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Inner Impulses of Evolution, The Mexican Mysteries, The Knights Templar
GA 171

23 September 1916, Dornach

4. The Rise of Spiritualism. The Need for the Science of the Spirit

As our friends who are present for the meeting of the Building Association have not heard the recent lectures held here, I will not continue today with the subject that has now occupied us for some time. Instead, I will digress and speak during these days of things that can contribute to a wider understanding of what has already been presented but that can also be understood to some extent by itself. I want to touch quite briefly upon a leading thought that has been brought forward. It is, indeed, somewhat comprehensible from the whole character of spiritual science, but it is deepened when one adds to one's understanding the facts that have been presented in our recent studies. This thought can be expressed as follows. Human history can only be considered in its true reality when one learns to know the individual forms of the actuating spiritual powers that stand behind it, just as one can only get to know nature when one knows in its true form what works and lives behind sense perceptions.

We have frequently emphasized that the science of the spirit is related to what is commonly called science today much in the following way. Modern science, which has been pursued by mankind—rightly and for good reasons—for three or four centuries, resembles a description of single letters that are printed or written on a sheet of paper. At best, it resembles the phonetic or grammatical rules by which these letters are grouped into words or united to form sentences. What we call the laws of nature can be compared with phonetic or grammatical rules. Thus, if we were to examine a printed or written page and say that we can see first a stroke upwards to the right, a stroke going down to the left and so on, and then describe the other letters and perhaps even the rules pertaining to phonetics or grammar, this way of relating ourselves to a printed or written page would resemble what is correctly called science today. But if we were to do no more than observe in this way, our relation to the printed or written page would be completely inadequate because we can also read. Here, we pass on from mere observation and description of what is on the page to the meaning of the words. We can only learn to know this meaning when we advance from describing what meets the eye to what our faculties—our mind and its power—can make of it. By these means, we unite ourselves with the spirit that is ruling and working within these little beings that we call letters.

In contrast to ordinary science, spiritual science seeks to read the facts of the world, not merely to describe what is seen. When we have learned to do so, both the facts of nature and history, inasmuch as they first show themselves to us in forms that we can describe in movements or inner laws, are, figuratively speaking, like letters that can be read. In this domain the meaning of existence is revealed, that is, the meaning of life and all human activity insofar as the revelation is necessary to man. We also seek in this way the meaning of historical evolution and the concrete forces that stand behind it, conjuring it out of itself, as it were, just as a writer conjures forth from his thoughts what we afterward read from the dead characters set down on the written or printed page.

Now, we have tried to study the fundamental meaning of this modern age, which we describe as the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. We know that it begins approximately in the period that is also described by external history as the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times. With the exception perhaps of its very last centuries, but including the fourteenth and perhaps part of the fifteenth, we look upon this period of the Middle Ages as belonging to the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, calling it the Greco-Latin in accordance with the fundamental character of its spiritual and material life. It begins in the eighth century before the event of the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we consider the evolution of humanity only in the way that ordinary history does—this, too, has often been spoken of here and elsewhere—we then easily arrive at the idea that human evolution, to the extent that it can be spoken of at all, has always consisted of man as we know him today and has always progressed more or less in the same way. When one looks back, one imagines that one sees historical evolution in such a way that the human being remains unchanged and just about the same. Such a view does not hold good for a real spiritual observation of history, as we know. The truth is that humanity changes considerably as time passes. The man of the tenth or twelfth centuries of the Christian era differed more radically from the man of the present time than is believed today when people are so little inclined to look into mankind's evolution. If one considers the whole configuration of the social life of the soul, the way of thinking and the very manner of life, then this difference becomes manifest not only among the educated in whom problems of world conception, science and knowledge play a part, but is also seen in the simplest, most primitive men. Although the world knows little of it, the simplest farmer today is, in his whole configuration of soul, an essentially different being inwardly from the man of the eighth, ninth and tenth Christian centuries.

Again, we can say of the modern age also, which, as it has evolved from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, bears essentially the character of the present, that it completed the first small segment of its course approximately in the middle of the nineteenth century. As we have often mentioned, this is an important point in time. I have frequently drawn attention to a saying that is used incessantly, yet is completely false when understood in the way it is usually meant. Nature, it is said, knows no leaps. In reality, however, we see how life makes leaps everywhere. It really only progresses through leaps. Speaking in the Goethean sense, it is a leap when, through metamorphosis, the leaf of a plant develops from the root, the flower petal again from the leaf and the organs of the fruit from the petal. It is, however, conveniently prejudicial to believe that human history proceeds without leaps. Such is not the case. Human history advances in great undulating waves that do not simply follow the one upon the other. Rather, at certain times what comes later places itself abruptly beside the earlier. Men, however, are not accustomed to observe things accurately or it would strike them that in the sphere of evolution powerful forces are to be observed that by means of breaks and periods, with wave-like depressions and elevations, bring evolution forward.

One could say that the conclusion of a particular evolutionary process was reached in the year 1840, that is, in the middle of the nineteenth century. In the period from the fifteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, humanity was evolving quite distinct faculties that were not present in the same way in an earlier period. One is entirely mistaken if one believes, for instance, that the Copernican world conception or the art of printing could just as well have appeared in human evolution in an earlier century than the one in which they did. The progress of human evolution is just as organic as individual human development. Just as the child of twelve or thirteen lacks the capacity to do things in the world that might be done by a man or woman of thirty five, just as faculties must evolve in the life of an individual in accord with his age, it is also the same with humanity. The special faculties that came to the fore in Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler and later in the scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, did not formerly exist. In fact, they correspond to a particular period of human evolution that falls within those centuries. The Greeks or Romans could not have looked at the world similarly because the faculties for doing so were simply not in existence in their time. The individual human would not be perfected if he did not gradually evolve faculties suited to each period of life; neither would humanity become complete in its way if faculties, whose foundations already exist in man's general nature, did not gradually emerge. That these faculties develop, that mankind gradually puts forth what lies within its being is the fundamental fact of human evolution.

Now, what is the nature of these special faculties that evolved in man from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries? They are mainly the forces making possible an intellectual grasp of the world through reason. Nowadays, people on the whole believe that the Ptolemaic world conception belonged to the Middle Ages. Then came the Copernican. We believe we have made wonderful progress. Those in the Middle Ages were really quite foolish to accept anything so imperfect as the Ptolemaic world conception and now we, at last, have the true view.

As a matter of fact, those people think but little in accord with reality who are not willing to admit that when we are as far removed in time from Copernicus as Copernicus was from Ptolemy, men will again have a different concept of the heavens. The development of humanity is in constant flux and by that time, the Copernican system will be regarded just as the Ptolemaic system was regarded by the Copernicans. Even though it gives the impression today of being pure nonsense when one says another world conception, which will differ as much from the Copernican as the Copernican from the Ptolemaic, will replace the Copernican world conception in future, this truth is nevertheless quite evident to those who have an inner comprehension of what lives and weaves in the growth of humanity. The special method of applying merely the intellect to natural phenomena in an external way, which has created the natural science of the last three or four centuries, represents the faculty that belongs to those centuries. It is clear to those who know how humanity advances that mankind was actually ripe from the middle of the nineteenth century on for the gradual development of other faculties. But man must increasingly take his own affairs in hand. More than in any previous age he is given the task today of doing something toward adding fresh faculties to those gained in the last three or four centuries. Why have these faculties arisen that can keenly, penetratingly and logically master the outer surface of phenomena so that they can then be expressed in natural laws? For what purpose have these faculties appeared that penetrate so little below the surface of things, yet observe so meticulously and scientifically all that lies on the surface? They have appeared because only by their means can man go through a certain stage of his development.

In earlier ages man had other faculties. When we go back in historical evolution, we find that the further we go the more possible it was for man to look into the spiritual world. But the faculties he then had were not such that he could use them in freedom. They were more or less involuntary. The force enabling him to reach a certain knowledge came over man in earlier ages somewhat in the way in which the desire for sleep overtakes a man. It was, however, a force that entered the spiritual world. In order for man to take a step forward toward achieving the faculty of making free decisions and developing freedom, he had to be separated from the forces that, in earlier times, brought him nearer the spiritual world but also allowed him less freedom. Man had to pass through a period of development in which he was shut off as by a veil or sheath from the spiritual world so that he might become freer. To be sure, this development is still far from complete but a first stage reached its conclusion in the middle of the nineteenth century. Those who know something of the spiritual life behind the sensory life recognize that since that time it is a growing necessity for other forces to be added to those of observation and knowledge based on mere intellect. These other forces slumber in the human soul and must be developed, even as the forces have evolved that have brought humanity to achieve the great advances of the last three or four centuries.

Thus, it is for the sake of freedom that humanity has gone through the intellectual development of the last three or four centuries. This intellectual development has led to a conception of the world that is materialistic in a far-reaching sense. It is a materialistic conception that is still in full force wherever a conception of the world penetrates extensively or intensively into world affairs. However much it may be said in scientific circles that materialism has already receded, those who imagine it to have withdrawn often do not have the least idea how deeply and firmly they themselves are still held in materialistic concepts. The materialistic outlook, which is in its way admirable, has emerged in the last three or four centuries. It is not to be criticized because man has need of it, but it can, however, never advance beyond a grasp of the dead and lifeless. Were the intellectual conception of the world alone to hold sway in human earthly evolution, man would only understand the dead and lifeless. All understanding of life and the living, to say nothing of the spiritual, would be lost. The lifeless alone can be the object of the kind of scientific study that has made such magnificent progress in the last three or four centuries. Those individuals, however, who know what is necessary for humanity have gradually become fewer during this time. They understand why it is that since the middle of the nineteenth century a certain longing has arisen, as if through some inner process in man, to know something about the spiritual worlds. The peculiar thing is that this longing took a form that was in harmony with the materialistic feeling of the age. Man wanted to learn to know the spirit in a materialistic way, since habits are lost far less rapidly than longings. It was along materialistic lines that man wished to find the spirit, and this materialistic knowledge of the spirit was often fostered and generously bestowed even by those who really know what is necessary for humanity. Hence there arose the various materialistic branches of science that set out to prove that spiritual activity lies behind the sense world. All that has been set going in order to arrive at knowledge of the spiritual through the hypnotic element, the element of suggestion, and even through spiritism or spiritualism, as it is called, is nothing but an attempt to research the spirit by materialistic means.

Humanity had become accustomed to recognize as true only what had been verified by means of investigation in a laboratory or clinic. Now, in the same way, through external operations following precisely the pattern of the natural scientific method, a method was elaborated that should give manifest proof of the spirit. Important results have undoubtedly been attained on this path. In addition, of course, there has been a good deal of charlatanism and swindling. Indeed, we know that certain learned men and scientists who must be taken seriously have devoted themselves to these matters because they have felt it necessary to show man, who must otherwise fall prey to materialism, that a spiritual world exists, surrounding us just as does what we see with our eyes and grasp with our hands. So, in the course of human evolution after the middle of the nineteenth century, we have these efforts to make men understand that there is a spiritual world around us just as there is a world that we perceive with our senses.

We have spoken many times of the value of knowledge that is obtained by dulling the forces of mind and soul that are right for our age, so that man is made into an instrument in a mediumistic way for letting all sorts of spiritual realities and facts enter the sense world. As I say, we have repeatedly spoken of the worth—or lack of it—of these methods. Today I want to make clear what meaning it had for historical evolution for men to wish to kill off and cripple just what it is right for them to possess in this present time; that is, full conscious insight into the spiritual world, and, turning from this, to become an instrument through which what is really around us spiritually emerges in the physical world. It corresponds to a deep necessity in historical evolution because conscious thinking, through what it had to become in the last three or four hundred years, had been one sided in its development. Thought had become attenuated and consequently also powerless because it had to stop short at the surface of things in order to create human freedom. But for this reason thought was quite unable to penetrate below the surface.

It was the intention to drive out thought and to guide the human soul back to its primitive constitution, in this way meeting the difficulty of the thinking that had become powerless in the new age and could no longer find strength to penetrate into the spiritual world. As a result, something arose that is far more widespread than the ordinary person imagines, that is, the search for the spirit along materialistic paths. With the expulsion of conscious knowledge in which, regarding the spiritual world, they had lost confidence, men wished to dip down into the spiritual world through a subconscious knowledge and a lowering of consciousness. There were always, however, other persons who did not enter into this phenomenon of the time merely instinctively as did the ordinary scientists and most spiritists or spiritualists, but who knew, nevertheless, what was going on. Such persons have always existed. They had great expectations of the movement just described. In general, one can say that those persons who have preserved an exact knowledge of the spiritual world during the last three or four centuries, and even up to today, fall into different groups. There are those who expected nothing from such a materialistic way of research into the spiritual world; but there are also those who hoped that from it men would come to the conviction that a spiritual world does exist in our environment. Nevertheless, none of this group was sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to see why this approach must be in vain.

Those students of spiritual science who expected nothing from this materialistic approach had good reasons for this, which have been justified by the consequences that have arisen from this entrance—rather, this hoped for entrance—into the spiritual world. Take all that has come about on this path, go through all that has come to light from the most primitive beginnings of amateur mediums and mediumistic seances to the subtlest things that certain scholars have brought about in this sphere—go through all this and you will find that by far the greatest part of what has happened consists in the fact that experiences have been gathered of which those through whom the experiences were gained said they had received them from the spirits of the dead. Far and away the greater number of the experiences were described as emanating from the spirits of men who had died. Little is to be found that has not been described as originating in this way. This was certainly a great surprise to those acquainted with spiritual knowledge who had looked on this development with good will. That the mediums should say that what they brought to light was obtained from the spirits of the dead was something that must have caused the greatest surprise because it was the last thing one would expect when one really considered the evolution of humanity. Something quite different would have been expected.

