The Reality of the Higher Worlds
GA 79
2 December 1921, Bern
Translator Unknown
The Renewal of Culture
I have been asked to lecture this evening on The Necessity for a Renewal of Culture. During the past few days I have been speaking to you on the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. This is a field which may be dealt with generally by any individual, if he thinks that he can communicate to others this or that result of special investigations or impulses. For this is the expression of an individual impulse—although one must of course bear in mind that it is something which, from certain standpoints, may be of interest to all.
But I have quite a different feeling in regard to this evening's subject. In the present time, when one has to speak of the necessity for a renewal of culture, one only has the right to do so if one can perceive that this subject really corresponds to a general demand, that people are filled by the desire for a renewal of culture, and believe in what may be called a renewal of culture. An individual must therefore more or less interpret a generally ruling view. For in regard to such a subject, arbitrary individual opinions would only be an expression of lack of modesty and conceit.
The following question therefore arises: Does this subject correspond to-day to a generally ruling feeling, to a sum of feelings which exists in wide circles? If we look in an unprejudiced way into the hearts and souls of our contemporaries, if we study their soul-moods and their general frame of mind, we may indeed believe that this subject of the necessity for a renewal of culture is in many respects justified.
Do we not see that in the most varied spheres of life many of our contemporaries feel that something must penetrate into our spiritual life and into the other branches of human life, something which in some way corresponds to the longing which manifests itself so clearly?
To-day we come across searching souls in many fields of artistic life. Who has not noticed these searching souls? We find them above all among modern youth. Particularly there we find that youth expects something which it cannot obtain from the things offered by the generally prevailing spirit of the times. Especially in the sphere of ethical-religious life we come across such seeking souls. Innumerable questions, expressed and above all unexpressed, questions which live only in the depths of feeling, are now reposing in human hearts. If we consider social life, then the course of the world's events and all that takes place, as it were, within this domain, takes on the aspect of one great question: Where must we look for some kind of cultural renewal of our social life?
The individual, however, who considers these different questions, may nevertheless not go further than the belief that he can but offer a small contribution towards these problems, arising out of a generally felt need in this domain. But perhaps the explanations resulting from anthroposophical spiritual research contained in the last lectures which I gave to you here, entitle me to set forth a few facts on the subject chosen for to-day, even though the spiritual science of Anthroposophy knows that in regard to many things which people are now seeking, it can at the most offer a few impulses which can bear fruit; yet it is the very aim of anthroposophical research to offer such impulses, such germinating forces.
At Dornach, in Switzerland, we have tried to establish the School for Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum. Here we can say that at least the attempt has been made to fructify the single scientific spheres by adding to the results obtained in medicine, natural science, sociology, history, and many other fields by the highly significant methods of recent times, the results which can be obtained through direct investigation of the spiritual world itself.
In the pedagogical-didactical field, the effort has been made to obtain some practical results through the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Attempts have even been made to achieve results in the economic field. But there we must say that present conditions are so difficult, that these newly founded economic undertakings must first pass the test showing whether they are able to—I will not say attain—but at least encourage what so many modern people are seeking to find.
Let me therefore begin with this quest. I cannot speak of course from the standpoint of your nation, where I have the great pleasure of being your guest; I can only speak to you from an international standpoint. Those who have open hearts, minds and souls for the longings of that section of mankind which counts most for the future, those who observe this in an unprejudiced way, cannot help turning their gaze to the young people and their quest!
Everywhere we find that our young people are filled with the longing, arising out of an altogether indefinite feeling, for something quite new. The earnest, significant question must therefore rise up: Why do our young people not have full satisfaction in the things which we as older people could offer to them? And I believe that this very quest of youth is connected with the most intimate and deepest soul-impulses, which give rise in men's hearts in the present time to this general sense of seeking.
I believe that in this respect we must penetrate deeply into human souls, if the call for a renewal of culture, which can now be heard plainly, is to be judged according to its true foundation. We shall have to look into many depths of human soul-life; above all we cannot deal only with the characteristics of modern culture, but we shall have to survey a longer stretch of time.
If we do this in an unprejudiced way, we find that in an international respect the special soul-configuration of modern humanity has been prepared during the past three, four or five centuries, and we also find that these last three, four and five centuries reveal something completely new, compared with the spiritual constitution which still existed in the Occident during the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries, derived from a still earlier epoch. Whenever we survey these earlier times of spiritual life in the Occident, we find that man's soul-spiritual conception was not so strictly separated from his physical or sensory conception, as was the case later on and during the present time.
In earlier centuries, when the human being turned his senses towards the physical world which constituted his environment, he always knew that a spiritual element also lived in the objects which he perceived though his senses. He no longer had such a highly spiritual conception of the world as, for instance, the ancient Egyptian, or even the ancient Greek, who saw the external embodiment of soul-spiritual beings in the world of the stars, but he still had some inkling of the fact that a spiritual essence permeated everything in his physical environment.
Again, when the human being of earlier centuries looked back upon his own self, he did not strictly separate his physical-bodily part from his soul, i.e. from thought, feeling and will. I might say that by being conscious of his soul, he was at the same time conscious of the members of his body, of the organs of his body, and he also perceived a soul-spiritual essence in these bodily organs, he felt a soul-spiritual essence in his own organism. In the world outside he experienced this soul-spiritual essence, and within his own self he also experienced a soul-spiritual essence.
He thus felt a certain relationship, a certain intimacy with the world around him. He could say to himself: What lives within me, also lives in a certain respect within the universe, and Divine-spiritual beings, who lead and guide the world, placed me into this universe. He felt connected with the universe and had a feeling of intimacy with it. He experienced, as it were, that he formed part of the great soul-spiritual-physical organism of the universe.
This is a feeling which we do not fully understand to-day, because during the past centuries the times have undergone a complete change. This change appears not only among theoreticians and scientists, but it reveals itself in every human heart, in every human soul. It does not merely reveal itself in the way in which modern people contemplate the world, but also in the way in which spirit is embodied in matter in artistic creation and in the enjoyment of art. It reveals itself in our social life, in the way in which we face our fellowman, in the understanding which we have for him, and in what we demand from him. Finally, it reveals itself in the feelings which we have concerning our own ethical-religious impulses, in the way in which we experience the Divine within our own heart and soul, in our attitude towards the impulse which gave to the earth in the deepest way the key to the spirit underlying earthly existence in our attitude towards the deeper inner meaning of Christianity.
We can therefore say: What people thus search for in widest circles must in some way be related with this change. What is the nature of this change?
Now the last centuries have seen the dawn of an age which is frequently described as the age of intellectualism. But it was not intellectualism, an abstract use of the understanding which in the past made people feel so closely connected and acquainted with the surrounding world—as I briefly explained to you just now. Only in the course of human evolution has modern man thoroughly learned to have full confidence in the intellect and in the understanding, when contemplating the world, and even when experiencing it.
Now, however, there are two conditions of human life which are interrelated: inwardly, intellectualism and confidence in the authority of reason, of the understanding, and outwardly, faith in the phenomena of Nature and a sense for the observation of Nature's phenomena.
Inwardly, modern man developed an inclination to set everything under the rule of an intellectualistic observation based on reason. As a natural consequence, this inner capacity above all, could only be applied to the phenomena of Nature, to everything which can be observed through the senses, to everything which can be analyzed or combined in the form of thoughts. These two things, I might say, the indisputable observation of Nature and the development of the intellect, were the two great, important means of education used during recent centuries: they exercised their strongest influence upon civilised humanity during the 19th century and have also carried their fruits into the 20th century.
One of the characteristics connected with the use of the intellect is that in a certain way our inner experience becomes isolated. The use of the intellect (it clearly reveals itself in its picture-character) in a certain way estranges feeling; it takes on a cold, prosaic life-nuance, and in reality it can only develop in the right way through external Nature, through everything which constitutes the surrounding world.
Through this connection, through this relationship of man with the world, deeply satisfying explanations can be found in regard to Nature, but it does not supply in the same measure as in the past the possibility to discover oneself, as it were, within external Nature. The soul-spiritual element which shone out to the men of olden times from a world filled with colour, sound, warmth and coldness, and from the year's seasons, could be experienced as something which was related to what lived in their inner being.
Through our feeling, we can no longer directly bring into our own inner being the whole external life of Nature, which we learn to know through the intellect—all that we discover through intellectual research in physics, chemistry and biology. We can certainly strive to investigate biologically man's inner organic structure; we can even go as far as seeking to investigate the chemical processes of the human organism. But if we apply the investigation of external Nature to the human organism in order to understand it, we shall never find that this manner of investigation also takes hold of our feeling, that it can be summed up in a religious-ethical feeling towards the universe, and that finally it can be expressed in the feeling: "I am a member of the universe: Soul-spiritual is the universe, and I too am soul-spiritual."
This feeling does not shine out of the things which could be learnt during recent centuries through the magnificent impulses of natural science. Consequently, the very forces which brought the best and most significant fruit and which transformed the whole existence of modern man, at the same time estranged him from his own self.
The fact that he stands within the universe and admiringly looks upon his mathematical conception of the spatial world, of the stars and their movements, the fact that he can unfathom with a certain scientific reverence what plants, animals, etc., contain, is accompanied (in spite of all the problems which are still unsolved) by a certain feeling of satisfaction; people are filled with satisfaction that on the one hand it is possible for them to solve the riddles of Nature by using their intellect and their reason; but there is one thing which cannot be reached along this path, namely a Knowledge of Man's True Being.
The science dealing with the stars, the science which exists in the form of physics and chemistry, the science of biology, and in more recent times even the science of history, do not reveal anything in reply to man's deepest longing concerning his own being. And hence arose more and more the need to seek for something else.
Their quest is none other than the quest of modern man for the human being. Though we may do our utmost to summarize the true nature of this quest in different spheres everywhere, we find that men now really wish to solve the riddle of their own being, the riddle of man.
This is not merely something which may interest theoreticians, but something which deeply penetrates into the constitution of every human soul. To all who are interested in such things it is undoubtedly a source of deepest longing when the investigation of Nature leads to the desire to discover also what lies concealed behind the great expanse of Nature's life: namely, man's being, which greatly transcends all that can be gathered from the external kingdoms of Nature.
But I might say: At this point, the great riddle, the search for the nature of man, really begins. At this point we also understand the fact that we have allowed our feelings and our whole education to be influenced by forces which thus came to the fore during recent centuries. External life reflects this in every way. Far more than we think, external life reflects the forces which came to the fore in the spiritual life of humanity during its more recent course of development, as described just now.
We not only enquire in vain after man's true being from a theoretical standpoint—oh no!—but to-day we pass each other by, and under the influence of our modern education we have not the capacity to understand our fellow-men inwardly, we lack the capacity to look with a kind of clairvoyant sympathy into the human soul and into what lives in it, a capacity which still existed in many civilisations of the past. Not only theoretically have we lost the understanding for the human being, but in every moment of the day we lack a sympathetic comprehension, a sympathetic, feeling contact with our fellow-men. Perhaps this appears most clearly of all in the social question; in its present form it shows us that we have indeed lost this understanding for our fellow-men.
For why does the call for social reforms, for a social renewal, resound so loudly? Because in reality we have grown utterly unsocial. As a rule, we demand most loudly of all the very things which we most sorely lack, and in the loud call for socialism, a truly unprejudiced person can hear the truth, that we no longer understand each other and are unable to build up a social organism, because we have grown so unsocial. Consequently, we cling to the hope that our understanding, which has reached such a high stage of development through intellectualism, may after all lead us back to an organic social structure.
The social question itself shows us above all how estranged we have become from each other as human beings. In quite recent times the religious question confronts us, because we have lost the immediate inner experience of being directly connected with the divine essence of the universe; we no longer feel the voice speaking within our own self as an expression of the Divine-spiritual. The call for a religious renewal also arises through a really felt need.
If we now look more deeply into the seeking life of modern times, by setting out from such aspects, we find that the intellectual culture, the intellectual contemplation which gradually made even human feeling grow pale, is after all something which is connected with a definite age of human life.
We should not fall a prey to any illusion: for in regard to his intellect, the human being really awakes only when he reaches the age of puberty; his intellectual powers awake at that time of his life when he is ready to work in the external world. But intellectualism is never our own personal property, a force which can move our soul during childhood, or soon after when we go to school. In this early life the soul's configuration must differ from its later configuration. The intellectual element in modern life cannot and must not develop during childhood and in early youth, for it would have a chilling, deadening, paralyzing effect upon the forces of youth.
Thus it came about (in order to understand the present time and its longings we must penetrate into more intimate details of life) that we now grow into a culture which deprives us—though this may sound paradoxical—in our mature age of the most beautiful memories of our childhood.
If we look back in memory upon our experiences of childhood, we cannot draw up with sufficient intensity and warmth the undefined feelings and memories which frequently live in unconscious depths and which sometimes can only rise up in nuances of thoughts and memories. We reach the point of being unable to understand ourselves completely. We look back upon the life of our childhood as if it were a riddle. We no longer know how to speak out of our full human being, and into the language which we speak as grown-ups we can no longer bring that shading which re-echoes what the child experiences in its living wisdom, when it turns its innocent eyes to the surrounding world, when it unfolds its will during the early years of its existence.
We do not study history in a true way if it does not show us that among the people of olden times, the speech of men who had reached a mature age always re-echoed the development of childhood. We live through our childhood unconsciously, but in such a way, that this unconscious life of the soul still contains in an intensive form what we brought with us through birth, through the union with the physical body, what we brought with us from the soul-spiritual life of our pre-existence.
Those who can observe a child, those who have an open soul and mind for this kind of observation, will discover the greatest mystery when they see how week by week the child unfolds what the human being brings with him into the earthly-physical world from a soul-spiritual existence. What man's eternal being unconsciously brings into the human members, into the whole human organisation, so that it lives and pulses through the body, brings about an inner permeation with soul-spiritual forces, which however encounter a kind of chilling substance, when later on the intellect which really exists only for earthly concerns comes to the fore.
Those who to-day have enough self-observation for such intimate things, know that a kind of thin fog spreads over that which seeks to enter our mature consciousness from our childhood; they know that it is impossible to bring into words which have grown old the living experiences of childhood, because these exercise a soul-spiritual influence, and live within the child in a far more intensive soul-spiritual form than they can later on live in an intellectualistic state.
A witty writer of the 18th and 19th century once wrote: During his first three years of life, man learns far more than during his three years at the university. I do not mean to hurt the feelings of university students, for I can appreciate them, but I also believe that in regard to our whole, full manhood, we learn more during the first three years of life, when we form our organism out of our still unconscious wisdom, than we can ever learn later on. Yet our modern culture strongly develops the tendency to forget these most important three years of life, at least it has the tendency to prevent their coming to expression in a corresponding living way in that which manifests itself later on as the expression of our mature culture. But this fact exercises a great influence upon our whole civilised life. If we are unable to colour, animate, and spiritualize our mature speech and the thoughts of mature life with the forces which well up from our own childhood—because the intellect gives us pictures, a spiritual world in pictures, but is unable to absorb spiritual life, the life of the spirit itself—if we are unable to do this, we cannot speak to youth in a living and intensive way. We then speak out of a lost youth to a living youth round about us.
This is the feeling which we discover in modern youth, this is the feeling expressed in their search and which may be characterised as follows: "You old people speak a language which we cannot understand; you speak words which find no echo in our hearts and souls."—This is why the call for a renewal of culture is to be heard above all in the longings of our young people, and we must realize that by going back to a comprehension of the spiritual we must again learn to speak to youth in the right way, and even to speak in the right way to children.
My dear friends, those who permeate their inner being with the truths which anthroposophical spiritual research seeks to grasp through the soul's living being and not through abstract thoughts, take hold of something which does not grow old, which even in mature years does not deprive them of the forces of childhood; they feel, in a certain way, the more spiritual forces of childhood and of youth entering their maturer life. They will then find the words and the deeds which appeal to youth, the words and deeds which unite them with the young.
It was this observation of youth's mood of seeking which led to the endeavor to create at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart above all a body of teachers able to speak to children out of a spiritual rejuvenation reached in maturer years, to speak to children once more as if they were real friends. To those people who acquire something of genuine spirituality in their life, every child is a revelation, they know that the child, the small child and the older child, can—if they have an open heart for this—give them more than they can give to the child. Though this may sound paradoxical, it is nevertheless the note which may lead to a kind of renewal of culture in this sphere.
If we let this shed light on the other things which confront us in life, we must say to ourselves if we clearly perceive that man is in search of man and that he must seek him; that is to say, if we can see that the human being who has become one-sided through intellectualism goes in search of the full whole human being, we shall come across this same fact very definitely in many other spheres of life to-day.
