The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] In these reflections, we have discussed some of the oldest events in the development of Western culture. But you have seen that we have always done this in order to find, from the thoughts that spring from these reflections on the most ancient, that which is necessary to present in the present. And it is with this intention that I will continue these reflections here.

[ 2 ] It is a time, this present time, in which it is already apparent, even on the surface, that only thoughts taken from the mysteries of human development can have any impact. However, in order to feel the full significance of such a statement, it is necessary to look quite clearly, but also to a certain degree deeply, into the needs and deficiencies of present-day thinking, feeling, and willing. It is precisely from this that one will then feel the necessity for our present age to need new impressions, new thoughts, new ideas, and precisely those impressions and thoughts that come from the depths of spiritual life, which should be the subject of spiritual science.

[ 3 ] You see, there are some things in the present that one must indeed view with a certain sadness, although this sadness should never be something that makes one despondent, but rather something that can make one fit and ready for work and striving in the present. A book has been published in recent weeks, and I must say that when I first picked it up, I felt that I would like to rejoice over this book, to rejoice heartily. For it is written by a man who belongs to the few, one might say, who could be interested in our spiritual-scientific endeavors, and in whom one would wish that he could allow what comes out of spiritual-scientific endeavors to flow into his own spiritual work. I am referring to the book “The State as a Form of Life” by Rudolf Kjellén, the Swedish economist and political scientist. When I had read the book, I felt a sense of melancholy because I could see in a mind that, as I said, could be interested in the spiritual-scientific endeavours, how far removed his thoughts still were from those thoughts that are most needed in the present, that must take shape in the present above all else in order to have an impact on the course of development of the present. Kjellén attempts to study the state, and one gets the feeling that he has no ideas or concepts that would enable him to even remotely solve his task, or even come close to solving it in any way. It is indeed a sad feeling, but one that, as I said, must not discourage us; on the contrary, it should strengthen our resolve when we are forced to face the truth of our times. It is a sad feeling to have to make such discoveries again and again.

[ 4 ] But before I say anything about these phenomena, I would like to draw your attention once again to the most ancient, to that which, as you can easily imagine from the information I gave you recently about the destructive element in the development of Christian culture, can only appear very clouded to the present day in terms of external history, which must therefore be brought to an understanding of the present through spiritual science. Last time, I mentioned the tremendous fury with which Christianity, spreading in the first centuries, destroyed the ancient monuments of art, how much this spreading Christianity, so to speak, razed to the ground from earthly existence. I believe that it is impossible to approach Christianity today with an open mind unless one is able to view this other side of the matter with complete objectivity. But consider something else in connection with this: consider the fact that today you get a picture from the various books that exist on this subject. Anyone with even a little schooling gets a picture of the spiritual development of antiquity, of the spiritual development that preceded Christianity. But think for a moment how different this picture would be that everyone has today if Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria had not burned seven hundred thousand scrolls in 391 containing the most important cultural documents on Roman, Egyptian, Indian, and Greek literature and their spiritual life! Just imagine what would be written in books today if those seven hundred thousand scrolls had not been burned in 391! And from that you will be able to form a picture of what the history of the past actually is, if it is based solely on documents, or rather what it is not.

[ 5 ] Now, let us build on the lines of thought I touched on last time. Let us be clear that in many respects, as we have seen, the cultic life of Christianity received its inspiration and impetus from the ancient mystery symbols and mystery cults; but that, on the other hand, it ensured that these mystery cults and mystery symbols were thoroughly eradicated in their form for external research. Christianity has, in a sense, made a clean sweep so that no one can know what went before, so that people devote themselves only to what Christianity itself offers. Yes, such is the course of human development; and without being tormented by pessimistic impulses, one must accept that the course of human development is not such a straight line of progress.

[ 6 ] I already pointed out last time that much of what has flowed into the cults can be traced back on the one hand to the Eleusinian mysteries, which, however, were interrupted in their development because, as we have seen, Julian the Apostate did not come into his rights and was unable to carry out his intentions; but even more has flowed into what then took place in the following period from the mysteries of Mithras. But precisely that which was the spirit of the Mithras mysteries, that which gave them their justification, that from which they drew their actual content, their spiritual content, has been lost to external research because people knew how to cover up the traces. So it can only be found again in its true form if we try to gain ideas about the corresponding things through spiritual scientific research. Today I want to present just one aspect of the Mithras mysteries to you. There is, of course, much, much more to say about these Mithras mysteries than I can say today, but one must get to know things by gradually familiarizing oneself with their details.