What was to be expected was that by these means a knowledge would come about of the spiritual world that, at the present time, surrounds us while we are alive. That is what one might have expected to find by making experiments, for example, as to how one man affects another, how the men of the present are linked together by secret threads invisible to ordinary science, how in one soul things arise that originate from quite another soul. In reality, a network of spiritual connections is drawn from soul to soul. Inasmuch as we stand within the world—if, for instance, we are standing here, then we do not merely see the light, the surroundings, people as they are externally and physically, but inasmuch as we are in the world, spiritual threads or currents pass every moment from soul to soul in the most varied manner. One gets nowhere if one speaks in general terms of some sort of connection between souls that is distinguishable by the senses. The solution is to be found by thinking of individual threads or streams between all the different souls. We are actually surrounded by a spiritual world just as we are by a physical one. That this should emerge is what might have been expected, but little indeed has come out concerning this. Throughout the sixty or seventy years during which attempts have been made to enter the spiritual world by materialistic paths, least of all has been learned about the living connections linking men with one another. The mediumistic manifestations and revelations have always referred to the spirits of the departed. Nor, in truth, could anything else happen by this method. Why? What, then, had actually been happening through this attempt to enter the spiritual world?

As a matter of fact, nothing had been achieved other than the knowledge of what comes to light if one expels the best qualities of the new age from human consciousness and leads man back to earlier times, to subconscious conditions of soul. The remains of this subconscious condition that had carried over into the new age were now laid bare. It was this that was revealed. Just consider, then, that a quite definite consciousness had been prepared and developed in the last three centuries. This consciousness had veiled the spiritual world and by so doing had taken away the power of direct connection with it. But nothing had been done toward developing new forces for new connections with the spiritual world. Nothing had come out but the old connections, which went in the direction of that to which they had been linked earlier. They did not unite with what was living in the contemporary environment but with death, with the lifeless. This was so because the direction of man's evolution in the last three or four centuries and more has so determined the character of his soul that it is really particularly adapted for the knowledge of the dead and lifeless. Here in the material world, through the kind of knowledge that belongs to modern times, one learns about the lifeless. Through the forces that one draws up from the deep underground of the soul, one does not know about the living but the dead. Thus, all these experiments did not open up a path to the living men of the spiritual, but to what is dead, to what one finds as dead in the spiritual world.

What is the nature of this dead element? It is not human beings, that is to say, the souls who, speaking spiritually, are our contemporaries. So, if we take such an experiment as has been described, undertaken in 1870, let us say, it would not, through laying bare the subconscious soul forces, have given a connection with the living present. In fact, it would not have made a connection with the living souls of 1870, but only with what had remained behind from these living, progressing souls—in other words, with the loosened remnants that were gradually disintegrating in earthly existence but that were still active. To be sure, the mediums always interpreted things in such a way that they claimed relationship to the dead who were spiritually still living. That was, however, a misinterpretation. In reality, it was not a matter of the souls as they then were, but of what they had been in ages past, or, respectively, what they had become after these remnants had been long ago loosened from the souls. Recollect how I have explained what Goethe represents in the Lemurs scene and you will know that much of what is released from the soul at death continues to exist. It was only with what is really dead and does not live on with the living soul that one could connect oneself with the spiritual world through that materials [materialistic] pathway.

If, through contemporary science, one reached a knowledge of the material, the lifeless, the dead, so also through this spiritual longing that had to be satisfied along materialistic paths one reached nothing but a knowledge of the dead though, to be sure, it was a knowledge of the super-sensible. Contemporary materialistic science found only the external dead. This apparently spiritual but, from their methods, actually materialistic science found the super-sensible dead. From this one could learn something immensely significant, that in the middle of the nineteenth century an age had closed; that humanity needed new forces of development if it would enter the truly living; that for a period of time only those forces had been brought to their zenith that lead to the dead, lead in all fields to the lifeless and to knowledge and worship of the lifeless.

One only gives such things their rightful place if one does not merely let them work on the soul abstractly and intellectually, but when one receives them in their deep moral significance and lets them make a sort of moral impression on the soul. Indeed, we are shown that although these intellectual powers with which man has made such splendid progress have brought him to a certain summit of attainment. Yet, they are only fitted for approaching the lifeless. The content of human soul life could gradually only be directed to what is dead. To him who can perceive the course of man's evolution, it is unquestionably clear how the foremost currents of modern thought lead more or less directly to a cult and worship of the lifeless; the working that is felt in respect of the outer material natural order where such wonderful progress has been made is but a cult and worship of the dead. Why are people so gripped by the last cantos of Hamerling's Homunculus? Because, after Hamerling has shown how modern mankind is really hastening into a sort of homunculus era, he shows what it signifies for man, in respect of the great cosmic mysteries, to try to lift himself above gravitation through purely mechanical forces. His last canto shows us the dirigible, the Zeppelin before it existed, and all that was still in the future. At the same time, he makes us aware of what is linked with this extreme mechanizing, which is to say, the killing, the homunculizing, of life in the development of human civilization.

Spiritual knowledge, however, has never died out; it is always safeguarded somewhere, and there are individuals in every age who are able to obtain it. It was saved even through the period in which it counted for least, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, being preserved like a fine thread. Those of whom I spoke as holding no expectations from the materialistic path into the spiritual world perceived something else as well. They were of the opinion that our modern way of feeling and thinking, as it has developed in the last centuries, can be further trained and developed so that out of clear-headed materialistic methods a knowledge then can develop gradually that which can even work in a sufficiently penetrating way to get under the surface of things and into the spirit. That is what the real method of spiritual science ought to be—to enter into the spiritual world along the same path that man has entered into nature during the last three or four centuries. All that is necessary is a further development of the scientific habits that mankind has evolved in this period. The point is that in a corresponding way, through a real exertion and effort, avoiding indolence, man has to develop further the thinking habits already evolved.

But now it may be asked why there are so many who, in spite of knowing something of the spiritual world, have remained silent concerning it. It must be repeatedly emphasized that spiritual knowledge was always there. Although it had to be developed in different ways in different ages, it has always existed. Why, then, have so many people been afraid to impart this spiritual knowledge? It has been disseminated in our circle because the recognition of the need to do so outweighs everything. In fact, however, only certain portions of spiritual knowledge can be imparted, as you know, and that only on quite definite grounds. You see, spiritual knowledge was also in existence in another and more unconscious or subconscious form before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then, man was connected with the spiritual world in a more instinctive way than is possible for him without injury today. Moreover, a great portion of mankind was omitted because the way to the spiritual world was only open to those who received fitting preparation. These individuals were prepared in a way that would not occur to those who speak of a preparation for science consisting of intellectual knowledge.

Today men are of the opinion that the moral qualities of one who is to receive instruction are of secondary importance and that knowledge does not depend on moral qualities. In ancient times, this was absolutely different. Then, when knowledge was communicated through the mysteries, it was imparted only to those who had undergone a special and strict moral discipline. Nothing beyond at most mathematical knowledge, with which one can do but little harm, or literary knowledge could be reached without undergoing strict moral discipline. Things were only imparted to those deemed to be fitted for them after they had undergone a certain severe moral test. First came the training toward virtue and then the communication of wisdom. Training in virtue and, in particular, the training of moral courage was an absolute necessity and it was held to be of paramount importance. Owing to lack of time, I cannot enlarge upon this today, but there was a conviction that knowledge can only benefit the world when what can be done by a man who knows, is done only by one who is good. However improbable it seems to people who look on earlier ages as barbaric and think that nowadays we have made such wonderful progress—so wonderful, in fact, that thousands are bathed in blood every week—in those earlier ages there was a conviction that no one should be allowed to make use of knowledge in what they did until he had undergone the strictest moral discipline. Those who had not were to live merely instinctively, led by those who had undergone the moral training and discipline.

The modern age is not adapted for directly applying such a principle. Just imagine how such a principle might be realized today when everyone says what he knows as soon as possible—or even has it published—and no one can prevent it. It would be illusory to think that anything, social institution or whatever, could stop it. Today is the day of publicity. What, then, must replace this older principle of only allowing men who had undergone moral discipline to attain Knowledge? It must be replaced with the assurance that the imparted knowledge itself must contain a certain force that brings forth good through itself, actually and really to bring forth of itself what is good.

The entire spiritual scientific movement must aim at achieving this. All knowledge entering the world through the science of the spirit must be so ordered that it engenders the good through itself and its own force. You will say that the efforts that have been made in modern times with the treasures of knowledge inherent in the science of the spirit have not yet completely realized this goal. No, because everything has to work its way through its various hindrances. The hidden feeling of the good in spiritual science has, however, been the reason that it has been fought not only with logic but also hatred. You will ask, “But do not all reasonable people really desire the good?” As it is generally understood nowadays, one could say, “Yes, all reasoning people desire the good.” But what really counts is not that someone thinks he would like the good or that he desires it, but that he wills it, that he absolutely will have it. That is the point. If one considers the achievements of modern civilization from the point of view of their moral defects, those moral defects that work in the lifeless, one will find that the world needs a wisdom that, along with being wisdom, also causes good. Materialistic science, however, is indifferent to good and evil. It uses what it creates from matter just as well for good as for evil, serving one just as willingly as the other.

Here, again, we have a point where, if we look at the world as a whole and its course of development, we can perhaps see the necessity for the science of the spirit. It is not enough to shut ourselves away in a little circle and form a world conception. The smallest circles are surrounded on every side by the great network of human evolution. Let us look at the manifest results of European civilization in the last three years. If we do not follow an ostrich policy but with truly throbbing hearts enter lovingly into our surroundings, we shall see these results and grasp what they are bringing us. Because the one or other of us is protected from what rages against Europe today is no reason for turning away from the terrible state into which modern civilization has been hurled. It is there, as present fact.

It may be useful at this point to comment on a new publication. A book, good of its kind, has lately been written that endeavors to judge from the standpoint of human feeling and moral perception the problems that have agitated the world during the last two years. It is a good book, recently published, that tries to show with a certain all embracing survey how man can escape from the evil network of blood and hate in which modern civilization finds itself. It was written by a Chinese author whom I mentioned to some of our friends four or five years ago as an important personality when his first book on European conditions was published. This new book by Ku Hung Ming, a highly cultured Chinese, is good and contains much that is objective. It reveals a man who avoids the mistakes that many make; a man who stands aloof from these errors.

Many people have opinions today; many give vent to one or another opinion about the conditions of our age. The greater part of what is presented, however, is not said in order to give expression to what people really think but to deafen themselves to what actually exists. We see streams of hatred flow over the world. Why are they set going? Why is this or that said? Do you imagine that those who say, “The Pope should excommunicate a whole nation,” and energetically demand it, think that they have really reached this conclusion from objective events? Do you believe that these people possess the calm of objective knowledge? They say it to deafen themselves so as not to have to admit to themselves what should be admitted. A great part of what is said today is intended to close one's ears. Some people will not admit to themselves what they really ought to admit. They say one thing or another merely to avoid saying what they ought to say.

This Chinese, Ku Hung Ming, does not proceed in this way. He says, “When one sees what has developed in Europe, what has happened there and the forces that are at work, one can do nothing but admit that things had to come about as they have. In its one sided cultivation the materialism that developed in the nineteenth century was bound to lead to these consequences and it is bound to lead even further, ending in the final downfall of European culture.” Ku Hung Ming is quite convinced that European culture must go under if Europeans refuse to become like the Chinese and if Chinese conditions do not spread over Europe. The only salvation for European culture, so he says, is for Europeans to become Chinese, that is, become Chinese in their souls. Much of what he says is deeply impressive. One should not take it lightly that a wise man of today can find no way out for European culture other than finally merging it all—everything in it that has led it ad absurdum—in good Chinese principles. I will not elaborate Ku Hung Ming's ideas on the methods for making Europe Chinese. Of course, we should see at once that we cannot become Chinese or return to the position of Chinese culture, but if there were no other way out than the one Ku Hung Ming sees, then that would be better than to continue on the path that European culture has taken. It would definitely be better. It would be better to become Chinese than to proceed further on the course that materialistic civilization has pursued thus far, because disintegration would be inevitable. Do not believe, however, that it can be prevented by any of the old means and methods.

As a matter of fact, spiritual science has always been somewhat in agreement with the opinion of Ku Hung Ming—not regarding Chinese civilization but rather the first part of his statement. It therefore fosters, as its great ideal, drawing knowledge from the spiritual world that leads back into it, and that also can make men good through its own force; that is, a knowledge working morally through its own force and engendering moral impulses. So, as scientists of the spirit our answer would not be, like Ku Hung Ming's, to “become Chinese,” but rather to seek by paths of spiritual science to bring about the fructification of European culture because that is actually the only way it can be brought about. This striving toward new sources of human knowledge and activity is absolutely necessary for European humanity. The bitterest tears could be shed over much that meets one today when a book such as that of Ku Hung Ming is read, for these times of ours are more grave than many believe. There are many things in human life that separate man from man, and it is from this separation of souls that all the frightful conditions we are experiencing come. This separation will only be overcome through a knowledge that conceives of the human being beyond all divisiveness, through a knowledge that is for every single human being. All those divisions upon which men build their feelings today are actually only valid here in the physical world. When one sees the sympathy and antipathy poured out today, and when one sees that they come only from the unspiritual, then in all this outpouring of sympathy and antipathy one also recognizes the denial of the spirit.

All racial hatred, for instance, is really also a fight against the spirit. Because this age of ours is so strongly inclined to fight against the spirit, it therefore possesses this talent for racial hatred. Here is one of the deepest secrets of our present spiritual culture; the only way out is through the living grasp of the spirit.

Just think how, the moment we fall asleep and our ego and astral body leave behind our physical and etheric bodies, we are in a world where all that leads to sympathy and antipathy simply does not exist. In the moment that follows falling asleep we are united with those whom we look upon from the consciousness of our time with the deepest antipathy. We must pass through their souls in the realm of interpenetrability. We can rage as we will and hurl tirades of hatred against this man or that, but as soon as we fall asleep and enter the realm where all interpenetrates, we must pass through the souls of those we hate. The facts concerning such actual realities must now be made known. What I have just said is elementary, but if one enters more and more into the knowledge of actual reality, then the very entering possesses the force to create the impulse of the good. One only learns to know the real significance of hatred and unfounded antipathy in the world when one sees their effects in the spiritual world. He who knows what hate is in the spiritual world ceases to hate lest he put himself straight into the service of certain evil powers.