If we survey the times which have given rise to the great achievements of modern culture, achievements which cannot be prized highly enough, we find that modern civilisation could only be gained by forfeiting something of man's whole being. Man looked out into the world's spaces. He could build instruments enabling him to discover the nature and the movements of the stars. It is only since a few centuries, however, that results which thus confront us have developed in such a way as to supply a mathematical physical picture of the universe. To-day we no longer feel how in the past men looked out into the universe and perceived in the stars' courses a revelation of the spirit in the cosmos, in the same way in which we now perceive in the physiognomy of a human being the revelation of his soul and spirit. An abstract, dried-up mathematical-mechanical element now appears to us in the cosmos, although in itself it is one which cannot be prized highly enough. We look up to the sky and perceive nothing but an immense world-mechanism. The ideal has more and more gained ground to perceive this world-mechanism everywhere. And what has grown out of it to-day
Though to many contemporaries this may still seem contradictory, I think that to an unprejudiced observation it is everywhere clearly evident that the social sphere of humanity which surrounds us everywhere and which constitutes our modern civilisation, now sends out its answers to the concept of world-mechanism.
For to-day our social and also our ethical and juridical life, and in a certain way—as I will immediately show you—even our religious life, have taken on a mechanistic character.
We can see that in millions and millions of men there lives the view that the historical evolution of mankind does not contain spiritual forces, but only economic forces, and that everything which lives in art, religion, ethics, science, law, etc., is a kind of fog rising out of the only historical reality, out of economic life. Economic forms are realities and their influence upon men—this is what many people say to-day and one's heart should feel the great tragedy of such statements—gives rise to what develops in the form of law, ethics, religion, art, etc. This is their view: they think that all this is an ideology.
This has driven us in a direction which has, to be sure, produced great results in the spiritual life of the Occident, but to-day it has reached the opposite pole of what once existed in ancient better times of the past in the civilisation of the Orient—though even the Oriental culture has now become decadent. It was a one-sided culture, but our modern culture is also one-sided.
Let us bear in mind that once upon a time—in the East above all—there lived a race which described the external physical world as Maya, as the great illusion, for it only looked upon man's inner life as the true reality, man's thoughts, sensations, feelings and impulses of the will were the only reality. Once upon a time there was this other one-sided conception of perceiving the true essence and reality only in man's inner being, in the world of his thoughts, feelings and sensations, and of seeing in the external world nothing but Maya or the great illusion.
To-day we have reached the opposite conception, which is also one-sided. From the standpoint of modern culture we see the physical world everywhere round about us, and we call it the true reality. Millions of people see reality only in the physical course of economic processes and consider man's inner life an ideology, with the inclusion of everything which has proceeded from it in the development of culture. What millions and millions of people now designate an ideology is after all the same thing which the Orientals once called Maya, illusion—it is simply a different word, and used to be sure, in the opposite sense. The Oriental could have applied the word “ideology” to the external world, and “reality” to his inner being. Modern culture has reached the stage that countless people now apply these words in an opposite one-sidedness.
Our social life reveals something of which we can say: It has resulted in great and significant triumphs for science, but it has brought difficulties into human life itself, into the ethical and social life of men. But this mechanisation of life which now faces us does not only live in the ideas of millions of men, it really also exists. Our external life has become mechanised, and with our modern culture we are now living in a time which supplies man's answer in the social, ethical and religious spheres of life.
What first arose as a conception of the world in the great age of Galileo, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno, the conception which was then born, demands to be sure that it should be permeated with humanity in a different way from what has been the case so far. For the mechanisation of our human life is, as it were, the answer of civilisation to the mechanical character of our intellectual, scientific life.
We can see this in every detail. To-day we study natural science. We study the development of animal species from the lowest, simplest, most imperfect forms right up to man. Guided by highly praiseworthy scientific thought, we then place man at the end of this line of organic beings. What does this teach us in regard to him? That he is the highest animal. This is, of course, significant in a certain way, but we thus only learn to know man in his relationship to the other beings, not as he experiences himself as man. We learn to know what man develops in regard to the other beings, but not what constitutes his own self. Man loses himself in as much as he contemplates the external world in accordance with the admirable principles of modern natural science.
And hence the search for the human being, since through the great achievements of modern time, man has in a certain way, lost himself. And if we then look at the communal life in the social organism, we find that their reciprocal actions compel men to live as they do. In regard to this necessity we have gone very far in modern times. Into every sphere of social life there has entered a division of work. As regards the external mechanised life of modern times we must work so as to realize the truth of the words: All for one and one for all! In regard to external life we have had to learn to work one for the other.
But also, here we can see that for those who have not preserved old traditions but who have grown into the most modern form of life, human labour has become completely separated from the human being and that our modern understanding only enables us to grasp the external nature of man. Our conception and feeling in regard to human labour, through which we help our fellow men and work together with them, has therefore become a purely external one. We no longer observe the man and how he develops his work out of his soul-spiritual existence on earth, we do not see how human labour is the outcome of a man with whom we are closely bound up through feeling, who is a being like us. We see him and we do not feel that he is working for us. No, in the social life of to-day we look at the product, we see how much human labour has flowed into it and we judge human work in so far as we find it in the product.
This is so deeply rooted in people's minds, that by enhancing this great error of modern times Karl Marx reached the point of designating everything circulating as human labour in the form of goods produced for human consumption, as a crystallised condensed labour. We now judge labour separated from the human being, in the same way in which we have acquired the power of observing Nature apart from man. Our judgement of human labour is really infected by what we have learned to know concerning man and by the way in which we look upon him through natural science. This only leads us as far as the Nature-side of man, only as far as the fact that man is the highest animal: we do not penetrate as far as man's innermost being.
Even when we observe man in his work, we do not see how this work comes from him, but we wait instead until the product is there and only seek the work in something which has become emancipated from the man. And there stands man among us as a social being who knows that he must put into labour his human nature and frequently his human dignity, and he sees that this human dignity and the way in which labour comes out of his inner self, is not valued human work is only valued when it has streamed into the external product which is then brought on to the market; labour is there something which has been submerged in the wares, something which can, as it were, be bought and sold.
So in this connection, too, we see how man has lost himself. He has forfeited, as it were, a piece of his own self—his work—to the mechanism of modern civilisation.
We see this above all in the juridical part of the social organism. If we observe how the spiritual, mental, life prevails among us in modern times we find that the spirit only exists in abstract thoughts; that we can only have confidence in abstract thoughts and forget that the spirit lives within us in a direct way, that the spirit enters into us whenever we occupy ourselves with it, that our soul is not only filled by thoughts, but that our soul is really penetrated by the spirit whenever we are spiritually active. Mankind has lost this connection with the spirit, while its conception of Nature has become great. This in regard to the spiritual life.
In regard to our juridical, social and political life, the example of human labour has shown us that something which is connected with the human being has been torn away from him. When we observe the human soul in its intercourse as man with man, we do not see feeling flashing up and growing warm when one person looks at another's work. There is no warm feeling for the man at his work. We do not see the work developing in connection with man, but we only see something which can no longer kindle the other man's warm sympathy; we see the labour after it has left the man, and has flowed into the product.
So in this sphere, too, in the sphere of human intercourse and juridical life, we have lost man.
And if we look at the sphere of economics: in the economic life man must procure for himself what he needs for his consumption. The things which he needs for his own consumption are those for which he develops his capacities. Man will work all the better for others, for himself and for the whole human community, the more he develops his capacities. The essential point in economic life is the development of human faculties. When it is a question of people, an employee will find it advantageous to work for a capable employer. This is quite possible, for those whose work is guided by others physically or spiritually, soon recognize that they fare better with a capable leader than with an incapable one.
But does our modern economic striving tend above all to bear in mind the economic life and activity of mankind and to ask everywhere: Where are the more capable people? If we were to look upon this living element in man, upon this purely human element, if people were placed into economic life in accordance with their capacities, so that they might achieve their best for their fellows: that could achieve a conception, a culture, able to discover the human being in man.
But the characteristic of our modern culture is just this, that it cannot discover the human being in man, and to an unprejudiced observation it is evident that we have gradually lost the power of judging people rightly, in accordance with their capacities and gifts.
To be sure that testing entity, the examination, through which men's capacities are supposed to be shown, has acquired a great importance in our modern civilisation. But its chief aim is not to discover how a person can most capably work in life, for the mechanised way of living requires something else. In many respects indeed, there is the call to-day to let the best man fill the best place according to requirement, but this generally remains a pious wish, and we see that economic life above all—as well as other spheres, such as spiritual and juridical life—becomes severed from the human being. We do not consider the human being above all and his living connection with economic life, but we consider instead the best way in which he can become connected with something which is not really related to man. We see that economic life as well is separating itself from man. It is therefore no wonder that the call for a renewal of our present culture should arise in every sphere of life under the aspect of a search for the human being.
Things are not much better in the sphere of art. If we look back into the times of ancient Greece, we think that the Greek tragedians wrote their dramas in the same way in which we write them now. Yet the Greek conception of life in no way resembles the present one. The Greek spoke of Catharsis, the purification which must take place through the drama. What did he understand by catharsis or purification? He meant that a person participating in the action of such a tragedy or of some other piece, experienced something in his soul which made him pass through certain feigned emotions. But this had a purifying effect, and thereby a healing effect upon him, reaching as far as the physical organism; it had above all a purifying and healing effect upon the soul. And the most important thing in Greek drama consisted both in a higher spiritual impulse and, I might say, in a medical impulse; the Greek saw a kind of healing process in what he wished to impart to his fellow-men through his highly perfected art.
We cannot of course, become Greeks again; I am merely telling you this as an elucidation of the fact that we have actually entered into a mechanised way of living which is, as it were, a denial of the human being, and that this explains the deep longing which passes through the modern world as a search for man.
The spiritual science of Anthroposophy in order to support this search for the human being, strives for what may be called the threefold division of the social organism. This is subjected to many misunderstandings. It only seeks ways, however, which will lead, in the life of the spirit, to the rediscovery of no mere abstract spirit, a pallid thought world, at most a reflecting upon the spirit; which will lead, in the juridical-political life, to the rediscovery of not merely the work that flows into the product, but the valuing of man's work, that human valuing of work which arises in the communal life when man as man confronts his fellows in pure humanity.
And in the economic sphere, the threefold division of the social organism aims at the forming of Associations in which people unite as consumers and producers, so that they can guide economic life in an associative way, out of the most varied human spheres of interest.
We judge economic requirements purely through the mechanism of the market. The Associations are meant to unite people as living human beings who recognize the requirements in economic life; they are to form an organism that can regulate the conditions of production determined by the common life of men and by a knowledge of these requirements arising from such a joint life.
The threefold division of the social organism thus seeks to connect these three members-spiritual life, juridical life and economic life—in such a way within the social organism that the human element may everywhere be found again in the free life of the spirit, that does not serve economic interests nor proceed from these, that does not serve political interests nor proceed from these, but that stands freely upon its own foundation and seeks to develop human capacities in the best way. This free life of the spirit seeks to show man the human being—it shows the human being to man.
In the free Life of the Spirit the human being can be found by experiencing the spirit, thus unfolding in a harmonious way the human capacities; from such a relatively independent spiritual life, it will then be possible to send into the political-juridical life and into the economic life the men with the best capacities, thus fructifying these spheres. If the economic life or political life dictate what capacities are to be developed, they themselves cannot prosper. But if they leave the life of the spirit completely free, so that it can give to the world out of its own foundations what every individual brings into existence out of divine-spiritual worlds, then the other spheres of life can become fruitful in the widest sense of the word.
The States-life should cultivate what men can develop as the feeling of legal rights, as moral disposition inasmuch as they face each other as equals. The Economic Life should discover man through the necessary Associations in keeping with his needs and capacities in the economic sphere. The threefold division of the social organism does not aim at a mechanical separation of these three spheres, but by establishing a relative independence of these three spheres it seeks to enable man once more to find through these three spheres of life the full humanity which he has lost and which he is seeking to discover again.
In such a sense we may indeed speak of the necessity for a renewal of culture. And this is particularly evident if we look still deeper into man's inner being, into that inner part where, if he seeks to be fully man, and experience fully his dignity and worth as a human being, he must connect himself with the divine-spiritual; where he must experience and feel his own eternal being, that is to say, when we look at men's common religious life.
My dear friends, I only desire of course to say that these are the convictions of anthroposophical spiritual science; I do not wish to press anyone to accept this particular solution of to-day's subject. Anthroposophy seeks above all to recognize once more the place of Christianity in the evolution of the earth. It points to the Mystery of Golgotha, as Anthroposophy can unravel it in the spiritual world. Historical evolution is then traced in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha.
A spiritual study of human history reveals that in primeval times humanity possessed a kind of primeval revelation, a kind of instinctive primeval wisdom, which gradually disappeared and grew fainter, and this would have increased as time went on. If nothing else had occurred, we should now be living within a pallid spiritual life deprived of wisdom, a spiritual life that could have nothing in common with the warmth of our soul-life had not earthly existence been fructified at a certain moment by something which came from outside the earth.
Spiritual science, in the sense of Anthroposophy, can once more draw attention to the man Jesus, who at the beginning of our era, wandered upon the earth in Palestine. We see that modern external Christianity more and more considers this man Jesus merely as a human being, whereas in older times people saw in Jesus a Being from spiritual worlds transcending the earth, Who had united Himself with the man Jesus and Who had become Christ Jesus.
By investigating the spheres outside the earth with the aid of spiritual observation, spiritual science does not only draw attention to the man Jesus, but also to the Christ Who descended from heavenly heights, as a Principle transcending the earth and penetrating through the Mystery of Golgotha into human life on earth. And since the Mystery of Golgotha, the evolution of humanity on earth has become different, for a fructifying process from the heavenly worlds took place.
Modern culture leads men to concentrate their attention more and more upon the man Jesus, thus losing that feeling of genuine religious devotion gained by looking upon Christ Jesus, a feeling which alone can give us satisfaction. By looking only upon the man Jesus, people really lose that part in Jesus which could be of special value to them. For the human being in man has been lost. Even through religion we do not know how to seek in the right way the man in Jesus of Nazareth.
Through a deepening of the spiritual-religious life, anthroposophical spiritual science once more discloses the source of religious devotion, in other words, it leads to the search of the divine in man within the human being himself, so that it can also rediscover in the man Jesus the super-earthly Christ, thus penetrating to the real essence of Christ Jesus. Anthroposophy does not in any way degrade the Mystery of Golgotha by saying that what formerly existed outside the earth afterwards came down to the earth.
And what does one experience in the present age of modern culture by pursuing such a goal?
The tendency of anthroposophical spiritual science to consider what transcends the earthly sphere has led people to retort that Anthroposophy is not Christian, that it cannot be Christianity because it sets a super-earthly, cosmic Being in Christ Jesus in place of the purely human being. They even think that it is an offence to say that Christ came down from cosmic spaces and penetrated into Jesus. Why do they think this? Because people only see the mathematical-mechanical cosmos, only the great machinery, as it were, when they look out into the heavenly spaces, and this attitude affects even religion, even man's religious feeling. Consequently, even religious people, and those who teach religion to-day, think that religion would be mechanised if Christ were to be sought in the cosmic spaces before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Yet spiritual science does not mechanize religion, nor does it deprive Christianity of its Christian element; instead it fills external life with Christianity by showing: out there in the cosmos is not mere mechanism, not merely phenomena and laws which can be grasped, through mathematics and natural science—there is spirituality.
Whereas modern theologians often believe that Anthroposophy speaks of a Christ coming down from the sun, from the lifeless cosmic space into Jesus, what is true is that Anthroposophy also sees the spiritual in the realms outside the earth, and considers it a blessing for the earth that the heavenly powers sent down their influence through this Being Who gave the earth its meaning by passing through the Mystery of Golgotha, by coming down from heavenly heights and uniting Himself with the evolution of humanity upon the earth.
The spiritual science of Anthroposophy thus really seeks to render religious life fruitful again and to fill it with real warmth; it seeks to lead man back to the original source of the divine. And this is sought by listening to what lies in the call for a renewal of our culture.
We have watched the development of a magnificent science and are full of admiration for the achievements of this modern science which have brought about such great results in our civilisation. But in addition to this, we realize that there exists the call for a renewal of religious life, for a renewed religious deepening. On the one hand, we are to have a science which has nothing to do with religion, and at the same time we are to have a religious renewal. This is the dream of many people.
But it will be a vain dream. For the content of religion can never be drawn out of anything but what a definite epoch holds to be knowledge. If we look back into times when religious life was fully active, we find that religions were also filled with the content of knowledge of a definite epoch, though in a special form, with the breath of reverence and piety, with true devotion and (this is especially significant) with a feeling of veneration for the founder of the particular religion.
