The Spiritual Background of the Social Question
GA 190
13 April 1919, Dornach
Translated by Dorothy Osmond
Lecture V
This lecture appeared in The Golden Blade, 1954.
From the two preceding lectures you will have realised that in finding it necessary to speak at the present time of the threefold social order, anthroposophical spiritual science is not actuated by any subjective views or aims. The purpose of the lecture yesterday was to point to impulses deeply rooted in the life of the peoples of the civilised world—the world as it is in this Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. I tried to show how, from about the year 1200 A.D. onwards, there awakened in Middle Europe an impulse leading to the growth of what may be called the civic social order, but that this civic social life of the middle classes was infiltrated by the remains of a life of soul belonging to earlier centuries—by those decadent Nibelung traits which appeared particularly among the ruling strata in the mid-European countries.
I laid special stress upon the existence of a radical contrast in mid-European life from the thirteenth until the twentieth centuries, culminating in the terrible death-throes of social life that have come upon Middle Europe. This incisive contrast was between the inner, soul-life of the widespread middle-class, and that of the descendants of the old knighthood, of the feudal overlords, of those in whom vestiges of the old Nibelung characteristics still survived. These latter were the people who really created the political life of Middle Europe, whereas the bulk of the middle class remained non-political, a-political. If one desires to be a spiritual scientist from the practical point of view, serious study must be given to this difference of soul-life between the so-called educated bourgeoisie and all those who held any kind of ruling positions in Middle Europe at that time. I spoke of this in the lecture yesterday.
We will now consider in rather greater detail why it was that the really brilliant spiritual movement which lasted from the time of Walter von der Vogelweide until that of Goetheanism, and then abruptly collapsed, failed to gain any influence over social life or to produce any thoughts which could have been fruitful in that sphere. Even Goethe, with all his power to unfold great, all-embracing ideas in many domains of life, was really only able to give a few indications—concerning which one may venture to say that even he was not quite clear about them—as to what must come into being as a new social order in civilised humanity. Fundamentally speaking, the tendency towards the threefold membering of a healthy social organism was already present in human beings, subconsciously, by the end of the eighteenth century. The demands for freedom, equality and fraternity, which can have meaning only when the threefold social order becomes reality, testified to the existence of this subconscious longing. Why did it never really come to the surface?
This is connected with the whole inherent character of mid-European spiritual life. At the end of the lecture yesterday I spoke of a strange phenomenon. I said that Hermann Grimm—for whom I have always had such high regard and whose ideas were able to shed light upon so many aspects of art and general human interest of bygone times—succumbed to the extraordinary fallacy of admiring such an out-and-out phrasemonger as Wildenbruch! In the course of years I have often mentioned an incident which listeners may have thought trivial, but which can be deeply indicative for those who study life in its symptomatological aspect. Among the many conversations I had with Hermann Grimm while I was in personal contact with him, there was one in which I spoke from my own point of view about many things that need to be understood in the spiritual sense. In telling this story I have always stressed the fact that Hermann Grimm's only response to such mention of the spiritual was to make a warding-off gesture with his hand, indicating that this was a realm he was not willing to enter. A supremely true utterance, consisting of a gesture of the hand, was made at that moment. It was true inasmuch as Hermann Grimm, for all his penetration into many things connected with the so-called spiritual evolution of mankind, into art, into matters of universal human concern, had not the faintest inkling of what ‘spirit’ must signify for men of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch of culture. He simply did not know what spirit really is from the standpoint of a man of this epoch. In speaking of such matters one must keep bluntly to the truth: until it came to the spirit, there was truth in a man like Hermann Grimm. He made a parrying gesture because he had no notion of how to think about the spirit. Had he been one of the phrasemongers going about masked as prophets today endeavouring to better the lot of mankind, he would have believed that he too could speak about the spirit; he would have believed that by reiterating Spirit, spirit, spirit! something is expressed that has been nurtured in one's own soul.
Among those who of recent years have been talking a great deal about the spirit, without a notion of its real nature, are the theosophists—the majority of them at any rate. For it can truly be said that of all the vapid nonsense that has been uttered of late, the theosophical brand has been the most regrettable and also in a certain respect the most harmful in its effects. But a statement like the one I have made about Hermann Grimm—not thinking of him as a personality but as a typical representative of the times—raises the question: how comes it that such a true representative of Middle European life has no inkling of how to think about the spiritual, about the spirit? It is just this that makes Hermann Grimm the typical representative of Middle European civilisation. For when we envisage this brilliant culture of the townsfolk, which has its start about the year 1200 and lasts right on into the period of Goetheanism, we shall certainly perceive as its essential characteristic—but without valuing it less highly on this account—that it is impregnated in the best sense with soul but empty of anything that can be called spirit. That is the fact we have to grasp, with a due sense of the tragedy of it: this brilliant culture was devoid of spirit. What is meant here, of course, is spirit as one learns to apprehend it through anthroposophical spiritual science.
Again and again I return to Hermann Grimm as a representative personality, for the thinking of thousands and thousands of scholarly men in Middle Europe was similar to his. Hermann Grimm wrote an excellent book about Goethe, containing the substance of lectures he gave at the University of Berlin in the seventies of the last century. Taking it all in all, what Hermann Grimm said about Goethe is really the best that has been said at this level of scholarship. From the vantage-point of a rich life of soul, Hermann Grimm derived his gift not only for portraying individual men but for accurately discerning and assessing their most characteristic traits. He was brilliant in hitting upon words for such characterisations. Take a simple example. In the nature of things, Hermann Grimm was one of those who misunderstood the character of the wild Nibelung people. He was an ardent admirer of Frederick the Great and pictured him as a Germanic hero. Now Macaulay, the English historian and man of letters, wrote about Frederick the Great, naturally from the English point of view. In an essay on Macaulay, Hermann Grimm set out to show that in reality only a German possessed of sound insight is capable of understanding and presenting a true picture of Frederick the Great. Hermann Grimm describes Macaulay's picture of Frederick the Great in the very apt words: Macaulay makes of Frederick the Great a distorted figure of an English Lord, with snuff in his nose.
To hit upon such a characterisation indicates real ability to shape ideas and mental images in such a way that they have plasticity, mobility. Many similar examples could be found of Hermann Grimm's flair for apt characterisation. And other kindred minds, belonging to the whole period of Middle European culture of which I spoke yesterday, were endowed with the same gift. But if, with all the good-will born of a true appreciation of Hermann Grimm, we study his monograph on Goethe—what is our experience then? We feel: this is an extraordinarily good, a really splendid piece of writing—only it is not Goethe! In reality it gives only a shadow-picture of Goethe, as if out of a three-dimensional figure one were to make a two-dimensional shadow-picture, thrown on the screen. Goethe seems to wander through the chapters like a ghost from the year 1749 to the year 1832. What is described is a spectral Goethe—not what Goethe was, what he thought, what he desired.
