The Tension Between East and West
GA 83
8 June 1922, Vienna
7. The Individual Spirit and the Social Structure
A few months ago, the British Colonial Secretary remarked that the world's centre of gravity has shifted from the Baltic and Atlantic to the Pacific. His observation is certainly indicative of the transformation now taking place in the social structure of the whole world. Only now, in fact, is the world gradually beginning, in circumstances that have arisen in the course of centuries and have changed so significantly as a result of the cruellest of wars, to realize the consequences of something that has long been brewing—the fact that not only economic and social relationships, but the whole of human relationships throughout the world are tending to transform themselves into a totality, a single entity.
If this is true, however, then the change in external economic organization (directly determined by the conversion of world trade into a world economy from the last third of the nineteenth century onwards) must also be followed by a profound spiritual transformation throughout the world, of which perhaps only the beginnings can be discerned today.
Yet we must also remember that, however social structures may change throughout the world, there live within them human beings who must reach an understanding as men if they wish to establish a relationship with one another. Understanding between men, however, involves trust. And trust involves a kind of insight into the souls of others. In Western civilization to date it has only been possible, generally speaking, to extend our horizons slightly, to include the Continent of Europe and its immediate colonial dependencies. A world-wide view has yet to be found.
Starting from one or two features of the historical background, which yet are directly reflected in man's life today, I shall try this evening to indicate what is actually happening in this direction. To do so, I shall first have to say something about understanding and attempts at understanding within Western civilization itself.
If you listen to the way educated Englishmen speak about Europe, about Central Europe and in particular about Germany, which has set the tone in certain respects for so long in Central Europe, what they say—and write in their books—is usually something like this: With us, everything rests on a democratic basis. The individual very largely determines what happens in spiritual and also in economic life. The greater part of public affairs is left to individual initiative. But when we look across at Central Europe—I do not want to claim that what they say is absolutely correct, only to illustrate what is in fact a widely-held view—a certain autocracy becomes apparent, a system of administration by officials—very capable, of course—who determine, from the centre of national life, the nature of individual human relationships. There is—or was before the war, at least—always this pointed reference to a centralized and more or less autocratic system. If we were then to look further East, we should have to say, following the same line of thought: further East, we find not just autocracy, but a kind of patriarchal autocracy. This is pervaded, not only by the ordinances of administrators, but also by a religious impulse: men therefore feel that what they do on earth is actually ordained by spiritual, extra-terrestrial powers and entities, the impulses from which are absorbed into their feelings.
Behind this English attitude there certainly lies something of great importance, which affects all the social structures of the present day. We can say: the further West we go, the more man with his whole thinking and feeling is bound up in the affairs he has to manage. This comes out most clearly when we look at economic affairs. In the West, what a man wishes to accomplish in economic life he accomplishes by attention to practical detail. He has an immediate personal relationship with the externals of life. In Central Europe, as the psychologically perceptive observer cannot help noticing, things are rather different. There is a tendency towards what the Englishman, from his standpoint, calls “academic administration by the state:” a tendency for certain ideas to prevail which are regarded as correct. These are expected to shape laws and inform administrative principles, and are set forth from the beginning in an administrative, a political system. The individual who comes to the affairs of actual life, even economic affairs, may look to economic practice first of all; but he is always looking over his shoulder at something of a juridical-political character that belongs to one of these systems. And he regards his personal activities as a part of such a system. The Englishman has no inclination to think up a system of this kind; his eye is only on the concrete details of life, not on the overall system that imposes itself upon them.
At this point, our attention is drawn to a historical phenomenon that has become particularly important in very recent times. For millions upon millions of people, the name of Karl Marx is of extraordinary significance. The rigidly dogmatic and formula-ridden Marxism that occupied the souls of many millions of men like a kind of religion, fifty years or so ago, has been modified in many ways. Yet for the broad masses of the European proletariat, the name Marx still denotes a prophet of social reorganization. On this occasion, I am not concerned to demonstrate the errors of Marxism. I only want to point to a certain aspect of Marx as a historical phenomenon.
Marx was educated in Central Europe, in Germany, where he absorbed a disposition towards the kind of systematization of ideas that I have just been describing. Then, however, he went to the West, to France and in particular to England, in order to study concrete details of the social and economic development of recent times. What he studied were concrete details—for that is all that exists in the British working-class. What he constructed from them is a system of social organization such as only a Central European temperament can create. And this system took root, not primarily in the West, but in Central Europe. And we may say: the concrete details that Marx observed in the West he shaped into a grand systematic edifice of ideas, which his disciples have made increasingly dogmatic and increasingly theoretical. It came to be regarded as the ideal organization of human society as a whole from the economic standpoint. And when its exponents had the opportunity of realizing it in Eastern Europe, it became, in a sense, the ideal economic and political organization—though in fact it has not been realized to any great extent, and even this little is gradually leading to absurdity. The essential point, however, is that we can see quite clearly, just with a phenomenon like this, how fundamentally the mode of thought even in Central Europe differs from that in Western Europe. From this, however, we must suppose that the variations throughout the world are very much greater still, and that only an impartial attitude, quite free of preconceptions, is capable of gaining a conspectus of these variations.
What strikes us as diversity within the small sphere of Western civilization must be seen today against a world background. This is because our present-day structures, including the social ones, are affected by world conditions as these have developed historically in East and West, just as they are affected by philosophical impulses, in the way I have described here in the last few days. A similar approach will be in place when we attempt to depict present-day social structures.
In so many of these, a great deal survives in a disguised form, so that its origin is only dimly visible. What originated long ago in the East exists side by side with what is specifically Central European and with what is just beginning to appear in the West as a quite new configuration. This is true of the social structures as it was of the philosophical situation throughout the world.
When we look across at the East—which, at some time in the future. Western structures will have to be extended to include—we can see in the modes of thought and social attitudes of people today definite survivals of ancient institutions and ancient impulses from which these arose. Decadent as it has become in the East, everything that can still be observed today points back to times when the Orient was ruled by a variety of priest-theocracies. In a way possible and appropriate to the culture of the time, their leaders embodied in the social structures things that they felt they had to ascertain from the spiritual worlds by means of the old instinctive spiritual vision, as I have described in the last few days. On the basis of historical documents, people today describe the priestly hierarchies as ruling by teaching the populace that all natural phenomena were inhabited by divine and spiritual entities, and that by certain magical operations one could gain the favour of these gods, or their love. This is true of a later epoch of the Oriental priest-theocracies, but it is precisely a later epoch, when the original qualities of the Orient were already in decline.
It is true that, in ancient Oriental civilization, certain select individuals sought a kind of connection with the spiritual world which was based on things that have no charms at all for us today. It was based on certain quite material activities of the human body: potions that were brewed and substances that were eaten. They regarded as a secret the fact that, by the consumption of these potions and substances, man's normal sensory activity is suspended, and he is taken back to times when there was as yet no sense of purely external natural law and when spiritual life, too, was not yet so abstract as it later became—times when the moral and spiritual element was still united with the physical and natural. These priest-scholars sought to return to primeval ages in the development of the earth itself by associating their metabolism with certain material essences of the outside world.
What they were actually asserting we again become capable of understanding when, by the quite different modern path into super-sensible worlds, we come to know what I expounded in my fifth lecture: that through spiritual insight into his own nature man experiences within himself a kind of world-memory. He thus goes back, in his spiritual vision of course, to times when for men natural laws were not as they are today—expressing themselves more or less by chance—and spiritual laws were not so abstract as they are today. In consequence, spiritual vision arrives, not at the purely mechanistic Kant-Laplace nebula, but at an origin of the earth that is to be interpreted physically and spiritually. As I have demonstrated in the last few days, the world-memory men gain in this way is achieved entirely without manipulating the physical, in a spiritual way by spiritual exercises. This was not so in those early Oriental times, when men established contact with the spiritual world through stimulating their unconscious instincts by associating their metabolism with essences of one type or another. They knew what each plant in nature could develop from their instinctive life by a kind of dream-like spiritualization; they knew that, if this or that plant was eaten, the effect upon their organism was such that they could transport themselves to a particular area of spiritual activity. This was in fact the way in which the high priests of the Oriental theocracies, who also had complete power over social and political structures, originally established contact with the spiritual world. They believed they had thereby obtained impulses that proved to be the actual guiding impulses for social life.
We may say: The subsequent belief, or rather superstition, that to this or that natural object this or that “spirit” was linked, is already a product of cultural decadence. The original implication was that, if we allow these natural objects to affect us in a certain way, we shall be led to a particular kind of spiritual being, from whom we can receive various impulses, including social ones. Oracles, star-gazing, everything astrological was basically a product of the decline of these older views, towards which, however, objective science today is already being led, if dimly as yet. Objective science has given up seeing crude polytheism deep down in all primitive peoples, and can now perceive a monotheism of primitive man. In the same way, it will arrive at the outlook that has been evolved by consideration of the historical background and by spiritual investigations such as I have described.
On the one hand, therefore, there existed a complete awareness of how impulses from extra-terrestrial nature, from spiritual entities, manifest themselves in human nature itself—these impulses had, after all, been obtained by stimulating the instincts, by a spiritualization of the instincts. Yet at the same time people could not help attaching some importance to what displayed itself in these instincts, which they ascribed to the particular quality of the blood, let us say in a family with a particular constitution. In the manifestations of this instinctive life also, they detected social impulses sent into the world from extra-terrestrial spheres. When decadence later set in, it was natural, for the men who were striving for power, to take over, quite arbitrarily, the general view that looked to this manifestation of the instinctive life, which they sought in blood and in what could be discovered through its spiritualization. In this way, however, something unspiritual and (based on blood) something patriarchal entered Eastern life as a whole. We can only discuss this patriarchal element, of course, by referring to what is known; but its point of departure lies in the relations that the old priest-rulers of the Orient sought with the spiritual world. For this reason, all the social configurations of the Orient are steeped in this religious element, this awareness that divine and spiritual powers must prevail in everything on earth, and that ultimately no man should give orders unless he has first allowed the power of the divine word to flow into the spirit, the soul that is to give them. Impulses initially felt as religious, as impulses of grace from extra-terrestrial powers, thus assumed for social life the character of commandments. Even when, in certain Eastern civilizations, we appear to be confronted with laws in the later sense of the word, we soon find, when we analyse the spirit of legislation such as that of Hammurabi, for example, that it is based on impulses of the commandment type, which derive from what was regarded as the commerce of the elect with the spiritual world.
In an increasingly attenuated form, this has survived in all the social configurations that rest on ecclesiastical and religious foundations. And however much these things are disguised in social structures today, we can see, even in those left-wing associations that rest on a religious basis, that the ancient Oriental impulses I have described still operate in an attenuated form. There is much in present-day social structures that we cannot understand at all if we are not in a position to ask: In what sense do human souls cling to such structures? They cling to them because, in these souls' subconscious depths, there still remain legacies of the religious inclinations of the Orient. This is true even where the religious views themselves have taken on quite different forms, forms that have detached themselves from economic life, as is the case with the religions of the West. That the effect of Oriental religions is felt even in detailed features of economic life could be observed in Eastern Europe right down to the Great War.
To understand social configurations, we must discuss the spiritual impulses that inform them. For the description often given these days of social structures really only relates to their external appearance, as can be shown quite clearly by an example such as the following.
Today, it is clear, we can only look with horror at the social organization that is trying to establish itself in Eastern Europe. Yet in considering what is going on there today, we cannot help remembering what happened some eight hundred years ago, in China. Here, quite suddenly, men sought and very largely realized a political system that aimed at ordering all the affairs of man, even those of an economic nature, in every detail on behalf of the state. At this period in China, there were government authorities that fixed prices from week to week, authorities that laid down how the land was to be cultivated here, there and everywhere, authorities that provided country people with the seed for the year. At this period in China, an attempt was made to impose a high rate of tax on people who were particularly rich, so that gradually their fortunes passed to the general public. Remembering all this, we may say: the social configuration sought in Europe in our time by certain circles was largely realized eight hundred years ago, over a period of three decades, until the Socialist government concerned was overthrown and its supporters expelled from China. For thirty years, a system persisted whose features, if we described them without mentioning China, might very well be taken to refer to present-day Russia.
We can point to such things if our aim is to direct attention to the surface features of social structures. For here we can see that Socialism, as it is popularly understood, need not be solely a product of our own time, but could arise eight hundred years ago there in the Far East on quite different cultural foundations.
Yet if we look at the spirit of these two social structures, we observe a significant difference. In the Chinese Socialism there clearly survive features of the theocracy that had always ruled over China, and does so still; in modern Russian Socialism there is embodied an abstract thinking, culled from natural science, which has nothing whatever to do with man's consciousness of a connection with spiritual worlds. Things that appear the same in their outward form are not the same when we consider them spiritually.
