially this will be the only precondition. Something else which I will not be able to repeat, time being limited, in so far as it applies today is that along the lines I tried to give in the first lecture, this science of the spirit can confirm that human beings, striving with their powers of soul, must come to recognize a supersensible world, and that a specific training of these powers of soul—I have characterized this at least in principle—will enable human beings to gain insight into the facts pertaining to this supersensible world.

It is now a matter of applying these fundamental truths of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science to one of the most significant fields in human life, the field of history. I will, of course, have to limit myself to what is of most immediate concern to us, the historical evolution of humanity in more recent times. People who do not look far into the development of human civilization take history to be a very old field of study. The truth is, however, that history really only came to life just before the second half of the 18th century, arising from beginnings that could not yet be called history. And in the sense in which we are accustomed to think of history, having learned this at school, namely that history serves to study the laws that govern the evolution of the human race in the course of time—in this sense history is really only a child of the 19th century.

The study of history arose from the interest that people have always shown in other people and their destinies, in so far as those other people and their destinies had a connection with one’s own life, being on the periphery of one’s personal life experience. We might say it is a straight line from the family records that people use to inform themselves on their own nation and native land, and ultimately the efforts made to gain insight into the laws that govern the evolution of humanity as a whole. It is significant that the study of history, which before was always within the above-mentioned narrow confines, thus came to be extended to the whole of humanity. It has only been in the recent times which we intend to consider here that a wholly general, human interest in the evolution of humanity as a whole arose from the more or less narrowly defined interest shown by people.

This alone will show anyone who is prepared to see that human beings showing pure interest in other human beings as such is essentially of recent origin. Now the situation is such that exactly because history arises from people’s interest in people, an obstacle arises when history is supposed to rise to a higher level where insight is gained into the laws that govern human evolution. For here history is very easily taken into an abyss that at some time or other has threatened every kind of scientific study. The natural-scientific approach has almost completely overcome this in more recent times, but it will often and quite unconsciously influence the way people look at history. We may call it the anthropomorphic view. It arises because something found in the human being himself is taken out into the world and the phenomena which present themselves in the world. The most obvious, happily overcome in natural science, is that a person finds that when he achieves something he has been following a purpose, an aim. People are therefore inclined to look at anything that happens in the natural world, and also at historical developments, by looking for purposive actions in the same sense as one finds them in the inner human being, that is, in oneself.

Natural science has grown great in the more recent sense exactly because efforts are made not to take an anthropomorphic view, though this is in many respects unconscious. Goethe was justified in saying that people do not know how anthropomorphic they are.111Sprüche in Prosa. See note 10. In the case of history, however, there is the special temptation to see the things which we find in ourselves also in historical developments outside, for we are trying to consider something that is human. We overcome the obstacle—which existed to a greater or lesser degree for the most hardworking thinkers of recent times when they wanted to establish a kind of philosophy of history—basically only by going beyond the narrow limits set to human nature even as we consider the human being himself. Those limits are set because human beings act according to something that is immediately subjective, according to such aims as are possible in their inner life between birth and death.

If you overcome an inner nature that relies on the senses, with the life of the soul bound to it between birth and death, by rising higher and going beyond the senses, you can take the discoveries made in supersensible study of the human being out into historical evolution. For human beings go beyond themselves when they rise to their supersensible nature, and they can then no longer be anthropomorphic in the study of history, for they are no longer so in the way they look at their own essential nature. By just making efforts to overcome a particular obstacle to seeing the world clearly, we are thus taken beyond ourselves into the supersensible sphere.

If we are thus equipped to approach historical evolution with the powers that take us into the supersensible world, the facts of historical life appear in a completely new light, purely because one sees them in the light of the supersensible sphere. In this new light you ask yourself: What is the real situation? Have certain facts that have been recorded so that we find them in our usual history books truly had such a close connection with the human being as they are often said to have, with the view expressed that the human being, as he stands before us, is a product of historical development, a product of the past? However, if we ask these questions only in the light of supersensible insight, we soon discover, on turning our attention to historical events, how little people are able to say with the impulses of the lives in which they find themselves at the present time, for example: This or that is connected with this or that historical event in the past. Just as natural science, if pursued consistently, takes us beyond itself, so does the study of history take us to the point where we have to say: In a sense, the historical events are falling apart. We cannot just speak of cause and effect in the usual sense, considering the present as though it were due to the influence of the past, certainly where this contains whatever may be found in the world perceptible through the senses. We can only see history truly if we connect the human being with the supersensible and do not look in historical facts for anything they appear to be on the surface but for something that initially is only given as revelation—a supersensible process in world events, with human beings involved in it.

Then history becomes something other than a study of consecutive events. It becomes a symptomatology, as I’d like to call it. We then consider individual events not just the way they present in the life perceived through the senses but as symptoms that allow us to penetrate into a supersensible process behind them that goes beyond history itself. It will then also no longer be possible to seek absolute completeness in the usual way—anyone who has been working with historical material in some area or other will know that such completeness can never be achieved. Instead you will try to take the facts that can be discovered, regarding them as symptoms, and penetrate into the great spiritual scheme of things that lies behind them.

Taking this road you will soon find yourself compelled to abandon the old distinctions we know from our schooldays, where the study of recent history begins with all kinds of reflections on the journeys of discovery and the importance of discovering America, or on inventions and the like. Instead you feel compelled to say: Where can a point be found—if we start from the present time and go back in historical evolution—where a major change came in the course of human evolution, with new ways of life and new conditions for life?

People who like to take the easy way in looking at the world often tend to say that one thing simply arises from another that went before, and that there are no significant changes or turning points. They will even quote the soothing words: Nature does not take leaps.112 Nature non facit saltus. First in Fournier, Varietés historiques et litteraires, 1613, IX, 247, then in Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur I’entendement humain, 1756, preface and IV ch. 16, and in Linnaeus, Philosophia botanica, 1751, No. 77. But just look at the natural world and the leaps that are made! A plant will first develop green leaves and later transform them into petals of different colours—a leap. And such leaps exist everywhere in the natural world, refuting common prejudice that people find comfortable.

Even a superficial look will in fact show that in the European world, the 15th century brought a major change in all ways of life. A change came in the characteristic state of soul humanity had had until then, and in the way humanity made this inner state of soul into external historical actions. With regard to symptomatology, we can point to something of a landmark at an earlier time, an important turning point in the historical life of more recent humanity. This was when the French forced the Pope to move his residence from Rome to Avignon in 1303.113 At the request of Philipp IV, Pope Boniface VIII was taken prisoner at Anagni on 7 September 1303. He died soon after. The French pope Clement V did not go to Italy but resided in Avignon from 1309. The Papal Court had its seat there from 1309 until 1377. Almost at the same time the order of the Templars, a very special community that had a strange relationship to the Church, was destroyed by the French government, its properties being confiscated.114 The Order of the Templars, established in 1119 for the protection of the Sacred Tomb in Jerusalem and the pilgrims who visited it, was accused of heresy by French Kind Philip IV who wanted them suppressed and their property appropriated. The Papacy, then wholly under the French influence in Avignon, acceded to this. Following inquisition and torture, the Order was suppressed in 1312. The remaining Templars who had been arrested in 1307 were burned.

Those events were turning points in more recent historical evolution because they showed that people were going against something that for centuries had been characteristic of the whole civilized world. This characteristic was reflected in the strange hostilities between central European imperialism and the Popes, as well as the mutually supportive alliances that resulted from them. All those hostilities were in the light of a quite specific fact. The peoples throughout the civilized world of that time were not divided into groups such as national and other groups the way they came to be in later times, for beyond any such division reigned something that people had in common; we can only say that a universal idea reigned in the human race, influencing people’s actions, and on the one side this came from the Roman papacy, which felt itself to be something that brought people together. Medieval imperialism was equally universal, except that it was often fighting that universal community.

The element that came with the turning point of which I spoke goes against this way of holding people together. The kind of cohesion which existed through the Middle Ages, with people feeling themselves to be part of a great whole, was for centuries based on certain unconscious impulses that dwelt in human beings. The leaders knew them and used them in bringing people together. They addressed a particular sum total of unconscious powers of soul in bringing people together from the above-mentioned points of view in the civilized world of that time. The event at Avignon created breaches, perceptible breaches in that cohesion. We can sense that a new element thus had to come into the constitution, into the state of soul, of occidental humanity.

We also see that the forces at work in the European West had for a long time been affected by an event that had come from the East like a force of nature. I only need to mention everything that started with the Mongolian hordes, and the migrations from East to West, from Asia to Europe, that followed. Both were turning points, and at the dawn of the 15th century they gave Europe and its people the structure of community life. Despite all attempts to preserve the past, this structure was different from the earlier one, when it depended on unconscious impulses. Humanity found it increasingly necessary to be consciously aware also in areas where they were previously given cohesion on the basis of unconscious impulses.

Something highly significant happened with these changes in the West of Europe, especially in areas where people had until then be used, more or less so but significantly, to find cohesion through that universal idea, universal impulse, which I have been characterizing. We see something completely new arise in those areas. The national element came to take over from the old, more spiritual element of the Catholic Church in providing cohesion. We see England and France become a new kind of nation-states, setting a pattern, as it were.

Let us try and consider the way in which the new element was taken particularly into those areas of Western Europe. Initially the two countries were united until the movement arose in the 15th century which we may also call a turning point, in 1428, when in a certain direction a dividing wall came between England and France. This came to expression in the events that happened around Joan of Arc.115In the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, Orleans was under siege by the English in 1428. It was relieved in April 1429 by a small army led by Joan of Arc. The seed was then sown for the mutual independence of France and England; before that there had been a degree of connection between them. This is a tremendously significant phenomenon. For we shall see many things grow from this differentiation, which only came at that time, in the 15th century, things that will again prove symptomatic in the further evolution of history.

Another change came when a kind of national feeling, at the time preparing the way for an independent feeling of being Italian, developed in Italy from the very element which had led to the papacy being so powerful in that country, overshadowing all such national and similar groupings. Letting the eye roam across Europe we also see ourselves—I can only refer to these things briefly here—coming closer to the time when a major struggle arose between central and more or less eastern parts of Europe, the Germanic and Slavonic cultures. We see how the power of the Hapsburgs arose from the struggles in those regions, with the Slavs attacking, and Slav and Germanic cultures mingling. We also see highly individual structures, which before that had not emerged in such a way from the universal impulses, now with individual views and individual purpose. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, city states flourished throughout the occidental civilization of that time.

Again, once national aspirations had become differentiated and France and England were separate, we see long periods of civil war in England leading to the parliamentary system, as the world was to know it, being the goal of a social structure that arose from mutual understanding among individual people.

These, then, are not all, but some of the symptoms from more recent history. I merely have to add that as the groups formed from those impulses everywhere in Europe, there slowly arose in the East, still only in its early beginnings, from struggles that had to lead to its emergence, what later was to be the Russian structure. A strange structure. Seen from Europe it evolved in such a way that to our feeling it will always be a riddle. The most important impulses living within that structure were not really sentiently perceived but welded together, I would say, from something that had survived through all kinds of migrations—passing through Byzantium, arising from a certain metamorphosis of Roman Catholic life; something had come together that arose from what had sprouted forth as the blood of the Slavonic and Norman cultures. In ways that are familiar enough to you, it took in much of the Asiatic inner attitude of soul, a state of soul—I am now referring to the best parts of it—that through millennia had turned away from anything immediately coming through the senses and towards great mystic approaches, hoping to penetrate into a supersensible world with which the sensual life of human beings is connected.

If we take these and perhaps also many other symptoms of more recent historical development and truly consider them from the point of view of the issues considered earlier, a characteristic emerges clearly from these symptoms. We come to perceive it if we ask ourselves: How does the element that comes to expression in these symptoms inwardly differ from anything which in earlier centuries and millennia showed itself in a similar way in a historical evolution of humanity that was more at an unconscious level? We need to consider these things without any sympathy or antipathy, in a wholly objective way. It is only then that we will discover the characteristic element in the phenomena we are considering.

It is strange, when we ask ourselves: What do all these symptoms—for instance those I have given as examples today—have in common if we compare them with earlier impulses that came into historical evolution? I won’t speak of the fruitful way, for example, in which Christianity came into the world in a positive way, creating something new for the soul. I won’t speak of this, but only of the kind of impulses that were, for example, often given in ancient Greek life, when a new impulse would simply be given as though produced from inmost human nature. This would then come into its own in a completely new configuration of reality; or the way it was given, let us say, to Roman civilization in the days of Augustus. None of the impulses that come now are of that kind. The most evident impulse we see, for example, is the national one, based not on national cohesion—as one often sees it identified today and considered to be a state cohesion—but on the national element in so far as it bases on natural principles deep down in human nature. We see it as an impulse that people take up without having produced it inside. A person is French or English on account of his nature. And when in establishing the historical configuration he refers to his nationality he is not referring to something produced in his mind and spirit, but something he has simply accepted from outside.

If we compare the national principle as it has come up in history with those earlier impulses, we discover that all the impulses which we have seen coming to humanity in Greek and in Roman Latin times were infinitely much closer to the productive side in human nature. What came there was retained and preserved. When one takes up something new in more recent history, this is something one is not producing oneself, something which comes to the human being from outside.

Having attempted to gain our orientation more from the outer progress of more recent European history, we’ll now attempt to penetrate to the inner aspects. Within the soul’s inner state, we see a very similar onrush in the inner state of soul against the universal impulse that had counted on the unconscious, an impulse given through the ages. We see the onrush of Huss in the 15th century, Wiclif even before him, and then Luther and later Calvin. We see something human beings want to give, to put into history much more than anything that went before, when it was thought of in more universal ways; this is something individual, welling up from human nature itself. Strangely, however, we also see how in discussion, everything is always related to what went before. What is new is that the human being was referred to his own nature. Decide for yourself what the nature of the eucharist is. Decide for yourself on your attitude to your priest, do not let it be forced on you through a universal impulse coming from outside.

Yet when we consider the subject of the discussion, the dogma of the eucharist that had earlier been produced into humanity, had existed for centuries in history, or in human life altogether. Nothing new was being produced from the soul and given over to historical life, but the old was produced and preserved, everything that was there without human beings contributing anything. All that happened then was that the human being entered into a new relationship to it.

In following this inner process in European development we see infinitely much of the old torn apart, changed, metamorphosed in the onrush against the universal impulse that had reigned before. We can see it exactly from the way knighthood scattered and vanished. The whole of its inner state of soul—you only have to study the crusades—was connected with the universal impulse. Again we can refer to a turning point that will provide the orientation for everything else that happened. This was the battle of Murton in 1476, towards the end of the 15th century, fought against knighthood connected with the universal impulse. We may see it as representative of a struggle that happened in many places.116The attack by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was successfully beaten off by the Swiss at Grandson and Murten. Charles was killed in the decisive battle of Nancy in 1477.

We also find a change in the ecclesiastical authority in connection with all this. This ecclesiastical authority had assumed a strange form, and you can find this characterized in any work on history. During this time and because of the onrush, a need was felt for inner regeneration and improvement. The onrush against it really made the Church itself change many things internally. Yet we see everywhere how the element that had raised the Church up in the course of human evolution, having spread it in form of a universal impulse, was to be given a new relationship to each individual human being. We see this happening all over Europe. We see how the English Church made itself independent. We see how in central Europe growing independence joined forces with political powers. We see how everywhere the individual and personal rose against the universal, in other words how something that the human mind was to make its own raged against an earlier inner human nature that had been more unconscious or subconscious, and we see what followed from this in historical terms.

Counter forces did, of course, also arise, like the counter reformation against the reformation. But if we study the symptomatology, the struggles this caused immediately show something of the greatest importance with regard to more recent history. We see the Thirty Years’ War arise from everything that happened in connection with the symptoms I have characterized. Studying the Thirty Years’ War,117 1618-1648, power struggle between kings of France and Habsburg rulers of Holy Roman Empire and Spain, with added overtones of conflict between Calvinism and post-Tridentine Catholicism. Other powers that became involved included German principalities, Sweden, Denmark and Transylvania. [Tr.] we discover something strange. It arose from opposition arising among the confessions in Europe. It began with all the impulses connected with religious struggles, and it ended as a purely political phenomenon. It turned into something completely different as it progressed. If we now ask ourselves how its evolution looks to us with regard to the confessions which then existed in Europe, we find that in 1648 people were exactly where they had been in 1618. The whole 30 years really changed nothing of any significance as regards the relationship between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and so on. All this remained as before. However, in the course of that war quite different powers intervened, and this gave the European national structures a completely different configuration.

If you study the Thirty Years’ War in this way you will be truly convinced that we cannot see history as something that follows as an effect connected with what went before and call the latter the cause. Nothing that came from the Thirty Years’ War was genuinely connected as effect with anything we can call cause in the true sense. Studying the evolution we see how events happening on the outside can only be a symptom for something that happens deeper down. This is particularly evident in the case of the Thirty Years’ War. But what did happen? It was the western countries and above all France which advanced as a result of the events that came in the course of that war, and not its causes. The consequences of the Thirty Years’ War later led to the whole regal glory of France. We see how the royal power of France shone out over Europe in the time that followed.

Then again, something arose in the womb of what was evolving there, taking the old national impulse forward in a most eminent sense. This new element went far beyond anything merely national; it broke the national idea apart, as it were. Individual, personal nature arose, later to come into its own in the French Revolution. The human individual, standing by himself, wanted to emancipate from the compulsion of a community that had not arisen from some productive impulse but been taken up into the human state of soul from nature, from the world surrounding humanity. Again, in looking at the symptomatology, we see how Napoleon then arose, quite inorganically we might say, without any evident motivation. He was the executor, as it were, of the French Revolution’s will and testament. At the same time we also see a strange, a great and tremendous turning point arise. This significant turning point in more recent history came on 21 October 1805, when the battle of Trafalgar prevented Napoleon from extending his tentacles across to England. Something which earlier had only been potential, the separation between England and the Continent, was then made complete.

We can now let things that are generally known pass quickly before the inner eye. We find that parliamentary life going in the direction of liberalism evolved further in an independent England. We see a more tumultuous evolution in France during the 19th century. Then, however, we see emerge in a new form, symptomatic and shining out over what is really happening at the foundations of European history, how the European west and centre needed to come to grips in the 1850s with something that was like a dark riddle in the European east, with the Russian configuration that had arisen. This was like a question posed with regard to European development. We then see certain ideas gaining strength in the 19th century, other ideas going against them, and how ideas of the one kind or the other became impulses in historical development. We see how everything was building up in the 19th century towards the storm which then broke in 1848.118 Revolution broke out in many European countries in 1848—France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Germany and other areas. In England this was reflected in a final outburst of Chartist agitation [Tr.]. And we see evolve from all this the social movement that was later to be so comprehensive and today has a profound influence on human evolution. We see how one especially noteworthy event came among everything that evolved in the 19th century, something the people of Europe were able to observe quite profoundly. Out of the glory that had arisen with France becoming a national state, a kind of demand or claim arose and continued to spread.

Let us not put values on things here. We do not follow them with sympathy or antipathy, but quite objectively. We see how out of the relationship between developments in west and east something arose that was considered an insoluble problem—insoluble for Europe at least for the time being—by people who had the necessary insight at the time, irrespective of the attitude they took to it, to whether it should happen or not. We can even completely leave aside the question as to whether Alsace was occupied by the French originally or later by the Germans, but the Alsatian question, as it is known today, evolved out of European life.

If you study history, and especially things said by people with insight at the time in question, you will know that even then they foresaw conflicts arising from this, conflicts that were really insoluble in either direction because they had to do with all the difficult questions concerning the European east. Those questions arose because the European west—the Crimean War119 Britain and France fought Russia in 1854-6, originally because the Russians had successfully fought the Turks in the Black Sea region. European peace was under threat. was symptomatic of this—was forced to come to grips with the European east, which was behind all the phenomena like an enigma. We should really consider and feel it to be extraordinarily significant, especially in these days, that something which appears insoluble is given in the way in which central Europe must face up to western Europe because of a question which under specific historical conditions may be asked to be solved in one way or another, a question that has arisen from the national impulse emerging in France but cannot be solved in national terms.

I could give you many more symptoms apparent in recent history, but I only want to mention just one thing which enters deeply into the whole of human evolution in recent times. Although the connections cannot always be clearly seen, I want to refer to the emergence of the more recent scientific way of thinking. I have characterized its significance from other points of view in my earlier lectures here. The scientific way of thinking is evolving. What does it do? It makes the human being stand on his own. It is exactly this thinking which separates the individual out from the community. It is in many respects also the driving impulse in all the other things I have mentioned. This modern scientific way of thinking has something in it which strangely does betray the significance which it has in more recent history.

Two kinds of problems arise. Let me show you the one by referring to a fact. This is that in 1830 a friend found Goethe in a state of sheer excitement. Asked what was the matter, Goethe said: The news coming from France are overwhelming; the world is in flames; something new is beginning to emerge. Soret, the friend to whom Goethe said these words, did of course think he was speaking of the 1830 revolutions. ‘No,’ said Goethe, ‘I am not talking about that but about the revolution which is taking place between the two scientists Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire.’120 The talk between Goethe and Frédéric Jean Soret took place on 2 August 1830. Conflict between Etienne Geoffrey de Saint-Hilaire and Georges Cuvier had started in February that year at the Paris Academy. Goethe had above all studied Saint-Hilaire’s writings, publishing a review entitled ‘Principes de Philosophic zoologique’ in 1830/32. In Goethe’s scientific writings. See note 10. Cuvier held the view that all life forms in the natural world exist side by side and each had to be taken on its own. Saint- Hilaire was looking for a common type in the organic forms, he set the whole of organic life in motion, so that one could only get an overview in this state of flux if one looked at nature itself in an immediately productive spirit, experiencing the spirit to be as much in flux as nature itself. Goethe sensed something in Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire that ultimately, when taken from seed to fruit, will be the supersensible concepts of natural phenomena which I characterized here the day before yesterday.

Initially, however, the world was overshadowed by everything that came with the other way of looking at nature, where the human being is taken out of any living, immediate relationship to the phenomena of nature. This approach, which has not been taken hold of by the impulse of which Goethe spoke, gives insight into the part of nature that is nonliving, into the dying element, where nature dissolves, and this is connected with the element that is mortal in us, as I characterized it the day before yesterday.