[ 7 ] If one wants to understand the true spirit of the Mithras mysteries, which played a major role even in the first centuries of the spread of Christianity, even deep into Western Europe, one must know that they were based entirely on a fundamental view that was justified in the ancient world; which remained entirely justified in this ancient world until the mystery of Golgotha. These Mithras mysteries were based on the fundamental view that the human community, or that individual human communities, for example, communities of peoples or other communities within communities of peoples, do not consist merely of individual atoms that can be called human beings, but that a group spirit, a spirit of community, which has a supersensible existence, lives and must live in communities if things are to have any roots in reality at all. A community of so many heads was not merely the number indicated by those heads, but a community expressed for these old people the external form, I would say the incarnation, if I may use the expression, of the truly existing common spirit. And to live with this spirit, to participate in the thoughts of this group spirit, was the intention of those who were initiated into these mysteries. The intention was not to remain isolated individuals with our own stubborn, selfish thoughts, feelings, and impulses, but to live in such a way that the thoughts of the group spirit played into us. And in the Mithras mysteries in particular, it was said that this cannot be achieved if one regards a larger human community only as what is present at the moment. What is present actually clouds what lives in the spirit of community. The dead, it was said, belong to the present, and the more one can live with those who have long since died, the better and more truly one lives in the present. Indeed, the longer the deceased had been dead, the better it was considered to live with their spirit. It was considered best to be able to live with the spirit of the forefather of a tribe, a community, or a family by connecting with his soul. For it was assumed that the soul continued its development after passing through the gate of death and that it knew better than those living on earth in their present bodies what was to happen here on earth. Thus, all efforts in these mysteries were directed toward performing such acts and such cults that could bring the pupil into contact with spirits who had passed through the gate of death for a shorter or longer period of time, even for a very long time.

[ 8 ] The first stage that those who were drawn to these mysteries had to go through was usually described with an expression taken from the bird family: the “ravens,” for example. A raven was, let us say, an initiate of the first degree. What was achieved in him through the special mystery cults, through powerful symbols and, in particular, through artistic and dramatic events, was that the person concerned now learned not only what one sees with one's eyes in one's surroundings, or what one learns from the people present, but also what the dead think. He acquired, as it were, a kind of memory of the dead and the ability to develop this memory. Such a raven had a duty. He was strictly obliged not to sleep while living in the present, but to observe the present with open, clear eyes, to familiarize himself with human needs, to familiarize himself with natural phenomena. Someone who slept through existence, who had no sense of what lives in human beings and in nature, was considered unfit to be admitted to the mysteries. For only correct observation of life outside made him fit for the task he had to fulfill in the mysteries. The task consisted in trying as much as possible to enter into the various situations of the outer world in order to experience a great deal, to suffer a great deal, and to rejoice with the events and processes of the present. Someone who was indifferent to the events of the present was of no use. For what he had to accomplish within the mystery at first was to reproduce the experiences he had gained outside in the mysteries, to bring them forward in the mysteries. By bringing these experiences forward in the mysteries, they became messages for the deceased, for those whose advice was sought. You might now ask: Wouldn't someone with a higher degree be more suitable for this? No, it was precisely the first graduates who were particularly suited to this, because the first graduates still had all the feelings, all the sympathies and antipathies that enable one to really empathize with the outer world, whereas the higher graduates had more or less shed them. Therefore, these first graduates were particularly suited to experiencing the life of the present as an ordinary person experiences it and to carrying it into the mysteries. It was therefore their special task, that of the ravens, to mediate between the outer world and those who had long since passed away. This has been preserved in legend. Legends are usually based on deep foundations, as has often been discussed. And when the legend claims that Frederick Barbarossa, long since deceased, is taught in his mountain by ravens, or that Charlemagne is taught in the Untersberg near Salzburg by ravens in order to convey to him what is happening outside, these are echoes of the ancient mysteries, specifically the Mithras mysteries.

[ 9 ] When someone was ready for the second degree, they became an “occultist” in the true sense of the word; they became a secret student, an occultist, as we would call it today. This enabled him not only to bring the external into the mysteries, but also to hear — in the same way that one received messages from the deceased — to hear the messages from the deceased, through the impulses, so to speak, which the supersensible world, this concrete supersensible world in which the deceased are, for the outer world. And only when he was thus integrated, as it were, into the whole spiritual life that is connected with the outer, sensory world through the supersensible, was he found ready for the third degree, and he was given the opportunity to apply in the outer world what he had received as impulses in the mysteries. He was now chosen to become, as it were, a “fighter” for what had to be revealed from the supersensible world to the sensible world.

[ 10 ] You might now ask: Was it not a profound injustice to leave the entire mass of the people in ignorance, as it were, about the most important things and to initiate only a few individuals? — But you can only gain a proper understanding of what lies behind this if you assume what I said from the outset, namely that one reckoned with a group spirit, with a group soul. It was enough for individuals to work for the whole group of people. People did not feel themselves to be individuals, but rather members of the group. That is why it was only possible to act in this way at a time when group animation, the unselfish feeling of belonging to the group, was very much alive.

[ 11 ] And then, when one had been a fighter for the supersensible world for a certain time, one was found suitable to form smaller groups within the large group, smaller communities, as they are necessary within large groups. In those ancient times, no one would have paid any attention if someone had simply stood up and wanted to form an association, as we do today. Such an association would have been nothing. In order to found such an association, such a club, one had to be a “lion” in the Mithraic mysteries, as they said, because that was the fourth degree of initiation. One had to have established within oneself life in the supersensible worlds through connection with those impulses that were not only among the living, but also connected the living with the dead.