Looking at human history from this standpoint, we shall find that the particular form of the theocratic state—or rather, theocratic social structures—lasted for a definite period. When the Asiatic theocracies were at their zenith, the tribes in Western and Central Europe were still in an entirely uncivilized state. In moving over to Europe, what was theocratic in form has gradually assumed a quite special shape.
If we are sufficiently unprejudiced, we can discover a transitional form in the Platonic Utopian state. There is certainly something here faintly reminiscent, I would say, of the Oriental priestly hierarchies. For this reason, no doubt, Plato wished to choose as leaders of his state those who had become—in the Greek sense, it is true—wise men, philosophers. Within Greek civilization, in fact, the philosopher took the place of the Oriental priest. Yet Plato's Utopia derives, after all, from the social outlook of his own time, in the sense that it reproduces what was currently felt about society; and in it we can recognize a form into which Oriental society had already developed. No longer was a relationship of man to super-sensible powers sought. The religious feelings appropriate to this relationship were more or less taken over from the Ancient East; what the Greeks themselves evolved, however, was something that had played no particular part in early Oriental society, and ultimately plays no particular part even in the social structures we meet in the Old Testament. What was now elaborated independently was the relationship of man to man.
We encounter this relationship in its purest form when we look into the life of the soul in Greece. Here, man still felt a certain intimate association between the spiritual and the physical in his make-up. In conscious inner life, there was for the Greek as yet no separation of body and spirit, such as there is for us. We look within and apprehend the mind in a very diluted form, metaphorically speaking; so that, comprehending it by ordinary consciousness, we can have no conception how it activates the vigorous body or is influenced by it. For the Greeks it was different. And that is why Goethe longed to achieve their outlook in his own experience. The Greeks had no such concept of body and spirit as we have. For them, spiritual and physical were one. Not until Aristotle, a late Greek, does the distinction begin to creep in. Although Plato's views are often presented abstractly, the spirit in which he spoke is one that saw the body everywhere permeated by soul, even in its organic functions, and felt the soul to be so powerful that it could everywhere extend its antennae towards the physical organs. The attitude to the soul is more physical, to the body more spiritual. Such a view is linked at the same time, however, to a particular feeling that grows up between men. And from this view has arisen what is characteristic of the civilization of Central Europe.
If we look with a sensitive eye at the felt relationship between man and man among the Ancient Greeks, and recognize how it has evolved from man's old relationship to the divine, we can say: what was previously an attitude permeated by religion has transformed itself into the legal attitude, the political attitude. Out of this, out of a combination of the nature of Greek and Roman, there then arose something that could maintain itself in social configurations. The priest gradually becomes merely the successor of the Oriental national leaders, for, although he may have kept himself in the background, the priest in the Orient was always the real spiritual leader, even with Darius and Xerxes. There comes to the fore a mode of thinking that cultivates ideas based on the relationship between man and man. And this goes so far that even religious life is swallowed up by this legal current, as I would call it. A juridical element enters man's world-picture, and even the cosmology of the time; and this element then remains almost throughout the Middle Ages and can be detected when we study the political views of, say, Augustine or Aquinas. Religious impulses themselves, while remaining what they are, take on legal forms.
This entry of legal forms into man's religious, cosmological views is eloquently documented in the wonderful picture of the Last Judgment that faces us as we enter the Sistine Chapel in Rome. It is at its most monumental here in this picture in which Christ appears as judge over all the world. His status as judge magnificently symbolizes the transition from a purely religious and devotional element to that conception which permeates religious feeling with a legal element—one that is carried over into the theory of man's world government and guidance.
This legal element informs all the social structures of the Middle Ages and much that persists in those of today. When we remove the disguise, we observe the presence of this legal element, and see how it has transmitted to us religious impulses from ancient times. And in modern political systems, right down to their terminology and the workings of their laws, where these go back to the Middle Ages, we perceive how, in the middle period of human experience and in the civilization between East and West, this legal and logical element has made its appearance.
We may say: what was Oriental and theosophical changes into something legal and logical; the sophia of the Orient becomes the logos of the Occident; and from the logos there develops in turn the juridical structure, which then proceeds to reproduce itself.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the legal element also determined social configurations. You need only study the economic ordinances of the period: everywhere you will find that social structures are shaped by something which is permeated by ancient Oriental religiosity and is juridical.
Nowadays, we observe the religious element still active in the less formal human groupings or in those that arise from religious denominations, whereas in the major social structures that are the nations we observe the operation of legal thinking. We notice, however, that with the transition from medieval to modern history the religious element allows itself to be pushed more and more into the background, whilst the legal one becomes increasingly predominant.
At this stage, the legal element invades economic configurations. What I am now describing can be traced in all its detail in the history of Roman Law. We can see how concepts of property, customs of ownership, and everything economic in fact, has been decisively determined by a social mould of this nature.
Yet in the course of human development an independent economic element does assert itself increasingly in the West, the nearer we come to modern times. We can say: in earlier periods, economic activity is completely cradled in religious and legal forms. It is in the West that the economic element first emancipates itself in human thinking.
You need only examine the economic element as it presented itself to the Phoenicians, and compare it with the economic systems of modern times (though admittedly these are only at an early stage in their development). You will realize the difference: Phoenician economic life is the product of the impulses I have described; Western economic systems have gradually emancipated themselves from them.
Religion and law are thus joined by a third current which, at any rate at first, tends to endow economic conditions with a social configuration of their own. This trend derives from the West, which in turn has adopted, to a greater or a lesser extent, something of what originated in the East and in the region between. We can see, for example, how, in American civilization especially, economic conditions, unaffected by other cultural currents, evolve along their own lines, until trusts and syndicates emerge. We can see, too, how Western man is inclined to attempt to separate economic from religious life, though he is less successful in separating it from what he later absorbed from juridical thinking and feeling. Even so, we are clearly aware how economic configurations, in their social aspect, are gradually struggling free of the intellectual straightjacket that was imposed on them while they were still under the sway of the legal element. Increasingly, we find economic life pure and simple attaining its emancipation. There can then evolve categories that derive from economic life itself.
At this point, however, we become aware of something that must establish relationships between men and between peoples, yet also lead to conflicts between peoples, and indeed conflicts within nations. We perceive that, in the ancient Orient, the religious element included the legal and economic ones; that the legal element subsequently became more or less distinct, but still contains the economic one, whilst the religious element has become more independent; and that now, in the West, an independent economic life is seeking to develop. Perceiving this, we must also consider how the various cultural patterns of humanity stand in relation to these currents.
And here we may conclude that the theocratic and patriarchal element, with its roots in the East, can really only produce something consonant with an agrarian system, with a social organization based principally on the cultivation of land, on an arable economy. We thus observe a certain correlation between agrarian life and the theocratic element. Moreover, this has its effect on all the social structures of more modern times. In admitting that the theocratic element continues to inform social structures right down to our own times, we must also realize that, because other branches of human activity have come to the fore, they have come into conflict with it, to the extent that in agrarianism, in accordance with the nature of human agriculture, the theocratic element seeks to maintain its position. The correlation exists. A split occurs in it, however, when human activities of another kind seek to assert themselves.
Here we may point to something that can be regarded as a barometer for this aspect of world history. I recommend you some time to study the Austrian parliamentary proceedings of, say, the seventies of the last century. You can observe, sitting in this parliament, men who believe that the old order, with its roots in theocracy and jurisprudence, is intimately associated with agriculture. They are faintly aware of something that later became a great flood, the influx of Western produce—including it is true country produce—deriving from a mode of thought and a social order built on a quite different branch of the economy—on industrialism. Although this is only faintly audible in the various parliamentary speeches, yet we can perceive precisely here, where so much has come together and may be studied, something that illuminates world-wide perspectives.
To what is here developing in the West, the theocratic mode of thought is less applicable than it is to any other branch of the economy. What is developing is industrialism. Naturally, land cultivation is not included in it. But land cultivation itself is then caught up by social configurations that are distinctly reminiscent of the tutelage of industrial thinking.
Yet industrial thinking today, however much it has developed its technical structures, has still not assumed the social structures appropriate to it. On the one hand, we can see the correlation between the theocratic mode of thought, with its patriarchal essence, and the agrarian system. We can see, for example, that in Germany, right down to the present day, it has been impossible for agrarian thinking and industrial thinking to come to terms properly, for reasons I have indicated. We can see this correlation, therefore; but on the other hand we can also see how everything appertaining to commerce is, in the last analysis, correlated with politics and the law.
That is why, in the ancient Orient, commerce is a kind of appendage to the patriarchal administration of human affairs. And in the form that is socially significant for us today, commerce really develops alongside the legal element. For what is required between man and man in trade is something that develops particularly in the juridical sphere. In so far as it did develop in the Orient, the way was prepared by certain commandments, transposed into legal terms but definitely regarded as divine. Commerce, however, has achieved its social organization only within the political and legal current in human development. We can say, therefore, that it is the commercial aspect of economic life that has proved to be particularly suited to political systems based on law and legal thinking.
At the same time, it is true that—because in the whole man everything must be connected with everything else—the political and legal element has also linked up with the industrial sector of economic life. As we go further and further West, therefore, we find that, although men evolve their personal relationship to anything chiefly from industry and the things associated with it, yet they also take over features of commerce. For with social structures as they are today, any undertaking is viewed, in point of fact, in the light of its commercial function in the social order. The industrialist himself sees his own undertaking within a commercial framework, so that in this way too the second current, the legal one, maintains its influence on the economic life of the West.
In other present-day social structures, we can see even more clearly how this politico-legal element continues to exert an influence below the surface among the broad masses of the people. As concomitants of modern technical life, all kinds of social structures have emerged. We need only recall the trade unions. We correctly perceive the nature of these only when we realize that economic conditions have created them. Nevertheless, those who see these things in a vital manner know that, even if the unions emerge from economic conditions—associations of metalworkers, printing trades unions and so on—the way men behave within them, the way they vote, the way they look at things and discuss them, is the parliamentary, political and legal one, the administrative way. It is something that derives from the second current I have described. The ideas appropriate to the third current are still in their infancy, and it still has to take its social patterns from what is old.
At the present time, therefore, we can see three principal types of social configuration existing side by side, widely differentiated of course in one direction and another. They co-exist in such a way that, we may say, history is deployed in space. And in adapting ourselves to any individual social configuration—an economic association, a political association or a religious community—we do in fact, since each of them is in contact with the others, enter a community where elements that have arisen successively in history now co-exist. They have now become shuffled together in space, and call for our understanding today, for this is the time when mankind must regain, at a higher level, the nai'vet^ from which creativity originally sprang.
It was once proper that primitive economic and political life should be poured into the theocratic mould. At a later period, a duality developed, taking over from earlier times the religious element, and evolving the political and legal element, incorporating economic life. So, today, economic life cries out for independent organization, for vital human ideas that can operate once more in a formative manner, as the vital impulses! of the legal forms of Greece and Rome, and the Orient's religious impulses, once operated. Since these three currents in human development are now mutually diverging, however, we must be able to consider them independently. We must look at the spiritual side of social structures, initially the only effective one; must look at their legal side, which became the dominant one in the Middle Ages; and must look at their economic side, for which a spiritual aspect must also be sought.
This has been put forward simply as a reflection on the antecedents of present-day social structures. It is intended to indicate that, in order to understand these structures, we must enter with real understanding upon the contemplation of those world-wide perspectives to which I drew attention at the beginning of this lecture. To do so, however, we shall have need of vital thought. That this vital thought is needed can be seen on the one hand from the sociological tone of my observations here; but it also emerges from direct contemplation of contemporary life. Everywhere, people are longing to begin to permeate economic life with the vital thought-impulses appropriate to it.
In this respect, of course, educated men of the West are of peculiar interest. In an extraordinarily significant treatise written in England in the very year before the fearful event of the Great War, a notable Englishman pointed out how fundamentally the English way of thinking differs from the German one—in the sense that I indicated at the beginning of my observations today. But he points out something else too: what strikes him is that, within the German-speaking population of Central Europe, there has always existed thought. And he observes that thought is the element in the human soul that in the most intimate way points continually to the great enigmas. Through civilizations that cultivate thought, as the German does, we are confronted again and again with the deepest riddles of man and the cosmos, even if—and here comes the tail-piece characteristic of this man of Western Europe—even if, he says, we perceive the futility of supposing their solution.
Well, it was proper to speak of the “vanity” of a solution when one could only point to the thought that emerged by abstraction from the body of law and logic; for, although as thought it may rise to supreme heights, this still remains a kind of dead thought. Anyone, however, who becomes aware that in our time the souls of men can provide a birth-place for vital thought, will speak, not perhaps of a final solution, but of a path that can lead to our being able to solve, at least for that particular period, the social problems that face us at any time.
