The Tension Between East and West
GA 83
Part II: Anthroposophy and Sociology
9 June 1922, Vienna
8. The Problem (Asia-Europe)
When the conversation turns to what is lacking in society today, there is scarcely anyone who does not have something really significant to contribute, from his own particular position in life. My purpose here, however, is not to draw up a list of all the various deficiencies that a survey would reveal. It is rather to direct attention to some of the antecedents of a phenomenon that has, quite justifiably, attracted comment on many sides and has led a large part of mankind into a mood of extraordinary pessimism and hopelessness.
One of the most extreme expressions of this hopelessness came from a man of whom it might perhaps have been least expected—a man, moreover, who belonged to a period for which such an opinion cannot help striking us as something out of the ordinary. In one of his last books, the influential art-historian Herman Grimm, who did not live to experience the most fearful war in history, but died at the turn of the century, makes this surprising statement: “When we survey the international situation today, and observe, with the `mind's eye' I would say, how the various nations of the civilized world behave to one another, how they attack one another, and how they hold within them the seeds of further conflicts, then we feel ready to set a date for mass suicide, since we cannot envisage where all these things that bring men and nations into conflict, strife and combat, are to lead, if not to the utter collapse of civilization.” I regard this statement as striking precisely because it comes from Herman Grimm—since his philosophy of life was in itself a joyous one; throughout his life, he kept his eyes fixed on all the things that can elevate mankind and that exist in man as creative and productive forces. It is striking, moreover, that he did not make this statement under the influence of the sense of gloom that was to be experienced in the years just before the outbreak of the Great War, or during it. His observation sprang entirely from the spirit of the nineteenth century, at the end of which it was made. Nothing that has happened since then seems likely in any way to cushion the impact on us of such a statement.
Yet at the same time it can never be the business of mankind to get bogged down in mere hopelessness; we must rather be on the look-out for anything that can lead to revival, to reconstruction, to a new dawn. This being so, it is necessary for us to look more deeply into the causes of the extraordinarily difficult situation that has gradually developed inside European civilization. Even if we believe that these causes can only be economic ones, we shall still have to look to the spiritual life of modern civilization for the main reason underlying this economic decline.
In my lectures here, I have pointed out more than once how our present temper of soul—together with all the soul-powers we can acquire at present—is affected by historical forces, and to understand these we have to go back a long way in human development. Specifically, I pointed out yesterday how at the threshold of the spiritual life of the West, looked at historically, there stands a figure who still has one eye on Asia, whilst the other is already directed at the perspectives of Europe. I mean Plato.
When we examine Plato's social theories, they appear to our modern consciousness extraordinarily alien in many respects. We find that he sees the ideal social system in the creation of a community even at the expense of the development of individual human beings who have been born into this earthly life. Plato thinks it quite feasible that children who appear unfit for life should simply be abandoned, so that they may not occupy a place in the community and thus disturb the social organism. He also manages to regard as an ideal social organism one in which only members of a certain caste enjoy the full privileges of citizenship. Apart from the fact that slavery appears quite natural to him, he would also grant those responsible for trade and commerce only a precarious position within his social system. All those who are not fixed within this system by virtue of having been born—by right, as he sees it—into its fabric, are not in fact completely accepted into the organization. Much else might be said, too, on the question: How does Plato's ideal relate to the individual human being? And here, from the standpoint of modern consciousness, we must conclude that there is present as yet little understanding of this human individuality. Attention is still directed entirely to the community, which is seen as primary. The man who is to live in it is regarded as secondary. His life is accepted as justified only in so far as he can match the social ideal that exists outside his own personality.
To discover what led Plato to this concept of community, we must look once more at Oriental civilization. And when we do so, we realize how, in the last analysis, the historical development of Europe's spiritual life is like a small peninsula jutting out from a great continent.
When we look at Asia, we find that there the idea of community is the primary one, and that Plato simply took it over from the East. To what has been said already about this idea, one thing must be added, if the social situation throughout the world is to be illuminated.
When we come to examine the basic character of spiritual life in the Orient, we find that it embraced a humanity quite different in type from the Europeans of later civilization. In many psychic and spiritual matters, indeed, we can say that there prevailed in Asia a high level of civilization, one to which many Europeans, even, long to return. I have already mentioned the often-quoted expression: Light comes from the East. What is most striking of all, however, is that these men of different type did not have the feature that has been typical of Europeans since they first began to play a civilized part in the world's development. What we observe there in Asia is a subdued sense of self, a sense of personality that is still quiescent in the depths of the soul. The European's awareness of personality is not as yet found in Asia. If on the other hand this high level of Asian civilization is adopted by an individual who still lacks this sense of personality—and it is a civilization suited for adoption by a human community—then he experiences it as in a dream, without sense of personality.
Obviously, in an age when human individuality had not yet attained its full development, communities were more receptive to and capable of a high level of culture than were individuals. In communal life, human capacities for absorbing this civilization increased not simply in an arithmetical but in a geometrical progression. Meanwhile, the particular ideal that Oriental civilization had set before itself, as it gradually passed over into Europe, was minted by European spirits in a simple formula—the Apolline dictum: “Know thyself!”
We can, in a sense, regard the entire Ancient East as developing towards the realization in Greece, as the ultimate intention of Oriental self-less civilization, of that sentence: “Know thyself!”—a sentence which has since survived as a spiritual and cultural motto to direct mankind. Yet we can also see, there in the East, that it is regarded as desirable, for the attainment of a higher stage of development in mankind, to penetrate to the self after all. On the spiritual side, I have already indicated this in characterizing yoga. On the social side, it reveals itself when we look at the theories current in the East with regard to leadership of the masses. Everywhere we find that the man who was the teacher and the leader was at the same time, in the spiritual sphere, the priest, but also at the same time the healer. We find in the East an intimate connection between all that mankind sought as knowledge and as higher spiritual life, on the one hand, and healing, on the other. For early Oriental civilization, the doctor cannot be separated from the teacher and the priest.
This is, of course, connected with the fact that Oriental civilization was dominated by a feeling of universal human guilt. This feeling introduces something pathological into human development, so that the cognitive process itself, and indeed every effort to reach a higher spirituality, is regarded as having the function of healing man as nature made him. Education to a higher spirituality was also healing, because man in his natural state and thus uneducated was regarded as a being who stood in need of healing. Connected with this were the early Oriental mysteries.
The cult of mysteries sought to achieve, in institutions that were, I would say, church and school and source of social impulses combined, the development of the individual to a higher spiritual life. They did this in such a way that, as I have already indicated in my previous lectures, religion, art and science were combined: in performing the ritual actions, men were religious beings; and here what mattered was not the articles of faith, still less the dogmas, that occupied the soul, but the fact that the individual was participating in a socially organized rite, so that man's approach to the divine was made principally through sacrifice and ritual act. Yet the ritual act and its foundations in turn involved an aesthetic element. And this combination of aesthetic and religious elements gave to knowledge its original form.
The man who was to attain this unified triad of religion, art and science, however, had not merely to accept something that represented a step forward in his development; he had also to undergo a complete transformation as a man, a kind of rebirth.
The description of the preparations that such a student of the higher spiritual life had to undertake makes it clear that he had consciously to undergo a kind of death. He experienced, that is, something that set him apart from life in the ordinary world, as death sets men apart from this life. Then, when he had left behind everything in his inner experience that appertained to earthly life, he would, after passing through death, experience the spiritual world in a complete rebirth. This is the old religious form of catharsis, the purification of man. A new man was to be born inside the old. Things that man can so experience in the world as to arouse in him passions and emotions, desires and appetites, notions that are of this world—all these he was to experience within the mysteries in such a manner that they were left behind and he emerged as one purified of these experiences. Only then, as a man reborn, was he credited with being capable of exerting any social influence on his fellow-men. Even the academic scholarship of our time has quite correctly observed that the surviving remnants of this cult have been of enormous importance for social life, and that the impulses aroused in those who have experienced such a catharsis in these very secret places have exerted the greatest conceivable influence on social life outside. As I say, this is not merely a pronouncement of spiritual science, it is something that even academic scholarship has arrived at. You can see this by looking at Wilamowitz. What we find is that, in Oriental civilization, the aim was to cure man by knowledge and by all the efforts to achieve a spiritual education.
What existed in the East passed over in another form to Greece and thus to Europe, and it has continued to affect Europe to the extent that Greek culture itself has influenced European spiritual life and civilization. Let me mention a point that is not usually emphasized. In his study of Greek tragedy, from which the West has derived so much of artistic importance for its spiritual life, Aristotle produced a description that is usually taken far too much at its face value. People are always quoting the familiar sentence in which Aristotle says that the aim of tragedy is to arouse fear and pity, so that the excitation of these and other emotions shall bring about a purification, or catharsis, of them. In other words, Aristotle is pointing to something in the aesthetic sphere—the effect that tragedy should produce. Armed for the interpretation of Aristotle's dictum, not with academic philology, but with an understanding of Oriental spiritual life—with a knowledge, that is, of its roots in the past—we can interpret what
Aristotle means by pity and fear more extensively than it is usually interpreted. He means in fact, as we come to perceive, that the spectator is brought by tragedy to mental participation in the sorrow, pain and joy of others, and that in this way the spectator in his mental life escapes from the narrow confines that he naturally occupies. Through the contemplation of the suffering of others, there is aroused in the spectator—for here man goes outside his physical existence, if only vicariously—that fear which always arises when a human being is confronted with something that takes him outside himself, and creates in him a transport of faintness and breathlessness. We can say, therefore: Aristotle really means that, in looking at tragedy, man enters a world of feeling that takes him out of himself; that he is overcome by fear; and that a purification or catharsis ensues. In this way he learns to bear what in the natural state he cannot bear; through purification he is strengthened for the sympathetic experience of alien sorrow and alien joy; he is no longer overcome by fear when he has to go outside himself and into social life. In ascribing a function of this kind to tragedy, Aristotle, we perceive quite clearly, is really demonstrating that tragedy also educates man towards a strengthening of his sense of self and his inner security of soul.
I am well aware that to introduce the aesthetic element into social life in this way strikes many people today as a devaluation of art, as if one were trying to attribute some kind of extrinsic purpose to it. Objections of this kind, however, often really betray a certain philistinism, resting as they do on the belief that any attempt to assimilate art into human life as a whole, into all that the human soul can experience, implies its subordination to a merely utilitarian existence. This is not what it meant for the Greeks; it meant rather the inclusion of art in the life that carries man above himself, not just beneath himself into mere utility.
If we can look beyond the mere utility that typifies our time, we shall be able to understand the precise significance of the Greek view of art: that the Greeks saw in tragedy, side by side with its purely artistic aspect, something that brought man face to face with himself, drawing him away from a dream, a half-conscious perception of the world, nearer and nearer to a complete awareness of himself. We may say: in the social sphere, tragedy was certainly intended to make its contribution to the all-important precept: “Man, know thyself!”
If, moreover, from this extension of art into the social sphere we pass on to a consideration of the position of the individual vis-à-vis society, and from this perspective look back at the Orient, we find that, in the mysteries too, what was sought through therapeutic treatment—the rebirth of man as a higher being—represented a strengthening of the sense of self. From an awareness that the soul was not then attuned to a sense of self, and that such a sense still remained to be developed, the mysteries attempted a rebirth in which man emerged to individuality. For this ancient society, therefore, experience of self was really something that had still to be attained. It was seen as a social duty to foster the birth of this sense of self in individuals who could become leaders in the social sphere. Only when we comprehend this can we gain an understanding of the strong sense of community persisting in Plato's ideal state, and of his belief that man is entitled to develop his individuality fully only if he does so through the rebirth that was accessible to the wisdom of the time. This shows that humanity at that time had no awareness of the claims of individuality in the fullest sense.
What grew out of this kind of society in Asia then established itself in Europe, combined with Christianity, passed over into the Middle Ages and even survived here for a long period. The manner of its survival, however, was determined by the fact that the hordes which, mainly from Northern and Central Europe, streamed into this civilization—South European now, but inherited from Asia—were endowed by nature with a strong sense of self. These tribes acquired the important historical task of carrying over what Oriental man had achieved with a still subdued sense of self, into complete self-consciousness and a full sense of self. For the brilliant civilization of the Greeks, “Know thyself!” was still an ideal of human cognition and society. The peoples who descended from the North during the Middle Ages brought with them, as the central feature of their being, this sense of self. It was theirs by nature. Though they lived in groups, they none the less strove to incorporate into their own personality what they absorbed in the cognitive and social sphere. It was in this way, then, that there came to be established the contrast between community life and individual life. The latter only appeared in the course of history, and did so, I would say, with the assistance of man-made institutions.
In thus making its appearance in human development, the sense of self was bound to link up with something else, with which it certainly has an organic connection. Looking back once more at the features of Oriental-Greek civilization even as it appeared to Plato, we are nowadays very much aware that this whole civilization was in fact built on slavery, on the subjugation of large numbers of people. A great deal has been said from various standpoints about the significance of slavery in earlier times, and if we are willing to sift this properly, we shall naturally find a great deal that is significant in it. But the point that above all others is still relevant for our life today is precisely the one that I said has actually received little attention. For community life—and also for the social life which sprang from the mysteries, and for the development of which the Greek regarded his art as providing an impetus—the full significance of human labour within the social order was quite unrealized. In consequence, they had to exclude human labour from their discussion of the ideal image of man.