Our present time, our modern civilisation, will therefore be unable to draw any satisfaction out of a religious content which does not harmonize with the knowledge which is accessible to modern people. That is why anthroposophical spiritual science does not seek a religion in addition to science, but it endeavors instead to raise science itself to a stage where it can once more become religious. It does not seek an irreligious science, and beside it an unscientific religion, but a science which can cultivate a religious life out of its own sources. For the science which Anthroposophy seeks is not based in a one-sided way upon the intellect, but it embraces the whole human being and everything which lives in him. Such a form of science does not have a destructive influence upon religious life, and above all it has no destructive influence upon Christian life, but will shed light upon it, so that one can find in the Mystery of Golgotha which entered the evolution of the earth the eternal, supersensible significance which was bestowed upon humanity through this event. If we look upon the Mystery of Golgotha, religious enthusiasm and inner religious happiness will enter our feelings and in a moral way also our will, and this religious life cannot be destroyed, but can be illumined in the right way by the truths which we can see and comprehend in regard to Christ Jesus, and His entrance into the earthly development of humanity.
Spiritual science therefore tries to meet the search for the human being. As I already explained to you, this lecture is only meant to be a small contribution to the hoped-for and longed-for renewal of our modern culture. It only seeks to explain the way in which it is possible to view the significance, the deep, inner, human significance of the longings which can find expression in a problem such as the renewal of modern culture.
In my lecture I also wished to show you that this call for a renewal of culture is really at the same time a call for knowledge for the development of a new feeling of the true human nature. The problem dealing with the nature of this search which strives after a renewal of modern culture is one which really exists, and we must seek to gain a real feeling of the true being of man, a full experience of the human being. Perhaps it is justified to believe that we may interpret this call for a renewal of culture, a call which is in many ways not at all clear and distinct, by saying to ourselves: The striving human being is now confronted in a really significant way by the renewal of a problem which resounded in ancient Greece and which now re-echoes from there in the call: "O man, know thyself!"
Assuredly the noblest endeavors of hundreds and thousands of years have been spent in the attempt to solve this problem. To-day it is more than ever the greatest problem of destiny. No matter how individual persons may reply to the question, how are we to reach a renewal of culture (I think I indicated this to some extent) the answer will somehow have to lie in the following direction: How can we rediscover by a fully human striving man himself, so that in contact with his fellow-man (who in his turn should devote himself fully to the world and his fellows) man may once more find satisfaction in his ethical, social and intellectual life? This constitutes, I think, the problem dealing with a renewal of our modern culture.
Die Notwendigkeit Einer Kulturerneuerung
Für den heutigen Abend wurde gewünscht, daß ich sprechen solle über das Thema «Die Notwendigkeit einer Kulturerneuerung». Nun habe ich mir erlaubt, im Laufe der vergangenen Tage über anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft zu sprechen. Das ist ein Gebiet, aus dem heraus im allgemeinen der einzelne sprechen darf, wenn er glaubt, das eine oder das andere aus besonderen Forschungsergebnissen oder Impulsen seinen Mitmenschen mitteilen zu dürfen. Denn es handelt sich ja dabei um den Ausdruck eines individuellen Impulses, wenn man auch durchaus der Meinung sein muß, daß man es da mit etwas zu tun habe, das alle Mitmenschen von irgendeinem Gesichtspunkte aus angehen könne. Dem heutigen Thema gegenüber fühle ich aber durchaus anders. Wenn von der Notwendigkeit einer Kulturerneuerung in unserer Zeit gesprochen werden soll, dann rechtfertigt sich ein solches Thema nur, wenn man wirklich wahrnehmen kann, daß ein solches Thema einer allgemeinen Meinung entspricht, und ein Glaube oder Wille vorhanden ist zu dem, was man Kulturerneuerung nennen könnte. Es muß also der einzelne sich mehr oder weniger zum Interpreten einer allgemein herrschenden Ansicht machen. Denn willkürliche einzelne Meinungen wären einer solchen Frage gegenüber etwas, was nur Unbescheidenheit und Überhebung hervorbringen könnte. Daher entsteht vor allen Dingen die Frage: Entspricht dieses Thema einer heute allgemein herrschenden Empfindung, einer Summe von Gefühlen, die in weiteren Kreisen vorhanden sind? Man darf allerdings glauben, wenn man mit unbefangenem Blicke durchgeht, was in den Herzen, in den sonstigen Seelenstimmungen und Seelenverfassungen unserer gegenwärtigen Mitwelt vorhanden ist, daß dieses Thema von der Notwendigkeit einer Kulturerneuerung in vieler Beziehung gerechtfertigt ist. Sehen wir denn nicht, wie von vielen unserer Zeitgenossen auf den mannigfaltigsten Gebieten des Lebens empfunden wird, es müsse etwas hereintreten in unser Geistesleben und in die anderen Zweige unseres menschlichen Zusammenlebens, das in irgendeiner Form einem Suchen entsprechen soll, welches deutlich vorhanden ist?
Suchende Seelen, wir finden sie heute auf manchen Gebieten des künstlerischen Lebens. Suchende Seelen — wer sollte es nicht bemerkt haben? — finden sich vor allen Dingen in der heutigen Jugend. Gerade in der heutigen Jugend finden wir, wie etwas erwartet wird,was diese Jugend nicht finden kann in dem, was ihr aus dem allgemeinen Zeitgeiste entgegentritt. Suchende Seelen finden wir vor allen Dingen auf dem Gebiete des ethisch-religiösen Lebens. Unzählige ausgesprochene und noch mehr unausgesprochene, bloß empfundene Fragen ruhen in ethisch-religiöser Beziehung heute in den menschlichen Herzen. Und wenn wir das soziale Leben betrachten, so erscheint uns ja der Weltengang selber, alles das, möchte man sagen, was in diesen Gebieten des Lebens geschieht, wie eine große Frage: Woher soll eine Art Kulturerneuerung dieses sozialen Lebens kommen?
Noch immer aber darf der einzelne, wenn er auch diese mannigfaltigsten Fragestellungen sieht, wohl nicht weiter gehen in seiner Beantwortung, als dazu, daß er meinen kann, einen kleinen Beitrag zur Beantwortung des allgemeinen Bedürfnisses auf diesem Gebiete zu geben. Und vielleicht rechtfertigen es doch gerade die Ausführungen, die ich in den verschiedenen Vorträgen der letzten Tage aus anthroposophischer Geistesforschung heraus gegeben habe, einiges mit Bezug auf unser heutiges Thema vorzubringen, weil doch — wenn diese anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft auch weiß, daß sie höchstens etwas ganz Keimhaftes geben kann und nur Anregungen zu bieten in der Lage ist für manches, was man heute sucht — diese anthroposophische Forschung gerade solche Keime geben will. Es ist versucht worden, in Dornach in der Schweiz die Freie Hochschule für Geisteswissenschaft, das Goetheanum, aufzurichten. Und da darf man sagen, daß wenigstens der Versuch gemacht worden ist, die einzelnen wissenschaftlichen Gebiete zu befruchten dadurch, daß in Medizin, in Naturwissenschaft, in die Soziologie, in die Geschichte, in die verschiedensten anderen Gebiete des menschlichen Forschens, zu dem, was die außerordentlichen, bedeutsamen Methoden der neuesten Zeit haben geben können, das hinzugetragen wurde, was man durch unmittelbare Forschung in der geistigen Welt selbst gewinnen kann. Und es wird gerade auf diesem Gebiete versucht, in pädagogisch-didaktischer Weise auch Praktisches durch die «Waldorfschule» in Stuttgart zu geben. Es sind sogar Versuche gemacht worden, in ökonomischer Beziehung manches zu leisten. Da muß allerdings gesagt werden: Unsere gegenwärtigen Verhältnisse sind so schwierig, daß erst die Probe wird gemacht werden müssen, ob diese ökonomischen Gründungen das in bezug auf eine wirkliche Kulturerneuerung, ich will nicht sagen, leisten können, aber anregen können, was eine größere Anzahl von Menschen heute sucht.
Von diesem Suchen also lassen Sie mich zunächst sprechen. Ich kann hier natürlich nicht vom Standpunkt Ihres Volkstums aus, innerhalb dessen ich mich ja nur als Gast zu meiner tiefsten Befriedigung betrachten darf, ich kann nur vom internationalen Standpunkt aus sprechen. Wie soll aber derjenige, der Herz und Sinn und Gemüt und offene Seele hat für das, was der für die Zukunft wichtigere Teil der Menschheit heute als seine Sehnsucht vor sich hat, wie soll der, der das mit unbefangenem Sinn beobachtet, nicht zunächst seinen Blick wenden auf das Suchen der Jugend! Überall finden wir, daß gerade unsere Jugend die Sehnsucht hat, aus einem, ich möchte sagen, zunächst völlig Unbestimmten heraus, irgend etwas Neues zu empfangen. Und die ganz ernste, bedeutsame Frage muß auftauchen: Warum ist es denn so bei unserer Jugend, daß sie in dem, was wir ihr haben geben können als Alte, nicht mehr die volle Befriedigung finden kann? Und ich glaube gerade, daß dieses Suchen der Jugend zusammenhängt mit den intimsten, tiefsten Seelenimpulsen, die in der Gegenwart dieses allgemeine menschliche Suchen hervorrufen. Ich glaube, daß man auf diesem Teile allerdings tief hineinschürfen muß in die menschlichen Gemüter, wenn man das, was allerdings an der Oberfläche zu bemerken ist, das Rufen nach einer Kulturerneuerung, seinem eigentlichen Untergrunde nach beurteilen will. Man wird schon hineinschauen müssen in die vielen Tiefen des menschlichen Seelenlebens, und man wird vor allen Dingen nicht bloß fragen dürfen nach den Kultureigentümlichkeiten der unmittelbaren Gegenwart, sondern man wird den Blick über einen etwas längeren Zeitraum richten müssen.
Wer dies mit offenem Sinn tut, der wird finden, daß sich die besondere Seelenverfassung der Menschheit der Gegenwart in internationaler Beziehung vorbereitet hat durch die letzten drei, vier, fünf Jahrhunderte, und er findet, daß diese letzten drei, vier, fünf Jahrhunderte im Grunde in bezug auf die menschliche Seelenverfassung ein völlig Neues aufweisen gegenüber dem, was — bei einem wirklich unbefangenen historischen Blick sieht man es — etwa als die Geistesverfassung des Abendlandes im zehnten, elften, zwölften Jahrhundert aus früher Vorzeit noch vorhanden war. Man findet überall, wenn man in diese früheren Zeiten des abendländischen Geisteslebens zurückgeht, daß die menschliche seelisch-geistige Anschauung und die physische Anschauung, die sinnliche Anschauung nicht in dem strengen Sinne getrennt waren, wie das später der Fall geworden ist, und wie das in unserer unmittelbaren Gegenwart der Fall ist. Der Mensch der früheren Jahrhunderte, er hat, indem er seine Sinne hinausgerichtet hat in die physische Umwelt, überall in den sinnlich wahrnehmbaren Dingen auch irgend etwas Geistiges vermutet. Er hat die Welt zwar nicht mehr in dem Grade geistig vorgestellt, wie vielleicht der alte Ägypter oder der alte Grieche selbst noch, die in der Gestirnwelt die äußere Verkörperung von geistig-seelischen Wesenheiten sahen, aber er hatte noch eine Ahnung davon, daß Geistiges alles das durchdringt, was er in seiner physischen Umwelt hat. Und wiederum, wenn dieser Mensch der älteren Jahrhunderte auf sich selbst hingesehen hat, dann hat er das Physisch-Leibliche nicht streng getrennt von dem Seelischen, von dem Denken, von dem Fühlen, von dem Wollen. Ich möchte sagen, der Mensch hat sich, indem er seiner Seele sich bewußt war, auch sich bewußt gefühlt seiner Leibesglieder, seiner Leibesorgane, und er hat auch in diesen Leibesorganen in seinem eigenen Organismus etwas Seelisch-Physisches gesehen. Seelisch-Physisches hat er draußen empfunden in der Welt, Seelisch-Physisches in seinem eigenen Inneren. Und so konnte er eine gewisse Verwandtschaft fühlen, ein gewisses Vertrautsein mit seiner Weltumgebung. Er konnte sich sagen: Dasjenige, was in mir lebt, es lebt in einer gewissen Beziehung auch in der Welt, in die mich irgendwelche göttlich-geistigen Mächte, die die Welt lenken und leiten, hineingestellt haben. - Der Mensch fühlte sich verwandt und vertraut mit der Welt. Er fühlte sich gewissermaßen als ein Glied in dem großen geistigseelisch-physischen Weltenorganismus.
Das ist eine Empfindung, die wir heute nur noch wenig verstehen, weil eben in den letzten Jahrhunderten die Zeiten durchaus andere geworden sind. Und dieses Anderswerden äußert sich nicht bloß bei den Theoretikern, bei den Wissenschaftern, dieses Andersgewordensein äußert sich in jeder einzelnen Menschenbrust, in jeder einzelnen Menschenseele. Es äußert sich nicht bloß darin, wie wir wissenschaftlich heute die Welt betrachten, es äußert sich auch darin, wie wir in künstlerischem Schaffen und künstlerischem Genießen den Geist der physischen Materie einverleiben. Es äußert sich darin, wie wir im sozialen Zusammenleben dem einzelnen Mitmenschen begegnen, wie wir ihn verstehen, was wir von ihm fordern. Es äußert sich endlich auch darin, wie wir über unsere eigenen sittlich-religiösen Impulse empfinden, wie wir das Göttliche in der eigenen Brust, in der eigenen Seele erleben, wie wir zu dem stehen, was der Erde im allertiefsten Sinn den Geist des Erdenseins enträtselt hat: wie wir stehen zu dem tieferen inneren Sinn des Christentums.
So kann man sagen: Was da in weitesten Kreisen gesucht wird, es wird wohl in irgendeiner Weise verwandt sein mit diesem Andersgewordensein. Und wie ist dieses Andersgewordensein? — Nun, es ist ja in den letzten Jahrhunderten das Zeitalter heraufgezogen, das man so sehr häufig nennt das Zeitalter des Intellektualismus. Es war nicht der Intellektualismus, es war nicht der abstrakte Verstandesgebrauch, der einst in früheren Jahrhunderten den Menschen so vertraut und verwandt gemacht hat mit seiner Weltumgebung, wie ich es eben andeutungsweise zu charakterisieren versuchte. Der neuere Mensch erst hat innerhalb der Entwickelung des Menschentums so recht gelernt, sein volles Vertrauen beim Betrachten der Welt, selbst beim Empfinden der Welt, dem Intellekt, dem Verstande zuzuwenden.
Nun ergeben sich aber für das menschliche Leben zwei Bedingungen, die zusammengehören: Innerlich der Intellektualismus, das Vertrauen auf die Autorität der Vernunft, des Verstandes, und äußerlich der Glaube an die Naturerscheinungen, der Sinn für die Beobachtung der Naturerscheinungen. Innerlich erstand dem neueren Menschen die Neigung, alles unter die Macht der vernünftigen, der verstandesmäßigen, der intellektualistischen Betrachtung zu stellen. Und da ergab sich von selbst, daß diese innerliche Fähigkeit vor allen Dingen nur anwendbar ist auf die Naturerscheinungen, auf alles, was durch die Sinne beobachtet und eben in Begriffen analysiert oder kombiniert werden kann. Diese zwei Dinge, möchte ich sagen, die einwandfreie Betrachtung des Natürlichen und die Ausbildung des Intellektuellen, das waren die beiden großen, bedeutsamen Erziehungsmittel der letzten Jahrhunderte, die Erziehungsmittel, die ihre größte Macht auf die Kulturmenschheit ausgeübt haben im 19. Jahrhundert, und die auch ihre Früchte hereingetragen haben in das 20. Jahrhundert.