For it is probably true that, once thinking about social structures has appeared in human evolution, we cannot speak of being able to solve the social problem all at once, but must rather say that among the evolutionary impulses that must survive into the future are included reflections about social organization. We can say, therefore: It is true that we shall not be able to speak of solutions, but of a vital human thinking that in a conscious way will first perceive the goals and in a conscious way will then move towards the solution of the social riddles of existence.
Die Zeit und Ihre Soziale Gestaltung
Atlantische und Pazifische Kultur
Meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden! Als vor einigen Monaten ein englischer Kolonialminister die Worte ausgesprochen hat, der Schwerpunkt der Welt habe sich verschoben von der Ostsee und dem Atlantischen Ozean nach dem Stillen Ozean, hat er damit allerdings ein für die gegenwärtige Umgestaltung der sozialen Situation der ganzen Erde bedeutsames Wort gesprochen. Erst jetzt beginnt in der Tat die Welt nach und nach aus den Verhältnissen, wie sie sich seit Jahrzehnten herausgebildet, wie sie sich so bedeutsam gewandelt haben durch den grausamsten der Kriege, die Konsequenzen zu ziehen dessen, was sich lange vorbereitet hat: die Konsequenzen daraus, daß nicht nur die wirtschaftlichen und sozialen, sondern die gesamten gegenseitigen Menschheitsverhältnisse der ganzen Erde sich zu einer Totalität, zu einem einheitlichen Wesen umbilden wollen.
Wenn das aber der Fall ist, dann ist es auch notwendig, daß den äußerlichen wirtschaftlichen Gestaltungen, die in der Umwandlung des Welthandels zur Weltwirtschaft seit dem letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts einfach gegeben sind, auch eine tiefgehende geistige Umwandlung über die ganze Erde hin folgt, von der man allerdings heute vielleicht nur erst die Anfänge ahnen kann.
Aber dann muß berücksichtigt werden, daß, wie auch immer sich die sozialen Gestaltungen über die Erde hin umwandeln, in diesen sozialen Gestaltungen Menschen leben, die sich als Menschen verständigen müssen, wenn sie miteinander in ein Wechselverhältnis treten wollen. Zur Menschenverständigung gehört aber Vertrauen. Und zum Vertrauen gehört in einem gewissen Sinne wirklich eine Art Hineinsehen in die Seelen der anderen. Es ist aber der abendländischen Zivilisation bisher mehr oder weniger nur möglich gewesen, einen etwas weiteren Gesichstkreis zu gewinnen über den europäischen Kontinent und seine unmittelbaren kolonialen Anhänge. Es wird die Perspektive über die ganze Erde hin gefunden werden müssen.
Am heutigen Abend soll nun aus einigen historischen Untergründen heraus, die sich aber unmittelbar in das gegenwärtige Dasein der Menschheit hineinleben, darauf hingedeutet werden, was eigentlich in dieser Richtung vorgeht. Dazu wird notwendig sein, zuerst über Verständnis und Verständigungsversuche innerhalb der abendländischen Zivilisation selbst einiges zu sprechen,
Wenn man gebildete Engländer vernimmt über die Art und Weise, wie sie über Europa, über Mitteleuropa, insbesondere über das so lange in Mitteleuropa nach gewissen Richtungen hin tonangebend gewesene Deutschland sprechen, so sagen sie gewöhnlich — mündlich und auch in der Literatur - etwa das Folgende: Bei uns ruht alles auf einer gewissen demokratischen Grundlage. Der einzelne Mensch ist in einem hohen Grade maßgebend für das, was im geistigen, aber auch im wirtschaftlichen Leben geschieht. Der Initiative dieses einzelnen ist der größte Teil der öffentlichen Angelegenheiten anheimgestellt. Schaut man aber nach Mitteleuropa hinüber — ich will jetzt gar nicht behaupten, daß diese Dinge absolut richtig sind, sondern will nur charakterisieren, was eben eine allgemeine Meinung ist -, dann macht sich eine gewisse Autokratie bemerkbar, ein gewisses Verwaltungsprinzip durch allerdings tüchtige Verwaltungsfunktionäre, die vom Zentrum des staatlichen Lebens aus bestimmen, wie die einzelnen menschlichen Verhältnisse sich abspielen sollen. Es wird da in scharfer Weise immer hingedeutet, vor dem Kriege wenigstens, auf das zentralistische, auf das mehr oder weniger autokratische Prinzip. Würde dann der Blick weiter ausgedehnt nach dem Osten hinüber, so müßte eigentlich, unter Festhaltung derselben Denkweise, gesagt werden: Weiter nach Osten hinüber findet sich nicht nur Autokratie, sondern es findet sich eine Art patriarchalischer Autokratie, die durchsetzt ist nicht nur von dem, was Menschen anordnen, die verwalten, sondern die durchsetzt ist von einem religiösen Impuls, so daß Menschen das, was sie auf Erden tun, sogar angeordnet empfinden von geistigen, außerirdischen Mächten und Wesenheiten, deren Impulse sie aufnehmen in ihre Empfindungen.
Hinter einer solchen Betrachtungsweise verbirgt sich allerdings sehr Wichtiges, das hereinspielt in alle sozialen Gestaltungen der Gegenwart. Man kann sagen, je weiter man gegen Westen vorschreitet, desto mehr ist der Mensch mit seinem ganzen Denken und Empfinden verbunden mit den Angelegenheiten, die er zu besorgen hat. Und sieht man auf die wirtschaftlichen Angelegenheiten, so tritt das am allerdeutlichsten hervor. Im Westen vollzieht der Mensch das, was er im wirtschaftlichen Leben vollziehen will, dadurch, daß er wirklich bis in die Details dessen, was ihm obliegt, einzudringen versucht. Ein persönliches, ein unmittelbar persönliches Verhältnis hat er zu den äußerlichsten Angelegenheiten des Lebens. In der europäischen Mitte ist das allerdings in einem gewissen Sinn - für den psychologischen Weltenbetrachter muß sich das so herausstellen - anders. Da herrscht der Sinn dafür, daß eintritt, was der Engländer von seinem Gesichtspunkt aus «wissenschaftliche Verwaltung des Staates» nennt, daß gewisse Ideen vorwalten, die man als die richtigen ansieht, die Gesetze formen und in Verwaltungsprinzipien sich einleben sollen, die zunächst überschaut werden in einem Verwaltungssystem, in einem Staatssystem. Und der einzelne, der dann herangeht an die Angelegenheiten des unmittelbaren Lebens, auch an die wirtschaftlichen Angelegenheiten, der hat zunächst allerdings seine wirtschaftliche Praxis im Auge; aber er blickt doch von ihr immer hinweg zu dem, was in gewissem Sinn einen juristisch-staatlichen Charakter trägt, was in eines dieser Systeme einzuordnen ist. Und er betrachtet das einzelne, was er tut, als ein Glied in einem solchen System. Der Engländer hat nicht die Neigung, ein solches System auszudenken, er hat nur das im Auge, was sich für die Einzelheiten des Lebens konkret ergibt, nicht das, was sich wie ein Gesamtsystem über das Ganze gleichsam hinüberlegt.
Damit aber ist auch hingedeutet auf eine historische Erscheinung, die in der neuesten Zeit ganz besonders wichtig geworden ist. Für Millionen und aber Millionen von Menschen bedeutet ja der Name Karl Marx etwas Außerordentliches. Wenn auch vielfach Modifikationen eingetreten sind in bezug auf den einstigen dogmatischstarren, formelhaften Marxismus, der noch vor Jahrzehnten in vielen Millionen Menschenseelen wie eine Art von Religion gelebt hat, so bedeutet für die breiten Massen des europäischen Proletariats doch der Name Marx noch den Namen eines Propheten der sozialen Neugestaltung. Es kann sich mir nicht darum handeln, jetzt irgendwie auf die Irrtümer des Marxismus hinzuweisen. Dagegen möchte ich auf das historische Phänomen Marx von einer gewissen Seite aus hinweisen.
Marx hat seine Bildung genossen innerhalb Mitteleuropas, innerhalb Deutschlands, hat dort aufgenommen, was die Anlage ist zu jenem Systematisieren, zu jenem Ordnen der Ideen, wie ich es eben charakterisiert habe. Dann aber ging er nach dem Westen, ging nach Frankreich, ging insbesondere nach England, um dort die konkreten Einzelheiten der sozialen, der wirtschaftlichen Entwickelung der neueren Zeit zu studieren. Was er studiert hat, waren konkrete Einzelheiten, denn nur die allein leben auch in der englischen Arbeiterklasse. Was er daraus gebildet hat, ist ein System eines sozialen Organismus, wie es auszugestalten nur einem mitteleuropäischen Gemüt möglich ist. Und dieses System hat Wurzeln geschlagen nicht etwa in erster Linie im Westen. Es hat wiederum Wurzeln geschlagen in Mitteleuropa. Und man darf sagen: Was Marx im Westen beobachtet hat in konkreten Einzelheiten, hat er zu einem großen systematischen Ideengebäude geformt, und es ist durch seine Anhänger immer noch dogmatischer und dogmatischer, theoretischer und theoretischer gemacht worden. Es wurde das Ideal einer allgemeinen Organisation der ganzen menschlichen Gesellschaft vom wirtschaftlichen Standpunkt aus. Es wurde in gewisser Beziehung das Ideal wirtschaftlicher, staatlicher Organisation, als die entsprechenden Kreise die Möglichkeit hatten, das im Osten auszuführen, allerdings zu einem sehr, sehr geringen Grad, der sich auch nach und nach ad absurdum führt. Das Wesentliche ist aber, daß einem auch an einer solchen Erscheinung in ganz klarer Weise entgegentritt, wie grundverschieden schon die Denkweise Mitteleuropas von der Denkweise des europäischen Westens ist. Daraus aber muß geahnt werden, daß die Differenzierungen über die Erde noch weit größere sein müssen, und daß wirklich eine Unbefangenheit, die sich nicht beirren läßt durch vorgefaßte Meinungen, allein zu einer Anschauung über diese Differenzierungen kommen kann.
Heute muß das, was einem als die Mannigfaltigkeit in dem kleinen Kreis der abendländischen Zivilisation erscheint, auf dem Hintergrund der großen Weltordnung betrachtet werden. Denn in unsere Gestaltungen, auch in die sozialen Gestaltungen, spielen die Weltverhältnisse, wie sie sich im Osten und Westen historisch entwickelt haben, in die unmittelbare Gegenwart herein. Geradeso spielen sie herein, wie die Weltanschauungsimpulse hereinspielen, in dem Sinne, wie ich das in den vergangenen Tagen hier geschildert habe. Und eine ähnliche Betrachtung wird auch angemessen sein, wenn die Darstellung der sozialen Gestaltungen der Gegenwart versucht wird.
In so manchem, was als soziale Gestaltungen in der unmittelbaren Gegenwart da ist, lebt noch vieles, was heute maskiert ist, so daß sein Ursprung nur in geringem Maße sichtbar ist. Was im Osten vor langer Zeit entstanden ist, lebt mit dem zusammen, was das spezifisch Mitteleuropäische ist, und mit dem, was im Westen als eine ganz neue Gestaltung sich zu ergeben anfängt. In ähnlicher Weise muß das für die sozialen Gestaltungen gesagt werden, wie es ausgeführt werden mußte für die Weltanschauungsverhältnisse über die Erde hin.
Gehen wir aber nach dem Osten hinüber, nach jenem Osten, den die abendländischen Gestaltungen in der Zukunft werden mit umfassen müssen, so sehen wir heute in den Denkweisen, in den sozialen Empfindungen der Menschen durchaus die Überreste uralter Einrichtungen und uralter Impulse, aus denen sie hervorgegangen sind. Alles, was auch heute noch beobachtet werden kann, obwohl es im Osten durchaus in die Dekadenz gekommen ist, weist zurück in jene Zeiten, in denen der Osten, der Orient, beherrscht war von Priestertheokratien der mannigfaltigsten Art, Priestertheokratien, die in der Art, wie es dazumal möglich und der menschlichen Kultur angemessen war, den sozialen Gestaltungen einverleibt haben, was sie im Sinn der alten instinktiven Geistesschau aus den geistigen Welten heraus glaubten erkunden zu müssen, eben in der Art, wie ich es in diesen Tagen geschildert habe. Wenn allerdings heute die Menschen aus den historischen Dokumenten heraus schildern, wie im Orient einmal die Priesterhierarchien in der Art geherrscht haben, daß sie das Volk lehrten, wie gewissermaßen in allen Naturerscheinungen göttlich-geistige Wesenheiten wohnen und wie man sogar durch gewisse menschliche magische Verrichtungen die Gnade dieser Götter oder die Liebe dieser Götter sich erwerben könne, so ist das zwar für eine gewisse spätere Epoche der orientalischen Priestertheokratien richtig, aber eben für eine spätere Epoche, wo das Ursprüngliche des Orients schon im Niedergang begriffen war.
