The Karma of Vocation
GA 172
12 November 1916, Dornach
Lecture IV
Someone might say that the spiritual scientific reflections touching on the problem of vocation are among the least interesting. But such is not the case. This must be recognized, especially in our fifth post-Atlantean period, because in this period all human relationships will be essentially modified in comparison with those that prevailed in earlier periods of the earth. They will be so modified that man must, out of his own freedom, bring more with him than in earlier ages when his mission in the evolution of earth could be carried out almost instinctively; that is, when he received by inspiration the direction into which he had to go.
When we look back, for example, to the Egypto-Chaldean culture or to other cultures of earlier times, we shall find that the measure of freedom now given to man toward forging his external destiny—and this freedom will constantly increase—was not given him in earlier times. During the Egypto-Chaldean period, the fact that each person belonged to a certain class into which he or she was forced similar to the way an animal is forced into its species, though not so irrevocably, removed from the sphere of man's freedom much that at present belongs there. To be sure, there was a compensation for this limitation of freedom. Students of the external history of culture who are generally quite shortsighted in their thinking, usually assume that conditions in ancient times were such that those who were then guiding human affairs did so with the same impulses as the leading personalities today. But you must bear in mind that there were quite definite processes in the mysteries in ancient times whereby the guiding personalities acquainted themselves with what was willed by beings who guide life from regions outside the earth. I have told you that at certain times—we do not need now to review them—sacrificial priests carried out specified mystery rituals. As a result, certain personalities in the temples who were suited for such purposes were brought into contact with the universe, the cosmos, the extraterrestrial relationships. The consciousness of these specially qualified personalities was then inspired by beings who guided the earth from extraterrestrial regions, and what was learned from these beings determined the course of action.
I will show you through a hypothetical case how things took their course in earlier times. Suppose that today the Christmas festival was not more or less an external holiday for most people, but that in its form and time of occurrence men knew that our earth is especially fitted to receive ideas into its aura that cannot enter, for example, in summer. I have explained how the earth is awake during the winter and that Christmas time is one of the most brilliant points of this waking state. At that time the aura of the earth is permeated, interwoven, with thoughts. We may say that the earth is permeated, interwoven, with thoughts. We may say that the earth ponders the outer universe, just as we men, while in the waking state of day, reflect in our thought on what is around us. In summer the earth sleeps, so it is not possible then to find certain thoughts in it. In winter the earth is awake, and most wide awake at Christmas; then the earth's aura is interpenetrated with thoughts, and it is possible to read the will of the cosmos for our earthly events from them.
Now the sacrificial priests educated some individuals in such a way that they became sensitive and receptive to what was alive in the earth's aura. By putting these individuals into contact with the earthly thoughts that gave expression to the cosmic will, the sacrificial priests in the temples could learn it from them. What they learned was to them, in a sense, the will of heaven, and from this they were able to determine who should remain in a particularly worthy position and who should be taken into the mysteries in order that he might assume a leading position in ancient government or priestly life. Humanity has now outgrown such things and is exposed to chaos in this respect; we must simply recognize this fact. The transition from the ancient, quite definite conditions in which men learned from the will of the gods what was to happen here on earth has already occurred. During the fourth post-Atlantean period, in which the individual freed himself from the will of the cosmos, these ancient customs passed over into our present more chaotic conditions. Everything tends to be handed over more completely to man. Thus, it is all the more necessary that the will of the cosmos shall penetrate earthly conditions in another way.
It would require much time to make clear how in the third Egypto-Babylonian culture period something still lived and wove in earthly life from the various vocations of men—to use a term adapted to our present conditions—that was in large measure a reproduction of the will of the cosmos. This came about as described and was disappearing during the fourth post-Atlantean period. It has vanished completely in our fifth post-Atlantean period which began, as we know, approximately in the fifteenth century. If men would pay more attention today to what is happening and stop offering a fable convenue in place of history, they would be able to recognize, even from external conditions, how man's relation to his vocation has changed since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They would recognize from present conditions how everything will increasingly become different in the future. But a sort of anarchy would inevitably overtake mankind if no one were to grasp these deeper connections and impart to the intellectual community ideas that take into account the modifications produced by the natural course of evolution. What it has been possible to establish even from external history regarding the emergence of what we might call the modern vocational life since the fifteenth century would cause astonishment to those who are at all able to observe human life. If they would submit to the influence of all that it is possible to recognize, they would find fault with themselves, in a way, for living in such a somnolent state and for having no conception of what is connected with evolving human destiny.
Last time, I called your attention to the fact that what constitutes real vocational life is by no means so insignificant for the cosmic complex as it may at first appear. I pointed out that, as men, we have gone successively through the Saturn evolution, where the first potentialities of the physical body were prepared; the Sun period, in which the etheric man was prepared; the Moon period, in which the astral man was prepared, and that we are now passing through the earth period in which the ego develops. But other periods are to follow: The Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan times. We may say that the earth is, in a way, the fourth stage of Saturn; likewise, Vulcan is the fourth stage of the earth. The earth is, in a sense, the Saturn of Vulcan. Just as on ancient Saturn processes occurred so intimately bound up with evolution that we owe the first potentiality of our physical body to them, which still continues to work in us, so must something happen on earth that will continue to work on in our evolution. On Vulcan it will attain a fourth stage of development, just as certain processes on Saturn have reached a fourth stage of development of earth. I pointed out that those processes that would correspond to Vulcan correspond to what we have on earth from the Saturn evolution; they represent, therefore, what works and lives in the various vocations that men take up on earth. As humans pursue vocational lives, something develops on earth within their vocational activity that will be the first potentiality for Vulcan, just as the Saturn activity was the first potentiality for our physical body.

If you add to this reflection the fact that vocational life has undergone a tremendous transformation since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, you will understand how increasingly important it will become to conceive of it as a component of the entire world evolution provided you do this by means of those points of view that may be developed through spiritual science. Only by learning first to recognize the objective aspects of vocational life can we form suitable concepts regarding the karma of vocation. Of even greater interest will be the question where vocational life is going and what it will develop into from our age onward because from this we shall derive more clear-cut concepts than from today's conditions.
As can easily be recognized when we take a common sense look out into the world today, the future evolution of vocational life will consist in the ever increasing differentiation and specialization of vocations. It is not too intelligent for people to criticize the fact that, in recent times, vocations have become more specialized and that not so many centuries ago a person could find in his vocation the connections between what he was producing and what this meant for the world. He thereby would take an interest in the forming and shaping of his product because he saw clearly what his product became in life. In our times, this is no longer the case for much of humanity.
To take a radical example, a man is placed by his destiny in a factory where he perhaps makes, not a whole nail, but only part of one; this piece is then joined with another part by another man. Thus, the man who makes only part of the nail can develop no interest in how what he produced from morning until night takes its place in the relationships of life. If we compare the earlier handicraft life with the factory life of today, we are immediately aware of a radical difference between what is contemporary and what existed not too long ago. What has already come to pass in the various branches of human activity will continue to develop, and more specialization and differentiation of vocational life will necessarily occur. It is by no means especially intelligent for people to criticize this because it is a necessity in evolution; it simply will happen, and will happen more and more.
What sort of outlook is opened to us by this fact? Fundamentally, it is that men must increasingly lose interest, as we can readily imagine, in the work that occupies the greater part of their lives; in a way, they must surrender like automatons to their work in the world. But the most essential point is something else. Man's inner nature must obviously acquire the color of his outer work. Anyone who observes the historic development of humanity will certainly discover to what a large extent the men of the recent fifth post-Atlantean period have become reproductions of their vocations and how their vocational lives influence their soul lives, specializing them. This does not apply to the majority of those who live today within our Anthroposophical Society, however. They are often in the fortunate position of having detached themselves from the interconnections of life. In the fortunate position? I might just as well say in the unfortunate position! This is good fortune often only for subjective egoistic feeling. For the world, it is often bad fortune because the world will demand increasingly of men that they excel in special fields and become specialists.
But what must happen in addition to this? Their specialization will be a necessary by-product of world evolution, and this question will soon become one of the weightiest of family problems; anyone who wishes to educate children will have to understand it. To place oneself rationally within the course of evolution then will depend altogether upon an understanding of the question: How shall I place my child into the evolution of humanity? What is still possible in many cases today, even though it is only a residue left over from ancient times that people routinely cling to, will soon prove to be empty phrases; that is, the fine manner of speaking so much admired today, according to which children must be allowed to become what corresponds to their observed talents. This will soon prove to be an empty phrase. In the first place, people will see that those who are born from now on will give indications of their previous incarnations in a more complex way than was the case with people in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. They will show complex potentialities that no one would have dreamed of before since these potentialities were far simpler in earlier times. Those who consider themselves especially clever in testing the potentialities of grown children to determine whether or not they are fitted for this or that vocation may learn that the insights derived from these tests are nothing but their own fantastic imaginations.
In the near future, however, life will be so complicated that the word profession will take on an entirely different meaning. Today we still often associate something quite inward with the word, calling it “vocation,” although for most people their vocations do not at all represent anything inward. We conceive vocation (calling) as something toward which a person is called by his inner qualities. However, if we would question people about their calling, especially in our cities, many would say, “I am in my profession because I am convinced this is the only one that corresponds to my talents and inclinations that I have had since childhood.” Yet, closer inspection of these cases would reveal that the answers given did not correspond with the facts, and I imagine they are not congruent with your own observation of life. Today, a vocation is increasingly that to which a person is called by the world's objective course of development. There outside of men is the organism, the interconnection; you may call it, if you please, the machine—this is not important—that gives orders, that calls him.
All this will constantly intensify and, as a result, what humanity accomplishes through vocational activity is also detached from man himself; it becomes more objective. Through this detachment, vocational activity grows increasingly into something that, in its further development through Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan, goes through a process of development similar to what has taken place for the earth through Saturn, Sun, and Moon. It is a peculiar fact that when one speaks as a spiritual scientist it is not possible to flatter human beings if the subject is related intimately to their lives. Spiritual science will be less and less exposed, you see, to the danger of expressing itself according to the model of wisdom to be found in the words:
At best a pompous moralistic play
With wonderfully edifying quips,
Most suitable to come from puppets' lips.67 Kaufmann's translation. See footnote 21.
Spiritual science will certainly not be in a position to do this. It will often be compelled to set forth as something significantly great for the evolution of the world the very thing that people would prefer not to hear. It will therefore be inevitable that some people today who consider themselves exceedingly bright because their philistinism has crept into their brains will glibly declare, “Oh, professional life is a prosaic, mundane matter.” The way vocational life appears to true spiritual science compels us to declare that through the very fact that this life becomes detached from human interests, it contains the necessity to develop relationships possessing a cosmic significance. Many people might think that a depressing view of the future results from this: increasingly people are caught in the treadmill of life and spiritual science cannot even console them that this has happened.
It would, however, be a great deception should one draw such a conclusion from what has been said since the nature of the universe requires things to be unified through polar opposites. Just consider how these polarities thrust themselves upon you in the world! It is, for example, in their mutual relationship that positive and negative electricity produce their unified effects. Positive and negative electricity are necessary to each other. Male and female are necessary for the propagation of the human race. It is from polarities that unity evolves in the evolution of the world.