The study of nature from which Goethe turned away is such that it can only work with the gradual process of decay in nature. Efforts are then made to rise to something that cannot be shown by these means but only by supersensible vision, and those are the symptoms of ascent, of growth, of being born and thriving. But, though this does again sound paradoxical, this approach to nature, which really focuses on whatever is dead within living nature, cast its deep shadows on the whole of modern social life. Essentially it created a new universal impulse for humanity in more recent times, but this is a universal impulse against which the human being himself as an individual must rebel all the time, for it takes him out of nature, so that he must look for the real whole over and over again. The knowledge gained puts him outside. He needs to look for the real whole again in something other than the area in which he seeks such knowledge. The result is dualism in the way the human being relates to his environment and hence also in life. This natural science flows into modern industrial life which supports the whole of modern civilization; its influence is highly significant.

With the impulses we considered earlier, for instance the national impulse, we saw that old tradition was preserved and no new productive element introduced into life. With the riddle of the European east we see how a nation remarkably stimulated to be productive in the spirit ties itself up so that it truly cannot be productive, although it has the potential to be highly productive, truly tying itself up in the most extreme bonds of the old Byzantine Church community. Old things are thus preserved. We see how with the views from natural science that are poured out over modern humanity something universal is created, something universal which also does not consider anything the human being produces out of himself, but exactly the knowledge that is gained in cutting things off from himself, knowledge concerning decay in natural phenomena. This can also only be brought into civilization in the sphere of industry, with the natural element killed off.

Initially by not being productive in the old sense, humanity has been gaining the full conscious awareness which began to develop in the 15th century. Earlier, they maintained their connection with nature and the world at a subconscious level rather than in full conscious awareness. In addition to preservation of old things we see a process of educating the human race in more recent times which is given out of something new but nevertheless is along the lines of the old. The principles developed for industry only seem to arise from productive ideas. For those productive ideas do not arise as independent green plants in the human soul—the supersensible, if it is to be sought, must arise as an independent plant in the human soul—but from calm contemplation of objective natural phenomena.

We see how an event that has had a significant influence on more recent developments is particularly connected with this modern industry, for it is now becoming apparent that modern industry develops progressively in our times and that colonization also gains significance; for colonial and colonizing life is closely bound up with the element that enters into industry through natural science.

Let us now take a general view of what all these symptoms are more or less telling us. We see that anything which has come up as something new since the 15th century has not come from productive human nature. Looking at these things we find it necessary to take a wider view of historical evolution and to acknowledge—supersensible insight makes us acknowledge this—that there is not only ascent in this human life, not only what in abstract terms is usually called progress, but that ascending, sprouting and shooting life goes hand in hand with a descending life. Life is bound up with a principle that is all the time leading to death.

When we consider an individual human life, birth, growth and development are presented separately from dying and decay. But it only seems like that. When we consider life in the outside world, developments that have come particularly in more recent history show that dying, descending and ascending development are immediately next to one another and influence one another. We see that descending evolution, which is the evolution that takes historical death into itself, had great significance actually for the beginning of this more recent period in history which began in the 15th century, doing so initially for several centuries and right into our own time. The life of decay, of death, has greater significance than ascending, sprouting and shooting life. We see how the mind of modern man as it evolves is connected with the element in him which is mortal, and how he is able to sense that the element which drives him towards death is also the element that helps him to advance in knowledge. Whilst sprouting, shooting life lulls him as if in dreams, we can see that the spiritual soul is evolving from the more unconscious state of soul which humanity developed from the 8th century BC until the 15th century AD, and that it has influenced the history of more recent times. We see that there is need, for a first education towards developing this spiritual soul, that symptoms of decay, of dying life take effect particularly also in human civilization. We cannot understand more recent historical life unless we are able to develop the thought—in spite of all admiration, in spit of all the good will and recognition that has to be given for the great, tremendous achievement of modern industry, of modern national impulses—that descending life moving towards the death of historical evolution must be present in it all, and that an ascending, sprouting and shooting life must be born into this descending life.

This has caused people of more recent times who have insight to develop something we might call a pessimistic view of civilization. Thus Schopenhauer121See note 33. looked at more recent historical developments. In spite of all the achievements they seemed rather trivial to him. The only thing Schopenhauer appreciated was anything that could be achieved in the minds of single individuals. Pessimists are themselves mere symptoms in recent historical development, but they have a feeling that the greatest and most significant element in that development which we are used to seeing as a characteristic of more recent historical evolution has been the death impulse entering into it.

What has been the consequence? Something we may call tragedy coming into the historical life of more recent times. Promotion of the impulses that we may consider to have been partly traditional and partly coming from natural scientific views is a matter of course. All this is such that we have to say to ourselves: We must encourage it, we must take it up, it is a necessity of our more recent history; human beings absolutely must make it part of developments in world history, but it must of necessity also lead to its own decline and death in everything that arises, that is achieved in this field. The tragedy is that something has to be encouraged and considered an achievement of which one knows that in creating it one is creating something that must at the same time also decay. We actually start the decay as we create it.

Anyone who thinks that the events arising in more recent historical development from the impulses I mentioned can stand on their own, is like someone who thinks a woman can give birth without conception, without the one principle being connected with the other. The element arising from those impulses presents as something one-sided that needs something to come from another side if it is to survive. Within itself there is only the power to die. Let us take everything that has come with modern industry and social relationships in more recent times, be they commercial or other kinds of connections. Let us take all this—on its own, seen in accord with its own impulse, it is infertile and always leads to its own death, I would say in rhythms. We have to realize that we need to look at it in such a way that we say: For the sake of something else, this dying element has to enter into our modern world as an achievement.

What is this something else? Well, we have seen that the strange thing I hinted at shows itself as we follow more recent history with its sequence of what we consider to be different symptoms. On the one hand we see the spiritual soul come into flower from the 15th century onwards, and this happens exactly because of the unproductive principle. On the other hand we have seen this spiritual soul grow great in that initially the stimulus for the productive element was withdrawn from its environs, so that it took its guidance from the principle that was all the time leading to a dying process in civilization. This has made the human being independent. The outside world does not stimulate something in us that has productive life but all the time something that bears the seed of the dying process in the insights gained. The human being grows up in his individual and conscious natural development in a way where the outside world does not raise him for life, nor to something that will take him higher, but is all the time preventing anything intended to take him higher. As a result, the human being stands by himself.

Looking at the situation purely in the light of supersensible insight, we see that this inner life of the human being, with the movement towards the spiritual soul from the 15th century onwards, also has something that corresponds to it on the outside. This could not emerge in the early centuries but shows itself immediately if without bias we consider the human heart and mind in the present time when it has once again gained an inclination towards a supersensible life. Many are, of course, still unconscious of this, but this inclination towards a supersensible life now exists for very many people. Someone working with the science of the spirit with an anthroposophical orientation knows that the principle of dying which developed in the outer material civilization of recent times was only of a passing nature and that we are at a great turning point in time which will bring a new revelation of the supersensible to human beings from outside, this time not through nature but stimulated in the way I have shown when I spoke on anthroposophically orientated spiritual science.

We see it approaching everywhere, this new revelation of the supersensible. It will now be gained in a different way from earlier times when human beings were connected with nature unconsciously, through their instincts, finding in nature itself the principles that also held true for the soul and which they could also introduce into social and historical life. A productive, supersensible life will develop that goes beyond anything which this study of nature and the old impulses in more recent historical developments are able to give. It will be revealed from the world of the spirit. And if we look particularly at the terrible catastrophe that has arisen in our time—what is it, seen in the genuine light of truth, but something in which elements that are dying crowd together?

Much will die within this catastrophic life. Anything that has the principle of dying within it in the way I have characterized will die more quickly. No reason for pessimism, even if there is reason for pain with all the things that can come to us from watching and being involved in this catastrophe. There is no reason to be pessimistic about civilization if we consider life in the light of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. For it is apparent now in one point in recent historical evolution around the globe that the dying process which otherwise is distributed across material life comes powerfully together. This gives more recent events their tragic note. At the same time it shows us that everything that comes into the world in the way I have characterized earlier must be fruitless and needs to be made fruitful with what we receive out of the supersensible.

Anyone who considers the principle which makes the development of the spiritual soul complete and the new revelations from the supersensible with an open mind will raise his head, however much it may be bowed down in pain over the things that are happening now, and say to himself: It is the first flush of dawn for something that must come and will trigger the impulse in humanity to turn towards the supersensible. All the suffering and pain over the present collapse would be in vain, and so would be all the feelings, the justifiable pain felt by those who see this collapse, if these feelings could not take us forward to the realization that as with everything in nature that is destined to die, so with this dying, too, something new is arising. However, the new development will only be possible if humanity has the will to take up the principle that will make things fruitful, a principle revealed to us from the supersensible world.

The spiritual soul has evolved. Nature must now no longer give us unconsciously the things we introduce into the world of social and historical development. Humanity of our time must now also consciously receive, willingly receive, the new kind of supersensible revelation that comes to the spiritual soul if this spiritual soul wills it. It is exactly when we consider the tragedy of modern life without prejudice that the redeeming impulse reveals itself on the other side. It reveals itself in that we feel the need to acknowledge the revelation of a new supersensible element which now also has to be there for the spiritual soul.

We thus see through the symptoms and perceive what humanity is going to be and what is to be revealed to humanity out of the universe. In Graeco-Latin times, which began in the 8th century before the Christian era and came to an end in the 15th century, the inner life was still bound up with outward physical life. This led to the great achievements of Greek and Roman times that were passed on to the Middle Ages. In the 15th century evolution took a great leap as the powers of conscious awareness began to evolve what we may call the spiritual soul. We are now in this stage of evolution. We see that for a true science of history human beings must take up the principles that are revealed behind the symptoms. We must have the courage to admit, however, that death is all around us as much as life, and that death is necessary so that new life may come. It has also been necessary for death to be overwhelming for a time, so that human beings might all the more develop the powers of the spiritual soul. When no more is given to us from outside, we feel the need to look inside for the spirit, the supersensible principle.

Some may of course object and say: Well, where are those people, how many of them are there? Not many have developed their powers of soul so that they are able to point to the supersensible world. We certainly have to admit that there are only few of them today. Their numbers will grow apace; but it is not a matter of how many find their way to the supersensible sphere which is needed to make the sensual fruitful. What matters is that one does not have to take the road to supersensible insight oneself, for, quite apart from how and for what you estimate the individual who provides the fruits of the supersensible, once they have been uttered, once they have been cast into human culture, they can be understood with the understanding that is perfectly common in the age of the spiritual soul. People can largely understand everything brought to them from the sphere of the supersensible, unless they create obstacles for themselves with prejudices which they then find insurmountable.

There is, however, one thing which is needed. Just consider that with the view of history I have outlined one finds it necessary to admit to oneself, in insight, as it were, and in full awareness, that what has to be done—what is a necessity of the age and will be a necessity more and more—is at the same time something that is all the time also dying. It does take some courage to acknowledge that one has to be active so that that active principle may perish and be the soil for the Father principle of the spiritual, supersensible sphere. It does need such courage for all supersensible insight. Fear of supersensible insight prevents many people from entering into it. There is one field at least where in more recent times we face the immediate necessity to develop such courage if we want to be at all considered for human development. This is the field of history. Those who know something of supersensible insight always speak of crossing the threshold, and of a guardian of the threshold.122 See also Rudolf Steiner’s Knowledge of the Higher Worlds (GA 10); tr. G. Metaxa; Bristol: Rudolf Steiner Press 1993; chapter on the guardian of the threshold. They speak of crossing the threshold because one has to abandon many things that seemed to be absolutely solid ground before one crossed the threshold in finding one’s way into the supersensible world. Unconsciously people feel it is a relief not to have to cross the threshold. Yet something that had to be done at a particular time for historical development is becoming more and more of a necessity. And this is again part of the inner progress of historical development from the 15th century onwards. It is becoming more and more of a necessity to say to oneself: You are actively involved in the creation of processes of dying, processes of decay. You need to devote yourself to these processes of decay, and this will bring your inner power to life; it is exactly because of this that you will be able to come close to the supersensible. You must abandon what you used to consider a foundation in mind and spirit before, cross the threshold to the supersensible world, losing the ground under your feet, as it were. And in its place you must find within you the firm focal point where you can maintain yourself even in the face of what in sensual terms has no ground.

The human being needs to find a new focus for the whole of his inner life. Historical necessity will make us look for this focus more and more in future. The fact that we thus gain insight will not change things. We are, as it were, facing the process of dying—in the sense I mean here. The fact that we admit it is a dying process will not change it. But it is exactly by this that one must feel driven to try and fructify the living principle that is the counter force. For the situation is like this: Inscribed above the search for supersensible insights there has always been the great, tremendous demand: ‘Know yourself.’123Words of Solon or Chilon on the Apollo Temple at Delphi. And it is still the demand made on human beings who are seekers. Seeking to gain this insight today people can only do so by rising to worlds that can take them beyond finite existence. Above all, impelled by the necessities of human evolution, they will have to admit to themselves with regard to historical life in more recent times, that the spiritual soul is a goal that has been implanted with regard to more recent history, to know themselves more and more. In coming to know themselves, they are facing the necessity of going beyond themselves. In going beyond themselves, perceiving his supersensible nature within their sensual nature, they also come to the supersensible that is active in history, with external facts merely symbols for it. We will only have a history that is fruitful for life if we look for the supersensible behind the symptoms, just as we do behind the phenomena of nature.

The look we have taken at history has shown that more recent developments impose trials on human beings, the trial where they must consider descending as well as ascending life, involution as well as evolution. With supersensible insight into history people will find this gaining of insight to be a great trial for the soul for they must cross the threshold and find a new focus in the inner life of the soul, so that in having gone through the trial they will have the strength to go through the other trials that life will present more and more out of historical events as they move towards the future. We may say, however, that human beings only grow strong and robust and truly fit for life by going through trials. Fear of insight should not prevent people from entering into the trials. Instead, courage to gain insight should make them prepared to accept these trials. They will develop those trials on the road to insight into powers that will also guide them to be active human beings who are involved in evolution and fruitful in the course of history.

Questions and answers

Following the lecture given in Zurich on 17 October 1918

The suggestion has been made that 1 should briefly say something about one particular phenomenon in more recent history that is particularly relevant to human life, and that is the evolution of speech and language. This could, of course, be another whole lecture if I were to treat the subject exhaustively. I would, however, like to take up the suggestion, apart from anything else because I would indeed like to draw your attention to the fact that anthroposophically orientated spiritual science in the sense of which I have been speaking truly is such that it does not owe its existence to a sudden idea that came like a shot, nor is it made up of sudden flashes of insight. No, if you study the literature you’ll find that this anthroposophically orientated spiritual science gathers what it has to say from the whole breadth of observation, the whole range of phenomena in the world.

Of course, when one has to cover vast areas in an hour—and I am sorry that it always takes longer than this anyhow—the impression inevitably arises that one is moving in abstract regions; on the other hand the intention is not to convince anyone, but merely to encourage them to take this further, for then people will see that this science of the spirit is based on careful, conscientious and methodical investigation, serious research, more so than in any other kind of scientific endeavour.

It is interesting to consider the principles which I have been characterizing in general terms today in a single phenomenon such as the development of human speech and language. When we say anything today, we do not usually consider the fact that talking is actually at every moment forcing us to be inaccurate. Fritz Mauthner has written three volumes as well as a dictionary of philosophy to show that everything we produce in philosophy and science is based on language and that the language is imprecise. Because of this, he says, we can really never have a body of true knowledge.124 Mauthner, F. Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, 3 Bde, Stuttgart 1901-1903. Wörterbuch der Philosophy, see note 27.

Well, when it comes to the science of the spirit this is, of course, a foolish thing to say, even in three volumes. It is, however, significant to consider the partial phenomenon that lies behind this. Going back in the development of language we find—unlike the superficial anthropological linguistics where the means are inadequate—that the further back we go, human beings were progressively more closely connected with anything their speech expressed, inwardly so, and again instinctively and unconsciously. Human beings are gradually also separating from the things that lie in their own inherent nature, just as they are from the outside world of nature.

Thus they also cease to be so closely connected with their speech. Speech thus becomes something external. A marked dualism arises between the thoughts that live in us—and some do not even have them any more, because they remain in the sphere of language—and the words that are spoken. If we do not give ourselves to illusion at the point in human evolution where we are today, in the age of the spiritual soul, we need to take a real look at the way language has already separated from the human being. It is really only proper names relating to a single individual that are truly appropriate to that individual. As soon as we use general terms, be they adjectives, nouns, or whatever, they are imprecise about what they are meant to tell us. They are abstract, they are like generalities. We will only understand the relationship between language and human life rightly if we take it really as gesture; if we know: just as I point to something in a direct, living way when I point to it with my finger, so I also point in a kind of gesture at the entity to which the sounds of speech refer when I produce sounds, using my larynx. To take speech as gesture, this is what matters. In earlier times, people had a vague feeling, I would say it was instinctive and lay in the subconscious, as to how their inner life was connected with sound in a kind of gesture. They did not confuse their experiences in inner life with the things brought to expression in speech.

We ourselves have tried to develop endeavours in this direction in a field of spiritual science, using the element of gesture to make speech visible. This is in the art we call eurythmy. Efforts are made to get the whole human being moving, and express in gesture—in the movements of the limbs, movements of the human form in space, the movements in groups and relationships between individuals—what is otherwise expressed in gesture, though not perceived as gesture, through the human larynx and its neighbouring organs. We call this art of movement, something new which has to come to humanity, eurythmy. We had intended to follow this lecture here in Zurich with a eurythmy performance. This had to be put off for another time, for we were given permission to give these lectures, in what is now a difficult time,125An influenza epidemic had led to a partial ban on gatherings. but not to give a eurythmy performance. The intention was to show how the whole human being becomes a larynx, as it were. In becoming aware of what speech is, we come to something that is particularly important, fundamentally important, for life in the present and future.

Nothing happens more frequently in human life today but that someone makes a statement of some kind, as I am doing with regard to the science of the spirit, for instance, and then someone else will come along and say: ‘I have read this before,’ showing you something which at least in parts has exactly the same wording. I could give you striking examples of this, but will give just one which I found illustrated the situation perfectly.

One thing I truly endeavour to do is to apply all the things that demand consideration in spiritual science to life and thus enter into the true impulses in life. For a long time I have thus been reflecting on the whole way of thinking, the whole attitude of thought, shown by Woodrow Wilson.126See note 88. I found it interesting to study especially his essays on historical method, the study of history and American historical life. He plays such a major role in present-day life that one has to get to know him—this is what someone would say who does not want to sleep through current events but observe them with his senses wide awake. I have come to admire the magnificent way, truly apt in an American way, in which Woodrow Wilson presents the evolution of the American nation, this advance from the American east to the American west, with American life emerging in a quite specific way, that came only once people had advanced from east to west. Woodrow Wilson characteristically speaks of everything that went before as mere appendage to European life. This uprooting and overcoming of nature, overcoming the native population of the American west, this specific way of making history, which shows some similarity to what has happened in human life generally yet also differs in quite specific ways—this is magnificently presented. It is therefore also interesting to see how Woodrow Wilson develops his method of history.

I looked at the descriptions he gave of his own method of history and found something quite peculiar. Sentences come from this man, who is wholly and entirely American, that seemed to me to almost word for word in agreement with sentences written by a completely different person, someone who truly arose from an entirely different approach to life and way of thinking. Statements Woodrow Wilson made in his essay on the methodology for history that bore such excellent fruit for him, could be transposed word for word into essays by Herman Grimm, who is entirely within the Goethean development of our time, and out of this development presents as a truly Central European mind. We might say that you need only take sentences from Herman Grimm’s essays and transpose them, or include sentences by Woodrow Wilson in Herman Grimm’s essays, and you would not see any great difference in the wording.

What we learn from such things—to put it in ordinary words, though I want to say something highly significant in this way—is that when two people say the same thing, even using the same words, it is not the same. We have to learn from this that it is necessary to enter not only into the wording, which comes from speech, but the into whole person. This will reveal the specific differences between Herman Grimm and Woodrow Wilson. You will find that with Herman Grimm, every single sentence is worked out with the spiritual soul wholly present. The progression one finds in Herman Grimm’s spirited essay where he writes about historical method and the contemplation of history is truly such that one sees him progress from sentence to sentence through an inner struggle in his soul, so that nothing remains unconscious and everything is brought to conscious awareness. All the time one sees this inner progression in the soul.127It has not been possible to establish exactly which essay this was. See notes 44 and 46, however.

Looking across at what we see in the case of Woodrow Wilson, we see how the statements arise from subconscious depths of the soul, as though out of the human being as such rather than inner activity. I don’t mean anything bad by this, but I would like to say, if I may be paradoxical about it, that with Herman Grimm I always feel that in the region of wholly conscious inner life, all the life of the soul proceeds as statement follows statement; with Woodrow Wilson I feel he is as if possessed by something that lies within himself and lets his own truths shine up in his own inner life. As I said, I do not mean anything sympathetic or antipathetic by this, merely something I want to characterize. It is given to him from the depths of his own soul. So we find, and it is truly evident, that even if the wording is the same, two people are saying the same thing yet it is not the same. We only discover what lies behind it if we learn to go not by the wording but by what arises from the whole way the person presents himself in life.

You see, modern humanity must learn to overcome the general habit of judging anything that is presented only on its content. We will have to learn that the content is not really what matters. When I speak about the science of the spirit, I do not focus on the way I formulate my sentences, on the content, but what matters is that something which has truly been projected from the supersensible world flows into what I say. Considering the How more important than the What, so that one can sense, or feel, that these things are said out of the supersensible world. This is what matters.

This is how we must altogether learn in a way in the present time in contrast to ordinary life. A paper, or a journal, may say the nicest things—people can say the most beautiful things today, for ‘beautiful ideas’ and ‘nice things’ are commonplace today—but it is not the words which matter but the inner attitude from which they arise, so that we look through the statements and the words to symptoms, to the human being. We need to penetrate language and wording as if they were a veil and thus come closer to the human being himself again. We are made aware of this in more recent developments in language, for here the human being’s inmost nature, his spiritual soul, has become separate from speech and language. Out of ourselves, therefore, the necessity arises to consider not just the words, but see through them to the human soul, doing so in every possible direction and way.

It will, however, be necessary to overcome something else if one wants to go on in this direction. People are still used to abstract notions today, to going by the immediate content in what I might call an uninspired, middle-class way. When someone speaks of an ideal, however beautifully formulated, we need to be aware that this is something that is a hundred a penny today, for the ideas have been given form. You can put all kinds of ideas to people and nations today, and they will be formed. It will depend on where they come from, where they truly arise in the inmost soul, in the soul region. Life will be tremendously enriched if we are in a position to see it like this.