Wahr ist es, daß in den Zeiten der alten orientalischen Zivilisation gewisse auserlesene Individuen eine Art Verbindung suchten mit der geistigen Welt, eine Verbindung, die auf Dingen beruhte, für die wir heute allerdings nicht im geringsten mehr eine Neigung haben können. Sie beruhte auf gewissen Maßregeln, die sogar in sehr materieller Art mit dem menschlichen Körper vorgenommen wurden, gewissen Tränken, die gebraut, gewissen Stoffen, die genossen wurden. Man betrachtete es als ein Geheimnis, daß durch den Genuß dieser Tränke und Stoffe die gewöhnliche Art der Sinnestätigkeit des Menschen ausgeschaltet und der Mensch zurückgeführt werde in Zeiten, in denen die bloß äußere Naturgesetzlichkeit noch nicht so da war wie später, und in denen auch das geistige Leben nicht in solch abstrakter Weise vorhanden war wie eben später, sondern in Zeiten, in denen das Moralisch-Geistige noch ein Einheitliches war mit dem Physisch-Natürlichen. In Urzeiten der Erdenentwickelung selber wollten sich jene Priestergelehrten dadurch zurückversetzen, daß sie ihren Stoffwechsel in eine Beziehung brachten zu gewissen Essenzen stofflicher Natur der Außenwelt.
Was sie eigentlich behaupteten, kann wieder verstanden werden, wenn - jetzt in einer ganz anderen Art durch den modernen Weg in die übersinnlichen Welten hinein wiederum das erkannt werden kann, was ich in meinem letzten Vortrag der ersten Serie ausgeführt habe: daß durch ein gewisses geistiges Hineinschauen in die eigene Menschennatur der Mensch in sich etwas erlebt wie ein Weltengedächtnis und dadurch allerdings in seiner Geistschau zurückdringt bis in die Zeiten, wo für die Menschen die Naturgesetze nicht so waren wie heute, daß sie sich mehr oder weniger durch den Zufall äußerten, und die geistigen Gesetze nicht so abstrakt, wie sie heute sind, bis in die Zeiten, in denen das MoralischGeistige noch eine Einheit war mit dem Physisch-Natürlichen. So daß eine solche Geistschau nicht zu dem bloß mechanistischen Kant-Laplaceschen Urnebel kommt, sondern zu einem Ursprung der Erdenentwickelung, der geistig-seelisch-physisch aufzufassen ist. Was in dieser Weise heute als ein Weltgedächtnis von den Menschen erworben werden kann, das wird durchaus, ohne daß man das Physische bearbeitet - ich habe das ja ausgeführt in diesen Tagen —, auf geistig-seelische Art durch geistig-seelische Übungen errungen. Das war in jenen älteren orientalischen Zeiten nicht der Fall. Da setzten sich die Menschen mit der geistigen Welt dadurch in Beziehung, daß sie ihre unbewußten Instinkte durch das Verbinden ihres Stoffwechsels mit Essenzen dieser oder jener Art aufstachelten. Sie wußten gewissermaßen, was aus ihrem Instinktleben heraus in einer Art traumhafter Vergeistigung entwickelt werden konnte aus jeder Pflanze, aus der Natur; sie wußten, wenn diese oder jene Pflanze genossen wird, so wird ihr Organismus so beeindruckt, daß sie sich in ein gewisses geistiges Geschehen versetzen können. Das war eigentlich die ursprüngliche Form, in der sich die führenden Priester der orientalischen Theokratien, die aber zu gleicher Zeit die volle Macht auch über die sozialen und politischen Gestaltungen hatten, mit der geistigen Welt in Verbindung setzten. Und sie vermeinten, daß sie dadurch die Impulse bekämen, die sich als die eigentlichen Richtimpulse für das soziale Leben ergaben.
Man darf sagen: Was dann späterer Glaube wurde, Aberglaube wurde, daß an dieses oder jenes Naturwesen dieser oder jener «Geist» sich kette, das ist schon ein dekadentes Kulturprodukt. In Wahrheit wollte ursprünglich gesagt werden: Wenn man diese Naturwesen auf sich in gewisser Weise wirken läßt, so wird man zu einer bestimmten Art von Geistwesen geführt, von denen man diese oder jene, auch sozialen, Impulse empfangen könne. Und das Orakelwesen, das Sterndeutewesen, alles Astrologische war im Grunde genommen schon ein Produkt des Niedergangs älterer Anschauungen, worauf heute die äußere Wissenschaft im Grunde genommen auch schon, wenn auch nur andeutend, geführt wird. Geradeso wie diese äußere Wissenschaft abgekommen ist davon, den krassen Polytheismus auf dem Grund aller Urvölker zu sehen, und heute schon hinschaut auf einen gewissen urmenschlichen Monotheismus, so wird sie auch zu der Anschauung kommen, die jetzt aus den Untergründen heraus entwickelt worden ist, die sich ergibt durch solche geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungen, wie sie charakterisiert worden sind.
War aber ein volles Bewußtsein von dem vorhanden, wie die Impulse außerirdischer Natur, geistiger Wesenheiten, sich in der menschlichen Natur selber äußern — hatte man sie doch gefunden durch Aufstachelung der Instinkte, durch eine gewisse Art von Vergeistigung der Instinkte —, so mußte man auch auf das etwas geben, was sich in diesen Instinkten auslebte, in den Instinkten, die man der besonderen Beschaffenheit des Blutes, sagen wir, in einer besonders gearteten Familie zuschrieb. Auch in den Äußerungen dieses Instinktlebens sah man etwas von dem, was aus außerirdischen Sphären in die Erde als gewisse soziale Impulse hereingeschickt wird. Es war dann natürlich, daß, als dies in die Dekadenz kam, die Menschen, die nach Macht strebten, sich in ihrer Willkür der allgemeinen Anschauung bemächtigten, die nach dieser Äußerung des Instinktlebens hinblickte, die man im Blut suchte und in dem, was durch Vergeistigung dieses Blutes gefunden werden konnte. Dadurch aber kam etwas Ungeistiges und, dem Blute nach, Patriarchalisches in das ganze morgenländische Leben hinein. Dieses Patriarchalische kann man allerdings nur besprechen, indem man auf Bekanntes hinweist; aber sein Ausgangspunkt liegt in den Beziehungen, welche die alten Priesterherrschaften des Orients zur geistigen Welt gesucht haben. Deshalb ist auch über alle sozialen Gestaltungen des Orients dieses religiöse Element ausgegpssen, dieses Bewußtsein, daß es eigentlich göttlich-geistige Mächte sind, die in allem Irdischen walten müssen, und daß kein Mensch im Grunde Befehle anders geben sollte als dadurch, daß er erst in den Geist, in die Seele, welche diese Befehle geben soll, die Kraft des göttlichen Wortes einfließen läßt. Dadurch nahmen die Impulse, die zunächst als religiöse, als Gnadenimpulse von außerirdischen Mächten empfunden wurden, in bezug auf das soziale Leben den Charakter von Geboten an. Selbst dann, wenn es in gewissen morgenländischen Kulturen so erscheint, als ob wir es mit Gesetzen im späteren Sinn des Wortes zu tun hätten, findet man leicht, wenn man auf den Geist solcher Gesetzgebung, wie etwa die des Hammurabi, zurückgeht, daß da gebothafte Impulse zugrunde liegen, die auf das zurückführen, was man als den Verkehr auserlesener Menschen mit der geistigen Welt ansah.
Das aber hat sich dann, in immer mehr und mehr abgeschwächter Form, in all den sozialen Gestaltungen erhalten, die auf kirchlich-religiösen Grundlagen beruhen. Und so sehr heute diese Dinge oft in sozialen Gestaltungen maskiert sind: selbst bei den auf religiöser Grundlage beruhenden, genossenschaftlichen Vereinigungen kann es noch gesehen werden, wie sich in abgeschwächter Form die geschilderten Impulse des alten Orients noch wirksam erweisen. Und man versteht manches in den gegenwärtigen sozialen Gestaltungen gar nicht, wenn man nicht in der Lage ist, zu fragen: Inwiefern hängen die Menschenseelen an solchen Gestaltungen? Sie hängen daran, weil tief in den unterbewußten Untergründen dieser Seelen noch die Erbstücke der religiösen Neigungen des Orients sind, auch da, wo die religiösen Anschauungen selbst schon ganz andere Formen angenommen haben, Formen, die von dem wirtschaftlichen Leben sich losgelöst haben, wie das bei den Religionen des Abendlandes der Fall ist. Daß die orientalischen Religionen ihre wirksamen Kräfte bis in die Einzelheiten des wirtschaftlichen Lebens hineinsenden, das konnte im Grunde genommen in seinen Nachwirkungen im europäischen Osten noch bis zu dem Kriege hin bemerkt werden.
Man muß von diesen geistigen Impulsen, welche die sozialen Gestaltungen durchdringen, sprechen, wenn man sie verstehen will. Denn das, was man heute oftmals als soziale Gestaltungen schildert, ist eigentlich nur die Außenseite. Daß es das ist, kann man sich an solchen Beispielen sehr deutlich machen, wie etwa das folgende ist.
Wir können heute gewiß nur mit Entsetzen auf das hinschauen, was sich im europäischen Osten als ein sozialer Organismus geltend machen will. Aber indem man das, was da im europäischen Osten geschieht, heute anschaut, muß man sich erinnern an das, was vor etwa acht Jahrhunderten in Asien drüben, in China, geschehen ist. Wenn man dann schildert, wie vor diesen acht Jahrhunderten in China mit einer gewissen Plötzlichkeit eine Staatseinrichtung gesucht und auch in sehr hohem Grade verwirklicht wurde, die darauf ausging, alle Angelegenheiten des Menschen, auch diejenigen, die wirtschaftlicher Art sind, in allen Einzelheiten von Staats wegen aus zu ordnen, wenn man schildert, daß es Staatsbehörden in dieser Zeit in China gab, welche die Preise von Woche zu Woche festsetzten, daß es Staatsbehörden gab, welche die Art und Weise angaben, wie da, wie dort, wie an dem dritten Ort der Boden bebaut werden mußte, daß es Staatsbehörden gab, welche der Landbevölkerung das Saatgut für die Saat des Jahres zur Verausgabung brachten, daß in dieser Zeit in China versucht wurde, die Leute, die besonders reich waren, in hohem Grade zu besteuern, so daß allmählich ihre Vermögen in die Allgemeinheit übergingen, wenn man an all das erinnert, dann kann man sagen: Was in unserer Zeit von gewissen Kreisen als eine soziale Gestaltung in Europa gesucht wird, das war vor achthundert Jahren in einem hohen Grad durch dreißig Jahre hindurch verwirklicht, bis die betreffende sozialistische Regierung gestürzt und ihre Anhänger aus China ausgetrieben worden waren. Dreißig Jahre lang hat eine Gestaltung dort gedauert, von der man sagen kann: Wenn man sie schilderte und dabei gar nicht sagte, daß sie sich auf China bezieht, dann könnte man glauben, daß sie sich auf das heutige Rußland bezieht.
Auf solche Dinge kann man weisen, wenn man auf die Außenseite der sozialen Gestaltungen hinweisen will. Denn dann sieht man, daß das, was im landläufigen Sinn als Sozialismus aufgefaßt wird, nicht bloß ein Produkt unserer Zeit sein muß, sondern daß es vor acht Jahrhunderten im Fernen Osten drüben aus ganz anderen kulturellen Untergründen heraus hat auftreten können.
Aber wenn man auf die Seele dessen eingeht, was sich da sozial gestaltet hat und heute sozial gestalten will, dann merkt man als bedeutsamen Unterschied, daß in jenem chinesischen Sozialismus die deutlichen Nachwirkungen der Theokratie vorhanden waren, die immer über China geherrscht hatte und heute noch herrscht, und daß das abstrakte, an der Naturwissenschaft erlernte Denken, das gar nichts zu tun hat mit einem Bewußtsein des Menschen von einem Zusammenhang mit geistigen Welten, dem heutigen russischen Sozialismus einverleibt ist. Was seiner äußeren Gestalt nach scheinbar dasselbe ist, ist nicht dasselbe, wenn man es im geistigen Sinn anschaut.