Since a larger number of friends than usual is gathered here for the meeting of the Building Association, I especially wished to speak about these earnest matters today. Those who have heard my last lectures will be able to connect what has now been said with what we studied before. Even if it has been no more than a digression, it can nevertheless throw light on many impulses that are being enacted in the world historical evolution of the present time.

Vierter Vortrag

Mit Rücksicht darauf, daß anläßlich der Generalversammlung des Johannesbau-Vereins Freunde anwesend sind, welche die letzten hier gehaltenen Vorträge nicht gehört haben, will ich nicht unmittelbar heute fortsetzen mit dem Thema, das jetzt schon durch eine längere Zeit uns beschäftigt hat. Ich will vielmehr in diesen Tagen Dinge besprechen, allerdings episodisch, die beitragen können zu weiterem Verständnisse des in den letzten Wochen hier Vorgebrachten, die aber aus sich selbst heraus, wenigstens bis zu einem gewissen Grade, wiederum verständlich sein können. Nur kurz will ich skizzieren einen Hauptgedanken, der vorgebracht worden ist, und der ja aus dem ganzen Charakter unserer Geisteswissenschaft bis zu einem gewissen Grade verständlich ist. Nur wird er eben vertieft, wenn man zu seinem Verständnisse noch hinzunimmt die Tatsache, die wir in unseren verschiedenen letzten Betrachtungen anführen konnten. Es ist der Gedanke, daß alles dasjenige, was menschliche Geschichte ist, nur dann in seiner wahren Wirklichkeit betrachtet werden kann, wenn man hinter dieser menschlichen Geschichte die treibenden spirituellen Mächte kennenlernt in ihrer individuellen Gestalt, ebenso wie man ja die Natur nur kennenlernen kann, wenn man dasjenige, was wirkt und lebt hinter den Wahrnehmungen der Sinne, in seiner echten Gestalt kennenlernt. Wir haben ja nun schon öfter betont, daß Geisteswissenschaft sich zu dem, was man heute oftmals Wissenschaft nennt und womit man alles Wissenschaftliche umfassen will, so verhält, daß man sagen kann: Die heutige Wissenschaft, die Wissenschaft, die seit drei bis vier Jahrhunderten mit Recht und aus guten Gründen von der Menschheit getrieben wird, diese Wissenschaft gleicht der Beschreibung der einzelnen Buchstaben, die, sagen wir, auf einem Blatte gedruckt oder geschrieben sind; höchstens noch dem, was die grammatikalischen Regeln sind oder die Lautregeln, nach denen sich diese Buchstaben zu Worten gruppieren oder zu Sätzen zusammenfügen. Alles, was man Naturgesetze nennt, gleicht so den lautlichen oder den grammatikalischen Regeln. Wenn man also beginnen würde, anschauend zu beschreiben eine bedruckte oder beschriebene Seite, wenn man beschreiben würde: Da sehe ich zunächst etwas, einen Strich, einen Strich nach rechts oben gehend, einen Strich nach links unten gehend, und dann den nächsten Buchstaben beschreiben würde und höchstens noch die Regeln, wie die Sache der Lautlehre, der Grammatik angehören würde, so gleicht ein solches Verhalten zu einer beschriebenen oder bedruckten Seite dem, was man heute, und zwar für heute mit Recht, die Wissenschaft nennt. Aber unser Verhalten zu einer solchen beschriebenen oder bedruckten Seite wäre durchaus nicht der Sache angemessen, wenn wir nur stehen blieben bei einer solchen Anschauung, wie sie eben charakterisiert worden ist. Wir lesen und schreiten vor von dem bloßen Anschauen und Beschreiben desjenigen, was wir doch eigentlich einzig und allein von der bedruckten Seite vor uns haben, zu dem Sinn der Sache, den wir eben nur kennenlernen können, wenn wir vom Beschreiben des Augenscheines zu dem fortschreiten, was wir vermögen mit der beschriebenen oder bedruckten Seite anzufangen, wenn wir uns mit unserem eigenen Geiste und seinen Kräften in eine Beziehung setzen können durch dasjenige, was da bedruckt oder geschrieben ist, zu dem, von dem das ausgeht, was bedruckt oder geschrieben ist: zu dem Geiste, der in diesen kleinen Wesen, die wir als Druckbuchstaben kennen, waltet. So sucht Geisteswissenschaft, im Gegensatze zu der gewöhnlichen Wissenschaft, zu lesen, nicht bloß das Geschaute zu beschreiben, sondern zu lesen in den Tatsachen der Welt. Denn ebenso, wie sie uns zunächst in ihren Formen, die wir beschreiben können, in ihren Bewegungen, in ihrer inneren Gesetzmäßigkeit entgegentreten, die Tatsachen der Natur und die Tatsachen des geschichtlichen Werdens, so sind uns zugleich - in übertragenem Sinne natürlich ist das gemeint — diese Tatsachen der Natur und der Geschichte gewissermaßen Lettern, Buchstaben, die wir lesen können, wenn wir auf diesem Gebiete lesen lernen, aus denen sich uns enthüllt der Sinn des Daseins, der Sinn des Lebens, der Sinn aller menschlichen Tätigkeit, soweit dies den Menschen notwendig ist. So suchen wir den Sinn auch des geschichtlichen Werdens, suchen die konkreten Kräfte, die hinter diesem geschichtlichen Werden stehen und es gewissermaßen hervorzaubern aus sich, so wie der Schreiber aus seinen Gedanken hervorzaubert dasjenige, das wir nachher aus den toten Buchstaben der beschriebenen oder bedruckten Seiten lesen.

Nun haben wir versucht, gewissermaßen den Sinn der neueren Zeit, jener neueren Zeit, die wir als die fünfte nachatlantische irdische Kulturperiode bezeichnen, zu ergründen. Wir wissen, daß diese Zeit ungefähr aufgeht in dem Zeitalter, welches die äußere Geschichte auch bezeichnet als den Übergang des Mittelalters zur neueren Zeit. Das Mittelalter, vielleicht mit Ausnahme seiner allerletzten Jahrhunderte, bis in das 14., ja noch bis in einen Teil des 15. Jahrhunderts herauf, betrachten wir als zugehörig zum vierten nachatlantischen Kulturzeitraum, den wir als den griechisch-lateinischen bezeichnen nach dem eigentlichen Grundcharakter seines geistigen und materiellen Lebens; er beginnt etwa im 8. Jahrhundert vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha. Wenn wir nur in dem Stil, wie es die gewöhnliche Geschichte macht, die Entwickelung der Menschheit betrachten — auch das ist ja schon öfter hier und anderswo gesagt worden -, so kommt man sehr leicht zu der Meinung, daß in dieser menschlichen Entwickelung, solange man von ihr so sprechen kann, enthalten ist das, was wir als Jetzt-Menschen entwickeln, daß diese menschliche Entwickelung ziemlich gleich verlaufen ist. Man stellt sich vor, es ginge die geschichtliche Entwickelung, wenn man rückwärts blickt, nur so zurück, und der Mensch wäre sich ziemlich gleich geblieben. Vor einer wirklichen geistigen Geschichtsbetrachtung gilt das nicht, wie wir wissen; da gilt, daß in der Tat die Menschheit sehr, sehr sich verändert. Und mehr als man heute glaubt, wo man so wenig eigentlich übersehen will von der Menschheitsentwickelung, ist der Mensch des 10., 12. Jahrhunderts der christlichen Zeitrechnung ganz radikal verschieden von dem Menschen der gegenwärtigen Zeit. Wenn man die ganze Konfiguration des Seelenlebens, die ganze Konfiguration der menschlichen Gesinnungsweise und der Lebensart ins Auge faßt, dann zeigt sich diese Verschiedenheit nicht nur etwa auf den Höhen des Lebens, da, wo Weltanschauungsfragen oder wissenschaftliche Fragen, Erkenntnisfragen spielen, sondern diese Verschiedenheit zeigt sich zu den einfachsten, primitivsten Menschen heruntergehend. Der Bauer, der einfachste Bauer ist heute in seiner ganzen Seelenkonfiguration, wenn die Welt auch nicht viel davon weiß, innerlich ein wesentlich anderes Wesen als der Mensch des 8.,9., _ 10. christlichen Jahrhunderts. Und wiederum können wir sagen, daß dasjenige Zeitalter, das im wesentlichen den Charakter der Gegenwart trägt, wie es so heraufkommt vom 15.,16. Jahrhundert an, seinen ersten kleineren Abschnitt vollendet hat ungefähr in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts ist ja tatsächlich, wie wir auch schon öfter angeführt haben, ein ganz wichtiger Zeitabschnitt.

Ich habe es ja schon öfter auch angedeutet, daß ein Ausspruch, der immer wieder und wiederum getan wird, zu den falschesten Aussprüchen gehört, wenn man ihn in der Art faßt, wie er gewöhnlich gefaßt wird: In der Natur oder im Leben, so sagt man, geschehen keine Sprünge. In Wahrheit ist es so, daß überall zu bemerken ist, wie das wirkliche Leben überall Sprünge macht, sich nur durch Sprünge in Wahrheit fortentwickelt. Ein Sprung ist es, wenn von der Wurzel durch Metamorphose — im Goetheschen Sinne gesprochen — das Blatt sich entwickelt, aus dem Blatt wiederum das Blumenblatt, aus dem Blumenblatt die Fruchtorgane in der Pflanze. Und so ist es auch ein Vorurteil, allerdings ein bequemes Vorurteil, zu glauben, daß die menschliche Geschichte so ohne Sprünge weitergeht. Es ist nicht der Fall. Die menschliche Geschichte schreitet fort, gewissermaßen deutlich Wellentäler und Wellenberge machend, und nicht einfach so sukzessive das eine an das andere reihend; sondern in gewissen Zeiten stellt sich schroff als etwas anderes das Spätere neben das Vorhergehende hin. Die Menschen sind nur nicht geneigt, die Dinge so genau anzusehen, daß ihnen auffallen würde, wie auf dem Grunde des Werdens waltende Mächte zu schauen sind, die in dieser Weise durch Abschnitte, wellenberg-, wellentalartig dieses Werden vorwärtsbringen.

Was einen gewissen Abschluß erlangt hat im Jahre 1840, könnte man sagen, also in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, das ist, daß in dem Zeitraume vom 15. bis in die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts die Menschheit ganz bestimmte Fähigkeiten entwickelt hat, Fähigkeiten, die in der früheren Zeit nicht in derselben Art vorhanden waren. Man geht völlig in die Irre, wenn man meint, daß, sagen wir, die kopernikanische Weltanschauung oder die Buchdruckerkunst in einem früheren Jahrhunderte ebensogut hätte eintreten können in die menschliche Entwickelung wie in dem Jahrhunderte, in dem sie eingetreten sind. Das hängt davon ab, daß das Fortschreiten der menschlichen Entwickelung geradeso einem Organismus entspricht wie die einzelne menschliche Entwickelung; und so wie das Kind von zwölf, dreizehn Jahren nicht die Fähigkeiten hat, um in der Welt dasselbe zu tun wie der Mann oder die Frau von fünfunddreißig Jahren, so wie sich diese Fähigkeiten entwickeln müssen, und wie diese Fähigkeiten dem Lebensalter des menschlichen Individuums entsprechen, so ist es auch im ganzen Menschengeschlecht. Die Fähigkeiten, die besonders hervorgetreten sind in Kopernikus, in Galilei, in Kepler, dann wiederum in den Männern der Naturwissenschaft des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, diese Fähigkeiten waren vorher nicht da. Sie entsprechen eben einem Zeitalter der menschlichen Entwickelung, der menschlichen Gesamtentwickelung, das auf die angedeuteten Jahrhunderte fällt; und nicht in derselben Weise hätte der Grieche oder der Römer die Welt anschauen können, weil die Fähigkeiten einfach dazumal nicht da waren. Und so wie das einzelne menschliche Individuum nichts Vollständiges sein würde, wenn es nicht nach und nach die verschiedenen, den Lebensaltern entsprechenden Fähigkeiten herausgestalten würde, so wäre das Menschengeschlecht nichts in seiner Art Vollständiges, wenn nicht nach und nach diejenigen Fähigkeiten herauskämen, die eben in der allgemeinen Menschennatur veranlagt sind. Daß diese Fähigkeiten sich entwickeln, daß nach und nach das Menschengeschlecht aus sich dasjenige heraussetzt, was in seinem Wesen liegt, das ist ja im Grunde genommen menschliche Entwickelung.

Welcher Art sind nun diese besonderen Fähigkeiten, welche sich vom 15. bis ins 19. Jahrhundert innerhalb der Menschheit entwickelt haben? Es sind vorzugsweise die Kräfte des verständigen Auffassens der Welt, des, könnte man sagen, vernünftigen Auffassens der Welt. Man hat heute so allgemein den Glauben: Das Mittelalter hat die ptolemäische Weltanschauung, dann kam die kopernikanische Weltanschauung; wir haben es herrlich weit gebracht, denn dieses Mittelalter war im Grunde genommen doch ganz töricht, daß es so etwas Unvollkommenes hatte wie die ptolemäische Weltanschauung, und jetzt haben wir endlich das Richtige! — Diejenigen Menschen denken wenig der Wirklichkeit gemäß, die nicht zugeben wollen, daß, wenn wir einmal von Kopernikus uns ebensoweit entfernt haben werden in der Zeit, wie die Zeit des Kopernikus entfernt war von Ptolemäus, man über das Himmelsgewölbe wiederum anders denken wird. Nichts von dem, was kopernikanische Weltanschauung ist, wird dann anders angesehen werden, als die kopernikanische Weltanschauung die ptolemäische ansah; denn im steten Flusse ist das Werden des menschlichen Geschlechtes. Mag es auch heute noch ganz wahnsinnig erscheinen, wenn man sagt, daß etwas an die Stelle der kopernikanischen Weltanschauung treten wird, was sich von dieser ebenso unterscheidet wie die kopernikanische Weltanschauung von der ptolemäischen, es ist dies für denjenigen ganz klar, der innerlich erfaßt, was im Werden der Menschheit webt und lebt. Die besondere Art, so äußerlich nur den Verstand anzuwenden auf die Naturerscheinungen, wie er angewendet werden mußte, um die neuere Naturwissenschaft der letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderte zu erzeugen, das ist eben etwas, was einer Fähigkeit gerade dieser Jahrhunderte entspricht.