Perhaps I may also be permitted to say something personal. You see I am often presented with people’s poetical productions. All kinds of people produce them nowadays. Among them are some that are perfect in form, beautifully expressing something or other, and others that seem awkwardly phrased, bumpy or indeed primitive, having problems with the language. Someone taking a point of view that is not yet modern will of course delight in the beauty of the language, especially if the forms are perfect. He will not—not yet today—feel that Emanuel Geibel128 Geibel, Emanuel (1815–1884), German poet and dramatist. was right in saying that his verses would have a public for as long as there were young girls. They are beautiful, polished, and will have a public even among those who believe Wildenbnich129Wildenbruch, Ernst von (1845–1909), German writer and dramatist, wrote patriotic poems during the Hohenzollem empire. or similar people to be poets—and there are many of these as well.

Today, however, a different view is taken. This is also the case with other arts, but I am here talking about language. There are poets today whose verses make us stumble; you may have problems with the awkward words, but there is a new impulse in them. This is something we must feel! We must be able to see through the veil of the language and see the inner superficiality reflected in polished verse. For polished poems, beautiful poems, much more beautiful than Goethe’s poems, are a hundred a penny today; there it is the language itself which is producing the poetry. But a new inner life springing directly from the source of all life—this is something one must look for. It sometimes comes to expression exactly by having to battle with the language, so that we might say it has only got as far as being a stammer. Such ‘stammers’ may, however, be preferable for us to something that is perfect in itself but only reflects superficiality of soul. There was an occasion where I was given some verses. We needed verses, because we had to make a translation from another language. Very beautiful verses. I grew angry about them and wrote bad verse myself. I am aware that as poetry they are much poorer in quality. I knew, however, that in that case it was a necessity to express what needed to be expressed in a language that may perhaps seem rough and bumpy if one was drawing on the source spring of life that had to be sought in that case. I certainly do not overestimate what I undertook to do; but I also do not overestimate the polished verse I was given at the time.

The human being seeking through speech and language in the age of the spiritual soul—this is something which becomes life practice when we truly consider the life of language. Today I have therefore also tried to speak in a way where I did not deal with spiritual science in every sentence, always wanting to prove the supersensible, and instead tried to put this into the How of looking at history. And I think this is also the important thing, that one does not only call someone a true spiritual scientist whose every fifth word is ‘spirit’ and ‘spirit’ and ‘spiritual world’, believing in the suggestive effect of this, but someone who shows in the way he looks at the world, even in completely outer terms, by the way in which he presents things, that the inner guide, who takes us from thought to thought, from view to view, from impulse to impulse—that this guide is the spirit. If it is the spirit we need not keep on chirping the word all the time.

Here you can see how one can substantiate in speech and language something which I might also present in an extensive lecture.

Die Geschichte der Neuzeit im Lichte Geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschung

Indem ich heute einiges zu sprechen haben werde über den Verlauf der neueren geschichtlichen Entwickelung der Menschheit von dem Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswissenschaft, so wie sie hier in diesen Vorträgen gemeint ist und war, werde ich genötigt sein, mancherlei vorauszusetzen von dem, was ich in den vorangegangenen Vorträgen gesagt habe. Nur das wird es hauptsächlich sein, was ich vorauszusetzen habe und was ich, da mir ja nur eine beschränkte Zeit zur Verfügung steht, insofern es heute seine Anwendung findet, nicht werde wiederholen können: daß diese Geisteswissenschaft in den Linien, wie das im ersten Vortrage versucht worden ist, erhärten kann, daß der Mensch strebend mit seinen Seelenkräften zur Anerkennung einer übersinnlichen Welt kommen muß, und daß durch eine gewisse Schulung dieser Seelenkräfte — so wie ich diese Schulung wenigstens prinzipiell charakterisiert habe - Einsicht in die Tatsachen dieser übersinnlichen Welt für den Menschen auch zu gewinnen ist.

Nun handelt es sich darum, gerade diese Fundamentalwahrheiten anthroposophisch orientierter Geisteswissenschaft anzuwenden auf eines der allerbedeutsamsten Gebiete des menschlichen Erlebens, auf das geschichtliche Gebiet, und ich muß mich natürlich beschränken auf dasjenige, was uns zunächstliegt, auf die geschichtliche Entwickelung der neueren Menschheit. Geschichte, wenn man nicht tiefer eindringt in die Kulturentwickelung der Menschheit, hält man für eine sehr alte Wissenschaft. Allein in Wahrheit ist aus Anfängen, die man keineswegs schon Geschichte nennen kann, Geschichte eigentlich erst erblüht kaum vor der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Und in dem Sinne, wie wir heute gewöhnt sind, schon von der Schule her Geschichte aufzufassen: daß durch Geschichte gesucht werden die Entwickelungsgesetze der Menschheit im Laufe der Zeit, in diesem Sinne ist Geschichte eigentlich erst ein Kind des 19. Jahrhunderts.

Hervorgegangen ist diese geschichtliche Wissenschaft aus den Interessen, die der Mensch ja immer an anderen Menschen und ihren Schicksalen genommen hat, insofern diese anderen Menschen und die Schicksale dieser anderen Menschen zusammenhängen im Umkreise des Erlebens mit dem eigenen Leben. Man kann sagen, es ist eine gerade Linie von der Familienchronik, durch die jemand, der etwas erfahren will über das Volk, über die Heimat, mit denen man zusammenhängt und endlich mit jenen Bestrebungen, durch die man die Entwickelungsgesetze der ganzen Menschheit erkennen will. Und bedeutsam ist es, daß die geschichtliche Betrachtung, die sonst immer in den genannten engeren Kreisen verlief, auf die ganze Menschheit erweitert wird. Erst in der neueren Zeit, die wir hier geschichtlich betrachten wollen, erstand aus mehr oder weniger enger begrenzten Interessen der Menschheit das ganz allgemein-menschliche Interesse an der Gesamtentwickelung der Menschheit der Erde.

Schon daraus kann ersehen werden von dem, der dies ersehen will, daß das reine Interesse des Menschen am Menschen als solchem im Grunde genommen jungen Datums ist. Nun handelt es sich darum, daß gerade, weil Geschichte aus dem Interesse des Menschen am Menschen entspringt, eine Klippe gegeben ist, wenn die Geschichte sich erheben will zur Erkenntnis des gesetzmäßigen Zusammenhanges der menschlichen Entwickelung. Denn dadurch wird die Geschichte sehr leicht hineingeführt in einen Abgrund, der mehr oder weniger zu irgendeiner Zeit jeder wissenschaftlichen Betrachtung gedroht hat, der fast ganz. überwunden ist in der neueren Zeit von der naturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung, der aber oftmals ganz unbewußt bei den Menschen in die geschichtliche Betrachtung leicht hineinspielt: es ist der Gesichtspunkt, den man nennen kann den anthropomorphistischen, der dadurch entsteht, daß man dasjenige, was man im Menschen selber findet, nun hineinträgt in die Welt und ihre Erscheinungen, die sich darbieten. Das Nächstliegende ist ja das, was von der Naturwissenschaft glücklich überwunden ist, daß der Mensch sieht, wenn er irgend etwas vollbringt, dann handelt er nach Zwecken, nach Zielen. Dadurch ist der Mensch geneigt, auch dasjenige, was draußen in der Natur geschieht, und das, was im Verlauf der geschichtlichen Entwickelung geschieht, so zu betrachten, als ob zweckvolles Handeln in demselben Sinne darinnen zu suchen wäre, wie man das im Inneren des Menschen, also an sich selbst findet.

Die Naturwissenschaft ist gerade dadurch in dem neueren Sinne groß geworden, daß sie diese Zweckmäßigkeitslehre ausschaltet, auch daß sie versucht, wenigstens nicht anthropomorphistisch zu sein, obwohl sie es in vielen Beziehungen unbewußt ist. Goethe sagte mit Recht: Der Mensch weiß gar nicht, wie anthropomorphistisch er ist. — Aber bei der Geschichte liegt noch ganz besonders die Verführung und Versuchung nahe, dasjenige, was man in sich selber findet, weil man ja das Menschliche betrachten will, auch draußen im Verlauf des geschichtlichen Werdens zu schauen. Und man kommt über diese Klippe, die mehr oder weniger bei den strebsamsten Denkern der neueren Zeit vorhanden war, wenn sie eine Art Philosophie der Geschichte begründen wollten, man kommt im Grunde genommen nur darüber hinaus, wenn man in der Betrachtung des Menschen selber schon über jene engen Grenzen der menschlichen Natur hinauskommt, welche charakterisiert sind dadurch, daß der Mensch nach dem unmittelbar Subjektiven, das heißt, nach den Zwecken handelt, die ihm in seinem Seelenleben zwischen Geburt und Tod möglich sind.

Überwindet man so, wie das in den vorhergehenden Tagen charakterisiert worden ist, diese rein sinnenfällige Natur des Menschen und das an diese gebundene Seelenleben zwischen Geburt und Tod dadurch, daß man sich zum übersinnlichen Menschen erhebt, dann kann man dasjenige, was sich durch übersinnliche Betrachtung des Menschen ergibt, hinausführen in das geschichtliche Werden. Denn indem der Mensch aufsteigend zu seinem übersinnlichen Wesen über sich selbst hinauskommt, wird er auch in der geschichtlichen Betrachtung nicht mehr anthropomorphistisch sein können, weil er es ja in der Betrachtung seines eigenen Wesens nicht mehr ist. So wird man schon, indem man sich anstrengt, eine gewisse Klippe der Weltbetrachtung zu vermeiden, hinausgeführt in das Übersinnliche.

Wenn man dann, ausgerüstet in seinem Erkennen mit denjenigen Kräften, die in die übersinnliche Welt hineinführen, an das geschichtliche Werden herandringt, dann erscheinen einem rein durch die übersinnlichen Anschauungen die Tatsachen des geschichtlichen Lebens in einem völlig neuen Lichte. Dann frägt man sich in diesem neuen Lichte: Ja, wie ist es denn eigentlich? Haben gewisse Tatsachen, die die Geschichte verzeichnet, die wir in unseren gebräuchlichen Geschichtsdarstellungen finden, haben sie wirklich eine solch nahe Beziehung zum Menschen, wie es ihnen oftmals zugeschrieben wird, wenn man meint, der Mensch sei so, wie er dasteht, ein Produkt des geschichtlichen Werdens, ein Produkt der Vergangenheit? — Wirft man aber diese Fragen nur auf im Lichte der übersinnlichen Erkenntnis, so sieht man sehr bald, wenn man den Blick auf die Ereignisse der Geschichte hinlenkt, wie wenig eigentlich mit dem, was zum Beispiel die Menschen in der Gegenwart in sich finden, was sie an Impulsen ihres Lebensablaufes finden, wie wenig die Menschen sagen können: Das oder jenes hängt zusammen mit diesem oder jenem historischen Ereignis der Vergangenheit. -— Geradeso wie die Naturwissenschaft, wenn man sie konsequent verfolgt, über sich selbst hinausführt, so kommt man durch die geschichtliche Betrachtung dazu, sich sagen zu müssen: Die historischen Ereignisse fallen in einem gewissen Sinn auseinander. Man kann nicht im gewöhnlichen Sinn nur von Ursache und Wirkung sprechen und die Gegenwart nur wie eine Wirkung der Vergangenheit betrachten, insofern diese dasjenige enthält, was im Sinnenfälligen gefunden werden kann. Man kommt erst dann zu einer geschichtlichen Betrachtung, wenn man den Menschen anknüpft an das Übersinnliche und in den geschichtlichen Tatsachen selbst nicht das sucht, als was sie sich zunächst äußerlich darbieten, sondern wenn man in ihnen dasjenige sucht, was einem zunächst nur geoffenbart wird: einen übersinnlichen Vorgang im Weltgeschehen, in das die Menschen eingeflochten sind.

Dann aber wird die Geschichte etwas anderes als die Betrachtung der aufeinanderfolgenden Tatsachen; dann wird die Geschichte das, was ich nennen möchte eine Symptomatologie. Dann betrachtet man die einzelnen Tatsachen nicht so, wie sie sich einfach darstellen im sinnlichen Leben, sondern dann betrachtet man sie als Symptome, durch die man eindringt in ein hinter ihnen selbst liegendes übersinnliches, übergeschichtliches Geschehen. Dann wird man auch nicht mehr in derselben Weise nach einer unbedingten Vollständigkeit streben können, die ja ohnedies nicht zu erreichen ist — wer das geschichtliche Material auf irgendeinem Gebiete bearbeitet hat, weiß das —, sondern man wird versuchen, durch die aufzufindenden Tatsachen, die man als Symptome betrachtet, einzudringen in dasjenige, was hinter diesen Symptomen als große geistige Zusammenhänge verborgen ist.

So wird die Geschichte, wenn sie befruchtet werden wird von Geisteswissenschaft, den Weg nehmen aus einer reinen Tatsachenwissenschaft zu einer Symptomatologie. Und in dem Sinne, den ich hier meine, möchte ich Ihren Blick lenken auf wenigstens einige bedeutendere Erscheinungen in der Entwickelung der neueren Menschheit, um zu zeigen, wie der ganze Gang der neueren Geschichte sich darstellt, wenn man versucht, durch Tatsachen hinter die Tatsachen zu kommen.

Wenn man einen solchen Weg einschlägt, dann sieht man sich sehr bald gedrängt, abzukommen von jener Einteilung, die wir von der Schule her gewöhnt sind: daß wir die neuere Geschichte beginnen mit allerlei Betrachtungen über die Entdeckungsreisen und über die Bedeutung der Entdeckung Amerikas oder über Erfindungen und dergleichen. Man fühlt sich vielmehr gedrängt zu fragen: Wo ist ein Punkt - wenn wir bei der Gegenwart anfangen und nach rückwärts das geschichtliche Werden betrachten -, wo im Verlauf der Entwickelung der Menschheit wirklich eine Wendung eintritt, wo neue Lebensformen, neue Lebensverhältnisse eintreten?

Man hat in einer bequemen Weltanschauungsbetrachtung sehr häufig das Bestreben, sich zu sagen, die Dinge verlaufen einfach so, daß sukzessive das Folgende aus dem Früheren hervorgeht und daß nirgends bedeutende Umschwünge, bedeutende Wendungen stattfinden. Man hat sich ja sogar den bequemen Spruch geprägt: In der Natur fände nirgends ein Sprung statt. — Aber man sehe nur hin auf die Natur, wie da Sprünge stattfinden! Die Pflanze entwickelt zuerst die grünen Laubblätter, verwandelt sie dann in die farbigen Blumenblätter — ein Sprung. Und solche Sprünge sind überall in der Natur vorhanden, trotzdem sie einem gebräuchlichen, bequemen Vorurteil des Menschen widersprechen.

Und in der Tat, schon eine oberflächliche Betrachtung zeigt, daß in der Welt, die uns zunächst naheliegt, in der europäischen Welt, mit dem 15. Jahrhundert eine Änderung in allen Lebensformen eintritt. Dasjenige, was früher insbesondere die Menschheit charakterisiert hat, wie sie in ihrer Seelenverfassung war, wie sie diese Seelenverfassung umgesetzt hat in äußere geschichtliche Taten, das wird anders im is. Jahrhundert. Und wir können geradezu wie auf einen Markstein wiederum vom Standpunkte der Symptomatologie auf eine etwas weiter zurückliegende Tatsache hinweisen, die ein wichtiger Wendepunkt im geschichtlichen Leben der neueren Menschheit ist: das ist der Zwang, der von Frankreich auf das Papsttum im Jahre 1303 ausgeübt wurde, als der Papst gezwungen wurde, seine Residenz von Rom nach Avignon zu verlegen. Zeitlich fällt diese Tatsache ja fast ganz zusammen mit der anderen, daß der Tempelherrenorden, diese eigentümliche, wiederum in einem eigentümlichen Verhältnis zur Kirche stehende Gemeinschaft, von der französischen Regierung vernichtet und ihrer Güter beraubt wird.

Diese Ereignisse sind deshalb Wendepunkte in der neueren Entwickelung der Menschheit, weil sie zeigen, daß gegen etwas angekämpft wird, was über die ganze zivilisierte Welt der damaligen Zeit hin durch Jahrhunderte das Eigentümliche war. Das Eigentümliche war das, was. sich ausdrückte in jenen merkwürdigen Kämpfen und dadurch auch hervorgerufenen gegenseitigen Unterstützung, welche zwischen dem mitteleuropäischen Kaisertum und dem Papsttum stattfanden. Aber alle diese Kämpfe stehen in dem Lichte einer ganz bestimmten Tatsache. Die Menschen über die zivilisierte Welt hin sind nicht wie in der folgenden Zeit abgeteilt nach Gruppen, wie etwa nationale Gruppen oder dergleichen, ohne daß jede solche Abteilung überglänzt und überragt wird von einem Gemeinsamen, das sich nur ausdrücken läßt durch eine die Menschheit beherrschende Universalidee, die auf das Handeln der Menschen übergreift, die ausgeht auf der einen Seite von dem römischen Papsttum, das sich gewissermaßen als der Zusammenfasser der Menschheit fühlt. Ebenfalls universell, nur oftmals im Kampfe gegen diese Universalgemeinschaft, war dann das mittelalterliche Kaisertum.

Nun, gegen diese Art der Zusammenfassung der Menschheit richtet sich dasjenige, was hineinfällt in den Wendepunkt, den ich bezeichnet habe. Eine solche Zusammenfassung, wie sie durch das Mittelalter hindurch bestanden hat, in der die Menschen sich in einem großen Ganzen fühlten, eine solche Zusammenfassung war gebaut durch die Jahrhunderte hindurch auf gewisse unbewußte, im Menscheninneren liegende Impulse, die man kannte da, wo die Führung war, auf die man baute, indem man die Menschen zusammenfaßte. Eine gewisse Summe unbewußter Kräfte der Seele wurde angesprochen, wenn man die Menschheit unter den charakterisierten Gesichtspunkten zusammenfaßte, insofern sie damals über die zivilisierte Welt ausgebreitet war. Breschen, wahrnehmbare Breschen waren durch das Ereignis von Avignon geschlagen worden in die Art der Zusammenfassung. Damit ahnen wir schon, daß gerade dadurch in die Konstitution, in die Seelenverfassung der abendländischen Menschheit ein neues Element hineingetragen werden muß.

Und nun sehen wir, wie dasjenige, was da im europäischen Westen wirkt, schon seit langer Zeit beeinträchtigt wird durch ein Ereignis, das wie naturhaft vom Osten hereinbricht. Ich brauche nur zu nennen alles dasjenige, was mit den Mongolenstürmen beginnt, und was sich dann anschließt an Wanderungen der Menschen vom Osten nach dem Westen, von Asien nach Europa herüber. Das gibt beides Wendepunkte, gibt für das anbrechende 135. Jahrhundert Europa und seinen Menschen die Struktur ihres Zusammenlebens. Und diese Struktur wird trotz aller Versuche, das Alte zu bewahren, eine andere, als sie früher war, als sie auf unbewußte Impulse rechnete. Die Menschheit sieht sich genötigt, immer mehr und mehr zur Bewußtheit überzugehen auch auf denjenigen Gebieten, in denen sie früher sich zusammenfassen ließ aus unbewußten Impulsen heraus.

Und nun sehen wir unter diesen Wendungen im Westen von Europa sich etwas höchst Bedeutungsvolles vollziehen, gerade in Gebieten, in denen Menschen wohnten, die bis dahin gewohnt waren, mehr oder weniger, aber sehr bedeutsam ihre Zusammenfassung zu finden unter jener Universalidee, unter jenem Universalimpuls, den ich charakterisiert habe. In diesen Gebieten sehen wir, wie etwas völlig Neues auftritt: wie das nationale Element als zusammenfassendes Element an die Stelle des alten, mehr geistigen Elementes der katholischen Kirche tritt. Wir sehen sich entwickeln als Nationalstaaten, geradezu als die Muster der neueren Nationalstaaten, England und Frankreich.

Versuchen wir zunächst hinzublicken auf die Art und Weise, wie das neue Element hineingetragen wird gerade in diese Gebiete des europäischen Westens. Wir finden zuerst sogar eine Zusammengehörigkeit bis ins 15. Jahrhundert hinein, bis jene Bewegung auftritt, die wir wiederum charakterisieren können durch einen Wendepunkt, den Wendepunkt 1428, wo die Scheidewand gezogen wird nach einer gewissen Richtung zwischen England und Frankreich, was sich ausdrückt in den Ereignissen, die sich gruppieren um die Jungfrau von Orleans. Es wird damals der Keim der Unabhängigkeit Frankreichs und Englands voneinander gelegt, während sie vorher mehr oder weniger in einem Zusammenhange gestanden haben. Dies ist eine ungeheuer bedeutungsvolle Erscheinung. Denn wir werden hervorwachsen sehen aus dieser Differenzierung, die erst damals, im 15. Jahrhundert, eingetreten ist, vieles, was sich wiederum symptomatisch im späteren Entwickelungsgange der Menschheit abspielt.

Eine weitere Wendung sehen wir eintreten, indem sich in Italien, damals vorbereitend ein selbständiges italienisches Bewußtsein, wiederum eine Art Nationalbewußstsein, heraus sich entwickelt aus dem, was gerade in Italien die alle solche nationalen und ähnlichen Gruppierungen überschattende Papstmacht hervorgebracht hat. Und wir sehen weiter, indem wir den Blick über Europa hinschweifen lassen - ich kann alle diese Dinge nur andeuten -, wie wir uns der Zeit nähern, in welcher in Mitteleuropa eine große Auseinandersetzung stattfindet zwischen den Mittel- und den mehr oder weniger nach dem Osten gelegenen Gebieten, zwischen Germanentum und Slawentum. Wir sehen hervorsprießen aus den Kämpfen dieser Gebiete, aus dem anstürmenden Slawentum, aus der Vermischung des Slawentums mit dem Germanentum, die habsburgische Macht. Wir sehen, indem wir das alles überblicken, wie einzelne Zentren herauswachsen aus dem Leben, das dadurch bestimmt ist. Wir sehen weiter recht individuelle Gebilde, die früher nicht in einer solchen Weise sich aus den Universalimpulsen herausgehoben haben, mit ihrer eigenen Gesinnung, mit ihrem eigenen Wollen nicht herausgehoben haben: wir sehen vom i3. bis i5. Jahrhundert erblühen die Städtekulturen über die ganze damalige abendländische zivilisierte Welt hin.

Und wiederum sehen wir, nachdem sich die nationalen Aspirationen in Frankreich und in England differenziert haben, wie sich in England aus langdauernden Bürgerkriegen heraus dasjenige vorbereitete, was dann die Welt kennenlernt als den Parlamentarismus, als das Ziel einer solchen sozialen Struktur, die aus einer gegenseitigen Verständigung der einzelnen Menschen hervorgegangen ist.