Wenn man gerade von einem solchen Gesichtspunkte ausgeht, dann wird man finden, daß die besondere Form des theokratischen Staatswesens, besser gesagt der theokratischen sozialen Gestaltungen, eben eine gewisse Epoche der Menschheit hindurch dauerte. Die westlichen und mitteleuropäischen Völker waren, als diese asiatischen Theokratien ihre Höhepunkte erreicht hatten, durchaus noch in einem Punkt der Nichtkultur, der Nichtzivilisation. Aber indem sich das, was in Asien die theokratische Form hatte, nach Europa herüberlebt, nimmt es allmählich eine ganz besondere Gestalt an.
Man kann, wenn man unbefangen genug dazu sein will, die Übergangsform in der platonischen Staatsutopie suchen. In dieser ist durchaus etwas, was, ich möchte sagen, in abgeblaßter Art an die orientalischen Priesterhierarchien erinnert. Plato hat wohl aus diesem Grunde auch zu den dirigierenden Führern seines Staates diejenigen erkiesen wollen, die — allerdings jetzt im griechischen Sinn - Weise, Philosophen geworden waren. In der Tat war ja innerhalb der griechischen Zivilisation der Philosoph der Nachfolger dessen, was der orientalische Priester gewesen war. Aber in dem platonischen utopistischen Staat, der doch aus den Anschauungen des sozialen Lebens der Plato-Zeit insofern herrührt, als er in einer gewissen Weise das wiedergibt, was man von dem sozialen Leben jener Zeit empfand, kann man schon eine Form erkennen, in die sich das orientalische soziale Leben umgewandelt hat. Es wurde nicht mehr das Verhältnis des Menschen zu außersinnlichen Mächten gesucht. Was über dieses Verhältnis religiös empfunden werden sollte, übernahm man mehr oder weniger aus dem Altertum des Orients; das aber, was man selbständig ausbildete, war etwas, was im alten Orient noch gar keine besondere Rolle gespielt hatte, was im Grunde genommen selbst noch keine besondere Rolle spielt in jenen sozialen Gestaltungen, die uns aus dem Alten Testament heraus sprechen. Was man jetzt selbständig ausgestaltete, war das Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch.
Dieses Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch tritt uns eigentlich in seiner ureigenen Artung ganz besonders entgegen, wenn wir in das griechische Seelenleben innerlich hineinschauen. Dieses Seelenleben war so, daß der Mensch noch in einer gewissen Weise einen innigen Zusammenhang des Geistig-Seelischen und des NatürlichPhysischen seiner Körperlichkeit fühlte. Es war im inneren Bewußtseinsleben für den Griechen noch nicht eine solche Scheidung des Körperlichen und des Geistigen, wie es für uns nunmehr geworden ist. Wir schauen nach innen und fühlen, ich möchte sagen, in einer sehr dünnen - bildlich gesprochen - Weise das Seelische, fühlen dieses Seelische so, daß wir von ihm, wenn wir es im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein auffassen, gar keine Vorstellung haben können, wie es den robusten Körper bewegt oder sich von ihm beeinflussen läßt. Das war bei dem Griechen anders. Und weil es so war, ersehnte es ja Goethe eigentlich für sich, für sein eigenes Erleben. Der Grieche hatte gar nicht einen solchen Körper- und Geistesbegriff wie wir. Bei ihm waren Geist und Physis eins. Erst bei Aristoteles, dem Spätgriechen, tritt das in gewisser Weise herein. Plato sprach noch durchaus aus einem Geiste, dem man bald anmerkt, obwohl seine Anschauung oft abstrakt geschildert wird, daß er doch von dem Gesichtspunkt aus spricht, wo der Körper noch eigentlich überall, auch in seinen organischen Funktionen, durchseelt ist, und wo die Seele noch innerlich als so kraftvoll empfunden wird, daß sie gewissermaßen überall ihre Fühlhörner nach den körperlichen Organen hin erstreckt. Die Seele ist noch körperlicher, der Körper noch seelischer vorgestellt. Eine solche Anschauung ist aber auch mit einer gewissen Empfindung verbunden, die sich zwischen Mensch und Mensch herausstellt. Und aus dieser Anschauung heraus ist dann das Charakteristische der Zivilisation Mitteleuropas entstanden.
Wenn man das gefühlte Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch bei den alten Griechen ins Auge, ins empfindende Auge, faßt und erkennt, wie dieses Verhältnis sich aus dem alten Verhältnis des Menschen zu dem Göttlichen herübergeleitet hat, wenn man diese Herüberleitung des Verhältnisses des Menschen zu dem Göttlichen in das Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch ins Auge faßt, so kann man sagen: Was vorher eine Anschauung war, die religiös ganz durchsetzt war, das verwandelte sich in die juristische Anschauung, in die staatsgemäße Anschauung. Und daraus - aus dem Zusammenwirken des griechischen und des römisch-lateinischen Wesens — ist dann entstanden das, was sich in sozialen Gestaltungen fortsetzen konnte. Der Priester wird nach und nach nur der Nachfolger des orientalischen Völkerführers, denn der Priester war im Orient doch immer, wenn er sich auch im Hintergrunde hielt, selbst Darius und Xerxes gegenüber, der eigentliche geistige Führer. Eine Denkweise kommt herauf, die Ideen ausbildet, welche auf dieser Grundlage des Verhältnisses zwischen Mensch und Mensch beruhen. Und das geht so weit, daß selbst das religiöse Leben in diese, ich möchte sagen, juristische Strömung untertaucht. In die umfassende Weltanschauung, selbst bis in die damalige Kosmologie, kommt ein juristisches Element hinein, das dann mehr oder weniger durch das ganze Mittelalter hindurch bleibt, das man erfühlen kann, wenn man etwa die Staatsanschauung des Augustinus oder die des Thomas von Aquino studiert. Die religiösen Impulse selbst, obwohl sie religiöse Impulse bleiben, nehmen juristische Formen an.
Ein sprechendes Dokument dieses Einziehens der juristischen Formen in die religiösen kosmologischen Anschauungen der Menschen sieht uns entgegen, wenn wir die Sixtinische Kapelle in Rom betreten: das wunderbare Bild des Jüngsten Gerichts. Hier tritt es einem am monumentalsten entgegen, jenes Bild, in dem der Christus als Weltenrichter erscheint. Indem man in ihm das Richtertum über die Welt sieht, versinnbildlicht das in einer großartigen Weise den Übergang aus dem bloß religiös-kultischen Element in jene Auffassung, die das Religiöse mit einem juristischen Element durchsetzt, das in die Anschauung von der Weltregierung und Weltenlenkung der Menschheit hineingetragen wird.
Dieses juristische Element aber ist drinnen in allen sozialen Gestaltungen des Mittelalters und in vielem, was in unseren sozialen Gestaltungen lebt. Wenn man wiederum die Maske wegnimmt, so schaut man, wie dieses juristische Element da ist, wie es aus uralten Zeiten die religiösen Impulse herübergetragen hat. Und das können wir in den modernen Staatseinrichtungen bis in die Wortbildungen hinein, bis in die Formen der Gesetzesauswirkungen hinein, namentlich derjenigen, die noch aus dem Mittelalter heraufströmten, erkennen: wie in der mittleren Zeit des Menschenerlebens und innerhalb der Zivilisation zwischen Osten und Westen dieses juristisch-logische Element eingetreten ist.
Man könnte sagen: Das Orientalisch-Theosophische wandelt sich um in das Juristisch-Logische, die Sophia des Orients wird der Logos des Okzidents, und aus dem Logos heraus entwickelt sich wieder dasjenige, was juristische Gestaltung wird. Diese pflanzt sich dann weiter £fort.
Das Juristische ist durch das ganze Mittelalter hindurch auch für die sozialen Gestaltungen maßgebend. Man studiere die Wirtschaftsordnungen des Mittelalters: man wird überall finden, daß in die sozialen Gestaltungen formend das eingreift, was von alter orientalischer Religiosität durchsetzt und juristisch ist. Das prägt den sozialen Gestaltungen die Formen auf.
Und sieht man heute in manchem, was in mehr freien menschlichen Vereinigungen vorhanden ist oder in Vereinigungen, die aus religiösen Bekenntnissen hervorgehen, das religiöse Element fortwirken, so sieht man in dem, was die großen sozialen Gestaltungen, die Staatsbildungen, geworden sind, das mehr aus dem Hintergrund drängende juristische Weltendenken wirksam. Man sieht aber auch, wie sich beim Übergang der mittelalterlichen in die neue Geschichte das religiöse Element immer mehr und mehr in den Hintergrund drängen läßt und wie das juristische Element immer mehr und mehr hervorkommt.
Dieses juristische Element drängt sich dann hinein in die wirtschaftlichen Gestaltungen. Was ich jetzt schildere, ist in allen Einzelheiten zu verfolgen, wenn man den Gang des römischen Rechts in der Welt studiert. Da sieht man, wie in den Eigentumsbegriffen, in den Besitzgewohnheiten, in allem, was wirtschaftlich ist, das soziale Gestalten maßgebend war, das auf solchen Untergründen beruhte.
Aber innerhalb des Ganges der Menschheitsentwickelung macht sich dann immer mehr und mehr, je näher wir gegen die moderne Zeit heraufrücken, das selbständige Wirtschaftselement im Westen geltend. Man kann sagen, für ältere Zeiten ist alles Wirtschaften durchaus in religiös-juristischen Formen eingefangen. Das Wirtschaftselement emanzipiert sich zunächst für das menschliche Denken mehr im Westen.
Man versuche nur einmal, solch ein Wirtschaftselement, wie es bei den Phöniziern gelebt hat, zu studieren, und vergleiche das mit dem, was allerdings erst im Anfang ist von Wirtschaftssystemen der neueren Zeit, so wird man den Unterschied merken, wie jenes phönizische Wirtschaftselement aus den Impulsen herausgeboren ist, die ich geschildert habe, wie sich aber im Laufe der Zeit von diesen Impulsen immer mehr und mehr die westlichen Wirtschaftssysteme herausemanzipierten.
Und so sehen wir, wie sich als dritte Strömung zur religiösen und juristischen das hinzugesellt, was, wenigstens zunächst, die Tendenz hat, die wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse selber einer sozialen Gestaltung selbständiger Art zu unterwerfen. Diese Tendenz geht vom Westen aus, der seinerseits mehr oder weniger das übernimmt, was vom Osten und von der Mitte kommt. Wir sehen zum Beispiel besonders in der amerikanischen Zivilisation, wie dort die wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse, emanzipiert von anderen Kulturströmungen, aus ihren eigenen Bedingungen heraus sich entwickeln, bis zu den Trusts und Syndikaten hin, und wie aus einer gewissen menschlichen Neigung heraus, die eben eine Neigung des Westens ist, der Mensch getrennt halten will, was Wirtschaftsleben ist, von dem, was religiöses Leben ist, während er es weniger getrennt halten kann von dem, was er sich später von dem juristischen Denken und Fühlen einverleibt hat. Aber wir sehen doch deutlich, wie allmählich die wirtschaftlichen Gestaltungen in ihrer sozialen Beziehung aus den Begriffsschablonen herausstreben, in die sie hineingekommen sind, indem sich das juristische Element über sie ausgedehnt hat. Immer mehr und mehr sehen wir zur Emanzipation streben dasjenige, was bloß wirtschaftliches Leben ist. Es können sich Kategorien herausbilden, die aus dem Wirtschaftsleben selbst genommen sind,
Damit aber ist auf etwas hingewiesen, was besonders gegenseitige Menschheits- und Völkerverhältnisse, aber auch Völkerkonflikte hervorbringen muß, ja Konflikte innerhalb der Volksgemeinschaften. Denn sieht man auf diese Tatsache hin, daß sich im alten Orient das religiöse Element auch über das juristische und wirtschaftliche ausgedehnt hat, daß dann das Juristische sich mehr oder weniger losgelöst hat, aber das Wirtschaftliche noch in sich hat, das Religiöse jedoch selbständiger geworden ist, und daß nun im Westen ein selbständiges Wirtschaftsleben sich bilden will, dann muß man auch betrachten, wie die einzelnen menschlichen Kulturbestrebungen sich zu solchen geistigen Strömungen verhalten.
Und da kann man sagen: Aus jenem theokratischpatriarchalischen Element, das seine Wurzeln im Osten hat, kann eigentlich mit einer gewissen Richtigkeit sich nur das herausbilden, was für die Agrarorganisation, für einen sozialen Organismus, der vorzugsweise auf die Landbebauung, auf die Ackerwirtschaft gestützt ist, passend ist. Und so sehen wir eine gewisse Zusammengehörigkeit des Agrarlebens mit dem theokratischen Element. Das sehen wir aber in alle sozialen Gestaltungen in späteren Zeiten hineinspielen. Indem wir zugeben müssen, daß das Theokratische sich weiter auslebt in den sozialen Gestaltungen bis in unsere Gegenwart herein, müssen wir uns auch sagen: Dadurch, daß andere Zweige menschlicher Betätigung in den Vordergrund getreten sind, kamen diese mit ihm in Konflikt, insofern sich im Agrarwesen, gemäß dem Wesen der menschlichen Landbebauung, das Theokratische immer weiter und weiter fortsetzen will. Diese Zusammengehörigkeit besteht. In dieser Zusammengehörigkeit aber geschieht ein Riß, wenn von anderer Seite her andere menschliche Betätigungen sich geltend machen.