Goethe himself did not succeed in lifting to the level of spiritual consciousness all that was alive within his soul. Indeed, the great ‘Goethe problem’ today is precisely this: to raise into consciousness in a truly spiritual way what was spiritually alive in Goethe. He himself was not capable of this, for culture in his day could give expression only to a rich life of the soul, not of the spirit. Therefore Hermann Grimm, too, firmly rooted as he was in the Goethean tradition, could depict only a shadow, a spectre, when he wanted to speak of Goethe's spirit. It is thoroughly characteristic that the best modern exposition of Goethe and Goetheanism should produce nothing but a spectre of Goethe.
Why is it that through the whole development of this brilliant phase of culture there is no real grasp of the spirit, no experience of it or feeling for it? Men such as Troxler, and Schelling too at times, pointed gropingly to the spirit. But speaking quite objectively, it must be said that this culture was empty of spirit. And because of this, men were also ignorant of the needs, the conditions, that are essential for the life of the spirit. Here too there is something which may well up as a feeling of tragedy from contemplation of this stream of culture: men were unable to perceive, to divine, the conditions necessary for the life of the spirit, above all in the social sphere; For the reason why the social life of Middle Europe has developed through the centuries to the condition in which it finds itself today is that it had no real experience of the spirit, nor felt the need to meet the fundamental requirement of the spiritual life by emancipating it, making it independent of and separate from the political sphere. Because men had no understanding of the spirit, they allowed it to be merged with the political life of the State, where it could unfold only in shackles. I am speaking here only of Middle Europe; in other regions of the modern civilised world it was the same, although the causes were different.
And then, in the inmost soul, a reaction can set in. Then a man can experience how in his study of nature the spirit remains dumb, silent, uncommunicative. Then the soul rebels, gathers its forces and strives to bring the spirit to birth from its own inmost being! This can happen only in an epoch when scientific thinking impinges on a culture which has no innate disposition towards spirituality. For if men are not inwardly dead, if they are inwardly alive, the impulse of the spirit begins of itself to stir within them. We must recognise that since the middle of the 15th century the spirit has to be brought to birth through encountering what is dead if it is to penetrate into man's life of soul. The only persons who can gain satisfaction from inwardly experiencing the spiritualised soul-life of the Greeks are those who, with their classical scholarship, live in that afterglow of Greek culture which enables the soul-quality of the spirit to pulsate through a man's own soul. But men who are impelled to live earnestly with natural science and to discern what is deathly, corpse-like in it—they will make it possible for the spirit itself to come alive in their souls.
If a man is to have real and immediate experience of the spirit in this modern age, he must not only have smelt the fumes of prussic acid or ammonia in laboratories, or have studied specimens extracted from corpses in the dissecting room, but out of the whole trend and direction of natural scientific thinking he must have known the odour of death in order that through this experience he may be led to the light of the spirit! This is an impulse which must take effect in our times; it is also one of the testings which men of the modern age must undergo. Natural science exists far more for the purpose of educating man than for communicating truths about nature. Only a naive mind could believe that any natural law discovered by learned scientists enshrines an essential, inner truth. Indeed it does not! The purpose of natural science, devoid of spirit as it is, is the education of men. This is one of the paradoxes implicit in the historic evolution of humanity.
And so it was only in the very recent past, in the era after Goetheanism, that the spirit glimmered forth; for it was then, for the first time, that the essentially corpse-like quality in the findings of natural science came to the fore; then and not until then could the spirit ray forth—for those, of course, who were willing to receive its light. Until the time of Goethe, men protected themselves against the sorry effects of a spiritual life shackled in State-imposed restrictions by cultivating a form of spiritual life fundamentally alien to them, namely the spiritual life of ancient Greece; this was outside the purview of the modern State for the very reason that it had nothing to do with modern times. A makeshift separation of the spiritual life from the political sphere was provided by the adoption of an alien form of culture. This Greek culture was a cover for the spiritual emptiness of Middle European life and of modern Europe in general.
On the other hand, the need to separate the economic sphere from the Rights-sphere, from the political life of the State proper, was not perceived. And why not? When all is said and done, nobody can detach himself from the economic field. To speak trivially, the stomach sees to that! In the economic sphere it is impossible for men to live unconcernedly through such cataclysms as are allowed to occur, all unnoticed, in the political and spiritual spheres. Economic activity was going on all the time, and it developed in a perfectly straightforward way. The transformation of the old impenetrable forests into meadows and cornfields, with all the ensuing economic consequences, went steadily ahead. But into economic life, too, there came an alien intrusion, one that had actually found a footing in the souls of men in Middle Europe earlier than that of Greece, namely the Latin-Roman influence. Everything pertaining to the State, to the Rights-life, to political life, derives from this Latin-Roman influence. And here again is something that will have to be stressed by history in the future but has been overlooked by the conventional, tendentious historiography of the immediate past, with its bias towards materialism—the strangely incongruous fact that certain economic ideas and procedures are a direct development from social relationships described, for example, by Tacitus, as prevailing in the Germanic world during the first centuries after the founding of Christianity.
But that is not all. These trends in economic thinking did not go forward unhampered. The Roman view of rights, Roman political thinking, seeped into the economic usages and methods originally prevailing in Europe, infiltrated them through and through and caused a sharp cleavage between the economic sphere and the political sphere. Thus the economic sphere and the political sphere, the former coloured by the old Germanic way of life and the latter by the Latin-Roman influence, remained separate on the surface but without any organic distinction consistent with the threefold membering of the body social: the distinction was merely superficial, a mask. Two heterogeneous strata were intermingled; it was felt that they did not belong together, in spite of external unification. Inwardly, however, people were content, because in their souls they experienced the two spheres as separate and distinct.
One need only study mediaeval and modern history in the right way and it will be clear that this mediaeval history is really the story of perpetual rebellion, self-defense, on the part of the economic relationships surviving from olden times against the political State, against the Roman order of life. Imaginative study of these things shows unmistakably how Roman influences in the form of jurisprudence penetrate into men via the heads of the administrators. A great deal of the Roman element had even found its way into the wild Nibelung men in their period of decline. “Graf” is connected with “grapho”—writing. One can picture how the peasants, thinking in terms of husbandry, rise up in rebellion against this Roman juridical order, with fists clenched in their pockets, or with flails. Naturally, this is not always so outwardly perceptible. But when one observes history truly, these factors are present in the whole moral trend and impulse of those times. And so—I am merely characterising, not criticising, for everything that happened has also brought blessings and was necessary for the historic evolution of Middle Europe—all that developed from the seeds planted in mid-European civilisation was permeated through and through by the juristic-political influences of the Roman world and the humanism of Greece, by the Greek way of conceiving spirit in the guise of soul.