Damit haben wir nicht alle, aber einzelne Symptome des neueren geschichtlichen Werdens vor unsere Seelen hingestellt. Ich habe nur hinzuzufügen, daß wir sehen, indem sich über Europa hin die Gruppierungen bildeten, die aus diesem Impulse herausgekommen sind, wie im Hintergrunde stehend, im Osten sich aufbauend, noch keimhaft, aus den Stürmen, aus denen es sich schon einmal herausbilden mußte, dasjenige, was dann das russische Gebilde wurde. Ein merkwürdiges Gebilde, von Europa aus gesehen sich so bildend, daß es der Empfindung nach immer ein Rätsel bleibt, daß die wichtigsten Impulse, die innerhalb dieses Gebildes leben, nicht eigentlich empfunden werden, zusammengeschweißt, möchte ich sagen, aus dem, was sich erhalten hat durch mancherlei Wanderungen hindurch: durch Byzanz hindurch, aus einer gewissen Metamorphose des katholischen Lebens; was sich gebildet hat aus dem, was durch das Blut, das zusammengeflossen ist aus Slawentum und Normannentum, hervorgesprossen ist, und was aufgenommen hat auf den Wegen, die Ihnen ja bekannt genug sind, vieles von dem, was Seelenverfassung des asiatischen Wesens ist, jene Seelenverfassung — ich meine jetzt die besten Teile dieser asiatischen Seelenverfassung —, die durch Jahrtausende hindurch sich hinweggerichtet hat von dem unmittelbar Sinnenfälligen zu großen mystischen Zusammenhängen, durch die man eindringen wollte in eine übersinnliche Welt, mit der zusammenhängt das sinnliche Leben der Menschen.

Nun, indem man solche und vielleicht noch manche andere Symptome der neueren Menschheitsentwickelung vor seine Seele treten läßt und sie nun wirklich unter dem Einflusse der erwähnten Fragestellung betrachtet, fällt einem ganz bedeutsam ein Charakteristisches auf, das sich in diesen Symptomen offenbart und das man erkennen lernt, wenn man sich frägt: Wie unterscheidet sich innerlich dasjenige, was sich in diesen Symptomen ausdrückt, von demjenigen, was in früheren Jahrhunderten und Jahrtausenden in ähnlicher Weise im geschichtlichen Werden der Menschheit, das mehr in das Unbewußte eingetaucht war, sich auslebte? — Man muß diese Dinge durchaus ohne Sympathie und Antipathie betrachten, in völlig objektiver Weise; dann erst kommt man auf dasjenige, was für die Erscheinungen auf diesem Gebiete charakteristisch ist.

Merkwürdig, wenn man sich frägt: Was haben alle diese Symptome, die da zum Beispiel heute von mir notifiziert worden sind, was haben sie Gemeinschaftliches, verglichen mit früheren Impulsen, die in die weltgeschichtliche Entwickelung eingetreten sind? — Ich will gar nicht reden von jener Fruchtbarkeit, mit der zum Beispiel das Christentum in positiver Weise in die Welt eingetreten ist und für die Seele Neues geschaffen hat. Ich will gar nicht von dieser Weise reden, ich will nur reden von solchen Impulsen, wie sie zum Beispiel oftmals gegeben worden sind im alten griechischen Leben, wo einfach ein neuer, wie aus dem Innersten der Menschennatur heraus produzierter Impuls gegeben wurde, der dann sich auslebte in einer ganz neuen Konfiguration der Tatsachen, oder wie er gegeben wurde, sagen wir, dem römischen Wesen im Augusteischen Zeitalter. Solche Impulse sind das alles nicht, die jetzt da auftreten. Wir sehen als hervorragendsten Impuls zum Beispiel den nationalen, der sich gründet nicht auf die Nationszusammengehörigkeit — wie man es heute vielfach identifiziert sieht als Staatszusammengehörigkeit aufgefaßt -, sondern der sich gründet auf das Nationale, insofern es sich auf natürlichen Untergründen der menschlichen Natur aufbaut. Wir sehen ihn als einen Impuls, der vom Menschen aufgenommen wird, ohne daß er ihn von innen heraus produziert. Der Mensch ist Franzose oder Engländer durch seine Natur. Und indem er sich, schaffend die geschichtliche Konfiguration, auf seine Nationalität bezieht, bezieht er sich nicht auf etwas, das er in seinem Geiste produziert, sondern er bezieht sich auf etwas, das er in seinem Geiste bloß von außen aufnimmt.

Vergleicht man das, was da in das geschichtliche Werden mit dem nationalen Prinzip eintritt, mit den früheren Impulsen, dann kommt man darauf, wie unendlich viel näherliegend in bezug auf das Produktive der Menschennatur alle die Impulse sind, die wir aufeinanderfolgend in der Griechenzeit, in der römisch-lateinischen Zeit in die Menschheit hineindringen sehen. Dasjenige aber, was da eingedrungen ist, das wird behalten, das wird konserviert. Und insofern man zu einem Neuen greift, nimmt man etwas, was man nicht selbst produziert, in der neueren Entwickelung auf, etwas, was von außen an den Menschen herantritt.

Nachdem wir uns erst an dem mehr äußeren Gang der neueren europäischen Geschichte zu orientieren versuchten, versuchen wir nun in ihr Inneres einzudringen. Da sehen wir ein ganz ähnliches Anstürmen im Inneren der Seelenverfassung gegen dasjenige, was als Universalimpuls, der auf das Unbewußte rechnete, von alters her gebracht worden ist. Wir sehen, wie im i5. Jahrhundert us, schon vorher Wiclif, wir sehen, wie dann Luther, später Calvin anstürmen. Wir sehen etwas, das viel mehr als alles Frühere, das universeller gedacht war, die Menschen geben wollen, hineintragen wollen in die Geschichte, das individuell ist, das unmittelbar aus der menschlichen Natur selber quillt. Aber auch dabei sehen wir merkwürdigerweise, wie alles dasjenige, was diskutiert wird, anknüpft an das Frühere. Dasjenige, was neu ist, ist die Hinweisung des Menschen auf seine eigene Natur: Entscheide selbst über die Natur des Abendmahls. Entscheide selbst, wie du dich zu deinem Priester stellen willst, laß dir das nicht durch einen Universalimpuls von außen aufdrängen.

Wenn man aber eingeht auf das, worüber diskutiert wird, so ist es dasjenige, was früher in die Menschheit hineinproduziert worden ist, was als Abendmahlslehre schon da war, was seit Jahrhunderten schon da war in der Geschichte oder im menschlichen Leben überhaupt. Es wird nicht in der gleichen Weise wie früher aus der Seele heraus ein Neues produziert und dem geschichtlichen Leben übergeben, sondern es wird das Alte produziert und konserviert, all das, was da ist, ohne daß der Mensch etwas dazu tut, und es wird nur der Mensch in ein neues Verhältnis dazu gebracht.

Gerade wenn man diesen innerlichen Gang der europäischen Entwickelung verfolgt, sieht man, wie er unendlich viel Altes zerreißt, Altes ändert, metamorphosiert, wie er anstürmt gegen den früher herrschenden Universalimpuls. Das sieht man ganz genau an der Art und Weise, wie das Rittertum zerstiebt, das verbunden war in seiner ganzen inneren Verfassung, Seelenverfassung — man braucht nur die Kreuzzüge zu studieren —, mit dem Universalimpuls. Wiederum können wir da auf einen Wendepunkt hinweisen, der für alles andere, was geschieht, orientierend ist: auf die Schlacht bei Murten von 1476, gegen das Ende des i5. Jahrhunderts, wo ein solcher Kampf gegen das mit dem Universalimpuls verbundene Rittertum geführt wird, wie er aber an vielen Orten, hier repräsentativ, geführt wurde.

Und mit alldem verbunden, finden wir eine Änderung im Kirchenregiment selber. Dieses Kirchenregiment hat ja eine merkwürdige Gestalt angenommen, die Sie in jeder Geschichte charakterisiert finden können. In dieser Zeit, durch den Ansturm, fühlte es sich zu einer inneren Regeneration, zu einem inneren Verbessern veranlaßt; und so hat denn eigentlich der Ansturm die Kirche veranlaßt, selber in ihrem Schoße manches zu ändern. Aber überall sehen wir, wie dasjenige, was die Kirche heraufgehoben hat in die Menschheitsentwickelung, was sie in Form eines Universalimpulses verbreitet hat, wie das in ein neues Verhältnis zu jedem einzelnen Menschen gestellt werden soll. Wir sehen es über ganz Europa hin. Wir sehen es, wie die englische Kirche sich verselbständigt. Wir sehen es, wie in Mitteleuropa die Verselbständigung sich verbindet mit den politischen Mächten. Wir sehen überall, wie die Individualität, wie das Persönliche anstürmt gegen das Universelle, mit anderen Worten, wie dasjenige, was der Mensch im Bewußtsein sich erobern will, anstürmt gegen die frühere, mehr unbewußte oder unterbewußte Seelennatur des Menschen und was geschichtlich aus ihr folgte.

Natürlich erhoben sich gegen solche Dinge auch die Gegenkräfte, gegen die Reformation die Gegenreformation. Aber an den Kämpfen, die das hervorrief, zeigt sich uns gleich, wenn wir Symptomatologie treiben, etwas Allerwichtigstes in bezug auf den Verlauf der neueren Geschichte. Wir sehen heraufkommen aus alledem, was geschehen ist im Zusammenhange mit den charakterisierten Symptomen, den Dreißigjährigen Krieg. Wenn wir den Dreißigjährigen Krieg studieren, kommen wir zu einem merkwürdigen Resultat. Entsprungen ist er aus den Gegensätzen, die sich in der Bekennerschaft der europäischen Menschheit herausgebildet hat. Er beginnt aus lauter solchen Impulsen heraus, welche mit den Religionskämpfen zusammenhängen, und er endet als eine rein politische Erscheinung. In seinem Verlauf wird er etwas ganz anderes, als er war in seinem Ausgangspunkt. Und wenn wir uns fragen, als er nach dreißig Jahren vorüber ist: Wie stellt sich uns der Verlauf dar in bezug auf dasjenige, was die Bekennerschaften der europäischen Menschheit sind? - steht man 1648 ganz genau auf demselben Standpunkt, auf dem man 1618 gestanden hat. Die ganzen dreißig Jahre haben in bezug auf das Verhältnis von Protestanten zu Katholiken und so weiter eigentlich nichts Wesentliches geändert. Da ist alles geblieben, wie es ist. Nur, im Verlauf des Krieges haben ganz andere Mächte eingegriffen, und daraus ist eine ganz andere Konfiguration der europäischen Völkergebilde geworden.

Gerade wer den Dreißigjährigen Krieg in dieser Weise studiert, der überzeugt sich eindringlich, wie man in der Geschichte nicht das Folgende als Wirkung an das Vorhergehende als Ursache anknüpfen kann, denn nichts war von dem, was aus dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg hervorgegangen ist, irgendwie als Wirkung im echten Sinne zusammenhängend mit dem, was man im echten Sinne als Ursache ansprechen kann. Verfolgt man den Verlauf, so sieht man, wie dasjenige, was äußerlich geschehen ist, nur ein Symptom für ein tieferes Geschehen sein kann. Gerade an diesem Dreißigjährigen Krieg zeigt sich das in einer ganz besonderen Weise. Aber, was ist geschehen? Gerade die Weststaaten rücken vor, und namentlich Frankreich durch dasjenige, was im Dreißigjährigen Krieg, nicht aus seinen Ursachen, sondern in seinem Verlauf entstanden ist. Dasjenige, was aus dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg hervorgegangen ist, das führte später dann zu dem großen königlichen Glanze von Frankreich. Wir sehen die königliche Macht Frankreichs Europa überstrahlen in der folgenden Zeit.

Und wiederum, in dem Schoße desjenigen, was da sich herausbildet, was fortpflanzt den alten nationalen Impuls, gerade im eminentesten Sinne fortpflanzt, in dem erwächst etwas, was weit über das bloße Nationale hinausgeht, was gewissermaßen das Nationale sprengt. Es erwächst dasjenige, was später sich auslebt in der Französischen Revolution: die Persönlichkeit. Die rein auf sich selbst gestellte menschliche Persönlichkeit will sich emanzipieren aus dem Zwange derjenigen Gemeinschaft, die nun auch nicht aus irgendeinem produktiven Impuls genommen ist, sondern die aus der Natur, aus der menschlichen Umgebung heraus von der menschlichen Seelenverfassung aufgenommen worden ist. Und wiederum sehen wir, wenn wir hinblicken auf das, was sich symptomatisch vollzieht, wie dann herauswächst, ganz unorganisch, könnte man sagen, ohne daß irgendeine Motivierung da ist, Napoleon, wie der Testamentsvollstrecker der Französischen Revolution.

Aber wir sehen zu gleicher Zeit wiederum einen merkwürdigen, einen großen, gewaltigen Wendepunkt eintreten. Und dieser bedeutsame Wendepunkt der neueren Geschichte fällt auf den 21. Oktober 1805, wo durch die Schlacht von Trafalgar Napoleon verhindert wird, seine Fangarme nach England hinüber auszustrecken, wo dasjenige, was früher keimhaft veranlagt war — die Trennung zwischen England und dem Kontinente -, vollständig vollzogen wird.

Und nun brauchen wir nur das allgemein Bekannte rasch vor unserer Seele vorüberziehen lassen. Wir finden, wie nun stattfindet in dem verselbständigten England gerade die Fortbildung des parlamentarischen, ins Liberale auslaufenden Lebens. Wir finden, wie in Frankreich der Verlauf im 19. Jahrhundert mehr tumultuarisch ist. Wir finden aber dann, wie auftaucht in einer neuen Gestalt, hinleuchtend symptomatisch über dasjenige, was eigentlich in den Grundfesten des europäischen Werdens geschieht, wie der europäische Westen und die europäische Mitte ihre Auseinandersetzung halten müssen in den fünfziger Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts mit demjenigen, was eben wie ein dunkles Rätsel im europäischen Osten ist, mit demjenigen, was als russisches Gebilde entstanden ist, was wie eine Frage steht vor dem europäischen Werden. Wir sehen dann, wie gewisse Ideen im 19. Jahrhundert erstarken, wie sie bekämpft werden von anderen Ideen und wie die einen und die anderen Begriffe zu Impulsen des geschichtlichen Werdens werden. Wir sehen, wie im 19. Jahrhundert überall sich vorbereitet das, was dann im Jahre 1848 sich entlädt. Und wir sehen, wie sich herausentwickelt aus alldem die spätere umfassende und heute so tief in das menschliche Werden einschneidende sogenannte soziale Bewegung. Wir sehen unter dem, was da im 19. Jahrhundert sich bildet, ein ganz merkwürdiges Ereignis, auf das die europäische Menschheit wirklich tief beobachtend hinschauen konnte. Wir sehen nämlich entstehen aus jenem Glanze, der sich durch das Nationalwerden des französischen Staates entwickelt hat, eine Art Anspruch, weiter und weiter gehen.

Gewertet soll nicht werden; nicht mit Sympathie oder Antipathie sollen diese Dinge verfolgt werden, sondern ganz objektiv. Aber wir sehen, wie sich durch den Zusammenhang desjenigen, was da im Westen entsteht, mit dem, was weiter nach Osten läuft, etwas entwickelt, was von den Einsichtigen in der Zeit, in der es geschehen ist — ganz gleichgültig, wie sie sich zu dem, ob es hat geschehen sollen oder nicht, gestellt haben —, als ein unlösbares, zunächst unlösbares europäisches Problem angesehen worden ist. Man kann dabei sogar ganz absehen, ob Elsaß vorher bei Frankreich war oder nachher bei Deutschland — aus dem europäischen Leben heraus entwickelt sich dasjenige, was man heute kennt als die elsässische Frage.

Wer die Geschichte, namentlich die Äußerungen einsichtiger Menschen der damaligen Zeit verfolgt, weiß, daß diese Menschen schon damals vor sich sahen Konflikte, die dadurch geschaffen wurden, und die nach der einen wie nach der anderen Seite recht unlösbar sind, weil sie zusammenhängen mit all den schwierigen Fragen des europäischen Ostens, die aufgeworfen waren dadurch, daß der europäische Westen — wie der Krim-Krieg symptomatisch gezeigt hat — in die Auseinandersetzung gezwungen war mit dem europäischen Osten, der wie ein Rätsel hinter allen Erscheinungen stand. Und man sollte es eigentlich als etwas außerordentlich Bedeutsames ansehen und fühlen, insbesondere in diesen Tagen, wie etwas wie Unlösbares gegeben ist in der Art und Weise, wie sich Mitteleuropa stellen muß zu Westeuropa wegen einer Frage, die nach gewissen geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen in der Weise und in der anderen Weise gelöst gefordert werden kann, eine Frage, die entsprungen ist aus dem, was in Frankreich als nationaler Impuls sich herausgebildet hat, die aber, wenn man sie national lösen will, nicht gelöst werden kann.

Ich könnte noch vieles anführen an Symptomen der neueren Geschichte, aber ich will nur dasjenige noch anführen, was tief eingreift in das ganze Werden der neueren Menschheit, ich will anführen, obwohl man die Zusammenhänge nicht immer klar übersieht, das Heraufkommen der neueren naturwissenschaftlichen Denkweise, deren Bedeutung ich ja von anderen Gesichtspunkten in den vorangegangenen Vorträgen charakterisiert habe. Die naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise kommt herauf. Was tut sie? Sie stellt den Menschen auf sich selbst. Sie ist es gerade, die den Menschen als Persönlichkeit heraussondert aus der Gemeinschaft. Sie ist in vieler Beziehung der Impuls, der treibend ist auch in all dem anderen, das ich angeführt habe. In dieser naturwissenschaftlichen Denkweise liegt etwas, das sonderbar verrät, welche Bedeutung sie in der neueren Geschichte hat.

Zweierlei Probleme entstehen. Das eine möchte ich durch eine Tatsache Ihrem Gemüte nahebringen. Es ist diese Tatsache, daß Goethe 1830 einmal von einem Freunde in heller Aufregung gefunden wurde, und als er gefragt wurde, was er habe, sagte er: Die Nachrichten, die aus Frankreich kommen, sind überwältigend, die Welt steht in Flammen, etwas Neues spinnt sich an. — Soret, zu dem Goethe das gesagt hatte, glaubte natürlich, Goethe spreche von der eben damals ausgebrochenen Dreißigerrevolution. Nein, von dem ist nicht die Rede, sagte Goethe, ich spreche von jener Revolution, welche sich abspielt zwischen den beiden Naturforschern Cuvier und Geoffroy de SaintHilaire! — Cuvier war der Anschauung, daß alle Wesen der Natur nebeneinanderstehen, jedes einzelne für sich aufzufassen sei, Saint-Hilaire suchte einen gemeinsamen Typus in den organischen Formen, brachte das ganze organische Leben in Fluß, so daß es nur überschaut werden kann in diesem Fluß, wenn man unmittelbar produktiv geistig diesen Blick hinrichtet auf die Natur und den Geist ebenso beweglich erlebt wie die Natur selber. Goethe spürte etwas davon, daß es notwendig ist für die kommende Zeit, auch der Natur gegenüber den Geist lebendig zu halten. In dem, was Goethe an Geoflroy de Saint-Hilaire spürte, lag dasjenige, was schließlich, wenn es aus seinen Keimen zu den Früchten getrieben wird, die übersinnlichen Begriffe der Naturerscheinungen sind, die ich vorgestern hier charakterisierte.

Zunächst aber wurde die Welt überschattet von alldem, was aus der anderen Naturanschauung hervorgeht, notwendigerweise überschattet von jener Naturanschauung, die den Menschen herausstellt aus dem unmittelbar lebendigen Zusammenhange mit den Naturerscheinungen. Diese Naturanschauung, die also nicht ergriffen ist von dem Impuls, den Goethe meinte, führt zu der Erfassung desjenigen, was eigentlich nicht lebt in der Natur, sondern was das Absterbende ist, was die Natur auflöst, weil es zusammenhängt mit dem, was im Menschen selber sterblich ist, wie ich vorgestern charakterisiert habe.

Die Naturanschauung, von der Goethe sich abwandte, ist diejenige, die das allmähliche Verfallen nur erfassen kann im Naturgange, und aus den Symptomen des Verfallens dann sich erheben möchte zu dem, was auf ihre Weise nicht gezeigt werden kann, was nur im übersinnlichen Anschauen sich zeigen kann: zu den Symptomen des Aufsteigens, des Wachsens, des Geborenwerdens, des Gedeihens. Aber - so paradox es wiederum klingt — diese Naturanschauung, die eigentlich auf das Tote gerichtet ist in der lebendigen Natur, die warf ihre Schatten tief hin auf das ganze moderne soziale Zusammenleben. Sie schuf im Grunde einen neuen Universalimpuls über die neuere Menschheit hin, aber einen solchen Universalimpuls, gegen den sich der Mensch selbst in seiner Individualität fortwährend auflehnen muß, weil er ihn herausstellt aus der Natur und er eben den Zusammenhang immer wieder suchen muß. Seine Erkenntnis stellt ihn heraus. Er muß aus etwas anderem, als er durch diese Erkenntnis anstrebt, seinen Zusammenhang wieder suchen. Ein Dualismus, eine Zweiheit im Verhältnis des Menschen zu seiner Umwelt wird dadurch in das Leben hineingetragen. Diese Naturwissenschaft strömt ein in das moderne Leben der Technik, das die ganze moderne Kultur trägt, das ungeheuer bedeutungsvoll eingreift.

Haben wir gesehen in denjenigen Impulsen, die wir früher betrachtet haben, zum Beispiel in den nationalen, daß Althergebrachtes konserviert wird, kein neues Produktives eingeführt wird in das Leben, sieht man in dem Rätsel des europäischen Ostens, wie ein merkwürdig zur geistigen Produktivität angeregtes Volksgebilde sich einschnürt, um ja nicht produktiv sein zu dürfen, trotzdem es zur Produktivität im höchsten Maße veranlagt ist, sich einschnürt wirklich in die alleräußersten Fesseln der alten byzantinischen Kirchengemeinschaft, sehen wir, wie da Altes heraufgebracht wird und konserviert wird, so sehen wir, wie in dem, was die Naturanschauung ausgießt über die moderne Menschheit, nun ein Universales geschaffen wird, ein Universales, das nun wiederum nicht geht auf das, was der Mensch aus sich selber heraus produziert, sondern gerade auf dasjenige, was er in der Absonderung von sich selber als Verfall der Naturerscheinungen in seine Erkenntnis hereinnimmt und daher auch nur als etwas in seine Kultur einfließen lassen kann, was er hinausträgt in die Technik, indem er das Natürliche ertötet.