In dieser Beziehung darf auf etwas hingewiesen werden, was für solche Angelegenheiten wie ein welthistorisches Barometer betrachtet werden kann. Ich empfehle Ihnen, studieren Sie einmal die Parlamentsberichte Österreichs aus den siebziger Jahren des vergangenen Jahrhunderts etwa, studieren Sie, wie da im Parlament die Menschen sitzen, die das Gefühl haben: Mit dem Agrarwesen steht in innigem Zusammenhang jene alte Ordnung, die ihre Wurzeln in Theokratie und Jurisprudenz hat; und nun fühlen Sie leise, was später eine große Strömung geworden ist, das Hereindringen der westlichen Produkte, darunter allerdings auch Landprodukte, die aus einer auf einen anderen Wirtschaftszweig, den Industrialismus, gebauten Denkweise und sozialen Ordnung kommen. Obwohl sich das nur in leisen Andeutungen in den verschiedenen Parlamentsreden ausspricht, kann man gerade hier, wo so vieles zusammengeflossen ist und so vieles studiert werden kann, erkennen, was Klarheit bringen kann über große Weltperspektiven.
Das, was sich da im Westen herausbildet, das ist nun etwas, worauf die theokratische Denkweise weniger als auf irgendeinen anderen Wirtschaftszweig anwendbar ist. Es ist der Industrialismus. Dieser umfaßt selbstverständlich nicht das Landbebauen. Aber das Landbebauen selbst wird dann in soziale Gestaltungen eingefangen, die durchaus an das erinnern, was erst im industrialistischen Denken herangeschult worden ist.
Dieses industrialistische Denken aber hat heute, so sehr es auch technische Formen angenommen hat, so sehr seine technischen Gestaltungen ausgebildet worden sind, noch immer nicht die ihm angemessenen sozialen Gestaltungen angenommen. Denn wenn wir auf der einen Seite sehen, wie eine Zusammengehörigkeit besteht zwischen der theokratischen Denkweise mit ihrem patriarchalischen Wesen und dem Agrarsystem, wenn wir sehen, wie zum Beispiel in Deutschland bis in die Gegenwart herein kein rechter Ausgleich zwischen dem agrarischen Denken und dem industriellen Denken aus dem Grund möglich ist, der auch in dem Angedeuteten liegt, wenn wir also die Zusammengehörigkeit sehen, so können wir auf der anderen Seite sehen, wie alles, was den Handel ausmacht, im Grunde genommen wiederum mit dem staatlich-juristischen Wesen seine Zusammengehörigkeit hat.
Daher ist im alten Orient der Handel etwas wie ein Anhängsel der patriarchalischen Verwaltung der menschlichen Angelegenheiten. Und der Handel entwickelt sich in der Gestalt, die heute für uns soziale Bedeutung hat, im Grunde genommen mit dem juristischen Element. Denn was da spielen muß im Handel zwischen Mensch und Mensch, bildet sich besonders aus in dem juristischen Element. Insofern es sich im Orient ausgebildet hat, haben gewisse ins Juristische umgesetzte, aber durchaus als göttlich angesehene Gebote vorausgespielt. Der Handel gewinnt aber erst seine soziale Gestaltung in der Menschenströmung, die dann die staatlich-juristische ist. So können wir sagen: Das Gebiet des Wirtschaftslebens, das sich vorzugsweise angemessen erwiesen hat den Staatenbildungen, die auf das Recht und auf das Rechtsdenken sich stützen, ist der kommerzielle Teil der Wirtschaft.
Mit dem industriellen Teil aber hat sich zwar, weil sich im ganzen Menschen alles miteinander verbinden muß, auch das staatlich-juristische Element in der neueren Zeit verbunden, so daß wir, wenn wir mehr und mehr gegen Westen gehen, finden, daß der Mensch allerdings sein persönliches Verhältnis zu den Einzelheiten vorzugsweise an dem Industriellen entwickelt und an dem, was mit diesem zusammenhängt, daß er da aber kommerzielle Beziehungen hineinträgt. Denn heute ist es bei den sozialen Gestaltungen des Lebens eben so, daß eigentlich das Unternehmen so gedacht wird, wie es kommerziell in die soziale Ordnung hineingestellt wird. Der Unternehmer sieht sein eigenes Unternehmen in einen kommerziellen Zusammenhang hineingestellt, so daß also auch in dieser Beziehung die zweite, die mittlere Strömung für den Westen im Wirtschaftsleben nachwirkt.
Viel mehr sehen wir in anderen heutigen sozialen Gestaltungen, wie dieses juristisch-staatliche Element aus den Untergründen heraus nachwirkt, die sich als menschheitliche der breiten Volksmassen ergeben haben. Als Begleiterscheinungen des modernen technischen Lebens sind ja allerlei soziale Gestaltungen entstanden. Man braucht nur an die Gewerkschaften zu erinnern. Aber man empfindet das Wesen solcher Gewerkschaften nur richtig, wenn man sich sagt: Wirtschaftliche Verhältnisse haben sie geschaffen; wer diese Dinge lebensvoll anschaut, weiß aber: Wenn sie auch aus wirtschaftlichen Verhältnissen - man denke nur an Metallarbeiterverbände, Buchdruckergewerkschaften und so weiter — heraus geschaffen sind, die Art und Weise, wie die Menschen darin leben, wie sie abstimmen, wie sie die Dinge anschauen und diskutieren, das ist das ParlamentarischStaatlich-Juristische, das Verwaltungsmäßige, das ist das, was von der zweiten Strömung herrührt, die ich heute besprochen habe. Die dritte steht mit ihren eigenen Ideen erst im Anfang und muß noch ihre sozialen Schablonen hernehmen von dem, was alt ist.
Und so sehen wir, wie in unserer Gegenwart drei hauptsächlichste soziale Gestaltungen nebeneinanderstehen, die sich allgemein im weitesten Maße wiederum in das oder jenes differenzieren. Sie stehen so nebeneinander, daß, ich möchte sagen, Geschichte ausgebreitet im Raume lebt. Und indem wir in irgendeine der sozialen Gestaltungen uns einleben, in irgendeine Wirtschaftsvereinigung, in irgendeine staatliche Vereinigung oder in ein religiöses Gemeinschaftsleben, leben wir uns eigentlich überall, weil keine ohne Berührung mit der anderen ist, in ein Zusammensein desjenigen hinein, was in der Geschichte nacheinander entstanden ist, was sich aber im Raum durcheinandergeschoben hat und was heute verstanden sein will, weil heute die Zeit ist, wo die Menschheit auf höherer Stufe jene Naivität wieder erringen muß, die mit vollem Bewußtsein vereinbar ist, jene Naivität, aus der heraus ursprünglich geschaffen worden ist.
Und wie einstmals das primitive Wirtschafts- und Staatsleben in die theokratische Form richtig eingegossen war, wie in einem späteren Zeitalter sich die Zweiheit herausbildete, von den alten Zeiten her übernehmend das religiöse Element und das Staatlich-Juristische mit dem ihm einverleibten Wirtschaftsleben weiterentwikkelnd, so schreit heute das Wirtschaftsleben nach selbständiger Gestaltung, nach menschlichen lebendigen Ideen, die wiederum gestaltend wirken können, wie einst die griechisch-römischen Rechtsformen, als lebendige Impulse, und wie die orientalisch-religiösen Impulse gestaltend gewirkt haben. Da sich aber heute diese drei Menschheitsströmungen auseinanderdifferenzieren, müssen wir sie in ihrer Selbständigkeit betrachten können. Wir müssen die sozialen Gestaltungen betrachten nach der geistigen Seite, die zunächst die allein wirksame war, müssen sie betrachten nach der juristischen Seite, die die maßgebende geworden ist im Mittelalter, müssen sie betrachten nach der wirtschaftlichen Seite, für die auch die geistige Seite gesucht werden muß.
Das sollte nur eine Betrachtung sein über die Grundlagen der sozialen Gestaltungen in unserer Gegenwart. Sie sollte darauf hinweisen, daß wir nötig haben, um diese sozialen Gestaltungen zu verstehen, mit wirklichem Verständnis in die Betrachtung jener Weltperspektiven einzutreten, auf die ich heute im Beginn meines Vortrags hingewiesen habe. Dazu aber wird man brauchen den lebendigen Gedanken. Und daß dieser lebendige Gedanke gebraucht wird, mag auf der einen Seite aus der sozialen Note hervorgehen, die diese Betrachtungen schon hatten; es geht aber auch aus den Betrachtungen des unmittelbaren Lebens der Gegenwart hervor. Überall sehnt man sich danach, zunächst das wirtschaftliche Leben mit ihm angemessenen lebendigen Ideenimpulsen zu durchsetzen.
Und in dieser Beziehung sind gebildete Menschen des Westens ganz besonders interessant. In einer außerordentlich bedeutsamen Abhandlung, die gerade in dem Jahre vor dem grausamen Krieg in England geschrieben worden ist, hat ein bedeutender Engländer darauf hingewiesen, wie grundverschieden die englische Denkweise von der deutschen ist, in der Weise, wie ich das im Beginn der heutigen Betrachtung angedeutet habe. Aber er weist noch auf etwas anderes hin. Ihm fällt auf, wie innerhalb der deutschsprechenden mitteleuropäischen Bevölkerung immerdar gelebt hat: der Gedanke. Und er sagt von dem Gedanken, daß er dennoch das Element in der menschlichen Seele sei, das in intimster Art immer wieder hinweise auf die großen Menschheits- und Weltenrätsel, so daß man durch Kulturen, die so den Gedanken pflegen wie die deutsche, immer wieder auf die tiefsten Welt- und Menschheitsrätsel stößt, wenn auch — und jetzt kommt der Nachsatz dieses Westeuropäers —, wenn auch, so sagt er, einsehend die Vergeblichkeit in bezug auf ihre Lösung.
Nun, man konnte mit Recht sprechen von der «Vergeblichkeit dieser Lösung», wenn man nur auf jenen Gedanken hinweisen konnte, der durch die Abstraktion aus dem juristisch-logischen Wesen hervorgegangen ist, der, wenn er auch als Gedanke zum Höchsten sich schwingt, dennoch eine Art toter Gedanke ist. Wer aber einmal ahnt, daß in unserer Zeit in den Menschenseelen die Geburtsstätte sich bilden kann für den lebendigen Gedanken, der wird vielleicht nicht von einer endgültigen Lösung sprechen, aber von einem Weg, der dahin führen kann, daß wir die jeweilig uns aufgegebenen sozialen Fragen auch jeweilig für das entsprechende Zeitalter lösen können.
Denn wahrscheinlich ist es doch so, daß, nachdem einmal das Denken über die sozialen Gestaltungen in die Menschheitsentwickelung getreten ist, man nicht davon sprechen kann, daß nun die soziale Frage auf einmal gelöst werden könne, sondern daß unter den Entwickelungsimpulsen, die von der Gegenwart in die Zukunft hinein bestehen müssen, auch das Nachdenken über die sozialen Gestaltungen wird sein müssen, so daß man sagen kann: Zwar von Lösungen wird nicht die Rede sein können, aber von einem solchen lebendigen Menschendenken, das in bewußter Weise die Ziele erst sehen wird und sich in bewußter Weise auf den Weg begibt zur Lösung der sozialen Rätsel des Daseins.
Time and Its Social Structure
Atlantic and Pacific Culture
Ladies and gentlemen! When, a few months ago, a British colonial minister said that the center of gravity of the world had shifted from the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, he was making a statement that is significant for the current transformation of the social situation of the entire globe. Only now is the world gradually beginning to draw conclusions from the circumstances that have developed over decades and changed so significantly as a result of the most cruel of wars: the consequences of the fact that not only economic and social relations, but all human relations throughout the world are seeking to transform themselves into a totality, into a unified entity.
But if that is the case, then it is also necessary that the external economic structures that have simply been in place since the last third of the 19th century, with the transformation of world trade into a global economy, be followed by a profound spiritual transformation across the entire globe, the beginnings of which we can perhaps only guess at today.