On the other hand, directly economic life acquired its modern, international character, the old order was doomed. A man might have had a very good classical education and be an ignoramus in respect of modern natural science, but then he was inwardly on a retrograde path. A man of classical education could not keep abreast of his times unless he penetrated to some extent into what modern natural scientific education had to offer. And again, if a man were schooled in natural science, if he acquired some knowledge of modern natural science and of what had come out of the old Roman juristic system in the period of which I have spoken, he could not help suffering from an infantile disease, from ‘culture scarlet fever’, ‘culture measles’, in a manner of speaking. In the old Imperium Romanum a juristic culture was fitting and appropriate. Then this same juristic principle, the res publica (i.e. the conception of it), was transplanted from ancient Rome into the sphere of Middle European culture, together with the element of Nibelung barbarism on the other side. One really gets ‘culture scarlet fever’, ‘culture measles’, if one does not merely think of jurisprudence in the abstract, but, with sound natural scientific concepts, delves into the stuff that figures as modern jurisprudence in literature and in science.
We can see that this state of things had reached a certain climax when we find a really gifted man such as Rudolf von Ihering at an utter loss to know how to deal with the pitiable notions of jurisprudence current in the modern age. The book written by Ihering on the aim of justice (Der Zweck im Recht) was a grotesque production, for here was a man who had made a little headway in natural scientific thinking endeavouring to apply the concepts he had acquired to jurisprudence—the result being a monstrosity of human thinking. To study modern literature on law is a veritable martyrdom for sound thinking; one feels all the time as though so many worms were crawling through the brain. This is the actual experience—I am simply describing it pictorially.
We must be courageous enough to face these things fairly and squarely, and then it will be clear that we have arrived at the point of time when not only certain established usages and institutions, but men's very habits of thought, must be metamorphosed, re-cast; when men must begin to think about many things in a different way. Only then will the social institutions in the external world be able, under the influence of human thinking and feeling, to take the form that is called for by these ominous and alarming facts.
A fundamental change in the mental approach to certain matters of the highest importance is essential. But because between 1200 and the days of Goetheanism, modern humanity, especially in Middle Europe, absorbed all unwittingly thoughts that wriggled through the brain like worms, there crept over thinking the lazy passivity that is characteristic of the modern age. It comes to expression in the absence of will from the life of thought. Men allow their thoughts to take possession of them; they yield to these thoughts; they prefer to have them in the form of instinct. But in this manner no headway can be made towards the spirit. The spirit can be reached only by genuinely putting the will into thinking, so that thinking becomes an act like any other, like hewing wood. Do modern men feel that thinking tires them? They do not, because thinking for them is not activity at all. But the fact that anyone who thinks with thoughts, not with words, will get just the same fatigue as he gets from hewing wood, and actually in a shorter time, so that he simply has to stop—that is quite outside their experience. Nevertheless, this is what will have to be experienced, for otherwise modern mankind as a community will be incapable of achieving the transition from the sense-world into the super-sensible world of which I spoke in the two preceding lectures. Only by entering thus into the super-sensible world, with understanding for what is seen and apprehended in the spirit, will human souls find harmony again.
The year 1200 is the time of Walter von der Vogelweide, the time when the spiritual life of Middle Europe is astir with powerful imaginations of which conventional history has little to say. Then it flows on through the centuries, but from the 15th and 16th centuries onwards takes into itself the germs of decline with the founding of the Universities of Prague, Ingolstadt, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Restock, Wurzburg and the rest. The founding of these Universities throughout Middle Europe occurred almost without exception in a single century. The kind of life and thinking emanating from the Universities started the trend towards abstraction—towards what was subsequently to be idolised and venerated as the pure, natural scientific thinking which today invades the customary ways of thought with such devastating results.
Fundamentally speaking, this gave a definite stamp to the whole mentality of the educated middle class. Naturally, many individuals were not deeply influenced, but all the same the effect was universal. Of salient importance during this period was the increasing receptiveness of people to a form of soul-life entirely foreign to them. Side by side with what was developed through those who were the bearers of this middle-class culture, which reached its culmination in Goethe, Herder and Schiller, alien elements and impulses were at work.
I am speaking here of something profoundly characteristic. In their souls, the bearers of this culture were seeking for the spirit without a notion of what the spirit is. And where did they seek it? In the realm of Greek culture! They learnt Greek in their intermediate schools, and what was instilled into them by way of spiritual substance was Greek in tenor and content. To speak truly of the spirit as conceived in Middle Europe from the thirteenth right on into the twentieth century, one would have to say: spirit, as conveyed by the inculcation of Greek culture. No spiritual life belonging intrinsically and innately to the people came into being. Greek culture did not really belong to the epoch beginning in the middle of the 15th century, which we call the epoch of the evolution of self-consciousness. And so the bourgeoisie in Middle Europe were imbued with an outworn form of Greek culture, and this was the source of all that they were capable of feeling and experiencing in regard to the spirit.
But what the Greek experienced of the spirit was merely its expression in the life of soul (Seelenseite das Geistes). What gave profundity to the culture of ancient Greece was that the Greek rose to perception of the highest manifestation of soul-life. That was what he called ‘spirit’. True, the spirit shines down from the heights, pulsing through the realm of soul; but when the gaze is directed upwards, it finds, to begin with, only the expression of the spirit in the realm of soul.
Man's task in the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, however, is to lift himself into the very essence of the spirit—an attainment still beyond his reach in the days of Greece. This is of far greater significance than is usually supposed, for it sheds light upon the whole way in which medieval, neo-medieval culture apprehended the spirit.
What, then, was required in order to reach a concept, an inward experience, of the spirit appropriate for the modern age? It is precisely by studying a representative figure like Hermann Grimm that we can discover this. It is something of which a man such as Hermann Grimm, steeped in classical lore, had not the faintest inkling—namely, the strivings of natural science and the scientific mode of thinking. This thinking is devoid of spirit; precisely where it is great it contains no trace of spirit, not an iota of spirituality. All the concepts of natural science, all its notions of laws of nature, are devoid of spirit, are mere shadow-pictures of spirit; while men are investigating the laws of nature, no trace of the spirit is present in their consciousness.
Two ways are open here. Either a man can give himself up to natural science, contenting himself—as often happens today—with what natural science has to offer; then he will certainly equip his mind with a number of scientific laws and ideas concerning nature—but he loses the spirit. Along this path it is possible to become a truly great investigator, but at the cost of losing all spirituality. That is the one way. The other is to be inwardly aware of the tragic element arising from the lack of spirituality in natural science, precisely where science appears in all its greatness. Man immerses his soul in the scientific lore of nature, in the abstract, unspiritual laws of chemistry, physics, biology, which, having been discovered at the dissecting table, indicate by this very fact that from the living they yield only the dead. The soul delves into what natural science has to impart concerning the laws of human evolution. When a man allows all this to stream into him, when he endeavours not to pride himself on his knowledge, but asks: ‘What does this really give to the human soul?’—then he experiences something true; then spirit is not absent. Herein, too, lies the tragic problem of Nietzsche, whose life of soul was torn asunder by the realisation that modern scientific learning is devoid of spirituality.