Dadurch, daß der Mensch zunächst im alten Sinne nicht produktiv ist, dadurch erringt er sich das in der neueren Zeit, seit dem 15. Jahrhundert auftretende Vollbewußtsein, während er früher nicht im Vollbewußtsein, sondern im Unterbewußtsein seinen Zusammenhang mit der Natur und mit der Welt überhaupt gewahrt hat. Zu der Konservierung des Alten kommt hinzu eine solche Erziehung der neueren Menschheit, die zwar durch ein Neues gegeben wird, die aber im Sinne des Alten verläuft. Dasjenige, was der Technik einverleibt wird, entspringt nur scheinbar produktiven Ideen. Aber diese produktiven Ideen entspringen nicht als selbständige Pflanze in der menschlichen Seele — wie das Übersinnliche, wenn es gesucht werden soll, als selbständige Pflanze in der menschlichen Seele entspringen muß -, sondern sie entspringen aus der ruhigen Betrachtung der objektiven Naturerscheinungen.

Wir sehen, wie ein bedeutsam in die neuere Entwickelung eingreifendes Ereignis gerade mit dieser modernen Technik zusammenhängt, denn erst jetzt zeigt sich, indem diese moderne Technik sich immer mehr und mehr in der neueren Geschichte ausbildet, daß auch eine Bedeutung gewinnt die Kolonisation; denn dasjenige, was das Kolonial- und Kolonisationsleben ist, das hängt im innigsten zusammen mit dem, was durch die Naturwissenschaft in die Technik einfließt.

Und nun werfen wir einen zusammenfassenden Blick noch auf das, was sich uns in all diesen Symptomen mehr oder weniger ausspricht. Wir sehen, wenn wir sie überblicken: was in ihnen auftritt seit dem i5. Jahrhundert als etwas Neues, das sind durchwegs Dinge, die nicht aus der produktiven Menschennatur heraus entspringen. Betrachtet man sie, dann sieht man sich genötigt, seinen Blick zu erweitern über den Gang des geschichtlichen Werdens der Menschheit, dann sieht man sich genötigt, anzuerkennen — und die übersinnliche Erkenntnis führt dazu, anzuerkennen —, daß es in diesem menschlichen Leben nicht bloß Aufsteigendes gibt, nicht bloß im abstrakten Sinne dasjenige, was man gewöhnlich Fortschritt nennt, sondern daß das aufsteigende, das sprießende, sprossende Leben verknüpft ist mit einem absteigenden Leben. Mit demjenigen ist das Leben verknüpft, das immerdar in den Tod hineinführt.

Wenn wir das einzelne Menschenleben betrachten, dann stellen sich uns Geburt und Wachsen und Werden getrennt hin neben Sterben und Verfall. Auch da ist es nur scheinbar; aber in der Betrachtung des äußeren Lebens zeigt uns gerade der Verlauf der neueren Geschichte, daß Sterben, absteigende und aufsteigende Entwickelung unmittelbar nebeneinanderstehen, ineinander eingreifen. Und wir sehen, daß die absteigende Entwickelung, die Entwickelung, die den geschichtlichen Tod aufnimmt, sogar für den Beginn dieser neueren Geschichtsepoche, die mit dem 15. Jahrhundert anhebt, zunächst durch mehrere Jahrhunderte bis in unsere Zeit herein eine große Bedeutung hat. Eine größere Bedeutung hat das Verfallsleben, das Todesleben, als das aufsteigende, das sprießende, sprossende Leben. Wir sehen, wie der Mensch in seinem Bewußtsein, indem er sich als moderner Mensch entwickelt, im Zusammenhang steht mit dem, was in ihm vergänglich ist, wie er spüren kann, wie dasjenige, was ihn zum Tode treibt, gerade auch das ist, was ihn in der Erkenntnis vorwärtsbringt. Während das sprießende, sprossende Leben ihn einlullt wie in Träume, können wir sehen, daß in der Geschichte unmittelbar eingreifend in der neueren Zeit sich herausentwickelt die Bewußtseinsseele aus der früher mehr unbewußten Seele, wie sie die Menschheit aus dem 8. vorchristlichen Jahrhunderte bis in das i5. nachchristliche Jahrhundert hinein entwikkelte. Wir sehen, wie der Mensch nötig hat für die erste Erziehung in der Menschheit zu dieser Bewußtseinsseele hin, daß sich gerade auch in seine Kultur wirksam für ihn hineinstellen die Verfallssymptome, die Symptome des Absterbelebens. Man wird das neuere geschichtliche Leben in seinem wirklichen Verhältnis zum Menschen nicht verstehen, wenn man nicht den Gedanken fassen kann - trotz aller Bewunderung, trotz aller willigen Anerkennung, die man haben muß für die großen, gewaltigen Errungenschaften der modernen Technik, der modernen nationalen Impulse -, daß in alldem absteigendes, zum Tode des geschichtlichen Werdens hinführendes Leben sein muß, und daß hineingeboren werden muß in dieses absteigende Leben ein aufsteigendes, ein sprießendes, sprossendes Leben.

Das ist es, was einsichtige Menschen in der neueren Zeit zu dem gebracht hat, was man den Kulturpessimismus nennen könnte. Solch ein Mensch wie Schopenhauer richtete den Blick hin auf den Verlauf namentlich der neueren Geschichte. Ihm kam dieses geschichtliche Treiben trotz aller Errungenschaften der neueren Zeit wie ein ziemlich nichtiges vor. Und allein dasjenige, was in einzelnen individuellen Menschen errungen werden kann, das schätzt Schopenhauer. Wenn auch die Pessimisten selbst nur Symptome sind im neueren geschichtlichen Werden, Menschen sind es, die ahnend hinblicken darauf, daß gerade das Größte, das Bedeutsamste, das man gewohnt ist als Charakteristikon der neueren Entwickelung anzusehen, der in das geschichtliche Werden sich hineinstellende Todesimpuls ist.

Was folgt daraus? Daraus folgt etwas, was man nennen könnte den tragischen Einschlag des neueren geschichtlichen Lebens. Selbstverständlich ist die Förderung desjenigen, was wir teils als konservierte, teils als aus den naturwissenschaftlichen Anschauungen hervorgegangene neue Impulse zu verzeichnen haben. Alles das ist so, daß wir uns sagen müssen: Man muß es fördern, man muß sich ihm widmen, es ist eine Notwendigkeit der neueren Zeit; es ist für den Menschen unbedingt in die weltgeschichtliche Entwickelung hineinzustellen, aber es muß in jeder seiner Erscheinungen dasjenige, was auf diesem Gebiete geschaffen wird, notwendigerweise auch wiederum zu seinem eigenen Untergange führen. Es müssen gerade durch diese großen Errungenschaften in die neuere Entwickelung die Probleme sich hineinstellen, die in Sackgassen führen, die an Enden führen, die durch sich selber nicht auflösbar sind, die den Menschen vor etwas hinstellen, das ihm vorkommen muß wie der Tod. Das ist das Tragische, daß gefördert werden muß, daß als Errungenschaft angesehen werden muß dasjenige, von dem man weiß: indem man es schafft, schafft man etwas, was zu gleicher Zeit verfallen muß. Ja, man beginnt schon den Verfall, indem man es schafft. _

Wer glaubt, daß für sich bestehen können diejenigen Tatsachen, welche aus den angedeuteten Impulsen sich in die neuere geschichtliche Entwickelung hineinstellen, der gleicht einem Menschen, der da glaubt, daß eine Frau gebären kann ohne zu empfangen, ohne daß das andere Prinzip mit dem einen Prinzip sich verbindet. Was von den angedeuteten Impulsen kommt, stellt sich dar als etwas, das einseitig ist, das der Befruchtung von anderer Seite bedarf, wenn es fortbestehen soll. Denn in sich selber hat es nur die Kraft des Absterbens. Man nehme alles dasjenige, was sich durch die reine Naturgrundlage des Nationalen, was sich durch moderne Technik, durch Industrie und durch den sozialen Verkehr, sei er kommerzieller, sei er anderer Verkehr, in der neueren Menschheit ergeben hat, man nehme alles das — es ist für sich, seinem eigenen Impulse nach betrachtet, unfruchtbar und führt, ich möchte sagen, in Rhythmen immer in seinen eigenen Tod hinein. Und wir müssen erkennen, daß wir es so anzuschauen haben, daß wir uns sagen: Um etwas anderem willen muß dieses Sterbende als Errungenschaft in die moderne Welt hineingesetzt werden.

Was ist dieses andere? Nun, wir haben ja gesehen, wenn wir nun den Gang der neueren Geschichte in ihrer Aufeinanderfolge an irgendwelchen Symptomen, die wir als solche ansehen, betrachten, so enthüllt sich uns eben das Merkwürdige, das ich angedeutet habe. Auf der einen Seite sehen wir seit dem i5. Jahrhundert gerade durch das Unproduktive die Bewußtseinsseele heraufblühen. Auf der anderen Seite sehen wir, wie diese Bewußtseinsseele dadurch groß wird, daß aus ihrer Umgebung zunächst entzogen wird die Anregung zu dem Produktiven, daß sie sich erzieht an dem zum Sterben der Kultur immerdar von neuem führenden. Dadurch wird der Mensch verselbständigt, daß ihn die äußere Welt nicht anregt zu etwas, was produktiv lebt, sondern was in seiner Erkenntnis fortwährend den Keim des Sterbens trägt; dadurch wird der Mensch in seiner individuellen und bewußten Naturentwickelung erzogen, daß ihn die Außenwelt nicht erzieht zum Leben, nicht erzieht zu dem, was ihn hinaufbringen soll, sondern ihn fortwährend abhält von dem, was ihn hinaufbringen soll und dadurch gerade auf sich selbst stellt.

Aber nun sehen wir, wenn wir rein mit übersinnlicher Erkenntnis auf diesen Tatsachengang hinblicken, daß diesem Inneren des Menschen — dem Hingang zur Bewußtseinsseele seit dem i5. Jahrhundert - ein objektives Äußeres entspricht, das in den ersten Jahrhunderten nur nicht hervortreten konnte, das sich uns aber sofort zeigt, wenn wir nun wirklich unbefangen gerade das menschliche Gemüt in der Gegenwart mit seiner wiedererrungenen Hinneigung zu einem übersinnlichen Leben betrachten. Selbstverständlich ist es bei vielen noch unbewußt, aber bei sehr zahlreichen Menschen der Gegenwart ist dieses Hinneigen zu einem übersinnlichen Leben vorhanden. Und derjenige, der sich beschäftigt mit der Geisteswissenschaft, die anthroposophisch orientiert ist, der weiß, daß nur von vergänglicher Dauer war, was sich entwickelte als Prinzip des Ersterbens in der äußeren materiellen Kultur der neueren Zeit, daß wir vor einem großen Zeitenwendepunkte stehen, der bringen wird von außen — aber jetzt nicht durch die Natur angeregt, sondern so angeregt, wie ich es dargestellt habe in den Betrachtungen über anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft —, der an den Menschen heranbringt eine neue Offenbarung des Übersinnlichen.

Wir sehen sie überall herankommen, diese neue Offenbarung des Übersinnlichen. Sie wird jetzt errungen werden nicht so wie in früheren Zeiten, wo unbewußt der Mensch durch seine Instinkte zusammenhing mit der Natur und aus der Natur selber heraus dasjenige fand, das auch für die Seele galt, das er dann auch in das soziale, geschichtliche Leben einführen konnte. Über all dasjenige hinaus, was diese Naturanschauung und was die alten Impulse der neueren geschichtlichen Entwickelung geben können, wird sich ein produktives, ein übersinnliches Leben entwickeln. Das Leben wird sich offenbaren aus der geistigen Welt heraus. Und wenn man hinschaut gerade auf das, was sich in der Gegenwart ergeben hat als eine so furchtbare Katastrophe, was ist es anderes, in echtem Wahrheitslichte betrachtet, als etwas, in das sich Sterbendes zusammendrängt.

Innerhalb dieses katastrophalen Lebens wird vieles sterben. Schneller stirbt dasjenige, was so, wie ich es charakterisiert habe, das Prinzip des Sterbens in sich enthält. Zum Pessimismus ist, wenn auch zum Leid, wenn auch zum Schmerz, wenn auch zu alldem, was uns aus dem Anblicke und aus dem Mitmachen dieser Katastrophe erfließen kann, zum Kulturpessimismus ist keine Veranlassung, wenn man das Leben im Lichte anthroposophisch orientierter Geisteswissenschaft betrachtet. Denn es zeigt sich einmal an einer Stelle der neueren geschichtlichen Entwickelung über die ganze Erde hin, daß zusammendringt dasjenige, was sonst verteilt ist als Sterben über das materielle Leben, was unserem neueren Leben den tragischen Zug gibt, was uns zugleich zeigt, daß alles dasjenige unfruchtbar sein muß, was so in die Welt kommt, wie ich es vorhin charakterisiert habe, daß dieses aber befruchtet werden muß aus dem vom Übersinnlichen heraus Empfangenen.

Und wer unbefangenen Gemütes hinschaut auf dasjenige, was die Ergänzung ist zu der Entwickelung der Bewußtseinsseele, auf die neuen Offenbarungen aus dem Übersinnlichen, der wird, selbst gebeugt vom Schmerze über dasjenige, was jetzt geschieht, das Haupt erheben und sich sagen: Es ist zugleich die erste Morgenröte für dasjenige, was den Impuls in der Menschheit auslösen muß nach dem Übersinnlichen hin. Verloren wären alle Leiden, alle Schmerzen über diesen Zusammenbruch, vergebens wären alle die Gefühle, die mit berechtigtem Schmerze hinschauen auf diesen Zusammenbruch, wenn sich diese Gefühle nicht erheben könnten dazu, daß, wie aus allem, was bestimmt ist zum Sterben in der Natur, so auch aus diesem Sterben ein Neues entspringt. Aber dasjenige, was sich entwickeln soll, kann sich nur entwickeln, wenn das andere, das Befruchtende, das aus der übersinnlichen Welt heraus sich offenbarend Befruchtende von der Menschheit willig aufgenommen werden wird.

Die Bewußtseinsseele hat sich entwickelt. Die Natur darf uns nicht mehr unbewußt dasjenige geben, was wir in die Welt des sozialen, des geschichtlichen Werdens hineinsetzen. Bewußt muß die neuere Menschheit auch aufnehmen, das heißt willig aufnehmen dasjenige, was als neuere übersinnliche Offenbarung der Bewußtseinsseele sich ergibt, wenn diese Bewußtseinsseele will. Gerade wenn wir ohne Vorurteile die Tragik des modernen Lebens betrachten, offenbart sich auf der anderen Seite der erlösende Impuls. Er offenbart sich dadurch, daß wir gedrängt werden, anzuerkennen die Offenbarung eines neuen Übersinnlichen, das nun auch für die Bewußtseinsseele da sein muß.

Und so sehen wir hindurch durch die Symptome auf das, was aus dem Menschen wird, und auf dasjenige, was dem Menschen sich aus dem Weltenall heraus offenbaren soll. Während der griechisch-lateinische Zeitraum, der begonnen hat im 8. Jahrhundert vor unserer Zeitrechnung und geschlossen hat im i5. Jahrhundert, noch das seelische Leben gebunden zeigte an das äußere körperliche Leben, dadurch gerade die großen griechischen, die großen römischen Errungenschaften hervorbrachte und sie dem Mittelalter übergab, geht über durch einen mächtigen Sprung im 15. Jahrhundert die Entwickelung zur Entwickelung der Bewußtseinskräfte, desjenigen, was man die Bewußtseinsseele nennen kann. Und in dieser Entwickelung stehen wir darinnen. Wir sehen, wie die Anknüpfung des Menschen an das, was sich hinter den Symptomen offenbart, erst eine wahre geschichtliche Wissenschaft werden kann. Aber man muß den

Mut haben anzuerkennen, daß um uns herum nicht nur Leben ist, sondern Tod ist, und daß der Tod notwendig ist, damit immer neues Leben geboren werde. Notwendig war auch das Überwiegen des Todes durch eine gewisse Zeit hindurch, damit der Mensch um so mehr die Kräfte der Bewußtseinsseele entwickeln könne. Und wird ihm nicht mehr von außen gegeben, so wird er auf den Weg gedrängt, im Inneren den Geist, das Übersinnliche zu suchen.

Nun kann man allerdings eines einwenden. Man kann sagen: Ja, wo sind denn die Menschen, wie zahlreich sind sie denn? — Es sind ihrer nicht viele, die da hinweisen können durch die Entwickelung ihrer eigenen Seelenkräfte auf die übersinnliche Welt. Es sind gewiß, das muß zugegeben werden, heute noch wenige. Es werden ihrer immer mehr werden; aber darauf kommt es nicht an, wieviel da sind, die den Weg hineinfinden in jenes Übersinnliche, das das Sinnliche befruchten muß, sondern darauf kommt es an, daß man den Weg übersinnlicher Erkenntnis nicht selbst zu gehen braucht, sondern, ganz gleichgültig, wie und als was man den schätzt, der die Ergebnisse des Übersinnlichen bringt — wenn sie einmal ausgesprochen sind, wenn sie hineingeworfen sind in die menschliche Geisteskultur, können sie durch den ganz gewöhnlichen Verstand, der den Menschen im Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele gegeben ist, auch verstanden werden. Begreifen kann der Mensch alles, was aus dem Übersinnlichen’ herausgeholt wird, heute schon in weitestem Umfange, wenn er sich nur nicht selber Steine in den Weg wirft durch Vorurteile, die er dann nicht überwinden kann.

Aber eines gehört mit dazu. Denken Sie nur, daß man durch eine solche Geschichtsbetrachtung, wie ich sie skizziert habe, genötigt ist, sich gewissermaßen erkennend, mit vollem Bewußtsein zu gestehen dasjenige, was man tun muß, was eine Notwendigkeit in der Zeit ist und eine Notwendigkeit immer mehr und mehr werden wird, daß das zu gleicher Zeit ein fortwährendes Absterbendes ist. Es gehört ein gewisser Mut dazu, anzuerkennen, daß man schaffen muß, damit das Schaffende untergehen könne und der Mutterboden sein könne für das Vaterprinzip des Geistigen, des Übersinnlichen. Solcher Mut ist zu allem übersinnlichen Erkennen allerdings notwendig. Und Furcht vor dem übersinnlichen Erkennen ist das, was viele Leute von diesem übersinnlichen Erkennen abhält. Auf einem Gebiete wenigstens stellt uns die neuere Zeit unmittelbar vor die Notwendigkeit, diesen Mut zu entwickeln, wenn wir überhaupt für die Entwickelung der Menschheit in Betracht kommen wollen: auf dem Gebiet der Geschichte. Diejenigen, die von übersinnlicher Erkenntnis etwas wissen, sprechen immer vom Überschreiten der Schwelle, von einem Hüter der Schwelle. Man spricht vom Überschreiten der Schwelle, weil, wenn man sich die übersinnliche Welt erschließt, man mit vielem brechen muß, was einem als unbedingt fester Boden der Erkenntnis erscheint, bevor man die Schwelle überschritten hat. Gewissermaßen empfindet es der Mensch unbewußt als eine Wohltat, daß er die Schwelle nicht zu überschreiten braucht. Was aber zu einer Zeit getan werden brauchte in bezug auf das geschichtliche Werden, es wird immer mehr und mehr zur Notwendigkeit. Und das gehört wiederum zum inneren Gang der geschichtlichen Entwickelung seit dem 15. Jahrhundert, es wird immer mehr und mehr zur Notwendigkeit, sich zu sagen: Du webst und lebst mit an dem Schaffen von Sterbeprozessen, von Verfallsprozessen. Du mußt dich diesen Verfallsprozessen widmen, und dadurch wird deine innere Kraft angeregt, gerade dadurch wirst du nahegebracht dem Übersinnlichen. Du mußt dasjenige, was du vorher als ein geistiges Fundament betrachtet hast, verlassen, die Schwelle in die übersinnliche Welt überschreiten, gewissermaßen den Boden unter den Füßen verlieren, dafür aber in dem eigenen Inneren den festen Schwerpunkt finden, an dem man sich auch gegenüber dem SinnlichBodenlosen halten kann.

Einen neuen Schwerpunkt seines ganzen Seelenlebens hat der Mensch notwendig zu finden. Und die geschichtliche Notwendigkeit legt ihm nahe, immer mehr und mehr gegen die Zukunft hin diesen Schwerpunkt zu suchen. Dadurch, daß man also erkennt, wird es nicht anders. Wir stehen gewissermaßen — so wie ich es gemeint habe, ist es eben aufzufassen — vor dem Sterben. Dadurch, daß man sich das Geständnis ablegt: Es ist ein Sterben —- dadurch wird es nicht anders. Aber man muß gerade dadurch gedrängt werden, das ihm entgegenstehende Lebende zu befruchten suchen. Denn es ist einmal so: Über dem Suchen nach übersinnlichen Erkenntnissen stand immer, solange die Menschheit strebte, die große, gewaltige Aufforderung: «Erkenne dich selbst.» Und auch für heute ist es die Aufforderung an die suchende Menschheit. Versucht der Mensch dies heute zu erkennen, so kann er es nur dadurch, daß er zu Welten aufsteigt, die über sein endliches Dasein hinauszuführen vermögen. Er muß vor allen Dingen, gedrängt durch die Notwendigkeiten der menschlichen Entwickelung, in bezug auf das geschichtliche Leben der neueren Zeit sich gestehen: mit der Bewußtseinsseele ist im Sinne der neueren Geschichte der Stachel eingepflanzt, sich immer mehr und mehr selbst zu erkennen. Damit, daß er sich selbst erkennt, ist er in die Notwendigkeit versetzt, über sich hinauszugelangen. Indem er über sich hinausgelangt, indem er sein Übersinnliches in seinem Sinnlichen erfaßt, gelangt er auch zu dem, was in der Geschichte als Übersinnliches wirkt und wofür die äußeren Tatsachen nur Symptome sind. Auch eine Geschichte werden wir erst wirklich haben, fruchtbar für das Leben, wenn wir hinter den Symptomen wie hinter den Naturerscheinungen das Übersinnliche suchen.