Für diejenigen nun, welche wissen, wie die Menschheitsgeschichte vorschreitet, ist es klar, daß eigentlich von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts an das Menschengeschlecht reif war, andere Fähigkeiten nach und nach zu entwickeln. Aber immer mehr und mehr muß die Menschheit ihre Angelegenheiten selbst in die Hand nehmen. So ist es, mehr als es jemals in einem Zeitalter früher der Fall war, der Menschheit heute in der Gegenwart überlassen, etwas zu tun, um weitere Fähigkeiten zu den in den letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderten errungenen hinzuzuerwerben. Warum sind denn die Fähigkeiten der letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderte gekommen, diese Fähigkeiten, welche scharfsinnig und eindringlich gewissermaßen die Oberfläche der Erscheinungen logisch beherrschen können, so daß sie sie in Naturgesetze prägen können? Warum sind denn diese Fähigkeiten gekommen, diese Fähigkeiten, die wenig unter die Oberfläche der Dinge dringen, aber sehr scharfsinnig gerade alles dasjenige wissenschaftlich anschauen, was an der Oberfläche der Dinge liegt? Diese Fähigkeiten sind aus dem Grunde gekommen, weil nur dadurch der Mensch eine gewisse Stufe, eine gewisse Etappe seines Werdens durchmachen kann.

Der Mensch hat früher andere Fähigkeiten gehabt. Wenn wir zurückgehen in der geschichtlichen Entwickelung, finden wir, daß, je weiter wir in die Vergangenheit zurückgehen, immer mehr und mehr der Mensch noch hineinblicken konnte in die geistige Welt. Aber diese Fähigkeiten waren nicht so, daß sie der Mensch frei handhaben konnte, sondern sie waren mehr oder weniger unfreiwillig im Menschen auftretend. So ähnlich, wie die Sehnsucht nach Schlaf über den Menschen kommt, so war ihm in früheren Zeiten die Kraft, dieses oder jenes zu erkennen, gekommen; aber diese Kraft, dieses oder jenes zu erkennen, die ging dafür hinein in die geistige Welt. Damit der Mensch eine Etappe vorwärtsschreiten konnte auf dem Gebiete der freien Entschlußfähigkeit, auf dem Gebiete der Entwickelung zur Freiheit, mußte er abgeschlossen werden von den Kräften, die ihn früher allerdings näher der geistigen Welt gebracht haben, aber ihn auch unfreier gehalten haben. Die Menschheit mußte eine Zeitlang durch eine Entwickelungsperiode durchgehen, in der sie gewissermaßen wie durch eine Hülle oder durch einen Schleier abgeschlossen war von der geistigen Welt, damit sie freier werden konnte. Allerdings ist diese Entwickelung noch lange nicht abgeschlossen, aber ihr erster Entwickelungsprozeß ist in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts abgeschlossen gewesen. Und seit jener Zeit — das wissen diejenigen, welche etwas vom geistigen Leben, das hinter dem sinnlichen ist, erkennen - ist es eine Notwendigkeit, und es wird immer mehr und mehr eine Notwendigkeit werden, daß zu den rein verstandesmäßigen Betrachtungs- und Erkenntniskräften hinzutreten andere Kräfte, die in der menschlichen Seele schlummern und die sich ebenso entwickeln müssen, wie sich die Kräfte entwickelt haben, welche die Menschheit zu den großen Fortschritten der letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderte gebracht haben.

Also um der Freiheit willen hat die Menschheit die verstandesmäßige Entwickelung der letzten drei, vier Jahrhunderte durchgemacht. Diese verstandesmäßige Entwickelung hat zu einer im weitgehenden Sinne so zu nennenden materialistischen Anschauung der Welt geführt, einer materialistischen Anschauung, die heute noch in vollem Schwunge ist überall da, wo Weltanschauung in ausgedehntem, in intensivem Maße in das Weltgeschehen eingreift. Wieviel man auch davon redet auf den wissenschaftlichen Gebieten, daß der Materialismus schon zurückgetreten sei, diejenigen, die ihn so zurückgetreten wähnen, die wissen oftmals gar nicht, wie tief sie noch in der materialistischen Anschauung stecken. Diese materialistische Anschauung, die in ihrer Art in großartiger Weise herausgekommen ist in den letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderten und die nicht kritisiert werden soll, weil die Menschheit sie auch braucht, diese materialistische Anschauung kann aber niemals weiterkommen als zu einem Verständnisse alles desjenigen, was tot ist, was unlebendig ist; und würde nur die verstandesmäßige Anschauung der Welt herrschend werden im Erdenwerden der Menschen, so würde man nur das Tote, das Leblose begreifen. Man würde alles Verständnis verlieren müssen für das Lebendige, geschweige denn für das Geistige. Das Tote nur kann Gegenstand sein einer solchen Betrachtung, wie wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis in ihrer grandiosen Ausgestaltung in ihrer Art in den letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderten sich zeigte.

Aber diejenigen Menschen —- und es waren ja immer weniger und weniger geworden gerade in den letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderten -, die wissen, was der Menschheit not tut, die konnten sich auch erklären, warum von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts an wie durch einen inneren Prozeß eine gewisse Sehnsucht entstand, von den geistigen Welten etwas zu wissen. Und das Eigentümliche ist: Die Sehnsucht, von den geistigen Welten zu wissen, zeigte sich so, daß sie angepaßt war der materialistischen Zeitgesinnung. Auf materialistische Weise wollte man den Geist kennenlernen. Denn dasjenige, was menschliche Angewohnheit ist, verliert sich viel weniger rasch als die Sehnsuchten nach diesem oder jenem. Also auf materialistische Weise wollte man den Geist erkennen. Und diese materialistische Geist-Erkenntnis wurde von denjenigen oftmals gefördert, ausgiebig gefördert, welche gerade wissen, was der Menschheit not tut. Aus diesem Grunde kamen die verschiedenen materialistischen Wissenszweige herauf, die zum Beweise dienen sollten, daß es hinter dem Sinnlichen ein wirkendes Geistiges gibt. Alles das, was angestellt worden ist, um durch das hypnotische, durch das Suggestionselement, ja durch den Spiritismus oder Spiritualismus, wie man es nennt, dahin zu kommen, daß es Geist in der Welt gibt, das ist ja nichts anderes als ein Versuch, mit den Mitteln des Materialismus den Geist zu erforschen. Die Menschheit hatte sich gewöhnt, das, was sie als wahr anerkannte, nur dann anzuerkennen, wenn es durch den Laboratoriumsversuch oder durch dieKlinik konstatiert wird. Nun wollte man auf dieselbe Weise durch äußere Hantierungen, ganz nach dem Muster der naturwissenschaftlichen Methode, eine Methode herausgestalten, die gewissermaßen den Geist handgreiflich erweisen sollte.

Es wurden allerdings auf diesem Wege wichtige Resultate erzielt, selbstverständlich neben unendlich vielem Scharlatanhaften, Schwindelhaften. Und man weiß ja, daß ernst zu nehmende Gelehrte, ernst zu nehmende Wissenschafter sich auf diese Dinge durchaus eingelassen haben, weil sie die Notwendigkeit empfanden, den Menschen, die sonst in Materialismus verfallen müßten, zu zeigen, daß es eine geistige Welt gibt, daß um uns herum die geistige Welt ebenso ist wie das, was wir mit Augen sehen und mit Händen greifen. Und darauf kam es im geschichtlichen Werden von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts an, den Menschen begreiflich zu machen, daß um uns herum eine geistige Welt ist, ebenso wie die Welt, die wir durch unsere Sinne wahrnehmen.

Wir haben öfter gesprochen über den Wert jenes Erkennens, das dadurch zustande kommt, daß die für unser Zeitalter vollgültige Erkenntniskraft und Seelenkraft beim Menschen herabgestimmt wird, so daß der Mensch gleichsam medienhaft zu einem Instrumente gemacht wird, um allerlei geistige Wirklichkeiten und geistige Tatsachen herein zu lassen in unsere sinnliche Welt. Wie gesagt, über den Wert oder Unwert dieser Methoden haben wir ja öfter gesprochen. Heute wollen wir uns klarmachen, welchen Sinn im geschichtlichen Werden es hatte, daß man gewissermaßen abtöten, ablähmen wollte das, was der Mensch heute haben soll: Bewußtsein, hineinzuschauen in die geistige Welt, vollbewußtes Hineinschauen; daß man das ablähmen wollte, um den Menschen zu einem Instrument zu machen, durch welches herauskommt in der physischen Welt das, was da um uns herum geistige Wirklichkeit ist. Es entspricht dies einer tiefen Notwendigkeit des geschichtlichen Werdens, denn es war das bewußte Denken gerade durch das, was es werden mußte in den letzten drei, vier Jahrhunderten, einseitig entwickelt. Es war gewissermaßen der Gedanke so dünn und dadurch auch so ohnmächtig geworden, weil er auf der Oberfläche der Dinge haften sollte zur Erzeugung der menschlichen Freiheit. Aber dadurch konnte er nicht untertauchen unter die Oberfläche der Dinge. Ausschaltung dieses Gedankens, Zurückführung der menschlichen Seelenverfassung zu der primitiven Seelenstimmung, das wollte man herbeiführen, um zu Hilfe zu kommen dem in der neueren Zeit ohnmächtig gewordenen Gedanken, der nicht mehr durch sich selber die Kraft finden konnte, hineinzutauchen in die geistige Welt. Und so entstand denn dasjenige, was viel verbreiteter ist, als der heutige Philister ahnt: das Suchen nach dem Geiste auf materialistische Weise. Mit Ausschluß des bewußten Erkennens, zu dem man das Vertrauen in bezug auf die geistige Welt verloren hatte, wollte man durch ein unterbewußtes Erkennen, durch Herabstimmung des bewußten Erkennens, in die geistige Welt untertauchen.

Es gab allerdings immer auch Menschen, die nicht bloß so instinktiv in eine solche Zeiterscheinung sich begaben wie die landläufigen Gelehrten oder die landläufigen Spiritisten oder Spiritualisten, sondern die schon wußten, um was es sich dabei handelt. Solche Menschen gibt es schon immer. Diese Menschen haben sich manches versprochen von dieser eben charakterisierten Bewegung. Im ganzen kann man sagen, daß diejenigen Menschen, welche auch für die letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderte und bis heute sich ein genaues Wissen von der geistigen Welt gerettet haben, in verschiedene Gruppen zerfallen: jene, die sich nichts versprochen haben von einem solchen materialistischen Weg zur Erforschung der geistigen Welt; aber auch solche gab es, die sich davon versprachen, daß die Menschen zunächst die Überzeugung gewinnen würden: Es gibt in unserer Umgebung eine geistige Welt. - Doch war niemand von den letzteren soweit unterrichtet, daß er hätte einsehen können, warum die ganze Sache vergeblich sein mußte.

Diejenigen unter den geisteswissenschaftlich Gebildeten, die sich von der ganzen Sache nichts versprochen haben, die hatten ihre guten Gründe. Und diese guten Gründe, die zeigten sich gerade an dem Erfolg, der aus diesem ganzen Eintritt, ich möchte sagen, Eintreten-Wollen in die geistige Welt herausgekommen ist. Wenn Sie all das nehmen, was zustande gekommen ist auf diesem Wege — gehen Sie all das durch, was da zutage getreten ist von den primitivsten Anfängen der dilettantischen Medien und dilettantischen medialen Sitzungen bis zu den subtilsten Dingen, welche gewisse Gelehrte auf diesem Felde zustande gebracht haben —, so werden Sie finden, daß der weitaus überwiegende Teil dessen, was auf diesem Wege zustande gekommen ist, darin besteht, daß auf diesem Wege Erfahrungen gesammelt worden sind, von denen jene, durch die sie gewonnen worden sind, sagten, sie hätten sie von den Geistern abgestorbener Menschen. Das weitaus meiste wurde bezeichnet als herrührend von den Geistern abgestorbener Menschen; nur weniges ist zu finden, was nicht so bezeichnet worden ist als herkommend von den Geistern abgestorbener Menschen. Das war allerdings eine große Überraschung für diejenigen geisteswissenschaftlich Wissenden, die mit einem gewissen Wohlwollen hingeschaut haben auf diese Entwickelung. Daß die Medien sagen würden, sie hätten das, was sie zutage förderten, von den Geistern verstorbener Menschen, das war dasjenige, was am meisten überraschen mußte; denn es war das Letzte, was man erwarten konnte, wenn man wirklich den Werdegang der Menschheit ins Auge faßte. Etwas ganz anderes hätte man erwarten sollen. Das, was man erwarten mußte, war dieses, daß auf diesem Wege zustande gekommen wäre ein Wissen von derjenigen geistigen Welt, die uns als Lebende umgibt, die uns als Lebenden gegenwärtig ist. Das hätte man erwarten müssen. Erwarten hätte man müssen, zu erfahren, wenn man auf diese Weise Experimente anstellt, wie ein Mensch auf den anderen wirkt, wie die Menschen der Gegenwart durch geheime, für die äußere Wissenschaft undurchschaubare Fäden miteinander verknüpft sind, wie in der einen Seele Dinge auftauchen, die von einer ganz anderen Seele herrühren. In der Tat, ein Netz geistiger Zusammenhänge zieht sich von Seele zu Seele. Und indem wir in der Welt drinnenstehen, ist es nicht bloß so, daß, wenn wir zum Beispiel hier stehen, wir hier das Licht sehen, die Umgebung, die Menschen sehen, wie sie äußerlich, ihrer Physis nach sind; sondern indem wir in der Welt drinnenstehen, gehen in jedem Augenblicke Fäden, geistige Fäden, geistige Ströme von der Seele A zu der Seele K, von der Seele K zu der Seele Z in der verschiedensten Weise. Und man kommt durchaus nicht aus, wenn man im allgemeinen von einem solchen gewissermaßen sinnlich unterschiedenen Zusammenhang spricht zwischen den Seelen, sondern man kommt nur dadurch zurecht, daß man an individuelle Fäden, individuelle Strömungen zwischen den einzelnen Seelen denkt. Wir sind wirklich umgeben von einer geistigen Welt ebenso wie von einer physischen. Daß dies herauskomme, das hätte man erwarten können. Und darüber ist am allerwenigsten herausgekommen. Durch die ganzen sechzig, siebzig Jahre, seit man versucht hat, auf materialistischem Wege in die geistige Welt hineinzukommen, durch diese ganze Zeit hindurch ist am wenigsten über die lebendigen Beziehungen der Menschen untereinander herausgekommen. Immer gingen sozusagen die Manifestationen, die Offenbarungen auf die Geister Verstorbener zurück. Auf diesem Wege konnte es auch nicht anders kommen. Denn warum? Was war denn eigentlich geschehen, indem man also versuchte, in die geistige Welt hineinzukommen?