When we describe Oriental-Greek man, with the dignity that gave him his authority, we are describing something that was in fact constructed over the heads of the masses, who were actually doing the work. The masses merely formed an appendage to the social system, which developed within a society that had not absorbed labour into its being, since it regarded labour and those who performed it as a natural datum. Human society really only began where labour left off. At a higher level, in a higher psychic sense, man experienced something that also finds expression in the world of animals. In their world, the food supply, which with us forms part of the social organization, is provided by nature. The animal does not calculate; it does what it does out of its inmost being; and specialization is unnecessary for animals. Where apparent exceptions occur, they must be regarded as proving the rule. We can therefore say: in transplanting itself to Europe and entering further and further into the demands of individuality, Oriental civilization also took on the task of integrating human labour into the social system. When man's awareness of self is fully wakened, it is quite impossible to exclude labour from that system.
This problem—which did not exist as yet in Greece—became the great social question round which countless battles were fought in Rome. It was felt instinctively that only by integrating labour into the social system can man experience to the full his personality. In this way, however, the entire social organization of humanity took on a different aspect. It has a different appearance in civilized Europe from what it had in civilized Asia. Only by looking back at the development of individuality in Europe shall we understand something of what has repeatedly, and rightly, been emphasized as significant when we come to describe the source of the deficiencies of our time.
It is rightly pointed out here that the specific shape of the social order in our time was actually only decided with the emergence of modern technology and division of labour. It is also pointed out that modern capitalism, for instance, is merely a result of the division of labour. What the traditional teaching of modern Western civilization has to say in this respect, in characterizing division of labour and its consequences in the social deficiencies of our time, is extraordinarily significant. But when something like this is said, and from one point of view rightly said, the unprejudiced observer cannot help looking at, say, ancient Egypt or Ancient Babylon, and observing that these states contained cities of an enormous size, and that these achievements too were only made possible by a division of labour. I was able yesterday to show that, as early as the eleventh century, a kind of Socialism existed in China, yet that similarity of surface features is not what really matters. In the same way, I must point out that division of labour, too, which in modern times has rightly been seen as the central social problem, was also found in earlier epochs of human development; it was in fact what made the Oriental social systems possible, and these in turn have since affected Europe. In Europe, division of labour, after being less common at first, gradually evolved. I would say: division of labour in itself is a repetition of something that also occurred in earlier times; but in the Oriental civilizations it bore the stamp of a society in which individuality was still dormant. The modern division of labour, which makes its appearance along with technology, on the other hand, impinges on a society of men who are now seeking to expand their individuality to the full. Once again, then, the same phenomenon turns out to have a quite different significance in different ages.
For the Oriental social order, the first consideration was thus to allow man to grow clear of social restrictions and of communal life. If he was to move up to a higher spiritual life, man really had to find his individuality. The European of a later age already had this sense of self, and needed to integrate it into the social order. He had to follow precisely the opposite path from that followed in the East.
Everywhere in Europe we find evidence of the difficulty men experience in accommodating their individuality to the social order, whereas at one time the social system had been such that men sought to rescue their individuality from it. This difficulty still faces us on every side today as an underlying social evil.
When, some years ago, I was often called upon to lecture to audiences of working men, I saw a good deal of evidence that there did exist in men's souls this problem of articulating the ego into the general social order. Men are unable to find the way from a highly developed sense of self into the social order. And in attempting repeatedly to show proletarian audiences, for instance, what this way would need to be like—how it would have to be different from the ways that Socialist or Communist agitators commonly offer nowadays—one came across very curious views in the ensuing discussions. They might appear trivial; but a thing is trivial no longer when it provides the motive power for innumerable people in life. Thus, I once attempted to talk about social problems in a working men's club. A man came forward and introduced himself straight away as a cobbler. Naturally, it can be extremely pleasant to hear what such a man thinks; in this case, however, what he was unable to think was much more revealing than what he did think. First of all he set forth, in marked opposition to my own views, his conception of the social order; and then he reiterated that he was a simple cobbler: in the social order that he had outlined, therefore, he could never rise to be a registrar of births, marriages and deaths. Underlying his outlook, however, was the quite definite assumption that he might perfectly well be a Cabinet Minister! This shows the kind of bewilderment that ensues when the question arises: How is the ego, strengthened within spiritual life, to articulate itself into a social order?
In another working men's association (I am giving one or two examples, which could be multiplied indefinitely), someone said: “Oh, we don't really want to be foremen; we don't want to manage the factory; we want to remain what we are, simple workmen; but as such we want all our rights.” Justified as such a statement may be from one point of view, it displays, in the last analysis, no interest in social organization, only an interest in the strongly developed self.
I am well aware that many people today will not consciously admit that this particular discrepancy between the experience of self and the social order lies at the root of many, indeed almost all of our social deficiencies and shortcomings. But anyone who looks at life with unclouded vision cannot escape the conclusion: We have certainly managed to develop the feeling of self, but we cannot connect it with a real insight into man. We say the word “I;” but we do not know how to relate this “I” to a human personality that is fully comprehended and fully self-determining.
We can experience this once again when we come across views that are very much of the present, as opposed to what, on the basis of spiritual science, we regard as necessary for the health of humanity. A leading figure in present-day educational circles once said something very curious to me during a visit to the Waldorf School. I showed our visitor round personally, and explained to him our educational methods and their social significance. I pointed out that, with a sound educational method of this kind, education of the spirit and the soul must be linked with that of the body. Anyone wishing to teach and educate must first of all know the effect of this or that action on the forces of recovery or decline in the human organism, the human body; he must know how the exercise or neglect of memory expresses itself later in life in physical symptoms, and how, simply by treating the life of the soul, we can gradually bring about an improvement in physical ailments. The teacher, I concluded, must certainly understand the body's association with the soul and the spirit in health and sickness. And the reply I got was that, to do this, the teacher would have to be a doctor!
Well, up to a certain point it would indeed be desirable if this were the case. For when we look at our social system, with the difficulty of integrating the self into it, we are reminded once more of what I have touched on today in connection with the civilization of two regions: the Orient, where the doctor was also the teacher and leader of the people; and Greece, where, as I have shown, art had an educative influence. The art of medicine was associated with every aspiration of the spirit, because at that time man was regarded, if only instinctively, as a physical, mental and spiritual whole; in the treatment that was then applied to the soul, forces were brought into play which yielded knowledge for a general therapy of man.
The leaders at that time told themselves: I must attempt to cure man by leading him to true spirituality. To do this, I must bring healing forces to bear on a fairly normal life. Once I understand these forces thoroughly and can follow out their effects, this knowledge will tell me what to do when a man is ill.
From observation of the healthy man, I learn what forces to employ when confronted by the sick man. The sick man is simply one whose organism has deviated further in one direction or the other than it does in everyday life. Knowing how to bestow health on man in his normal state, I also know how to cure him when sick. Knowing which drink, which cordial affords me this or that insight into connections between man and nature—knowing, that is, the effect of a natural product in the sphere of knowledge—I shall also know what effect it has on a sick man, if used in greater strength.
The intimate association of medical art with education and development towards spirituality in general, which was the goal of the Ancient Orient and had an important rôle there, appears once more as a spiritual residuum in the Greek experience of art. Here, the aim is that the soul should be healed through art. Armed with this knowledge, we can still perceive in the use of the word “catharsis” in connection with tragedy how—because the same word was used in connection with the early mysteries, for the complete purification of man on entry to a new life—something of this sense is taken over. We are, however, also reminded that, for Greek doctors in the early period, knowledge and medicine still went together, and that in education, but also in popular culture in general, people saw something on a more spiritual level that was related to medicine, something that in a sense sprang from medicine.
We need to examine these phenomena of a bygone age, if we are to gain a strength of soul such that, when we contemplate the social systems in our own age, we can keep in view the whole man, and also such that, when we meet our fellow-men, we not only unfold a strong sense of self, but also connect this with a perception of the whole man in body, soul and spirit. If by an advance in spiritual science we can do this, there will become available, simply through the temper of soul that ensues, ways and means of integrating this whole man, but also all men, into the social order, thus annexing labour for society in the way that historical evolution in any case makes necessary. For this is what we are still suffering from today: the need to fit labour properly into the social order.
It is true that people often regard labour as something that goes into the article produced, being crystallized in it, so to speak, and giving it its value. Those who look more closely, however, will observe that what matters is not simply that a man should work, devoting to society his physical strength. The important factor in determining price and value is rather how the work fits into social life as a whole. We can certainly conceive of a man doing a job of work that is fundamentally uneconomic in the social order. The man may work hard and may believe that he is entitled to payment for his work; but when his work exists in the context of an inadequate social system, it often does more harm than good. And one ought to examine in this light a great deal of labour within society which, though exhausting, is really worthless. Consider how our literature is constantly accumulating; it has to be printed; a tremendous amount of work is involved in the manufacture of paper, the printing, etc., and then, apart from the tiny proportion that survives, it all has to be pulped once more: work is being done here which, I would say, disappears into thin air. And if you consider how much work has disappeared into thin air during the butchery of the recent war, you will gradually come to see that labour as such cannot lay claim to any absolute value, but derives its value from its contribution to the life of society.
The disease that most affects our age, however, is precisely the lack of this basic capacity to integrate labour into the social organism, taking account of the fact that everything men do, they really do for others. We need to win through to this by learning to integrate our own individual selves into the community. Only by achieving a true understanding between man and man, so that what the other man needs becomes part of our own experience and we can transpose our self into the selves of others, shall we win through to those new social groupings that are not given us by nature, but must be derived from the personality of man.
All our social needs certainly spring from the self. People sense what is lacking in the social order. What we need to find, however, is a new understanding of what human fellowship in body, soul and spirit really means. This is what a social order ought really to be able to bring forth out of the self.
The great battle that is being fought over the division of labour—fought quite differently from the way such battles have ever previously been fought under the influence of human individuality—is what underlies all our social shortcomings. Nowadays, we found associations for production; we participate in them, concerned not with their rôle in the social organism, but with our own personal position—and this is understandable. It is not my aim here to complain, pedantically or otherwise, about human egotism. My aim is to understand something for which there is considerable justification. Without this sense of self, we should not have advanced to human freedom and dignity. The great spiritual advances have been possible only because we have attained this sense of self. But this in turn must also find a way to imaginative identification with others.
There is a great deal of talk nowadays about the necessity of conquering individualism. This is not what matters. The important thing is to find society in man himself. The Oriental had to discover man in society. We have to discover society in man. We can do so only by extending on every side the life of the soul.
That is why I tried, at the close of one of my mystery-plays, to present a scene showing how a man wins through to an inner experience of the different forms of mankind. These differences exist outside us. In society, differentiation is necessary; we must each have our profession. If we find the right bridge between man and man, however, we can experience within us all that is separate in the social world outside—each individual profession. Once this social system comes into being within us, once we can experience the reality of society inside ourselves, we shall be able to follow that opposite way of which I have spoken: the way from the self to the social order. This will also mean, however, that everything connected with the individual—today we can point to labour; in the next two days we shall be looking at capital—is capable of finding its place in human society. In co-operatives, in the formation of trusts and combines, in the trade union movement, everywhere we feel a need to find a way out of the self into association with others. But here precisely is the great struggle of the present day: to enable what exists around us really to take root within us.
As already indicated, there was a time, not so very far behind us—we need only go back to the thirteenth century—when man had a bond with the product of his labour, and the making of every key and every lock gave pleasure, because the maker poured into it something of his own substance. The legacy of an earlier social order still made its mark upon the product. With their individuality as yet not fully awakened, people still accepted society. Since then, individuality has reached its zenith with the advance of technology. In the last analysis, the man of today is often extraordinarily remote from the product of his labour, even when his work lies in the spiritual sphere. What we perform in the outside world needs to take root in us and to link up with our individuality. This, however, will only happen if we develop the life of the soul on every side in the way I have described in the last few days. For if we do develop the life of the soul, our interest in all that has its being around us will be fired once more.
You encounter many people in this purely intellectual age who find their own profession uninteresting. It may have become so, perhaps. There must come a time, once more, when every detail of life becomes of interest. Whereas formerly what was interesting was the nature of objects, in the future the interest will lie in our knowing how our every activity is articulated into the social organization of mankind. Whereas formerly we looked at the product, we shall now look at the man who requires the product. Whereas formerly the product was loved, the love of man and the brotherhood of man will now be able to make their appearance in the soul that has developed, so that men will know the reason for their duties.
All this, however, needs to take hold of the soul before people try to reach an understanding about the particular social deficiencies of our time. From this standpoint, too, we must consider that Europe is still engaged in its battle for human individuality against the forces in its spiritual tradition that continue to flow from Asia—from foundations quite unlike those that exist today, foundations that took root in the souls of men, but at a time when full individuality had not yet been attained.
Thus the present time occupies a position not only between abstract concepts of individuality and community, but also in the centre of something that pervades man's soul and brings every individual human being today into action in defence of his individuality. We are only at the beginning of the road that leads to the discovery of the right relationship between self and community. It is from this fact that the shortcomings of the time, which for this reason I do not need to enumerate, derive.
Perceiving this psychological basis, this spiritual foundation, we shall be able to view in their proper light many of the needs, deficiencies and miseries that confront us in society today. To win our way through to this light, we need courage. Only then shall we know whether the pessimism that Herman Grimm expressed in so extreme a form is justified, and whether people are justified in saying: There remain only forces of decline in
European civilization, one can only be pessimistic, even: The date for mass suicide ought to be fixed.
That is, indeed, the question: whether all the Asiatic features that Europe had to conquer have in fact been conquered, so that after finding itself Europe can now, from the centre of the world's development, also reach an understanding with the East.