Aus unserer Geschichtsbetrachtung ging hervor, daß die neuere Entwickelung dem Menschen Prüfungen auferlegt, die Prüfung zu dem, daß er glaubt, das Leben sei nur aufsteigend, auch das absteigende Leben zu betrachten, zu der Evolution auch die Involution. Indem der Mensch übersinnlich erkennt, wird er sich bereitmachen zu diesen Prüfungen. Denn indem er geschichtlich übersinnlich erkennt, wird dieses Erkennen selbst dadurch, daß er die Schwelle überschreiten muß, seinen neuen Schwerpunkt im Inneren des Seelenlebens suchen muß, wird diese neue Erkenntnis eine so starke Prüfung für seine Seele sein, daß das, was aus dieser Prüfung hervorgeht, ihm Kraft gibt zum Durchmachen jener anderen Prüfungen, die das Leben immer mehr und mehr gegen die Zukunft hin aus der Geschichte heraus dem Menschen auferlegen wird. Aber man darf sagen: Stark und kräftig und wirklich lebenstüchtig wird der Mensch doch nur durch Prüfungen. Davon soll ihn nicht Erkenntnisfurcht abhalten, in die Prüfungen hineinzutreten, sondern es soll ihn gerade Erkenntnismut treiben, diese Prüfungen auf sich zu nehmen. Er wird die Erkenntnisprüfungen zu solchen Kräften entwickeln, die ihn auch hineinführen als schaffendes, am Werden mitwirkendes, in die Geschichte fruchtbar hinein gestelltes Menschenwesen.

Fragenbeantwortung

Mir wurde nahegelegt, ob ich nicht in dieser Fragenbeantwortung kurz etwas sagen könnte über eine einzelne Erscheinung in der neueren geschichtlichen Entwickelung, die ja dem menschlichen Leben besonders naheliegt: über die Sprachentwickelung. Nun wäre natürlich darüber wiederum ein ganzer Vortrag zu halten, wenn ich irgend etwas Erschöpfendes sagen wollte. Aber ich möchte auf die Anregung schon aus dem Grunde eingehen, weil ich wirklich Ihre Aufmerksamkeit auf die Tatsache hinlenken möchte, daß die hier gemeinte anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft wahrhaftig nicht so dasteht, als ob sie etwa ihr Dasein einem Einfall verdankte, als ob sie aus der Pistole geschossen wäre, als ob sie aus zusammengeholten einzelnen Aperçus bestünde. Nein, wenn Sie sich mit der Literatur bekanntmachen, werden Sie sehen, daß diese anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft schon aus der ganzen Breite der Beobachtung, aus der ganzen Breite der Welterscheinungen heraus das holt, was sie zu sagen hat.

Natürlich muß man immer, wenn man in einer Stunde und ich bedaure ja immer, daß es ohnedies immer länger wird! — weite Gebiete zusammenzufassen hat, den Eindruck machen, als ob man in abstrakten Gebieten herumwandelte; allein es soll auch niemand überzeugt, sondern nur angeregt werden, weiterzugehen, und dann wird man schon sehen, daß wirklich viel mehr als in einer anderen wissenschaftlichen Bestrebung gerade in dieser Geisteswissenschaft sorgfältiges, gewissenhaftes methodisches Suchen, ernste Forschung zugrunde liegt.

Es ist interessant, gerade das, was ich heute im allgemeinen charakterisiert habe, an einer solchen einzelnen Erscheinung wie der menschlichen Sprachentwickelung einmal zu beobachten. Ich will aber auch da nur auf eine Erscheinung dieser Sprachentwickelung eingehen. Wenn wir heute als Menschen sprechen, denken wir gewöhnlich gar nicht darüber nach, wie das Sprechen uns eigentlich in jedem Augenblicke zwingt, ungenau zu werden. Ich will nur das sagen: ungenau zu werden. Fritz Mauthner hat ein dreibändiges Werk und außerdem noch ein «Wörterbuch der Philosophie» geschrieben, um zum Ausdrucke zu bringen, wie alles dasjenige, was man in der Weltanschauung und in der Wissenschaft produziere, auf der Sprache beruhe und die Sprache ungenau sei. So daß man eigentlich niemals eine wahre Wissenschaft haben könne.

Nun, das ist gegenüber der Geisteswissenschaft selbstverständlich eine törichte Behauptung, wenn sie auch in drei Bänden auftritt. Aber bedeutsam ist es doch, auf das zugrunde liegende Teilphänomen einzugehen. Wenn man zurückgeht in der menschlichen Sprachentwickelung, so findet man, entgegen der äußeren anthropologischen Sprachforschung, welche mit unzulänglichen Mitteln arbeitet, daß der Mensch in älteren Zeiten, je mehr man in diese älteren Zeiten kommt, immer mehr und mehr noch innerlich seelisch, auch wiederum instinktiv und unbewußt, verwachsen ist mit dem, was in seiner Sprache zum Ausdrucke kommt. Der Mensch löst sich auch von dem, was seine eigene Natur enthält, allmählich los, wie er sich von der äußeren Natur loslöst.

Er löst sich auch von dem unmittelbaren Verbundenwerden mit der Sprache los. Und die Sprache wird etwas Außerliches. Ein starker Dualismus entsteht zwischen dem innerlich erlebten Gedanken, den mancher schon gar nicht mehr hat, weil er in der Sphäre der Sprache bleibt und dem, was gesprochen wird. Und nötig hat man, wenn man sich keiner Täuschung hingibt in dem Entwickelungspunkte der Menschheit, in dem wir jetzt stehen, im Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele, gerade hinzublicken darauf, wie die Sprache sich schon von dem Menschen losgelöst hat. Eigentlich sind es nur noch die Eigennamen, die sich auf ein einziges Wesen beziehen, die wirklich unmittelbar auf dieses Wesen zutreffen. Sobald man allgemeine Namen verwendet, seien sie Eigenschafts- oder Hauptwörter oder was immer, drücken sie nur ungenau dasjenige aus, was sie ausdrücken sollen. Sie sind abstrakt, sie sind Allgemeinheiten gleich. Und nur dann wird man die Sprache heute in ihrem Verhältnis zum menschlichen Leben richtig verstehen, wenn man sie auffaßt eigentlich als Gebärde; wenn man sich bewußt ist: wie ich unmittelbar lebendig hindeute, wenn ich mit dem Finger auf etwas zeige, so deute ich auch, durch die Hervorbringungen meines Kehlkopfes und durch den Laut, gebärdenhaft hin auf dasjenige, auf das sich die Laute der Sprache beziehen. Die Sprache auffassenlernen als Gebärde, das ist es, um was es sich handelt. So hat die alte Zeit ein unbestimmtes, ich möchte sagen, im Unterbewußtsein liegendes, instinktives Ahnen davon gehabt, wie das seelische Leben zusammenhängt gebärdenhaft mit dem Laut; sie hat nicht verwechselt das innerliche seelische Erleben mit dem, was in der Sprache zum Ausdrucke kommt.

Wir selbst haben versucht, um auf einem Gebiete der Geisteswissenschaft naheliegende Bestrebungen zu entfalten, das Gebärdenhafte der Sprache wiederum zur Anschauung zu bringen in dem, was wir die Eurythmie nennen, wo versucht worden ist, den ganzen Menschen in Bewegung zu bringen, und durch die Bewegungen der Glieder, durch Bewegungen der Menschengestalt im Raume, durch Gruppenbewegungen, durch die Verhältnisse von Menschen untereinander, gebärdenhaft dasjenige auszudrücken, was sonst auch in der Gebärde, aber nur nicht als Gebärde bemerkt, durch den menschlichen Kehlkopf und seine Nachbarorgane zum Ausdrucke kommt. Wir bezeichnen diese Art von Bewegungskunst, die als Neues in die Menschheit eindringen muß, als Eurythmie. Und wir haben ja hier in Zürich an diesen Vortrag anknüpfen wollen eine eurythmische Darstellung. Sie muß verschoben werden, weil wir zwar die Erlaubnis bekamen, diese Vorträge in der jetzigen schwierigen Zeit zu halten, nicht aber, diese eurythmische Vorstellung zu geben. Sie hätte gerade zeigen wollen, wie gewissermaßen der ganze Mensch zum Kehlkopf wird. Indem man sich dessen bewußt wird, was die Sprache ist, kommt man auf etwas, was besonders wichtig, ganz fundamental wichtig für das Leben der Gegenwart und der Zukunft werden wird.

Nichts trifft man heute öfter im menschlichen Leben, als daß irgend jemand etwas ausspricht, zum Beispiel ich hier in der Geisteswissenschaft. Ein anderer kommt und sagt: Das habe ich dort gelesen —, und zeigt etwas auf, was wenigstens in Einzelheiten mit den Worten allen vollständig übereinstimmt. Ich könnte Ihnen eklatante Fälle dieser Art zeigen. Ich will nur einen Fall besonders hervorheben, an dem sich mir die Sache ganz besonders hervorragend dargestellt hat.

Ich habe, weil ich nun wahrlich versuche, all die Dinge, die die Geisteswissenschaft von mir an Verarbeitung fordert, auf das Leben anzuwenden, dadurch gerade einzudringen in die wirklichen Impulse des Lebens, so habe ich seit langem mich beschäftigt mit dem, was ich nennen möchte die ganze Denkungsart, die ganze Denkgesinnung von Woodrow Wilson. Es ist für mich interessant gewesen, gerade die Aufsätze über geschichtliche Methode, über Geschichtsbetrachtung und über das amerikanische geschichtliche Leben von Woodrow Wilson zu studieren. Er spielt ja eine so große Rolle im Leben der Gegenwart, man muß ihn kennenlernen — so sagt sich derjenige, der nicht dasjenige verschlafen will, was in der Gegenwart geschieht, sondern es mit wachen Sinnen beobachten will. Ich habe bewundern gelernt die Art und Weise, wie großartig, wirklich amerikanisch treffend Woodrow Wilson die Entwickelung des amerikanischen Volkes selbst darstellt, dieses Fortschreiten von dem amerikanischen Osten nach dem amerikanischen Westen, das Auftreten des wirklichen amerikanischen Lebens in einer ganz eigentümlichen Weise, erst, als durchgedrungen wird von dem Osten nach dem Westen, während alles übrige, was dem vorangegangen ist, von Woodrow Wilson prägnant dargestellt wird als Anhängsel zum europäischen Leben. Dieses Ausroden der Natur, dieses Überwinden der Natur, dieses Überwinden der Eingeborenen des amerikanischen Westens, diese eigentümliche Art von Geschichtemachen, die mit manchem ähnlich ist, was sonst im Leben der Menschen sich zugetragen hat, aber doch wiederum ganz spezifisch verschieden ist, es kommt großartig zum Ausdruck. Und daher ist es auch interessant, zu sehen, wie Woodrow Wilson seine Geschichtsmethode einrichtet.

Ich bin nachgegangen den Beschreibungen, wo er seine Geschichtsmethode selbst darstellt. Da stellte sich mir etwas sehr Eigentümliches heraus: Aus diesem durch und durch amerikanisch gearteten Mann fließen Sätze heraus, die mir fast wörtlich übereinstimmend schienen mit Sätzen eines ganz anderen Mannes, der wirklich aus ganz anderer Lebens- und Denkergesinnung heraus sich entwickelt hat. Man könnte Sätze von Woodrow Wilson in seinem Aufsatze über Methodik der Geschichte, die bei ihm solch gute Früchte getragen hat, wörtlich herübernehmen in Aufsätze von Herman Grimm, der nun ganz in der neuzeitlichen Goethe-Entwickelung drinnensteht, der nun aus dieser Goethe-Entwickelung als ein wirklich durch und durch mitteleuropäisch-deutscher Geist dasteht. Man könnte sagen: Man braucht nur Sätze herauszuheben aus Herman Grimms Aufsätzen, sie herüberzusetzen, und von Woodrow Wilson Sätze herübernehmen in Herman Grimms Aufsätze, man würde dem Wortlaute nach gar keine großen Veränderungen finden. — Aber man lernt an einer solchen Erfahrung dasjenige, was ich nun mit trivialen Worten ausdrücken will, aber ich will etwas sehr Bedeutsames dadurch ausdrücken, man lernt: Wenn zwei dasselbe sagen, ist es nicht dasselbe, sei es auch dem Wortlaute nach übereinstimmend.

Dasjenige, was man daraus lernen muß, ist, daß man sich einzuleben hat nicht bloß in den Wortlaut, der durch die Sprache gegeben ist, sondern in den ganzen Menschen. Dann wird man das spezifisch Verschiedene Herman Grimms und Woodrow Wilsons finden, dann wird man finden, wie bei Grimm jeder einzelne Satz erarbeitet ist mit voller Bewußtseinsseele, wie das Fortschreiten in dem geistvollen Aufsatze von Herman Grimm, wo er über geschichtliche Methode und geschichtliche Betrachtung spricht, wahrlich so ist, daß man sieht, von einem Satz zum anderen schreitet er fort im inneren Seelenkampf, so daß nichts unbewußt bleibt, sondern alles in das Bewußtsein hereingedrängt wird. Man hat immer zu tun mit diesem innerlichen Fortschreiten der Seele.

Sieht man hinüber, wie sich bei Woodrow Wilson die Sache ausnimmt, dann sieht man, wie aus merkwürdig unterbewußten Untergründen der Seele, wie aus dem Menschen selbst im Gegensatz zu dem innerlichen Einwirken diese Sätze heraufdringen. Ich meine damit gar nichts Übles, aber ich möchte nur, wenn ich mich paradox ausdrücken darf, anschaulich machen, bei Herman Grimm fühle ich immer: in der Region des ganz bewußten Seelenlebens geht von Satz zu Satz alles seelische Leben vor sich; bei Woodrow Wilson spüre ich: er ist wie von etwas besessen, das in seinem eigenen Inneren liegt und das seine eigenen Wahrheiten in seinem eigenen Inneren heraufstrahlt. — Wie gesagt, ich meine nichts Sympathisches oder Antipathisches damit, sondern nur etwas, was ich charakterisieren will. Es wird ihm eingegeben aus den eigenen Untergründen der Seele. Da’ werden wir finden, wirklich zu erkennen, selbst wenn der Wortlaut gleich ist: wenn zwei dasselbe sagen, so ist es nicht dasselbe. Wir erkennen nur, was zugrunde liegt, wenn wir uns nicht an den Wortlaut halten, sondern wenn wir uns an das, was aus dem ganzen Darleben der Persönlichkeit folgt, zu halten verstehen.

Sehen Sie, das wird die moderne Menschheit lernen müssen zu überwinden, was heute so gang und gäbe ist: wenn man etwas vorgelegt bekommt, so beurteilt man es nur aus dem Inhalte heraus. Das wird man lernen müssen, daß der Inhalt gar nicht das Wesentliche ist. Wenn ich über Geisteswissenschaft spreche, so lege ich nicht das Wesentliche auf Satzformulierung, auf den Inhalt, sondern das Wesentliche beruht darauf, daß in das, was ich sage, einfließe dasjenige, was wirklich aus der übersinnlichen Welt heraus projiziert ist. Auf das Wie einen größeren Wert legen als auf das Was, daß man spürt, daß man fühlen kann: Die Dinge sind aus der übersinnlichen Welt heraus gesprochen, darauf kommt es an.

So muß man überhaupt auch in der Gegenwart gegenüber dem gewöhnlichen Leben lernen. Mag irgendeine Zeitung, irgendein Journal etwas noch so Schönes sagen man kann heute furchtbar schöne Sachen sagen, denn die Dinge liegen ja auf der Straße, die «schönen Ideale» und die «schönen Sachen» -, es kommt nicht auf den Wortlaut an, sondern es kommt darauf an, aus welchen Seelenmächten sie entspringen, daß man durch die Sätze selbst und durch die Worte hinblickt auf Symptome, auf den Menschen. Wir müssen durchdringen wie durch einen Schleier durch die Sprache und durch den Wortlaut, und so dem Menschen uns wiederum nähern. Das lehrt uns gerade die neuere Sprachentwickelung, die den Menschen losgelöst hat in seinem innersten Wesen, in seiner Bewußtseinsseele, von der Sprache. Das erzieht aus uns heraus die Notwendigkeit, nicht bloß auf den Wortlaut, sondern durch den Wortlaut durch auf die menschliche Seele zu sehen, nach allen Seiten, mit allen Möglichkeiten dem nachzugehen.

Allerdings muß etwas überwunden werden, wenn in dieser Richtung fortgeschritten werden soll, denn die Menschen sind heute noch an die Abstraktionen gewöhnt, an dieses, ich möchte sagen bürgerliche, philiströse Sich-Halten an den unmittelbaren Inhalt. Wenn einer ein Ideal ausspricht und irgend etwas noch so schön formuliert — wir müssen uns klar sein, daß das heute so billig ist wie Brombeeren, denn die Ideale sind geformt. Man kann alle möglichen Ideale für die Menschen und die Völker hinstellen, sie sind geformt. Es kommt darauf an, woher sie kommen, woher im Seeleninneren, in der Seelenregion sie wirklich entspringen. Es wird das Leben ungeheuer befruchtet werden, wenn wir in die Lage kommen, das Leben so anzusehen.

Vielleicht darf ich auch etwas Persönliches anführen. Sehen Sie, mir werden mancherlei poetische Produktionen übergeben. Wer dichtet heute nicht alles! Unter diesen poetischen Produktionen findet man solche, die sehr formvollendet sind, die wunderbar dies oder jenes ausdrücken, und solche, die scheinbar ungelenk sind, die Schwierigkeiten haben mit der Sprache, die sogar holperig, primitiv sind. Derjenige, der sich auf einen noch unmodernen Standpunkt stellt, der wird natürlich seine Freude haben über das Schöne, namentlich Formvollendete der Sprache. Er wird nicht, heute noch nicht, empfinden, daß Emanuel Geibel recht hatte, als er von sich selber sagte: Seine Verse werden ein Publikum finden, solange es Backfische gibt. Sie sind schön, sie sind glatt, und werden ein Publikum finden, selbst unter denjenigen Menschen, die zum Beispiel Wildenbruch oder ähnliche Leute für Dichter halten - und derer sind auch viele.

Aber es gibt heute auf diesem Gebiete eine andere Beurteilung, und das ist auch bei anderen Künsten der Fall, aber hier spreche ich jetzt über die Sprache. Es gibt heute Dichter, über deren Verse man stolpern kann; man kann Schwierigkeiten haben, weil sie in einer ungelenken Sprache sprechen, aber es ist ein neuer Impuls in ihnen; den muß man fühlen! Man muß durch den Schleier der Sprache den geleckten Versen in das Oberflächliche der Seele blicken können. Denn geleckte Verse, schöne, geleckte Verse, die vie] schöner sind als die Goetheschen Verse, sind heute billig wie Brombeeren; denn die Sprache dichtet schon. Aber neues seelisches Leben, Leben, das unmittelbar aus dem Quell alles Lebens herkommt, das muß erst gesucht werden. Das drückt sich manchmal gerade dadurch aus, daß es einen Kampf zu führen hat mit der Sprache, daß es gewissermaßen erst bei einem Stottern ist. Aber solches «Stottern» kann einem lieber sein als dasjenige, was in sich vollendet ist, und nur auf eine oberflächliche Seele hinweist. Es wurden mir einmal Verse übergeben bei einer Gelegenheit, wo wir selbst solche Verse brauchten, weil wir eine Übersetzung aus einer anderen Sprache zu leisten hatten, sehr schöne Verse. Ich wurde wütend darüber und machte selbst schlechte. Ich bin mir bewußt, daß sie als Verse viel schlechter sind; aber ich wußte, ich wurde in dem Falle in die Notwendigkeit versetzt, in einer vielleicht holperig erscheinenden Sprache dasjenige auszudrücken, was ausgedrückt werden sollte, wenn man aus dem entsprechend gesuchten Lebensquell schöpfte. Ich überschätze durchaus nicht dasjenige, was ich zu leisten übernommen habe; aber ich überschätze auch nicht die geleckten Verse, die mir übergeben wurden.

Das Suchen des Menschen durch die Sprache im Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele, das ist etwas, was wiederum als Lebenspraxis sich heraus ergibt aus einer wirklichen Betrachtung des sprachlichen Lebens. Ich habe deshalb auch heute rückhaltlos versucht, auch nicht bei jedem Satze so zu sprechen, als wenn ich Geisteswissenschaft tradierte und immer das Übersinnliche beweisen wollte, sondern ich habe versucht, das hineinzulegen in das Wie der Geschichtsbetrachtung. Und ich glaube, das ist auch das Wichtige: daß man nicht nur denjenigen einen wahren Geistesforscher immer wieder und wiederum nennt, der bei jedem fünften Wort das Wort: Geist und Geist und geistige Welt gebraucht und dann glaubt, das den Menschen dann so suggerieren zu können, sondern der durch die Art der Betrachtungsweise der Welt, selbst der alleräußerlichsten Welt, durch das Wie, wie er die Dinge darstellt, zeigt, daß der innerliche Führer, der eben von Gedanke zu Gedanke, von Anschauung zu Anschauung, von Impuls zu Impuls führt, daß dieser Führer der Geist ist. Wenn dieser Führer der Geist ist, dann braucht man ihn nicht immer wieder vorzupiepsen!

Das ist etwas, was Ihnen zeigt, wie man an der Sprache erhärten kann, was ich in einem umfassenden Vortrage darstellen könnte.

The History of Modern Times in the Light of Spiritual Scientific Research

As I will be speaking today about the course of recent historical developments of humanity from the perspective of spiritual science, as it is and was meant here in these lectures, I will be compelled to presuppose many things that I have said in previous lectures. The main thing I have to presuppose, and which I will not be able to repeat today as it applies to the present, given that I have only limited time available, is this: that this spiritual science can confirm, as was attempted in the first lecture, that human beings must strive with their soul forces to recognize a supersensible world, and that through a certain training of these soul forces — as I have characterized this training at least in principle — insight into the facts of this supersensible world can also be gained by human beings.

Now it is a matter of applying these fundamental truths of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to one of the most significant areas of human experience, the field of history, and I must of course limit myself to what is most immediate to us, the historical development of modern humanity. History, if one does not delve deeper into the cultural development of humanity, is considered a very old science. But in truth, from beginnings that can by no means be called history, history only really blossomed in the second half of the 18th century. And in the sense in which we are accustomed today to understand history, even from school: that through history we seek the laws of human development over time, in this sense history is actually only a child of the 19th century.