Man hatte im Grunde genommen nichts anderes erlangt, als daß man erkannt hatte, was zum Vorschein kommt, wenn man gerade die besten Eigenschaften der neueren Zeit aus dem menschlichen Bewußtsein ausschaltet und den Menschen zurückführt auf frühere Zeiten, auf unterbewußte Seelenzustände. Das, was bis in die neuere Zeit herein von diesen unterbewußten Seelenzuständen geblieben war, das war jetzt bloßgelegt, das war herausgekommen. Denken Sie also, daß durch lange Zeiten hindurch sich vorbereitet und dann in den letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderten sich entwickelt hat ein ganz bestimmtes Bewußtsein, welches die geistige Welt zudeckte, und daß dadurch abgenommen hat die Fähigkeit eines unmittelbaren Zusammenhanges mit der geistigen Welt. Aber man hatte nichts getan, um neue Kräfte zu neuen Zusammenhängen mit der geistigen Welt zu entwickeln. Es waren also nur die alten herausgekommen. Diese alten, die gingen auf das, womit sie schon früher verbunden waren, auf das, was nicht das unmittelbar Lebendige in der gegenwärtigen Umgebung ist, sondern auf das Tote, auf die Toten, weil der Mensch dadurch, daß er sich im Sinne der drei bis vier letzten Jahrhunderte und noch weiter zurück entwickelt hat, seine ganze Seele so gestimmt hat, daß diese Seele eigentlich für das Tote, für die Erkenntnis des Toten besonders gebildet ist. Hier in der materiellen Welt erkennt man durch die Art der Erkenntnis der neueren Zeit das Tote. Durch die Kräfte, die man aus den tieferen Untergründen der Seele hervorholt, erkennt man auch nicht das Lebendige, sondern das Tote. So zeigte sich durch alle die Veranstaltungen nicht ein Gang zur Lebendigkeit des Geistigen, sondern ein Gang zu dem, was tot ist, nur natürlich dann zu demjenigen, was man in der geistigen Welt als Totes findet.

Und welcher Art ist dieses Tote? Dieses Tote ist nicht so, daß es die menschlichen Wesen sind, die unsere Zeitgenossen sind, das heißt die Seelen, die, geistig genommen, unsere Zeitgenossen sind. Wenn wir also ein so gemeintes Experiment, wie es charakterisiert worden ist, nehmen, sagen wir, das 1870 angestellt worden ist, so setzte man sich dadurch nicht mit der lebendigen Gegenwart in Beziehung durch dieBloßlegung der unterbewußten Seelenkräfte, also auch nicht zu den lebenden Seelen von 1870, sondern zu demjenigen, was geblieben war, also nur zu den Resten, die sich losgelöst hatten von der lebenden, fortwirkenden Seele, zu dem, was noch fortwirkte von Resten, die sich allmählich auflösen im irdischen Dasein. Uminterpretiert wurden die Dinge allerdings so, daß die Medien angaben, sie stünden im Verhältnis zu den gegenwärtig lebenden Toten. Das war aber nur uminterpretiert. In Wirklichkeit handelte es sich nicht um das, was die Seelen waren im entsprechenden Augenblicke, sondern um das, was sie vor Zeiten waren, beziehungsweise was aus dem, was sie vor Zeiten waren, geworden ist, nachdem es sich gerade losgelöst hatte von den Seelen. Wenn Sie sich erinnern, wie ich dasjenige erklärt habe, was Goethe in der Lemurenszene darstellt, so werden Sie wissen, daß vieles fortlebt von dem, was sich im Tode loslöst von der Seele. Und mit dem, also mit dem wirklich Toten, das nicht mit der lebendigen Seele fortlebt, konnte man sich in Beziehung setzen durch diesen materialistischen Gang in die geistige Welt hinein.

Erlangte man so durch die zeitgenössische äußere Wissenschaft eine Erkenntnis des Materiellen, das heißt des Toten, so erlangte man durch diese spirituelle Sehnsucht, die aber auf materialistischem Wege befriedigt werden sollte, auch nichts anderes als eine Erkenntnis des Übersinnlichen, aber Toten. Die zeitgenössische materialistische Wissenschaft fand nur das äußere Tote; diese scheinbar spirituelle, in Wirklichkeit aber, nach ihrer Methode, doch materialistische Wissenschaft fand das übersinnliche Tote. Aber an diesem übersinnlichen Toten konnte man etwas sehr Bedeutsames lernen, etwas ungeheuer Bedeutsames. Man konnte daran lernen, daß wirklich um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts ein Zeitalter abgeschlossen war, daß die Menschheit der Entwickelung neuer Kräfte bedarf, wenn sie eintreten will in das wirklich Lebendige; daß eine Zeitlang bloß Kräfte zu ihrem Höhepunkt gebracht worden waren, die nur zum Toten führen, auf allen Gebieten zum Toten führen, zur Erkenntnis, zur Anbetung des Toten führen.

Solche Dinge würdigt man nur dann vollkommen, wenn man sie nicht bloß in ihren abstrakten Erkenntniswerten auf die Seele wirken läßt, sondern wenn man sie in ihrer tief moralischen Bedeutung nimmt, wenn sie gewissermaßen einen moralischen Eindruck auf die Seele machen. Denn es zeigt sich uns ja doch, daß zwar das, worinnen es die moderne Menschheit so herrlich weit gebracht hat, diese Menschheit wirklich auf eine gewisse Höhe, zu der sie kommen sollte, geführt hat, daß aber alle diese Kräfte nur geeignet sind, zu dem Toten zu führen. Nach und nach würde der Inhalt des menschlichen Seelenlebens nur auf das Tote gerichtet sein können. Für den, der den Werdegang der Menschheit empfinden kann, ist es ohne weiteres klar, wie tonangebende Strömungen des neueren Empfindens mehr oder weniger sogar zu einem Kultus des Toten führen, zu einer Anbetung des Toten; denn das, was angebetet wird in bezug auf die äußere materielle Naturordnung, in der es so herrlich weit gebracht worden ist, das ist doch auch nur ein Kultus des Toten. Warum wird man nun so ergriffen von den letzten Gesängen von Hamerlings «Homunkulus»? Weil, nachdem Hamerling in seinem «Homunkulus» gezeigt hat, wie die moderne Menschheit wirklich zu einer Art Homunkeltum hinzielt, er zeigt, was es gegenüber den großen kosmischen Geheimnissen bedeutet, daß der Mensch sich durch rein mechanische Kräfte erheben will über Erdenschwere. Der letzte Gesang in Hamerlings «Homunkulus» zeigt uns in einer Zeit, als es noch keine Zeppeline gab, in einer Zeit, als das alles noch Zukunft war, schon den lenkbaren Luftballon; aber er macht uns zugleich aufmerksam, was in der menschlichen Kulturentwickelung mit dieser äußersten Mechanisierung, das heißt Abtötung, Homunkulusierung des Lebens verbunden ist.

Ausgestorben ist aber das geistige Wissen niemals; es wird immer doch da oder dort bewahrt. Einzelne Menschen gibt es immer in jedem Zeitalter, welche das geistige Wissen haben können. So wurde es auch durchgerettet durch die Zeit, in der das geistige Wissen am wenigsten tonangebend war: durch die Zeit vom 15. bis ins 19, Jahrhundert. Wie ein dünner Faden wurde es durchgerettet, dieses geistige Wissen. Und diejenigen, von denen ich Ihnen gesagt habe, daß sie sich nichts versprochen haben von dem materialistischen Weg in die geistige Welt hinein, waren der Ansicht, daß die neuere Art des Empfindens und Denkens, wie sie sich in den letzten Jahrhunderten entwickelt hat, fortgebildet und weiterentwickelt werden kann, so daß aus der scharfsinnigen materialistischen Wissenschaftsmethode allmählich sich ein Wissen ergibt, das eindringlich genug wirken kann, um unter die Oberfläche der Dinge in den Geist hineinzukommen. Und das soll die eigentliche geisteswissenschaftliche Methode sein: auf demselben Weg in die geistige Welt hineinzukommen, wie man seit drei bis vier Jahrhunderten in die Natur hineinkommt. Dazu handelt es sich nur darum, wirklich das weiterzuentwickeln, was sich die Menschheit an Wissensgewohnheiten in den letzten Jahrhunderten entwickelt hat, in entsprechender Weise und mit genug Anstrengung, mit Nicht-sich-zurückhalten-Lassen durch Denkbequemlichkeiten, das, was man so als Denkgewohnheiten entwickelt hat, weiterzuentwickeln. Darum handelt es sich.

Nun kann aber die Frage aufgeworfen werden: Warum gibt es denn so viele Menschen, welche, trotzdem sie etwas gewußt haben von der geistigen Welt, geschwiegen haben über dieses Wissen? — Denn das muß einmal immer wieder und wiederum betont werden: da war das geistige Wissen schon immer. Es muß sich in verschiedener Weise entwickeln in den verschiedenen Zeitaltern; aber da war es immer. Warum haben denn manche Leute eine solche Scheu, das geistige Wissen mitzuteilen? In unserem Kreise wird es mitgeteilt, weil die Einsicht in die Notwendigkeit des Mitteilens alles übrige überwiegt. Aber es können ja nur gewisse Teile dieses geistigen Wissens mitgeteilt werden, und dies aus einem ganz bestimmten Grunde. Sehen Sie, in einer anderen Form war ja das geistige Wissen, wenn auch mit einer unbewußteren oder unterbewußteren Art, auch vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha vorhanden. Der Mensch kam in mehr instinktiver Art in Zusammenhang mit der geistigen Welt, als er heute, zu seinem Heile, kommen kann. Und ein großer Teil der Menschheit wurde überhaupt nicht zugelassen. Es wurden nur diejenigen zugelassen, die man entsprechend vorbereiten konnte. Und wie bereitete man sie vor? Auf eine Weise bereitete man sie vor, an die man heute gar nicht so recht denkt, wenn man von Vorbereitung für Wissenschaft oder Erkenntnis spricht. Heute ist man der Ansicht, daß man sich um die moralischen Qualitäten desjenigen, den man zum Wissen zuläßt, eigentlich erst in zweiter Linie zu kümmern hat; jedenfalls ist man nicht der Ansicht, daß das Wissen als solches abhängt von den moralischen Qualitäten. Das war in der alten Zeit durchaus nicht der Fall in bezug auf die Mitteilung des Wissens. Niemandem teilte man in den alten Zeiten, in denen das Wissen durch Mysterien mitgeteilt worden ist, irgend etwas mit, was in Betracht kam an Wissen, der nicht durch entsprechende moralische Zucht strengster Art gegangen war. Über das höchstens mathematische Wissen, mit dem man nicht viel Unfug treiben kann, und über das literarische Wissen kam man ohne eine strenge moralische Zucht nicht hinaus. Denn es wurden den Leuten nur die Dinge mitgeteilt, die als ihnen entsprechend angesehen wurden, nachdem sie eine gewisse moralische Zucht durchgemacht hatten, eine strenge moralische Zucht. Voraus ging die Erziehung zum Guten; dann kam die Mitteilung der Weisheit. Und Conditio sine qua non war diese Erziehung zum Guten. Das wurde vor allen Dingen in erster Linie eingehalten: die Erziehung zum moralischen Mut. Denn man war überzeugt - ich kann das heute der Kürze der Zeit wegen nicht auseinandersetzen -, daß das Gedeihen in der Welt durch das Wissen nur dadurch herbeigeführt werden kann, wenn das, was ein wissender Mensch tun kann, von einem guten Menschen getan wird. Das war Überzeugung. Es war, so unwahrscheinlich es aussieht heute, wo man die alten Zeiten nur für barbarisch hält und von den neuen die Meinung hat, daß man es so herrlich weit gebracht hat - allerdings, so weit, daß man jetzt Tausende jede Woche in Blut tränkt -, in diesen alten Zeiten Überzeugung, daß man das Wissen in seiner Wirkung nur angewendet haben wollte von Leuten, die durch die strengste moralische Zucht gegangen waren. Die anderen sollten nur instinktiv handeln, unter der Anleitung derjenigen, welche durch moralische Zucht gegangen sind.