It is from a standpoint such as this that we must consider whether what we ought to see is the kind of thing Herman Grimm had in mind, or whether we are not justified in thinking that mankind can still, through the development of what lies dormant in its soul, prove capable of choosing a time when understanding shall be achieved, and that what faces us is not the death of this European civilization, but its rebirth.
Whether and how far this is possible will be examined, at least in outline, in the remaining lectures.
Die Zeit und Ihre Sozialen Mängel: Asien - Europa
Meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden! Wenn gegenwärtig von den sozialen Mängeln und sozialen Nöten.der Zeit die Rede ist,'so wird es kaum irgend jemand geben, der nicht aus seiner besonderen Lebenslage heraus das eine oder das andere wirklich Erhebliche zu sagen hat. Es soll heute aber nicht meine Aufgabe sein, etwa eine Liste alles dessen hier zu entwickeln, was durch eine Umschau über die einzelnen Nöte der Zeit zu erreichen wäre, sondern vielmehr auf einige der Wurzeln hinzuweisen, aus denen das entspringt, was von den verschiedensten Seiten mit großer Berechtigung vorgebracht wird und einen großen Teil der Menschheit in eine außerordentlich pessimistische Stimmung und Hoffnungslosigkeit hineingebracht hat.
Vielleicht zu den stärksten Aussprüchen über diese Hoffnungslosigkeit gehört der eines Mannes, von dem man ihn vielleicht am allerwenigsten erwarten könnte, und der außerdem aus einer Zeit stammt, in der ein solcher Ausspruch etwas außerordentlich Auffälliges haben muß. Der bedeutende Kunsthistoriker Herman Grimm, der den grausamsten aller Kriege nicht mehr erlebt hat, der bereits an der Wende des 19. zum 20. Jahrhundert gestorben ist, hat in einer seiner letzten Schriften diesen merkwürdigen Ausspruch getan: Überblickt man, was einem heute entgegentritt im Leben der Völker, schaut man, ich möchte sagen, mit den Augen der Seele hin auf die Art, wie die verschiedenen Völker der zivilisierten Erde zueinander stehen, wie sie einander befehden, wie in ihnen Keime liegen zu weiteren Befehdungen, so möchte man eigentlich den Tag eines allgemeinen Selbstmords ansetzen, denn es sei ja nicht abzusehen, wohin alle diese Dinge, welche die Menschen und die Völker in Befehdung, in Streit und Kampf hineinbringen, führen sollen, wenn nicht zu einem absoluten Untergang der Zivilisation. Ich sage: Auffällig ist dieser Ausspruch gerade von Herman Grimm, und zwar aus dem Grunde, weil er für sich eigentlich eine freudige Weltanschauung hat, weil er den Blick sein ganzes Leben hindurch auf alles dasjenige gerichtet hat, was die Menschheit erheben kann, was eigentlich als Schaffendes, als Produktives in der Menschheit lebt. Und auffällig ist weiter, daß er diesen Ausspruch nicht etwa getan hat unter den trüben Eindrücken, die man die Jahre hindurch vor dem Ausbruch des Weltkrieges oder während desselben bekommen konnte, sondern daß er diesen Ausspruch getan hat noch ganz aus dem Geist des 19. Jahrhunderts heraus, am Ende dieses Jahrhunderts. Man möchte sagen: Alles das, was seither geschehen ist, scheint durchaus nicht geeignet, wenn jemand einen solchen Ausspruch tut, für ihn irgend etwas abzuziehen von dem, was er eigentlich bei einem solchen Ausspruch empfindet.
Dennoch aber kann es ja niemals die Aufgabe des Menschen sein, stehenzubleiben bei der bloßen Hoffnungslosigkeit, sondern es muß die Aufgabe sein, Ausschau zu halten nach dem, was zur Erneuerung, zum Aufbau, zu einer Morgenröte führen kann. Dann ist es aber notwendig, daß man gerade nach den tieferen Wurzeln dessen sucht, was uns allmählich innerhalb der ZiviJisation Europas in eine so außerordentlich schwierige Lage gebracht hat. Und auch wenn man den Glauben hat, daß es nur wirtschaftliche Gründe sein können, so wird man wohl die Hauptursache auch für den wirtschaftlichen Niedergang im Geistesleben der neueren Zivilisation zu suchen haben.
Ich habe schon in den Vorträgen der letzten Tage des öfteren darauf hingewiesen, wie in unsere gegenwärtige Seelenstimmung, auch in all das, was wir uns gegenwärtig an Seelenkräften aneignen können, historische Kräfte hereinspielen, zu deren Verständnis man weit in der geschichtlichen Entwickelung der Menschheit zurückgehen muß. Und ich habe insbesondere gestern darauf aufmerksam gemacht, wie gewissermaßen am Ausgang des gegenwärtigen abendländischen Geisteslebens, geschichtlich betrachtet, eine Persönlichkeit steht, die noch, man möchte sagen, mit einem Auge nach Asien hinübersieht, mit dem anderen aber schon den Blick gerichtet hat auf die Perspektiven Europas. Ich meine Plato.
Wenn wir die sozialen Anschauungen Platos auf uns wirken lassen, so kommen sie uns in vieler Beziehung für unser modernes Bewußtsein außerordentlich befremdend vor, Wir sehen, wie Plato das Ideal eines sozialen Organismus darin sieht, daß eine gewisse Gemeinschaft geschaffen werde auch auf Kosten der Entwickelung menschlicher Individualitäten, die einmal den Weg in das Erdenleben herein gefunden haben. Plato hält es durchaus für möglich, daß zum Leben untüchtig erscheinende Kinder einfach ausgesetzt werden, damit sie nicht in der menschlichen Gemeinschaft Platz finden und so den sozialen Organismus stören können. Plato findet es aber auch möglich, einen sozialen Organismus als sein Ideal zu betrachten, in dem eigentlich nur eine gewisse Menschenkaste eine vollberechtigte Stellung hat. Abgesehen davon, daß ihm die Sklaverei als etwas Selbstverständliches erscheint, will er auch denjenigen, die den Handel und Verkehr vermitteln, nur eine vorübergehende Stellung innerhalb seines sozialen Organismus einräumen. Alle, die also nicht an dem Boden dadurch haften, daß sie in den Boden des sozialen Organismus — nach seiner Anschauung — mit Recht hineingeboren sind, gliedert er eigentlich nicht völlig in diesen sozialen Organismus ein. Und manches andere wäre zu sagen, wenn die Frage auftaucht: Wie verhält sich das Ideal Platos zu der einzelnen menschlichen Individualität? Da würde man vom modernen Bewußtsein aus sagen müssen: Eigentlich ist noch wenig Verständnis vorhanden für diese menschliche Individualität. Es ist noch ganz der Blick auf die soziale Gemeinschaft gerichtet, die gewissermaßen als Erstes angesehen wird. Und der Mensch, der in ihr leben soll, wird erst als etwas Zweites angesehen. Sein Leben ist nur insofern als ein berechtigtes zu erkennen, als er dem außerhalb seiner Wesenheit festgesetzten sozialen Ideal sich einfügen kann.
Wenn wir suchen wollen, wo eigentlich dasjenige seine Wurzeln hat, was Plato zu einem solchen Gemeinsamkeitsgedanken geführt hat, so müssen wir wiederum in Asien, in der orientalischen Kultur suchen. Und dann kann es uns in geistiger Beziehung aufgehen, wie im Grunde genommen auch historisch das Geistesleben Europas sich entwickelte wie eine kleine Halbinsel, die zu einem großen Kontinent gehört.
Aber wenn wir gerade vom sozialen Gesichtspunkt hinübersehen nach Asien, finden wir, daß in Asien die Gemeinschaftsidee überall das Erste, das Primäre ist und daß Plato einfach diese Gemeinschaftsidee herübergenommen hat aus dem Orient. Zu all dem, was zur Charakteristik dieser Gemeinschaftsidee von den verschiedensten Gesichtspunkten aus hier schon gesagt worden ist, muß eines noch hinzugefügt werden, wenn die ganze Weltsituation sozial beleuchtet werden soll.
Wenn wir auf den Grundcharakter des orientalischen Geisteslebens sehen, so müssen wir sagen: Eigentlich dehnte es sich aus über eine Menschheit, die ganz andersgeartet war als die europäische Menschheit der späteren Zivilisation. Wir können in vieler Beziehung sogar sagen, daß mit Bezug auf manches Seelische und Geistige in Asien eine Hochkultur geherrscht hat, zu der sich sogar viele Europäer jetzt wiederum zurücksehnen. Ich habe ja schon auf den Ausspruch hingewiesen, der so oft angeführt wird: das Licht komme aus dem Orient. Aber diese andere Menschenwesenheit hatte vor allen Dingen das nicht, was gerade das Charakteristischste der europäischen Bevölkerung ist, seit diese an einer Zivilisation in der Erdenentwickelung arbeitet. Was wir drüben in Asien erblicken, ist ein gedämpftes Ich-Gefühl, ist ein noch durchaus in den Untergründen der Seele ruhendes Persönlichkeitsgefühl. Ein Persönlichkeitsgefühl, wie es der Europäer hat, tritt einem in Asien noch nicht in derselben Weise entgegen. Wird dagegen einem Menschen, der dieses Persönlichkeitsgefühl noch nicht hat, asiatische Hochkultur gewissermaßen einverleibt, und diese ist geeignet, der menschlichen Gemeinsamkeit einverleibt zu werden, dann nimmt er in einer gewissen Weise traumhaft, ohne Persönlichkeitsgefühl, an ihr teil.
Man muß sagen, in einer Zeit, wo die menschliche Individualität noch nicht zu ihrer vollen Entwickelung gekommen war, waren menschliche Gemeinschaften empfänglicher, begabter für eine Hochkultur als der einzelne Mensch. Es summierten sich nicht nur, es multiplizierten sich in gewisser Weise die menschlichen Fähigkeiten innerhalb des sozialen Zusammenlebens, um diese Hochkultur entgegenzunehmen. Das aber, was innerhalb der orientalischen Zivilisation als ein besonderes Ideal angesehen worden ist, das prägte sich aus, indem es immer mehr und mehr herüberzog nach Europa und aus europäischen Gemütern heraus eine einfache Formulierung fand, in dem apollinischen Spruch: Erkenne dich selbst!
In einer gewissen Beziehung kann man das ganze alte Asien so ansehen, als ob seine Entwickelung hintendierte, einmal in Griechenland als den letzten Sinn der orientalischen selbst-losen Kulturentwickelung den Satz hinzustellen: Erkenne dich selbst —, der seitdem als eine geistige und Kulturdevise überhaupt über der Menschheit wie eine orientierende Kraft lebt. Aber wir sehen auch im Orient drüben, wie es gerade für eine höhere Menschenbildung als erstrebenswert angesehen wird, in einem gewissen Sinne doch zu seinem Ich zu kommen. Vom geistigen Gesichtspunkt habe ich das ja schon angedeutet, indem ich die Jogakultur charakterisiert habe. Vom sozialen Gesichtspunkt tritt es uns entgegen, wenn wir auf das hinweisen, was im Orient in bezug auf die soziale Führung der Menschenmassen gang und gäbe war. Wir finden überall, daß derjenige, der Lehrer, der Führer war, in geistiger Beziehung zu gleicher Zeit Priester, aber auch zu gleicher Zeit Heiler war. Wir finden im Orient drüben einen innigen Zusammenhang zwischen all dem, was überhaupt von der Menschheit als Erkenntnis, als höheres Geistesleben angestrebt wird, und dem Heilen. Der Arzt ist für die ältere orientalische Kultur nicht von dem Lehrer, dem Priester der Menschheit zu trennen.
Das allerdings hängt in einer gewissen Beziehung damit zusammen, daß die orientalische Kultur von der Empfindung der allgemeinen Menschenschuld als solcher tief beherrscht war, die etwas Krankhaftes hineinbringt in die ganze menschliche Entwickelung, so daß der Erkenntnisprozeß selbst, überhaupt das Streben nach einer höheren Geistigkeit so angesehen worden ist, daß es gewissermaßen den bloß naturgegebenen Menschen heilen sollte. Erziehung zu einer höheren Geistesbildung war zu gleicher Zeit Heilung, weil man den naturgegebenen, also noch nicht erzogenen Menschen als ein Wesen ansah, das eigentlich geheilt werden müsse. Damit hängt dann zusammen die alte orientalische Mysterienkultur.
Die orientalische Mysterienkultur suchte in Institutionen, die, ich möchte sagen, zu gleicher Zeit Kirche und Schule und Ausgangspunkte der sozialen Impulse waren, die Entwickelung des einzelnen Menschen zu einem höheren geistigen Leben. Sie suchte diese so, daß — wie ich schon in den vorhergehenden Vorträgen angedeutet habe — Religion, Kunst und Wissenschaft in einem enthalten waren: Indem der Mensch seine Kultushandlungen darbrachte, war er ein religiöser Mensch; dabei kam es weniger an auf das, was als Glaubensvorstellungen oder gar als Dogmen in der Seele lebte, sondern darauf, daß der sozial geordnete Kultus von dem einzelnen Menschen mitgemacht wurde, so daß die Verbindung des Menschen mit dem Göttlichen vorzugsweise in der Opferhandlung, in der Kultushandlung gesucht worden ist. Dann aber war in der Kultushandlung und in dem, woran sich die Kultushandlung anlehnte, auch das Künstlerische enthalten. Und in dem Erleben dieses Künstlerischen und Religiösen war die alte Form der Erkenntnis gegeben.