But then we must take into account that, however social structures around the world may change, these social structures are inhabited by human beings who must communicate with each other as human beings if they want to interact with one another. But human understanding requires trust. And trust, in a certain sense, really requires a kind of insight into the souls of others. Until now, however, Western civilization has more or less only been able to gain a somewhat broader perspective on the European continent and its immediate colonial dependencies. A perspective encompassing the entire globe will have to be found.
This evening, based on some historical background that is directly relevant to the present existence of humanity, we will point out what is actually happening in this direction. To do this, it will first be necessary to talk a little about understanding and attempts at understanding within Western civilization itself.
When educated English people talk about Europe, about Central Europe, and in particular about Germany, which has long been the leading force in Central Europe in certain respects, they usually say – both verbally and in literature – something like the following: In our country, everything rests on a certain democratic foundation. The individual has a high degree of influence over what happens in intellectual and economic life. The initiative of the individual is responsible for most public affairs. But if we look across to Central Europe—I am not claiming that these things are absolutely correct, but only characterizing what is a general opinion—then a certain autocracy is noticeable, a certain administrative principle through admittedly capable administrative officials who, from the center of state life, determine how individual human relationships should play out. There is always a sharp emphasis, at least before the war, on the centralist, more or less autocratic principle. If we then extend our view further eastward, we would have to say, while maintaining the same line of thought: Further to the east, there is not only autocracy, but a kind of patriarchal autocracy that is permeated not only by what people who administer order, but also by a religious impulse, so that people feel that what they do on earth is even ordered by spiritual, extraterrestrial powers and entities, whose impulses they absorb into their feelings.
Behind such a view, however, lies something very important that plays a role in all social structures of the present. It can be said that the further one proceeds toward the West, the more human beings are connected with all their thoughts and feelings to the matters they have to deal with. And if one looks at economic matters, this becomes most apparent. In the West, people accomplish what they want to accomplish in economic life by really trying to penetrate into the details of what is incumbent upon them. They have a personal, an immediately personal relationship to the most external affairs of life. In the middle of Europe, however, this is different in a certain sense—for the psychological observer of the world, this must turn out to be the case. There prevails a sense of what the English, from their point of view, call the “scientific administration of the state,” that certain ideas prevail which are regarded as correct, which are to shape laws and become established in administrative principles, which are first of all surveyed in an administrative system, in a state system. And the individual who then approaches the affairs of immediate life, including economic affairs, initially has his economic practice in mind; but he always looks beyond it to what in a certain sense has a legal-state character, what can be classified in one of these systems. And he regards the individual things he does as a link in such a system. The Englishman has no inclination to devise such a system; he has only in mind what arises concretely in the details of life, not what, as it were, covers the whole like an overall system.
But this also points to a historical phenomenon that has become particularly important in recent times. For millions and millions of people, the name Karl Marx means something extraordinary. Even though there have been many modifications to the once dogmatically rigid, formulaic Marxism that lived like a kind of religion in the souls of many millions of people just decades ago, for the broad masses of the European proletariat, the name Marx still means the name of a prophet of social transformation. It is not my intention here to point out the errors of Marxism. Instead, I would like to highlight the historical phenomenon of Marx from a certain perspective.
Marx received his education in Central Europe, in Germany, where he acquired the aptitude for systematizing and organizing ideas as I have just described. But then he went to the West, to France, and especially to England, to study the concrete details of social and economic developments in modern times. What he studied were concrete details, because only these are alive in the English working class. What he formed from this is a system of a social organism that only a Central European mind could conceive. And this system did not take root primarily in the West. It took root in Central Europe. And it can be said that Marx took what he observed in the West in concrete detail and formed it into a large systematic structure of ideas, which has been made increasingly dogmatic and theoretical by his followers. It became the ideal of a general organization of the whole of human society from an economic point of view. In a certain sense, it became the ideal of economic and state organization when the relevant circles had the opportunity to implement it in the East, albeit to a very, very small degree, which gradually led to absurdity. The essential point, however, is that such a phenomenon clearly demonstrates how fundamentally different the way of thinking in Central Europe is from that in Western Europe. From this, however, it must be surmised that the differences across the globe must be even greater, and that only an impartiality that is not swayed by preconceived opinions can lead to an understanding of these differences.
Today, what appears to us as diversity within the small circle of Western civilization must be viewed against the backdrop of the greater world order. For world conditions, as they have developed historically in the East and West, play into our structures, including social structures, in the immediate present. They play into them in the same way that worldview impulses play into them, in the sense that I have described here in recent days. And a similar consideration will also be appropriate when attempting to describe the social structures of the present.
In many of the social structures that exist in the immediate present, there is still much that is masked today, so that its origin is only visible to a limited extent. What arose in the East long ago coexists with what is specifically Central European and with what is beginning to emerge in the West as an entirely new structure. In a similar way, what had to be said about worldviews across the globe must also be said about social structures.
But if we turn to the East, to that East which Western structures will have to embrace in the future, we see today in people's ways of thinking and social sensibilities the remnants of ancient institutions and ancient impulses from which they emerged. Everything that can still be observed today, even though it has fallen into decadence in the East, points back to those times when the East, the Orient, was ruled by priestly theocracies of the most diverse kinds, priestly theocracies which, in the manner that was possible at that time and appropriate to human culture, incorporated into social structures what they believed they had to explore from the spiritual worlds in the sense of the old instinctive spiritual vision, precisely in the manner I have described in recent days. However, when people today describe from historical documents how the priestly hierarchies once ruled in the Orient in such a way that they taught the people how, in a sense, divine-spiritual beings dwell in all natural phenomena and how one could even acquire the grace or love of these gods through certain human magical acts, this is true for a certain later epoch of Oriental priestly theocracies, but only for a later epoch when the original character of the Orient was already in decline.
It is true that in the times of ancient Oriental civilization, certain select individuals sought a kind of connection with the spiritual world, a connection based on things for which we today can no longer have the slightest inclination. It was based on certain measures that were taken in a very material way with the human body, certain potions that were brewed, certain substances that were consumed. It was considered a mystery that by consuming these potions and substances, the ordinary mode of human sensory activity was eliminated and the human being was transported back to times when the mere external laws of nature were not yet as present as they were later, and in which spiritual life was not present in such an abstract way as it was later, but in times when the moral-spiritual was still one with the physical-natural. In the primeval times of the Earth's development itself, those priest-scholars wanted to transport themselves back by bringing their metabolism into relation with certain essences of a material nature from the outside world.
What they actually claimed can be understood again if — now in a completely different way, through the modern path into the supersensible worlds — what I explained in my last lecture of the first series can be recognized again: that through a certain spiritual insight into his own human nature, man experiences something like a world memory within himself and thereby, in his spiritual vision, goes back to the times when the laws of nature were not as they are today, when they manifested themselves more or less by chance, and the spiritual laws were not as abstract as they are today, back to the times when the moral-spiritual was still one with the physical-natural. So that such spiritual vision does not lead to the merely mechanistic Kant-Laplace primordial nebula, but to an origin of Earth's development that can be understood spiritually, soulfully, and physically. What can be acquired by human beings today in this way as a world memory is achieved in a spiritual-soul manner through spiritual-soul exercises, without working on the physical — as I have explained in recent days. This was not the case in those older Oriental times. Then people related to the spiritual world by stimulating their unconscious instincts through connecting their metabolism with essences of one kind or another. They knew, in a sense, what could be developed from their instinctive life in a kind of dreamlike spiritualization from every plant, from nature; they knew that when they consumed this or that plant, their organism would be so impressed that they could transport themselves into a certain spiritual event. This was actually the original form in which the leading priests of the Oriental theocracies, who at the same time also had full power over social and political structures, connected with the spiritual world. And they believed that this gave them the impulses that resulted in the actual guiding impulses for social life.
It can be said that What later became belief, became superstition, that this or that nature being was chained to this or that “spirit,” is already a decadent cultural product. In truth, what was originally meant to be said was: if one allows these nature beings to influence oneself in a certain way, one is led to a certain kind of spirit being from which one can receive these or those impulses, including social ones. And the oracle, the astrologer, everything astrological was basically already a product of the decline of older views, to which external science is basically already being led today, albeit only hintingly. Just as this external science has moved away from seeing crass polytheism as the basis of all primitive peoples and now looks to a certain primitive human monotheism, so it will also come to the view that has now been developed from the underground, which results from such spiritual scientific research as has been characterized.
But if there was a full awareness of how the impulses of extraterrestrial nature, of spiritual beings, express themselves in human nature itself — for they had been found through the stimulation of instincts, through a certain kind of spiritualization of instincts — then one also had to pay attention to what was expressed in these instincts, in the instincts that were attributed to the special nature of the blood, let us say, in a family of a special kind. In the expressions of this instinctive life, too, one saw something of what is sent to Earth from extraterrestrial spheres as certain social impulses. It was then natural that, when this entered into decadence, people who strove for power seized upon the general view that looked to this expression of instinctual life, which was sought in the blood and in what could be found through the spiritualization of this blood. But this brought something unspiritual and, according to the blood, patriarchal into the whole of Oriental life. This patriarchal element can only be discussed by referring to what is known, but its starting point lies in the relationships that the ancient priestly rulers of the Orient sought with the spiritual world. That is why this religious element pervades all social structures in the Orient, this awareness that it is actually divine spiritual powers that must rule in all earthly matters, and that no human being should basically give orders other than by first allowing the power of the divine word to flow into the spirit, into the soul that is to give these orders. As a result, the impulses that were initially perceived as religious, as impulses of grace from extraterrestrial powers, took on the character of commandments in relation to social life. Even when, in certain Eastern cultures, it appears as if we are dealing with laws in the later sense of the word, it is easy to see, if one goes back to the spirit of such legislation, such as that of Hammurabi, that it is based on commanding impulses that can be traced back to what was regarded as the communication of chosen people with the spiritual world.
But this has been preserved, in an increasingly weakened form, in all social structures based on ecclesiastical and religious foundations. And as much as these things are often masked in social structures today, even in cooperative associations based on religious foundations, it can still be seen how the impulses of the ancient Orient described above are still effective in a weakened form. And one cannot understand many things in current social structures if one is not in a position to ask: To what extent are people's souls attached to such structures? They are attached to them because deep in the subconscious foundations of these souls there are still remnants of the religious inclinations of the Orient, even where religious views themselves have already taken on completely different forms, forms that have become detached from economic life, as is the case with the religions of the West. The fact that Oriental religions extend their influence into the details of economic life could, in essence, still be observed in its aftereffects in Eastern Europe until the war.
One must speak of these spiritual impulses that permeate social structures if one wants to understand them. For what is often described today as social structures is actually only the outer surface. This can be made very clear by examples such as the following.
Today, we can certainly only look with horror at what is trying to assert itself as a social organism in Eastern Europe. But when we look at what is happening in Eastern Europe today, we must remember what happened about eight centuries ago in Asia, in China. When we describe how, eight centuries ago in China, a state institution was sought with a certain suddenness and also realized to a very high degree, which aimed to regulate all human affairs, including those of an economic nature, in every detail by means of the state, when one describes that there were state authorities in China at that time which set prices from week to week, that there were state authorities which specified the manner in which, here and there, and in a third place, that there were state authorities which provided the rural population with the seed for the year's sowing, that during this period in China attempts were made to tax particularly wealthy people at a high rate, so that their fortunes gradually passed into the hands of the general public, when one recalls all this, one can say: What certain circles in our time are seeking to achieve in Europe in terms of social organization was realized to a high degree eight hundred years ago over a period of thirty years, until the socialist government in question was overthrown and its supporters expelled from China. For thirty years, a system existed there that, if one were to describe it without mentioning that it refers to China, one might believe that it refers to today's Russia.
One can point to such things when one wants to point to the external aspects of social structures. For then one sees that what is commonly understood as socialism does not have to be merely a product of our time, but that it could have emerged eight centuries ago in the Far East from completely different cultural foundations.
But if one delves into the soul of what has been socially formed there and what wants to be socially formed today, one notices a significant difference: in that Chinese socialism, there were clear after-effects of the theocracy that had always ruled China and still rules today, and that the abstract thinking learned from natural science, which has nothing to do with human consciousness of a connection with spiritual worlds, is incorporated into today's Russian socialism. What appears to be the same in its outward form is not the same when viewed in a spiritual sense.
If one starts from this point of view, one will find that the particular form of theocratic government, or rather theocratic social structures, lasted throughout a certain epoch of human history. When these Asian theocracies reached their zenith, the peoples of Western and Central Europe were still in a state of non-culture, of non-civilization. But as the theocratic form that existed in Asia spread to Europe, it gradually took on a very special shape.