Die neuere Zeit taugt nicht dazu, einen solchen Grundsatz ohne weiteres anzuwenden. Stellen Sie sich vor: Wie soll ein solcher Grundsatz heute in unserer Zeit verwirklicht werden, wo jeder so schnell wie möglich das, was er weiß, sagt oder gar drucken läßt, und wo man das nicht aufhalten kann? Man soll sich nur ja keinen Illusionen hingeben, daß in dieser Beziehung irgend etwas, irgendeine soziale Einrichtung Einhalt tun könnte! Heute gilt Öffentlichkeit. Was muß daher an die Stelle dieses alten Grundsatzes treten, nur den Menschen mit moralischer Zucht zum Wissen kommen zu lassen? An die Stelle dieses alten Grundsatzes muß der treten, daß das Wissen selber, das mitgeteilt wird, eine gewisse Kraft in sich habe, nämlich die Kraft, durch sich selber das Gute hervorzubringen, richtig durch sich selber das Gute hervorzubringen. Dahin muß sich alle geisteswissenschaftliche Bewegung richten. Gewissermaßen muß alles Wissen, das durch die Geisteswissenschaft in die Welt kommt, so geordnet werden, daß es durch sich selbst, durch seine eigene Kraft das Gute erzeugt. Sie werden sagen, die Versuche, die gemacht worden sind mit dem geisteswissenschaftlichen Lehrgut in der neueren Zeit, haben vielfach dieses Resultat nicht gezeitigt. Gewiß, noch nicht, weil alles sich durch seine verschiedenen Hindernisse hindurcharbeiten muß. Das geheime Fühlen des Guten in der Geisteswissenschaft ist es auch vielfach, welches bewirkt, daß diese Geisteswissenschaft nicht allein logisch bekämpft wird, sondern gehaßt wird. Nun werden Sie sagen: Ja, aber wollen denn nicht im Grunde genommen alle vernünftigen Menschen das Gute? — So wie man es heute vielfach auffaßt, könnte man sagen: Nun ja, alle vernünftigen Menschen wollen das Gute. Aber darauf kommt es nicht an, daß jemand meint, er wolle das Gute, oder er wünsche das Gute, sondern daß er es wirklich will; daß er es wahrhaftig will, darauf kommt es an. Wenn man die Errungenschaften der modernen Kultur gerade mit Bezug auf ihre moralischen Defekte in Betracht zieht, in bezug auf diejenigen moralischen Defekte, die sozusagen im Leblosen wirken, wird man finden, daß die Welt schon eine Weisheit braucht, welche, indem sie Weisheit ist, zugleich das Gute wirkt. Denn die materialistische Wissenschaft ist gleichgültig gegenüber Gut und Böse. Sie braucht das, was sie in die Materie hineinformt, ebensogut zum Bösen wie zum Guten; sie dient dem Bösen ganz gleich wie dem Guten.

Da haben wir wiederum einen solchen Punkt, wo man vielleicht, wenn man die Welt im Großen überblickt in ihrem Werdegang, die Notwendigkeit der Geisteswissenschaft schon einsehen kann. Es genügt nicht, daß man im engsten Kreise sich abschließt und sich eine Weltanschauung bildet aus dem engsten Kreise heraus; denn die engsten Kreise sind eingefaßt in das große Netz des menschlichen Werdens. Von allem übrigen abgesehen, sehen wir uns die Konsequenz der europäischen Kultur in den letzten drei Jahren an, sehen wir uns sie so an, wie wir sie ansehen werden, wenn wir nicht moralische Vogel-StraußPolitik betreiben, sondern wenn wir mit wirklichem, für alles in unserer Umgebung lebendigem, mit bebendem Herzen auffassen das, was sie uns bringt. Dadurch, daß wir, der eine oder andere, geschützt sind gegen das, was heute gegen Europa wütet, dadurch sollen wir uns keineswegs abwenden von dem Furchtbaren, in das die neuere Kultur hineingeschleudert worden ist; denn das ist da. Und eine Erscheinung darf doch bedacht werden.

Es ist in der letzten Zeit ein in seiner Art gutes Buch geschrieben worden, welches sich bemüht, die heute weltbewegenden Fragen, die seit zwei Jahren weltbewegenden Fragen auch vom Standpunkte des menschlichen Fühlens und des moralischen Empfindens zu beurteilen. Es ist ein Buch erschienen in der allerletzten Zeit, das gut ist, das mit einem gewissen umfassenden Blick zeigen will, wodurch man herauskommen kann aus dem Irrgewebe des Blutes und des Hasses, in dem die moderne Kultur sich befindet. Dieses Buch ist von jenem Chinesen geschrieben, auf den ich schon als auf eine wichtige Persönlichkeit eine Reihe unserer Freunde vor vier oder fünf Jahren hingewiesen habe, als sein erstes Buch über die europäischen Verhältnisse erschienen ist. Und das Buch, das jetzt erschienen ist von Ku Hung-Ming, dem feingebildeten Chinesen, dieses Buch ist gut, dieses Buch hat viel Objektives. Dieses Buch zeigt einen Menschen, der nicht in den Fehler verfällt, in den heute viele verfallen; dieses Buch zeigt einen Menschen, der von diesen Fehlern abseits steht. Heute haben viele Meinungen, heute äußern viele diese oder jene Meinung über unsere Zeitverhältnisse — der größte Teil desjenigen, was geäußert wird, ist nicht dazu da, um auszusagen das, was man wirklich meint, sondern um sich zu betäuben gegenüber dem, was wirklich ist. Wir sehen Ströme von Haß hinfluten über die Welt. Warum werden sie in die Welt gesetzt? Warum wird dies oder jenes gesagt? Denken Sie, daß diejenigen, die da sagen, der Papst solle zum Beispiel das Verdammungsurteil über ein ganzes Volk aussprechen, die das energisch fordern, die glauben, das wirklich aus irgendwelchen objektiven Ereignissen erkennen zu können — glauben Sie, die haben die Ruhe objektiver Erkenntnis? Das ist gesagt, um sich zu betäuben, gerade um sich das nicht zu gestehen, was man sich gestehen sollte. Ein großer Teil desjenigen, was heute gesagt wird, ist gesagt, um sich zu betäuben. Weil man sich das, was man sich eigentlich eingestehen sollte, nicht eingestehen will, so sagt man dies oder jenes, das nur hinweghelfen soll über dasjenige, was man sich nicht sagen will.

Nach dieser Methode geht jener Chinese Ku Hung-Ming nicht vor. Aber er sagt eines, Er sagt: Wenn man sieht, was sich in Europa entwickelt hat, was in Europa geschehen ist und welche Kräfte in Europa wirken, so kann man nicht anders, als sich sagen: Es hat so kommen müssen, wie es gekommen ist. Der Materialismus in seiner einseitigen Ausbildung, wie er im 19. Jahrhundert sich entwickelt hat, der mußte zu diesen Konsequenzen führen. Aber er muß noch weiter führen; er muß zum endlichen Untergange der europäischen Kultur führen. Und ganz überzeugt ist dieser Chinese Ku Hung-Ming, daß es zum Untergange der europäischen Kultur kommen müsse, wenn die Europäer sich nicht bequemen - so sagt er -, eigentlich so zu werden, wie die Chinesen sind; wenn nicht Chinesentum über Europa sich ausbreitet. Das einzige Heil der europäischen Kultur ist, daß die Europäer Chinesen werden, das heißt, in der Seele Chinesen werden. — Und vieles, was er sagt, ist tief eindringlich. Man sollte es nicht leicht nehmen, daß ein sehr weiser Mann der Gegenwart doch keinen anderen Ausweg für die europäische Kultur findet, als daß sie nun endlich all das, was in ihr selbst sich ad absurdum geführt hat, einlaufen läßt in das gute chinesische Prinzip. Ich will nicht im weiteren ausführen, wie sich Ku HungMing die Verchinesierung Europas denkt; denn ohne weiteres wird es ja für uns einzusehen sein, daß wir nicht Chinesen werden können, daß wir nicht auf den Standpunkt der Chinesenkultur zurückkommen können. Und wenn es keinen anderen Ausweg gäbe als den, den Ku HungMing sieht, dann wäre das noch immer der bessere Ausweg, als auf demselben Weg weiterzuschreiten, auf dem die europäische Kultur gegangen ist. Es wäre noch immer besser. Besser wäre es, Chinese zu werden, als auf dem Weg weiterzuschreiten, den die materialistische Kultur gegangen ist, denn unaufhaltsam würde dies sein. Man glaube nicht, daß dieses durch alte Mittel aufzuhalten ist.

Geisteswissenschaft ist im Grunde genommen immer ein wenig der Anschauung von Ku Hung-Ming gewesen, nur just in bezug auf das Chinesentum nicht, sondern in bezug auf den ersten Teil seines Satzes nur, und sie hegt daher als ihr großes Ideal, herauszuholen aus der geistigen Welt ein Wissen, das in diese geistige Welt hineinführt, aber zugleich durch seine eigene Kraft die Menschen gut machen kann, durch seine eigene Kraft moralisch wirkt, moralische Impulse erzeugt. So würde man als Geisteswissenschafter nicht antworten wie Ku HungMing: Werdet Chinesen! — sondern: Versuchet auf geisteswissenschaftlichem Wege diejenige Befruchtung der anderen Kultur herbeizuführen, die eben nur auf geisteswissenschaftlichem Wege herbeizuführen ist. — Aber dieses Hinstreben zu neuen Quellen menschlichen Wissens und Wirkens ist der Menschheit, ist der europäischen Menschheit notwendig, durchaus notwendig. Man möchte die bittersten Tränen vergießen, wenn man gegenüber vielem, was uns heute entgegentritt, gerade solch ein Buch liest wie das von Ku Hung-Ming; denn ernster, als viele glauben, sind diese unsere gegenwärtigen Zeiten. Und vieles ist unter den Menschen, das die Menschen trennt; und von der Trennung der Seelen kommt alles das, was wir an Furchtbarem erleben. Diese Trennung wird nur überwunden werden durch ein Wissen, das den Menschen jenseits aller Trennungen erfaßt, durch ein Wissen, das für jeden Menschen ist, weil diejenigen Trennungen, von denen die Menschen heute ihre Gefühle bilden, nur hier in der physischen Welt ihre Geltung haben, wirklich nur hier in der physischen Welt ihre Geltung haben. Wenn man sieht, was sich heute ergießt an Sympathie und Antipathie, und wenn man sieht, wie das, was sich in Sympathie und Antipathie ergießt, nur von dem Ungeistigen kommt, so sieht man in dem, was sich in Sympathie und Antipathie ergießt, zugleich die Verleugnung des Spirituellen.

Aller Völkerhaß zum Beispiel ist zu gleicher Zeit ein Kampf gegen den Geist. Und weil unsere Zeit so sehr geneigt ist, gegen den Geist zu kämpfen, hat diese unsere Zeit auch so viel Talent zum Völkerhaß. Dies ist eines der tiefsten Geheimnisse unserer gegenwärtigen geistigen Kultur. Daher aber auch kann es nur einen Ausweg geben durch das lebendige Ergreifen des Geistes.

Bedenken Sie nur, in dem Augenblicke, wo wir einschlafen, mit unserem Ich und unserem astralischen Leib unseren physischen Leib und unseren Ätherleib verlassen, in diesem Augenblicke sind wir in einer Welt, wo das alles nicht ist, was heute zur Sympathie und Antipathie führt; in diesem Augenblicke sind wir vereint, in diesem Augenblicke, der auf das Einschlafen folgt, sind wir vereinigt mit denjenigen, die wir aus unserem Zeitbewußtsein heraus mit tiefster Antipathie bedenken. Wir müssen durch ihre Seelen durchziehen im Reiche der Durchgänglichkeit. Wir können noch so schmettern und Tiraden des Hasses gegen den oder jenen schleudern - schlafen wir ein, sind wir im Schlafe, so müssen wir in der Region der Durchgänglichkeit durch die Seelen derjenigen ziehen, die wir hassen. Solche Erkenntnisse über das wahrhaft Wirkliche müssen erst unter die Menschen kommen. Das sind ja nur elementarische Dinge. Aber tritt man immer mehr und mehr ein in diese Erkenntnis des wahrhaft Wirklichen, dann hat dieses Eintreten schon die Kraft, die Impulse des Guten zu erzeugen. Denn was Haß, was unbegründete Antipathie in der Welt wirklich bedeuten, das lernt man erst kennen, wenn man deren Hinaufwirken in die geistige Welt durchschaut. Wer im Geistigen den Haß kennt, der legt ihn schon ab, es sei denn, daß er sich direkt in die Dienste gewisser böser Mächte begeben will.

Da durch die Gelegenheit der Johannesbauvereins-Versammlung eine größere Zahl der Freunde als sonst hier an diesem Orte beisammen sind, so wollte ich über diese ernsten Fragen gerade heute sprechen. Diejenigen, die meine letzten Vorträge gehört haben, werden auch das heute Besprochene einfügen können in das vorher Betrachtete, und es wird gewissermaßen, wenn es auch nur episodisch ist, dennoch aufklärend wirken können für manche Impulse, die in unserem weltgeschichtlichen Werden der Gegenwart sich abspielen.