Nun ist es eine Eigentümlichkeit, daß wenn man sich dem Verstandesgebrauche hingibt, man in einer gewissen Beziehung einsam wird im innerlichen Erleben. Der Verstandesgebrauch hat etwas — es kündigt sich deutlich an in seinem Bildcharakter —, was in einer gewissen Weise dem unmittelbaren Empfinden fremd wird, was eine kalte, nüchterne Nuance des Lebens annimmt, und was sich wiederum eigentlich nur im rechten Sinne entwickeln kann an der äußeren Natur, an alledem, was den Menschen umgibt. Und man mag wohl durch eine solche Beziehung, durch ein solches Verhältnis des Menschen zur Welt, tief befriedigende Erklärungen für das Natürliche finden, aber man hat nicht in einer solchen Weise wie früher die Möglichkeit, gewissermaßen sich selbst zu finden in der äußeren Natur. Was dem Menschen früherer Jahrhunderte als Geistig-Seelisches aus der farbigen, aus der tönenden, aus der warmen und kalten Welt, aus den Jahreszeiten entgegengeleuchtet hat, das fühlte er, das erlebte er als etwas mit dem Verwandtes, was in seinem eigenen Inneren lebte. Dasjenige, was wir durch den Intellekt erfahren, das ganze äußerlich-natürliche Dasein, möchte ich sagen, alles was wir so durch die intellektualistische Forschung in Physik, in Chemie, in Biologie selbst finden, können wir nicht unmittelbar hereintragen mit unserer Empfindung in unser eigenes Menschentum. Gewiß, wir können streben, die innere menschliche organische Struktur biologisch zu erforschen, wir können so weit gehen, selbst den Chemismus des menschlichen Organismus erforschen zu wollen. Aber wir werden niemals finden können, daß das, was wir so aus der Erforschung der äußeren Natur hineintragen in das Verstehen unseres eigenen Menschentums, unsere Empfindung ergreift, daß das sich zuletzt zusammenfaßt in einer religiösen, in einer ethischen Empfindung gegenüber der Welt, daß das sich zuletzt zusammenfaßt etwa in der Empfindung: Ich bin ein Glied dieser Welt, geistig-seelisch ist sie, geistig-seelisch bin ich.
Diese Empfindung, sie leuchtet nicht hervor aus dem, was wir in so großartiger Weise in den letzten Jahrhunderten haben lernen können durch die Anregung der Naturwissenschaft. Und so ist es gekommen, daß gerade das, was dem Menschen die größten, bedeutsamsten Früchte gebracht hat, was das ganze moderne Dasein umgestaltet hat, daß das den Menschen sich selbst entfremdet hat. Daß der Mensch dasteht in der Welt und bewundernd aufblicken kann zu seinem mathematischen Urteile über die Raumeswelt, über die Sterne und ihre Bewegungen, daß er mit einer gewissen wissenschaftlichen Ehrfurcht dasjenige ergründen kann, was da lebt in Pflanze, Tier und so weiter, es hat, trotz aller noch ungelösten Probleme, etwas Befriedigendes, wie der Mensch auf der einen Seite die Natur auf diese Weise enträtseln kann durch die Anwendung eben dieser natürlichen Wissenschaft, durch die Anwendung seines Intellektes, seiner Vernunft, seines Verstandesgebrauches. Aber wozu der Mensch auf diesem Wege nicht kommen konnte, das ist die Erkenntnis seiner selbst. Diejenige Wissenschaft, die wir von den Sternen haben, diejenige Wissenschaft, die wir als Physik und als Chemie haben, diejenige Wissenschaft, die wir als Biologie haben, in der neueren Zeit selbst die Wissenschaft der Geschichte, sie sagen dem Menschen nichts für seine tiefste Sehnsucht in bezug auf sein eigenes Menschsein. Und dadurch kam immer mehr und mehr ein Suchen herauf.
Und dieses Suchen ist kein anderes als das Suchen des modernen Menschen nach dem Menschen selbst. Wenn man sich noch so sehr Mühe gibt, zusammenzufassen, was Suchen auf den verschiedensten Gebieten ist, so findet man überall: Die Menschen suchen eigentlich das Rätsel ihres eigenen Selbstes, das Rätsel des Menschen zu erforschen. Das ist nicht bloß etwas, was wiederum den Theoretiker interessiert, das ist etwas, was tief eingreift in alle menschlichen Seelenverfassungen. Gewiß, es ist für jeden, der sich für solche Dinge interessiert, im höchsten Grade Sehnsucht gebärend, wenn er durch die Forschung über die Natur gerade hingewiesen wird darauf, auch zu ergründen, was außerhalb der Weiten des Naturdaseins verhüllt ist: der Mensch mit seinem Wesen, das ja doch weit über das hinausgeht, was in den äußeren Reichen der Natur erfahren werden kann. Aber ich möchte sagen: Da beginnt eigentlich erst die große Rätselfrage.
Das andere ist darin gelegen, daß wir auch unsere Empfindungen, daß wir auch unsere ganze Erziehung haben beeinflussen lassen von dem, was in dieser Art in den neueren Jahrhunderten heraufgezogen ist. Und das äußere Leben ist durchaus ein Abglanz davon. Mehr als man denkt, spiegelt sich im äußeren Leben das, was sich in der eben geschilderten Weise im Geistesleben in der neueren Menschheitsentwickelung ergeben hat.
Wir fragen nicht nur theoretisch vergeblich nach dem Menschenwesen, o nein, wir gehen heute Mensch an Mensch aneinander vorbei und haben unter dem Einfluß unserer neuzeitlichen Erziehung nicht die Fähigkeit erlangt, unsere Mitmenschen innerlich zu verstehen, die Fähigkeit, mit einer Art hellseherischem Mitgefühl, wie es in vielen älteren Kulturen vorhanden war, in das hineinzuschauen, was in der menschlichen Seele lebt. Wir stellen viele Forderungen des Lebens auf, aber wir gehen in der Regel Mensch an Mensch aneinander vorbei. Wir haben nicht nur theoretisches Menschenverständnis verloren durch die angegebenen Gründe, wir haben auch empfindendes Menschenverständnis für jede Stunde des Tages, in der wir unter unseren Mitmenschen leben, verloren. Und vielleicht kann uns nichts mehr, als gerade das Auftauchen der sozialen Frage in der heutigen Form, darauf aufmerksam machen, wie wir dieses Verständnis für unsere Mitmenschen verloren haben. Warum ertönt denn eigentlich so stark der Ruf nach sozialen Reformen, nach sozialer Erneuerung? Er ertönt aus dem Grunde, weil wir eigentlich recht unsoziale Menschen geworden sind. Im Grunde fordert der Mensch gerade dasjenige immer am meisten, was ihm am meisten fehlt, und in dem lauten Rufe nach Sozialismus kündet sich eigentlich für die Ohren, die unbefangen hören können, an, daß wir solche unsoziale Menschen geworden sind, daß wir einander nicht verstehen, daß wir keinen sozialen Organismus zu bilden vermögen, und daß wir daher von unserem Verstande, der so hohe Ausbildung erfahren hat, von dem Intellektualismus erhoffen, er werde uns doch zu einem solchen sozialen Organismus wiederum zurückführen.
Gerade die soziale Frage selbst ist es, die uns zeigt, wie fremd wir einander eigentlich als Menschen geworden sind. Die religiöse Frage, sie tritt uns gerade aus dem Grunde in der Gegenwart, ja schon in der ganzen neueren Zeit entgegen, weil der Mensch eben verloren hat das unmittelbare innere Erlebnis, mit dem göttlichen Wesenskern der Welt unmittelbar zusammenzuhängen, zu erleben, wie das, was in seinem eigenen Inneren spricht, ein Ausdruck des GöttlichGeistigen ist. Wiederum entsteht aus einem Mangel heraus der Ruf nach einer religiösen Erneuerung.
Wenn wir von solchen Ausgangspunkten aus nun tiefer in das Leben, in unser heutiges suchendes Leben hineinschauen, dann finden wir ja doch, daß die intellektuelle Kultur, das intellektuelle Anschauen, das selbst das menschliche Gefühl allmählich hat erblassen lassen, im Grunde genommen etwas ist, was gebunden ist an ein bestimmtes Lebensalter des Menschen. Wir dürfen uns keiner Täuschung hingeben, keiner Illusion hingeben: Der einzelne individuelle Mensch erwacht für den Intellekt im Grunde genommen erst mit der Geschlechtsreife, mit dem Jünglingsalter. Er erwacht für den Intellektualismus in derjenigen Zeit seines Lebens, in der er heraustreten soll, um im Leben zu arbeiten. Aber der Intellektualismus ist nichts von dem, was uns eigen sein kann, was unsere Seele bewegen kann, wenn wir Kind sind oder wenn wir unmittelbar nach dem kindlichen Alter im Schulalter stehen. In diesem jugendlichen Menschenalter muß die Seelenverfassung eine andere sein, als sie später sein kann. Und das Intellektualistische, das im Leben der heutigen Menschheit brauchbar ist, es kann sich nicht ausleben, es darf sich gar nicht ausleben im jugendlichen Alter, denn es müßte erkältend, ertötend, lähmend auf die Kräfte des Jugendalters wirken. Und so ist es eigentlich gekommen - man muß eben in intimere Einzelheiten des Lebens hineinschauen, wenn man die suchende Gegenwart verstehen will —, daß wir hineinwachsen in eine Kultur, die uns, so paradox es klingt, in unserem reifen Lebensalter um die schönsten Erinnerungen unserer Kindheit bringt.
Wenn wir erinnerungsmäßig darauf zurückschauen, was wir als Kind haben erleben können, so können wir das, was da oftmals im Unbewußten unten sitzt, was nur in dunklen Ahnungen, Erinnerungen, manchmal nur in Färbungen von Gedanken und Erinnerungen heraufkommen kann, nicht mit der nötigen Intensität, mit der nötigen Wärme heraufholen. Wir kommen dazu, uns selber nicht mehr ganz zu verstehen. Wir sehen auf das Leben unserer Kindheit wie auf ein Rätsel zurück. Wir verstehen nicht mehr, aus unserem ganzen, aus unserem vollen Menschen heraus zu reden und in die Sprache, die wir als Erwachsener führen, diejenige Nuance hineinzulegen, die durchklingen läßt durch diese Sprache des Erwachsenen, was das Kind in seiner lebendigen Weisheit erlebt, wenn es seine unschuldigen Augen in die Umwelt richtet, wenn es seinen Willen in den ersten Jahren des Daseins entfaltet.
Der studiert nicht wirklich Geschichte, der durch die Geschichte nicht wissen lernt, wie bei einer älteren Menschheit überall mitgesprochen hat die Kindheitsentwickelung, wenn die Sprache des reifen Menschen erklungen ist. Wir verbringen die Kindheit unbewußt, aber wir verbringen sie so, daß in diesem unbewußten Seelenleben noch intensiv vorhanden ist, was wir uns durch die Geburt, durch die Verbindung mit der physischen Leiblichkeit aus dem geistig-seelischen Leben, aus dem präexistenten Leben mitbringen. darf sich gar nicht ausleben im jugendlichen Alter, denn es müßte erkältend, ertötend, lähmend auf die Kräfte des Jugendalters wirken. Und so ist es eigentlich gekommen - man muß eben in intimere Einzelheiten des Lebens hineinschauen, wenn man die suchende Gegenwart verstehen will —, daß wir hineinwachsen in eine Kultur, die uns, so paradox es klingt, in unserem reifen Lebensalter um die schönsten Erinnerungen unserer Kindheit bringt.
Wenn wir erinnerungsmäßig darauf zurückschauen, was wir als Kind haben erleben können, so können wir das, was da oftmals im Unbewußten unten sitzt, was nur in dunklen Ahnungen, Erinnerungen, manchmal nur in Färbungen von Gedanken und Erinnerungen heraufkommen kann, nicht mit der nötigen Intensität, mit der nötigen Wärme heraufholen. Wir kommen dazu, uns selber nicht mehr ganz zu verstehen. Wir sehen auf das Leben unserer Kindheit wie auf ein Rätsel zurück. Wir verstehen nicht mehr, aus unserem ganzen, aus unserem vollen Menschen heraus zu reden und in die Sprache, die wir als Erwachsener führen, diejenige Nuance hineinzulegen, die durchklingen läßt durch diese Sprache des Erwachsenen, was das Kind in seiner lebendigen Weisheit erlebt, wenn es seine unschuldigen Augen in die Umwelt richtet, wenn es seinen Willen in den ersten Jahren des Daseins entfaltet.
Der studiert nicht wirklich Geschichte, der durch die Geschichte nicht wissen lernt, wie bei einer älteren Menschheit überall mitgesprochen hat die Kindheitsentwickelung, wenn die Sprache des reifen Menschen erklungen ist. Wir verbringen die Kindheit unbewußt, aber wir verbringen sie so, daß in diesem unbewußten Seelenleben noch intensiv vorhanden ist, was wir uns durch die Geburt, durch die Verbindung mit der physischen Leiblichkeit aus dem geistig-seelischen Leben, aus dem präexistenten Leben mitbringen. Wer ein Kind zu beobachten vermag, wer Seele und Sinn hat zu dieser Beobachtung, dem enthüllt sich das größte Geheimnis, wenn er sieht, wie in dem Kinde von Woche zu Woche herauskommt, was der Mensch aus einem geistig-seelischen Dasein in diese irdisch-physische Welt sich mitbringt. Dasjenige, was da unbewußt das Ewige den menschlichen Gliedern, der ganzen menschlichen Organisation einkörpert und einpulsiert, das verursacht ein innerliches Durchdrungensein mit dem Seelisch-Geistigen, dieses wird aber später wie von einem erkältenden Stoff getroffen, wenn das, was eigentlich nur für die Erdenangelegenheiten vorhanden ist, wenn der Intellekt sich darüberlegt.
Derjenige, der heute genug Selbstbeobachtung hat für diese intimen Dinge, der weiß, wie ein leiser Nebel über das gebreitet wird, was hereindringen will aus unserer Kindheit in unser reifes Bewußtsein, er weiß, wie wir gar nicht in unsere alt gewordenen Worte das hineinbringen, was so lebendig im Kinde lebt, und, weil es geistig-seelisch hereinwirkt, im Grunde genommen viel geistig-seelischer im Kinde lebt, als es später leben kann im Intellektualismus.
Ein geistvoller Schriftsteller des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts hat gesagt: Der Mensch lernt in den drei ersten Lebensjahren mehr als in den drei akademischen. — Ich will gewiß den Akademikern nicht im entferntesten zu nahe treten, denn ich weiß sie zu schätzen, allein, das glaube ich auch, daß wir in bezug auf unser ganzes, auf unser volles Menschentum in den ersten drei Lebensjahren, wo wir selbst noch aus unserer unbewußten Weisheit unseren Organismus gestalten, mehr lernen, als wir später jemals lernen können. Allein wir sind in unserer gegenwärtigen Kultur sehr darauf aus, diese drei wichtigsten Lehrjahre eigentlich zu vergessen, wenigstens sie nicht in der entsprechenden Weise lebendig zu machen in dem, was dann später als Ausdruck unserer vor allen Dingen durch eine solche Lehrerschaft eine Schulreform anzustreben, welche die Möglichkeit findet, aus der geistigen Verjüngung der späteren Menschenjahre wiederum zu Kindern zu sprechen wie zu echten Freunden. Denn wer eben etwas von wirklicher Geistigkeit im Leben sich angeeignet hat, für den ist jedes Kind eine Offenbarung, und er weiß, daß das Kind, das jüngere und reifere Kind, ihm jedenfalls mehr noch gibt — wenn er einen offenen Sinn dafür hat —, als er dem Kinde geben kann. So paradox das klingt, so ist es doch diejenige Nuance, die uns gerade auf diesem Gebiete zu einer Art Kulturerneuerung führen kann.
Und wenn wir gewissermaßen von diesem Lichte aus uns beleuchten lassen, was uns sonst im Leben entgegentritt, dann müssen wir sagen: Wenn wir so ganz deutlich sehen, daß der Mensch den Menschen sucht und suchen muß, nämlich der durch den Intellektualismus vereinseitigte Mensch den ganzen, vollen Menschen, dann tritt uns das auch auf manchem anderen Gebiete heute ganz stark entgegen.
Wir sehen, wenn wir zurückblicken gerade in diejenige Zeit, in der die großen, die nicht genug zu schätzenden Errungenschaften der neueren Kultur heraufgekommen sind, wie diese Kultur nur errungen werden konnte dadurch, daß der Mensch etwas hingab von seinem Vollmenschentum. Der Mensch sah hinaus in den Weltenraum. Er konnte sich die Instrumente verfertigen, durch welche sich ihm die Sterne in ihrem Wesen und in ihren Bewegungen enthüllten. Allein seit Jahrhunderten ist dasjenige, was da den Menschen entgegentritt, im Grunde genommen so geworden, daß es ihm ein mathematisch-physikalisches Weltbild gegeben hat. Man hat heute kein Empfinden mehr dafür, wie einstmals der Mensch hinausgeschaut hat und in dem Wandel der Sterne ebenso die Offenbarung des Geistigen in dem Kosmos gesehen hat, wie er heute die Offenbarung des Geistigen, des Seelischen in der menschlichen Physiognomie sieht. Trockenes, altes, obwohl nicht genug zu schätzendes Mathematisch-Mechanisches erscheint uns im Kosmos. Wir blicken hinauf und sehen im Grunde genommen einen großen Weltenmechanismus. Immer mehr und mehr ist das Ideal entstanden, diesen großen Weltenmechanismus überall in unserer Weltenbetrachtung zu sehen. Und was ist heute daraus geworden?