[ 12 ] From this fourth degree, one then rose to be allowed to lead an already existing group, to which the dead also belonged, a community of people, through various measures. If we go back to the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, those were very different times from today. It would not have occurred to anyone to demand that someone who had something to do should be elected; rather, anyone who had anything to do with the community had to be initiated up to the fifth degree. And then it continued until those insights which the Sun Mystery itself recently hinted at were placed into the human soul; and then up to the seventh degree. I do not need to go into this further, because I only want to describe the character of the development process of such a person who was to acquire the ability to work outside in the community from the spiritual world.

[ 13 ] Now you know, however, that it lies in the naturally necessary development of the human race that the group soul nature has gradually receded. This is what was essentially simultaneous with the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha: that human souls were consciously seized by their I. This had been preparing for centuries, but at the time of the mystery of Golgotha there was a climax, a crisis in this area. It was no longer possible to assume that the individual had the power, so to speak, to really carry the whole community with him, to transfer his feelings and impulses unselfishly to the whole community.

[ 14 ] It would be foolish to believe that history should have taken a different course than it did. But sometimes one can be inspired by thoughts such as what would have happened if, at the time when Christianity began to introduce its task into human evolution, everything had not been eradicated root and branch, but if a certain knowledge had been preserved in history that would also be transparent to those who believe only in documents, had been passed down to posterity. But Christianity did not want that. We will talk about the reasons why it did not want that later; but today we will first acquaint ourselves with the fact that Christianity did not want that. Christianity was also confronted with a completely different kind of humanity, a humanity that no longer stood in the same relationship to the old group spirits as humanity had in earlier times; a humanity in which one had to relate to the individual in a completely different way than in ancient times, when the individual was not particularly taken into account, but rather one turned to the group spirit and acted from the group spirit. In any case, by erasing, as it were, all the documentation of this ancient time for the outer world, Christianity left a certain darkness, even created darkness, for the age into which the development of Christianity initially fell. Christianity took what it needed into its traditions, into its dogmas, but especially into its cult, and then obliterated the origin of these cults. There is an enormous amount in the cults, but everything has been reinterpreted, everything has been understood differently. The things were there, the things were still visible to people, but people were not supposed to know what ancient wisdom the things were connected to.

[ 15 ] Think of such a fact: we know the bishop's miter, the bishop's miter from the eighth century. This bishop's mitre from the eighth century is covered with symbols, but all these symbols are actually the same, only arranged differently, and all these symbols are swastikas. The swastika appears in many different arrangements on this bishop's mitre. This ancient cross with handles in many different forms on the bishop's mitre! The swastika takes us back to the primeval times of the mysteries, back to ancient times when one could observe how the lotus flowers work in the human etheric and astral organism; how everything that lives in the so-called lotus flowers belongs to the fundamental phenomena of the etheric and astral. But it had become a dead symbol. The bishop wore it as a sign of his power. It had become a dead symbol; its origin had been obscured. And what is communicated today in cultural history about the origin of such things is still not something living, truly nothing living. Only through spiritual science can we once again perceive the living in these things with the spiritual eye.

[ 16 ] Now I said: In a sense, darkness was created. But we must emerge from this darkness again. And I think that over time I have said enough and in many different ways to make it clear that in our time it is particularly necessary to have ears for these things in order to hear, and eyes for these things in order to see. For our time is a time in which the necessary darkness has done its work, and in which the light must shine again, the light of spiritual life. First of all, one would wish that many souls, many hearts, would feel in the most serious, in the most serious sense, that this is necessary for our time, and that what is lacking in our time, what is causing infinite suffering in our time, is connected with all these things. It will become clear that it is not enough to look at things only on the surface; that it is not enough to speak about the causes of today's events only from the perspective of things that lie on the surface. For as long as we only talk about things that lie on the surface, we will not be able to find ideas or gain the impetus needed to emerge from the darkness that is the cause of everything else that is happening today.

[ 17 ] It is strange how in our time people — but this need not make us despondent or turn us into critics, but merely into necessary observers and interpreters of what is happening today — it is strange how in our time people do not want to approach what is actually necessary to see, because they are mostly still unable to approach it. to look at development. I would say that it is heartbreaking to see how a mind that suffered greatly from the turmoil and confusion of the second half of the nineteenth century, even to the point of serious illness, felt about what lives in the darkness and confusion of the times. One cannot come to terms with a spirit such as Friedrich Nietzsche's if one merely regards him enthusiastically as someone to follow, as so many have done. For he countered such followers with his own saying:

I live in my own house,
I have never imitated anyone,
And I have laughed at every master
Who did not laugh at himself.

[ 18 ] This is also the basic mood of Nietzsche's entire “Zarathustra.” But that did not prevent there from being many mere followers. That is one extreme. In any case, this extreme is not what is fruitful for the present. But the other extreme is certainly not fruitful either, which could consist in saying that, although he said some quite brilliant things, he ultimately became a fool, went mad, and that one should not pay any attention to him. He is certainly a peculiar phenomenon, this Friedrich Nietzsche, to whom one certainly does not need to simply surrender, but who, even in the years of his illness, felt with fine sensitivity what darkness and confusion exist in the present. And one might say that, especially for the present day, one could perhaps gain a very good background for consideration by taking some of Nietzsche's statements about the suffering that this present situation caused him. I would like to read to you two passages from Nietzsche's posthumous writings, “Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values,” which were written at that time by a sick mind, but which could perhaps also be written today with a completely different intention than Nietzsche wrote them, and could be written in such a way as to express the deeper causes of the effects of the present. Nietzsche says:

[ 19 ] “What I am telling you is the history of the next two centuries. I am describing what is coming, what cannot come any other way: the advent of nihilism. This history can already be told, for necessity itself is at work here. This future is already speaking in a hundred signs, this fate is announcing itself everywhere; all ears are already pricked up for this music of the future. Our entire European culture has long been moving through an ordeal of tension that has been growing from decade to decade, as if heading toward a catastrophe: restless, violent, hasty: like a stream rushing toward its end, unable to reflect, afraid to reflect."