Der Mensch aber, der zu dieser innerlich einheitlichen Dreiheit von Religion, Kunst und Wissenschaft gebracht werden sollte, mußte nicht nur etwas aufnehmen, was gewissermaßen ein gerader Fortschritt seiner Entwickelung war, sondern mußte eine völlige Umgestaltung als Mensch, eine Art Wiedergeburt erfahren, Es werden die Veranstaltungen, denen ein solcher Zögling des höheren Geisteslebens sich unterziehen mußte, so beschrieben, daß er in der Tat mit seinem Bewußtsein durch so etwas durchging wie durch eine Art Tod, das heißt, daß er etwas erlebte, was ihn dem Leben in der gewöhnlichen Welt fremd machte, wie der Tod den Menschen diesem Leben fremd macht. Dann sollte er, wenn er gewissermaßen alles in seinem inneren Erleben verlassen hatte, was dem Erdenleben angehört, nach dem Durchgang durch den Tod die geistige Welt in einer völligen Menschenwiedergeburt erleben. Das ist die alte religiöse, kultische Form der Katharsis, der Reinigung, der Läuterung des Menschen. Es sollte ein neuer Mensch im alten geboren werden. Was der Mensch in der Welt so erleben kann, daß es in ihm Leidenschaften, Emotionen aufrüttelt, daß es in ihm Triebe, Begierden hervorbringt, daß es ihn erhebt zu Vorstellungen, die dieser Welt angehören, das alles sollte er innerhalb dieser Mysterienkulte so erleben, daß es zu gleicher Zeit überwunden wurde und daß er als ein von diesen Erlebnissen Gereinigter und Geläuterter daraus hervorging. Dann erst traute man ihm, diesem wiedergeborenen Menschen, zu, daß er irgendeine soziale Wirkung auf seine Mitmenschen ausüben könne. Und mit Recht hat auch schon die äußere Gelehrsamkeit unserer Zeit darauf hingewiesen, daß die noch erhaltenen Reste dieser Kultur eine ungeheuerliche Bedeutung für das soziale Leben gehabt haben, daß die Impulse, die denjenigen aufgestiegen sind, die eine solche Katharsis innerhalb der sehr geheimgehaltenen Stätten durchgemacht haben, auf das äußere Gesellschaftsleben den denkbar größten Einfluß ausgeübt haben. Wie gesagt, das ist nicht nur eine Behauptung der Geisteswissenschaft, das ist etwas, wozu auch die äußere Gelehrsamkeit heute kommt. Sie dürfen nur Wilamowitz nachlesen. Man findet, daß eigentlich in der orientalischen Kultur eine Art Gesundung des Menschen in der Erkenntnis und in allem Streben nach einer geistigen Bildung gesucht worden ist.
Das was im Orient drüben gelebt hat, ist in einer anderen Form nach Griechenland und damit nach Europa herübergekommen, und es hat fortgewirkt in Europa in dem Maße, wie überhaupt die griechische Kultur in dem späteren Geistes- und Zivilisationsleben Europas nachgewirkt hat. Ich möchte auf etwas hinweisen, worauf gewöhnlich nicht hingewiesen wird: daß bei der Betrachtung der griechischen Tragödie, von der unendlich viel Künstlerisches für das Geistesleben des Abendlandes ausgegangen ist, Aristoteles eine Charakteristik gegeben hat, die gewöhnlich viel zu äußerlich genommen wird. Es wird der bekannte Satz immer wieder angeführt, in dem Aristoteles sagt, daß die Tragödie, das Trauerspiel, dazu da sei, Furcht und Mitleid zu erregen, damit durch die Erregung dieser und anderer Leidenschaften eine Reinigung, eine Läuterung, eine Katharsis von diesen Leidenschaften eintrete. Aristoteles weist also dabei auf etwas Künstlerisches hin, auf das, was durch die Tragödie geschehen sollte. Man kann, wenn man nicht mit einer äußerlichen Philologie, sondern mit demjenigen für eine Interpretation des aristotelischen Ausspruchs ausgerüstet kommt, was einem die Betrachtung des orientalischen Geisteslebens gibt, wenn man also mit einer Erkenntnis der weiter zurückliegenden Wurzeln ausgerüstet ist, dazu kommen, unter dem, was Aristoteles unter Mitleid und Furcht versteht, doch etwas Umfassenderes zu erleben, als was man heute darunter versteht. Man kommt dazu, einzusehen, daß er eigentlich meinte, daß der Mensch, der Zuschauer, durch die Tragödie dazu gebracht wird, mit seinem Seelenleben einzugehen in das, was der andere Mensch an Leiden, Schmerzen und auch an Freuden erlebt, daß also gewissermaßen der Zuschauer mit seinem Seelenleben heraustritt aus der engeren Umgrenzung, in der er sich naturgegeben befindet, und daß durch die Anschauung des fremden Leidens — weil der Mensch da außerhalb seines Leibeslebens, wenn auch nur vergleichsweise, lebt - beim Zuschauer zugleich erregt wird die Furcht, die immer eintritt, wenn der Mensch vor etwas steht, was ihn gewissermaßen außer sich bringt, was ihn in eine Art Ohnmacht, in Atemlosigkeit versetzt. Man kann also sagen: Aristoteles meint eigentlich, daß der Mensch beim Anschauen der Tragödie zu einer Empfindungswelt kommt, die ihn aus sich herausführt, daß er dadurch in Furcht versetzt wird und daß eine Läuterung, eine Katharsis eintritt, so daß er lernt, das zu ertragen, was er als naturgebene Persönlichkeit nicht ertragen kann, daß er durch die Läuterung gestärkt wird für das Miterleben fremden. Leides, fremder Freude, und daß er nicht mehr in Furcht versetzt wird, wenn er in dieser Weise aus sich heraus und in das soziale Leben hineintreten soll. Indem Aristoteles der Tragödie einen solchen Beruf zuschreibt, verspürt man ganz deutlich, daß er eigentlich darauf hinweist, wie in der Tragödie zu gleicher Zeit gegeben ist eine Art Erziehung des Menschen zur Stärkung des Selbstgefühls, zur Stärkung der inneren Seelensicherheit.
Ich weiß sehr gut, daß ein solches Hineinstellen des Künstlerischen in das soziale Leben heute bei vielen den Eindruck macht, als wollte man damit dem Wert der Kunst Abbruch tun, der Kunst irgendwelche Nebenzwecke beilegen. Allein die Einwendungen werden häufig gerade aus einer gewissen Philistrosität heraus gemacht, weil man glaubt, wenn die Kunst eingereiht werden solle in das totale Menschenleben, in alles das, was die menschliche Seele überhaupt durchmachen kann, dann sei das eine Einreihung der Kunst in das bloße Nützlichkeitsleben. Bei den Griechen war es nicht eine solche Einreihung in das bloße Nützlichkeitsleben, sondern eine Einreihung in das gesamte menschliche Leben, in das Leben, das den Menschen auch über sich hinausträgt, nicht nur unter sich, in die bloße Nützlichkeit hinunterträgt.
Sieht man ein wenig über das hinweg, was nur unserer Zeit eigen ist, die bloße Nützlichkeit, dann wird man gerade das Bedeutsame der griechischen Kunstanschauung erfassen können, nämlich daß der Grieche zu gleicher Zeit mit dem Künstlerischen der Tragödie in dieser etwas sah, was den Menschen zu sich selbst brachte, was den Menschen aus dem Träumen in der Welt, aus dem halben Bewußtsein von der Welt, immer mehr und mehr zu einem vollen Bewußtsein von sich selbst bringen sollte. Und man möchte sagen: In sozialer Beziehung sollte die Tragödie durchaus etwas leisten als Beitrag zu der großen Forderung: Mensch, erkenne dich selbst!
Wenn wir aber wiederum von dieser Erweiterung des Künstlerischen in das Soziale hinein auf die Betrachtung der Stellung des einzelnen Menschen zu dem sozialen Leben eingehen, wenn wir, von dieser Betrachtung aus, noch einmal zurückschauen nach dem Orient, dann finden wir im Mysterienwesen auch, wie eigentlich das, was in der Gesundung, in der Wiedergeburt des Menschen zu einem höheren Menschen angestrebt worden ist, eine Erstarkung des Ich-Gefühls bedeutet. Aus dem Bewußtsein heraus, daß die allgemeine Seelenstimmung damals nicht in einem Ich-Gefühl lebte, daß ein solches IchGefühl erst erworben werden mußte, wurde durch das Mysterienwesen die Wiedergeburt des Menschen zu der Ichheit angestrebt. So war eigentlich für diese alte soziale Zivilisation das Ich-Erlebnis etwas, was erst erworben werden mußte. Man sah eine der sozialen Aufgaben darin, einzelne Menschen zu der Geburt dieses Ich-Gefühls zu bringen, so daß sie dann die Führer ihrer Mitmenschen in sozialer Beziehung werden konnten. Nur wenn man das versteht, wird man auch ein Verständnis dafür haben, wie noch in Platos Idealstaat ein starkes Gefühl von der Gemeinsamkeit lebt und wie eigentlich bei ihm nur derjenige berechtigt ist, seine Individualität voll zu entfalten, der es durch die Wiedergeburt tut, die durch die damals zu erlangende Weisheit zu erreichen war, worin sich zeigt, daß bei der Menschheit damals noch kein Bewußtsein davon vorhanden ist, daß der Individualität im vollsten Sinne Rechnung getragen werden müsse.
Was aus einem solchen sozialen Leben Asiens herauswuchs, das verpflanzte sich dann nach Europa, amalgamierte sich mit dem Christentum, kam ins Mittelalter hinein und lebte in diesem sogar sehr lange fort. Aber es lebte fort in der Art, die sich daraus ergab, daß die Menschen, die in den Völkermassen, die mehr von Norden und von Mitteleuropa in diese jetzt südliche, aber noch von Asien herüber ererbte Kultur einströmten, schon von Natur aus das starke Ich-Gefühl mitbrachten. Für diese Völker stellte sich die große historische Aufgabe heraus, das, was den orientalischen Menschen noch bei einem gedämpften Ich-Gefühl gegeben war, in das volle Selbstbewußtsein, in das volle Ich-Gefühl hereinzutragen. Die glänzende Kultur der Griechen hatte das «Erkenne dich selbst!» noch als ein menschliches Erkenntnis- und Sozialideal. Die Völker, die in das Mittelalter von Norden hereintraten, brachten als die Organisation ihres Menschentums dieses Ich-Gefühl mit. Ihnen war es naturgemäß gegeben. Wenn sie auch in Verbänden lebten, strebten sie dennoch überall danach, das, was sie in erkenntnismäßiger, in sozialer Beziehung aufnahmen, ihrem Ich einzuverleiben. Damit aber machte sich eigentlich innerhalb der Geschichte so recht der Gegensatz zwischen dem Gemeinschaftsleben und dem Individualleben geltend. Dieser trat erst im Laufe der Geschichte, und zwar, ich möchte sagen, durch die Mitwirkung von menschlichen Institutionen auf.
Indem in dieser Art das Ich-Gefühl in die menschliche Entwickelung eintrat, mußte es sich verbinden mit etwas anderem, mit dem es durchaus einen organischen Zusammenhang hat. Schauen wir noch einmal zurück auf das, was die orientalisch-griechische Kultur auch noch im Sinne Platos hatte, so werden wir es sehr stark für unser heutiges Empfinden wahrnehmen müssen, wie diese ganze Kultur und Zivilisation eigentlich auf der Sklaverei aufgebaut ist, auf der Unfreiheit großer Menschenmassen. Es ist viel von den verschiedensten Gesichtspunkten aus über die Bedeutung der Sklaverei in den älteren Zeiten gesprochen worden, und wenn man das gehörig würdigen will, so wird man natürlich darin sehr viel Bedeutungsvolles finden, Dasjenige aber, was vor allen Dingen für unser heutiges Leben noch in Betracht kommt, das ist es eben, von dem ich sagte, daß es eigentlich noch wenig berücksichtigt worden ist. Denn für das Gemeinschaftsleben und auch für das soziale Leben, das aus den Mysterien hervorging, für das der Grieche noch seine Kunst als einen Entwickelungsimpuls ansah, war die volle Bedeutung der menschlichen Arbeit innerhalb der sozialen Ordnung noch gar nicht entdeckt. Daher mußte man gewissermaßen diese menschliche Arbeit ausschalten, wenn man von dem Idealbild des Menschen sprach.
Charakterisiert man den orientalisch-griechischen Menschen, wie er seine Würde in sich trägt, wie er sich durch seine Würde emporarbeitet, so charakterisiert man etwas, was sich eigentlich oberhalb der Menschenmasse aufbaute, die nun die Arbeit verrichtete. Diese Masse lebte in einem bloßen Anhängsel zum sozialen Organismus, der sich innerhalb eines Menschentums entwickelte, das die Arbeit nicht in sein Wesen aufgenommen hatte, weil es die Arbeit und den Menschen, der sie verfichtete, als etwas Naturgegebenes betrachtete. Das Menschentum fing gewissermaßen da an, wo die Arbeit schon verrichtet war. Auf einer höheren Stufe, in einem höheren seelischen Sinn erlebte der Mensch das, was in der Tierheit zum Ausdruck kommt: In der Tierheit ist das, was Nahrung, was zur sozialen Ordnung sonst gehört, naturgegeben, das Tier rechnet nicht, es verrichtet, was es tut, aus dem Innern seines Wesens heraus, aber irgendeine Orientierung der Arbeit ist für das Tier nicht notwendig. Wenn scheinbare Ausnahmen da sind, so muß man gerade diese in der Weise anschauen, daß sie die allgemeine Regel eigentlich bestätigen. So können wir sagen: Indem die orientalische Kultur sich nach Europa hinüberverpflanzte und immer mehr und mehr in die Forderungen der Ichheit, der Individualität untertauchte, tauchte sie zugleich in die Notwendigkeit unter, die menschliche Arbeit einzubeziehen in die soziale Ordnung. Es ist einfach unmöglich, wenn die Individualität des Menschen voll erwacht ist, die Arbeit auszuschließen von der sozialen Ordnung.