Now, the same principle is at the bottom of what has been said. When vocational labor is separated from the human being, we necessarily create the first cosmic potentiality for a far-reaching cosmic evolution. Everything that happens in the evolution of the world is related to the spiritual, and in what we create within the sphere of our vocations, whether by bodily or by mental labor, there lies the possibility for the incarnation of spiritual beings. At present, during this earth stage, these spiritual beings are, to be sure, still of an elemental kind; we might say an elemental kind of the fourth degree. But they will have become elemental beings of the third degree during the Jupiter evolution, and so on. The labor in the objective vocational process is detached from us and becomes the external sheath for elemental beings who thereby continue their development. But this occurs only under a certain condition.
If it be said that we must first begin to understand the meaning of what is often belittled as the prosaic part of life, we must also understand that this meaning is not clarified until we comprehend it completely in its comprehensive cosmic connection. What we produce in our vocational life can become meaningful for the Vulcan evolution, but something else is prerequisite to this. Just as positive electricity is necessary for negative, and the male necessary for the female, so also what will be released continuously from humanity as activity will require an opposite pole. A polarity of opposites was also present for humanity in its earlier evolutionary stages. Something absolutely new, of course, does not come into existence here because something similar was already present before. But when you look back at earlier cultural periods, if only two or three centuries ago, you will find that the human being was still far more immersed in his professional life with his feelings and passions, in fact with all his emotions, than today. When you compare the joy that a human being could still experience in his or her profession even a hundred years ago with the dissatisfaction of many people today who have nothing but their profession, you will be able to form an impression of what really needs to be said.
Such things are really considered rightly far too infrequently for the simple reason that those who discuss the character and choice of vocation are those who can least afford to talk about this subject matter. Schoolmasters, literary scholars, parsons—the very people who least experience the dark side of vocational activity in the modern world—write about these things. Thus you will find in ordinary literature and even in pedagogical books that people express themselves on this subject like the blind discussing colors. Of course, someone who has finished elementary and high school, and then looked around a little in a university because that's the thing to do, may easily consider himself unusually clever with the ideas he has absorbed; that is, if he now plays the role of a reformer of humanity who can tell us how everything should be done. There are, indeed, many such individuals. A person who has gained a proper perception of life knows that they are the ones who usually talk most stupidly about what must come about. This is ordinarily not observed simply because those who have acquired such educational credentials are at present highly respected. The time is yet to come when the feeling will develop that the so-called men of letters, the journalists and narrowly educated schoolmasters, understand the interrelationships of life least of all. This must gradually develop as a general opinion.
It is important that we come to see more clearly how in earlier times man's emotional life was intricately related with his professional life and how subsequently the latter has increasingly become disengaged from man's emotional life and must continue to do so. For this reason, the polar opposite of vocational life must become something different from what it was earlier. What was this element that was added earlier to vocational life? You have it before you today when you consider what constitutes the shell of culture. The buildings in which professions are practiced and in the midst of these, the church, have become the sheath and shell of culture; the days of the week reserved for work, and Sunday reserved for the needs of the soul. These were the two poles: the vocational life and the life dedicated to religious conceptions.
It would be one of the greatest mistakes that could be made to suppose that this other pole as it is still conceived today by the religious denominations could remain as it is, since it was made to fit a vocational life still bound up with the emotions of men. All of human life will deteriorate unless understanding increases in this sphere. So long as the elemental spirit that an individual creates in his vocation, as I have described, was not separated from him, the old religious conceptions still sufficed to some extent. Today they are no longer sufficient, and they will become less so the farther we advance into the future. The very idea that is most vociferously opposed by certain people must be revived; that is, the opposite pole, consisting of the fact that men shall be able to form concrete concepts regarding the spiritual worlds, should enter into evolution.
The representatives of the religious sects will often say, “Oh, there they are in spiritual science talking about many spirits and gods, but it is the one God that is important; with Him alone we have enough.” Thus, we can still make an impression on people today if we present them with the great advantage of coming into contact with one god, especially during after-dinner coffee and family music, when contemptuous remarks are made about other more recent endeavors, and ideas are expressed in an especially egotistic and philistine fashion. But what is really important is that human horizons should be broadened; that is, that we should learn to know that everything is permeated not just by a single divine spirit conceived in the vaguest way possible, but that spirit is also omnipresent in a concrete, special sense. People must learn to know that when a workman stands at his vice and the sparks fly about elemental spirits are being created which pass over into the world process and there have their significance. Those especially clever ones will claim that this is stupid. These elemental spirits, however, will certainly come into existence even though the one working at the vice is unconscious of them. Nevertheless, they will still be created, and it is important that they shall come into existence in the right way since elemental spirits both destructive and helpful to the world process can come into being.
You will most clearly understand what I mean if you consider it in a special context because in all these things we are standing today at the threshold of new evolutionary developments. Many people already have an inkling of this. Should it be transformed into reality and people fail to have spiritual scientific aspirations, it would be the worst thing that could happen to the earth. What has come about primarily during the course of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch is that the human being has been liberated from the external, inorganic world which he embodied in his tools. Eventually, he will be reunited with what he has embodied in them.
Today, machines are constructed. Of course, they are at present objective, containing little of the human element. But it will not always be so. The course of the world tends to bring about a connection between what the human being is and what he produces and brings into existence. This connection will become ever more intimate. It will appear first in those areas that furnish the foundation for closer relations between one person and another—for example, in the treatment of chemical substances that are used in medicines. People still believe that when sulphur, oxygen, and some other substance—hydrogen or something else—have been combined, the product of this combination possesses only those effects that are derived from the individual substances. Today this is still true to a large extent, but the course of world evolution is tending toward something different. The subtle pulsations lying in the human being's life of will and disposition will weave and incorporate themselves gradually into what he produces. Thus, it will not be a matter of indifference from whom a certain preparation is received.
Even the most external and cold technical development tends toward a quite definite goal. Anyone who can form a vague conception of the future of technical development knows that an entire factory will operate in a completely individual way that will be in keeping with the one who directs it. His or her attitude of mind will enter into the factory and will pass over into the way in which the machines work. Human beings will blend with this objectivity. Everything that they touch will gradually come to bear a human impression. No matter how stupid it may seem today to the clever people—in spite of St. Paul having said that what men consider to be clever is often foolishness in the eyes of God68 I Corinthians, 1:20: “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?“ —people will realize that the time will come when an individual will be able to step up to a mechanism standing at rest and will know that to set it in motion he must move his hand this way, that way, and another way. Through the vibrations of the air caused by this signal, the motor,69 Rudolf Steiner says in the third lecture of “Weltwesen und Ichheit“ [The Essence of the World and Selfness], Bibl.-No. 169, CE (1963) that the American Keely invented such a motor in the 19th century. adjusted beforehand to respond to it, will be set in motion.
Then, national economic development will become such that to patent machines will be quite impossible; such things will be replaced by what I have just explained. Thus, everything will be excluded that has no relation to human nature, and by this it will be possible to bring about something quite definite. Just imagine what a truly good person who has reached an especially high level of morality will in future be able to do. He will construct machines with signals that can be governed only by individuals like himself. Evil minded people will produce quite different vibrations when they make these signals, and the machine will not respond.
People already have a faint inkling of this. It is not without purpose that I have called your attention to certain individuals who study flames dancing under the influence of definite tones. Further research in this direction will reveal the way to what I have just indicated. We might, indeed, say that it is the path back to those times when an alchemist who only wished to stuff money into his pocket could accomplish nothing, whereas another, who wished only to set up a sacrament for the glory of the gods and the welfare of humanity, would be successful.
In a sense, so long as what arose from human work bore the aura of the emotions and joys that men transferred into it, it was not accessible to the kind of influence that I have just described. But to the extent that the products of vocational labor can no longer be produced with special and absolutely necessary enthusiasm, what thus flows away from men and streams forth from them can become a motor force. The truth is that through the fact that individuals can no longer unite their emotions with the world of machinery, they, in a way, restore to this world the purity that arises from or serves their labor. In the future it will no longer be possible for people to bestow the warmth gained from the enthusiasm and joy derived from their work on the things produced. But these things themselves will be purer as they are put into the world by workers. They will also become more susceptible to what will emanate from, and be predetermined by, man as a motor force, as I have described.
Such a direction to human evolution can only be given by concrete knowledge of the spiritual forces that can be discovered by spiritual science. In order that this development may occur, it is necessary for an ever greater number of individuals in the world to gradually find the opposite pole. This consists in uniting one human being with another in what rises far above all vocational labor, while at the same time illumining and permeating it. Life in the spiritual scientific movement furnishes the foundation for a united life that can bind all professions together. If there were only an external advance of vocational evolution, this would result in a dissolution of human ties; people would become less able to understand one another or to develop relationships according to the requirements of human nature. They would increasingly disregard one another, seek only their own advantage, and have only competitive relationships with one another. This must not be permitted to come to pass lest humanity thereby fall into complete decadence. To prevent this from happening, spiritual science must be propagated.
It is possible to describe truly what many people are today unconsciously striving for, even though they deny it. There are many today, you know, who say, “This talk about the spiritual is ancient twaddle! The true advance that will really bring about human progress is to be found in the development of the physical sciences. When men get beyond all this twaddle about spiritual things, we will then, in a way, have a paradise on earth.”
Should nothing prevail in humanity except competition and the compensatory acquisitive instinct, however, it would not be paradise on earth but hell. After all, there would have to be another pole if real progress were to take place. If a spiritual pole were not sought for, there would have to be an ahrimanic pole. Then the following argument would prevail: “Should vocations continue to be specialized, there would always be a certain unity in that one person would be this, another that, but all would have the common characteristic of acquiring as much as possible through their jobs.” True, all would be made alike, but this is simply an ahrimanic principle. It is incorrect to think that the world can reach its goal through such a one-sided evolution, proceeding purely in the external sphere as we have described it. To follow this line of thinking would be tantamount to a woman's arguing that men had gradually become worse, were really utterly unfit for the world, and should be completely exterminated, and that then we would get the right evolution of the physical world.
It would require a weird person, indeed, to hold such a view since nothing whatever could be achieved by getting rid of all the men. Because this applies to the sensory world, people understand it, but they do not understand such foolishness in reference to the spiritual world. Yet, it is the same for spiritual relationships as if someone were to suppose that mere external evolution could continue to progress; it cannot. Just as the earlier evolutionary periods required the abstract religions, so this new stage requires a more concrete spiritual knowledge as it is striven for in the spiritual scientific movement. The elemental beings that are created and released through the vocational labor of men must be fructified by the human soul with what it takes into itself from impulses striving upward to the spiritual regions. Not that this is the only mission of spiritual science, but it is the mission related to the advancing and changing vocational life. Therefore, world evolution demands that as professions become more specialized and mechanized, people feel the need for the opposite pole to become proportionately more intensely active in them. This means that each human being should fill his soul with what brings him close to every other human being, no matter what their specialized work may be.
All this leads to much more. As we will hear in due course, a new age will emerge from what we may describe as our own time's indifference to and withdrawal from life, which is frequently the experience of working people these days. In the new age, human beings will again perform their work from different impulses. These will really be no worse than those good old vocational impulses that cannot be renewed, but must be replaced by others of a different sort. In this connection we can already point today, not merely abstractly but quite concretely, to a human ideal that spiritual science will develop. This will show what even a vocation may become to human beings when they understand how to observe the signs of the times in the right manner.
We shall continue our reflections regarding the significance of these matters for the individual, and for karma.