Fourth Lecture

In consideration of the fact that friends who have not heard the last lectures given here are present at the general meeting of the Johannesbau Association, I do not wish to continue immediately today with the topic that has occupied us for some time now. Instead, I would like to discuss things in these days, albeit episodically, that can contribute to a further understanding of what has been presented here in recent weeks, but which can also be understood in themselves, at least to a certain extent. I would like to briefly outline a main idea that has been put forward and which is, to a certain extent, understandable from the whole character of our spiritual science. However, it is deepened when one adds to its understanding the fact that we have been able to mention in our various recent reflections. It is the idea that everything that constitutes human history can only be viewed in its true reality if one recognizes the driving spiritual forces behind this human history in their individual form, just as one can only know nature if one recognizes what is active and alive behind the perceptions of the senses in its true form. We have already emphasized several times that spiritual science is related to what is often called science today, and which is intended to encompass everything scientific, in such a way that one can say: Today's science, the science that has been pursued by humanity for three or four centuries with good reason and for good reasons, resembles the description of individual letters that are, say, printed or written on a sheet of paper; at most, it resembles the grammatical rules or phonetic rules according to which these letters are grouped into words or combined into sentences. Everything that is called natural law is thus similar to phonetic or grammatical rules. So if one were to begin to describe a printed or written page by looking at it, if one were to describe First I see something, a line going up to the right, a line going down to the left, and then I would describe the next letter and, at most, the rules of phonetics and grammar, then such behavior toward a written or printed page would resemble what we today, and rightly so, call science. But our behavior toward such a written or printed page would not be appropriate if we were to remain at the level of perception just described. We read and proceed from merely looking at and describing what we actually have before us on the printed page to the meaning of the matter, which we can only discover if we move on from describing what we see to what we are capable of doing with the written or printed page when we relate our own mind and its powers to what is written or printed there. what we can do with the written or printed page, when we can relate our own mind and its powers to what is printed or written, to that from which what is printed or written proceeds: to the mind that reigns in these little beings that we know as printed letters. Thus, in contrast to ordinary science, spiritual science seeks to read, not merely to describe what is seen, but to read in the facts of the world. For just as the facts of nature and the facts of historical development first appear to us in their forms, which we can describe, in their movements, in their inner laws, so too, in a figurative sense of course, these facts of nature and history are, as it were, letters, characters that we can read when we learn to read in this field, revealing to us the meaning of existence, the meaning of life, the meaning of all human activity, insofar as this is necessary for human beings. Thus we also seek the meaning of historical development, seek the concrete forces that stand behind this historical development and, in a sense, conjure it out of themselves, just as the writer conjures out of his thoughts that which we subsequently read from the dead letters of the written or printed pages.

Now we have attempted, as it were, to fathom the meaning of the newer time, that newer time which we designate as the fifth post-Atlantean earthly cultural period. We know that this time roughly coincides with the age which external history also designates as the transition from the Middle Ages to the newer time. We consider the Middle Ages, perhaps with the exception of its very last centuries, up to the 14th century and even into part of the 15th century, to belong to the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, which we call the Greek-Latin period because of the fundamental character of its spiritual and material life; it begins around the 8th century before the Mystery of Golgotha. If we look at the development of humanity in the way that ordinary history does — and this has already been said many times here and elsewhere — it is very easy to come to the conclusion that this human development, insofar as we can speak of it in this way, includes what we are developing as present-day human beings, and that this human development has proceeded in a fairly uniform manner. One imagines that, looking back, historical development has proceeded in this way, and that human beings have remained fairly much the same. As we know, this is not true from a genuine spiritual view of history; what is true is that humanity has in fact changed very, very much. And more than people believe today, when they want to overlook so much of human development, the human being of the 10th and 12th centuries of the Christian era is radically different from the human being of the present time. If we consider the entire configuration of the soul life, the entire configuration of the human mindset and way of life, then this difference is evident not only at the heights of life, where questions of worldview or scientific questions, questions of knowledge, play a role, but this difference is evident all the way down to the simplest, most primitive human beings. The farmer, the simplest farmer today, is in his whole soul configuration, even if the world does not know much about it, inwardly a fundamentally different being from the human being of the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries of the Christian era. And again, we can say that the age which essentially bears the character of the present, as it has emerged since the 15th and 16th centuries, completed its first minor phase around the middle of the 19th century. The middle of the 19th century is indeed, as we have often pointed out, a very important period.

I have often hinted that a statement that is repeated over and over again is one of the most false statements when it is understood in the way it is usually understood: In nature or in life, it is said, there are no leaps. In truth, it can be observed everywhere that real life makes leaps, that it only develops through leaps. It is a leap when, through metamorphosis—in Goethe's sense—the leaf develops from the root, the flower petal from the leaf, and the fruit organs in the plant from the flower petal. And so it is also a prejudice, albeit a convenient one, to believe that human history continues without leaps. This is not the case. Human history progresses, in a sense clearly forming wave troughs and wave crests, and not simply by successively stringing one thing after another; but at certain times, the later stands abruptly alongside the earlier as something different. People are simply not inclined to look at things so closely that they notice how, at the bottom of becoming, there are forces at work that drive this becoming forward in this way, through sections, like waves and troughs.

What reached a certain conclusion in 1840, one might say, that is, in the middle of the 19th century, is that in the period from the 15th to the middle of the 19th century, humanity developed very specific abilities, abilities that did not exist in the same way in earlier times. It is completely misleading to think that, say, the Copernican worldview or the art of printing could have entered human development in an earlier century just as well as in the century in which they did. This depends on the fact that the progress of human development corresponds to an organism just as much as the development of the individual human being; and just as a child of twelve or thirteen does not have the abilities to do the same things in the world as a man or woman of thirty-five, just as these abilities must develop and as these abilities correspond to the age of the human individual, so it is with the whole human race. The abilities that were particularly evident in Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and then again in the men of natural science in the 18th and 19th centuries, these abilities did not exist before. They correspond to an age of human development, of overall human development, which falls in the centuries indicated; and the Greeks or Romans could not have viewed the world in the same way, because the abilities simply did not exist at that time. And just as the individual human being would not be complete if he did not gradually develop the various abilities corresponding to the stages of life, so the human race would not be complete in its nature if the abilities that are inherent in general human nature did not gradually emerge. That these abilities develop, that the human race gradually brings out what lies within its nature, is, in essence, human development.

What, then, are these special abilities that developed within humanity from the 15th to the 19th century? They are primarily the powers of understanding the world, of what one might call a rational understanding of the world. Today, it is generally believed that the Middle Ages had the Ptolemaic worldview, then came the Copernican worldview; we have come a long way, because the Middle Ages were basically quite foolish to have something as imperfect as the Ptolemaic worldview, and now we finally have the right one! Those people who do not want to admit that, once we have moved as far away from Copernicus as Copernicus' time was from Ptolemy, we will think differently about the vault of heaven, are not thinking very realistically. Nothing that is part of the Copernican worldview will then be viewed any differently than the Copernican worldview viewed the Ptolemaic worldview; for the human race is in a constant state of flux. Even if it still seems completely insane today to say that something will replace the Copernican worldview that is as different from it as the Copernican worldview is from the Ptolemaic, this is quite clear to those who inwardly grasp what is weaving and living in the becoming of humanity. The particular way of applying the intellect to natural phenomena, as it had to be applied in order to produce the newer natural science of the last three or four centuries, is something that corresponds precisely to the capacity of these centuries.

For those who know how human history progresses, it is clear that from the middle of the 19th century onwards, the human race was actually ripe to gradually develop other abilities. But more and more, humanity must take matters into its own hands. Thus, more than ever before in any previous age, it is now up to humanity to do something to acquire further abilities in addition to those gained in the last three to four centuries. Why have the abilities of the last three to four centuries come about, these abilities which, in a sense, can logically master the surface of phenomena so astutely and penetratingly that they can shape them into natural laws? Why have these abilities come about, these abilities which penetrate little beneath the surface of things, but which view everything that lies on the surface of things very astutely and scientifically? These abilities have come about because only through them can human beings pass through a certain stage, a certain phase of their development.

Human beings used to have other abilities. If we go back in historical development, we find that the further back we go into the past, the more and more human beings were able to see into the spiritual world. But these abilities were not such that human beings could use them freely; rather, they arose more or less involuntarily in human beings. Just as the longing for sleep comes over human beings, so in earlier times the power to recognize this or that came over them; but this power to recognize this or that went into the spiritual world. In order for human beings to take a step forward in the realm of free decision-making, in the realm of development toward freedom, they had to be cut off from the forces that had previously brought them closer to the spiritual world, but had also kept them less free. Humanity had to go through a period of development in which it was, as it were, separated from the spiritual world by a shell or veil, so that it could become freer. This development is far from complete, but its first stage was completed in the middle of the 19th century. And since that time — as those who know something of spiritual life, behind the sensory world—it is a necessity, and it will become more and more necessary, that other powers, which lie dormant in the human soul and which must develop just as the powers that have brought humanity to the great advances of the last three to four centuries have developed, be added to the purely intellectual powers of observation and cognition.

So, for the sake of freedom, humanity has undergone the intellectual development of the last three or four centuries. This intellectual development has led to what can be called, in a broad sense, a materialistic view of the world, a materialistic view that is still in full swing today wherever worldview intervenes extensively and intensively in world events. No matter how much people in scientific circles talk about materialism having already receded, those who believe it has receded often do not realize how deeply they are still entrenched in the materialistic view. This materialistic view, which has emerged in a magnificent way over the last three or four centuries and should not be criticized, because humanity also needs it, can never progress beyond an understanding of everything that is dead, that is lifeless; and if only the intellectual view of the world were to prevail in the earthly existence of human beings, then one would only understand the dead, the lifeless. We would have to lose all understanding of the living, let alone the spiritual. Only the dead can be the object of such observation, as scientific knowledge has shown itself to be in its grandiose form over the last three to four centuries.

But those people — and there have been fewer and fewer of them, especially in the last three to four centuries — who know what humanity needs, were also able to explain why, from the middle of the 19th century onwards, a certain longing arose, as if through an inner process, to know something about the spiritual worlds. And the peculiar thing is that the longing to know about the spiritual worlds manifested itself in such a way that it was adapted to the materialistic spirit of the times. People wanted to get to know the spirit in a materialistic way. For what is human habit is lost much less quickly than longings for this or that. So people wanted to know the spirit in a materialistic way. And this materialistic knowledge of the spirit was often promoted, extensively promoted, by those who know precisely what humanity needs. For this reason, various materialistic branches of knowledge arose, which were intended to prove that there is an active spirit behind the senses. Everything that has been done to prove, through hypnosis, suggestion, or even spiritualism, that there is a spirit in the world, is nothing more than an attempt to explore the spirit using the tools of materialism. Humanity had become accustomed to recognizing as true only that which was confirmed by laboratory experiments or clinical observation. Now, in the same way, through external manipulations, following the pattern of the scientific method, people wanted to develop a method that would, so to speak, prove the spirit in a tangible way.

Important results were indeed achieved in this way, alongside an infinite amount of charlatanism and fraud, of course. And we know that serious scholars and serious scientists have thoroughly engaged in these things because they felt the need to show people, who would otherwise fall into materialism, that there is a spiritual world, that the spiritual world around us is just as real as what we see with our eyes and touch with our hands. And that was what it came down to in the historical development from the middle of the 19th century onwards: to make people understand that there is a spiritual world around us, just like the world we perceive through our senses.

We have often spoken about the value of the knowledge that comes about when the power of knowledge and the power of the soul, which are fully valid for our age, are toned down in human beings, so that human beings are, as it were, made into instruments through which all kinds of spiritual realities and spiritual facts can enter our sensory world. As I said, we have often spoken about the value or worthlessness of these methods. Today we want to clarify what meaning it had in historical development that people wanted to kill off, to weaken, what human beings should have today: consciousness, looking into the spiritual world, looking into it fully consciously; that they wanted to weaken this in order to make human beings into instruments through which what is spiritual reality around us comes out into the physical world. This corresponds to a deep necessity of historical development, for it was conscious thinking that had developed one-sidedly precisely because of what it had to become in the last three or four centuries. In a sense, thought had become so thin and therefore so powerless because it was supposed to cling to the surface of things in order to produce human freedom. But this prevented it from diving beneath the surface of things. The elimination of this thought, the reduction of the human soul to a primitive state, was what people wanted to achieve in order to help the thought that had become powerless in modern times and could no longer find the strength within itself to dive into the spiritual world. And so arose what is much more widespread than today's philistine suspects: the search for the spirit in a materialistic way. Excluding conscious knowledge, in which confidence in the spiritual world had been lost, people wanted to dive into the spiritual world through subconscious knowledge, by lowering conscious knowledge.

However, there have always been people who did not simply instinctively follow such a contemporary phenomenon as the common scholars or the common spiritualists or spiritualists, but who already knew what it was all about. Such people have always existed. These people expected a great deal from the movement just described. On the whole, it can be said that those people who have preserved a precise knowledge of the spiritual world over the last three or four centuries and up to the present day can be divided into different groups: those who expected nothing from such a materialistic path to exploring the spiritual world; but there were also those who hoped that people would first gain the conviction that there is a spiritual world around us. However, none of the latter were sufficiently informed to understand why the whole thing was doomed to failure.

Those among the spiritually educated who did not expect anything from the whole thing had their good reasons. And these good reasons were evident precisely in the success that came out of this whole entry, I would say, desire to enter the spiritual world. If you take everything that has been achieved in this way — go through everything that has come to light from the most primitive beginnings of amateur mediums and amateur mediumistic sessions to the most subtle things which certain scholars in this field have achieved — you will find that the vast majority of what has been achieved in this way consists of experiences that have been gathered in this way, which those who gained them said they had received from the spirits of deceased people. The vast majority was described as originating from the spirits of deceased people; very little can be found that has not been described as coming from the spirits of deceased people. This was indeed a great surprise to those knowledgeable in spiritual science who viewed this development with a certain degree of benevolence. That the mediums would say they had obtained what they brought to light from the spirits of deceased people was what was most surprising, for it was the last thing one could expect if one really considered the development of humanity. Something completely different should have been expected. What one should have expected was that this would have led to knowledge of the spiritual world that surrounds us as living beings, that is present to us as living beings. That is what one should have expected. One should have expected to learn, by conducting experiments in this way, how one person affects another, how people of the present are linked to one another by secret threads that are invisible to external science, how things arise in one soul that originate from a completely different soul. Indeed, a network of spiritual connections extends from soul to soul. And because we are inside the world, it is not merely the case that when we stand here, for example, we see the light, the surroundings, the people as they are outwardly, according to their physical nature; but because we are inside the world, threads, spiritual threads, spiritual streams from soul A to soul K, from soul K to soul Z in the most diverse ways. And it is not at all sufficient to speak in general terms of a connection between souls that is distinguished in a sense by the senses; one can only make sense of it by thinking of individual threads, individual streams between the individual souls. We are truly surrounded by a spiritual world just as we are by a physical one. One would have expected this to come out. And yet this is what has come out least of all. Throughout the entire sixty or seventy years since attempts have been made to enter the spiritual world by materialistic means, throughout this entire period, the least has come out about the living relationships between human beings. The manifestations, the revelations, were always attributed to the spirits of the dead. It could not have been otherwise. Why? What actually happened when people tried to enter the spiritual world?