Das aber wurde das große soziale Problem —- das im Griechentum eigentlich noch nicht vorhanden war —, um das in Rom unzählige Kämpfe ausgekämpft worden sind. Denn man empfand es instinktiv, daß erst durch Einbeziehung der Arbeit in die soziale Ordnung der Mensch seine volle Individualität ausleben kann. Damit aber hat die ganze soziale Gestaltung der Menschheit ein anderes Gesicht bekommen. Sie weist ein anderes Gesicht auf im zivilisierten Europa gegenüber dem zivilisierten Asien. Erst wenn wir hinschauen auf die Entwickelung der Individualität in Europa, werden wir etwas verstehen von dem, was wiederum mit Recht so vielfach betont worden ist, wenn charakterisiert werden sollte, woher eigentlich die sozialen Nöte in unserer Zeit kommen.
Da wird mit Recht darauf hingewiesen, daß die spezifische Kultur der sozialen Ordnung in unserer Zeit eigentlich erst ihren Anfang genommen hat mit dem Heraufkommen der modernen Technik und Arbeitsteilung. Und hingewiesen wird auch darauf, wie zum Beispiel so etwas wie der moderne Kapitalismus auch nichts anderes ist als ein Ergebnis der Arbeitsteilung. Außerordentlich bedeutsam ist das, was das Lehrgut der abendländischen neueren Zivilisation in dieser Beziehung zur Charakteristik der Arbeitsteilung und deren Folgen in den sozialen Nöten unserer Zeit aufweist. Aber der unbefangene Beobachter muß da, wo so etwas gesagt wird, einseitig mit Recht gesagt wird, dennoch hinschauen, sagen wir, auf das alte Ägypten, auf das alte Babylonien, und darauf hinweisen, daß zum Beispiel im alten Babylonien, auch im alten Ägypten, Städte von ungeheurer Ausdehnung existiert haben, daß das, was da geleistet worden ist, auch nur unter der Arbeitsteilung geleistet worden ist. Geradeso wie ich gestern darauf hinweisen konnte, daß bereits im 11. Jahrhundert in China eine Art Sozialismus vorhanden war, daß es aber darauf nicht ankommt, was wir da als solche äußere Gestaltung sehen, so muß ich jetzt wiederum darauf hinweisen, daß die Arbeitsteilung, die mit Recht in der neueren Zeit als das Grundproblem in den sozialen Nöten angesehen wird, auch in früheren Epochen der Menschheitsentwickelung vorhanden war, und daß unter ihrem Einfluß gerade die orientalischen sozialen Ordnungen möglich geworden sind, die dann mehr ihre Nachwirkungen nach Europa herübergeschickt haben. In Europa hat sich diese Arbeitsteilung, nachdem sie zuerst weniger vorhanden war, später herausgestellt. Ich möchte sagen, die Arbeitsteilung selbst ist eine Wiederholung von etwas, was auch in früheren Zeiten vorhanden war; aber sie war innerhalb der orientalischen Kulturen unter dem Zeichen der noch nicht erwachten Ichheit vorhanden, während die moderne Arbeitsteilung, die durch die Technik eintritt, eine Menschheit trifft, die nun voll ihre Ichheit zur Entfaltung bringen will, so daß wiederum dasselbe in verschiedenen Zeitaltern etwas ganz Verschiedenes bedeutet.
Daher war für die orientalische soziale Ordnung das primäre, das erste Ziel, den Menschen herauswachsen zu lassen aus der sozialen Gebundenheit, aus dem Gemeinschaftsleben; der Mensch sollte, wenn er zu einem höheren Geistesleben aufrücken wollte, eben seine Ichheit finden. Der europäische Mensch der späteren Zeit hatte diese Ichheit, und er mußte nun diese Ichheit hineingliedern in die soziale Ordnung. Er mußte genau den umgekehrten Weg gehen als den, der im Orient gegangen worden ist.
Da finden wir in Europa überall Spuren davon, wie schwierig es dem Menschen wird, sich mit seinem Ich in die soziale Ordnung hineinzustellen, das hineinzustellen in die soziale Ordnung, was seine Ichheit ist, während doch einstmals die soziale Ordnung eine solche war, daß der Mensch gerade seine Ichheit, möchte ich sagen, aus ihr heraus retten wollte. - In allen Einzelheiten kann einem diese Schwierigkeit als soziales Grundübel noch heute gegenübertreten.
Als ich vor einigen Jahren öfters auch vor Arbeitern Vorträge zu halten hatte, da ergab sich manches von dem, daß in den Menschenseelen diese Schwierigkeit bezüglich der Eingliederung des Ichs in die Gesamtheit der sozialen Ordnung lebte. Der Mensch kann den Weg von einem stark entwickelten Ich-Gefühl hinein in die soziale Ordnung nicht finden. Und wenn man sich immer wieder und wieder bemühte, gerade zum Beispiel einer proletarischen Bevölkerung zu zeigen, wie dieser Weg sein müsse, wie er anders sein müsse als die Wege, die heute vielfach von sozialistischen oder kommunistischen Agitatoren gewiesen werden, dann konnte man erleben, daß bei nachfolgenden Diskussionen ganz merkwürdige Ansichten auftraten. Sie konnten trivial erscheinen, aber das Triviale ist dann nicht mehr trivial, wenn es ein treibender Motor für unzählige Menschen im Leben ist. So versuchte ich einmal, über die sozialen Fragen in einer Arbeitergemeinschaft zu reden. Es trat ein Mensch auf und stellte sich sogleich vor als Schuhflicker. Selbstverständlich kann es einem ganz besonders angenehm sein, von einem solchen Menschen zu hören, was er denkt; aber in diesem Fall war das, was er nicht denken konnte, viel bedeutungsvoller als das, was er dachte. Denn erst setzte er sehr stark im Gegensatz zu mir auseinander, wie er sich die soziale Ordnung denke, dann machte er noch einmal darauf aufmerksam, daß er ein einfacher Schuhflicker sei, daß er also in der von ihm entworfenen sozialen Ordnung kein Standesbeamter sein könne, wie er betonte. Aber im Hintergrunde seiner Ausführungen stand durchaus, daß er Minister sein könnte! Das zeigt den Mangel an Orientierung, wenn die Frage in Betracht kommt: Wie soll sich das innerhalb des Geisteslebens erstarkte Ich in eine soziale Ordnung hineinstellen?
Und bei einer anderen Arbeiterversammlung - ich führe Beispiele an, sie könnten ins Unendliche vermehrt werden — sagte jemand: Ja, wir streben gar nicht etwa an, Vorartbeiter zu werden, streben gar nicht an, eine führende Stellung in der Fabrik zu bekommen, wir wollen bleiben, was wir sind, einfache Arbeiter; aber als solche wollen wir unser volles Recht haben. — So einseitig berechtigt auch wiederum ein solcher Ausspruch sein mag - im Grunde genommen ist da kein Interesse für die soziale Gestaltung als solche vorhanden, sondern nur für das, was das besonders stark entwickelte Ich als solches ist.
Ich weiß sehr wohl, daß viele Menschen das heute aus ihrem Bewußtsein heraus nicht zugeben werden, daß gerade diese Diskrepanz zwischen dem Ich-Erlebnis und der sozialen Ordnung die Wurzel für viele unserer sozialen, ja fast für alle unsere sozialen Nöte und Mängel ist. Aber wer mit offenen Augen ins Leben hineinschaut, der wird sich doch sagen müssen: Wir sind eben durchaus nur dahin gekommen, das Ich-Gefühl zwar zu entwickeln, können es aber nicht verbinden mit einer wirklichen Einsicht in den Menschen selber. Wir sagen zu uns Ich; aber wir wissen dieses Ich nicht anzuwenden auf eine voll erfaßte und voll wollende menschliche Wesenheit.
Das kann man wiederum erfahren, wenn einem so recht aus der Gegenwart heraus geformte Anschauungen gegenüber dem entgegentreten, was man aus geisteswissenschaftlichen Untergründen für die Gesundung der Menschen für nötig hält. Eine Persönlichkeit, die im gegenwärtigen pädagogischen Leben steht, sagte mir einmal bei einem Besuch der Waldorfschule etwas sehr Merkwürdiges. Ich führte diese Persönlichkeit selbst herum, machte sie aufmerksam auf unsere Unterrichtsmethode, auf die soziale Bedeutung unserer Unterrichtsmethode, und machte namentlich darauf aufmerksam, wie bei einer solchen gesunden Unterrichtsmethode die geistige und die seelische mit der leiblichen Erziehung verbunden werden müsse, wie der, der erziehen und unterrichten will, vor allen Dingen wissen muß, wie das oder jenes auf die aufsteigenden oder niedergehenden Kräfte der menschlichen Organisation, der menschlichen Leiblichkeit wirkt, wie gewisse Gedächtnisübungen oder Gedächtnisvernachlässigungen in einem späteren Lebensalter in leiblichen Erscheinungen sich geltend machen, wie man durch bloßes Behandeln des seelischen Lebens körperliche Übel nach und nach zur Besserung bringen könne, wie durchaus der Lehrer den Zusammenhang der physischen mit der seelischen und geistigen Natur im gesunden und kranken Zustand des Menschen bis zu einem gewissen Grade überschauen müsse. Und da wurde mir erwidert, daß ja dann der Lehrer Arzt sein müßte!
Ja, bis zu einem gewissen Grad müßte es eigentlich durchaus angestrebt werden, daß dies der Fall sein könnte. Denn sehen wir in unsere soziale Ordnung hinein mit der Schwierigkeit, das Ich ihr einzuverleiben, dann werden wir wiederum erinnert an das, was ich heute schon für zwei Kulturterritorien angeschlagen habe: für den Orient, wo der Arzt zugleich Lehrer und Führer des Volkes war, und für Griechenland, wo ich darauf hingewiesen habe, daß die Kunst in gewissem Sinn einen erzieherischen Einfluß hatte. Es war die Kunst des Arztes überhaupt mit jeglichem Streben des Geistes deshalb verbunden, weil man damals den Menschen, wenn auch mit einer instinktiven Einsicht, als ein Ganzes ansah in leiblicher, seelischer und geistiger Beziehung und weil man in der Gesundung, die man für die Seele anstrebte, Kräfte wirken lassen wollte, die einem dann Erkenntnisse gaben für die Gesundung des Menschen überhaupt.
Man sagte sich: Ich muß eigentlich den Menschen heilen, indem ich ihn zur wahren Geistigkeit bringe. Da muß ich innerhalb eines mehr normalen Lebens Kräfte anwenden, die Gesundungskräfte sind. Verstehe ich diese Kräfte durch und durch, kann ich sie bis in ihre letzte Konsequenz verfolgen, so stellt mir eine solche Erkenntnis das dar, was ich anzuwenden habe, wenn der Mensch krank ist. Ich lerne an der Betrachtung des gesunden Menschen die Kräfte kennen, die ich anwenden muß, wenn ich den kranken Menschen vor mir habe. Der kranke Mensch hat nur eine stärkere Abweichung seiner Organisation nach dieser oder jener Seite hin als auch schon im normalen Leben. Weiß ich, wie ich den normalen Menschen zur Gesundung bringe, so weiß ich auch, wie ich den kranken zu behandeln habe; weiß ich, welcher Trank, welche Essenz mir dieses oder jenes an Einsichten bringt von Zusammenhängen mit der Natur, weiß ich, wie in erkenntnismäßiger Weise das wirkt, was Naturprodukt ist, dann weiß ich auch, wie dieses, wenn ich es stärker anwende, auf den kranken Menschen wirkt.
Wir haben wiederum das, was im alten Orient in inniger Gemeinschaft als Arzneikunst und als Erziehung und als Entwickelung zur Geistigkeit überhaupt gesucht worden ist, was überhaupt eine große Rolle gespielt hat mehr oder weniger in einem geistigen Filtrat im griechischen Kunstleben drinnen. Dort handelt es sich darum, daß die Seele durch die Kunst gesund gemacht werden soll, und man kann, wenn man mit solchen Erkenntnissen an die Sache geht, im Gebrauch des Wortes Katharsis für die Tragödie noch erfühlen, wie es, weil ja dasselbe Wort für das alte Mysterienwesen, für die völlige Reinigung des Menschen zu einem neuen Leben gebraucht worden ist, auf etwas Verwandtes hinwies. Wir werden aber auch darauf verwiesen, wie noch bei den älteren griechischen Ärzten durchaus Erkenntnis und Heilkunde Schwestern waren, zusammengehörten, und wie man, mehr in das Geistige heraufgehoben, in der Erziehung, aber auch in der allgemeinen Volkskultur etwas sah, was mit der Heilkunde Verwandtschaft hatte, was sich gewissermaßen aus der Heilkunde heraushob.