Vierter Vortrag
Vielleicht könnte jemand sagen, daß die geisteswissenschaftlichen Betrachtungen gerade einer solchen Frage, wie diejenige ist, die sich jetzt in unsere Auseinandersetzungen hineinflicht, die doch alle mehr oder weniger auf die sogenannte Berufsfrage hinaustendieren, zu den wenigst interessanten gehören. Das ist aber nicht der Fall, und man muß erkennen, daß es insbesondere nicht der Fall ist in unserer fünften nachatlantischen Periode. Denn in dieser fünften nachatlantischen Periode werden sich tatsächlich alle Verhältnisse, innerhalb welcher die Menschen leben, ganz wesentlich ändern gegenüber den Zuständen, die in früheren Erdperioden vorhanden waren, und sie werden sich so ändern, daß der Mensch selbst aus seiner Freiheit heraus mehr mitbringen muß bei dieser Änderung, als er in früheren Zeiten mitgebracht hat, wo dies, was ihm als seine Aufgabe innerhalb der Erdenentwickelung zugefallen ist, sich wie instinktiv vollziehen konnte, wo ihm gewissermaßen für vieles die Richtung eingegeben wurde, die er in der einen oder in der anderen Hinsicht einzuschlagen hatte.
Wenn wir zum Beispiel zurückblicken auf die ägyptisch-chaldäische Kultur oder auf andere Kulturen früherer Zeiten, so werden wir finden, daß so viel als schon jetzt — und das wird immer mehr werden in die Hand des Menschen gegeben ist mit Bezug auf die Prägung seines äußeren Schicksals, in früheren Zeiten nicht in seineHand gegeben war. In der ägyptisch-chaldäischen Periode war gewissermaßen dadurch, daß der Mensch einem bestimmten Stande angehörte, in den er gleichsam hineingezwängt war, wenn auch nicht in so festem Sinne, aber doch in einem gewissen Sinne wie das Tier in seine Gattung, es war dadurch seiner Freiheit entzogen, was heute vielfach in die Freiheit des Menschen gestellt ist. Allerdings gab es gegenüber dieser Freiheitsbeschränkung in diesen älteren Zeiten ein Gegengewicht. Dieses Gegengewicht, Sie können es sich vor die Seele rufen, wenn Sie bedenken, was wir im Zusammenhange dieser Vorträge besprochen haben. Man stellt sich sehr häufig heute in der äußeren Kulturgeschichte, die so kurzsinnig denkt, vor, daß es auch in älteren Zeiten so gewesen wäre, als ob diejenigen, die die Leiter der menschlichen Angelegenheiten waren, aus - solchen menschlichen Impulsen heraus diese menschlichen Angelegenheiten geleitet hätten, wie die jetzigen führenden Persönlichkeiten. Aber erinnern Sie sich, daß in älteren Zeiten ganz bestimmte Vorgänge vorhanden waren innerhalb der Mysterien, durch welche sich die führenden, die leitenden Persönlichkeiten unterrichtet haben über dasjenige, was nicht irdische Wesen wollen, sondern was die Wesen wollen, welche von außerirdischen Regionen aus das irdische Leben leiten. Ich habe Ihnen gesagt, daß zu bestimmten Zeiten, welche wir ja jetzt nicht näher zu bezeichnen brauchen, die alten Opferpriester bestimmte Mysterienhandlungen abhielten. Diese Mysterienhandlungen liefen darauf hinaus, daß gewissermaßen dazu geeignete Persönlichkeiten in den Tempeln eingeschaltet wurden in das Universum, in den Kosmos, in die außerirdischen Verhältnisse, daß dann in das Bewußtsein dieser besonders geeigneten Persönlichkeiten hereinspielten Wesen, welche von außerirdischen Regionen herein die Erdenvorgänge leiteten, und daß man sich nach dem, was man so hereininspiriert bekam über den Willen der leitenden geistigen Wesenheiten, bestimmen ließ zu den Vornahmen, die einem oblagen.
Also stellen wir uns vor, es würde in unserer Zeit — das geschieht nicht, aber ich will durch eine hypothetische Annahme hinweisen darauf, wie in früheren Zeiten solche Dinge verliefen — das Weihnachtsfest nicht so verlaufen, wie es heute verläuft, wo es ja doch mehr oder weniger eine äußere Festlichkeit bleibt für die meisten Menschen. Nehmen wir an, es würde das Weihnachtsfest so verlaufen, daß man weiß: In dieser Zeit, in der das Weihnachtsfest liegt, ist unsere Erde als Wesen besonders geeignet, in ihre Aura Ideen hereinzubekommen, die zum Beispiel während der Sommerszeit gar nicht hereinkommen können in die Erdenaura. Ich habe in früheren Betrachtungen auseinandergesetzt, wie die Erde gewissermaßen wacht während der Winterszeit und wie einer der hellsten Punkte des Wachens eben die Weihnachtszeit ist. Die Erdenaura ist in dieser Zeit durchzogen, durchwoben von Gedanken. Man kann sagen, daß die Erde in dieser Zeit so nachdenkt über das Weltenall, das außer ihr ist, wie wir Menschen dann, wenn wir im tagwachen Zustande sind, durch unsere Gedanken nachdenken über das, was um uns herum ist. Im Sommer schläft die Erde. Da kann man also gewisse Gedanken in ihr nicht finden. Im Winter wacht sie, und am hellsten wacht sie in der Zeit, in die Weihnachten fällt. Da durchziehen die Erdenaura Gedanken und aus diesen Gedanken kann man ablesen, was der Kosmos mit unseren Erdenvorgängen will.
Erzogen sie nun gewisse Menschen individuell so, daß diese Individuen sensitiv, empfänglich wurden für das, was da in der Erdenaura lebte, so konnten diese erziehenden Opferpriester in den Tempeln dadurch diesen kosmischen Willen erfahren, daß sie die dazu erzogenen Menschenindividuen gewissermaßen einschalteten in die irdischen Gedanken, welche über den kosmischen Willen sich aussprechen. Und dann konnten sie nach dem, was sie da gewissermaßen als Wille des Himmels erfuhren, bestimmen, wer bleiben sollte innerhalb eines gewissen Standes und wer hereingezogen werden sollte in die Mysterien, um irgendeine führende Stellung im alten Staatsleben oder im alten Priesterleben einzunehmen. Aus diesen Dingen ist die Menschheit herausgewachsen. Sie ist jetzt gewissermaßen in dieser Beziehung dem Chaos ausgeliefert. Darüber müssen wir uns nur ganz klar sein. Der Übergang aus den alten, ganz bestimmten Verhältnissen, in denen die Menschen aus dem Willen der Götter erkundet haben, was hier auf der Erde vorgehen soll, in unsere jetzigen Verhältnisse, fand statt. Diese alten Gepflogenheiten sind übergegangen durch den vierten nachatlantischen Zeitraum, in dem sozusagen die menschliche Individualität sich emanzipiert hat von dem Willen des Kosmos, in unsere jetzt schon mehr chaotischen Verhältnisse. Alles tendiert darauf hin, mehr in des Menschen Hand gegeben zu werden. Um so mehr ist es aber notwendig, daß der Wille des Kosmos in einer anderen Weise in die irdischen Verhältnisse hereindringt.
Es würde außerordentlich viel Zeit in Anspruch nehmen, wenn man klarmachen wollte, wie noch in der ägyptisch-babylonischen, also in der dritten nachatlantischen Kulturperiode in demjenigen, was im Irdischen wirkt und webt — nun, nennen wir es mit einem an unsere Verhältnisse angepaßten Worte — aus den verschiedenen Berufen der Menschen heraus, wie da etwas wirkt und webt, was in hohem Grade ein Abbilden des Wollens des Kosmos war. Das kam auf die geschilderte Weise zustande. Das verschwamm schon während der vierten nachatlantischen Zeitperiode; das ist aber vollständig verschwommen geworden in der Zeit der fünften nachatlantischen Periode, in der wir leben und die ja, wie wir wissen, ungefähr mit dem 15. Jahrhundert begonnen hat. Würden die Menschen heute mehr achten auf das, was vorgeht, würden sie nicht statt Geschichte eine Fable convenue erzählen, dann würden die Menschen auch schon aus den äußeren Verhältnissen heraus erkennen können, wie alles bis zu einem gewissen Grade im menschlichen Berufszusammenleben gerade seit dem 14. und 15. Jahrhundert anders geworden ist, und aus den gegenwärtigen Verhältnissen würde man erkennen, wie alles in der Zukunft immer mehr und mehr anders werden wird. Es müßte über das Menschengeschlecht aber wirklich eine Art Anarchie hereinbrechen, wenn gar niemand da wäre, der diese tieferen Zusammenhänge erfaßte und dem menschlichen Geistesleben Ideen übermittelte, welche mit diesen durch den naturgemäßen Gang der Evolution gegebenen Veränderungen rechnen könnten. Dasjenige, was in der äußeren Geschichte schon konstatiert werden könnte an dem Aufleben des neugeschichtlichen, könnten wir sagen, Berufslebens seit dem 15. Jahrhundert, würde jeden, der einen Sinn überhaupt hat für die Betrachtung des menschlichen Lebens, in Erstaunen versetzen. Da würde er sich gewissermaßen, wenn er das alles, was man so erkennen kann, auf sich wirken lassen würde, Vorwürfe darüber machen, daß er so schläfrig dahinlebt und sich nicht über das, was im eminentesten Sinne mit dem sich fortentwickelnden menschlichen Schicksal zusammenhängt, Gedanken macht.
Ich habe nun das letzte Mal hier aufmerksam darauf gemacht, daß dasjenige, was wirkliches Berufsleben darstellt, keineswegs so bedeutungslos ist für den ganzen kosmischen Zusammenhang, wie es zunächst erscheinen könnte. Ich habe Sie darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß wir ja als Menschen nacheinander durchgemacht haben die Saturnentwikkelung, wo sich vorbereitet hat die erste Anlage des physischen Menschenleibes, die Sonnenzeit, wo sich vorbereitet hat der ätherische Mensch, die Mondenzeit, wo sich vorbereitet hat der astralische Mensch. Die Erdenzeit machen wir jetzt durch, wo sich ausbildet das Ich. Aber es werden auf diese Zeiträume andere folgen: die Jupiterzeit, die Venuszeit, die Vulkanzeit. Und wir können sagen: So wie die Erde gewissermaßen die vierte Stufe ist zum Saturn, so ist der Vulkan die vierte Stufe zur Erde. Die Erde ist gewissermaßen der Saturn des Vulkan. Wie auf dem alten Saturn, den ich mit 1 bezeichne, Vorgänge sich abgespielt haben, die so sehr mit der Evolution zusammenhängen, daß wir ja diesen Vorgängen die erste Anlage zu unserem physischen Leib verdanken, die jetzt noch in uns fortwirkt, so muß auch auf der Erde etwas vorgehen, was in der Evolution weiterwirkt und was auf dem Vulkan eine vierte Stufe der Ausbildung erlangt, so wie gewisse Vorgänge auf dem Saturn während der Erdenzeit eine gewisse vierte Stufe der Ausbildung erfahren haben. Und ich habe Sie darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß diese Vorgänge, welche dem Vulkan entsprechen werden, dem entsprechen, was wir von der Saturnentwickelung auf der Erde haben und also dasjenige darstellen, was wirkt und lebt in den verschiedenen Berufen, welche die Menschen auf der Erde ergreifen. Indem die Menschen ein Berufsleben führen, entwickelt sich auf der Erde innerhalb der Tätigkeit der Berufe etwas, was erste Anlage ist für den Vulkan, so wie die Saturntätigkeit erste Anlage war für unseren physischen Menschenleib.