Basically, they had achieved nothing more than recognizing what comes to light when one eliminates the best qualities of modern times from human consciousness and leads people back to earlier times, to subconscious states of the soul. What had remained of these subconscious states of the soul until modern times was now exposed, it had come to light. So think that over long periods of time a very specific consciousness developed, which covered the spiritual world, and that this diminished the ability to have a direct connection with the spiritual world. But nothing was done to develop new forces for new connections with the spiritual world. So only the old ones came out. These old forces turned to what they had been connected with earlier, to what is not immediately alive in the present environment, but to the dead, to the dead, because human beings, through their development in the last three or four centuries and even further back, have attuned their whole soul in such a way that this soul is actually specially formed for the dead, for the recognition of the dead. Here in the material world, the nature of modern knowledge enables us to recognize what is dead. Through the forces that we draw from the deeper layers of the soul, we do not recognize what is alive, but what is dead. Thus, all these events revealed not a movement toward the liveliness of the spiritual, but a movement toward what is dead, and then, naturally, toward what is found as dead in the spiritual world.

And what is the nature of this deadness? This deadness is not that of the human beings who are our contemporaries, that is, the souls who, spiritually speaking, are our contemporaries. If we take an experiment such as the one described above, which was carried out in 1870, we see that it did not establish a connection with the living present by exposing the subconscious forces of the soul, and therefore did not connect us with the living souls of 1870, but only with what remained, that is, with the remnants that had detached themselves from the living, continuing soul, to what was still continuing from remnants that gradually dissolve in earthly existence. However, things were reinterpreted in such a way that the mediums claimed they were in relation to the dead who were currently alive. But that was only a reinterpretation. In reality, it was not about what the souls were at that moment, but about what they had been in the past, or rather what had become of what they had been in the past after it had just detached itself from the souls. If you remember how I explained what Goethe depicts in the Lemurian scene, you will know that much of what detaches itself from the soul at death lives on. And it was possible to relate to that which is truly dead, which does not live on with the living soul, through this materialistic passage into the spiritual world.

If, through contemporary external science, one gained knowledge of the material, that is, of the dead, then through this spiritual longing, which was to be satisfied by materialistic means, one gained nothing more than knowledge of the supersensible, but dead. Contemporary materialistic science found only the external dead; this seemingly spiritual, but in reality, according to its method, materialistic science found the supersensible dead. But from this supersensible dead, one could learn something very significant, something tremendously significant. One could learn from it that an era had truly come to an end in the middle of the 19th century, that humanity needed to develop new forces if it wanted to enter into true life; that for a time, forces had been brought to their peak that led only to death, to death in all areas, to the recognition and worship of death.

Such things can only be fully appreciated if one does not allow them to affect the soul merely in their abstract cognitive value, but if one takes them in their deep moral significance, if they make a moral impression on the soul, so to speak. For it is clear to us that although modern humanity has achieved so much, and has indeed raised itself to a certain height which it was destined to reach, all these forces are only capable of leading to death. Gradually, the content of human soul life would be directed solely toward death. For those who can feel the development of humanity, it is immediately clear how the dominant currents of modern sensibility lead more or less to a cult of the dead, to a worship of the dead; for what is worshipped in relation to the external material order of nature, in which it has been brought so gloriously far, is also only a cult of the dead. Why are we so moved by the last songs of Hamerling's “Homunkulus”? Because, after Hamerling has shown in his “Homunkulus” how modern humanity is really striving toward a kind of homunculus, he shows what it means in relation to the great cosmic mysteries that human beings want to rise above the earth's gravity through purely mechanical forces. The last song in Hamerling's “Homunkulus” shows us, at a time when there were no zeppelins, at a time when all this was still in the future, the steerable balloon; but at the same time, it makes us aware of what is connected with this extreme mechanization, that is, the killing, the homunculusization of life, in the development of human culture.

But spiritual knowledge is never extinct; it is always preserved here and there. There are always individuals in every age who can possess spiritual knowledge. Thus it was also preserved through the period when spiritual knowledge was least influential: from the 15th to the 19th century. This spiritual knowledge was saved by a thread. And those whom I have told you did not expect anything from the materialistic path into the spiritual world were of the opinion that the newer way of feeling and thinking, as it has developed in recent centuries, can be further developed and refined, so that the astute materialistic scientific method would gradually yield knowledge that could penetrate deeply enough to reach the spirit beneath the surface of things. And that is supposed to be the true spiritual scientific method: to enter the spiritual world in the same way that we have been entering nature for three or four centuries. It is simply a matter of truly developing what humanity has developed in terms of habits of knowledge over the last few centuries, in an appropriate manner and with sufficient effort, without allowing oneself to be held back by intellectual laziness, and of further developing what has been developed as habits of thinking. That is what it is all about.

Now, however, the question may be raised: Why are there so many people who, despite knowing something about the spiritual world, have remained silent about this knowledge? — For this must be emphasized again and again: spiritual knowledge has always existed. It must develop in different ways in different ages, but it has always been there. Why are some people so reluctant to share spiritual knowledge? In our circle, it is shared because the insight into the necessity of sharing outweighs everything else. But only certain parts of this spiritual knowledge can be shared, and this for a very specific reason. You see, spiritual knowledge existed in another form, albeit in a more unconscious or subconscious manner, even before the Mystery of Golgotha. Human beings came into contact with the spiritual world in a more instinctive way than they can today, for their own good. And a large part of humanity was not allowed to do so at all. Only those who could be prepared accordingly were allowed. And how were they prepared? They were prepared in a way that we cannot really imagine today when we speak of preparation for science or knowledge. Today, we believe that the moral qualities of those who are admitted to knowledge are only of secondary importance; in any case, we do not believe that knowledge as such depends on moral qualities. This was certainly not the case in ancient times with regard to the communication of knowledge. In ancient times, when knowledge was communicated through mysteries, no one was told anything that could be considered knowledge unless they had undergone the strictest moral discipline. Without strict moral discipline, it was impossible to go beyond mathematical knowledge, with which one cannot do much harm, and literary knowledge. For people were only taught things that were considered appropriate for them after they had undergone a certain moral discipline, a strict moral discipline. This was preceded by education for the good; then came the imparting of wisdom. And this education for the good was a conditio sine qua non. This was adhered to above all else: education for moral courage. For it was believed – I cannot go into detail here due to time constraints – that prosperity in the world through knowledge can only be achieved if what a knowledgeable person can do is done by a good person. That was a conviction. As unlikely as it seems today, when we consider the old days to be nothing but barbaric and believe that we have come so far in the new days – albeit so far that we now drown thousands in blood every week – in those old days it was a conviction that knowledge should only be applied by people who had undergone the strictest moral discipline. The others were to act only instinctively, under the guidance of those who had undergone moral discipline.

The modern age is not suited to applying such a principle without further ado. Imagine: how can such a principle be realized today, in our time, when everyone says or even prints what they know as quickly as possible, and when this cannot be stopped? We should not delude ourselves that anything, any social institution, could put a stop to this! Today, public opinion prevails. What, then, must replace this old principle of allowing only those with moral discipline to acquire knowledge? It must be replaced by the principle that knowledge itself, when communicated, has a certain power within it, namely the power to bring about good through itself, to bring about good correctly through itself. This must be the goal of all spiritual scientific movement. In a sense, all knowledge that comes into the world through spiritual science must be ordered in such a way that it produces good through itself, through its own power. You will say that the attempts that have been made with spiritual scientific teaching in recent times have often not produced this result. Certainly not yet, because everything has to work its way through various obstacles. It is also often the secret feeling of the good in spiritual science that causes this spiritual science to be not only logically opposed, but hated. Now you will say: Yes, but don't all reasonable people want the good? — As it is often understood today, one could say: Well, yes, all reasonable people want the good. But it does not matter whether someone thinks they want the good or desires the good; what matters is that they really want it, that they truly want it. If one considers the achievements of modern culture precisely in relation to its moral defects, in relation to those moral defects that, so to speak, have an effect on the lifeless, one will find that the world already needs a wisdom which, being wisdom, also brings about the good. For materialistic science is indifferent to good and evil. It needs what it shapes into matter just as much for evil as for good; it serves evil just as much as good.

Here again we have a point where, if we look at the world as a whole in its development, we can perhaps already see the necessity of spiritual science. It is not enough to shut oneself off in the narrowest circle and form a worldview from that narrow circle, for the narrowest circles are embedded in the great web of human development. Leaving everything else aside, let us look at the consequences of European culture in the last three years, let us look at them as we will look at them if we do not pursue a moral ostrich policy, but if we take in with a trembling heart what it brings us, with a heart that is alive to everything around us. The fact that some of us are protected from what is raging against Europe today should not cause us to turn away from the terrible situation into which modern culture has been thrown, for it is there. And a phenomenon must be considered.

A good book has been written recently which endeavors to assess the questions that are shaking the world today, the questions that have been shaking the world for two years, from the standpoint of human feeling and moral sensibility. A book has been published very recently which is good, which seeks to show, with a certain comprehensive view, how we can escape from the web of blood and hatred in which modern culture finds itself. This book was written by the Chinese man whom I pointed out to a number of our friends four or five years ago as an important personality when his first book on European conditions was published. And the book that has now been published by Ku Hung-Ming, the highly educated Chinese, is a good book, a book that is very objective. This book shows a man who does not fall into the trap that many fall into today; this book shows a man who stands aloof from these mistakes. Today, many people have opinions, many express this or that opinion about the conditions of our time—most of what is said is not intended to express what one really thinks, but to numb oneself to what is really going on. We see streams of hatred flooding the world. Why are they being put out into the world? Why is this or that said? Do you think that those who say, for example, that the Pope should condemn an entire people, who demand this energetically, who believe that they can really recognize this from some objective events — do you think they have the calmness of objective knowledge? This is said to numb oneself, precisely in order not to admit to oneself what one should admit. Much of what is said today is said to numb oneself. Because one does not want to admit what one should actually admit, one says this or that, which is only meant to help one get over what one does not want to say.

The Chinese Ku Hung-Ming does not proceed in this way. But he says one thing. He says: When you see what has developed in Europe, what has happened in Europe, and what forces are at work in Europe, you cannot help but say: It had to come as it came. Materialism in its one-sided form, as it developed in the 19th century, had to lead to these consequences. But it must lead further; it must lead to the ultimate downfall of European culture. And this Chinese man, Ku Hung-Ming, is utterly convinced that the downfall of European culture is inevitable if Europeans do not bring themselves—as he puts it—to become like the Chinese, if Chinese culture does not spread throughout Europe. The only salvation for European culture is for Europeans to become Chinese, that is, to become Chinese in their souls. — And much of what he says is deeply penetrating. One should not take lightly the fact that a very wise man of the present day can find no other way out for European culture than for it to finally allow everything that has been reduced to absurdity within itself to flow into the good Chinese principle. I will not go into further detail about how Ku HungMing envisions the Sinicization of Europe, because it is obvious to us that we cannot become Chinese, that we cannot return to the Chinese cultural standpoint. And if there were no other way out than the one Ku Hung-Ming sees, then that would still be better than continuing on the same path that European culture has taken. It would still be better. It would be better to become Chinese than to continue on the path that materialistic culture has taken, because that would be unstoppable. Do not believe that this can be stopped by old means.

The humanities have always been, in essence, a little like Ku Hung-Ming's view, only not in relation to Chinese culture, but only in relation to the first part of his statement, and it therefore cherishes as its great ideal to extract from the spiritual world a knowledge that leads into this spiritual world, but at the same time can make people good through its own power, has a moral effect through its own power, and generates moral impulses. As a scholar of the humanities, one would not respond as Ku Hung-Ming did: Become Chinese! — but rather: Try to bring about the enrichment of the other culture through the humanities, which can only be achieved through the humanities. — But this striving for new sources of human knowledge and activity is necessary for humanity, for European humanity, absolutely necessary. One would like to shed the bitterest tears when reading a book like Ku Hung-Ming's in the face of much of what confronts us today, for our present times are more serious than many believe. And there is much among human beings that divides them, and from the division of souls comes all that we experience that is terrible. This separation will only be overcome by a knowledge that encompasses human beings beyond all divisions, by a knowledge that is for every human being, because the divisions on which people today base their feelings are only valid here in the physical world, are really only valid here in the physical world. When one sees the outpouring of sympathy and antipathy today, and when one sees how what pours forth in sympathy and antipathy comes only from the unspiritual, one sees in the outpouring of sympathy and antipathy the denial of the spiritual.

All hatred between peoples, for example, is at the same time a struggle against the spirit. And because our age is so inclined to fight against the spirit, our age also has such a talent for hatred between peoples. This is one of the deepest secrets of our present spiritual culture. But this also means that there can only be one way out, through a living grasp of the spirit.

Just consider that at the moment when we fall asleep, when our ego and our astral body leave our physical body and our etheric body, at that moment we are in a world where none of the things that today lead to sympathy and antipathy exist; at that moment we are united, at that moment that follows falling asleep, we are united with those whom we regard with deepest antipathy in our conscious life. We must pass through their souls in the realm of permeability. We can shout and hurl tirades of hatred against this or that person, but when we fall asleep, we must pass through the souls of those we hate in the region of permeability. Such insights into what is truly real must first come among people. These are only elementary things. But if one enters more and more into this insight into what is truly real, then this entry already has the power to generate impulses of good. For what hatred and unfounded antipathy really mean in the world can only be understood when one sees through their upward working in the spiritual world. Those who know hatred in the spiritual realm already lay it aside, unless they want to place themselves directly in the service of certain evil powers.

Since the Johannesbauverein meeting has brought together a larger number of friends than usual in this place, I wanted to speak about these serious questions today. Those who have heard my last lectures will be able to fit what is discussed today into what has been considered previously, and it will, in a sense, even if only episodically, nevertheless have an enlightening effect on some of the impulses that are at work in our world history of the present.