This historical science arose from the interest that people have always taken in other people and their fates, insofar as these other people and the fates of these other people are connected to their own lives in the sphere of experience. One could say that there is a straight line from the family chronicle, through which someone who wants to learn something about the people and the homeland with which they are connected, to the aspirations through which they want to recognize the laws of development of the whole of humanity. And it is significant that the historical view, which otherwise always remained within the narrower circles mentioned above, is extended to the whole of humanity. It is only in more recent times, which we want to consider here from a historical perspective, that the more or less narrowly defined interests of humanity have given rise to a general human interest in the overall development of humanity on earth.

From this alone, it can be seen by those who want to see it that pure interest in human beings as such is, in fact, a relatively recent phenomenon. Now, precisely because history springs from human interest in humanity, there is a pitfall when history seeks to rise to the recognition of the lawful connection of human development. For this very reason, history is very easily led into an abyss that has more or less threatened scientific observation at some point in time, almost completely. It has been overcome in recent times by scientific observation, but it often plays into historical observation quite unconsciously: it is the viewpoint that can be called anthropomorphic, which arises from the fact that what one finds in human beings themselves is now carried over into the world and its phenomena that present themselves. The most obvious example is what science has happily overcome, namely that when humans accomplish something, they act according to purposes and goals. This inclines humans to view what happens outside in nature and what happens in the course of historical development as if purposeful action in the same sense were to be sought in them as one finds within humans, that is, in oneself.

Natural science has become great in the modern sense precisely because it eliminates this doctrine of purposefulness and also because it tries, at least, not to be anthropomorphic, although in many respects it is unconsciously so. Goethe rightly said: Man does not know how anthropomorphic he is. — But in history, there is a particular temptation to look for what one finds within oneself, because one wants to observe what is human, also outside in the course of historical development. And one can overcome this obstacle, which was more or less present in the most ambitious thinkers of modern times when they wanted to establish a kind of philosophy of history, one basically only gets beyond it when, in considering human beings themselves, one already goes beyond those narrow limits of human nature which are characterized by the fact that human beings act according to the immediately subjective, that is, according to the purposes that are possible for them in their spiritual life between birth and death.

If, as has been characterized in the preceding days, one overcomes this purely sensory nature of human beings and the spiritual life between birth and death that is bound to it by rising to the supersensible human being, then one can carry what results from the supersensible contemplation of human beings into historical becoming. For as human beings ascend to their supersensible nature and rise above themselves, they will no longer be able to be anthropomorphic in their historical observation, because they are no longer so in their observation of their own nature. Thus, by striving to avoid a certain pitfall in their observation of the world, they are led out into the supersensible.

When one then approaches historical development, equipped in one's knowledge with those powers that lead into the supersensible world, the facts of historical life appear in a completely new light, purely through supersensible perceptions. Then, in this new light, one asks oneself: Yes, how is it actually? Do certain facts recorded in history, which we find in our usual historical accounts, really have such a close relationship to human beings as is often attributed to them, when one thinks that human beings are, as they stand, a product of historical development, a product of the past? — But if one raises these questions only in the light of supersensible knowledge, one soon sees, when one directs one's gaze to the events of history, how little actually corresponds to what people find within themselves in the present, for example, what they find in the impulses of their life course, how little people can say: This or that is connected with this or that historical event of the past. — Just as natural science, when pursued consistently, leads beyond itself, so too does historical observation lead one to conclude that historical events fall apart in a certain sense. One cannot speak of cause and effect in the usual sense and regard the present merely as an effect of the past, insofar as the past contains what can be found in the sensory world. One only arrives at a historical view when one connects human beings to the supersensible and does not seek in historical facts themselves what they initially present externally, but when one seeks in them what is initially only revealed to one: a supersensible process in world events in which human beings are interwoven.

But then history becomes something other than the consideration of successive facts; then history becomes what I would call a symptomatology. Then one does not consider the individual facts as they simply present themselves in sensory life, but rather as symptoms through which one penetrates into a supersensible, supra-historical event lying behind them. Then one will no longer be able to strive in the same way for an unconditional completeness that cannot be achieved anyway — anyone who has worked with historical material in any field knows this — but one will try, through the facts to be found, which are regarded as symptoms, to penetrate into what is hidden behind these symptoms as great spiritual connections.

Thus, when history is fertilized by spiritual science, it will take the path from a pure science of facts to a symptomatology. And in the sense that I mean here, I would like to draw your attention to at least a few significant phenomena in the development of modern humanity, in order to show how the entire course of modern history presents itself when one attempts to get behind the facts through facts.

If one takes such a path, one very soon finds oneself compelled to depart from the classification we are accustomed to from school: that we begin modern history with all kinds of considerations about voyages of discovery and the significance of the discovery of America, or about inventions and the like. Instead, one feels compelled to ask: Where is the point – if we start with the present and look back at historical developments – where a real turning point occurs in the course of human development, where new ways of life and new living conditions emerge?

In a comfortable worldview, one very often has the tendency to say to oneself that things simply proceed in such a way that the following gradually emerges from the earlier, and that nowhere do significant upheavals or significant turning points take place. One has even coined the convenient saying: nowhere in nature does a leap take place. But just look at nature and see how leaps do occur! The plant first develops green leaves, then transforms them into colorful petals — a leap. And such leaps are everywhere in nature, even though they contradict a common, comfortable human prejudice.

And indeed, even a superficial observation shows that in the world that is closest to us, the European world, a change occurred in all forms of life in the 15th century. What previously characterized humanity in particular, how it was in its state of mind, how it translated this state of mind into external historical deeds, changed in the 15th century. And from the point of view of symptomatology, we can point to a somewhat earlier event that marks an important turning point in the historical life of modern humanity: the pressure exerted by France on the papacy in 1303, when the pope was forced to move his residence from Rome to Avignon. This event coincides almost exactly with another, namely the destruction of the Order of the Knights Templar, that peculiar community which had a peculiar relationship with the Church, by the French government, which also robbed it of its possessions.

These events are turning points in the recent development of humanity because they show that something was being fought against that had been peculiar to the entire civilized world of that time for centuries. This peculiarity was expressed in those remarkable struggles and the mutual support they engendered between the Central European Empire and the Papacy. But all these struggles must be viewed in the light of a very specific fact. The people of the civilized world are not divided into groups, such as national groups or the like, as they were in the following period, without each such division being overshadowed and surpassed by a commonality that can only be expressed through a universal idea dominating humanity, which extends to the actions of people, emanating on the one hand from the Roman papacy, which feels itself to be, in a sense, the unifier of humanity. Equally universal, but often in conflict with this universal community, was the medieval empire.

Now, what falls within the turning point I have described is directed against this kind of unification of humanity. Such a unification, as it existed throughout the Middle Ages, in which people felt themselves to be part of a great whole, was built up over the centuries on certain unconscious impulses lying within human beings, which were known where the leadership was that people relied on in uniting them. A certain sum of unconscious forces of the soul was addressed when humanity was united under the characterized points of view, insofar as it was spread across the civilized world at that time. Breaches, perceptible breaches, had been made in the nature of unity by the event of Avignon. We can already sense that this is precisely what is needed to bring a new element into the constitution, into the soul constitution of Western humanity.

And now we see how what has been at work in Western Europe has long been affected by an event that seems to have broken in from the East as if by nature. I need only mention everything that began with the Mongol invasions and was followed by migrations of people from the East to the West, from Asia to Europe. Both of these events mark turning points and give Europe and its people the structure of their coexistence at the dawn of the 135th century. And despite all attempts to preserve the old, this structure will be different from what it used to be, when it relied on unconscious impulses. Humanity finds itself compelled to become more and more conscious, even in those areas where it used to be guided by unconscious impulses.

And now, amid these changes in Western Europe, we see something highly significant taking place, precisely in areas where people lived who until then had been accustomed, more or less, but very significantly, to find their unity under that universal idea, under that universal impulse that I have characterized. In these areas, we see something completely new emerging: the national element is replacing the old, more spiritual element of the Catholic Church as the unifying element. We see the development of nation states, indeed the models of the newer nation states, England and France.

Let us first look at the way in which the new element is being introduced into these areas of Western Europe. At first, we even find a sense of belonging until the 15th century, until the movement emerges that we can characterize as a turning point, the turning point of 1428, when a dividing line is drawn in a certain direction between England and France, which is expressed in the events surrounding the Virgin of Orleans. At that time, the seeds of independence between France and England were sown, whereas previously they had been more or less connected. This is an enormously significant phenomenon. For we will see many things emerge from this differentiation, which only occurred then, in the 15th century, and which in turn will play a symptomatic role in the later course of human development.

We see another turning point occurring in Italy, where an independent Italian consciousness, a kind of national consciousness, developed out of what the papal power, which overshadowed all such national and similar groupings, had brought about in Italy. And as we look across Europe—I can only hint at all these things—we see how we are approaching the time when a great conflict takes place in Central Europe between the central regions and the areas more or less to the east, between Germanic and Slavic cultures. We see the Habsburg power springing forth from the struggles of these areas, from the surging Slavic culture, from the mixing of Slavic and Germanic cultures. Looking at all this, we see how individual centers grow out of the life that is determined by it. We see further quite individual formations, which previously did not stand out in this way from the universal impulses, with their own attitudes, with their own will: we see city cultures flourishing throughout the entire Western civilized world of that time from the 3rd to the 5th century.

And again, after national aspirations in France and England had differentiated, we see how, in England, prolonged civil wars prepared the way for what the world then came to know as parliamentarianism, as the goal of a social structure that emerged from mutual understanding between individuals.

We have thus presented to our souls not all, but individual symptoms of recent historical developments. I need only add that as the groupings that emerged from this impulse formed across Europe, we see, as if standing in the background, building up in the East, still in its infancy, from the storms from which it had to emerge, that which then became the Russian entity. A remarkable entity, forming from the perspective of Europe in such a way that it always remains a mystery to the senses, that the most important impulses that live within this entity are not actually felt, welded together, I might say, from what has been preserved through various migrations: through Byzantium, from a certain metamorphosis of Catholic life; formed from what has sprung forth from the blood that has flowed together from Slavdom and Normannism, and which has absorbed, in ways that are well known to you, much of what is the soul state of the Asian being, that soul state — I mean now the best parts of this Asian soul state — which over thousands of years has moved away from the immediately sensible to great mystical connections, through which one wanted to penetrate into a supersensible world, with which the sensual life of human beings is connected.

Now, when one allows such and perhaps some other symptoms of recent human development to come before one's soul and considers them under the influence of the aforementioned question, one notices a very significant characteristic that is revealed in these symptoms and that one learns to recognize when one asks oneself: How does what is expressed in these symptoms differ internally from what was expressed in a similar way in earlier centuries and millennia in the historical development of humanity, which was more immersed in the unconscious? One must view these things without sympathy or antipathy, in a completely objective manner; only then can one arrive at what is characteristic of the phenomena in this area.

It is curious to ask oneself: What do all these symptoms, which I have mentioned today, for example, have in common with earlier impulses that have entered into world historical development? — I do not want to talk about the fruitfulness with which, for example, Christianity entered the world in a positive way and created something new for the soul. I don't want to talk about that at all; I only want to talk about impulses such as those that were often given in ancient Greek life, for example, where a new impulse was simply given, as if produced from the innermost depths of human nature, which then lived itself out in a completely new configuration of facts, or as it was given, let's say, to the Roman essence in the Augustan age. Such impulses are not what we see emerging now. We see the most outstanding impulse, for example, as the national one, which is not based on national unity — as is often identified today as understood as state unity — but which is based on the national insofar as it is built on the natural foundations of human nature. We see it as an impulse that is taken up by human beings without them producing it from within. Human beings are French or English by their very nature. And in referring to their nationality, creating the historical configuration, they are not referring to something they produce in their minds, but to something they merely take up in their minds from outside.

If we compare what enters into historical development with the national principle with the earlier impulses, we realize how infinitely closer to the productive nature of human beings are all the impulses that we see entering into humanity successively in the Greek and Roman-Latin periods. But what has penetrated is retained, it is preserved. And insofar as one reaches for something new, one takes up something that one has not produced oneself, something that approaches human beings from outside.

After first attempting to orient ourselves to the more external course of recent European history, we now try to penetrate its inner core. There we see a very similar onslaught within the soul's constitution against what has been brought about since ancient times as a universal impulse that relied on the unconscious. We see how in the 15th century, and even before that with Wiclif, we see how Luther and later Calvin stormed in. We see something that, much more than anything that came before, which was thought of as more universal, people want to give, want to carry into history, that is individual, that springs directly from human nature itself. But even here, strangely enough, we see how everything that is being discussed ties in with what came before. What is new is the reference to human nature: decide for yourself about the nature of the Eucharist. Decide for yourself how you want to relate to your priest; don't let a universal impulse from outside impose this on you.

But if one goes into what is being discussed, it is what has been produced in humanity in the past, what was already there as the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, what has been there for centuries in history or in human life in general. It is not produced in the same way as before, from the soul, and handed over to historical life, but rather the old is produced and preserved, everything that is there, without human intervention, and only human beings are brought into a new relationship with it.

Precisely when one follows this inner course of European development, one sees how it tears apart, changes, and metamorphoses an infinite amount of the old, how it rushes against the previously dominant universal impulse. This can be seen very clearly in the way knighthood, which was connected in its entire inner constitution, its soul constitution — one need only study the Crusades — with the universal impulse, is shattered. Once again, we can point to a turning point that serves as a guide for everything else that happens: the Battle of Murten in 1476, towards the end of the 15th century, where such a battle was fought against chivalry, which was connected with the universal impulse, as was fought in many places, represented here.

And connected with all this, we find a change in the church government itself. This church government has taken on a remarkable form, which you can find characterized in every history. During this period, due to the onslaught, it felt compelled to undergo an inner regeneration, an inner improvement; and so the onslaught actually caused the church to change many things within its own bosom. But everywhere we see how what the church has elevated in human development, what it has spread in the form of a universal impulse, is to be placed in a new relationship to each individual human being. We see it all over Europe. We see how the English church is becoming independent. We see how in Central Europe independence is connected with political powers. Everywhere we see how individuality, how the personal, is rushing against the universal; in other words, how that which human beings want to conquer in consciousness is rushing against the earlier, more unconscious or subconscious nature of the human soul and what historically followed from it.

Of course, counterforces also arose against such things, the Counter-Reformation against the Reformation. But in the struggles that this provoked, we immediately see, if we engage in symptomatology, something most important in relation to the course of recent history. We see emerging from all that has happened in connection with the symptoms characterized, the Thirty Years' War. When we study the Thirty Years' War, we come to a remarkable conclusion. It arose from the contradictions that developed in the confessions of European humanity. It began out of impulses related to religious conflicts, and it ended as a purely political phenomenon. In the course of its development, it became something completely different from what it was at its starting point. And when we ask ourselves, after it has been over for thirty years: How does its course appear to us in relation to the confessions of European humanity? – in 1648 we find ourselves standing on exactly the same ground as we did in 1618. The entire thirty years did not actually change anything significant in terms of the relationship between Protestants and Catholics and so on. Everything remained as it was. However, in the course of the war, completely different powers intervened, and this resulted in a completely different configuration of European nations.

Anyone who studies the Thirty Years' War in this way will be convinced that in history, one cannot link what follows as an effect to what precedes as a cause, because nothing that emerged from the Thirty Years' War was in any way connected as an effect in the true sense to what can be referred to as a cause in the true sense. If one follows the course of events, one sees how what happened externally can only be a symptom of a deeper process. This is particularly evident in the Thirty Years' War. But what happened? The western states in particular advanced, and France in particular, as a result of what arose during the Thirty Years' War, not from its causes, but in its course. What emerged from the Thirty Years' War later led to the great royal splendor of France. We see the royal power of France outshining Europe in the following period.

And again, in the womb of what is emerging, what propagates the old national impulse, propagates it in the most eminent sense, something arises that goes far beyond the merely national, that in a sense transcends the national. What arises is what later finds expression in the French Revolution: the personality. The human personality, relying purely on itself, wants to emancipate itself from the constraints of a community that is not based on any productive impulse, but has been absorbed by the human soul from nature and the human environment. And again, when we look at what is happening symptomatically, we see how Napoleon emerges, quite inorganically, one might say, without any motivation, as the executor of the French Revolution.

But at the same time, we see a strange, great, and powerful turning point occurring. And this significant turning point in recent history falls on October 21, 1805, when the Battle of Trafalgar prevents Napoleon from extending his tentacles to England, where what had previously been in embryonic form — the separation between England and the continent — is now fully accomplished.

And now we need only quickly review what is generally known. We find that in England, which has become independent, the development of parliamentary life, leading to liberalism, is now taking place. We find that in France, the course of the 19th century is more tumultuous. But then we find that a new form emerges, shining symptomatically about what is actually happening in the foundations of European development, how the European West and the European Center have to deal in the 1850s with what is like a dark mystery in the European East, with what has emerged as a Russian entity, which stands as a question before European development. We then see how certain ideas gained strength in the 19th century, how they were opposed by other ideas, and how both concepts became impulses for historical development. We see how the events of 1848 were prepared everywhere in the 19th century. And we see how all this developed into the later comprehensive and today so deeply incisive so-called social movement. We see among what was forming in the 19th century a very remarkable event, which European humanity was able to observe with great depth. For we see emerging from the splendor that developed through the nationalization of the French state a kind of claim to go further and further.

There should be no judgment; these things should not be viewed with sympathy or antipathy, but quite objectively. But we see how, through the connection between what is emerging in the West and what is happening further to the East, something is developing that was regarded by those who understood the times in which it happened—regardless of whether they thought it should have happened or not—as an insoluble, initially insoluble European problem. One can even disregard whether Alsace belonged to France before or to Germany afterwards — what we know today as the Alsatian question developed out of European life.

Anyone who follows history, especially the statements of insightful people of that time, knows that even then these people foresaw conflicts that were created by this, and which are quite insoluble for both sides because they are connected with all the difficult questions of Eastern Europe that were raised by the fact that Western Europe — as the Crimean War symptomatically showed — was forced into conflict with Eastern Europe, which stood like a riddle behind all appearances. And one should actually regard and feel it as something extremely significant, especially these days, as something insoluble is given in the way Central Europe must face Western Europe because of a question that, according to certain historical preconditions, can be demanded to be solved in one way or another, a question that arose from what developed in France as a national impulse, but which, if one wants to solve it nationally, cannot be solved.

I could cite many more symptoms of recent history, but I will mention only one that has a profound impact on the entire development of modern humanity. Although the connections are not always clear, I would like to mention the emergence of the modern scientific way of thinking, the significance of which I have characterized from other perspectives in previous lectures. The scientific way of thinking is on the rise. What does it do? It places the human being on his own. It is precisely this that singles out the human being as a personality from the community. In many respects, it is the impulse that drives everything else I have mentioned. There is something in this scientific way of thinking that strangely reveals its significance in recent history.

Two problems arise. I would like to illustrate one of them to you with a fact. It is this fact that Goethe was once found by a friend in 1830 in a state of great excitement, and when asked what was wrong, he said: The news coming from France is overwhelming, the world is in flames, something new is brewing. Soret, to whom Goethe had said this, naturally believed that Goethe was referring to the Thirty Years' Revolution that had just broken out. No, that is not what I am talking about, said Goethe, I am talking about the revolution that is taking place between the two naturalists Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire! — Cuvier was of the opinion that all beings in nature exist side by side and should be understood individually, while Saint-Hilaire sought a common type in organic forms, bringing all organic life into flux, so that it can only be understood in this flux if one directs one's gaze directly and productively at nature and experiences the spirit as being just as mobile as nature itself. Goethe sensed something of the necessity for the coming age to keep the spirit alive in relation to nature. What Goethe sensed in Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire was ultimately, when brought from its seeds to fruition, the supersensible concepts of natural phenomena that I characterized here the day before yesterday.

At first, however, the world was overshadowed by everything that arises from the other view of nature, necessarily overshadowed by that view of nature that separates human beings from their immediate living connection with natural phenomena. This view of nature, which is therefore not seized by the impulse that Goethe meant, leads to the grasping of that which does not actually live in nature, but which is dying, which dissolves nature, because it is connected with that which is mortal in man himself, as I characterized the day before yesterday.

The view of nature from which Goethe turned away is one that can only grasp gradual decay in the course of nature, and then wants to rise from the symptoms of decay to what cannot be shown in its own way, what can only be shown in supersensible contemplation: to the symptoms of rising, growing, being born, thriving. But — as paradoxical as it may sound — this view of nature, which is actually directed at what is dead in living nature, cast its shadow deep over the whole of modern social coexistence. It basically created a new universal impulse throughout modern humanity, but one against which human beings themselves, in their individuality, must continually rebel, because it sets them apart from nature and they must constantly seek connection. Their knowledge sets them apart. They must seek connection again in something other than what they strive for through this knowledge. This brings a dualism, a duality in the relationship between humans and their environment, into life. This natural science flows into modern technological life, which supports the whole of modern culture and has an enormously significant impact.

Have we seen in the impulses we considered earlier, for example in the national ones, that the traditional is preserved and nothing new and productive is introduced into life? In the enigma of Eastern Europe, we see how a people strangely stimulated to intellectual productivity constricts itself so as not to be productive, even though it is highly predisposed to productivity, constricts itself into the very extreme shackles of the old Byzantine church community, we see how the old is brought up and preserved, we see how, in what the view of nature pours out over modern humanity, now creates something universal, something universal that does not come from what man produces from himself, but rather from what he takes into his knowledge in isolation from himself as the decay of natural phenomena, and therefore can only allow to flow into his culture as something he carries out into technology by killing the natural.

Because humans are not productive in the old sense, they have gained full consciousness in more recent times, since the 15th century, whereas in the past they were not fully conscious, but rather subconsciously aware of their connection with nature and with the world in general. In addition to the preservation of the old, there is the education of modern humanity, which is provided by something new, but which proceeds in the spirit of the old. What is incorporated into technology springs only from seemingly productive ideas. But these productive ideas do not spring as independent plants in the human soul — as the supersensible, if it is to be sought, must spring as independent plants in the human soul — but they spring from the calm observation of objective natural phenomena.

We see how an event that has had a significant impact on recent developments is connected precisely with this modern technology, for it is only now, as this modern technology develops more and more in recent history, that colonization is also gaining in importance; for what colonial and colonizing life is has the most intimate connection with what flows into technology through natural science.

And now let us take a summary look at what is more or less expressed to us in all these symptoms. When we survey them, we see that what has appeared in them since the 15th century as something new are, without exception, things that do not spring from productive human nature. When we consider them, we are compelled to broaden our view of the course of humanity's historical development, and then we are compelled to recognize—and supersensible knowledge leads us to recognize—that there is not only upward movement in human life, not only in the abstract sense of what is commonly called progress, but that the upward, sprouting, budding life is linked to a downward life. Life is linked to that which always leads to death.