Wenn Sie zu dem hinzubedenken, daß gerade von der fünften nachatlantischen Zeit an das Berufsleben eine so ungeheure Umgestaltung erfahren hat, so werden Sie ermessen, wie notwendig es immer mehr und mehr werden wird, mit den Gesichtspunkten, welche geisteswissenschaftlich entwickelt werden können, in den gesamten Gang der Weltenentwickelung sich das Berufsleben hineingestellt zu denken. Denn nur dadurch, daß wir zunächst die objektiven Seiten des Berufslebens kennenlernen, können wir uns auch geeignete Vorstellungen machen über das Karma des Berufes. Mehr noch interessieren muß uns, weil uns das deutlichere Vorstellungen gibt als die schon heutigen Zustände, wohin eigentlich das Berufsleben tendiert, wohin es sich weiterentwikkeln will von unserem Zeitpunkte an.
Die weitere Entwickelung des Berufslebens wird darinnen bestehen das kann man ja leicht erkennen, wenn man überhaupt nur mit gesundem Verstande heute in die Welt hineinsieht -, daß die Berufe sich immer mehr und mehr differenzieren, immer mehr und mehr spezialisieren. Es ist heute gar wenig gescheit, wenn manchmal in kritisierender Weise davon gesprochen wird, daß sich im Laufe der neueren Zeit die Berufe spezialisiert haben, während vor vielleicht gar nicht einer so großen Anzahl von Jahrhunderten der Mensch noch überschauen konnte in seinem Berufe den Zusammenhang desjenigen, was er verfertigte, mit dem, was es für die Welt bedeutete und ein Interesse daran haben konnte, seine Produkte in einer bestimmten Weise zu formen und zu gestalten, weil er unmittelbar eine Anschauung hatte von dem, was seine Produkte im Menschenleben wurden. Während das in früheren Zeiten der Fall war, ist es heute für einen großen Teil der Menschen nicht mehr der Fall.
Der Mensch wird heute, wenn wir einen radikalen Fall nehmen, in die Fabrik gesteckt durch sein Schicksal. Er arbeitet vielleicht nicht einmal einen Nagel, sondern nur einen Teil eines Nagels aus, der dann wiederum durch einen anderen Menschen zusammengestellt wird mit einem anderen Teile des Nagels, und kein Interesse kann der Betreffende entwickeln für die Art und Weise, wie sich hineinstellt das, was er vom frühen Morgen bis zum späten Abend macht, in den Gesamtzusammenhang des menschlichen Lebens. Vergleicht man das frühere Handwerksleben mit dem jetzigen Fabriksleben, so hat man gleich einen radikalen Unterschied mit Bezug auf das Gegenwärtige und das vor gar nicht langer Zeit Gewesene. Dasjenige, was in den einzelnen Zweigen menschlicher Betätigung heute schon in hohem Maße sich vollzogen hat, wird sich immer mehr und mehr vollziehen. Es wird immer mehr und mehr Spezialisierung, Differenzierung des Berufslebens eintreten müssen. Es ist gar nicht besonders gescheit, wenn man dies kritisiert, weil es eine Notwendigkeit der Evolution ist, weil es einfach geschehen wird und immer mehr und mehr geschehen wird.
Und was für eine Aussicht eröffnet sich gewissermaßen aus diesem? Ja, im Grunde genommen eröffnet sich die Aussicht, daß die Menschen dann, wie man sich einbilden möchte, immer mehr und mehr das Interesse gerade für dasjenige verlieren müßten, was den größten Teil ihres Lebens ausfüllt, daß sie also gewissermaßen mechanisch hingegeben sein müßten an ihre Arbeit in der Außenwelt. Das aber wäre noch nicht einmal das Wesentlichste. Das Wesentlichste ist Ja noch etwas anderes. Das Wesentlichste ist, daß in das menschliche Innere herein seine äußere Arbeit selbstverständlich abfärben muß. Und wer wiederum die geschichtliche Entwickelung der Menschen betrachtet, der wird schon finden, in wie hohem Grade die Menschen in der neueren Entwickelung im fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraum gewissermaßen Abdrucke geworden sind ihrer Berufe, wie hereinspielt das berufliche Leben in das seelische Leben und den Menschen selber spezialisiert. Sie dürfen ja nicht den Maßstab nehmen von der Mehrzahl derjenigen, die vielleicht heute noch innerhalb unserer Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft leben, denn die sind vielfach in der glücklichen Lage, sich herauszulösen aus dem Zusammenhang des Lebens - in der glücklichen Lage, ich könnte ebensogut sagen, in der unglücklichen Lage! Denn ein Glück ist dieses vielfach nur für das subjektiv-egoistische menschliche Empfinden, ein Glück ist es vielfach nicht für die Welt. Denn die Welt wird einmal immer mehr und mehr von den Menschen fordern, daß sie im Speziellen Tüchtiges leisten, daß sie sich spezialisieren können.
Die Frage wird nur immer mehr und mehr sein: Was muß außer dem geschehen, daß sich die Menschen spezialisieren? Daß sie sich spezialisieren werden, dafür wird schon die Notwendigkeit der Weltenentwikkelung sorgen. Was muß aber außerdem geschehen? Die Frage wird in nicht gar zu ferner Zukunft eine der allerwichtigsten, gestatten Sie den Ausdruck, Familienfragen werden für die Menschheit. Familienfrage, denn ein Verständnis dieser Frage wird man haben müssen, wenn man Kinder erziehen will. Sich vernünftig hineinzustellen in den ganzen Gang der menschlichen Entwickelung dann, wenn die Frage auftaucht: Wie stelle ich mein Kind in diese menschliche Entwickelung hinein? — das wird ganz und gar von dem Verständnis für diese Frage abhängen. Denn das, was heute noch vielfach möglich ist, was aber nur ein Überbleibsel alter Zeiten ist, dem die Menschen noch nachhängen aus einem gewissen Schlendrian heraus, das wird sich bald als eine leere Redensart herausstellen, jene schönen Redensarten, die heute vielfach bewundert werden: man müßte die Anlagen der Kinder beobachten und man müßte sie werden lassen das, was ihren Anlagen entspricht. Gerade das wird sich eben sehr bald als eine leere Redensart herausstellen. Denn erstens werden die Menschen sehen, daß diejenigen, die von jetzt an geboren werden, in komplizierterer Weise auf ihre früheren Inkarnationen zurückweisen, als das noch im vierten nachatlantischen Zeitraum der Fall war, daß sie in ihren Anlagesystemen Kompliziertheiten zeigen, von denen man sich früher nichts träumen ließ. Es waren die Anlagesysteme in früheren Zeiten viel einfacher. Und Leute, die sich besonders geeignet glauben, bei erwachsenen Kindern die Anlagen zu prüfen, ob sie zu diesem oder jenem Berufe geeignet sind, werden vielleicht die Erfahrung machen müssen, daß solche Einsicht in die Anlagen nur die phantastischen Einbildungen der betreffenden, sich gescheit dünkenden Menschen sind.
Aber abgesehen davon wird das Leben der Menschen so kompliziert werden in nicht zu ferner Zeit, daß das Wort «Beruf» eine ganz andere Bedeutung annehmen wird. Heute stellt man sich noch vielfach bei dem Beruf etwas Innerliches vor, obwohl der Beruf bei den meisten Menschen keineswegs sich als etwas Innerliches darstellt. Heute stellt man sich vor: Beruf — wozu der Mensch durch seine inneren Qualitäten berufen ist. Würde man einmal objektiv prüfen, besonders in unseren Städten, wie viele Menschen antworten würden: Ich bin in meinem Berufe deshalb drinnen, weil ich einsehe, daß dies der einzige Beruf ist, der meinen Anlagen, meinen Neigungen von Kindheit auf entspricht -, würde man diese Frage mindestens an die meisten städtischen Menschen stellen, so würde man wohl in den wenigsten Fällen eine Antwort bekommen dahingehend, daß die Leute sagen würden, sie seien just in dem Berufe drinnen, der ihren Neigungen und Anlagen, wie sie sie selber empfunden haben, von Jugend auf entspricht. Ich glaube, Sie werden aus der Lebensbeobachtung heraus dies keineswegs glauben. Beruf ist schon heute in hohem Grade und wird immer mehr und mehr werden das, zu dem man berufen wird durch den objektiven Werdegang der Welt. Draußen ist, möchte ich sagen, der Organismus, der Zusammenhang — meinetwillen nennen Sie es auch die Maschine, auf das kommt es nicht an -, das, was den Menschen abfordert, was den Menschen ruft.
Gerade durch alles das, was immer mehr und mehr Steigerung erfahren wird, löst sich aber zu gleicher Zeit dasjenige, was die Menschheit durch die Berufstätigkeit vollbringt, von dem Menschen selber ab, wird objektiver. Und dadurch wird es gerade immer mehr und mehr zu dem, was in seiner weiteren Ausbildung durch Jupiter, Venus, Vulkan etwas Ähnliches durchmacht wie dasjenige, was durch Saturn, Sonne und Mond für die Erde durchgemacht worden ist, gerade durch dieses Loslösen. Es ist merkwürdig, daß man als Geisteswissenschafter gerade, wenn es dem Leben des Menschen recht nahe geht, in der Regel nicht dem Menschen zu Gefallen reden kann. Dieser Gefahr wird die Geisteswissenschaft immer weniger ausgesetzt werden, daß sie nach dem Muster der Weisheit sprechen wird, die da geprägt ist mit den Worten:
Und höchstens eine Haupt- und Staatsaktion
Mit trefflichen pragmatischen Maximen,
Wie sie den Puppen wohl im Munde ziemen!
Dazu wird Geisteswissenschaft allerdings nicht imstande sein. Sie wird oftmals genötigt sein, das gerade, was die Menschen nicht möchten, als etwas für die Weltenentwickelung Bedeutungsvolles, Großes hinzustellen. Und so kann es schon nicht anders sein, als daß dasjenige, wovon heute mancher, der sich genial dünkt, weil er die Philistrosität etwas in sein Oberstübchen hinaufgetragen hat, leicht sagt: Ach, das ist eine prosaische äußere Sache — das Berufsleben, es stellt sich vor wirklicher Geisteswissenschaft anders dar. Es stellt sich so dar, daß man sagen muß: In dem Berufsleben ist eine Notwendigkeit gegeben, Verhältnisse zu entwickeln, welche kosmische Bedeutung haben, gerade dadurch, daß sich das Berufsleben in einer gewissen Weise von dem menschlichen Interesse loslöst. - Also, könnte mancher sagen, ergibt sich eine traurige Perspektive für die Zukunft. Immer mehr und mehr muß der Mensch in die Tretmühle des Lebens hinein. Und Geisteswissenschaft kann nicht einmal die Menschen trösten darüber, in die Tretmühle des Lebens hineinversetzt zu werden. - Das wäre aber wiederum eine große Täuschung, wenn man das aus dem Gesagten folgern würde, denn es ist im Weltenall:so, daß die Dinge durch polarische Ausgleichung wirken. Bedenken Sie doch nur, wie die polarischen Ausgleichungen sich in der Welt Ihnen aufdrängen! Positive und negative Elektrizität, in ihrer gegenseitigen Beziehung bringen sie ihre Wirkungen, ihre Ausgleiche hervor; positive und negative Elektrizität sind füreinander notwendig. Das Männliche und Weibliche ist für die Fortpflanzung des Menschengeschlechtes notwendig. Aus den Einseitigkeiten entwickelt sich in der Weltenevolution die Totalität.