Wir müssen auf solche Erscheinungen einer abgelebten Zeit hinschauen, wenn wir die richtige innere Seelenkraft gewinnen wollen, um auch wieder in unserer Zeit da, wo wir auf die sozialen Ordnungen hinschauen, so hinzuschauen, daß wir den ganzen Menschen ins Auge fassen, um, wenn wir unseren Mitmenschen gegenübertreten, nicht nur das starke Ich-Gefühl zu entwickeln, sondern dieses mit einem Erfühlen des ganzen Menschen nach Leib, Seele und Geist zu verbinden. Sind wir durch eine geisteswissenschaftliche Entwickelung dazu imstande, dann werden sich gerade durch die Seelenstimmung, die dabei herauskommt, die Mittel und Wege finden lassen, den ganzen Menschen, aber auch alle Menschen, in die soziale Ordnung hineinzustellen, das heißt, die Arbeit für die soziale Ordnung in dem Sinn zu erobern, wie das ja ohnedies durch die geschichtliche Entwickelung als Notwendigkeit dargelegt wird. Das ist es aber, woran wir bis heute noch kranken: die Arbeit in einer richtigen Weise hineinzufügen in die soziale Ordnung.
Allerdings sieht man vielfach in der Arbeit etwas, was dann in das Arbeitsprodukt hineingeht, gewissermaßen in ihm kristallisiert ist und ihm eigentlich seinen Wert gibt. Wer genauer zusieht, wird aber bemerken, daß es nicht allein darauf ankommt, daß ein Mensch überhaupt arbeitet, daß er also das, was Kräfte seines physischen Organismus sind, an die soziale Ordnung abgibt, sondern daß das Wesentliche bei Preis- und Wertbildung das ist, wie die Arbeit sich dem gesamten sozialen Leben einfügen kann. Es kann durchaus gedacht werden, daß der Mensch eine Arbeit verrichtet, die im Grunde genommen unökonomisch in der sozialen Ordnung drinnensteht. Der Mensch kann fleißig sein, kann auch glauben, Anspruch zu haben auf Entlohnung seiner Arbeit; wenn aber seine Arbeit in einem mangelhaften sozialen Organismus drinnensteht, dann wird oft durch die Arbeit nicht genützt, sondern geschadet. Und man sollte von einem solchen Gesichtspunkt aus hinschauen auf vieles, was als eine eigentlich unwertvolle und trotzdem anstrengende Arbeit im sozialen Organismus drinnensteht. Betrachten wir nur einmal, wie ungeheuer vieles in unsere Literatur einläuft, was gedruckt werden muß, worauf ungeheure Arbeit mit der Herstellung des Papiers, des Drucks und so weiter angewendet wird, was dann bis auf einen geringen Rest wiederum eingestampft wird: Arbeit ist da geleistet worden, die durchaus, ich möchte sagen, in leere Luft verhaucht wird. Und wenn man bedenkt, wie während des mörderischen Krieges der letzten Jahre ungeheure Arbeit in leere Luft verhaucht worden ist, dann wird man allmählich dennoch zu dem Begriffe kommen, daß Arbeit als solche nicht einen unmittelbaren Wert beanspruchen kann, sondern daß Arbeit ihren Wert bekommt durch die Art und Weise, wie sie sich ins soziale Leben hineinstellt.
Daran aber krankt unsere Zeit am meisten, daß ihr gerade das soziale Grundverständnis dafür fehlt, die Arbeit in der entsprechenden Weise in den sozialen Organismus hineinzustellen, daß gewissermaßen der Mensch alles, was er leistet, in Wirklichkeit für seine Mitmenschen leistet. Das aber müssen wir uns erst dadurch erringen, daß wir mit unserem Ich uns wirklich in die menschliche Gemeinschaft lernen hineinzustellen. Erst dadurch, daß wir ein richtiges Verständnis gewinnen von Mensch zu Mensch, so daß das, was des anderen Menschen Bedarf ist, zu gleicher Zeit unser eigenes Erlebnis wird, daß wir uns hinüberleben mit unserem Ich in die Iche der anderen Menschen, werden wir den Weg finden zu jenen neuen sozialen Gemeinschaften, die nicht ein Naturgegebenes sind, sondern die aus dem Ich des Menschen heraus gefunden werden müssen.
Alle unsere sozialen Forderungen aber entspringen durchaus aus dem Ich heraus. Der Mensch fühlt, was ihm mangelt innerhalb der sozialen Ordnung. Das aber, was wir finden müssen, das ist wiederum ein Verständnis für das, was menschliches Zusammenleben nach Leib, Seele und Geist in Wirklichkeit heißt. Das muß vom Ich aus eine soziale Ordnung eigentlich im Grunde genommen erst gebären können.
Der große Kampf, der sich innerhalb der Arbeitsteilung abspielt, in anderer Weise als sich diese Kämpfe unter dem Einfluß der menschlichen Ichheit jemals abgespielt haben, ist das, was in allen unseren sozialen Mängeln als die Grundwurzel lebt. Wir gründen heute Gemeinschaften der Produktion; wir treten in sie so ein, daß nicht das, was eine solche Gemeinschaft im sozialen Organismus bedeutet, das Maßgebende für uns ist, sondern so, daß zuerst unser Ich das Maßgebende ist, in begreiflicher Weise. Es soll hier gar nicht in schulmeisterlicher oder in anderer Weise gezetert werden über den menschlichen Egoismus. Es soll erfaßt werden, was in gewisser Weise berechtigt ist. Denn hätten wir dieses Ich-Gefühl nicht, dann wären wir nicht zur menschlichen Freiheit und Würde geschritten. Nur dadurch, daß wir dieses IchGefühl erlangt haben, konnten die großen geistigen Fortschritte gemacht werden. Aber dieses Ich-Gefühl muß die Wege finden zu einem Mitfühlen.
Geredet wird heute viel von der Notwendigkeit, den Individualismus wiederum zu überwinden. Darum kann es sich nicht handeln, sondern darum, in den Menschen selber die Gesellschaft zu entdecken. Der Orientale mußte in der Gesellschaft den Menschen finden. Wir müssen im Menschen die Gesellschaft finden. Das können wir nur, wenn wir das Seelenleben nach allen Seiten erweitern.
Ich habe deshalb versucht, in einem meiner Mysteriendramen am Schluß eine Szene darzustellen, in der gezeigt wird, wie sich ein Mensch hindurchringt zu dem inneren Erleben, das darin besteht, in sich selbst die Differenzierungen in der Menschheit zu erleben. Da draußen sind die Differenzierungen der Menschen. In der sozialen Ordnung müssen wir differenziert sein, müssen wir ein jeder seinen Beruf haben. Im Innern aber können wir, wenn wir die richtige Brücke finden zwischen Mensch und Mensch, alles, was draußen differenziert wird, die soziale Welt, nacherleben, können in uns jeden einzelnen Beruf nacherleben. Geht uns diese soziale Ordnung im Innern auf, finden wir die Möglichkeit, die soziale Wirklichkeit in uns selber zu erleben, dann werden wir jenen umgekehrten Weg gehen können: von dem Ich zur sozialen Ordnung hin. Damit ist aber auch gegeben, daß alles — heute können wir auf die Arbeit hinweisen; in den nächsten Tagen werden wir auch auf das Kapital sehen —- an den einzelnen Menschen Gebundene sich in die menschliche Gesellschaft eingliedern kann. Im Genossenschaftswesen, in der Syndikatsbildung, in der Trustbildung, im Gewerkschaftswesen, überall fühlen wir die Notwendigkeit, von dem Ich aus den Weg zu finden zur Gemeinschaftlichkeit. Aber das eben ist der große Kampf der Gegenwart: daß das, was in unserer Umgebung lebt, auch wirklich in uns Wurzel fassen könnte.
Es gab — es ist schon darauf hingewiesen worden — eine Zeit, die gar nicht so weit hinter uns zurückliegt, wir brauchen bloß bis zum 13. Jahrhundert etwa zurückzugehen, in der der Mensch verbunden war mit seinem Arbeitsprodukt, eine Zeit, in der jeder Schlüssel, jedes Schloß, das man machte, Freude machte, weil man etwas von seiner eigenen Wesenheit hineingoß. Da war das, was noch Erbstück einer alten sozialen Ordnung war, dem Produkt noch eingeprägt. Man lebte noch ohne die vollerwachte Ichheit mit der sozialen Ordnung mit. Seither ist diese Ichheit innerhalb der Technik zur vollen Höhe und Stärke gekommen. Heute steht der Mensch im Grunde genommen oftmals, selbst wenn er im Geistigen arbeitet, seinem Arbeitsprodukt außerordentlich fremd gegenüber. Es müßte das, was wir in der Außenwelt vollbringen, in uns selber tief wurzeln und sich mit unserer Ichheit verbinden können. Das aber wird eben nur der Fall sein, wenn wir das seelische Leben nach allen Seiten so ausbilden, wie es in den letzten Tagen hier geschildert worden ist. Denn wenn wir dieses Seelenleben so ausbilden, so wird wiederum das Interesse für alles um uns herum Seiende erregt.
Man kann sehr viele Menschen des rein intellektualistischen Zeitalters finden, die gerade den Beruf, den sie haben, uninteressant finden. Er ist es vielleicht geworden. Es muß wiederum eine Zeit kommen, wo jede Einzelheit des Lebens interessant wird. War sie früher interessant durch das, was sie als Objekt war, so wird sie für eine Zukunft interessant werden können, indem wir bei jedem einzelnen, was wir vollbringen, wissen können, wie es sich eingliedert in die soziale Ordnung der Menschheit. Wir werden, während wir früher auf das Produkt geschaut haben, jetzt auf den des Arbeitsprodukts bedürftigen Menschen schauen. Während früher das Produkt geliebt worden ist, wird menschliche Liebe und menschliche Brüderlichkeit gerade in der entwickelten Seele auftreten können so, daß der Mensch wird wissen können, warum er auf seinem Posten steht.
Das aber muß in der Seele Wurzel fassen, bevor man zu einer Verständigung kommen will über die einzelnen sozialen Mängel unserer Zeit. Man muß von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus auch überschauen, wie Europa noch immer dabei ist, seinen Kampf zu kämpfen um die Ichheit der Menschheit gegenüber dem, was, aus seiner Geisteskultur, noch immer herüberstrahlt von Asien und was von ganz anderen Untergründen ausgegangen ist, als sie heute bestehen, von Untergründen, die in Menschenseelen wurzelten, aber noch nicht bis zur vollen Ichheit erwacht waren.
So lebt nicht nur die Gegenwart zwischen Individualität und Gemeinschaft in abstrakten Begriffen, wie das vielfach der Fall ist, sondern als in etwas, was die Menschenseele durchdringt, durchsetzt, was jeden einzelnen Menschen heute wie einen Kämpfer hineinstellt um sein Ich. Wir sind eben auf dem Weg zum Finden des Verhältnisses des menschlichen Ichs zu der sozialen Gemeinschaft eigentlich erst im Anfang. Und daraus schreiben sich die Mängel der Zeit, die ich deshalb nicht in besonderen Listen aufzuführen brauche, her.
Sieht man diese psychologische Grundlage, diesen geistigen Untergrund ein, dann wird man manches, was einem heute in der sozialen Ordnung entgegentritt als Forderungen, als Nöte, als Elend, im richtigen Lichte sehen. Zu diesem richtigen Lichte uns durchzukämpfen, müssen wir den Mut haben. Dann wird es sich erst zeigen, ob der Pessimismus berechtigt ist, wie ihn in einer besonders radikalen Form selbst Herman Grimm zum Ausdruck gebracht hat, ob es berechtigt ist, zu sagen: es blieben nur Niedergangskräfte innerhalb unserer europäischen Zivilisation, man könne nur pessimistisch sein, man müsse sogar den Tag eines allgemeinen Selbstmordes fixieren.
Ja, es ist doch die Frage, ob schon alles das, was für Europa an asiatischer Eigentümlichkeit zu besiegen war, schon besiegt ist, damit dann Europa, nachdem es sich selbst gefunden hat, von der Mitte der Weltentwickelung aus auch die Verständigung nach dem Osten hinüber gewinnen kann. Von einem solchen Gesichtspunkte ist zu betrachten, ob man hinschauen solle auf so etwas, wie es Herman Grimm meint, oder ob man auch daran denken könne, daß die Menschheit doch aus der Entwickelung dessen, was in ihrer Seele schlummert, heraus dic Möglichkeit hat, den Tag zu bestimmen, an dem Verständigung eintritt - daß nicht der Tod dieser europäischen Zivilisation uns bevorstehen darf, sondern eine neue Geburt.
Ob und inwiefern ein solches möglich ist, das soll wenigstens andeutend in den nächsten Vorträgen charakterisiert werden.
The Times and Their Social Deficiencies: Asia - Europe
Ladies and gentlemen! When we talk about the social deficiencies and social hardships of our times, there is hardly anyone who does not have something truly significant to say based on their particular circumstances. However, it is not my task today to draw up a list of everything that could be achieved by reviewing the individual hardships of the times, but rather to point out some of the roots from which springs what is being put forward with great justification from various quarters and has plunged a large part of humanity into an extraordinarily pessimistic mood and hopelessness.