As you know, insight into the super-sensible world does not depend upon clairvoyance; all that is required is to apprehend by the exercise of healthy human reason what clairvoyance can discover. It is not essential for the whole of mankind to become clairvoyant; but what is essential, and moreover within the reach of every human being, is to develop insight into the spiritual world through the healthy human intelligence. Only thus can harmony enter into souls of the modern age: for the loss of this harmony is due to the conditions of evolution in our time. The development of Europe, with her American affinities on the one hand and the Asiatic frontier on the other, has reached a parting of the ways. Spiritual Beings of higher worlds are bringing to a decisive issue the overwhelming difference between former ages and modern times as regards the living side-by-side of diverse populations on the earth.
How were the peoples of remote antiquity distributed and arranged over the globe? Up to a certain point of time, not long before the Mystery of Golgotha, the configuration of peoples on earth was determined from above downwards, inasmuch as the souls simply descended from the spiritual world into the physical bodies dwelling in some particular territory. Owing to physiological, geographical, climatic conditions in early times, certain kinds of human bodies were to be found in Greece, and similarly on the peninsula of Italy. The souls came from above, were predestined entirely from above, and took very deep root in man's whole constitution, in his outer, bodily physiognomy.
Then came the great migrations of the peoples. Men wandered over the earth in different streams. Races and peoples began to intermix, thus enhancing the importance of the element of heredity in earthly life. A population inhabiting a particular region of the earth moved to another; for example the Angles and Saxons who were living in certain districts of the Continent migrated to the British Isles. That is one such migration. But in respect of physical heredity, the descendants of the Angles and Saxons are dependent upon what had developed previously on the Continent; this was a determining factor in their bodily appearance, their practices, and so forth. Thus there came into the evolutionary process a factor working in and conditioned by the horizontal. Whereas the distribution of human beings over the earth had formerly depended entirely upon the way in which the souls incarnated as they came down from above, the wanderings and movements of men over the earth now also began to have an effect.
At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, however, a new cosmic historic impulse came into operation. For a period of time a certain sympathy existed between the souls descending from the spiritual world and the bodies on the earth below. Speaking concretely: souls who were sympathetically attracted by the bodily form and constitution of the descendants of the Angles and Saxons, now living in the British Isles, incarnated in those regions. In the 15th century this sympathy began to wane, and since then the souls have no longer been guided by racial characteristics, but once again by geographical conditions, the kind of climate, and so forth, on the earth below, and also by whether a certain region of the earth is flat or mountainous. Since the 15th century, souls have been less and less concerned with racial traits; once again they are guided more by the existing geographical conditions. Hence a kind of chasm is spreading through the whole of mankind today between the elements of heredity and race and the soul-element coming from the spiritual world. And if men of our time were able to lift more of their subconsciousness into consciousness, very few of them would—to use a trivial expression—feel comfortable in their skins. The majority would say: I came down to the earth in order to live on flat ground, among green things or upon verdant soil, in this or that kind of climate, and whether I have Roman or Germanic features is of no particular importance to me.
It certainly seems paradoxical when these things, which are of paramount importance for human life, are concretely described. Men who preach sound principles, saying that one should abjure materialism and turn towards the spirit—they too talk just like the pantheists, of spirit, spirit, spirit. People are not shocked by this today; but when anyone speaks concretely about the spirit they simply cannot take it. That is how things are. And harmony must again be sought between, shall I say, geographical predestination and the racial element that is spread over the earth. The leanings towards internationalism in our time are due to the fact that souls no longer concern themselves with the element of race.
A figure of speech I once used is relevant here. I compared what is happening now to a ‘vertical’ migration of peoples, whereas in earlier times what took place was a ‘horizontal’ migration. This comparison is no mere analogy, but is founded upon facts of the spiritual life.
To all this must be added that, precisely through the spiritual evolution of modern times, man is becoming more and more spiritual in the sphere of his subconsciousness, and the materialistic trend in his upper consciousness is more and more sharply at variance with the impulses that are astir in his subconsciousness. In order to understand this, we must consider once more the threefold membering of the human being.
When the man of the present age, whose attention is directed only to the material and the physical, thinks of this threefold membering, he says to himself: I perceive through my senses: they are indeed distributed over the whole body but are really centralised in the head; acts of perception, therefore, belong to the life of the nerves and senses—and there he stops. Further observation will, of course, enable him to describe how the human being breathes, and how the life passes over from the breath into the movement of the heart and the pulsation of the blood. But that is about as far as a he gets today. Metabolism is studied [in] all detail, but not as one of the three members of threefold man: actually it is taken to be the whole man. One need not, of course, go to the lengths of the scientific thinker who said: man is what he eats (Der Mensch ist, was er isst)—but, broadly speaking, science is pretty strongly convinced that it is so. In Middle Europe at the present time it looks as if he will soon be what he does not eat!
This threefold membering of the human being, which will ultimately find expression in a threefold social order because its factual reality is becoming more and more evident, manifests in different forms over the earth. Truly, man is not simply the being he appears outwardly to be, enclosed within his skin. It was in accordance with a deep feeling and perception when in my Mystery Play, “The Portal of Initiation”, in connection with the characters of Capesius and Strader, I drew attention to the fact that whatever is done by men on earth has its echo in cosmic happenings out yonder in the universe. With every thought we harbour, with every movement of the hand, with everything we say, whether we are walking or standing, whatever we do—something happens in the cosmos.
The faculties for perceiving and experiencing these things are lacking in man today. He does not know—nor can it be expected of him and it is paradoxical to speak as I am speaking now—he does not know how what is happening here on the earth would appear if seen, for example, from the Moon. If he could look from the Moon he would see that the life of the nerves and senses is altogether different from what can be known of it in physical existence. The nerves-and-senses life, everything that transpires while you see, hear, smell, taste, is light in the cosmos, the radiation of light into the cosmos. From your seeing, from your feeling, from your hearing, the earth shines out into the cosmos.
Different again is the effect produced by what is rhythmic in the human being: breathing, heart movement, blood pulsation. This activity manifests in the universe in great and powerful rhythms which can be heard by the appropriate organs of hearing. And the process of metabolism in man radiates out into cosmic space as life streaming from the earth. You cannot perceive, hear, see, smell or feel without shining out into the cosmos. Whenever your blood circulates, you resound into universal space, and whenever metabolism takes place within you, this is seen from out yonder as the life of the whole earth.
But there are great differences in respect of all this—for example, between Asia and Europe. Seen from outside, the thinking peculiar to the Asiatics would appear—even now, when a great proportion of them have lost all spirituality—as bright, shining light raying out into the spiritual space of the universe. But the further we go towards the West, the dimmer and darker does this radiance become. On the other hand, more and more life surges out into cosmic space the further we go towards the West. Only from this vista can there arise in the human soul what may be called perception of the cosmic aspect of the earth—with the human beings belonging to it.