Ein solches liegt nun auch zugrunde dem, was wir eben ausgeführt haben. Das muß sein, daß wir in der vom Menschen losgelösten Berufsarbeit die ersten kosmischen Anlagen für eine weitergehende Weltenentwickelung schaffen. Denn alles, was geschieht in der Weltenentwikkelung, steht mit Geistigem in Beziehung. Und in dem, was wir, sei es durch körperliche, sei es durch sogenannte geistige Arbeit innerhalb der Berufe schaffen, in dem liegt der Ausgangspunkt gewissermaßen für die Verkörperung von geistigen Wesenheiten. Jetzt sind diese geistigen Wesenheiten während der Erdenzeit allerdings noch elementarischer Art, man könnte sagen: elementarischer Art des vierten Grades. Aber sie werden schon elementarische Wesenheiten sein des dritten Grades, wenn die Jupiterentwickelung da sein wird und so weiter. Unsere Arbeit, die gerade im objektiven Berufsprozeß geleistet wird, wird abgelöst von uns und wird die äußere Hülle für elementarische Wesenheiten, die sich durch die Evolution weiterentwickeln. Aber nur unter _ einer gewissen Bedingung. Wenn man auf der einen Seite sagen muß, daß man erst anfängt, den Sinn zu verstehen auch desjenigen, was oftmals als das prosaische Leben angeschwärzt wird, muß man sich auch klar sein, daß dieser Sinn erst völlig enthüllt wird, wenn man die Sache im großen Weltenzusammenhange ganz versteht. Was wir in unserem Berufsleben erzeugen, das kann Bedeutung gewinnen für die Vulkanentwickelung, aber es ist dazu noch ein anderes notwendig. Der andere Pol ist dazu notwendig. So wie zur negativen Elektrizität die positive, zu.dem Weiblichen das Männliche notwendig ist, so ist zu dem, was sich als Berufstätigkeit immer mehr loslösen wird von der Menschheit, ein anderes notwendig, ein entgegengesetzter Pol. Solche auf Gegensatz beruhende Polarität war auch in früheren Entwickelungsepochen schon da für die Menschheit. Etwas ganz Neues entsteht ja selbstverständlich nicht; es war schon ein Ähnliches da. Allein, blicken Sie zurück auf frühere Kulturperioden, blicken Sie selbst nur ein paar Jahrhunderte zurück, so werden Sie finden, wie der Mensch noch mit seinem Fühlen, mit seinen Leidenschaften selbst, mit seinem ganzen Affektleben viel mehr drinnenstand in seinem Berufsleben, als das heute der Fall sein kann. Wenn Sie die Summe von Freuden, die ein Mensch an seinem Berufe haben konnte noch vor hundert Jahren, vergleichen mit der Unlust, die heute schon mancher haben muß, wenn er nichts sonst hat als den Beruf, so werden Sie eine Vorstellung von dem bekommen, was eigentlich gesagt sein soll.
Solche Dinge werden in der Gegenwart eigentlich viel zu wenig in rechte Erwägung gezogen, einfach aus dem Grunde, weil die Leute, die über Berufsart, Berufscharakter, Berufswahl und so weiter sprechen, meistens solche sind, die gut reden haben. Schulmeister schreiben darüber, Literaten oder Pfarrer, solche Leute, die verhältnismäßig am wenigsten heute schon die Schattenseiten der Berufstätigkeit in der neueren Zeit empfinden. Daher kommt es, daß, wenn man heute in der gebräuchlichen Literatur, auch in der pädagogischen, über diese Dinge reden hört, man wirklich findet, daß die Leute reden wie die Blinden von den Farben. Denn selbstverständlich kann einer, der aus gewissen sozialen Bedingungen heraus die Schule durchmacht, aufs Gymnasium kommt und nachher, nun, vielleicht ein bißchen auf irgendeiner Universität sich umschaut, sich heute ja leicht, weil er viele Vorstellungen in sich aufgenommen hat, sehr gescheit vorkommen, wenn er so tut wie ein Reformator der Menschheit, der nun zu sagen weiß, wie alles werden soll. Es gibt ja viele solche. Für denjenigen, der das Leben durchschaut, reden eigentlich diese Leute über das, was werden soll, gewöhnlich am allerdümmsten. Man bemerkt es nur nicht, weil man heute noch einen sehr starken Respekt hat vor Leuten, die solch einen Entwickelungsgang durchgemacht haben. Die Zeit muß erst noch kommen, wo man mehr oder weniger die Empfindung haben wird, daß ein Literat, ein Zeitungsschreiber, ein Schulmeister, der nach dem Muster gebildet ist, wie heute die Schulmeister gebildet werden, am wenigsten versteht von den Lebenszusammenhängen. Das muß sich nach und nach herausbilden mehr als ein allgemeines Urteil.
Nun handelt es sich darum, daß man wirklich besser einsieht, wie mit dem menschlichen Emotionsleben das Berufsleben früherer Zeiten zusammenhing und wie das Wesentlichste in der Entwickelung auf diesem Gebiete darinnen liegt, daß das Berufsleben herausgewachsen ist und immer mehr und mehr herauswachsen wird aus dem menschlichen Emotionsleben. Daher muß der andere Pol, der zum Berufsleben hinzukommen muß, ein anderer werden als er früher war. Was war denn früher dasjenige, was zum Berufsleben hinzukam? Sie haben es heute noch vor sich, wenn Sie das, was mehr oder weniger Schale der Kultur geworden ist und immer mehr und mehr Hülle und Schale der Kultur werden muß, auf sich wirken lassen: die Häuser, in denen die Berufe ausgeführt werden, ringsherum, in der Mitte die Kirche. Die sechs Tage der Woche bestimmt dem Berufe, der Sonntag demjenigen, was der Mensch nur für seine Seele aufzunehmen hat. Das waren die zwei Pole: das Berufsleben und das Leben in religiösen Vorstellungen.
Es wäre der größte Irrtum, der heute begangen werden könnte, wenn man glauben wollte, daß dieser andere Pol, wie er heute noch gedacht wird von den religiösen Bekenntnisgesellschaften, bleiben könnte, so wie er ist, weil er zugeschnitten ist auf ein Berufsleben der Menschen, das noch mit den Emotionen zusammenhängt. Verkümmerung des gesamten menschlichen Lebens müßte eintreten, wenn nicht Einsicht Platz griffe gerade auf diesem Gebiete. Solange dasjenige, was der Mensch an elementarer Geistigkeit erzeugte in seinem Berufe — denn elementare Geistigkeit erzeugte er in dem eben beschriebenen Sinne —, von den Menschen sich nicht loslöste, solange waren die alten religiösen Vorstellungen in gewisser Beziehung hinreichend. Jetzt sind sie es nicht mehr und werden es immer weniger sein, je weiter wir in die Zukunft hineingehen. Was notwendig ist, das ist gerade dasjenige, was von gewisser Seite am meisten bekämpft wird: daß der andere Pol in die Menschheitsentwickelung hereinkommt, welcher darinnen besteht, daß man sich konkrete Vorstellungen über die geistigen Welten zu machen in der Lage sein wird.
Diejenigen, die heute noch die Vertreter der Religionsbekenntnisse sind, werden sehr häufig sagen: Ach, da redet die Geisteswissenschaft von vielen Geistern, von vielen Göttern; ein Gott ist das, worauf es ankommt! Haben wir mit dem nicht genug? — Man kann heute noch einen gewissen Eindruck machen auf die Menschen, wenn man ihnen den großen Vorteil des Hingelangens zu einem Gotte beibringt, besonders bei Kaffee und Familienmusik, indem man spottet über neuere Bestrebungen, wenn man die Dinge in ganz besonders selbstischer und philisterhafter Weise den Menschen vorsetzt. Aber dasjenige, um was es sich handelt, ist gerade dieses, daß die Gesichtspunkte der Menschen weiter werden müssen, das heißt, daß sie wissen lernen müssen, daß alles nicht bloß von einer Göttlich-Geistigkeit, die man sich möglichst verschwommen vorstellt, durchzogen ist, sondern daß überall Geistigkeit ist, und zwar konkrete, spezielle Geistigkeit. Wissen lernen wird man müssen, wenn man am Schraubstock steht: Wie die Funken absprühen, so werden auch die Elementargeister erzeugt, die in den Weltenprozeß übergehen und die im Weltenprozeß ihre Bedeutung haben. — Das ist dumm, könnte mancher sagen, der glaubt, ganz besonders gescheit zu sein. Diese Elementargeister, die werden schon entstehen, wenn auch irgendeiner am Schraubstock steht, der gar keine Ahnung davon hat, daß sie entstehen. Sie werden schon entstehen. Aber darauf kommt es an, daß sie recht entstehen, daß sie richtig entstehen, nicht daß sie überhaupt entstehen. Denn es können also den Weltenprozeß störende und dem Weltenprozeß dienende Elementargeister entstehen.
Sie werden am besten einsehen, was ich meine, wenn Sie es auf einem speziellen Gebiete betrachten, denn wir stehen in allen diesen Dingen heute am Anfang einer Entwickelung, die aber, ich möchte sagen, unmittelbar vor der Türe steht. Manche Menschen beginnen schon etwas zu ahnen davon. Würde man etwas ahnen und es in Wirklichkeit umsetzen, ohne zugleich in geisteswissenschaftliche Bestrebungen überzugehen, so wäre das das Allerschlimmste, was der Erde passieren könnte. Das, was hauptsächlich eingetreten ist im Verlaufe des vierten nachatlantischen Zeitraums, das ist, daß der Mensch zunächst losgelöst worden ist von der äußeren unorganischen Welt, die er in seinen Werkzeugen verkörpert. Er wird wiederum mit dem, was er in seinen Werkzeugen verkörpert, zusammengeführt werden. Heute werden Maschinen konstruiert. Selbstverständlich sind Maschinen heute objektiv, das Menschliche ist noch wenig darinnen. Aber so wird es nicht immer bleiben. Der Weltengang geht dahin, daß ein Zusammenhang entsteht zwischen dem, was der Mensch ist und demjenigen, was der Mensch erzeugt, demjenigen, was der Mensch hervorbringt. Dieser Zusammenhang wird ein immer intimerer und intimerer werden. Er wird zuerst hervortreten auf denjenigen Gebieten, die eine nähere Beziehung begründen zwischen Mensch und Mensch, hervortreten zum Beispiel in der Behandlung der chemischen Stoffe, die verarbeitet werden zu Arzneien. Heute wird man noch glauben, wenn irgend etwas besteht aus Schwefel und Sauerstoff und irgendeinem anderen Stoff, Wasserstoff, noch etwas anderem, daß dann dasjenige, was da als Produkt entstanden ist, nur enthält diejenigen Wirkungen, die von den einzelnen Stoffen kommen. Man hat heute noch bis zu einem hohen Grade recht damit, aber der Gang der Weltenentwickelung geht nach anderem. Die feinen, in dem menschlichen Willensleben und Gesinnungsleben liegenden Pulsationen werden sich immer mehr und mehr in dasjenige hineinverweben, hineingliedern, was der Mensch erzeugt, und es wird nicht gleichgültig sein, ob man einen zubereiteten Stoff von dem einen Menschen empfängt oder von dem anderen Menschen.