Perhaps one of the strongest statements about this hopelessness comes from a man from whom one would least expect it, and who moreover comes from a time when such a statement must have been something extremely remarkable. The eminent art historian Herman Grimm, who did not live to see the most cruel of all wars, having died at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, made this remarkable statement in one of his last writings: If one surveys what one encounters today in the lives of nations, if one looks, I would say, with the eyes of the soul at the way the various nations of the civilized world relate to one another, how they feud with one another, how the seeds of further feuds lie within them, one would actually like to set a date for a general suicide, because it is impossible to foresee where all these things that bring people and nations into conflict, strife, and battle will lead, if not to the absolute downfall of civilization. I say: this statement is striking, especially coming from Herman Grimm, because he actually has a joyful worldview, because throughout his life he has focused his gaze on everything that can uplift humanity, on everything that is creative and productive in humanity. And it is also striking that he did not make this statement under the gloomy impressions that one could have gained in the years before the outbreak of the World War or during it, but that he made this statement still entirely in the spirit of the 19th century, at the end of that century. One might say: Everything that has happened since then seems entirely unsuitable, if someone makes such a statement, to detract in any way from what he actually feels when making such a statement.
Nevertheless, it can never be the task of human beings to remain stuck in mere hopelessness; rather, their task must be to look for what can lead to renewal, to reconstruction, to a new dawn. But then it is necessary to search for the deeper roots of what has gradually brought us into such an extraordinarily difficult situation within European civilization. And even if one believes that it can only be economic reasons, one will probably have to look for the main cause of the economic decline in the spiritual life of modern civilization.
In the lectures of the last few days, I have often pointed out how historical forces play into our present mood, and into all that we can currently acquire in terms of soul forces, and that in order to understand these forces, we must go far back in the historical development of humanity. And yesterday, in particular, I drew attention to how, from a historical perspective, there is a figure who stands, as it were, at the beginning of contemporary Western spiritual life, a figure who still looks toward Asia with one eye, so to speak, but who has already turned his gaze toward the prospects of Europe with the other. I am referring to Plato.
When we allow Plato's social views to sink in, they seem extremely strange to our modern consciousness in many respects. We see how Plato sees the ideal of a social organism in the creation of a certain community, even at the expense of the development of human individualities that have once found their way into earthly life. Plato considers it entirely possible that children who appear unfit for life should simply be abandoned so that they do not find a place in human society and thus disturb the social organism. Plato also finds it possible to regard as his ideal a social organism in which only a certain caste of people actually has full rights. Apart from the fact that slavery seems to him to be something self-evident, he also wants to grant only a temporary position within his social organism to those who mediate trade and commerce. Thus, he does not fully integrate into this social organism all those who are not attached to the ground by virtue of having been rightly born into the ground of the social organism, according to his view. And there would be much more to say if the question arose: How does Plato's ideal relate to individual human individuality? From a modern perspective, one would have to say that there is still little understanding of this human individuality. The focus is still entirely on the social community, which is regarded as the primary concern, so to speak. And the human being who is supposed to live in it is regarded as secondary. His life can only be recognized as legitimate insofar as he can conform to the social ideal established outside his own being.
If we want to find the roots of what led Plato to such a concept of community, we must again look to Asia, to Oriental culture. And then we can understand, in a spiritual sense, how, historically speaking, the spiritual life of Europe developed like a small peninsula belonging to a large continent.
But if we look across to Asia from a social point of view, we find that in Asia the idea of community is everywhere the first, the primary thing, and that Plato simply took this idea of community from the Orient. To all that has already been said here about the characteristics of this idea of community from various points of view, one thing must be added if the whole world situation is to be illuminated socially.
When we look at the fundamental character of Oriental spiritual life, we must say: Actually, it extended over a humanity that was very different from the European humanity of later civilization. In many respects, we can even say that, in terms of many spiritual and intellectual aspects, a high culture prevailed in Asia, which even many Europeans now long for again. I have already referred to the saying that is so often quoted: light comes from the Orient. But above all, this other humanity lacked what has been most characteristic of the European population since it began working on a civilization in the development of the earth. What we see over in Asia is a subdued sense of self, a sense of personality that still lies deep in the soul. A sense of personality such as that possessed by Europeans does not yet meet one in Asia in the same way. On the other hand, if a person who does not yet have this sense of personality is, in a sense, incorporated into Asian high culture, and this culture is suitable for incorporation into human community, then he participates in it in a certain dreamlike way, without a sense of personality.
It must be said that at a time when human individuality had not yet reached its full development, human communities were more receptive and more gifted for a high culture than the individual human being. Human abilities within social coexistence not only added up, but in a certain way multiplied in order to receive this high culture. But what was regarded as a special ideal within Oriental civilization became imprinted as it spread more and more to Europe and found a simple formulation in European minds in the Apollonian saying: Know thyself!
In a certain sense, one can view the whole of ancient Asia as if its development had been aimed at establishing in Greece the ultimate meaning of Oriental selfless cultural development: Know thyself — a phrase that has since lived on as a spiritual and cultural motto for humanity as a whole, serving as a guiding force. But we also see in the Orient how, precisely for the sake of a higher human education, it is considered desirable, in a certain sense, to come to one's own self. From a spiritual point of view, I have already indicated this by characterizing the culture of yoga. From a social point of view, it comes to us when we point to what was common practice in the Orient with regard to the social leadership of the masses. We find everywhere that the teacher, the leader, was at the same time a priest in a spiritual sense, but also a healer. In the East, we find an intimate connection between everything that humanity strives for in terms of knowledge and higher spiritual life, and healing. In older Eastern culture, the physician cannot be separated from the teacher, the priest of humanity.
This, however, is related in a certain way to the fact that Oriental culture was deeply dominated by the feeling of universal human guilt as such, which brings something pathological into the whole of human development, so that the process of knowledge itself, indeed the striving for a higher spirituality, was regarded as something that should, in a sense, heal the merely natural human being. Education for higher spiritual development was at the same time healing, because the natural, i.e., not yet educated human being was regarded as a being that actually needed to be healed. The ancient Oriental mystery culture is connected with this.
Oriental mystery culture sought the development of the individual human being toward a higher spiritual life in institutions that were, I would say, at the same time churches, schools, and starting points for social impulses. It sought this in such a way that — as I have already indicated in previous lectures — religion, art, and science were contained in one: by performing his cultic acts, man was a religious being; what mattered less was what lived in the soul as beliefs or even dogmas, but rather that the socially ordered cult was participated in by the individual human being, so that the connection of the human being with the divine was sought primarily in the sacrificial act, in the cultic act. But then the ritual act and that on which the ritual act was based also contained the artistic. And in the experience of this artistic and religious element, the old form of knowledge was given.But the human being who was to be brought to this inner unity of religion, art, and science had to undergo not only something that was, in a sense, a direct progression in his development, but also a complete transformation as a human being, a kind of rebirth. The events that such a pupil of the higher spiritual life had to undergo are described in such a way that he actually went through something like a kind of death with his consciousness, that is, he experienced something that made him alien to life in the ordinary world, just as death makes human beings alien to this life. Then, when he had, so to speak, left behind everything in his inner experience that belonged to earthly life, he was to experience the spiritual world in a complete rebirth as a human being after passing through death. This is the ancient religious, cultic form of catharsis, the purification, the refinement of the human being. A new human being was to be born within the old one. Whatever a person experiences in the world that stirs up passions and emotions within them, that gives rise to drives and desires desires, that elevates him to ideas that belong to this world, he should experience all this within these mystery cults in such a way that it was overcome at the same time and that he emerged from it purified and refined by these experiences. Only then was this reborn person trusted to have any social impact on his fellow human beings. And rightly so, the external scholarship of our time has already pointed out that the remaining remnants of this culture have had an enormous significance for social life, that the impulses that arose in those who underwent such a catharsis within the very secret places have exerted the greatest conceivable influence on external social life. As I said, this is not only a claim made by spiritual science, it is something that external scholarship is also coming to today. You only have to read Wilamowitz. One finds that in Oriental culture, a kind of healing of the human being was actually sought in knowledge and in all striving for spiritual education.
What lived in the Orient came over to Greece and thus to Europe in a different form, and it continued to have an effect in Europe to the same extent that Greek culture continued to have an effect on the later spiritual and civilizational life of Europe. I would like to point out something that is not usually pointed out: that in his consideration of Greek tragedy, from which an infinite amount of artistry has emanated for the spiritual life of the West, Aristotle gave a characteristic that is usually taken far too superficially. The well-known sentence in which Aristotle says that tragedy, the drama of sorrow, is there to arouse fear and pity, so that through the arousal of these and other passions, a purification, a catharsis of these passions may occur, is quoted again and again. Aristotle thus points to something artistic, to what should happen through tragedy. If one approaches the interpretation of Aristotle's statement not with external philology, but with what the contemplation of Oriental intellectual life provides, if one is equipped with an understanding of the more distant roots, one can come to understand what Aristotle means by pity and fear something more comprehensive than what is understood by these terms today. One comes to realize that he actually meant that the human being, the spectator, is led by tragedy to enter with his soul into what another human being experiences in suffering, pain, and also joy, that in a sense the spectator steps out with his soul from the narrow confines in which he naturally finds himself, and that by observing the suffering of others — because the individual lives outside his physical life, even if only comparatively — the spectator is simultaneously aroused by the fear that always arises when the individual is confronted with something that, in a sense, takes him out of himself, that puts him into a kind of powerlessness, into breathlessness. So one can say: Aristotle actually believes that when people watch tragedy, they enter a world of feelings that takes them out of themselves, that this causes them to feel fear, and that a purification, a catharsis, occurs, so that they learn to endure what they cannot endure as natural personalities, that they are strengthened by the purification to experience the suffering of others. Suffering, the joy of others, and that they are no longer filled with fear when they are to step out of themselves and into social life in this way. When Aristotle attributes such a vocation to tragedy, one senses quite clearly that he is actually pointing out how tragedy simultaneously provides a kind of education for human beings, strengthening their self-esteem and inner peace of mind.
I am well aware that placing art in social life in this way gives many people the impression that the aim is to detract from the value of art, to assign it some secondary purpose. However, the objections are often made out of a certain philistinism, because people believe that if art is to be incorporated into the totality of human life, into everything that the human soul can experience, then this is a reduction of art to mere utility. For the Greeks, it was not a classification into mere utilitarian life, but a classification into the whole of human life, into the life that carries human beings beyond themselves, not just among themselves, down into mere utility.
If we look beyond what is unique to our time, namely mere utility, we can grasp the significance of the Greek view of art, namely that the Greeks saw in the artistic nature of tragedy something that brought people to themselves, something that brought people out of their dreams in the world, out of their half-consciousness of the world, and bring them more and more to a full awareness of themselves. And one might say: in social terms, tragedy should certainly contribute to the great demand: Man, know thyself!
But when we turn from this extension of the artistic into the social to consider the position of the individual human being in social life, when we look back once more to the Orient from this perspective, then we also find in the mystery cults how what was sought in the healing, in the rebirth of the human being into a higher human being, actually means a strengthening of the sense of self. Out of the awareness that the general mood of the soul at that time did not live in a sense of self, that such a sense of self first had to be acquired, the mystery cults strove for the rebirth of the human being into selfhood. Thus, for this ancient social civilization, the experience of self was actually something that first had to be acquired. One of the social tasks was seen as bringing individual human beings to the birth of this sense of self, so that they could then become the leaders of their fellow human beings in social relationships. Only when one understands this will one also understand how a strong sense of community still lives in Plato's ideal state and how, in fact, only those who are entitled to fully develop their individuality through rebirth, which was to be achieved through the wisdom that was to be attained at that time, showing that humanity at that time was not yet aware that individuality had to be taken into account in the fullest sense.
What grew out of such a social life in Asia then transplanted itself to Europe, amalgamated with Christianity, entered the Middle Ages, and even lived on there for a very long time. But it lived on in the way that resulted from the fact that the people who flocked in from the masses of the north and central Europe into this now southern culture, which was still inherited from Asia, already had a strong sense of self by nature. These peoples were faced with the great historical task of transforming what was still a subdued sense of self in Oriental people into full self-awareness, into a full sense of self. The brilliant culture of the Greeks still had “Know thyself!” as a human ideal of knowledge and society. The peoples who entered the Middle Ages from the north brought this sense of self with them as the organization of their humanity. It was given to them by nature. Even though they lived in communities, they nevertheless strove everywhere to incorporate into their ego what they absorbed in terms of knowledge and social relations. But this actually brought the contrast between community life and individual life to the fore in history. This contrast only emerged in the course of history, and, I would say, through the influence of human institutions.
As the sense of self entered human development in this way, it had to connect with something else with which it has an organic connection. If we look back once more at what Oriental-Greek culture still had in common with Plato's thinking, we will have to recognize very strongly, from our present-day perspective, how this entire culture and civilization was actually built on slavery, on the lack of freedom of large masses of people. Much has been said from various points of view about the significance of slavery in ancient times, and if one wants to appreciate it properly, one will naturally find much that is meaningful in it. But what is still relevant to our life today is precisely what I said has actually been given little consideration. For community life and also for social life, which emerged from the mysteries, for which the Greeks still regarded their art as an impulse for development, the full significance of human labor within the social order had not yet been discovered. Therefore, one had to eliminate this human labor, so to speak, when speaking of the ideal image of man.