Such conceptions will be needed if mankind is to go forward to a propitious and not an ominous future. The idiocy that is gradually being bred in human beings who are made to learn from the sketchy maps of modern geography: Here is the Danube, here the Rhine, here Reuss, here Aare, here Bern, Basle, Zürich, and so forth—all this external delineation which merely adds material details to the globe—this kind of education will be the ruin of humanity. It is necessary as a foundation and not to be scoffed at; but nevertheless it will lead gradually to man's downfall. The globe of the future will have to indicate: here the earth shines because spirituality is contained in the heads of men: there the earth radiates out more life into cosmic space because of the characteristics of the human beings inhabiting this particular territory.
Something I once said here is connected with this. (One must always illumine one fact by another). I told you that Europeans who settle in America develop hands resembling those of the Red Indians; they begin to resemble the Indian type. This is because the souls coming down into human bodies today are directed more by geographical conditions, as they were in the olden days. In our own time, the souls are directed, not by racial considerations, not by what develops out of the blood, but by geographical conditions, as in the past. But it will be necessary to get at the roots of what is going on in humanity. This can be done only when men accustom themselves to concepts of greater flexibility, capable of penetrating matters of this kind. These concepts, however, can be developed only on the foundation of spiritual science. And such a foundation is available when the spirit can be brought to birth in the human soul. For this, man needs a free spiritual life, emancipated from the political life of the State.
I have now given you one or two indications of what is astir in humanity, and of the need to strive for a new ordering of social life. Social demands cannot nowadays be advanced in terms of the trivial concepts commonly employed. Men must have insight into the nature of present-day humanity; they must make good what they have neglected in the study of modern mankind.
Elfter Vortrag
Aus den beiden Vorträgen von vorgestern und gestern werden Sie ersehen haben, daß wahrhaftig nicht aus irgendeiner subjektiven Meinung, aus irgendeinem subjektiven Wollen heraus von seiten anthroposophisch orientierter Geisteswissenschaft gegenwärtig gesprochen werden muß von jener sozialen Dreigliederung, von der wir ja jetzt so oft gesprochen haben und die auch zum Gegenstande öffentlicher Darstellungen gemacht worden ist. Was besonders die Auseinandersetzungen von gestern betrifft, so ist darüber zu sagen, daß ich dabei die Absicht haben mußte, darauf hinzuweisen, welche tiefgehenden Impulse in dem Völkerleben der gegenwärtigen zivilisierten Welt, also der Welt der fünften nachatlantischen Zeit herrschen. Ich versuchte zu zeigen, wie ungefähr vom Jahre 1200 ab in Mitteleuropa ein Impuls erwacht, der in diesem Mitteleuropa eigentlich bedeutete den Aufstieg desjenigen, was man nennen kann die bürgerliche soziale Ordnung, daß aber sich hineinmischte in dieses bürgerlich soziale Leben Mitteleuropas wie zurückgebliebenes Seelenleben aus früheren Jahrhunderten, verfallendes Nibelungentum, jenes verfallene Nibelungentum, welches als Seelenleben sich ausgestaltete, namentlich in den verwaltenden und regierenden Oberschichten der mitteleuropäischen Länder. Und ich betonte ganz besonders, welch ein einschneidender Kontrast in diesem mitteleuropäischen Leben vorhanden war vom 13. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert herein, wo er eben dann geführt hat zu jenem furchtbaren sozialen Röcheln, das auch über Mitteleuropa hereingebrochen ist. Ich versuchte darauf hinzuweisen, welch ein einschneidender Kontrast vorhanden war zwischen dem inneren seelischen Erleben der breiten bürgerlichen Bevölkerung und denjenigen Leuten, welche, hervorkommend aus dem alten Rittertum, aus den alten Lehensträgern, aus alldem, was eben Überbleibsel war in seelischer Beziehung des alten Nibelungentums, im Grunde die Politik dieses Mitteleuropa machten, während die breite Masse des Bürgertums unpolitisch, apolitisch blieb. Man muß sich schon einmal ganz ernsthaftig, gerade wenn man von praktischen Gesichtspunkten aus Geisteswissenschafter sein will, hineinversetzen in diesen Seelenunterschied, der da besteht oder bestanden hat, namentlich zwischen dem sogenannten gebildeten Bürgertum und seinen Angehörigen und zwischen alldem, was auf irgendwie gearteten Regierungssesseln in Mitteleuropa gesessen hat. Das habe ich gestern charakterisiert.
Nun wollen wir ein wenig näher ins Auge fassen, warum eigentlich diese im Grunde doch großartige Geistesbewegung, die da geht von Walther von der Vogelweide bis herauf zum Goetheanismus, während sie nach dem Goetheanismus einen jähen Absturz erfährt, warum denn diese Geistesbewegung so gar nicht dahin gekommen ist, das soziale Leben irgendwie zu bewältigen, in dem sozialen Leben irgendwie Gedanken zu fassen. Man bedenke doch nur, daß selbst Goethe, der über vieles in der Welt die umfassendsten Ideen zu entwickeln verstand, eigentlich nur in gewissen Andeutungen, von denen man dreist sagen kann, daß sie ihm selber nicht ganz klar waren, zu sprechen verstand über dasjenige, was da als eine neue soziale Ordnung über die zivilisierte Menschheit heraufkommen muß. Im Grunde war schon die Tendenz nach der Dreigliederung des gesunden sozialen Organismus seit dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts in dem Unterbewußtsein der Menschen vorhanden. Und die Rufe nach Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit, die nur dann Sinn bekommen werden, wenn einmal die Dreigliederung sich verwirklicht, sie bezeugten, daß diese unterbewußte Sehnsucht nach der Dreigliederung vorhanden war. Warum eigentlich kam sie nicht ans Tageslicht?