Selbst die äußerste, kälteste technische Entwickelung tendiert nach einem ganz bestimmten Ziele hin. Derjenige, der heute sich ahnende Vorstellungen von der Zukunft der technischen Entwickelung machen kann, der weiß, daß in der Zukunft ganze Fabriken individuell wirken werden, je nach demjenigen, der die Fabrik leitet. Die Gesinnung wird mit in die Fabrik hineingehen und sich übertragen auf die Art und Weise, wie die Maschinen arbeiten. Der Mensch wird zusammenwachsen mit der Objektivität. Alles, was wir berühren werden, wird nach und nach den Abdruck menschlichen Wesens an sich tragen. Und Zeiten werden kommen, so dumm es heute noch den gescheiten Leuten auch erscheinen mag — aber schon der heilige Paulus sagte, dasjenige, was die Menschen für gescheit halten, ist manchmal Torheit vor Gott -, in denen ein Mechanismus dastehen wird, der in Ruhe verharrt; ein Mensch wird hinzutreten, der wissen wird, daß er eine Handbewegung so, eine andere in einer bestimmten Weise dazu, eine dritte so zu machen hat, und durch dasjenige, was da als Luftschwingungen entsteht und was die Folge eines bestimmten Zeichens ist, wird der Motor in Bewegung gesetzt sein, der abgestimmt sein wird auf dieses Zeichen.
Und die nationalökonomische Entwickelung wird ein solches Gesicht bekommen, daß äußere Patente und dergleichen völlig ausgeschlossen sein werden, denn was in solchen Dingen liegt, wird durch das ersetzt werden, was ich eben auseinandergesetzt habe. Dafür aber wird auch alles dasjenige ausgeschaltet werden, was in keiner Beziehung steht zur menschlichen Natur. Dadurch wird etwas ganz Bestimmtes bewirkt werden können. Denn denken Sie sich einmal einen recht guten Menschen in der Zukunft, einen Menschen, der wirklich auf besonderer Höhe menschlicher Gesinnung ist,was wird der können? Der wird Maschinen konstruieren und Zeichen für sie festsetzen können, die nur vollzogen werden können von Menschen, die so gesinnt sind wie er, die also auch gutgesinnt sind. Und alle Bösgesinnten werden mit dem Zeichen eine ganz andere Schwingung erregen, und die Maschine wird nicht gehen!
Davon, sagte ich, ahnen die Leute heute schon einiges. Ich habe Ihnen nicht umsonst den Hinweis darauf gegeben, wie gewisse Leute Flammen tanzen sehen unter dem Einfluß bestimmter Töne. Wird man einmal nach dieser Richtung weiter forschen, dann wird man den Weg finden zu dem, was ich gerade angedeutet habe, man könnte auch sagen, zurückfinden zu gewissen alten Zeiten, wo der eine Alchimist, der nur Geld in seinen Beutel stecken wollte, nichts erreichen konnte mit dem nämlichen Prozesse, mit dem der andere, der nicht Geld in seinen Beutel stecken wollte, sondern der ein Sakrament verrichten wollte zur Ehre der Götter und zum Heile der Menschheit, etwas erzielte.
Solange dasjenige, was aus der Berufsarbeit hervorgegangen ist, gewissermaßen die Aura der Emotionen der Menschen trug, Freude, die Menschen hineinarbeiteten, war es unzugänglich für diese Art von Einwirkung, die ich eben geschildert habe. In demselben Maße, in dem das, was durch die menschliche Berufsarbeit hervorgebracht wird, nicht mehr mit besonderem Enthusiasmus wird gemacht werden können, wird, weil das eine notwendige Bedingung ist, in demselben Maße, was so von den Menschen ausfließt und ausströmt, motorische Kraft werden können. Es ist so, daß der Mensch gewissermaßen der maschinellen Welt, die aus seiner Arbeit hervorgeht oder die seiner Arbeit dient, ihre Keuschheit zurückgibt dadurch, daß er sie nicht mehr mit seinen Emotionen verbinden kann. Es wird nicht mehr möglich sein in der Zukunft, daß man gewissermaßen aus dem Glutherd der erfreulichen Berufsarbeit heraus seine eigene menschliche Wärme den Dingen mitgeben wird. Man wird sie aber dafür keuscher in die Welt hineinstellen, dadurch aber auch empfänglicher machen für das, was in der geschilderten Weise als motorische Kraft, von dem Menschen selber ausgehend, durch den Menschen für die Dinge bestimmt werden kann. Das aber, was der menschlichen Entwickelung eine solche Richtung geben kann, das kann nur von den konkreten Erkenntnissen der geistigen Kräfte kommen, die durch die Geisteswissenschaft erforscht werden können. Nur davon kann es kommen. Und daß so etwas geschehen kann, wie es jetzt geschildert worden ist, hängt davon ab, daß eine größere Anzahl von Menschen in der Welt immer mehr und mehr den anderen Pol findet, den Pol, sich von Mensch zu Mensch zusammenzufinden in dem, was über alle Berufsarbeit hinausgeht und alle Berufsarbeit zu gleicher Zeit beleuchten und durchdringen kann. Was ein menschliches Zusammenleben begründet, das alle Berufe zusammenführen kann, das ist das Leben in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung. Zur Auflösung aller Menschheitsbande würde der rein äußerliche Fortschritt in der Berufsentwickelung führen. Dahin würde er führen, daß die Menschen sich immer weniger und weniger verstehen würden, immer weniger und weniger Beziehungen entsprechend den Voraussetzungen der Menschennatur entwickeln könnten. Die Menschen würden immer mehr und mehr aneinander vorbeigehen, könnten nichts anderes mehr suchen als ihre Vorteile, könnten in keine anderen Beziehungen zueinander kommen als in die Beziehung der Konkurrenz. Das darf nicht der Fall sein, weil sonst das Menschengeschlecht in die vollständige Dekadenz verfallen würde. Daß das nicht der Fall werde, dazu muß Geisteswissenschaft sich ausbreiten.
Und es gibt eine Möglichkeit, dasjenige, was heute viele, wenn sie es auch leugnen, unbewußt anstreben, in der richtigen Weise zu bezeichnen. Sie wissen, es gibt heute viele Menschen, die sagen: Ach, vom Geistigen zu reden — alter Quatsch! Wir entwickeln die rein physischen Wissenschaften, auf allen Gebieten. Das ist gerade Fortschritt der Menschheit, das wird die Menschheit wirklich vorwärtsbringen. Und wenn die Menschen nur einmal darüber hinauswachsen werden, von dem alten Quatsch der geistigen Dinge zu sprechen, dann wird gewissermaßen das Paradies auf Erden sein.— Aber nicht das Paradies würde dadurch auf Erden kommen, sondern die Hölle würde kommen, wenn nichts weiter das Menschengeschlecht beherrschen würde als Konkurrenz, Erwerbssucht in dem Sinne, daß die Erwerbssucht das ausgleichende Prinzip sein soll. Denn schließlich, ein anderer Pol müßte schon da sein, wenn es überhaupt weitergehen sollte. Würde man einen geistigen Pol nicht suchen, so müßte man einen ahrimanischen Pol haben. Wenn die Berufe sich spezialisieren, so könnte man als Einheit ja noch immer das haben, daß man sagt: Gewiß, der eine ist das, der andere ist jenes, aber alle haben das gemeinschaftlich, daß sie durch ihren Beruf möglichst viel erwerben wollen, und das ist es, was alle gleich macht. — Gewiß, aber es ist ein rein ahrimanisches Prinzip. Zu glauben, daß die Welt mit der einseitigen Entwickelung, die rein im Äußeren fortschreitet, so wie wir es jetzt geschildert haben, zurechtkommen kann, das heißt, auf diesem Gebiete dasselbe glauben, wie wenn jemand finden würde — nehmen wir an, es gäbe solch einen sonderbaren Kauz, oder sagen wir aus Höflichkeit Käuzin, die den Standpunkt vertreten würde: die Männer seien alle immer schlechter und schlechter geworden und seien eigentlich heute unmöglich für die Welt und man solle sie ausrotten, dann würde sich erst die Weltenentwickelung in entsprechender Weise auf dem physischen Plan ergeben! Es wäre eine sonderbare Käuzin, nicht wahr, die das glauben würde, denn es würde sich gar nichts dadurch ergeben können, wenn man die Männer alle ausrottete. Weil das in der sinnlichen Welt so ist, verstehen es die Leute. In der geistigen Welt verstehen sie eine solche Kauzigkeit nicht. Und dennoch, für die geistigen Verhältnisse ist es ganz dasselbe, wenn jemand meint, es könnte bloß die äußere Evolution fortgehen. Sie kann nicht fortgehen. Und geradeso, wie die früheren Entwickelungsperioden die abstrakten _ Religionen gefordert haben, so fordert die neuere Entwickelung die konkretere geistige Erkenntnis, wie sie in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung angestrebt wird. Befruchtet werden müssen die Elementargeister, welche durch die losgelösten Berufsarbeiten erzeugt werden, von der menschlichen Seele aus durch das, was die menschliche Seele aufnimmt aus den zu den geistigen Regionen hinaufsteigenden Impulsen. Nicht als ob das die einzige Aufgabe der Geisteswissenschaft wäre, aber gegenüber dem fortschreitenden, sich umgestaltenden Berufsleben ist das die Aufgabe der Geisteswissenschaft. Daher muß, durch die Weltenevolution auf Erden selber gefordert, die Einsicht in die menschlichen Herzen kommen, daß in demselben Maße, als die Berufe die Menschen vermechanisieren, nach und nach immer mehr gerade für die sich spezialisierenden und mechanisierenden Menschen der Gegenpol intensiver und intensiver tätig werde, der darinnen besteht, daß der Mensch seine Seele anfülle mit demjenigen, was ihn nahebringt jeder anderen Menschenseele, gleichgültig, wie sie sich spezialisiert hat.
Das aber führt noch zu viel mehr, das führt, wie wir auch hören werden, dazu, daß wirklich wiederum aus unserer, ich möchte sagen lebensgleichgültigen und lebenszurückgezogenen Zeit, die vielfach gerade für die Berufsmenschen vorhanden ist, eine ganz andere Zeit hervorgehen wird, eine Zeit, in der die Menschen wiederum aus ganz anderen Impulsen heraus schaffen werden, aus Impulsen, die wahrhaftig nicht schlechter sein werden als die guten alten Berufsimpulse, die aber nicht wieder erneuert werden können, sondern durch andere ersetzt werden müssen. Und in dieser Beziehung können wir heute schon nicht bloß in abstrakter Weise auf ein menschliches Ideal deuten, das Geisteswissenschaft entwickeln will, sondern in ganz konkreter Weise auf ein Ideal, welches zeigen wird, was auch der Beruf dem Menschen werden wird, wenn die Menschen es verstehen, die Zeichen der Zeit in der richtigen Weise zu beachten.
Über alle diese Dinge und über ihre Bedeutung für die menschliche Individualität und das Karma wollen wir morgen unsere Betrachtungen fortsetzen.
Fourth Lecture
Perhaps someone might say that spiritual scientific considerations are among the least interesting when it comes to questions such as those that are now entering our discussions, which all tend more or less toward the so-called question of vocation. But that is not the case, and we must recognize that this is especially not the case in our fifth post-Atlantean period. For in this fifth post-Atlantean period, all the conditions within which human beings live will indeed change very significantly compared to the conditions that existed in earlier earth periods, and they will change in such a way that human beings themselves, out of their own freedom, will have to bring more to this change than he brought with him in earlier times, when what fell to him as his task within the evolution of the earth could be carried out instinctively, when, in a sense, he was given the direction he had to take in one way or another.