[ 20 ] Consider some of what you may feel in the present in light of these words written by a sensitive person at the end of the 1880s. Consider them together with another passage that I would like to read to you, which can really bring to life the deepest feelings that each of us could experience.

[ 21 ] "My friends, we had a hard time when we were young: we suffered from youth itself as if it were a serious illness. That is what makes the time in which we find ourselves—a time of great inner decay and disintegration, which, with all its weaknesses and even with its best strengths, works against the spirit of youth. Disintegration, that is, uncertainty, is characteristic of this time: nothing stands on firm ground or is based on firm belief: one lives for tomorrow, because the day after tomorrow is uncertain. Everything is smooth and dangerous on our path, and the ice that still supports us has become so thin: we all feel the warm, eerie breath of the dew wind—where we still walk, soon no one will be able to walk anymore!”

[ 22 ] It cannot be said that these things are not deeply felt from the reality of the present. Anyone who wants to understand this present, and in particular what the individual can set himself as a task, anyone who wants to think beyond everyday life, will feel similarly to what is expressed in these passages, and will then perhaps say: Nietzsche was prevented, when illness clouded his mind, from taking a truly critical stance toward the ideas that arose in him; but the ideas that arose in him were often finely felt from the immediate reality of the present. Perhaps one day we will compare everything that otherwise confronts us from the “enlightened minds,” which does not even touch the uppermost ripples of the causes underlying today's difficult times, with such a perception of the present. Then we will gain a different perspective on the necessity of listening to the humanities, especially in our time. For it is not the case that people like to hear them today. And in saying how little people like to hear these spiritual sciences, I do not mean to express any reproach. As I said, I am far from reproaching anyone. Those I am talking about are mostly people whom I hold in very high esteem and whom I would most likely believe to be open to spiritual science. I just want to make it clear how difficult it is for individuals to open their souls to the humanities when they are completely immersed in what can be achieved in the soul when one surrenders oneself completely to the current, to the superficial current of the present in all areas. One has to really feel this.

[ 23 ] And now I am ready to return with a few words to Kjellén's book on “The State as a Form of Life.” This book is quite remarkable, remarkable if only because its author strives with every fiber of his being to understand what the state actually is—and because he has absolutely no confidence in the human capacity for imagination and ideas to come up with any answer to the question or problem of what the state actually is. Certainly, he says all sorts of beautiful things which, as I have seen, are greatly admired by contemporary critics; he says all sorts of beautiful things, but he does not even suspect what must be known, what must be known for the good of humanity. You see, I can only give you one main point of view. First of all, Kjellén asks himself: What is the relationship between the individual and the state? And when he tries to form an idea, a conception of this question, something immediately gets in his way. He wants to imagine the state as something real, as something whole, as something, one might say, that is alive; so let us say as an organism, initially as an organism. Some have already imagined the state as an organism, but then they always stumble around the question that immediately arises: Yes, an organism consists of cells; what are the cells of this state? They are the individual human beings! — And that is roughly how Kjellén thinks: the state is an organism, just as the human organism or the animal organism is an organism, and just as the human organism consists of individual cells, so too does the state consist of individual cells, of human beings; they are its cells.

[ 24 ] One cannot draw a more wrong, more terrible, more misleading analogy! For if one builds a train of thought on this analogy, then man can never come into his own. Never! Why? You see, the cells in the human organism are adjacent to one another, and it is precisely in this adjacency that something special lies. The entire organization of the human organism is connected with this adjacency. The people in the state are not adjacent to one another in the same way as individual cells. That is not the case at all. The human personality is far from being, in the whole of the state, something like the cells in an organism. And if, for the sake of argument, one compares the state to an organism, one must be clear that one is certainly terribly mistaken, terribly mistaken in all political science, if one overlooks the fact that the individual human being is not a cell, but is only that which can sustain the state, is the productive force itself, while the cells together form the organism and in their totality constitute that which is essential. That is why the state of today, where the group spirit is no longer what it was in ancient times, can never be such that what drives it forward is sustained by anything other than the individual human being. But this can never be compared to the task of the cells. As a rule, it is irrelevant what you compare something with; you just have to compare correctly when you draw pairs of comparisons; comparisons will usually be valid in some way, but they must not go as far as Kjellén's comparison. He can quite well compare the state to an organism; he could also compare it to a machine, which would do no harm, or, for that matter, to a pocket knife—there are points of contact to be found there as well—but when making the comparison, the matter must be done correctly. But people are not familiar enough with the basic structure of thought to be able to understand something like that.