Vielleicht wird es manchen Zeitgenossen noch paradox erscheinen, allein ich glaube, daß es sich der unbefangenen Beobachtung überall aufdrängt: Heute antwortet aus dem sozialen Menschenleben heraus das, was uns überall umgibt, was unsere Gegenwartskultur ist, auf die Anschauung vom Weltenmechanismus. Denn heute ist unser soziales, auch unser ethisches, unser juristisches Leben, ja in einem gewissen Grade, wie ich gleich nachher zeigen werde, sogar unser religiöses Leben mechanistisch geworden.
Wir sehen, wie in Millionen und Millionen von Menschen die Anschauung lebt, innerhalb des geschichtlichen Werdens der Menschheit seien nicht geistige Kräfte vorhanden, sondern allein wirtschaftliche Kräfte, und was in Kunst, in Religion, in Sitte, in Wissenschaft, in Recht und so weiter lebt, das sei gewissermaßen ein Nebel, der aufsteige aus dem, was sich in der einzigen geschichtlichen Realität, im Wirtschaftsleben, abspielt. Wirtschaftsformen seien das Reale, und indem die Wirtschaftsformen auf den Menschen wirken — so sagen manche heute, und man muß nur ein Herz haben, um das Tragische dieses Sagens zu empfinden —, entsteht das, was der Mensch ausbildet als Recht, Sitte, als Religion, als Kunst und so weiter, und das ist Ideologie. Wir sind auf diese Weise in ein Fahrwasser hineingekommen, das uns allerdings Großes gebracht hat im abendländischen Geistesleben, das aber heute bei dem entgegengesetzten Pol angelangt ist von dem, was einmal in alten, besseren Zeiten — heute ist ja auch die morgenländische Kultur durchaus in die Dekadenz gekommen — in der morgenländischen Kultur vorhanden war. Dort eine Einseitigkeit, jetzt aber bei uns auch eine Einseitigkeit.
Erinnern wir uns doch, daß es einstmals im Erdenleben, vor allen Dingen drüben im Orient, eine Menschheit gegeben hat, welche die äußere Sinneswelt als Maja, als die große Illusion, als die bloße Scheinwelt bezeichnet hat, und das, was der Mensch in seinem Innern erregt, was er denkt, was er empfindet, was er fühlt, was in seinen Willensimpulsen lebt, als die einzige wirkliche Realität ansah. Es gab einstmals diese andere Einseitigkeit, daß, wenn der Mensch in sein Inneres schaute, er in seiner Gedanken-, Gefühls- und Empfindungswelt die Wahrheit, das wahre Sein sah, und äußerlich die Maja, die große Illusion. Wir sind heute bei dem entgegengesetzten einseitigen Betrachten angelangt. Wir sehen vom Standpunkte der Gegenwartskultur aus überall in unserer Umgebung die materielle Sinnenwelt und nennen sie das wirkliche Sein. Und Millionen von Menschen sehen nur in dem sinnlichen Vorsichgehen der Wirtschaftsprozesse das wirkliche Sein und nennen das, was im Innern des Menschen lebt, wie auch dasjenige, was der Mensch als Kulturentwikkelung aus diesem seinem Innern hervorgehen läßt, Ideologie. Es ist im Grund genommen dasselbe, was einstmals der Morgenländer als Maja, als Illusion bezeichnet hat, was heute Millionen und Millionen von Menschen als Ideologie bezeichnen, ein anderes Wort nur, allerdings auch im entgegengesetzten Sinne angewendet. Ideologie hätte der Morgenländer sagen können für die Außenwelt, Realität für sein Inneres. Wir sind innerhalb unserer Kultur dazu gekommen, daß unzählige Menschen dieses in entgegengesetzter Einseitigkeit sagen.
Und so sehen wir gerade in unserem sozialen Leben das sich ausprägen, wovon wir sagen können: Der Wissenschaft hat es große, bedeutsame Triumphe gebracht, dem denkerischen menschlichen Leben, dem ethischen, dem sozialen Leben hat es Schwierigkeiten gebracht. Aber das, was da vor uns steht, diese Mechanisierung des Lebens, sie lebt nicht nur in den Ideen von Millionen, sie ist ja auch in der Realität vorhanden. Unser äußeres Leben hat sich mechanisiert, und wir stehen heute mit unserer Kultur in dem Zeitalter, das die menschliche Antwort gibt im sozialen, im ethischen, im religiösen Leben. Was in dem großen Zeitalter des Galilei, des Kopernikus, des Giordano Bruno zuerst als Anschauung der Welt begründet worden ist an Großem, erfordert allerdings, daß es in anderer Weise durchsetzt wird mit Menschentum, als es bisher hat durchsetzt werden können. Denn der Mechanismus unseres menschlichen Lebens ist gewissermaßen die Kulturantwort auf den Mechanismus unseres denkerischen, unseres intellektualistischen und wissenschaftlichen Lebens.
Und wir sehen das in allen Einzelheiten. Wir studieren heute Naturwissenschaft. Wir studieren die Reihe der Tiere von den untergeordnetsten, einfachsten, unvollkommensten bis herauf zum Menschen. Wir stellen dann, aus einer sehr anerkennenswerten Wissenschaft heraus, den Menschen an das Ende der Organismenreihe. Was wissen wir dadurch von ihm? Wir lernen dadurch erkennen, daß er das höchste Tier ist. Gewiß, es ist das in einem gewissen Sinne bedeutsam, aber wir lernen ihn ja nur in seiner Beziehung zu den anderen Wesen kennen, wir lernen ihn nicht kennen so, wie er als Mensch sich selbst erlebt. Wir lernen ja kennen, was der Mensch in bezug auf die anderen Wesen entwickelt, nicht aber, was er in bezug auf sich selbst ist. Der Mensch verliert sich, indem er in der neueren Weise die äußere Welt in großartiger Art betrachtet. Daher das Suchen nach dem Menschen, weil der Mensch sich gerade durch die größten Errungenschaften der neueren Zeit in einer gewissen Weise verliert. Und sehen wir dann auf das menschliche Zusammenleben im sozialen Organismus, so finden wir ja, wie in diesem sozialen Organismus die Menschen zusammen leben müssen durch das, was sie sich gegenseitig leisten. In bezug auf diese Notwendigkeit hat es die neuere Zeit ja sehr weit gebracht. Arbeitsteilung auf den verschiedensten Gebieten im ganzen sozialen Leben ist eingetreten. In bezug auf das äußerliche, mechanisierte Leben müssen wir schon so arbeiten, daß es gilt: Alle für einen, einer für alle! — Wir haben lernen müssen in bezug auf das äußere Leben das Füreinander-Arbeiten. Allein auch da zeigt sich uns wiederum, wie für diejenigen, die nicht alte Traditionen bewahren, sondern hineingewachsen sind gerade in die modernste Form des Lebens, dieses menschliche Arbeiten sich ganz losgelöst hat vom Menschen, wie eigentlich unsere Erkenntnis uns nur die Natur des äußeren Menschen gibt. So ist unsere Auffassung, unsere Empfindung von der menschlichen Arbeit, durch die wir unseren Mitmenschen helfen, durch die wir mit unseren Mitmenschen zusammenwirken müssen, eine äußerliche geworden. Wir schauen nicht darauf hin, wie sich aus dem seelisch-sinnlich-geistigen Dasein des Menschen seine Leistung herausentwickelt, wie sich die Arbeit loslöst aus dem Menschen, dem wir gefühlsmäßig nahestehen, der ein Wesen ist, wie wir selber, wir blicken nicht fühlend hin, wie er die Arbeit für uns leistet. Nein, wir sehen heute im sozialen Leben das Produkt an, wir sehen, wie viel Menschenarbeit hineingeflossen ist und beurteilen die Menschenarbeit danach, inwieweit wir sie im Produkte finden. Das ist so eingewurzelt, daß eben in einer Steigerung dieses großen Irrtums der neueren Zeit Karl Marx überhaupt alles, was als menschliche Leistung in Waren, in Gütern zirkuliert und für den menschlichen Nutzen und Verbrauch geschaffen werden muß, eine kristallisierte, eine geronnene Arbeit nennt. Arbeit beurteilen wir in Absonderung von dem Menschen, wie wir uns vorzugsweise angeeignet haben die Fähigkeit, die Natur in Absonderung vom Menschen zu beobachten. Wir sind wirklich angesteckt worden in unserer Beurteilung der Menschenleistung von dem, was wir über den Menschen als Naturwesen wissen und betrachten gelernt haben. Wir dringen nur bis zum Natürlichen des Menschen, gewissermaßen nur dahin, daß der Mensch das oberste Tier ist, wir dringen nicht bis zum tiefsten Innern des Menschen.
Aber auch wenn wir den Menschen in seiner Arbeit sehen, sehen wir nicht, wie diese Arbeit aus ihm hervorquillt, sondern wir warten, bis das Produkt, das Erzeugnis da ist, und suchen nur die Arbeit in dem, was sich abgesondert hat vom Menschen. Und da steht dann der Mensch als ein soziales Wesen mitten unter uns, wissend, daß er sein Menschenwesen, ja, oftmals seine Menschenwürde hineinlegen muß in die Arbeit, und er sieht, daß gewürdigt wird nicht diese Menschenwürde, nicht die Art, wie aus dem Menschen diese Arbeit hervorquillt, sondern daß gewürdigt wird diese Arbeit nur, indem sie hineingeronnen ist in die äußere Leistung, die dann auf den Markt kommt, wo die Arbeit als etwas, das in der Ware untergegangen ist, gewissermaßen käuflich geworden ist. So sehen wir, wie der Mensch auch in dieser Beziehung sich verloren hat, wie der Mensch gewissermaßen ein Stück von seinem Wesen, seine Arbeit, an dem Mechanismus der heutigen Kultur verliert.
Das sehen wir vor allen Dingen im rechtlichen Teile des sozialen Organismus. Wenn wir darauf sehen, wie das Geistesleben unter uns waltet, so finden wir, daß der Geist nur vorhanden ist in abstrakten Gedanken, daß wir nur zu diesen abstrakten Gedanken Vertrauen haben, daß wir abgekommen sind davon, daß der Geist unmittelbar in uns lebt, daß der Geist einzieht, indem wir uns mit ihm befassen, daß unsere Seele nicht nur gedankenerfüllt ist, sondern daß unsere Seele wirklich geistdurchdrungen wird, wenn wir uns einer geistigen Betätigung hingeben. Diesen Zusammenhang mit dem Geiste hat die Menschheit verloren, indem ihre Naturanschauung groß geworden ist. — Das in bezug auf das Geistesleben.
In bezug auf unseren Rechts- und sozialen, auf unseren Staatszusammenhang, sehen wir es an dem Beispiel der Arbeit, wie sich losgerissen hat von der menschlichen Wesenheit das, was mit dieser menschlichen Wesenheit verbunden ist. Indem wir die Menschenseele im Verkehr als Mensch dem Menschen gegenüber sehen, sehen wir nicht, wie das Gefühl aufleuchtet und sich erwärmt, wenn der Mensch die Arbeit des anderen erblickt. Es quillt nicht die Wärme hervor für den arbeitenden Menschen. Wir sehen nicht am Menschen die sich entwickelnde Arbeit, nein, wir sehen das, worin das Mitgefühl sich nicht mehr erwärmen und entzünden kann, wir sehen die Arbeit, nachdem sie den Menschen verlassen hat und in das Produkt hereingeronnen ist. So verlieren wir auch auf diesem Gebiete, auf dem Gebiete des rechtlichen Zusammenlebens den Menschen.
Und sehen wir uns auf dem Gebiete des wirtschaftlichen Lebens um. Auf dem Gebiete des wirtschaftlichen Lebens muß ja der Mensch sich mit dem versorgen, was er für seinen Konsum braucht. Was der Mensch für seinen Konsum braucht, ist ja nichts anderes als dasjenige, wofür er seine Fähigkeiten ausbildet. Der Mensch wird um so besser wirtschaften für den anderen Menschen, für sich selber, für die ganze menschliche Gesellschaft schaffen können, je mehr er seine Fähigkeiten entwickeln kann. Auf die Entwickelung der Fähigkeiten kommt es im wirtschaftlichen Leben an. Derjenige, der ein Arbeitnehmer ist, wird zu dem, der ein Arbeitsleiter ist, wenn es vorzugsweise auf die Leute ankommt, so hinschauen, daß er seinen eigenen Vorteil findet bei dem tüchtigen, bei dem fähigen Arbeitsleiter. Das kann schon durchaus erreicht werden, denn es sieht sehr bald derjenige, der sich in seiner Arbeit physisch und geistig leiten lassen muß, daß er besser gedeiht bei dem Befähigteren als bei dem Unbefähigten. Ist aber unser heutiges wirtschaftliches Streben darauf gerichtet, vor allen Dingen hinzuschauen auf die wirtschaftende Menschheit und dann überall zu fragen: Wo sind die größeren Fähigkeiten? — Hinzuschauen auf dieses Lebendige im Menschen, auf dieses reine Menschliche, und den Menschen hineinzustellen nach seinen Fähigkeiten in das wirtschaftliche Leben, damit er das Beste für seine Mitmenschen leisten kann, das würde eine Anschauung, eine Kultur erringen können, welche den Menschen im Menschen finden kann. Aber das ist ja gerade das Eigentümliche, daß unsere Kultur eben den Menschen im Menschen nicht finden kann, daß wir allmählich — das bietet sich dem unbefangenen Blicke dar — die Möglichkeit verloren haben, den Menschen nach seinen Fähigkeiten richtig zu beurteilen.
Gewiß, dasjenige Wesen, wodurch die menschlichen Fähigkeiten sich zeigen sollen, das Prüfungswesen, ist Ja groß geworden in unserer neueren Kultur. Aber es handelt sich vor allen Dingen auch nicht darum, wirklich zu ergründen, in welcher Weise der Mensch am besten eingreifen kann in das Leben, denn das mechanisch gewordene Leben fordert zunächst etwas anderes. Es wird ja heute vielfach der Ruf laut, den besten Menschen je nach den Bedürfnissen an den richtigen Platz zu stellen. Allein vorerst bleibt das ein frommer Wunsch, und wir sehen, daß sich das wirtschaftliche Leben vor allen Dingen — gerade so wie die anderen Gebiete, wie das geistige Leben und das rechtliche Leben — vom Menschen absondert. Wir sehen vor allen Dingen nicht auf den Menschen, auf sein lebendiges Sich-Hineinstellen in das Wirtschaftsleben, sondern darauf sehen wir, wie er am besten etwas mit sich verbinden kann, was nicht das eigentlich Menschliche ist. Wir sehen auch das Wirtschaftsleben sich loslösen vom Menschen. So ist es kein Wunder, daß der Ruf nach einer Erneuerung unserer Gegenwartskultur eigentlich auf allen Gebieten des Lebens dem Suchen nach dem Menschen entspringt.
Und zum Schluß ist es auch in der Kunst nicht anders. Wenn wir zurückblicken auf das Griechentum, so erscheinen uns heute die griechischen Tragödiendichter so, als ob sie auch in der Weise ihre Dramen verfaßt hätten, wie das heute noch geschieht. Die griechische Lebensauffassung ist aber durchaus nicht wie die heutige gewesen. Der Grieche sprach von der Katharsis, von der Reinigung, von der Läuterung, die durch ein Drama stattfinden soll. Und was verstand er unter dieser Katharsis, unter dieser Läuterung? Er verstand das, daß der Mensch, der an dem Darstellen eines solchen Trauerspieles oder eines anderen Stückes teilnahm, etwas in seiner Seele erlebt, wodurch er fingierte Leidenschaften durchmacht. Dieses Durchmachen aber wirkt läuternd, reinigend und damit gesundend bis in den physischen Organismus hinein, vor allen Dingen aber auf die Seele. Und das wichtigste im griechischen Drama war etwas, was ebenso ein höherer geistiger, wie, ich möchte sagen, ein medizinischer Impuls war. Eine Art Heilungsprozeß wurde von dem Griechen gesehen in demjenigen, was er gerade in seiner hohen Kunstvollendung seinen Mitmenschen geben wollte. Wir können selbstverständlich nicht wiederum Griechen werden. Es sollte dies zur Verdeutlichung dienen dafür, daß wir in der Tat in eine Mechanisierung des Lebens hineingekommen sind, welche in einer gewissen Weise den Menschen verleugnet und dafür, daß die tiefe Sehnsucht erklärlich ist, die als ein Suchen nach dem Menschen selbst durch die heutige Welt geht.