If we look back, for example, to the Egyptian-Chaldean culture or to other cultures of earlier times, we will find that as much as is already now — and this will increasingly be placed in the hands of human beings with regard to the shaping of their outer destiny — was not placed in their hands in earlier times. In the Egyptian-Chaldean period, the fact that people belonged to a certain class, into which they were, as it were, forced, if not in such a strict sense, but in a certain sense like animals into their species, deprived them of what is now often considered to be human freedom. However, there was a counterbalance to this restriction of freedom in those earlier times. You can bring this counterbalance to mind when you consider what we have discussed in the context of these lectures. Today, in the external cultural history, which thinks so short-sightedly, it is very often imagined that in earlier times it was also the case that those who were the leaders of human affairs guided these affairs out of such human impulses as the leading personalities of today. But remember that in earlier times there were very specific processes within the mysteries through which the leading personalities were instructed about what non-earthly beings want, rather than what earthly beings want, and about what beings from extraterrestrial regions want, who guide earthly life. I have told you that at certain times, which we need not specify here, the ancient sacrificial priests performed certain mystery rites. These mystery rites consisted in the fact that certain suitable personalities were connected in the temples with the universe, with the cosmos, with extraterrestrial conditions, so that beings who directed the earthly processes from extraterrestrial regions then entered into the consciousness of these particularly suitable personalities, which directed earthly events from extraterrestrial regions, and that, according to what was thus inspired, one allowed oneself to be determined by the will of the guiding spiritual beings to carry out the tasks that were incumbent upon one.
So let us imagine that in our time — this does not happen, but I want to point out through a hypothetical assumption how such things happened in earlier times — Christmas did not take place as it does today, where it remains more or less an external celebration for most people. Let us assume that Christmas would take place in such a way that we knew: during this time of Christmas, our Earth, as a being, is particularly suited to receiving ideas into its aura that cannot enter the Earth's aura during the summertime, for example. In earlier reflections, I have discussed how the earth is, in a sense, awake during the winter season and how one of the brightest points of this awakening is precisely the Christmas season. During this time, the Earth's aura is permeated, interwoven with thoughts. One could say that during this time, the Earth thinks about the universe outside itself in the same way that we humans, when we are awake, think about what is around us through our thoughts. In summer, the earth sleeps. So you cannot find certain thoughts in it. In winter, it wakes up, and it wakes up most brightly during the Christmas season. Thoughts permeate the earth's aura, and from these thoughts you can read what the cosmos wants from our earthly processes.
If they educated certain individuals in such a way that these individuals became sensitive and receptive to what lived in the earth's aura, then these educating sacrificial priests in the temples were able to experience this cosmic will by, as it were, connecting the educated individuals to the earthly thoughts that express the cosmic will. And then, according to what they experienced as the will of heaven, they could determine who should remain within a certain class and who should be drawn into the mysteries in order to take up some leading position in the old state life or in the old priestly life. Humanity has outgrown these things. In this respect, it is now, so to speak, at the mercy of chaos. We must be very clear about this. The transition from the old, very specific conditions, in which human beings explored what was to happen here on earth through the will of the gods, to our present conditions took place. These old customs have passed through the fourth post-Atlantean period, in which human individuality has, so to speak, emancipated itself from the will of the cosmos, into our now more chaotic conditions. Everything tends toward being placed more in the hands of human beings. This makes it all the more necessary for the will of the cosmos to penetrate earthly conditions in a different way.
It would take an extraordinary amount of time to explain how, even in the Egyptian-Babylonian, that is, in the third post-Atlantean cultural period, in what works and weaves in the earthly realm — well, let us call it, in words adapted to our circumstances — out of the various occupations of human beings, how something was working and weaving there that was a high degree of reflection of the will of the cosmos. This came about in the manner described. It became blurred during the fourth post-Atlantean period, but it has become completely blurred in the fifth post-Atlantean period in which we live and which, as we know, began around the 15th century. If people today paid more attention to what is going on, if they did not tell a fable convenue instead of history, then they would be able to recognize from external circumstances how everything has changed to a certain degree in human professional life since the 14th and 15th centuries, and from present circumstances they would recognize how everything will become more and more different in the future. But a kind of anarchy would really have to break out among the human race if there were no one to grasp these deeper connections and convey to the human mind ideas that could reckon with these changes brought about by the natural course of evolution. What can already be observed in external history in the revival of the new historical, we might say, professional life since the 15th century would astonish anyone who has any sense at all for the contemplation of human life. If they allowed all that can be recognized to sink in, they would, in a sense, reproach themselves for living so sleepily and not thinking about what is most eminently connected with the evolving human destiny.
I have now pointed out here for the last time that what constitutes real professional life is by no means as meaningless for the whole cosmic context as it might appear at first glance. I have pointed out to you that we as human beings have successively passed through the Saturn development, during which the first elements of the physical human body were prepared; the Sun period, during which the etheric human being was prepared; and the Moon period, during which the astral human being was prepared. We are now passing through the Earth period, during which the I is being formed. But these periods will be followed by others: the Jupiter period, the Venus period, and the Vulcan period. And we can say that just as the Earth is, in a sense, the fourth stage of Saturn, so Vulcan is the fourth stage of the Earth. The Earth is, in a sense, the Saturn of Vulcan. Just as processes took place on the old Saturn, which I designate with the number 1, which are so closely connected with evolution that we owe the first beginnings of our physical body to these processes, which are still working in us, so too must something be happening on Earth that continues to work in evolution and reaches a fourth stage of development on the volcano, just as certain processes on Saturn underwent a certain fourth stage of development during the Earth period. And I have pointed out to you that these processes, which will correspond to the volcano, correspond to what we have from the Saturn evolution on Earth and thus represent what is active and alive in the various occupations that people take up on Earth. As people lead a professional life, something develops on Earth within the activity of the professions that is the first seed for the volcano, just as the activity of Saturn was the first seed for our physical human body.

If you add to this the fact that professional life has undergone such an enormous transformation since the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, you will realize how necessary it will become to consider professional life in the context of the entire course of world evolution from a spiritual scientific perspective. For it is only by first getting to know the objective aspects of professional life that we can form suitable ideas about the karma of the profession. We must be even more interested in where professional life is actually heading, where it wants to develop from our point in time, because this gives us clearer ideas than the conditions that already exist today.
The further development of professional life will consist in this — one can easily see this if one looks at the world today with a healthy mind — that professions will become more and more differentiated, more and more specialized. It is not very wise today to speak critically of the fact that that professions have become more specialized in recent times, whereas perhaps not so many centuries ago, people could still see in their professions the connection between what they produced and what it meant for the world, and they had an interest in shaping and designing their products in a certain way because they had a direct view of what their products became in human life. While this was the case in earlier times, it is no longer the case for a large part of humanity today.
Today, if we take a radical case, people are put into factories by their fate. He may not even make a nail, but only a part of a nail, which is then assembled by another person with other parts of the nail, and the person concerned cannot develop any interest in how what he does from early morning to late evening fits into the overall context of human life. If you compare the former life of a craftsman with the current factory life, you immediately see a radical difference between the present and the not-so-distant past. What has already been achieved to a high degree in the individual branches of human activity will continue to develop more and more. There will have to be more and more specialization and differentiation in professional life. It is not particularly clever to criticize this, because it is a necessity of evolution, because it will simply happen and will happen more and more.
And what prospects does this open up, so to speak? Yes, basically, it opens up the prospect that people will then, as one might imagine, lose more and more interest in precisely that which fills the greater part of their lives, that they will, so to speak, be mechanically devoted to their work in the external world. But that would not even be the most important thing. The most important thing is something else. The most important thing is that a person's outer work must naturally rub off on their inner life. And if you look at the historical development of human beings, you will see to what extent people in the more recent development, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, have become, in a sense, imprints of their professions, how professional life plays into the soul life and specializes the human being themselves. You must not take as your yardstick the majority of those who perhaps still live within our Anthroposophical Society today, for they are often in the fortunate position of being able to detach themselves from the context of life — in the fortunate position, I might just as well say, in the unfortunate position! For this is often only happiness for the subjective, egoistic human feeling; it is often not happiness for the world. For the world will one day demand more and more of people that they achieve something special, that they are able to specialize.
The question will only become more and more pressing: What must happen besides people specializing? The necessity of world development will ensure that they specialize. But what else must happen? In the not too distant future, this question will become one of the most important, if I may say so, family issues for humanity. Family issues, because an understanding of these issues will be necessary if we want to raise children. To position oneself sensibly in the entire course of human development when the question arises: How do I place my child in this human development? — that will depend entirely on the understanding of this question. For what is still possible in many cases today, but is only a remnant of old times, which people still cling to out of a certain sluggishness, will soon prove to be empty words, those beautiful phrases that are so often admired today: one should observe the children's aptitudes and let them become what their aptitudes correspond to. This, precisely, will very soon prove to be an empty phrase. For, first of all, people will see that those who are born from now on will refer back to their previous incarnations in a more complicated way than was the case in the fourth post-Atlantean period, that they will show complexities in their constitutional systems that one could not have dreamed of in the past. In earlier times, the predisposition systems were much simpler. And people who believe themselves particularly suited to testing the predispositions of adult children to see whether they are suited to this or that profession will perhaps have to learn that such insight into predispositions is nothing more than the fantastical imaginings of the people concerned, who think themselves clever.
But apart from that, people's lives will become so complicated in the not too distant future that the word “profession” will take on a completely different meaning. Today, people still often imagine that a profession is something internal, even though for most people it is by no means something internal. Today, people imagine that a profession is what a person is called to do because of their inner qualities. If one were to objectively examine, especially in our cities, how many people would answer: “I am in my profession because I realize that this is the only profession corresponds to my aptitudes and inclinations from childhood — if you asked this question to at least most urban people, you would probably get very few answers to the effect that people say they are in the profession that corresponds to their inclinations and aptitudes as they have felt them since their youth. I believe that you will not believe this at all from your observation of life. Today, a profession is already, to a large extent, and will increasingly become, that to which one is called by the objective course of the world. Outside, I would say, is the organism, the context—call it the machine, if you like, it doesn't matter—that demands something of people, that calls people.
Precisely through everything that will experience more and more intensification, however, what humanity accomplishes through its professional activity will at the same time detach itself from human beings themselves and become more objective. And through this detachment, it becomes more and more like what Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon have done for the Earth in its further development through Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. It is remarkable that, as a spiritual scientist, one cannot generally please people when one deals with matters that are very close to human life. Spiritual science will be less and less exposed to the danger of speaking according to the pattern of wisdom that is characterized by the words:
And at most a major state action
With excellent pragmatic maxims,
As befits the mouths of puppets!
However, spiritual science will not be able to do this. It will often be compelled to present precisely what people do not want as something significant and great for the development of the world. And so it cannot be otherwise than that what many who think themselves ingenious because they have carried philistism up into their upper chambers easily say today: Oh, that is a prosaic external thing — professional life presents itself differently to real spiritual science. It appears that one must say: In professional life, there is a necessity to develop relationships that have cosmic significance, precisely because professional life detaches itself in a certain way from human interests. So, some might say, this presents a sad outlook for the future. More and more, people must enter the treadmill of life. And spiritual science cannot even comfort people about being placed in the treadmill of life. But that would be a great deception if one were to conclude that from what has been said, for it is so in the universe that things work through polar balancing. Just consider how polar balancing imposes itself on you in the world! Positive and negative electricity, in their mutual relationship, produce their effects, their compensations; positive and negative electricity are necessary for each other. The male and female are necessary for the reproduction of the human race. From one-sidedness, totality develops in the evolution of the world.