Das hängt mit der ganzen Artung des Geisteslebens Mitteleuropas zusammen. Ich habe gestern am Schlusse hingewiesen auf eine eigentümliche Erscheinung, ich habe gesagt: Der von mir so hoch verehrte Herman Grimm, der mit seinen Ideen in so manches hineinleuchten konnte, was Künstlerisches, was Allgemein-Menschliches ist, was die Antike betrifft, er verfiel in die merkwürdige Unwahrheit, einen bloRen Wortphraseur wie Wildenbruch zu bewundern. Ich habe öfter im Lauf der Jahre - gestatten Sie diese persönliche Bemerkung - auf etwas hingewiesen, was, wenn man es so erzählt, recht unbedeutend dem Zuhörer erscheinen könnte, was aber für den, der das Leben symptomatologisch betrachtet, eine große, tiefgehende Bedeutung haben kann. Ich hatte unter manchen anderen Gesprächen, die ich führen durfte in der Zeit, als ich mit Herman Grimm persönlichen Verkehr hatte, auch einmal ein Gespräch mit ihm, im Verlauf dessen ich von meinem Gesichtspunkte aus auf manches hinwies, was geistig zu verstehen ist. Und wenn ich dies erzählt habe, habe ich immer darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß Herman Grimm für eine solche Rede über das Geistige nur eine abwehrende Handbewegung hatte; er meinte, das ist etwas, worauf er sich nicht einläßt. Es war in diesem Momente eine ungeheuer wahre Bemerkung, die in dieser Handbewegung bestand. Inwiefern war diese Bemerkung ungeheuer wahr? Wahr war sie insofern, als Herman Grimm bei allem seinem Eingehen auf manches in der sogenannten geistigen Entwickelung der Menschheit, in der Kunst, in der Darlebung des ‚Allgemein-Menschlichen, auch nicht die geringste Ahnung hatte von dem, was eigentlich Geist sein muß dem Menschen des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitalters. Herman Grimm wußte einfach nicht vom Gesichtspunkte aus eines Menschen des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraums, was Geist ist. Wenn man solch eine Sache bespricht, dann ist es schon nötig, daß man nicht schroff sich auf den Gesichtspunkt der Wahrheit stellt; wenigstens bis zum Geiste hin war ein solcher Mensch wie Herman Grimm wahr -: weil er nichts wußte von der Art, wieman über den Geist denkt, machte er eine abwehrende Bewegung. Wäre er einer gewesen von den Phraseuren, die heute wieder als Propheten maskiert herumgehen und die Menschen bessern wollen, dann würde er geglaubt haben, er könne über den Geist mitreden, dann würde er geglaubt haben, wenn man sagt: Geist, Geist, Geist -, dann wäre damit irgend etwas gesagt, was auch entsprechen würde einem Inhalt, den man in seiner eigenen Seele hegt.
Unter denjenigen, die auch viel vom Geiste gesprochen haben in den letzten Jahrzehnten, ohne eine Ahnung zu haben von dem, was Geist ist, sind ja auch die Majorität der Theosophen zu verzeichnen. Denn eigentlich kann man schon sagen, daß unter allen geistlosen Schwätzereien, die in der neuesten Zeit gepflogen worden sind, die theosophischen die betrübendsten waren, auch die schlimmsten Früchte zum Teil getragen haben. Wenn man aber so etwas ausspricht wie dasjenige, was ich eben in bezug auf Herman Grimm gesagt habe, den ich dabei nicht als Persönlichkeit, sondern als Repräsentanten, als Typus unserer Zeit ins Auge fassen möchte, dann kann man doch die Frage stellen, wie es denn eigentlich möglich ist, daß ein solcher, das mitteleuropäische Leben ganz und gar repräsentierender Mensch keine Ahnung davon hat, wie man denken muß, wenn man über den Geist denkt. Damit ist nämlich Herman Grimm wirklich nur der Repräsentant für mitteleuropäisches Leben. Denn fassen wir eben gerade diejenige Kultur ins Auge, die ich gestern charakterisiert habe, die als die Kultur des Bürgertums, sagen wir im Jahre 1200 - approximativ natürlich — aufgeht und dann bis in den Goetheanismus hinein sich erstreckt, fassen wir gerade diese Kultur, diese glanzvolle Kultur ins Auge, dann muß uns als das Charakteristische dieser Kultur, die ja deshalb nicht geringer geschätzt zu werden braucht, erscheinen, daß sie im schönsten Sinne von demjenigen durchpulst ist, was man Seele nennt, daß ihr aber ganz und gar dasjenige fehlt, was man Geist nennen kann. Das muß man nur mit all der dazu nötigen tragischen Empfindung ins Auge fassen können, daß gerade dieser glanzvollen Kultur dasjenige fehlt, was man Geist nennen könnte. Nur muß man natürlich den Geist in dem Sinne nehmen, wie man den Geist zu nehmen lernt durch die anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft.
Ich komme immer wiederum auf diese repräsentative Persönlichkeit, Herman Grimm, zurück, denn so, wie er gedacht hat, so haben Tausende und aber Tausende von Gebildeten Mitteleuropas gedacht. Herman Grimm hat ein ausgezeichnetes Buch über Goethe geschrieben, das zusammenfaßt Vorlesungen, die er in den siebziger Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts an der Berliner Universität gehalten hat. Mit Bezug auf all dasjenige, was Herman Grimm über Goethe gesagt hat, ist es richtig, daß er eigentlich das Beste gesagt hat, was in umfassender Weise aus dieser Bildungsschicht heraus über Goethe gesagt worden ist. Und Herman Grimm hatte von seinem seelenvollen Standpunkte aus die Gabe, Menschen zu charakterisieren, aber auch die Gabe, Menschencharakteristiken in richtiger Weise aufzufassen, in richtiger Weise zu taxieren. In dieser Beziehung war er glänzend im Auffinden der Worte, um irgend etwas zu charakterisieren. Ich möchte nur an eines erinnern. Herman Grimm gehörte natürlich auch zu den Menschen, von denen ich gestern gesprochen habe, die mit Bezug auf die Nibelungenwildlinge in der Unwahrheit drinnen waren. Er war begeistert für Friedrich den Großen und hatte in seiner Seele eine ganz bestimmte Vorstellung, wie er sich Friedrich den Großen als einen germanisch-deutschen Helden vorzustellen habe. Nun hat der englische Historiker und Schriftsteller Macaulay eine Charakteristik Friedrichs des Großen gegeben, die selbstverständlich vom englischen Gesichtspunkte aus geschrieben ist. Herman Grimm wollte in einem Aufsatz über Macaulay klarmachen, wie eigentlich nur ein richtig empfindender Deutscher Friedrich den Großen verstehen und die Linien ziehen kann, durch die dieser Charakter gezeichnet wird, und die Macaulaysche Zeichnung von Friedrich dem Großen charakterisierte er sehr treffend, indem er sagte: Macaulay macht aus Friedrich dem Großen ein verzwicktes englisches Lordsgesicht mit Schnupftabak auf der Nase.
Nun, solch eine Charakteristik zu finden, das ist etwas, das bedeutet etwas, nämlich, daß man runden kann seine Ideen, seine Vorstellungen, daß diese Vorstellungen plastisch werden können. Solche Beispiele, aus denen anschaulich wird, wie solch ein Geist wie Herman Grimm treffend charakterisieren kann, könnte man viele geben, aber auch von anderen ähnlichen Geistern aus der ganzen Kulturzeit Mitteleuropas, die ich gestern charakterisiert habe. Aber sieht man gerade mit diesem guten Willen, der aus einer solchen Anerkennung Herman Grimms hervorgeht, seine Goethe-Monographie an, die weitaus die beste ist von denen, die geschrieben worden sind, was hat man dann für eine Empfindung? Man hat die Empfindung: Das ist etwas sehr Schönes, etwas außerordentlich Gutes - aber Goethe ist es nicht! Von Goethe ist eigentlich im Grunde genommen nur ein Schattenbild da, wie wenn man von einem Gebilde, das drei Dimensionen hat, nur ein Schattenbild, das auf die Wand geworfen wird und zwei Dimensionen hat, macht. Ich möchte sagen: Kapitel für Kapitel wandelt Goethe wie ein Gespenst vom Jahre 1749 bis 1832. Ein gespenstiger Goethe wird geschildert, nicht dasjenige, was Goethe war, was Goethe dachte, was Goethe fühlte, was Goethe wollte, sondern dasjenige, was wie ein Gespenst durch die Jahrzehnte, auf die ich eben gedeutet habe, hinwanderte und -wandelte.