Nichts anderes, als diesem Suchen zu dienen, erstrebt aus anthroposophischer Geisteswissenschaft heraus das, was man die «Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus» nennt. Sie wird vielfach mißverstanden. Sie sucht aber nichts anderes als die Wege, welche dazu führen können, daß im Geistesleben wiederum gefunden werden könne nicht bloß der abstrakte Geist, das Nachdenken höchstens über den Geist, nicht bloß eine blasse Gedankenwelt, sondern der lebendige Geist; daß im rechtlich-staatlichen Zusammenleben wiederum gefunden werden könne nicht bloß das, was zum Beispiel als Arbeit in das Produkt hineingerinnt, sondern die menschliche Würdigung der Arbeit, jene menschliche Würdigung der Arbeit, die im menschlichen Zusammenleben sich ergibt, wenn der Mensch als Mensch, in reiner Menschlichkeit dem anderen gegenübersteht. Und auf dem wirtschaftlichen Gebiete sucht diese Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus nach solchen Assoziationen, wo sich die Menschen zusammentun als Konsumenten, als Produzenten, und zwar so, daß sie aus ihren verschiedensten menschlich erkannten Interessen auch das Wirtschaftsleben assoziativ führen können.
Wir beurteilen den wirtschaftlichen Bedarf lediglich nach dem Mechanismus des Marktes. Die Assoziationen sollen ein Zusammenhang sein von lebendigen Menschen, die den Bedarf erkennen, ein Organismus, der aus menschlichem Zusammenleben und aus der Erkenntnis der Bedürfnisse dieses Zusammenlebens die Bedingungen des Produzierens regeln kann. Und so sucht die Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus diese drei Glieder — das Geistesleben, das Rechtsleben und das Wirtschaftsleben — in eine solche Beziehung, in solche Verhältnisse im sozialen Organismus zu bringen, daß überall wiederum das Menschliche gefunden werden könne im freien Geistesleben, das nicht den wirtschaftlichen Interessen dient oder aus ihnen hervorgehen soll, das gar nicht den staatlichen Interessen dient oder aus ihnen hervorgehen soll, sondern das frei auf sich gestellt sein soll und dazu dienen soll, die menschlichen Fähigkeiten in der besten Weise zu entwickeln. Dieses freie Geistesleben sucht dem Menschen den Menschen zu zeigen: Mensch dem Menschen. So daß der Mensch dadurch gefunden werden könnte im freien Geistesleben, daß er den Geist wiederum erlebt, dadurch die Fähigkeiten harmonisch ausbildet, und aus einem solchen reJativ selbständigen Geistesleben in das Staatsleben, in das Wirtschaftsleben befruchtend hineinschicken kann eben den Menschen mit den am besten ausgebildeten Fähigkeiten. Wenn das Wirtschaftsleben, wenn das Staatsleben diktiert, welche Fähigkeiten ausgebildet werden sollen, dann können sie selbst nicht gedeihen. Wenn sie das Geistesleben völlig frei lassen, so daß es aus seinen eigenen Untergründen der Welt das gibt, was jede einzelne Individualität aus geistig-göttlichen Welten in das Dasein hereinbringt, dann werden im weitesten Sinne die anderen Gebiete des Lebens befruchtet werden können. Das Staatsleben soll das ausbilden, was die Menschen, indem sie als Gleicher dem Gleichen einander gegenübertreten, als Rechtsgefühle, als moralische Verfassung entwickeln können. Das Wirtschaftsleben soll durch entsprechende Assoziationen den Menschen finden nach seinen Bedürfnissen und nach seinen Fähigkeiten im Wirtschaftsleben. Nicht ein mechanistisches Trennen der drei Gebiete versucht die Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus, sondern sie versucht, durch eine relative Selbständigkeit dieser drei Glieder das zu erreichen, daß der Mensch wiederum durch die drei Gebiete des Lebens eine Vollmenschlichkeit finden könne, die er im Grunde genommen verloren hat und nach der er sucht. In einem solchen Sinne kann man wohl von der Notwendigkeit einer Kulturerneuerung sprechen, die sich aber ganz besonders ergibt, wenn man noch tiefer hineinschaut in das menschliche Innere, in jene Stelle dieses menschlichen Inneren, wo der Mensch, wenn er Vollmensch sein will, wenn er seine Menschenwürde und seinen Weltwert als Mensch ganz empfinden will, sich an das Göttlich-Geistige anschließen muß, wo er seine ewige Wesenheit fühlen und erleben muß, wenn wir also hinschauen auf das religiöse Zusammenleben der Menschen. Ich will natürlich nur sagen, daß das den Überzeugungen anthroposophischer Geisteswissenschaft entspricht, will niemandem gerade mit Bezug auf das heutige Thema diese spezielle Lösung aufdrängen. Aber es wird in dieser anthroposophischen Geisteswissenschaft versucht, vor allen Dingen wieder zu erkennen, wie das Christentum sich hineingestellt hat in die menschliche Erdenentwickelung. Hingedeutet wird mit dem, was auf anthroposophische Weise in der geistigen Welt ergründet werden kann, auf das Mysterium von Golgotha. Die geschichtliche Entwickelung wird mit Bezug auf dieses Mysterium von Golgatha verfolgt.
Da zeigt sich für eine geistige Betrachtung der Geschichte des Menschen, daß ja allerdings die Menschheit in Urzeiten eine Art Uroffenbarung, eine Art Urweisheit — aber instinktiv — gehabt hat, daß diese Weisheit allmählich immer mehr und mehr hingeschwunden ist, blasser geworden ist, und daß dieses Blasserwerden sich hätte immer mehr und mehr steigern müssen. Und wir wären heute schon, wenn nichts anderes gekommen wäre, in einer Weise in einem blassen, unweisen Geistesleben drinnen, das nichts zu tun haben könnte mit der Wärme unseres Seelenlebens, wenn nicht das Erdenleben in einem gewissen Zeitpunkte befruchtet worden wäre von dem Außerirdischen. Geisteswissenschaft im anthroposophischen Sinne kann da wiederum hinweisen auf den Menschen Jesus, der im Beginne unserer Zeitrechnung über den Boden Palästinas gewandelt ist. Wir sehen, wie immer mehr und mehr das heutige äußere Christentum diesen Menschen Jesus als einen bloßen Menschen betrachtet, während ältere Zeiten in diesem Menschen Jesus ein Wesen gesehen haben, das aus geistigen, außerirdischen Welten sich mit diesem Menschen Jesus verbunden hat und dadurch zum Christus Jesus wurde. Geisteswissenschaft sucht wiederum, indem sie durch geistige Betrachtung das Außerirdische erforschen will, nicht nur auf den Menschen Jesus hinzuweisen, sondern wiederum auf den Christus, der wie ein außerirdisches Prinzip aus Himmelshöhen sich gesenkt hat in das Erdenmenschenleben durch das Mysterium von Golgatha. Und die Menschheitsentwickelung der Erde ist eine andere geworden seit dem Mysterium von Golgatha, als sie vorher war. Eine Befruchtung durch die Himmelswelten ist eingetreten. Indem der heutige Mensch aus seiner heutigen Kultur immer mehr und mehr nur auf den Menschen Jesus hinschaut, verliert er im Grunde genommen das, was an richtiger religiöser Hinneigung ihn allein befriedigen kann, wenn er zu dem Christus Jesus schaut. Er verliert, indem er nur den Menschen Jesus betrachtet, im Grunde genommen auch das, was an diesem Menschen Jesus ihm besonders wert sein könnte. Denn der Mensch hat ja den Menschen verloren. Er weiß auch den Menschen nicht in rechter Weise religiös in dem Jesus von Nazareth zu suchen. Indem aber anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft das geistig-religiöse Leben vertieft, damit auch den Quell religiöser Frömmigkeit wiederum eröffnet, das heißt, das Göttliche des Menschen im Menschen aufsuchen läßt, findet diese anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft auch wieder in dem Menschen Jesus den überirdischen Christus und dringt im wahrhaftigen Sinne zu dem Christus Jesus vor. Es ist nicht eine Herabwürdigung des Mysteriums von Golgatha, wenn sie sagt: Das, was vorher außerirdisch war, es ist auf die Erde herabgestiegen. — Und was erlebt man mit einer solchen Bestrebung im Zeitalter der heutigen Kultur?
Nun, gerade diesem Hinneigen anthroposophischer Geisteswissenschaft zu einer außerirdischen Betrachtung hat man erwidert: diese Anthroposophie sei kein Christentum, könne kein Christentum sein, weil sie ja an die Stelle des rein Menschlichen in dem Christus Jesus ein überirdisches Wesen setzt, ein kosmisches Wesen. Man empfindet das sogar als eine Beleidigung, daß aus kosmischen Himmelsweiten der Christus in den Jesus hereingezogen sein soll. Warum ist das denn so? Das ist aus dem Grunde so, weil bis in die Religion, bis in das religiöse Empfinden der Mensch, indem er die Himmelsweiten schaut, nur den mathematisch-mechanischen Kosmos sieht, nur gewissermaßen die große Maschinerie sieht. Und so vermeint selbst der Religiöse, selbst derjenige, der das Religiöse heute lehren will, daß, wenn man den Christus vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha in Weltenweiten sucht, man die Religion mechanisieren würde. Geisteswissenschaft mechanisiert nicht die Religion, entchristet nicht das Christentum, sondern durchchristet gerade das äußere Leben, indem sie zeigt: Da im Kosmos ist nicht bloß Mechanismus, da ist nicht bloß das, was durch Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft erfahren werden kann, da ist Geistigkeit. — Während der heutige Theologe oftmals glaubt, aus dem kalten Weltenraume, von der Sonne herab ließe Anthroposophie den Christus zu dem Jesus kommen, ist die Wahrheit diese, daß Anthroposophie gerade das Geistige im Außerirdischen auch sehen will, und die Erde beglückt sein lassen will damit, daß auf sie von den Himmeln so gewirkt wurde, daß dieses Wesen, das der Erde einen Sinn gegeben hat durch das Mysterium von Golgatha, sich aus Himmelshöhen mit der irdischen Menschheitsentwickelung vereinigt hat.
So versucht in der Tat Geisteswissenschaft als Anthroposophie das religiöse Leben wiederum zu befruchten, das religiöse Leben wirklich zu durchwärmen, den Menschen zum Urquell des Göttlichen zurückzuführen. Und sie versucht das dadurch, daß sie hinhorcht auf das, was in dem Ruf nach einer Erneuerung unserer Kultur liegt.
Wir haben heute eine großartige Wissenschaft, wir stehen bewundernd vor dieser großartigen Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, die so Gewaltiges in bezug auf unsere Gegenwartskultur geleistet hat. Aber wir sehen, wie neben dieser Wissenschaft der Ruf nach religiöser Erneuerung auftritt, nach neuerlicher religiöser Vertiefung. Wir sollen also auf der einen Seite eigentlich eine Wissenschaft haben, die mit Religion nichts zu tun haben will, und wir sollen neben der Wissenschaft eine religiöse Erneuerung haben. Das ist der Traum vieler. Es wird ein vergeblicher Traum sein. Denn niemals kann der Religionsinhalt aus etwas anderem hervordringen als aus dem, was irgendeine Zeit zu wissen glaubt. Und wenn wir in die Zeiten zurückschauen, wo Religionen voll gelebt haben, so war immer in der Religion doch dasjenige da, was dem betreffenden Zeitalter zugleich als Wissensinhalt gedient hat, nur eben auf besondere Art, als Verehrung, mit dem Hauch der Frömmigkeit, mit dem Hauch der Hingebung, und gewöhnlich —- außerordentlich bedeutend ist dies — mit der Verehrung vor allen Dingen für den besonderen Religionsstifter. Daher wird auch unser Zeitalter, wird unsere Kultur nicht froh werden mit einem religiösen Inhalte, der nicht in Harmonie steht mit dem, was unsere Zeit wissen kann.
Daher sucht anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft nicht Religion neben der Wissenschaft, sondern sie sucht die Wissenschaft selbst so weit zu erheben, daß diese Wissenschaft wieder religiös werden kann. Sie sucht nicht eine religionslose Wissenschaft und daneben eine unwissenschaftliche Religion, sie sucht eine Wissenschaft, die aus sich heraus, durch ihren eigenen Quell, das religiöse Leben treiben kann, weil sie eine Wissenschaft sucht, die nicht einseitig auf dem Intellekt ruht, sondern die beruht auf dem vollen Menschen, auf allem, was im Menschen lebt. Und eine solche Wissenschaft, sie wirkt nicht zerstörend auf das religiöse Leben, sie wirkt vor allen Dingen nicht zerstörend auf das christliche Leben, sondern sie wird so auf dasselbe leuchten, daß man in dem, was sich in die Erdenentwickelung hereinstellt als das Mysterium von Golgatha, die ewige, übersinnliche Bedeutung sehen kann, welche die Menschheit mit diesem Ereignis begnadet hat. Und es wird gefühlsmäßig, und moralisch im Willen, aus der Betrachtung des Mysteriums von Golgatha der religiöse Enthusiasmus und auch die innere religiöse Beglükkung hervorgehen, die nicht zerstört, sondern in der rechten Weise beleuchtet werden kann durch das, was geschaut, was gewußt werden kann über den Eintritt des Christus Jesus in die irdische Menschheitsentwickelung.
So sucht diese Geisteswissenschaft dem Suchen nach dem Menschen entgegenzukommen. Wie gesagt, das sollte nur gewissermaßen dazu dienen, um ein Kleines beizutragen zu der heute ersehnten, erhofften Kulturerneuerung. Das sollte nur zur Erläuterung dessen dienen, wie man sich vorstellen kann, daß eine Bedeutung, eine tiefe innerliche, menschliche Bedeutung haben diejenigen Sehnsuchten, die sich ausdrükken können in einer solchen Frage, wie der nach der Erneuerung unserer Kultur.
Und auch das wollten diese Betrachtungen zeigen, wie im Grunde genommen dieser Ruf nach einer Kulturerneuerung zugleich der Ruf nach einer Erkenntnis, nach einem erneuerten Fühlen des wahrhaft Menschlichen ist, wie es richtig ist, daß die Frage nach dem Wesen dieses Suchens nach Kulturerneuerung eigentlich da ist, daß wir nach einer vollen Empfindung vom Menschen suchen, nach einem vollen Erleben des Menschen. Und man darf schon glauben, daß man vielleicht doch zu einer Interpretation des heutigen, vielfach unbestimmten Rufes nach Erneuerung der Kultur kommen wird, wenn man sich sagt, in einer wirklich bedeutsamen Weise steht heute die Erneuerung der Frage vor dem suchenden Menschen, die schon aus dem alten Griechenland zu uns herübertönt: Mensch, erkenne dich selbst.
Gewiß, die Jahrhunderte und Jahrtausende haben ihr edelstes Streben an diese Frage gesetzt. Heute ist es aber in erhöhtem Maße die größte Schicksalsfrage. Und wie auch der einzelne — das glaube ich ein wenig angedeutet zu haben — antworten mag auf die Frage: Wie soll die Kultur erneuert werden? — irgendwie wird die Antwort in der Richtung liegen müssen: Wie finden wir aus einem vollmenschlichen Bestreben heraus wiederum den Menschen selbst, damit der Mensch an dem Menschen, der sich wiederum ganz der Welt und seinen Mitmenschen hingeben kann, seine sittliche, seine soziale, seine Erkenntnisbefriedigung und auch seine religiöse Befriedigung wieder haben könne? — Das scheint mir die Frage nach der Erneuerung unserer Kultur zu sein.
The Necessity of Cultural Renewal
For this evening, it was requested that I speak on the topic of “The Necessity of Cultural Renewal.” Over the past few days, I have taken the liberty of speaking about anthroposophical spiritual science. This is a field in which individuals are generally allowed to speak if they believe they can communicate one thing or another to their fellow human beings based on special research results or impulses. For this is an expression of an individual impulse, even if one must certainly be of the opinion that one is dealing with something that could concern all fellow human beings from some point of view. However, I feel quite differently about today's topic. If we are to speak of the necessity of cultural renewal in our time, then such a topic is only justified if we can really perceive that it corresponds to a general opinion and that there is a belief or will for what could be called cultural renewal. The individual must therefore more or less become the interpreter of a generally prevailing view. For arbitrary individual opinions on such a question would be something that could only give rise to immodesty and arrogance. This raises the question above all: Does this topic correspond to a generally prevailing sentiment today, to a sum of feelings that exist in wider circles? However, if we take an unbiased look at what is present in the hearts, minds, and souls of our contemporary world, we may believe that this topic is justified in many respects by the necessity of cultural renewal. Do we not see how many of our contemporaries in the most diverse areas of life feel that something must enter our spiritual life and other branches of our human coexistence that in some way corresponds to a search that is clearly present?