If one is sufficiently impartial, one can find the transitional form in Plato's utopian state. There is something in it that, I would say, is reminiscent of the Oriental priestly hierarchies in a diluted form. It was probably for this reason that Plato wanted to choose as the leaders of his state those who had become wise men and philosophers, albeit now in the Greek sense. In fact, within Greek civilization, the philosopher was the successor to what the Oriental priest had been. But in the Platonic utopian state, which nevertheless stems from the views of social life in Plato's time insofar as it reflects in a certain way what was felt about social life at that time, one can already recognize a form into which Oriental social life had been transformed. The relationship of human beings to extrasensory powers was no longer sought. What was to be felt religiously about this relationship was more or less taken over from the antiquity of the Orient; but what was developed independently was something that had not yet played any special role in the ancient Orient, something that, in fact, still does not play any special role in those social structures that speak to us from the Old Testament. What was now developed independently was the relationship between human beings.
This relationship between human beings actually strikes us in its very nature when we look inwardly into the Greek soul life. This soul life was such that human beings still felt, in a certain way, an intimate connection between the spiritual-soul and the natural-physical aspects of their physicality. In their inner consciousness, the Greeks did not yet have the same separation between the physical and the spiritual as we now have. We look inward and feel, I would say, in a very thin – figuratively speaking – way the soul, feel this soul in such a way that, when we perceive it in ordinary consciousness, we cannot even imagine how it moves the robust body or allows itself to be influenced by it. It was different for the Greeks. And because this was so, Goethe actually longed for it for himself, for his own experience. The Greeks did not have the same concept of body and spirit as we do. For them, spirit and physique were one. It was only with Aristotle, the late Greek, that this entered into the picture in a certain way. Plato still spoke from a spirit that, although his view is often described as abstract, soon reveals that he is speaking from a point of view where the body is still actually imbued with soul everywhere, even in its organic functions, and where the soul is still felt internally as so powerful that it extends its sensory horns, as it were, everywhere toward the physical organs. The soul is still imagined as more physical, the body as more spiritual. However, such a view is also associated with a certain feeling that arises between people. And it is from this view that the characteristic features of Central European civilization have developed.
If one considers the perceived relationship between people in ancient Greece, with a sensitive eye, and recognizes how this relationship was derived from the ancient relationship between humans and the divine, if one considers this derivation of the relationship between humans and the divine into the relationship between people, then one can say: What was previously a view that was completely permeated by religion was transformed into a legal view, into a view appropriate to the state. And from this — from the interaction of the Greek and Roman-Latin essences — arose what was able to continue in social structures. The priest gradually became merely the successor to the Oriental leader of the people, for in the Orient the priest was always, even if he remained in the background, the actual spiritual leader, even in relation to Darius and Xerxes. A way of thinking emerges that develops ideas based on this relationship between human beings. And this goes so far that even religious life is submerged in this, I would say, legalistic current. A legal element enters into the comprehensive worldview, even into the cosmology of the time, which then remains more or less throughout the Middle Ages, which can be sensed when studying, for example, the political views of Augustine or Thomas Aquinas. The religious impulses themselves, although they remain religious impulses, take on legal forms.
A telling document of this incorporation of legal forms into people's religious cosmological views greets us when we enter the Sistine Chapel in Rome: the wonderful painting of the Last Judgment. Here it confronts us in its most monumental form, that painting in which Christ appears as the judge of the world. Seeing him as the judge of the world symbolizes in a magnificent way the transition from the purely religious-cultic element to that conception which intersperses the religious with a legal element that is carried into the view of world government and world control of humanity.
This legal element, however, is present in all social structures of the Middle Ages and in much of what lives on in our social structures. When we remove the mask, we see how this legal element is present, how it has carried over religious impulses from ancient times. And we can recognize this in modern state institutions, even in the formation of words, in the forms of the effects of laws, especially those that still flowed down from the Middle Ages: how this legal-logical element entered into the middle period of human experience and within civilization between East and West.
One could say: the Oriental-Theosophical is transformed into the legal-logical, the Sophia of the Orient becomes the Logos of the Occident, and from the Logos develops again that which becomes legal structure. This then propagates itself further.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the legal system was also decisive for social structures. If one studies the economic systems of the Middle Ages, one will find everywhere that social structures were shaped by elements that were imbued with ancient Oriental religiosity and were legal in nature. This shaped the forms of social structures.
And if today we see the religious element continuing to have an effect in some of the more free human associations or in associations that arise from religious beliefs, we also see the legal worldview, which is more pressing in the background, having an effect in what the great social structures, the state formations, have become. But we also see how, in the transition from medieval to modern history, the religious element is increasingly pushed into the background and how the legal element is becoming more and more prominent.
This legal element then forces its way into economic structures. What I am now describing can be traced in every detail if one studies the course of Roman law in the world. There one can see how social structures, based on such foundations, were decisive in concepts of property, in habits of ownership, in everything that is economic.
But within the course of human development, the more we approach modern times, the more the independent economic element in the West asserts itself. It can be said that in earlier times, all economic activity was entirely captured in religious-legal forms. The economic element first emancipates itself for human thinking more in the West.
If one tries to study an economic element such as that which existed among the Phoenicians and compare it with what is, admittedly, only the beginning of modern economic systems, and you will notice the difference between how the Phoenician economic element arose from the impulses I have described and how, over time, Western economic systems increasingly emancipated themselves from these impulses.
And so we see how, as a third current alongside the religious and legal ones, there is one which, at least initially, tends to subject economic conditions themselves to a social structure of an independent nature. This tendency originates in the West, which in turn more or less adopts what comes from the East and the Middle East. We see, for example, particularly in American civilization, how economic conditions there, emancipated from other cultural currents, develop from their own conditions, leading to trusts and syndicates, and how, out of a certain human inclination, which is precisely an inclination of the West, people want to keep economic life separate from religious life, while they are less able to keep it separate from what they later incorporated from legal thinking and feeling. But we can clearly see how economic structures are gradually striving to break out of the conceptual templates into which they have been forced by the expansion of the legal element. More and more, we see what is merely economic life striving for emancipation. Categories can emerge that are taken from economic life itself,
But this points to something that must give rise to mutual human and international relations, but also to international conflicts, and even conflicts within national communities. For if we consider the fact that in the ancient Orient the religious element also extended over the legal and economic spheres, that the legal sphere then became more or less detached, but the economic element remained intact, while the religious element became more independent, and that an independent economic life is now developing in the West, then one must also consider how individual human cultural endeavors relate to such intellectual currents.
And here we can say that from that theocratic-patriarchal element, which has its roots in the East, only that which is suitable for agricultural organization, for a social organism based primarily on land cultivation and farming, can actually develop with any degree of accuracy. And so we see a certain affinity between agricultural life and the theocratic element. But we see this playing into all social structures in later times. While we must admit that the theocratic continues to live on in social structures up to the present day, we must also say to ourselves: As other branches of human activity came to the fore, they came into conflict with it, insofar as the theocratic element, in accordance with the nature of human land cultivation, wants to continue further and further in agriculture. This connection exists. But in this connection, a rift occurs when other human activities assert themselves from other sides.
In this regard, something should be pointed out that can be regarded as a world-historical barometer for such matters. I recommend that you study the Austrian parliamentary reports from the 1870s, for example, and study how the people who sit in parliament feel: Agriculture is closely linked to the old order, which has its roots in theocracy and jurisprudence; and now you can sense what later became a major trend, the influx of Western products, including agricultural products, which come from a way of thinking and social order based on a different economic sector, industrialism. Although this is only expressed in subtle hints in the various parliamentary speeches, it is precisely here, where so much has come together and so much can be studied, that one can recognize what can bring clarity about broad world perspectives.
What is emerging in the West is something to which the theocratic mindset is less applicable than to any other economic sector. It is industrialism. Of course, this does not include farming. But farming itself is then captured in social structures that are very reminiscent of what has been cultivated in industrialist thinking.
However, this industrialist thinking, as much as it has taken on technical forms and as much as its technical structures have been developed, has still not taken on the social structures appropriate to it. For if, on the one hand, we see how there is a connection between the theocratic way of thinking with its patriarchal nature and the agricultural system, if we see how, for example, in Germany, even today, it is not possible to achieve a proper balance between agricultural thinking and industrial thinking for the reason indicated above, if we see this connection, we can see, on the other hand, how everything that constitutes trade is, in essence, related to the state-legal nature.
Therefore, in the ancient Orient, trade is something like an appendage to the patriarchal administration of human affairs. And trade develops in the form that has social significance for us today, basically with the legal element. For what must play a role in trade between human beings is formed particularly in the legal element. Insofar as it developed in the Orient, certain commandments, translated into legal terms but regarded as divine, played a role. However, trade only acquires its social form in the human stream that is then the state-legal one. So we can say: the area of economic life that has proved most appropriate to the formation of states based on law and legal thinking is the commercial part of the economy.
However, because everything in human beings must be connected, the state-legal element has also become connected with the industrial part in more recent times, so that as we move further and further west, we find that human beings do indeed develop their personal relationship to details primarily in the industrial sphere and in what is connected with it, but that they bring commercial relationships into it. For today, in the social structures of life, it is precisely the case that the enterprise is conceived in terms of how it is commercially integrated into the social order. The entrepreneur sees his own enterprise as part of a commercial context, so that in this respect, too, the second, the middle current, has an after-effect on economic life in the West.
Much more, we see in other social structures today how this legal-state element continues to have an effect from the underground, which has emerged as humane for the broad masses of the people. All kinds of social structures have arisen as side effects of modern technical life. One need only think of trade unions. But one can only truly understand the nature of such unions if one says to oneself: economic conditions have created them; but anyone who looks at these things with a lively mind knows that even if they have been created by economic conditions — just think of metalworkers' unions, printers' unions, and so on — the way people live in them, how they vote, how they view and discuss things, that is the parliamentary-state-legal, the administrative, that is what comes from the second current I discussed today. The third is still in its infancy with its own ideas and must still take its social templates from what is old.
And so we see how, in our present time, three main social structures coexist, which in turn generally differentiate themselves to the greatest extent into one or the other. They coexist in such a way that, I would say, history lives out spread out in space. And as we settle into any of the social structures, into any economic association, into any state association, or into a religious community life, we actually live everywhere, because none of them is without contact with the other, in a togetherness of that which has arisen successively in history, but which has become jumbled together in space and which needs to be understood today, because today is the time when humanity must regain, at a higher level, that naivety which is compatible with full consciousness, that naivety from which creation originally sprang.
And just as primitive economic and political life was once correctly molded into theocratic form, just as duality developed in a later age, taking over the religious element from ancient times and further developing the state-legal system with its incorporated economic life, today economic life cries out for independent shaping, for human, living ideas that can in turn have a shaping effect, as once the Greco-Roman legal forms did as living impulses, and as the Oriental religious impulses had a shaping effect. But since these three currents of humanity are differentiating themselves today, we must be able to view them in their independence. We must consider social structures from the spiritual perspective, which was initially the only effective one; we must consider them from the legal perspective, which became the decisive one in the Middle Ages; and we must consider them from the economic perspective, for which the spiritual perspective must also be sought.
This was only meant to be a consideration of the foundations of social structures in our present time. It should point out that in order to understand these social structures, we need to enter into a genuine understanding of the world perspectives I referred to at the beginning of my lecture today. To do this, however, we will need living ideas. And the fact that these living ideas are needed may be apparent, on the one hand, from the social note that these reflections already had; but it is also apparent from reflections on the immediate life of the present. Everywhere, there is a longing to first permeate economic life with appropriate living ideas.
And in this regard, educated people in the West are particularly interesting. In an extremely important treatise written in England in the year before the cruel war, a prominent Englishman pointed out how fundamentally different the English way of thinking is from the German way, in the manner I indicated at the beginning of today's reflection. But he points out something else as well. He notices how the German-speaking population of Central Europe has always lived: the idea. And he says that thought is nevertheless the element in the human soul that, in the most intimate way, repeatedly points to the great mysteries of humanity and the world, so that in cultures that cultivate thought as much as the German culture does, one repeatedly encounters the deepest mysteries of the world and humanity, even if — and now comes the postscript of this Western European — even if, he says, recognizing the futility of solving them.
Well, one could rightly speak of the “futility of this solution” if one could only point to that thought which has emerged from abstraction from the legal-logical essence, which, even if it soars as a thought to the highest level, is nevertheless a kind of dead thought. But anyone who senses that in our time the birthplace of living thought can be formed in human souls will perhaps not speak of a final solution, but of a path that can lead us to solve the social questions that have been assigned to us for the respective age.
For it is probably the case that, once thinking about social structures has entered human development, one cannot say that the social question can now be solved at once, but that among the developmental impulses that must exist from the present into the future, there must also be reflection on social structures, so that one can say: Admittedly, there can be no talk of solutions, but of a living human thinking that will consciously see the goals first and consciously set out on the path to solving the social riddles of existence.