[ 25 ] So let's allow him the right to compare the state to an organism. Then he just has to find the right cells; and then, if you really want to compare the state to an organism, you cannot find the right cells. It simply has no cells! If you approach the matter with realistic thinking, the idea simply cannot be carried out. I just want to make it clear to you, to make you understand that you can only carry out that idea if you think abstractly, like Kjellén; but as soon as you think realistically, you come up against a barrier because the idea is not rooted in reality. You cannot find the cells; there are no cells. Instead, you find something else, something completely different. You find that the individual states can be compared to cells, and what the states together make up on earth can then be compared to an organism. Then you arrive at a fruitful idea, but first you must ask yourself the question: What kind of organism is this? Where can one find something similar in nature, where cells interact in a similar way to the individual cells of the state in relation to the whole organism of the earth? And if one goes further, one finds that one can only compare the whole earth with a plant organism, not with an animal organism, let alone a human organism — only with a plant organism. While what we have in external science deals with the inorganic, with the mineral kingdom, one must think upward into the plant kingdom if one wants to establish political science.

[ 26 ] One need not go as far as the animal kingdom, let alone the human kingdom, but one must at least free oneself from purely mineral thinking. But such thinkers remain stuck where they are; they do not free themselves from purely mineral thinking, from scientific thinking. They do not think up to the plant kingdom, but instead apply the laws they have found in the mineral kingdom to the state and call this political science.

[ 27 ] Yes, but you see, in order to find such a fruitful idea, one must root one's entire thinking in spiritual science. Then one will also come to say that the human being, with his entire being, as an individuality, rises above the state; he rises into the spiritual world, into which the state cannot rise. So if you want to compare the state with an organism and the individual human being with the cells, then if you think realistically, you would arrive at a strange organism, an organism consisting of individual cells, but the cells would grow everywhere beyond the skin. You would have an organism that protrudes beyond the skin; the cells would unfold entirely outside, independent of external life. You would have to imagine the organism everywhere as if living bristles, feeling themselves as individualities, were growing out beyond the skin. You see how living thinking leads you into reality, how it shows you the impossibilities that you must stumble over if you want to grasp any idea that is to be fruitful. No wonder, then, that such ideas, which have not been fertilized by spiritual science, have no power whatsoever to organize reality. How can one organize what is spreading on earth if one has no concept of what it is? One can issue as many Wilsonian declarations as one likes from all kinds of intergovernmental—whatever—associations and so on, but if they are not rooted in reality, they are nothing but empty talk. That is why so much of what is being done at present is mere talk.

[ 28 ] Here you have a case where you can see how immediately necessary it is for spiritual science to intervene in the present with its impulses. It is the misfortune of our time that our age is powerless to form concepts that could master what is truly organic. That is why everything naturally descends into chaos; of course everything becomes chaotic and confused. But now you can see where the deeper causes lie. It is therefore no wonder that books such as Kjellén's “The State as a Form of Life” come to such strange conclusions. Just think, we are now living in a time when everyone wants to think: What should we actually do so that people can live together again on earth, after they have decided more and more, with each passing week, not to live together, but to kill each other? How can they live together again? — But science, which wants to deal with how people should live side by side in the state, concludes with Kjellén's words:

[ 29 ] “This must be our final word in this investigation of the state as a form of life. We have seen that the state of our time has made very little progress on this path for compelling reasons and has not yet become fully aware of such a task. But we nevertheless believe in a higher type of state that will allow a rational purpose to be more clearly recognized and will strive toward this goal with sure steps.”

[ 30 ] Well, that is the conclusion. We know nothing, we are not aware of what is to come! That is the conclusion of strenuous, devoted thinking; that is the conclusion of thinking that swims with the current of the present with its soul in such a way that it cannot take in what is necessary. One must really look these things in the face; for only then does the impulse arise, I would even say, to want to acquire knowledge of these things at all, when one really looks these things in the face, when one knows what driving forces are at work in the present. One does not need to look deeply to find a certain urge and striving in the present for a kind of socialization—I do not say socialism, but socialization of the earthly organism. But socialization—because it must arise from consciousness, not from unconsciousness, as it has arisen for two millennia—socialization, reorientation, reorganization is only possible if one knows what human beings are like, if one gets to know human beings again—for getting to know human beings was also the endeavor of the ancient mysteries in ancient times—if one gets to know human beings again. Socialization is for the physical plane; but it is impossible to establish a social order if one knows nothing about the fact that here on the physical plane there are not only physical human beings walking around, but human beings with soul and spirit. Nothing can be achieved, nothing can be realized, if one speaks only of the outer human being. Go ahead and socialize according to the ideas of today, establish order, but in twenty years there will be disorder again if you fail to see that there is more to human beings than what modern science knows, that there is soul and spirit in human beings. For soul and spirit are already at work; they can only be forgotten in one's ideas and conceptions, but they cannot be abolished. However, if the soul is to dwell in a body that is in an external order appropriate to our present time, it needs above all what is called freedom of perception and freedom of thought. And socialization cannot be achieved without freedom of thought. And socialization and freedom of thought cannot be achieved without the spirit being rooted in the spiritual world itself.