Seeking souls—we find them today in many areas of artistic life. Seeking souls — who could fail to notice? — are found above all in today's youth. It is precisely in today's youth that we find, as might be expected, something that this youth cannot find in what confronts it from the general spirit of the times. We find seeking souls above all in the realm of ethical-religious life. Countless spoken and even more unspoken, merely felt questions rest in human hearts today in relation to ethical-religious matters. And when we look at social life, the course of the world itself, everything that happens in these areas of life, seems to us like one big question: Where should a kind of cultural renewal of this social life come from?
Even so, when faced with these manifold questions, the individual cannot go further in his response than to believe that he can make a small contribution to answering the general need in this area. And perhaps the explanations I have given in the various lectures of the last few days, based on anthroposophical spiritual research, justify to say something about our topic today, because even though anthroposophical spiritual science knows that it can offer at most something in a very embryonic form and can only provide inspiration for some of what people are seeking today, anthroposophical research aims precisely to provide such seeds. An attempt has been made in Dornach, Switzerland, to establish the School of Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum. And it can be said that at least an attempt has been made to fertilize the individual scientific fields by adding to what the extraordinary, significant methods of recent times have been able to offer in medicine, natural science, sociology, history, and various other fields of human research, that which can be gained through direct research in the spiritual world itself. And it is precisely in this field that attempts are being made to provide practical training in a pedagogical and didactic manner through the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Attempts have even been made to achieve something in economic terms. However, it must be said that our current circumstances are so difficult that it will first have to be tested whether these economic foundations can achieve, I will not say, but stimulate, what a large number of people are seeking today in terms of a real cultural renewal.
Let me first speak about this search. Of course, I cannot speak here from the standpoint of your culture, within which I can only consider myself a guest to my deepest satisfaction; I can only speak from an international standpoint. But how can anyone who has a heart and mind and spirit and an open soul for what the more important part of humanity today has as its aspiration for the future, how can anyone who observes this with an unbiased mind not first turn their gaze to the search of youth! Everywhere we find that it is precisely our youth who have the longing to receive something new from what I would call, at first, something completely undefined. And the very serious, significant question must arise: Why is it that our youth can no longer find complete satisfaction in what we, as older people, have been able to give them? And I believe that this search by young people is connected with the most intimate, deepest impulses of the soul, which in the present day give rise to this general human search. I believe that one must delve deeply into the human mind in this regard if one wants to assess the actual underlying cause of what can be observed on the surface, namely the call for cultural renewal. One will have to look into the many depths of human soul life, and above all, one must not merely ask about the cultural characteristics of the immediate present, but must look at a somewhat longer period of time.
Those who do this with an open mind will find that the particular state of mind of humanity today in international relations has been prepared over the last three, four, five centuries, and they will find that these last three, four, five centuries have basically brought something completely new in terms of the human soul state compared to what — if you take a truly unbiased historical view — was still present in the spiritual state of the West in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth centuries from earlier times. When we go back to these earlier times of Western spiritual life, we find everywhere that the human soul-spiritual view and the physical view, the sensory view, were not separated in the strict sense, as was later the case and as is the case in our immediate present. The people of earlier centuries, in directing their senses toward the physical environment, also suspected something spiritual in everything that could be perceived by the senses. They no longer imagined the world to be as spiritual as perhaps the ancient Egyptians or the ancient Greeks themselves still did, who saw the outer embodiment of spiritual-soul beings in the world of the stars, but they still had an inkling that the spiritual permeates everything in their physical environment. And again, when people in earlier centuries looked at themselves, they did not strictly separate the physical-bodily from the soul, from thinking, feeling, and willing. I would say that, by being conscious of his soul, man also felt conscious of his limbs, his bodily organs, and he also saw something spiritual-physical in these bodily organs in his own organism. He sensed the spiritual-physical outside in the world, and the spiritual-physical within himself. And so they were able to feel a certain kinship, a certain familiarity with their worldly surroundings. They could say to themselves: That which lives within me also lives in a certain relationship in the world, into which some divine-spiritual powers that guide and direct the world have placed me. People felt related and familiar with the world. They felt, in a sense, like a member of the great spiritual-soul-physical world organism.
This is a feeling that we understand very little today, because times have changed so much in recent centuries. And this change is not only evident among theorists and scientists; it is evident in every single human breast, in every single human soul. It is expressed not only in how we view the world scientifically today, but also in how we incorporate the spirit of physical matter into our artistic creation and enjoyment. It is expressed in how we encounter our fellow human beings in social life, how we understand them, what we demand of them. Finally, it is also expressed in how we feel about our own moral and religious impulses, how we experience the divine in our own hearts, in our own souls, how we relate to what has revealed the spirit of earthly existence to the earth in the deepest sense: how we relate to the deeper inner meaning of Christianity.
So we can say: what is being sought in the widest circles will probably be related in some way to this becoming different. And what is this becoming different? — Well, in recent centuries, the age has dawned that is so often called the age of intellectualism. It was not intellectualism, it was not the abstract use of the intellect that once, in earlier centuries, made human beings so familiar and connected with their surroundings, as I have just tried to characterize. It is only in recent times that human beings have learned, in the course of human development, to place their full trust in the intellect, in reason, when observing the world, even when experiencing the world.
Now, however, two conditions arise for human life that belong together: internally, intellectualism, trust in the authority of reason, of the mind, and externally, belief in natural phenomena, a sense of observation of natural phenomena. Internally, modern man developed a tendency to subject everything to the power of rational, intellectual, intellectualistic observation. And it followed naturally that this internal capacity is applicable above all to natural phenomena, to everything that can be observed through the senses and analyzed or combined in concepts. These two things, I would say, the flawless observation of nature and the development of the intellect, were the two great, significant educational tools of the last centuries, the educational tools that exerted their greatest power on civilized humanity in the 19th century and also bore fruit in the 20th century.
Now it is a peculiarity that when one devotes oneself to the use of the intellect, one becomes lonely in a certain sense in one's inner experience. The use of the intellect has something—it is clearly evident in its pictorial character—that in a certain way becomes alien to immediate feeling, that takes on a cold, sober nuance of life, and that in turn can only really develop in the right sense in relation to the external world, to everything that surrounds human beings. And one may well find deeply satisfying explanations for the natural world through such a relationship, through such a relationship between human beings and the world, but one no longer has the opportunity, as in the past, to find oneself, so to speak, in the external world of nature. What shone out to people in earlier centuries as spiritual and soulful from the colorful, the resonant, the warm and cold world, from the seasons, they felt and experienced as something related to what lived within them. What we experience through the intellect, the whole external natural existence, I would say, everything we find through intellectual research in physics, chemistry, and biology, we cannot directly bring into our own humanity with our feelings. Certainly, we can strive to research the inner human organic structure biologically; we can go so far as to want to research the chemistry of the human organism itself. But we will never be able to find that what we bring into our understanding of our own humanity from the research of external nature captures our feeling, that it ultimately sums up in a religious, ethical feeling towards the world, that it ultimately sums up in the feeling: I am a member of this world; it is spiritual and soulful, and I am spiritual and soulful.
This feeling does not shine forth from what we have been able to learn in such a magnificent way in recent centuries through the inspiration of natural science. And so it has come to pass that precisely that which has brought mankind the greatest and most significant fruits, that which has transformed the whole of modern existence, has alienated man from himself. That man stands in the world and can look up in admiration at his mathematical judgment of the spatial world, of the stars and their movements, that he can fathom with a certain scientific reverence what lives in plants, animals, and so on, despite all the problems that remain unsolved, there is something satisfying about the way humans can unravel nature in this way through the application of natural science, through the application of their intellect, their reason, their use of understanding. But what humans have not been able to achieve in this way is the knowledge of themselves. The science we have from the stars, the science we have as physics and chemistry, the science we have as biology, and in more recent times even the science of history, tell humans nothing about their deepest longing in relation to their own humanity. And this led to more and more searching.
And this search is none other than the search of modern man for man himself. No matter how hard one tries to summarize what this search is in the most diverse fields, one finds everywhere that people are actually seeking to explore the mystery of their own selves, the mystery of the human being. This is not merely something that interests theorists; it is something that deeply affects all human souls. Certainly, it is extremely appealing to anyone interested in such things when research into nature points them to the need to also explore what is hidden beyond the vastness of natural existence: human beings with their essence, which goes far beyond what can be experienced in the outer realms of nature. But I would like to say: that is where the great mystery actually begins.
The other thing is that we have also allowed our feelings, our entire education, to be influenced by what has arisen in this way in recent centuries. And external life is certainly a reflection of this. More than one might think, external life reflects what has emerged in the spiritual life of recent human development in the manner just described.
We do not only ask in vain about the human being in theory; oh no, today we pass each other by and, under the influence of our modern education, have not acquired the ability to understand our fellow human beings inwardly, the ability to look into what lives in the human soul with a kind of clairvoyant compassion, as was present in many older cultures. We make many demands on life, but we generally pass each other by as human beings. We have not only lost our theoretical understanding of human beings for the reasons stated, we have also lost our sensitive understanding of human beings for every hour of the day in which we live among our fellow human beings. And perhaps nothing can make us more aware of how we have lost this understanding of our fellow human beings than the emergence of the social question in its present form. Why is there such a strong call for social reform, for social renewal? It is because we have actually become quite unsocial people. Basically, people always demand most of all what they lack most, and the loud call for socialism actually announces to ears that can hear impartially that we have become such unsocial people, that we do not understand each other, that we are incapable of forming a social organism, and that we therefore hope that our intellect, which has undergone such a high level of education, will lead us back to such a social organism.
It is precisely the social question itself that shows us how alien we have actually become to one another as human beings. The religious question confronts us in the present, indeed in the whole of modern times, precisely because human beings have lost the immediate inner experience of being directly connected with the divine core of the world, of experiencing how what speaks within them is an expression of the divine spirit. Once again, it is out of a sense of lack that the call for religious renewal arises.
If we now look more deeply into life, into our present life of searching, from such starting points, we find that intellectual culture, intellectual observation, which has gradually caused even human feeling to fade, is basically something that is bound to a certain age of human life. We must not succumb to any delusion, any illusion: the individual human being basically only awakens to the intellect with sexual maturity, with adolescence. He awakens to intellectualism at that time of his life when he is supposed to step out into the world to work. But intellectualism is not something that can be inherent in us, something that can move our soul when we are children or when we are of school age, immediately after childhood. In this youthful age, the state of the soul must be different from what it can be later on. And the intellectualism that is useful in the life of humanity today cannot be lived out, it must not be lived out at all in youth, for it would have a chilling, deadening, paralyzing effect on the forces of youth. And so it has actually come to pass — one must look into the more intimate details of life if one wants to understand the searching present — that we grow into a culture which, as paradoxical as it sounds, robs us in our mature years of the most beautiful memories of our childhood.
When we look back in our memories on what we were able to experience as children, we cannot bring up what often lies buried in the unconscious, what can only emerge in dark premonitions, memories, sometimes only in the coloring of thoughts and memories, with the necessary intensity, with the necessary warmth. We come to no longer understand ourselves completely. We look back on our childhood as if it were a mystery. We no longer understand how to speak from our whole, complete humanity and to put into the language we use as adults the nuances that allow the child's lively wisdom to shine through, when it looks at the world with innocent eyes, when it develops its will in the first years of existence.
Those who do not learn from history, who do not learn how childhood development has influenced older humanity everywhere, when the language of mature human beings has resounded, are not really studying history. We spend our childhood unconsciously, but we spend it in such a way that what we bring with us from our spiritual and soul life, from our pre-existing life, through birth and through our connection with physical corporeality, is still intensely present in this unconscious soul life. This must not be allowed to play itself out in youth, for it would have a chilling, deadening, paralyzing effect on the powers of youth. And so it has actually come to pass — one must look into the more intimate details of life if one wants to understand the searching present — that we grow into a culture which, as paradoxical as it may sound, robs us of the most beautiful memories of our childhood in our mature years.
When we look back in our memories on what we were able to experience as children, we cannot bring up what often lies buried in the unconscious, what can only emerge in dark premonitions, memories, sometimes only in the coloring of thoughts and memories, with the necessary intensity, with the necessary warmth. We come to no longer understand ourselves completely. We look back on our childhood as if it were a mystery. We no longer understand how to speak from our whole, complete humanity and to put into the language we use as adults the nuances that allow the child's lively wisdom to shine through, when it looks at the world with innocent eyes, when it develops its will in the first years of existence.
Those who do not learn from history, who do not learn how childhood development has influenced older humanity everywhere, when the language of mature human beings has resounded, are not really studying history. We spend our childhood unconsciously, but we spend it in such a way that what we bring with us from our spiritual and soul life, from our pre-existing life, through birth and through our connection with physical corporeality, is still intensely present in this unconscious soul life. Those who are able to observe a child, who have the soul and mind for this observation, will discover the greatest secret when they see how, week by week, what human beings bring with them from a spiritual-soul existence into this earthly-physical world emerges in the child. That which unconsciously embodies and pulsates the eternal into the human limbs, into the whole human organization, causes an inner permeation with the soul-spiritual, but this is later struck as if by a chilling substance when that which is actually only present for earthly matters, when the intellect, takes precedence.
Those who today have enough self-observation for these intimate things know how a quiet mist spreads over what wants to penetrate from our childhood into our mature consciousness. they know how we cannot bring into our aged words what lives so vividly in the child, and because it has a spiritual and soulful effect, there is actually much more spiritual and soulful life in the child than can later live in intellectualism.
A witty writer of the 18th and 19th centuries said: Man learns more in the first three years of life than in the three academic years. — I certainly do not want to offend academics in the slightest, because I appreciate them, but I also believe that in terms of our whole, our full humanity, we learn more in the first three years of life, when we ourselves still shape our organism from our unconscious wisdom, than we can ever learn later. However, in our current culture, we are very keen to actually forget these three most important years of learning, or at least not to bring them to life in the appropriate way in what later becomes an expression of our above all, through such teaching, to strive for a school reform that finds the possibility of speaking to children again as genuine friends from the spiritual rejuvenation of later years. For those who have acquired some real spirituality in life, every child is a revelation, and they know that the child, the younger and more mature child, gives them more—if they have an open mind for it—than they can give to the child. As paradoxical as it sounds, it is precisely this nuance that can lead us to a kind of cultural renewal in this area.
And if we allow ourselves to be illuminated by this light, so to speak, in what we otherwise encounter in life, then we must say: when we see so clearly that human beings seek and must seek other human beings, namely that human beings who have become one-sided through intellectualism seek whole, complete human beings, then this also confronts us very strongly in many other areas today.
When we look back at the very period in which the great, invaluable achievements of modern culture arose, we see how this culture could only be achieved by human beings giving up something of their full humanity. Human beings looked out into space. They were able to make instruments that revealed to them the nature and movements of the stars. But for centuries now, what human beings encounter has basically become such that it has given them a mathematical-physical worldview. Today, we no longer have any sense of how humans once looked out and saw in the movement of the stars the revelation of the spiritual in the cosmos, just as today we see the revelation of the spiritual, of the soul, in human physiognomy. What appears to us in the cosmos is dry, old, mathematical-mechanical, although it cannot be overestimated. We look up and see, basically, a great world mechanism. More and more, the ideal has arisen of seeing this great world mechanism everywhere in our view of the world. And what has become of it today?
Perhaps it will still seem paradoxical to some of our contemporaries, but I believe that impartial observation everywhere compels us to conclude: Today, social human life, everything that surrounds us, our contemporary culture, responds to the view of the world mechanism. For today, our social, ethical, and legal life, and to a certain extent, as I will show shortly, even our religious life, has become mechanistic.
We see how millions and millions of people believe that within the historical development of humanity there are no spiritual forces at work, but only economic forces, and that what lives in art, religion, customs, science, law, and so on, is, in a sense, a fog that rises from what takes place in the only historical reality, economic life. Economic forms are the real thing, and as economic forms affect people — so some say today, and one only needs to have a heart to feel the tragedy of this statement — what people develop as law, customs, religion, art, and so on, arises, and that is ideology. In this way, we have entered a course that has certainly brought us great things in Western intellectual life, but which today has reached the opposite pole of what once existed in ancient, better times — today, Eastern culture has also fallen into decadence — in Eastern culture. There was one-sidedness there, but now we also have one-sidedness here.