When one characterizes the Oriental-Greek human being, how he carries his dignity within himself, how he works his way up through his dignity, one characterizes something that actually built itself up above the masses of people who now performed the work. This mass lived as a mere appendage to the social organism that developed within a humanity that had not incorporated work into its essence because it regarded work and the people who performed it as something natural. Humanity began, in a sense, where the work had already been done. At a higher level, in a higher spiritual sense, humans experienced what is expressed in animality: in animality, what constitutes food and what otherwise belongs to the social order is natural; animals do not calculate, they do what they do from within their being, but some orientation of work is not necessary for animals. If there are apparent exceptions, these must be viewed in such a way that they actually confirm the general rule. We can therefore say that as Oriental culture spread to Europe and became increasingly immersed in the demands of individuality, it also became immersed in the necessity of incorporating human work into the social order. It is simply impossible, once human individuality has fully awakened, to exclude work from the social order.
But this became the great social problem — one that did not actually exist in Greece — over which countless battles were fought in Rome. For it was instinctively felt that only by incorporating work into the social order could human beings live out their full individuality. This, however, changed the entire social structure of humanity. It presents a different face in civilized Europe compared to civilized Asia. Only when we look at the development of individuality in Europe will we understand something of what has been rightly emphasized so often when characterizing the origins of the social hardships of our time.
It is rightly pointed out that the specific culture of social order in our time actually only began with the advent of modern technology and the division of labor. It is also pointed out that something like modern capitalism, for example, is nothing more than a result of the division of labor. What the teachings of Western modern civilization reveal in this regard about the characteristics of the division of labor and its consequences in the social hardships of our time is extremely significant. But the impartial observer must, where such a thing is said, rightly said in a one-sided manner, nevertheless look, say, at ancient Egypt, at ancient Babylonia, and point out that, for example, in ancient Babylonia, as well as in ancient Egypt, cities of enormous size existed, that what was achieved there was also achieved only through the division of labor. Just as I was able to point out yesterday that a kind of socialism already existed in China in the 11th century, but that what we see as its external form is not important, I must now point out that the division of labor, which is rightly regarded in modern times as the fundamental problem in social hardship, also existed in earlier epochs of human development, and that it was under its influence that the Oriental social orders became possible, which then sent their after-effects over to Europe. In Europe, this division of labor, after being less prevalent at first, later became apparent. I would like to say that the division of labor itself is a repetition of something that also existed in earlier times; but within Oriental cultures it existed under the sign of the not yet awakened ego, while the modern division of labor, which is brought about by technology, encounters a humanity that now wants to fully develop its ego, so that the same thing means something completely different in different ages.
Therefore, for the Oriental social order, the primary, the first goal was to allow people to grow out of social bondage, out of community life; if people wanted to advance to a higher spiritual life, they had to find their ego. The European human being of later times had this individuality, and now had to integrate it into the social order. He had to take exactly the opposite path to that taken in the Orient.
Everywhere in Europe we find traces of how difficult it is for people to integrate their ego into the social order, to integrate their ego into the social order, whereas once upon a time the social order was such that people wanted to rescue their ego from it, so to speak. This difficulty can still be encountered today in all its details as a fundamental social evil.
When I had to give lectures to workers several times a few years ago, it became apparent that this difficulty of integrating the ego into the social order as a whole was alive in people's souls. People cannot find the way from a strongly developed sense of self into the social order. And when one tried again and again to show, for example, a proletarian population what this way should be like, how it should be different from the ways that are often pointed out today by socialist or communist agitators, one could experience that very strange views emerged in subsequent discussions. They may have seemed trivial, but the trivial is no longer trivial when it is a driving force in the lives of countless people. I once tried to talk about social issues in a workers' community. A man came up and immediately introduced himself as a cobbler. Of course, it can be particularly pleasant to hear what such a person thinks; but in this case, what he could not think was much more significant than what he did think. For first he explained, in stark contrast to my views, how he imagined the social order to be, then he pointed out once again that he was a simple cobbler, and that therefore, as he emphasized, he could not be a registrar in the social order he had designed. But in the background of his remarks it was quite clear that he could be a minister! This shows the lack of orientation when the question arises: How should the ego, strengthened within intellectual life, fit into a social order?
And at another workers' meeting — I am giving examples, but they could be multiplied indefinitely — someone said: Yes, we are not striving to become foremen, we are not striving to obtain a leading position in the factory, we want to remain what we are, simple workers; but as such we want to have our full rights. — As one-sidedly justified as such a statement may be, there is basically no interest in social organization as such, but only in what the particularly strongly developed ego is as such.
I am well aware that many people today will not admit, out of their own consciousness, that it is precisely this discrepancy between the ego experience and the social order that is the root of many of our social, indeed almost all of our social needs and shortcomings. But anyone who looks at life with open eyes will have to admit that we have only managed to develop a sense of self, but cannot connect it with a real insight into human beings themselves. We say to ourselves “I,” but we do not know how to apply this “I” to a fully comprehended and fully willing human being.
This can be experienced again when views formed from the present are confronted with what is considered necessary for the healing of human beings from a spiritual scientific perspective. A personality who is involved in contemporary educational life once said something very remarkable to me during a visit to a Waldorf school. I showed this person around myself, drew their attention to our teaching method, to the social significance of our teaching method, and pointed out in particular how, with such a healthy teaching method, intellectual and spiritual education must be combined with physical education, how those who want to educate and teach must above all know how this or that affects the ascending or descending forces of the human organism, the human body, how certain memory exercises or neglect of memory manifest themselves in physical symptoms in later life, how physical ailments can gradually be improved by simply treating the soul life, how the teacher must, to a certain extent, understand the connection between the physical, soul, and spiritual nature in the healthy and sick state of the human being. And I was told that in that case the teacher would have to be a doctor!
Yes, to a certain extent, it should actually be strived for that this could be the case. For when we look at our social order with the difficulty of incorporating the ego into it, we are reminded again of what I have already noted today for two cultural territories: for the Orient, where the physician was at the same time the teacher and leader of the people, and for Greece, where I have pointed out that art had an educational influence in a certain sense. The art of the physician was connected with every striving of the spirit because at that time, even if only with an instinctive insight, people were viewed as a whole in physical, mental, and spiritual terms, and because in the healing that was sought for the soul, one wanted to allow forces to work that would then provide insights for the healing of the human being as a whole.
People said to themselves: I must actually heal people by bringing them to true spirituality. To do this, I must apply forces within a more normal life that are healing forces. If I understand these forces thoroughly and can follow them to their ultimate conclusion, then such knowledge shows me what I must apply when a person is ill. By observing healthy people, I learn about the forces I must apply when I have a sick person before me. The sick person simply has a stronger deviation of their organization in one direction or another than is already the case in normal life. If I know how to bring the normal person to health, then I also know how to treat the sick person; if I know which drink, which essence gives me this or that insight into connections with nature, if I know how natural products work in terms of knowledge, then I also know how these will work on the sick person if I apply them more strongly.
We again have what was sought in the ancient Orient in intimate community as the art of healing and as education and as development toward spirituality in general, which played a major role more or less in a spiritual filtrate within Greek artistic life. There, the aim is to heal the soul through art, and if one approaches the matter with such insights, one can still sense in the use of the word catharsis for tragedy how it referred to something related, because the same word was used for the ancient mysteries, for the complete purification of the human being to a new life. But we are also reminded of how, even among the older Greek physicians, knowledge and medicine were sisters, belonged together, and how, more elevated in the spiritual realm, in education, but also in general popular culture, one saw something that was related to medicine, something that, in a sense, stood out from medicine.
We must look at such phenomena from a bygone era if we want to gain the right inner soul power to look at social orders in our time to look at the whole human being, so that when we encounter our fellow human beings, we not only develop a strong sense of self, but also combine this with a feeling for the whole human being in body, soul, and spirit. If we are able to do this through spiritual scientific development, then the mood of the soul that emerges from this will enable us to find the means and ways to place the whole human being, but also all human beings, into the social order, that is, to conquer the work for the social order in the sense that is in any case presented as a necessity by historical development. But this is what we are still struggling with today: integrating work into the social order in the right way.
However, work is often seen as something that goes into the product of labor, crystallizes in it, so to speak, and actually gives it its value. But if you look more closely, you will notice that it is not only important that a person works at all, that he or she contributes the powers of his or her physical organism to the social order, but that the essential factor in price and value formation is how work can be integrated into social life as a whole. It is entirely conceivable that a person performs work that is essentially uneconomical within the social order. A person may be hard-working and may also believe that they are entitled to remuneration for their work; but if their work is part of a deficient social organism, then the work often does more harm than good. And from this point of view, one should look at many things that are actually worthless and yet strenuous work within the social organism. Let us just consider how much of our literature has to be printed, how much work is involved in producing the paper, printing, and so on, and how much of it is then pulped, except for a small remainder: work has been done that, I would say, has been wasted. And when one considers how, during the murderous war of recent years, enormous amounts of work have been wasted, one gradually comes to the conclusion that work as such cannot claim any immediate value, but that work derives its value from the way in which it is integrated into social life.
But what our age suffers from most is precisely this lack of a basic social understanding of how to integrate work into the social organism in such a way that, in a sense, everything a person does is actually done for his fellow human beings. But we must first achieve this by learning to truly integrate our ego into the human community. Only by gaining a true understanding of other people, so that what other people need becomes our own experience at the same time, only by living our way into the egos of other people with our own ego, will we find the way to those new social communities that are not a given of nature but must be found from within the human ego.
All our social demands, however, spring entirely from the ego. Human beings feel what they lack within the social order. But what we must find is an understanding of what human coexistence really means in terms of body, soul, and spirit. This must actually be able to give birth to a social order from the ego.
The great struggle that takes place within the division of labor, in a different way than these struggles have ever taken place under the influence of human egoism, is what lives as the root cause of all our social deficiencies. Today we establish communities of production; we enter into them in such a way that what such a community means in the social organism is not the decisive factor for us, but rather that our ego is the decisive factor, in an understandable way. There is no need here to lecture or otherwise rant about human egoism. What is to be understood is that it is justified in a certain way. For if we did not have this sense of self, we would not have progressed to human freedom and dignity. It is only because we have attained this sense of self that great spiritual progress has been made. But this sense of self must find its way to compassion.
There is much talk today about the need to overcome individualism once again. That cannot be the issue, but rather the discovery of society within human beings themselves. The Oriental had to find the human being in society. We must find society in the human being. We can only do this if we expand our soul life in all directions.
I have therefore tried to depict a scene at the end of one of my mystery dramas that shows how a person struggles through to the inner experience of experiencing within themselves the differentiations in humanity. Out there are the differentiations between people. In the social order, we must be differentiated; we must each have our own profession. But inwardly, if we find the right bridge between human beings, we can relive everything that is differentiated outside, the social world, we can relive every single profession within ourselves. If this social order opens up within us, if we find the possibility of experiencing social reality within ourselves, then we will be able to go the opposite way: from the I to the social order. But this also means that everything — today we can point to work; in the next few days we will also look at capital — that is bound to the individual human being can be integrated into human society. In cooperatives, in the formation of syndicates, in the formation of trusts, in trade unions, everywhere we feel the need to find the way from the ego to community. But that is precisely the great struggle of the present: that what lives in our environment could really take root in us.
There was — as has already been pointed out — a time not so long ago, we need only go back to the 13th century or so, when people were connected to the products of their labor, a time when every key, every lock that was made gave pleasure because something of one's own essence was poured into it. There was still something of the old social order imprinted on the product. People still lived in harmony with the social order without the fully awakened ego. Since then, this ego has reached its full height and strength within technology. Today, even when working in the spiritual realm, people often feel extremely alienated from the products of their labor. What we accomplish in the outside world should be deeply rooted within ourselves and able to connect with our ego. But that will only be the case if we develop our soul life in all its aspects, as has been described here in recent days. For when we develop our soul life in this way, our interest in everything around us is reawakened.
One can find many people of the purely intellectual age who find their profession uninteresting. Perhaps it has become so. A time must come again when every detail of life becomes interesting. If it was interesting in the past because of what it was as an object, it will become interesting in the future because we will be able to know how everything we do fits into the social order of humanity. Whereas in the past we looked at the product, we will now look at the people who need the product of our labor. Whereas in the past the product was loved, human love and human brotherhood will be able to arise in the developed soul in such a way that people will be able to know why they are in their position.
But this must take root in the soul before we can come to an understanding of the individual social shortcomings of our time. From this point of view, we must also see how Europe is still fighting its battle for the individuality of humanity in the face of what still radiates from Asia from its spiritual culture, and which originated from completely different foundations than those that exist today, from foundations that were rooted in human souls but had not yet awakened to full individuality.
Thus, the present does not only live between individuality and community in abstract terms, as is often the case, but as something that permeates and pervades the human soul, something that places every individual human being today in the position of a fighter for his or her own self. We are only just beginning to find the relationship between the human self and the social community. And this is the source of the shortcomings of the times, which I therefore do not need to list in particular.
If one understands this psychological basis, this spiritual foundation, then one will see in the right light many things that confront us today in the social order as demands, as hardships, as misery. We must have the courage to fight our way through to this correct light. Only then will it become clear whether the pessimism expressed in a particularly radical form by Herman Grimm himself is justified, whether it is justified to say that only forces of decline remain within our European civilization, that one can only be pessimistic, that one must even set a date for general suicide.
Yes, the question is whether everything that was to be overcome in Europe in terms of Asian peculiarities has already been overcome, so that Europe, after finding itself, can also gain understanding towards the East from the center of world development. From this point of view, we must consider whether we should look at things as Herman Grimm does, or whether we can also think that humanity, through the development of what lies dormant in its soul, has the possibility of determining the day on which understanding will come – that it is not the death of this European civilization that awaits us, but a new birth.
Whether and to what extent this is possible will be outlined in the next lectures.