[ 31 ] Freedom of thought as a mindset, and pneumatology, spiritual wisdom, spiritual science as a scientific foundation, as the basis of all arrangements, are inseparable from one another. But how these things actually relate to human beings and how they can become external order can only be learned from spiritual scientific observation. Freedom of thought, that is, such an attitude toward other people that truly recognizes freedom of thought in other people in the fullest sense of the word, is impossible without standing on the foundation of repeated earthly lives, for otherwise one stands before a human being as if he were an abstraction. One never stands before him correctly unless one regards him as the result of repeated earthly lives. The whole question of reincarnation must be considered in connection with the question of that attitude of freedom of perception, freedom of thought. And moving within reality will be completely impossible in the future if the individual is not rooted in spiritual life with his soul. I am not saying that they must become clairvoyant — some will certainly do so — but I am saying that they must be rooted in spiritual life. I have often said that it is quite possible to be well rooted in spiritual life without being clairvoyant oneself. If one looks around just a little, one quickly discovers where the main obstacles are, where one must direct one's gaze in order to encounter these obstacles. For human beings are not — as I have said, I do not want to be a faultfinder or a clamoring critic — such that they do not want to attain what is right. But there are so many obstacles for the soul; there are so many terrible obstacles for the soul.

[ 32 ] You see, sometimes the individual things one notices are so enlightening that one can correctly understand entire contemporary phenomena from such symptoms. With regard to certain phenomena of the present, one must say: It is actually quite remarkable how people immediately become terribly anxious, terribly fearful — otherwise people today are courageous and brave — but they are terribly anxious when they hear anything that has to do with spiritual knowledge or spiritual insight. They can no longer find their bearings. I have often said that I have met many people who have heard one or two of my lectures and then have not been seen again for a long time. You meet them on the street and ask them why they did not come back. “Yes, I can't,” they say, “I'm afraid of being convinced!” For those who speak like this, being convinced is certainly associated with something very fatal and unpleasant, and they do not have the strength or the courage to accept this fatality and unpleasantness. One could cite many other examples in this regard, but I would rather mention symptoms from public life.

[ 33 ] Some time ago, I spoke here about how someone like Hermann Bahr, who recently gave a lecture here in Berlin entitled “The Ideas of 1914,” how someone like that—you only need to read his latest novel, “Ascension”—tries not only to approach spiritual science a little, but even tries, in his old age, get to know Goethe, to follow the path that I would consider right for anyone who wants to find their way into the humanities today with a good foundation. Yes, many people today want to talk about the spirit; they want to acquire the ability to talk about the spirit, about the spiritual. I don't want to lecture, least of all someone I love as much as Hermann Bahr. But how this intellectual life has worked to corrupt thoughts, I would say to drive original sin into thoughts, becomes clear in a very strange way, even if one is far from wanting to lecture.

[ 34 ] You see, Hermann Bahr recently gave a lecture here in Berlin on the ideas of 1914, and of course he said all sorts of nice things, but one could also make all sorts of strange discoveries. For example, he began by saying: This war has taught us something completely new. This war has taught us to put the individual back into the whole in the right way. This war has taught us to overcome individualism, egoism, and to serve the whole again. It has taught us to do away with old ideas and to take something completely new, completely new into our souls. — And now he knew an awful lot about characterizing and defining all the new things we have taken on with this war. I don't want to criticize that, quite the contrary. But it is strange when people talk at length about how this war is transforming us all, how we are all becoming completely different because of this war, and then one of the last sentences is: “People always hope for better times, but they themselves remain incorrigible. Even war will hardly change us very much.” As I said, I don't want to lecture, but I can't help feeling this way. These people really mean well; they want to get back to the spiritual. Bahr therefore emphasizes: Yes, we have relied too long on the individual. We have pursued individualism for too long. We must learn once again to submit to a greater whole. He believes that people who belong to a nation have now learned to feel themselves part of the whole of that nation, thus killing individualism. But peoples are also just individualities, he believes. A greater whole must emerge. Sometimes it becomes apparent, as it does in this lecture, what paths Bahr is taking to find the spirit. He sometimes only hints at it, but these hints reveal a great deal. The old ways are no good, he says. People have used the Enlightenment to try to put themselves on a pedestal of reason, but that has led to chaos. We must find something that connects us to the absolute, not to chaos. And here, once again, some strange ideas come to the fore:

[ 35 ] "What is most difficult for peoples, as for individuals, they might then have learned, they might have learned to grant to others the right to individuality that each demands for itself, since the individuality of others is ultimately the condition of their own, for if all were the same, no one would be unique, and they might have learned that, just as every individual is necessary to the nation in his particular place with his particular strength in order to by exerting its influence, to support the nation and thus at the same time to be its own purpose, but also its serving member, so that above the nations, out of the nations, the Catholic cathedral of humanity rises, touching God with its spire."

[ 36 ] That is a hint, if not with a sledgehammer, then with a matchstick, isn't it, but still a clear hint. People strive to find access to God, to the spiritual world, but they do not want to approach it in a way that is appropriate to our time; so they look for another way that is already there, without even considering that this way only worked until 1914, and that in order to overcome what it brought, we must return to it!