Let us remember that there was once a humanity on Earth, especially in the Orient, which regarded the outer sensory world as Maya, as the great illusion, as the mere world of appearances, and regarded what man stirs up within himself, what he thinks, what he feels, what he senses, what lives in his impulses of will, as the only real reality. There was once this other one-sidedness, that when man looked within himself, he saw truth, true being, in his world of thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and externally he saw Maya, the great illusion. Today we have arrived at the opposite one-sided view. From the standpoint of contemporary culture, we see the material sensory world everywhere around us and call it real being. And millions of people see only the sensual unfolding of economic processes as real being and call what lives within the human being, as well as what the human being brings forth from within as cultural development, ideology. It is basically the same thing that the Easterners once called Maya, illusion, which millions and millions of people today call ideology, just another word, but used in the opposite sense. The Easterners could have said ideology for the outer world and reality for their inner world. Within our culture, we have come to the point where countless people say this with opposite one-sidedness.
And so we see this becoming apparent in our social life, where we can say: Science has brought great, significant triumphs, but it has also brought difficulties to intellectual human life, to ethical and social life. But what lies before us, this mechanization of life, not only lives in the ideas of millions, it also exists in reality. Our external life has become mechanized, and today we stand with our culture in an age that provides the human response in social, ethical, and religious life. What was first established as a view of the world in the great age of Galileo, Copernicus, and Giordano Bruno requires, however, that it be permeated with humanity in a different way than it has been able to be permeated until now. For the mechanism of our human life is, in a sense, the cultural response to the mechanism of our intellectual, our intellectualistic, and scientific life.
And we see this in all its details. Today we study natural science. We study the series of animals from the lowest, simplest, most imperfect to humans. We then place humans at the end of the series of organisms, based on a very respectable science. What do we learn about him from this? We learn to recognize that he is the highest animal. Certainly, this is significant in a certain sense, but we only get to know him in his relationship to other beings; we do not get to know him as he experiences himself as a human being. We learn what humans develop in relation to other beings, but not what they are in relation to themselves. Human beings lose themselves by viewing the external world in a grandiose manner in the modern way. Hence the search for the human being, because human beings lose themselves in a certain way precisely through the greatest achievements of modern times. And when we look at human coexistence in the social organism, we find that in this social organism, human beings must live together through what they do for each other. In relation to this necessity, modern times have indeed made great strides. Division of labor has occurred in the most diverse areas of social life. In relation to external, mechanized life, we must work in such a way that the principle applies: all for one, one for all! — We have had to learn to work for each other in relation to external life. But here, too, we see how, for those who do not preserve old traditions but have grown into the most modern form of life, this human work has become completely detached from human beings, how our knowledge actually only gives us the nature of the external human being. Thus, our conception, our feeling of human work, through which we help our fellow human beings, through which we must work together with our fellow human beings, has become an external one. We do not look at how human achievement develops out of the soul-sensory-spiritual existence of human beings, how work detaches itself from the human beings we feel close to, who are beings like ourselves; we do not look with feeling at how they do the work for us. No, in social life today we look at the product, we see how much human labor has gone into it, and we judge human labor by the extent to which we find it in the product. This is so deeply rooted that, in an intensification of this great error of modern times, Karl Marx calls everything that circulates as human achievement in commodities and goods and must be created for human use and consumption crystallized, congealed labor. We judge labor in isolation from human beings, just as we have acquired the ability to observe nature in isolation from human beings. We have really been infected in our assessment of human achievement by what we have learned and come to regard as true about humans as natural beings. We penetrate only to the natural side of humans, in a sense only to the point that humans are the highest animals; we do not penetrate to the deepest innermost being of humans.
But even when we see humans at work, we do not see how this work springs from them; instead, we wait until the product, the result, is there, and we seek the work only in what has been separated from humans. And then humans stand there as social beings in our midst, knowing that they must invest their humanity, indeed, often his human dignity, into his work, and he sees that it is not this human dignity that is appreciated, not the way in which this work springs forth from the person, but that this work is appreciated only insofar as it has flowed into the external performance that then comes onto the market, where the work, as something that has been subsumed into the commodity, has, in a sense, become purchasable. Thus we see how man has lost himself in this respect too, how man loses, as it were, a part of his being, his work, to the mechanism of today's culture.
We see this above all in the legal part of the social organism. When we look at how spiritual life reigns among us, we find that the spirit is only present in abstract thoughts, that we only have confidence in these abstract thoughts, that we have strayed from the spirit living directly within us, that the spirit enters us when we engage with it, that our soul is not only filled with thoughts, but that our soul is truly permeated by the spirit when we devote ourselves to spiritual activity. Humanity has lost this connection with the spirit as its view of nature has grown. — That is in relation to spiritual life.
In relation to our legal and social context, to our state context, we see in the example of work how that which is connected with human nature has become detached from human nature. When we see the human soul in interaction with other people, we do not see how feelings light up and warm up when people see each other's work. Warmth does not well up for the working person. We do not see the developing work in the person; no, we see that in which compassion can no longer warm and ignite; we see the work after it has left the person and flowed into the product. Thus, we also lose the person in this area, in the area of legal coexistence.
And let us look around us in the area of economic life. In the realm of economic life, people must provide themselves with what they need for their consumption. What people need for their consumption is nothing other than that for which they train their abilities. The more people can develop their abilities, the better they will be able to manage for other people, for themselves, and for the whole of human society. The development of abilities is what matters in economic life. Those who are employees will become supervisors if it is primarily people that matter, so that they can see that they will benefit from having a capable and competent supervisor. This can certainly be achieved, because those who need to be guided physically and mentally in their work will soon see that they thrive better with the more capable than with the incapable. But are our economic aspirations today directed above all toward looking at the economic activity of humanity and then asking everywhere: Where are the greater abilities? — to look at what is alive in human beings, at what is purely human, and to place people in economic life according to their abilities, so that they can do their best for their fellow human beings, that would achieve a view, a culture that can find the human being in human beings. But that is precisely what is peculiar about our culture, that it cannot find the human being in the human being, that we have gradually — as is apparent to the unbiased observer — lost the ability to judge people correctly according to their abilities.
Certainly, the means by which human abilities are supposed to be revealed, the examination system, has become very important in our modern culture. But above all, it is not a matter of really finding out how people can best intervene in life, because life, which has become mechanical, demands something else first. Today, there are many calls to place the best people in the right place according to needs. But for now, this remains a pious wish, and we see that economic life, above all — just like other areas such as intellectual life and legal life — is separating itself from people. Above all, we do not look at people, at their lively involvement in economic life, but rather at how they can best connect with something that is not actually human. We also see economic life detaching itself from people. So it is no wonder that the call for a renewal of our contemporary culture actually springs from the search for people in all areas of life.
And finally, it is no different in art. When we look back at Greek culture, the Greek tragic poets seem to us today as if they had written their dramas in the same way as is still done today. However, the Greek view of life was not at all like today's. The Greeks spoke of catharsis, of purification, of purification through drama. And what did they understand by this catharsis, by this purification? They understood that the person who participated in the performance of such a tragedy or other play experienced something in their soul that made them go through simulated passions. This experience, however, had a purifying, cleansing, and thus healing effect on the physical organism, but above all on the soul. And the most important thing in Greek drama was something that was as much a higher spiritual impulse as, I would say, a medical impulse. The Greeks saw a kind of healing process in what they wanted to give their fellow human beings through their high artistic achievement. Of course, we cannot become Greeks again. This should serve to illustrate that we have indeed entered into a mechanization of life that in a certain way denies the human being, and that the deep longing that runs through today's world as a search for the human being itself is understandable.
Nothing other than serving this search is the aim of what is called the “threefold social order” in anthroposophical spiritual science. It is often misunderstood. But it seeks nothing other than the paths that can lead to the rediscovery in spiritual life not merely of the abstract spirit, of reflection on the spirit at most, not merely of a pale world of ideas, but of the living spirit; that in legal and state coexistence, we can once again find not merely what goes into a product as labor, for example, but the human appreciation of labor, that human appreciation of labor that arises in human coexistence when people face each other as human beings, in pure humanity. And in the economic sphere, this threefold social organism seeks associations in which people come together as consumers, as producers, in such a way that they can also conduct economic life associatively on the basis of their most diverse humanly recognized interests.
We judge economic needs solely by the mechanism of the market. Associations should be a connection of living people who recognize needs, an organism that can regulate the conditions of production based on human coexistence and the recognition of the needs of this coexistence. And so the threefold social organism seeks to bring these three elements — spiritual life, legal life, and economic life — into such a relationship, into such conditions in the social organism, that the human element can be found everywhere in free spiritual life, which does not serve economic interests or arise from them, which does not serve state interests or arise from them, but which should be free and serve to develop human abilities in the best possible way. This free spiritual life seeks to show people to people: human beings to human beings. So that human beings can be found in free spiritual life, that they can experience the spirit again, thereby developing their abilities harmoniously, and from such a relatively independent spiritual life can send into state life and economic life precisely those human beings with the best-developed abilities. If economic life, if state life dictates which abilities are to be developed, then they cannot flourish. If they leave spiritual life completely free, so that it gives to the world from its own foundations what each individual brings into existence from spiritual-divine worlds, then the other areas of life will be enriched in the broadest sense. State life should develop what people can develop as a sense of justice and moral constitution when they face each other as equals. Economic life should, through appropriate associations, find people according to their needs and abilities in economic life. The threefold social organism does not attempt a mechanistic separation of the three areas, but rather, through the relative independence of these three members, it attempts to achieve a state in which people can once again find, through the three areas of life, a full humanity that they have essentially lost and are searching for. In this sense, one can certainly speak of the necessity of a cultural renewal, which becomes particularly apparent when one looks even deeper into the human inner life, to that place within the human being where, if they want to be fully human, if they want to feel their human dignity and their value in the world as human beings, they must connect with the divine-spiritual, where they must feel and experience their eternal being. So when we look at the religious coexistence of human beings, I am of course only saying that this corresponds to the convictions of anthroposophical spiritual science; I do not want to impose this particular solution on anyone, especially in relation to today's topic. But it is precisely in this sense that we can speak of the necessity of a cultural renewal. I only want to say, of course, that this corresponds to the convictions of anthroposophical spiritual science; I do not want to impose this particular solution on anyone, especially in relation to today's topic. But in this anthroposophical spiritual science, an attempt is made above all to recognize how Christianity has positioned itself in human development on earth. What can be explored in the spiritual world in an anthroposophical way points to the mystery of Golgotha. Historical development is traced with reference to this mystery of Golgotha.
A spiritual view of human history shows that in primeval times humanity did indeed have a kind of primal revelation, a kind of primal wisdom — but instinctively — that this wisdom gradually faded more and more, became paler, and that this fading would have had to increase more and more. And if nothing else had happened, we would already be living today in a pale, unwise spiritual life that could have nothing to do with the warmth of our soul life, if earthly life had not been fertilized at a certain point in time by the extraterrestrial. Spiritual science in the anthroposophical sense can again point to the man Jesus, who walked the soil of Palestine at the beginning of our calendar. We see how today's external Christianity increasingly regards this man Jesus as a mere human being, whereas in earlier times this man Jesus was seen as a being who connected with this man Jesus from spiritual, extraterrestrial worlds and thereby became Christ Jesus. Spiritual science, in turn, by seeking to explore the extraterrestrial through spiritual contemplation, seeks to point not only to the man Jesus, but also to the Christ, who, like an extraterrestrial principle, descended from the heights of heaven into earthly human life through the Mystery of Golgotha. And the development of humanity on earth has become different since the Mystery of Golgotha than it was before. A fertilization by the heavenly worlds has taken place. By looking more and more only at the human being Jesus from his present culture, modern man basically loses what can satisfy him alone in terms of true religious devotion when he looks to Christ Jesus. By looking only at the man Jesus, they are essentially losing what could be of particular value to them in this man Jesus. For they have lost the human being. They also do not know how to seek the human being in the right religious way in Jesus of Nazareth. But by deepening spiritual-religious life, anthroposophical spiritual science reopens the source of religious piety, that is, it allows us to seek the divine in the human being. In this way, anthroposophical spiritual science also finds the supernatural Christ in the human being Jesus and advances in a true sense to Christ Jesus. It is not a denigration of the mystery of Golgotha when it says: That which was previously extraterrestrial has descended to earth. — And what does one experience with such an endeavor in the age of today's culture?
Well, this inclination of anthroposophical spiritual science toward an extraterrestrial view has been countered with the argument that anthroposophy is not Christianity, cannot be Christianity, because it replaces the purely human in Christ Jesus with a supernatural being, a cosmic being. People even feel insulted that Christ is supposed to have come into Jesus from the cosmic expanses of heaven. Why is that so? It is so because, even in religion, even in religious feeling, when people look at the expanses of heaven, they see only the mathematical-mechanical cosmos, only the great machinery, so to speak. And so even the religious, even those who want to teach religion today, believe that if one seeks Christ in the mysteries of Golgotha in the vastness of the worlds, one would mechanize religion. Spiritual science does not mechanize religion, does not de-Christianize Christianity, but rather Christianizes outer life by showing: There is not only mechanism in the cosmos, there is not only what can be experienced through mathematics and natural science, there is spirituality. — While today's theologians often believe that anthroposophy lets Christ come to Jesus from the cold space of the world, from the sun, the truth is that anthroposophy wants to see precisely the spiritual in the extraterrestrial, and wants to make the earth happy by having the heavens work on it in such a way that this being, who gave meaning to the earth through the mystery of Golgotha, has united with the earthly development of humanity from the heights of heaven.
Thus, spiritual science as anthroposophy attempts to fertilize religious life once again, to truly warm religious life, to lead human beings back to the original source of the divine. And it attempts to do this by listening to what lies in the call for a renewal of our culture.
Today we have a magnificent science, we stand in awe of this magnificent science of modern times, which has achieved so much in relation to our contemporary culture. But we see how, alongside this science, there is a call for religious renewal, for a renewed religious deepening. So, on the one hand, we are supposed to have a science that wants nothing to do with religion, and on the other hand, we are supposed to have a religious renewal alongside science. That is the dream of many. It will be a futile dream. For the content of religion can never emerge from anything other than what a particular era believes it knows. And when we look back to the times when religions were fully alive, religion always contained what served as knowledge for that particular age, only in a special way, as worship, with a touch of piety, with a touch of devotion, and usually — and this is extremely important — with worship above all for the particular founder of the religion. Therefore, our age, our culture, will not be happy with religious content that is not in harmony with what our age can know.
Therefore, anthroposophical spiritual science does not seek religion alongside science, but seeks to elevate science itself to such an extent that this science can become religious again. It does not seek a religionless science and an unscientific religion alongside it, but rather a science that can drive religious life from within itself, through its own source, because it seeks a science that does not rest one-sidedly on the intellect, but is based on the whole human being, on everything that lives in the human being. And such a science does not have a destructive effect on religious life, nor does it have a destructive effect on Christian life in particular, but rather it will shine upon it in such a way that one can see in what has entered into the earth's development as the Mystery of Golgotha the eternal, supersensible meaning that has blessed humanity with this event. And from the contemplation of the mystery of Golgotha, religious enthusiasm and inner religious joy will arise, both emotionally and morally in the will, which will not be destroyed but can be illuminated in the right way by what can be seen and known about the entry of Christ Jesus into earthly human development.
In this way, this spiritual science seeks to meet the search for the human being. As I said, this should only serve, in a sense, to contribute a little to the cultural renewal that is so longed for and hoped for today. It should only serve to explain how one can imagine that those longings that can be expressed in a question such as that of the renewal of our culture have a meaning, a deep inner, human meaning.
And these reflections also wanted to show how, in essence, this call for cultural renewal is at the same time a call for insight, for a renewed feeling of what is truly human, how it is right that the question of the essence of this search for cultural renewal is actually there, that we are searching for a full sense of humanity, for a full experience of humanity. And one may well believe that one will perhaps arrive at an interpretation of today's often vague call for cultural renewal if one says to oneself that, in a truly significant way, the renewal of the question that has been echoing down to us from ancient Greece stands before the searching human being today: Man, know thyself.
Certainly, centuries and millennia have placed their noblest aspirations on this question. Today, however, it is to an even greater extent the greatest question of destiny. And however the individual — as I believe I have hinted at — may answer the question: How should culture be renewed? — somehow the answer will have to be along the lines of: How can we, out of a fully human endeavor, find the human being again, so that the human being can once more devote himself entirely to the world and his fellow human beings, and thus regain his moral, social, intellectual, and religious satisfaction? — That seems to me to be the question of the renewal of our culture.