This also underlies what we have just explained. It must be that in our professional work, detached from the human being, we create the first cosmic foundations for the further development of the world. For everything that happens in world evolution is related to the spiritual. And in what we create, whether through physical or so-called spiritual work within our professions, lies the starting point, so to speak, for the embodiment of spiritual beings. Now, during the Earth period, these spiritual beings are still of an elementary nature, one might say of the fourth degree. But they will already be elemental beings of the third degree when the Jupiter evolution arrives, and so on. Our work, which is currently being done in the objective professional process, will be taken over by us and will become the outer shell for elemental beings that continue to evolve through evolution. But only under a certain condition. If, on the one hand, we must say that we are only beginning to understand the meaning of what is often denigrated as prosaic life, we must also be clear that this meaning will only be fully revealed when we understand the matter in its great world context. What we produce in our professional life can gain significance for volcanic evolution, but something else is also necessary for this. The other pole is necessary for this. Just as positive electricity is necessary for negative electricity, and the masculine is necessary for the feminine, so something else is necessary for that which will increasingly detach itself from humanity as professional activity: an opposite pole. Such polarity based on opposites already existed for humanity in earlier epochs of development. Of course, something completely new does not arise; something similar already existed. But if you look back at earlier cultural periods, even just a few centuries ago, you will find that people were much more involved in their professional lives with their feelings, their passions, their entire emotional life than is the case today. If you compare the sum of joys that a person could have in their profession a hundred years ago with the listlessness that many people today must feel when they have nothing else but their profession, you will get an idea of what is actually meant.
Such things are actually given far too little consideration in the present day, simply because the people who talk about types of work, the nature of work, career choices, and so on, are mostly those who are good at talking. Schoolmasters write about it, writers or pastors, people who are relatively least aware of the dark side of working life in modern times. That is why, when one hears people talking about these things in popular literature, including educational literature, one really finds that they are talking like the blind about colors. For it goes without saying that someone who, due to certain social conditions, goes through school, attends high school, and then, well, perhaps looks around a little at some university, can easily appear very clever today, because he has absorbed many ideas, when he acts like a reformer of humanity who now knows how everything should be. There are many such people. To those who see through life, these people usually talk about what should be in the most stupid way. One does not notice it because today we still have a great deal of respect for people who have gone through such a process of development. The time has yet to come when we will more or less feel that a writer, a newspaper editor, a schoolmaster educated according to the model of today's schoolmasters, understands the least about the connections in life. This must gradually emerge as more than a general judgment.
Now it is a matter of really understanding better how the professional life of earlier times was connected with the emotional life of human beings, and how the most essential aspect of development in this area lies in the fact that professional life has grown out of the emotional life of human beings and will continue to do so more and more. Therefore, the other pole that must be added to professional life must be different from what it was in the past. What was it that used to be added to professional life? You still have it before you today if you allow yourself to be impressed by what has more or less become the shell of culture and must increasingly become the shell and covering of culture: the houses in which professions are carried out, surrounding the church in the center. The six days of the week are determined by the profession, Sunday by what man has to take in for his soul. These were the two poles: professional life and life in religious ideas.
It would be the greatest mistake that could be made today to believe that this other pole, as it is still conceived today by religious denominations, could remain as it is because it is tailored to a professional life that is still connected with emotions. The entire human life would wither away if insight did not prevail in this area. As long as what man produced in his profession in terms of elementary spirituality — for he did produce elementary spirituality in the sense just described — did not detach itself from man, the old religious ideas were, in a certain sense, sufficient. Now they are no longer sufficient, and will become less and less so the further we go into the future. What is necessary is precisely what is most opposed by certain quarters: that the other pole should enter into human development, which consists in being able to form concrete ideas about the spiritual worlds.
Those who are still representatives of religious creeds today will very often say: Oh, spiritual science talks about many spirits, about many gods; one God is what matters! Isn't that enough for us? — One can still make a certain impression on people today by teaching them the great advantage of reaching God, especially over coffee and family music, by mocking newer endeavors, by presenting things to people in a particularly selfish and philistine manner. But what is at stake here is precisely this: that people's perspectives must broaden, that is, they must learn to know that everything is not merely permeated by a divine spirituality that is imagined to be as vague as possible, but that spirituality is everywhere, and indeed concrete, specific spirituality. When standing at the workbench, one will have to learn how the sparks fly and how the elemental spirits are generated, which pass into the world process and have their meaning in the world process. Some who believe themselves to be particularly clever might say that this is foolish. These elemental spirits will come into being even if someone is standing at the lathe who has no idea that they are coming into being. They will come into being. But what matters is that they come into being correctly, that they come into being properly, not that they come into being at all. For elemental spirits can come into being that disturb the world process and those that serve the world process.
You will understand what I mean best if you consider it in a specific area, because we are at the beginning of a development in all these things today, but I would say that it is just around the corner. Some people are already beginning to sense something of this. If one were to sense something and put it into practice without at the same time turning to spiritual scientific endeavors, that would be the worst thing that could happen to the earth. What has mainly happened in the course of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch is that human beings have first become detached from the external, inorganic world that they embody in their tools. They will be reunited with what they embody in their tools. Today, machines are being constructed. Of course, machines today are objective; there is still little of the human in them. But it will not always remain so. The course of the world is moving toward a connection between what man is and what man produces, what man brings forth. This connection will become increasingly intimate. It will first emerge in those areas that establish a closer relationship between human beings, for example in the treatment of chemical substances that are processed into medicines. Today, people still believe that if something consists of sulfur and oxygen and some other substance, hydrogen, or something else, then the product that has been created contains only the effects that come from the individual substances. To a large extent, this is still true today, but the course of world evolution is moving in a different direction. The subtle vibrations inherent in human will and consciousness will become increasingly interwoven and integrated into what human beings produce, and it will not be irrelevant whether a prepared substance is received from one person or another.
Even the most extreme, coldest technical development tends toward a very specific goal. Those who can form a vague idea of the future of technical development know that in the future, entire factories will function individually, depending on the person who manages them. Attitudes will enter the factory and be transferred to the way the machines work. Man will grow together with objectivity. Everything we touch will gradually bear the imprint of human nature itself. And times will come, however foolish it may seem to clever people today—but even St. Paul said that what people consider clever is sometimes foolishness before God—when a mechanism will stand there that remains motionless; a person will approach it, knowing that he must make one hand movement in a certain way, another in a certain way, and a third in a certain way, and through what arises as vibrations in the air and is the result of a certain sign, the motor will be set in motion, which will be attuned to this sign.
And the development of the national economy will take on such a character that external patents and the like will be completely excluded, for what lies in such things will be replaced by what I have just explained. But in return, everything that has no relation to human nature will be eliminated. This will make it possible to achieve something very specific. For imagine a truly good person in the future, a person who is truly at a high level of human consciousness. What will he be able to do? He will be able to construct machines and establish symbols for them that can only be carried out by people who are of the same mind as he is, who are therefore also well-intentioned. And all those with evil intentions will cause the sign to vibrate in a completely different way, and the machine will not work!
I said that people already have some inkling of this today. It was not for nothing that I pointed out to you how certain people see flames dancing under the influence of certain sounds. If research continues in this direction, we will find the way to what what I have just hinted at, one could also say, find one's way back to certain ancient times when one alchemist, who only wanted to put money in his purse, could achieve nothing with the same process that another, who did not want to put money in his purse but wanted to perform a sacrament for the glory of the gods and the salvation of mankind, achieved something.
As long as what emerged from professional work carried, so to speak, the aura of people's emotions, the joy that people put into their work, it was inaccessible to the kind of influence I have just described. To the same extent that what is produced by human professional work can no longer be done with particular enthusiasm, because that is a necessary condition, to the same extent what flows out and emanates from people can become a driving force. It is so that human beings, in a sense, restore chastity to the mechanical world that emerges from their work or serves their work by no longer being able to connect it with their emotions. In the future, it will no longer be possible to impart one's own human warmth to things from the hearth of enjoyable professional work, so to speak. Instead, they will be placed more chastely in the world, but this will also make them more receptive to what can be described as motor power, emanating from human beings themselves and directed by them toward things. But what can give human development such a direction can only come from the concrete knowledge of the spiritual forces that can be explored through spiritual science. It can only come from there. And whether something like what has now been described can happen depends on whether a larger number of people in the world increasingly find the other pole, the pole of coming together from person to person in something that goes beyond all professional work and at the same time illuminates and permeates all professional work. What forms the basis of human coexistence, which can bring all professions together, is life in the spiritual scientific movement. Purely external progress in the development of professions would lead to the dissolution of all human bonds. It would lead to people understanding each other less and less, being able to develop fewer and fewer relationships in accordance with the requirements of human nature. People would increasingly pass each other by, seeking nothing but their own advantage and entering into no relationships with one another other than those of competition. This must not be the case, because otherwise the human race would fall into complete decadence. To prevent this from happening, spiritual science must spread.
And there is a way to describe in the right way what many people today, even if they deny it, are unconsciously striving for. You know, there are many people today who say: Oh, talking about the spiritual — that's old nonsense! We are developing the purely physical sciences in all fields. That is precisely the progress of humanity; that is what will really advance humanity. And if people would only grow beyond talking about the old nonsense of spiritual things, then paradise would be on earth, so to speak. But paradise would not come to earth as a result; hell would come if nothing else ruled the human race but competition, the pursuit of gain in the sense that the pursuit of gain is supposed to be the balancing principle. For ultimately, another pole would have to exist if things were to continue at all. If one did not seek a spiritual pole, one would have to have an Ahrimanic pole. If professions become specialized, one could still have unity in saying: Certainly, one is this, the other is that, but all have in common that they want to acquire as much as possible through their profession, and that is what makes them all equal. — Certainly, but it is a purely Ahrimanic principle. To believe that the world can cope with the one-sided development that proceeds purely in the external realm, as we have now described, means to believe the same thing in this realm as if someone were to find — let us suppose there were such a strange oddball, or let us say, out of politeness, oddball woman, who would take the position that that men have become worse and worse and are actually impossible for the world today and should be exterminated, then the development of the world would only take place in a corresponding way on the physical plane! It would be a strange old bird who believed that, wouldn't it, because nothing would come of it if you exterminated all men. People understand that because that's how it is in the sensory world. In the spiritual world, they don't understand such eccentricity. And yet, for spiritual conditions, it is quite the same if someone thinks that only external evolution can continue. It cannot continue. And just as the earlier periods of development demanded abstract religions, so the newer development demands more concrete spiritual knowledge, as is sought in the spiritual scientific movement. The elemental spirits that are generated by detached professional work must be fertilized by the human soul through what the human soul takes in from the impulses ascending to the spiritual regions. Not that this is the only task of spiritual science, but in relation to the advancing, transforming professional life, this is the task of spiritual science. Therefore, demanded by the world evolution on earth itself, the insight must come into human hearts that, to the same extent that professions mechanize people, the opposite pole becomes increasingly active, especially for those who are becoming more specialized and mechanized. This pole consists in filling the soul with that which brings us closer to every other human soul, regardless of how specialized it has become.
But this leads to much more. As we shall hear, it leads to the emergence of a completely different era from our own, which is characterized by indifference to life and withdrawal from life, and which is often found among people who are completely absorbed in their careers. I would like to say life-indifferent and life-withdrawn time, which is often the case for professional people, a completely different time will emerge, a time in which people will once again create out of completely different impulses, impulses that will truly be no worse than the good old professional impulses, but which cannot be renewed, but must be replaced by others. And in this respect, we can already point today, not merely in an abstract way, to a human ideal that spiritual science wants to develop, but in a very concrete way to an ideal that will show what the profession will also become for human beings when they understand how to heed the signs of the times in the right way.
Tomorrow we will continue our reflections on all these things and their significance for human individuality and karma.