[ 37 ] But the symptoms that are coming to light are, I would say, worth looking into more deeply, because this is not just the opinion of one individual; an enormous number of people think along the same lines and feel the same way. Look, a book has been published: “The Genius of War and the German War” by Max Scheler. I praise it, I can praise it, it is a good book. Bahr also praises it. Bahr is a man of taste, a knowledgeable man, he has every reason to praise the book. But he also wants to praise it loudly; in other words, he wants to write a very favorable review of the book. What does he think about first? I want to write a very favorable review, a real fanfare for Scheler. But how should I do that? Should I do it in such a way that I really strike a chord with people? I can't just strike a chord with everyone. I have to find a way to reach people, I have to find a way. So what do I actually do? Well, Hermann Bahr is also a very sincere, honest person, and he explains quite openly what he does in such a case. You see, in the essay he wrote about Scheler, he says at the beginning: Scheler has written many essays, many things about how to get out of the misery of the present. People took notice of him. But today, according to Hermann Bahr, people don't like it when you take notice of someone so readily; they don't like it when you take notice of someone so easily. And so Hermann Bahr characterizes Scheler initially by saying: “People were curious about him and somewhat suspicious of him; Germans want above all to know where they stand with an author: they don't like unclear circumstances.”

[ 38 ] So, clear circumstances! But these are not created by reading books and examining their reasons; you see, there is something else involved. People don't like unclear circumstances. Now comes another hint:

[ 39 ] "Even in the Catholic world, people tended to hold back so as not to be disappointed. Here, too, it was his dialect that was disconcerting. For in every intellectual atmosphere, a distinct idiom develops over time, which makes special domestic use of the same words of the general language; this is how one recognizes who belongs to the household, and so it happens that in the end one pays less attention to what someone says than to how they say it.”

[ 40 ] So what was Hermann Bahr actually thinking? He decided he wanted to let off a real blast of trumpet. Scheler is like Bahr himself in that he always hints at those strange Catholicizing tendencies — well, with matches at first, not with fence posts. But now, says Bahr, Scheler doesn't speak like a true Catholic. But Catholics want to know where they stand with Scheler, especially me — says Hermann Bahr of himself — who now wants to let off a trumpet blast, who wants to write in the Catholic newspaper Hochland — so you have to know that Scheler can already be recommended to Catholics. People don't like unclear circumstances; they want clarity.

[ 41 ] You see, that's what matters. But clear circumstances are created by hinting to people: things will turn out quite well for Catholics with Scheler! It doesn't matter if he is a very witty person: things will turn out quite well within Catholicism. — But now Bahr wants to portray Scheler as a very great man in order to sound a loud trumpet blast. And he doesn't want to hurt people too much in this regard. First, however, he rails against how people have become spiritless, how they have lost touch with the spirit, and that they must return to the spirit. Here are some quotes from Hermann Bahr about Scheler:

[ 42 ] “Reason broke away from the church in the presumption that it alone could recognize, determine, order, control, guide, and shape life.”

[ 43 ] To say, for example, that reason must now seek out the spiritual world—Hermann Bahr does not have the courage to do that! So he says: Reason must seek out the church again.

[ 44 ] "Reason broke away from the church in the presumption that it alone could recognize, determine, order, control, guide, and shape life. It had hardly begun to try when it was already afraid, when it was already losing faith in itself. This reflection of reason on itself, on its limits, on the measure of its own power abandoned by God, begins with Kant. Kant recognized that reason cannot, by its own power, do precisely what it is repeatedly compelled by itself to want. He commanded it to stop precisely where it would have been worthwhile. He forbade it to fly, but his students flew over it again and competed with each other to see who could fly the furthest. In the end, there was nothing left for God-forsaken reason but renunciation. Ultimately, it knew only that it could know nothing. It searched for the truth until it found that there was none, either none at all or at least none that man could attain."

[ 45 ] Well, now we have flattered the souls of the present sufficiently, for all the beautiful things about “the limits of knowledge” and so on have been presented.

[ 46 ] "Since then we have lived without truth, believing that there is no truth, but continuing to live as if there must be one. For in order to live, we had to live against our reason. So we preferred to abandon reason altogether. The head was amputated from man. Man soon consisted only of instincts. He became an animal and still boasted. The end was—1914.

[ 47 ] This is how Hermann Bahr characterizes what Scheler does well by containing a kind of Catholicizing tendency. He then mistreats Goethe somewhat, having long since endeavored to make Goethe a true Catholic, and goes on to say: “The modern ‘man of science’ abandoned this belief that he was a noble member of the spirit world. Science became unconditional. It no longer drew from God the “impulse” that reason cannot do without in order to function. Where else could it come from? From the instincts. It had no other choice. The unconditional human being had become bottomless. The rest is—1914.”

[ 48 ] "If we are to rebuild now, it must be done from the ground up. It would be presumptuous to rebuild Europe right away. We must start quietly from the bottom. Man must first be rebuilt, the natural man must be restored, man must first become aware again that he is a member of the spirit world. Freedom, personality, dignity, morality, science, and art have disappeared since faith, hope, and love disappeared. Only faith, hope, and love can bring them back. We have no other choice: the end of the world or — omnia instaurare in Christo.”