When we look at the life of an individual human being, birth, growth, and becoming appear to us as separate from death and decay. Here, too, it is only apparent; but when we look at external life, the course of recent history shows us that death, descending and ascending development stand directly side by side, intertwined. And we see that the descending development, the development that takes up historical death, has been of great significance even for the beginning of this more recent historical epoch, which began in the 15th century and has continued for several centuries into our time. The life of decay, the life of death, has greater significance than the ascending, sprouting, blossoming life. We see how, in his consciousness, as he develops as a modern human being, he is connected with what is transitory in him, how he can feel that what drives him to death is precisely what advances him in knowledge. While the sprouting, blossoming life lulls him as if in dreams, we can see that in history, intervening directly in more recent times, the consciousness soul develops from the earlier, more unconscious soul, as it developed in humanity from the 8th century BC to the 15th century AD. We see how, for the first education of humanity toward this consciousness soul, it is necessary for the symptoms of decay, the symptoms of dying life, to become effective in its culture. One will not understand modern historical life in its real relationship to human beings if one cannot grasp the idea — despite all admiration, despite all the willing recognition one must have for the great, mighty achievements of modern technology, of modern national impulses — that in all this there must be a descending life leading to the death of historical becoming, and that an ascending, sprouting, budding life must be born into this descending life.

This is what has led discerning people in recent times to what could be called cultural pessimism. A man like Schopenhauer turned his gaze to the course of recent history in particular. Despite all the achievements of modern times, this historical activity seemed to him to be rather futile. And Schopenhauer values only that which can be achieved by individual human beings. Even if the pessimists themselves are only symptoms of recent historical developments, it is people who look at them with a sense of foreboding, realizing that the greatest and most significant thing that we are accustomed to seeing as a characteristic of recent developments is the death impulse that has entered into historical developments.

What follows from this? What follows is something that could be called the tragic impact of recent historical life. Of course, we must promote what we can describe as new impulses, some of which are preserved and some of which have emerged from scientific views. All this is such that we must say to ourselves: it must be promoted, it must be devoted to, it is a necessity of modern times; it must be placed in the development of world history for the sake of humanity, but in each of its manifestations, what is created in this field must necessarily lead to its own demise. It is precisely through these great achievements in recent development that problems arise which lead to dead ends, which lead to ends that cannot be resolved by themselves, which confront human beings with something that must seem to them like death. That is the tragedy, that what must be promoted, that must be regarded as an achievement, is something that we know, in creating it, we are creating something that must at the same time decay. Indeed, we begin the decay as soon as we create it.

Anyone who believes that the facts that arise from the impulses indicated can exist for themselves in recent historical development is like a person who believes that a woman can give birth without conceiving, without the other principle combining with the one principle. What comes from the impulses indicated presents itself as something that is one-sided, that needs fertilization from another side if it is to continue to exist. For in itself it has only the power of dying. Take everything that has come about in modern humanity through the pure natural basis of the national, through modern technology, through industry, and through social interaction, whether commercial or otherwise, take all of that — considered in itself, according to its own impulse, it is barren and leads, I might say, in rhythms always toward its own death. And we must recognize that we have to look at it in such a way that we say to ourselves: for the sake of something else, this dying must be placed in the modern world as an achievement.

What is this other thing? Well, we have seen that when we look at the course of recent history in its sequence of symptoms that we regard as such, the strange thing I have hinted at is revealed to us. On the one hand, since the 15th century, we have seen the consciousness soul blossom precisely through unproductivity. On the other hand, we see how this conscious soul grows by first removing from its environment the stimulus to productivity, educating itself in what leads ever anew to the death of culture. Human beings become independent because the external world does not stimulate them to do anything that is productively alive, but rather to do things that continually carry the seed of death in their knowledge; Man is educated in his individual and conscious development of nature in that the outside world does not educate him for life, does not educate him for what is supposed to elevate him, but continually deters him from what is supposed to elevate him and thereby places him precisely on his own.

But now, when we look at this sequence of events with purely supersensible knowledge, we see that this inner aspect of the human being — the transition to the consciousness soul since the 15th century — corresponds to an objective external aspect that could not emerge in the first centuries, but which immediately reveals itself to us when we now look impartially at the human mind in the present. Of course, it is still unconscious in many people, but this inclination toward a supersensible life is present in a great many people today. And those who are engaged in spiritual science oriented toward anthroposophy know that what developed as the principle of decay in the external material culture of recent times was only of a transient nature, that we are standing at a great turning point in time, which will bring — but now not inspired by nature, but inspired as I have described in my reflections on anthroposophically oriented spiritual science — which will bring a new revelation of the supersensible to human beings.

We see it approaching everywhere, this new revelation of the supersensible. It will now be achieved not as in earlier times, when human beings were unconsciously connected to nature through their instincts and found in nature itself that which also applied to the soul, which they could then also introduce into social and historical life. Beyond all that this view of nature and the old impulses of recent historical development can give, a productive, supersensible life will develop. Life will reveal itself from the spiritual world. And when we look closely at what has happened in the present as such a terrible catastrophe, what else is it, when viewed in the light of true truth, than something in which the dying are crowded together?

Within this catastrophic life, much will die. That which, as I have characterized it, contains the principle of dying within itself will die more quickly. There is no reason for pessimism, even if there is suffering, even if there is pain, even if there is everything that can flow from seeing and participating in this catastrophe, there is no reason for cultural pessimism if one views life in the light of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For it is evident at one point in recent historical development across the whole earth that what is otherwise distributed as dying over material life is coming together, giving our recent life its tragic character and showing us at the same time that everything that comes into the world in this way must be barren, as I characterized it earlier, but that it must be fertilized by what is received from the supersensible.

And anyone who looks with an open mind at what is the complement to the development of the consciousness soul, at the new revelations from the supersensible, will, even while bowed down by the pain of what is now happening, raise their head and say to themselves: This is also the first dawn of what must trigger the impulse in humanity toward the supersensible. All the suffering, all the pain over this collapse would be lost, all the feelings that look upon this collapse with justified pain would be in vain, if these feelings could not rise to the point where, as with everything in nature that is destined to die, something new springs forth from this death. But that which is to develop can only develop if the other, the fertilizing, the fertilizing that reveals itself from the supersensible world, is willingly accepted by humanity.

The consciousness soul has developed. Nature can no longer unconsciously give us what we put into the world of social and historical becoming. The newer humanity must also consciously accept, that is, willingly accept, what arises as a newer supersensible revelation of the consciousness soul, if this consciousness soul so desires. Precisely when we look at the tragedy of modern life without prejudice, the redeeming impulse reveals itself on the other side. It reveals itself in that we are compelled to acknowledge the revelation of a new supersensible realm, which must now also be there for the consciousness soul.

And so we see through the symptoms to what will become of human beings and to what will be revealed to them from the universe. While the Greco-Latin period, which began in the 8th century BC and ended in the 15th century, still showed spiritual life bound to external physical life, which produced the great Greek and Roman achievements and handed them over to the Middle Ages, the development of the powers of consciousness, of what can be called the consciousness soul, takes a mighty leap forward in the 15th century. And we are in the midst of this development. We see how man's connection to what is revealed behind the symptoms can only become a true historical science. But one must have the courage to recognize that there is not only life around us, but also death, and that death is necessary for new life to be born.

It was also necessary for death to predominate for a certain period of time so that man could develop the powers of the consciousness soul all the more. And if it is no longer given to him from outside, he will develop the powers of the consciousness soul all the more. It was also necessary for death to predominate for a certain period of time so that human beings could develop the powers of the consciousness soul all the more. And when it is no longer given to them from outside, they are compelled to seek the spirit, the supersensible, within themselves.

Now, of course, one can object. One can say: Yes, but where are these people, how numerous are they? — There are not many who can point to the supersensible world through the development of their own soul forces. It must be admitted that there are still few today. Their numbers will grow, but what matters is not how many there are who find their way into the supersensible, which must fertilize the sensible, but rather that one does not need to walk the path of supersensible knowledge oneself, but regardless of how and as what one esteems those who bring the results of the supersensible — once they have been expressed, once they have been thrown into human spiritual culture, they can also be understood by the ordinary intellect given to human beings in the age of the consciousness soul. Human beings can already comprehend everything that is brought out of the supersensible to the greatest extent possible today, if only they do not throw obstacles in their own way through prejudices that they cannot then overcome.

But one thing is part of this. Just think that such a view of history as I have outlined compels one to admit, with full consciousness, what one must do, what is a necessity in this age and will become more and more a necessity, that at the same time there is a continuous dying away. It takes a certain courage to acknowledge that one must create so that the creative can perish and become the mother soil for the father principle of the spiritual, the supersensible. Such courage is indeed necessary for all supersensible knowledge. And fear of supersensible knowledge is what keeps many people from this supersensible knowledge. In at least one area, modern times confront us directly with the necessity of developing this courage if we want to be considered at all for the development of humanity: in the area of history. Those who know something about supersensible knowledge always speak of crossing the threshold, of a guardian of the threshold. People speak of crossing the threshold because, when one opens oneself to the supersensible world, one must break with much of what appears to be absolutely solid ground of knowledge before one has crossed the threshold. In a sense, people unconsciously feel it is a blessing that they do not have to cross the threshold. But what needed to be done at one time in relation to historical development is becoming more and more necessary. And this, in turn, is part of the inner course of historical development since the 15th century. It is becoming more and more necessary to say to oneself: You are weaving and living in the creation of processes of dying, of decay. You must devote yourself to these processes of decay, and in doing so your inner strength will be stimulated, and it is precisely through this that you will be brought closer to the supersensible. You must leave behind what you previously regarded as a spiritual foundation, cross the threshold into the supersensible world, lose the ground beneath your feet, so to speak, but in return find a firm center of gravity within yourself, where you can hold your own even in the face of the sensually bottomless.

Human beings must necessarily find a new center of gravity for their entire soul life. And historical necessity urges them to seek this center of gravity more and more toward the future. Recognizing this does not change anything. We are, in a sense — as I have meant it, it is to be understood — facing death. By admitting that it is dying — this does not change anything. But it must be compelled to seek to fertilize the living that stands in its way. For it is true that, as long as humanity has striven, the great, powerful call to “know thyself” has always stood above the search for supersensible knowledge. And even today, this is the challenge facing humanity in its search. If people today try to recognize this, they can only do so by ascending to worlds that are capable of leading them beyond their finite existence. Above all, driven by the necessities of human development, they must admit to themselves, with regard to the historical life of recent times, that the consciousness soul has been implanted with the stimulus to know themselves more and more in the sense of recent history. By knowing themselves, they are compelled to go beyond themselves. By going beyond himself, by grasping the supersensible in his sensory world, he also reaches what works as the supersensible in history and for which the external facts are only symptoms. We will only truly have a history that is fruitful for life when we seek the supersensible behind the symptoms, just as we do behind natural phenomena.

Our view of history has shown that recent developments impose trials on human beings, trials that test their belief that life is only ascending, trials that require them to consider the descending life as well, evolution as well as involution. By recognizing the supersensible, human beings will prepare themselves for these trials. For when they gain supersensible knowledge of history, this knowledge itself, because they must cross the threshold and seek their new center of gravity within their soul life, will be such a severe test for their soul that what emerges from this test will give them the strength to endure those other tests that life will increasingly impose on them in the future, moving away from history. But it can be said that human beings only become strong, vigorous, and truly capable of living through trials. Fear of knowledge should not prevent him from entering into these trials, but rather courage of knowledge should drive him to take them upon himself. He will develop the trials of knowledge into forces that will also lead him into being a creative human being, participating in becoming, fruitfully placed in history.

Question and answer session

It has been suggested to me that I might say a few words in this question and answer session about a single phenomenon in recent historical development that is particularly close to human life: the development of language. Of course, it would take an entire lecture to say anything exhaustive on this subject. But I would like to respond to the suggestion for the simple reason that I really want to draw your attention to the fact that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here is truly not something that came into being on a whim, as if it had been shot out of a gun, as if it consisted of individual aperçus gathered together. No, if you familiarize yourself with the literature, you will see that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science draws what it has to say from the whole breadth of observation, from the whole breadth of world phenomena.

Of course, when you have to summarize broad areas in an hour—and I always regret that it always ends up taking longer anyway! — one must always summarize broad areas, one must give the impression of wandering around in abstract areas; but no one should be convinced, only inspired to go further, and then one will see that, much more than in any other scientific endeavor, this spiritual science is based on careful, conscientious, methodical searching and serious research.

It is interesting to observe what I have characterized in general terms today in such an individual phenomenon as the development of human language. However, I will only discuss one aspect of this linguistic development. When we speak as humans today, we usually do not think about how speaking actually forces us to be imprecise at every moment. I just want to say this: to become imprecise. Fritz Mauthner wrote a three-volume work and also a “Dictionary of Philosophy” to express how everything that is produced in worldview and science is based on language, and that language is imprecise. So that one can never really have true science.

Now, this is of course a foolish assertion when it comes to the humanities, even if it appears in three volumes. But it is nevertheless important to address the underlying sub-phenomenon. If one goes back in the development of human language, one finds, contrary to external anthropological language research, which works with inadequate means, that in earlier times, the further back one goes, the more and more, even inwardly, spiritually, and also instinctively and unconsciously, human beings were intertwined with what is expressed in their language. Humans also gradually detach themselves from what their own nature contains, just as they detach themselves from external nature.

They also detach themselves from their immediate connection with language. And language becomes something external. A strong dualism arises between the inner experience of thought, which some people no longer have because it remains in the sphere of language, and what is spoken. And if we do not allow ourselves to be deceived by the stage of human development in which we now find ourselves, in the age of the consciousness soul, we must look directly at how language has already detached itself from human beings. In fact, it is only proper names that refer to a single being that really apply directly to that being. As soon as one uses general names, whether they are adjectives, nouns, or whatever, they only express imprecisely what they are supposed to express. They are abstract, they are like generalities. And only then will we truly understand language in its relationship to human life today, if we understand it as a gesture; if we are aware that just as I point directly at something with my finger, I also point, through the sounds produced by my larynx and through the sound, gesturally at that to which the sounds of language refer. Learning to understand language as gesture is what it is all about. In ancient times, people had an indefinite, I would say subconscious, instinctive sense of how spiritual life is connected to sound in a gestural way; they did not confuse inner spiritual experience with what is expressed in language.

We ourselves have attempted, in order to develop obvious aspirations in the field of spiritual science, to bring the gestural nature of language back into view in what we call eurythmy, where an attempt has been made to set the whole human being in motion, and through the movements of the limbs, through movements of the human form in space, through group movements, through the relationships of people with one another, to express gesturally that which is otherwise also expressed in gesture, but not as gesture, through the human larynx and its neighboring organs. We call this kind of movement art, which must penetrate humanity as something new, eurythmy. And here in Zurich we wanted to follow up this lecture with a eurythmic performance. It has to be postponed because, although we were given permission to hold these lectures in the current difficult times, we were not given permission to give this eurythmic performance. It would have shown how, in a sense, the whole human being becomes the larynx. By becoming aware of what language is, we arrive at something that will become particularly important, fundamentally important for life in the present and the future.

Nothing is more common in human life today than someone saying something, for example, me here in spiritual science. Someone else comes along and says, “I read that there,” and points to something that, at least in detail, completely agrees with everyone's words. I could show you striking examples of this kind. I want to highlight just one case in particular, in which the matter presented itself to me in a particularly outstanding way.

Because I truly try to apply all the things that spiritual science demands of me to life, thereby penetrating the real impulses of life, I have long been preoccupied with what I would call the whole way of thinking, the whole mindset of Woodrow Wilson. It has been interesting for me to study Woodrow Wilson's essays on historical method, on the view of history, and on American historical life. He plays such a major role in contemporary life that one must get to know him — so says the person who does not want to sleep through what is happening in the present, but wants to observe it with alert senses. I have come to admire the way in which Woodrow Wilson so magnificently and truly American, Woodrow Wilson depicts the development of the American people themselves, this progression from the American East to the American West, the emergence of real American life in a very peculiar way, only when it penetrates from the East to the West, while everything else that preceded it is succinctly described by Woodrow Wilson as an appendage to European life. This eradication of nature, this overcoming of nature, this overcoming of the natives of the American West, this peculiar way of making history, which is similar in some ways to what has happened elsewhere in human life, but is nevertheless quite specifically different, is expressed magnificently. And so it is also interesting to see how Woodrow Wilson establishes his method of history.

I have followed the descriptions in which he himself presents his method of history. This revealed something very peculiar to me: from this thoroughly American man flow sentences that seemed to me to correspond almost word for word with sentences from a completely different man, who really developed from a completely different attitude to life and thinking. One could take sentences from Woodrow Wilson's essay on the methodology of history, which bore such good fruit for him, and transpose them verbatim into essays by Herman Grimm, who is now fully immersed in the modern Goethe development, who now stands out of this Goethe development as a truly thoroughly Central European-German spirit. One could say: One need only extract sentences from Herman Grimm's essays, transpose them, and take sentences from Woodrow Wilson and transpose them into Herman Grimm's essays, and one would find no great changes in the wording. — But one learns from such an experience what I now want to express in trivial words, but I want to express something very significant by this, one learns: When two people say the same thing, it is not the same, even if the wording is identical.

What one must learn from this is that one must familiarize oneself not only with the wording given by the language, but with the whole person. Then you will find the specific differences between Herman Grimm and Woodrow Wilson, then you will find how, in Grimm's case, every single sentence is crafted with full conscious soul, how the progression in Herman Grimm's spirited essay, where he talks about historical method and historical observation, is truly such that you can see him progressing from one sentence to the next in an inner soul struggle, so that nothing remains unconscious, but everything is forced into consciousness. One is always dealing with this inner progression of the soul.

If one looks at how things appear in Woodrow Wilson, one sees how these sentences emerge from strangely subconscious depths of the soul, as if from the person himself, in contrast to the inner influence. I don't mean anything bad by this, but I would just like to illustrate, if I may express myself paradoxically, that with Herman Grimm I always feel that in the region of the fully conscious life of the soul, all spiritual life takes place from sentence to sentence; with Woodrow Wilson, I feel that he is possessed by something that lies within himself and that radiates his own truths from within himself. — As I said, I don't mean anything sympathetic or antipathetic by this, but only something I want to characterize. It is inspired by the depths of his own soul. There we will find, even if the wording is the same, that when two people say the same thing, it is not the same. We only recognize what lies beneath if we do not stick to the wording, but if we understand how to stick to what follows from the whole life of the personality.

You see, modern humanity will have to learn to overcome what is so common today: when something is presented to us, we judge it only on the basis of its content. People will have to learn that the content is not the essential thing. When I speak about spiritual science, I do not place the emphasis on the wording of sentences, on the content, but rather on the fact that what I say is based on what is truly projected from the supersensible world. It is more important to focus on the how than on the what, to sense, to feel that Things are spoken from the supersensible world, that is what matters.

So one must learn this in the present as well, in relation to ordinary life. No matter how beautiful something may be said in a newspaper or journal—and today one can say terribly beautiful things, because things are lying on the street, the “beautiful ideals” and the “beautiful things”— it is not the wording that matters, but the powers of the soul from which they spring, that one looks through the sentences themselves and through the words at symptoms, at the human being. We must penetrate through language and wording as through a veil, and thus approach the human being again. This is precisely what recent linguistic developments teach us, which have detached people in their innermost being, in their conscious soul, from language. This educates us in the necessity of looking not only at the wording, but through the wording at the human soul, pursuing this in all directions, with all possibilities.

However, something must be overcome if progress is to be made in this direction, for people today are still accustomed to abstractions, to what I might call a bourgeois, philistine adherence to immediate content. When someone expresses an ideal and formulates something beautifully — we must be clear that this is as cheap as blackberries today, because ideals are formed. One can present all kinds of ideals for people and nations, but they are formed. What matters is where they come from, where in the soul, in the region of the soul, they truly spring from. Life will be immensely enriched if we are able to view life in this way.

Perhaps I may also mention something personal. You see, I am given all kinds of poetic works. Who doesn't write poetry these days! Among these poetic works, there are some that are very well-formed, that express this or that wonderfully, and others that are seemingly clumsy, that have difficulties with language, that are even awkward and primitive. Those who take a still old-fashioned point of view will naturally take pleasure in beauty, namely in the perfect form of language. They will not, at least not yet, feel that Emanuel Geibel was right when he said of himself: His verses will find an audience as long as there are young girls. They are beautiful, they are smooth, and they will find an audience, even among those people who consider Wildenbruch or similar people to be poets — and there are many of them.

But today there is a different assessment in this area, and this is also the case in other arts, but here I am talking about language. Today there are poets whose verses can be difficult to read; one can have difficulties because they speak in an awkward language, but there is a new impulse in them; one must feel it! One must be able to look through the veil of language at the polished verses into the superficiality of the soul. For polished verses, beautiful, polished verses, which are much more beautiful than Goethe's verses, are as cheap as blackberries today; for language already composes poetry. But new spiritual life, life that comes directly from the source of all life, must first be sought. This is sometimes expressed precisely by the fact that it has to struggle with language, that it is, so to speak, still in its infancy. But such “stammering” can be preferable to that which is perfect in itself and only points to a superficial soul. I was once given some verses on an occasion when we ourselves needed such verses because we had to do a translation from another language, very beautiful verses. I became angry about this and wrote some bad ones myself. I am aware that they are much worse as verses; but I knew that in this case I was forced to express in a language that might seem clumsy what needed to be expressed when drawing from the appropriate source of life. I do not overestimate what I have undertaken to do, but neither do I overestimate the polished verses that were handed to me.

The search for the human being through language in the age of the consciousness soul is something that, in turn, emerges as a life practice from a real observation of linguistic life. That is why I have tried unreservedly today not to speak in every sentence as if I were teaching spiritual science and always wanted to prove the supersensible, but I have tried to put this into the how of historical observation. And I believe that is also the important thing: that one does not just repeatedly and again and again call someone a true spiritual researcher who uses the words spirit and spirit and spiritual world in every fifth word and then believes that one can suggest this to people, but rather that one uses the way of observing the world, even the most external world, through the how, and then believes that one can suggest this to people. spirit and spirit and spiritual world in every fifth word and then believes that he can suggest this to people, but rather someone who, through the way he views the world, even the most external world, through the way he presents things, shows that the inner guide who leads from thought to thought, from insight to insight, from impulse to impulse, that this guide is the spirit. If this guide is the spirit, then there is no need to keep reminding people of it!

This is something that shows you how language can be used to reinforce what I could present in a comprehensive lecture.