Goethe selber hat nicht alles von dem, was in seiner Seele lebte, was in seiner Seele namentlich geistig lebte, auch geistig sich zum Bewußtsein gebracht. Das ist gerade heute das große Problem Goethe, dasjenige, was in Goethe geistig lebte, wirklich auf geistige Art ins Bewußtsein heraufzuholen, was Goethe noch nicht konnte, denn es war dazumal nicht möglich, etwas anderes als eine seelenvolle, nicht eine geistige Kultur zu haben. So hat auch Herman Grimm, der ganz in der Goethe-Tradition drinnen fußt, wenn er von dem Geist Goethes reden sollte, nur einen Schatten, ein Gespenst, ein Schema. Und es ist schon eine charakteristische Erscheinung, daß dasjenige, was man aus der heutigen Kultur hervorgehend als das Beste über Goethe und den Goetheanismus bezeichnen muß, nur ein Gespenst von Goethe gibt. Das ist schon eine bezeichnende Erscheinung.
Ja, woher rührt es denn aber, daß durch diese ganze glanzvolle Kulturentwickelung hindurch der Begriff, das Erleben, das Erfühlen des eigentlichen Geistes fehlt? Tastend haben Leute wie Troxler, wie auch manchmal Schelling, hingewiesen auf den Geist. Aber rein objektiv gesehen, muß man sagen: In dieser ganzen Kultur fehlt der Geist. Und weil der Geist fehlte, kannte man auch nicht die Bedürfnisse des Geistes, kannte man nicht die Lebensbedingungen des Geistes. Das ist wiederum etwas, was als tragische Empfindung hervorquellen kann aus der Wahrnehmung dieser Kulturströmung, daß man innerhalb ihrer die Lebensbedingungen des Geistes, auch die sozialen Lebensbedingungen des Geistes nicht wahrzunehmen, nicht zu empfinden vermochte. Daran liegt es aber, daß sich das mitteleuropäische soziale Leben durch die Jahrhunderte herauf entwickeln konnte und, weil es kein eigentliches Erlebnis vom Geiste hatte, auch nicht das Bedürfnis bekam, die Grundbedingungen dieses Geisteslebens dadurch zu erfüllen, daß man das Geistesleben emanzipiert, auf sich selber stellt und von dem Staatsleben absondert. Weil man den Geist nicht kannte, kannte man auch nicht die innersten Lebensbedingungen des Geistes, empfand daher nicht die Notwendigkeit - ich rede immer nur von diesen Gebieten, bei den anderen Gebieten der gegenwärtigen zivilisierten Welt empfand man es auch nicht, aber aus anderen Gründen -, den Geist auf sich selbst zu stellen, sondern ließ ihn verschmelzen mit dem, worinnen er sich nur in Fesseln entwickeln konnte: mit dem Staatswesen. 1200, sagte ich, ist der Zeitpunkt, in dem auch die Tätigkeit Walthers von der Vogelweide verzeichnet werden kann, der Zeitpunkt, in dem das geistige Leben Mitteleuropas in mächtigen Imaginationen dahinpulste, von denen die konventionelle Geschichte wenig verzeichnet. Dann gleitet dieses Geistesleben durch die Jahrhunderte weiter, nimmt aber eigentlich schon vom 15., 16. Jahrhundert an die Keime des Niedergangs in sich auf, und es stellt sich hinein in dieses Geistesleben Mitteleuropas die Begründung der Universitäten Prag, Ingolstadt, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Rostock, Würzburg und so weiter. Die Begründung dieser Universitäten, die sich so aussäen über das mitteleuropäische Leben, fällt fast ganz in ein Jahrhundert hinein. Mit diesem Denken, mit diesem Leben, das von den Universitäten ausstrahlte, wurde die Tendenz gebracht nach dem Abstrakten, nach demjenigen, das dann als das rein naturwissenschaftliche Denken vergöttert und verehrt wurde - vergöttert kann man natürlich nur vergleichsweise sagen und das heute so verheerend in die Denkgewohnheiten der Menschen eingreift.
Und mit diesem Leben wurde im Grunde genommen der ganzen gebildeten Bürgerwelt die Nuance gegeben. Wie war denn diese Nuance der ganzen gebildeten Bürgerwelt? Natürlich spricht da vieles mit, was nicht in jedem einzelnen, ich möchte sagen, quellenhaft wirkte, aber dessen Wirkung auf jeden einzelnen überging. Es wirkte das mit, daß ja in dieser Zeit immer mehr und mehr heraufkam die Empfänglichkeit für ein ganz fremdes Seelenleben, das gebildet wurde durch Träger der Bildung in diesem Bürgertum, das dann in Goethe und Herder und Schiller kulminierte. Das entwickelte ja außer dem, was in der eigenen Seele lag, im wesentlichen fremde Elemente, fremde Impulse.
Damit weise ich auf eine ungeheuer charakteristische Erscheinung hin. Die Seelen dieser Leute, die Träger des Bürgertums waren, sie suchten ja nach dem Geiste, dessen Begriff sie nicht einmal hatten. Aber wo suchten sie nach dem Geiste? In der griechischen Bildung. Sie lernten in ihren Mittelschulen griechisch, und was als Geistesinhalt in die Seelen floß, war griechischer Inhalt. Wenn man vom 13. Jahrhundert bis ins 20. Jahrhundert in Mitteleuropa vom Geist sprach, hätte man immer sagen müssen: Dasjenige, was einem die eingeimpfte griechische Bildung über den Geist beibrachte. Es entstand da kein eigenes Leben über den Geist. Griechische Bildung aber über den Geist war noch nicht die Bildung desjenigen Zeitraumes in der Menschheitsentwickelung, den wir den Zeitraum der Bewußtseinsentwickelung nennen. Der beginnt erst mit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts. So trug dieses Bürgertum in sich veraltete Bildung, griechische Bildung, und die gab ihm allein dasjenige, was der Grieche vom Geiste eigentlich fühlte und empfand.
Dasjenige aber, was der Grieche vom Geiste empfand, das war durchaus bloß die Seelenseite des Geistes. Darin liegt ja die Tiefe des Griechentums, daß der Grieche gewissermaßen gerade hinaufgelangte bis zur Empfindung des höchsten Seelischen. Das nannte er Geist. Gewiß, der Geist erglänzt herunter aus den Höhen. So wie ich ihn hier zeichne, erglänzt er aus den Höhen herunter, durchpulst das Seelische. Aber wenn man den Blick hinaufrichtet, so hat man das Seelische des Geistes.