[ 49 ] But this “omnia instaurare in Christo” does not mean turning to the spirit, to the exploration and investigation of the spirit, but rather the vaulting of the Catholic cathedral over the nations. But how do we do that, Bahr asks, how do we enable people to think and yet become good Catholics again, how do we do that? We have to look to people who are suited to the present. Here Scheler is right, because Scheler does not embarrass himself by talking about an evolution into the spiritual world, by talking about a special spiritual science; he does not embarrass himself by saying more than one would normally say about the spirit and then pointing out: You will find the other thing when you go to church, namely the Catholic Church—for that is what is meant by both Bahr and Scheler—which is sufficiently international, according to Bahr and Scheler. In this way, it is possible to bring people together under one roof, or rather under one cathedral. And yet people today still want to think, and Scheler thinks the way they want to think. Yes, Bahr thinks he even hits the nail on the head by thinking the way people want to think:

[ 50 ] "Scheler does not shout, nor does he gesticulate; this is precisely what makes him stand out, and one wonders involuntarily who this man is who seems so sure of his effect that he does not deem it necessary to make a fuss. It is a tried and tested trick of clever speakers to begin in a very quiet voice, forcing the audience to fall silent and pay attention; of course, the speaker must then have the power to captivate them. Scheler is a master at this. He never lets go of his listeners, who have no idea where he is leading them and suddenly find themselves at a destination they did not intend to reach. Scheler's art of using completely innocuous sentences, which the reader unsuspectingly accepts, to imperceptibly force him to draw conclusions and trap him in conclusions that he would have resisted with all his might at the slightest warning, is incomparable. He is a born educator; I know of no one who can guide our frightened age to the truth with such a gentle but strong hand.”

[ 51 ] It is indeed a special art, you know, to be able to take people by surprise in this way: first you tell them things that are innocuous, and then you continue gently until you bring them to the point where they would have resisted if you had approached them directly. Where does this come from, and what must one do to act in the right sense? — asks Bahr. He is completely sincere, completely honest, and that is why he also expresses his opinion on this in his review of Scheler:

[ 52 ] “It will now depend on whether the German, the good, decent average German, learns to grasp the terrible magnitude of the moment. He is of the best will, but still imagines that modern man can no longer believe, that faith has been scientifically disproved. He has no idea that this science of unbelief has itself long since been scientifically disproved. He knows nothing of the quiet preparatory work of the great German thinkers of our time, Lotze, Franz Brentano, Dilthey, Eucken, and Husserl."

[ 53 ] And now I ask you to listen very carefully to the following words:

[ 54 ] “In the ears of the average person, the post horn of the last error that has just been overcome still echoes. Through its deafening din, a calm, clear voice is most likely to penetrate, a voice that is not immediately suspected of enthusiasm, romanticism, or mysticism, things of which the average German is hopelessly afraid. Precisely because Scheler approaches the cause of conversion to the spirit in a completely unsentimental, completely unromantic way and in the familiar jargon of “modern education,” he is the man we need now.”

[ 55 ] Well, there you have it! Now you know what Bahr actually likes about Scheler: he cannot be suspected of being a dreamer, a mystic, “because the average German is hopelessly afraid of that.” And this fear must be respected, for God's sake, because if one were to allow oneself to be persuaded to exorcise this fear, if one were to recognize the necessity of fighting against this fear, then, yes, then it would not be enough; then the breath of courage that one can muster for such an undertaking would not be enough.

[ 56 ] Precisely because I hold Hermann Bahr in high esteem and am very fond of him, I would like to show how characteristic he is of those who find it quite difficult to grasp what our time needs. But only then can a little healing sprout, when we no longer stop at that hopeless fear, but have the courage to confess that spiritual science is by no means fanaticism, but that the highest clarity is necessary, including clarity of thought, if one wants to approach spiritual science in the right way, whereas, truly, clarity of thought has not exactly been evident in the few examples I have presented to you today from Hermann Bahr and other contemporaries. But some courage in the spiritual realm is necessary if one wants to find striking, powerful ideas. One really does not need to go far with Nietzsche, nor does one need to agree with everything he says in a sentence that strikes one as remarkable; but one must be able to go along with him where this sensitive spirit, perhaps, I would say, supported by his illness, expresses the most courageous ideas. And so one must not shy away from being misunderstood. That would be the most disastrous thing that could happen today if one were to shy away from being misunderstood by this or that person. Instead, one must sometimes make judgments such as the following by Nietzsche, even if they are not entirely correct in every detail; but that is not what matters. Nietzsche says in his essay “On the History of Christianity”:

[ 57 ] "One should not confuse Christianity as a historical reality with the one root to which its name refers: the other roots from which it grew were far more powerful. It is an abuse without parallel when such decayed structures and deformities called the “Christian Church,” “Christian faith,” and “Christian life” are distinguished by that sacred name. What did Christ deny? Everything that is called Christian today!”

[ 58 ] Now, although this may be expressed in radical terms, it nevertheless hits upon something that is already true to a certain extent; only Nietzsche expressed it in radical terms. It is already true to a certain extent that one could say: What would Christ be most opposed to today if he were to enter the world directly? Most likely something that today calls itself “Christian” in the broadest sense, and many other things that will be characterized on another occasion.

[ 59 ] More on this next Tuesday.