Aber es wurde die Aufgabe des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraums, sich zu erheben in den Geist selbst. Das konnte diese Kulturentwickelung noch nicht. Das ist viel wichtiger, als man gewöhnlich denkt. Denn das klärt auf über die ganze Art, wie neuzeitlich-mittelalterliche Bildung von dem Geist Besitz ergreifen konnte.
Was war denn notwendig, um zu einem Begriff des Geistes, zu einem inneren Erleben des Geistes im neuzeitlichen Sinne zu kommen? Gerade an einer solchen repräsentativen Erscheinung wie Herman Grimm ist es möglich zu studieren, was notwendig war, um in der neueren Zeit sich durchzuarbeiten zum inneren Erleben des Geistes. Dazu ist nämlich notwendig gewesen, wovon gerade ein so klassisch gebildeter Mensch wie Herman Grimm keine Ahnung hatte: naturwissenschaftliches Streben, naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise. Warum? Die naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise ist geistlos. Die naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise enthält gerade, wenn sie groß ist, nicht ein Stückchen Geist, gar nichts Geistiges. Alle naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffe, alle Begriffe von Naturgesetzen sind geistlos, weil sie nur Schattenbilder vom Geiste sind, weil im Bewußtsein, wenn man etwas weiß von Naturgesetzen, nichts vom Geist anwesend ist. Man kann dann zwei Wege gehen. Man kann sich der Naturwissenschaft hingeben, wie viele sich ihr heute hingeben, kann stehenbleiben bei dem, was die Naturwissenschaft gibt; dann wird man geistlos. Man kann gerade dadurch ein großer Naturforscher sein, aber man muß geistlos sein. Das ist der eine Weg.
Der andere Weg ist der, daß man die Geistlosigkeit der Naturwissenschaft gerade da, wo sie in ihrer Größe aufgetreten ist, innerlich tragisch erlebt, daß man mit seiner Seele untertaucht in das Naturwissen. Wenn man mit seiner Seele untertaucht in dasjenige, was an abstrakten Naturgesetzen, die sehr interessant sind und in manches hineinleuchten, gefunden wurde, die aber geistlos sind, wenn man untertaucht in die Naturgesetze der Chemie, der Physik, der Biologie, die am Seziertisch gewonnen werden und schon dadurch andeuten, wie sie von dem Lebendigen nur das Tote geben, wenn man versucht, mit dem nicht nur in menschlichem Hochmut als einer Erkenntnis zu leben, sondern wenn man versucht zu fragen: Was gibt das der menschlichen Seele? - dann ist es erlebt! Das gibt nichts von Geistlosigkeit. Das ist ja auch das tragische Problem Nietzsche, der gerade an dem Empfinden der Geistlosigkeit der modernen naturwissenschaftlichen Bildung in seinem Seelenleben zerklüftet und zerrissen wird.
Und dann kann die Reaktion eintreten im Inneren der Seele. Dann kann man erleben, wie im Anschauen der Natur der Geist ganz stumm, ganz schweigsam bleibt, nichts sagt. Die Seele bäumt sich auf, nimmt ihre Kraft zusammen, sucht dann aus dem Inneren heraus den Geist zu gebären. Das kann nur in dem Zeitalter geschehen, in dem die unmittelbare Naturanlage bei solchen Menschen wie denen der mitteleuropäischen bürgerlichen Bildung nicht vorhanden sind, und an die herantritt naturwissenschaftliche Kultur. Dann, wenn sie nicht innerlich tot sind, wenn sie innerlich lebendig sind, dann rafft sich in ihrem Inneren der Impuls des Geistes selbst auf. An dem Toten muß seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts der Geist geboren werden, wenn der Geist in das menschliche Seelenleben überhaupt hereintreten soll. Daher werden diejenigen, die nur mit der klassischen Bildung jenen Nachduft des Griechischen ausleben, der das Seelenhafte des Geistes durch des Menschen eigene Seele durchpulsieren läßt, noch befriedigt sein können in dem inneren Erleben, das ihnen gibt die Empfindung dieses griechischen Seelen-Geistes, dieser griechischen Geistes-Seele. Diejenigen aber, die genötigt sind, mit der Naturwissenschaft innerlich lebendig Ernst zu machen und ihren Tod, ihr Leichnamhaftes zu empfinden, die werden dann den Geist in ihrer Seele erstehen lassen.
Man muß schon, um in der neueren Zeit ein wirkliches unmittelbares Erlebnis vom Geist zu haben, nicht nur in Laboratorien gewesen sein und dort Zyansäure oder Ammoniak gerochen oder im Seziersaal gewesen sein und die frischen Präparate der Leichen angeschaut haben, man muß aus der ganzen naturwissenschaftlichen Richtung heraus den Leichenduft verspürt haben, um aus dieser Empfindung heraus zu dem Licht des Geistes zu kommen. Das ist ein Impuls, der in neuerer Zeit aufleben muß. Das ist eine der Prüfungen, die die Menschen durchmachen müssen in der neueren Zeit. Die Naturwissenschaft ist viel mehr dazu da, die Menschen zu erziehen, als Wahrheiten über die Natur zu vermitteln. Nur der naive Mensch kann glauben, daß in irgendeinem Naturgesetz, das die gelehrten Naturwissenschafter verzeichnen, eine innerliche Wahrheit ist. Nein, die ist nicht drinnen; aber zur Erziehung der Menschen zum Geiste ist gerade die geistlose Naturwissenschaft da. Das ist eine von jenen Paradoxien der weltgeschichtlichen Entwickelung der Menschheit.
So leuchtete erst in der neuesten Zeit - in der Zeit, die den Goetheanismus ablöste, denn da kam erst die eigentliche Leichenhaftigkeit, das eigentliche Tote der Naturwissenschaft herauf — der Geist, allerdings nur für diejenigen Menschen, die sein Licht empfangen wollten. Und so schützten sich die Menschen bis zur Goethe-Zeit und noch Goethe selber gegen das Verheerende eines in den Staatszwang hineingefesselten Geisteslebens dadurch, daß sie im Grunde genommen das griechische Geistesleben verarbeiten, das ja dem modernen Staate nicht angehörte, weil es überhaupt der modernen Zeit nicht angehörte. Die Abtrennung des Geisteslebens von dem Staatsleben wurde surrogativ dadurch besorgt, daß man ein fremdes Geistesleben, das griechische, in sich aufnahm. Dieses griechische Geistesleben, das war es eben, welches die innere Geistleerheit der neueren europäischen Welt überhaupt zudeckt. Das war auf der einen Seite.
Auf der anderen Seite empfand man aber auch nicht die Notwendigkeit der Trennung des Wirtschaftslebens von dem Rechtsleben, von dem Leben des eigentlichen politischen Staates. Warum nicht? Dem Wirtschaftsleben kann sich ja der Mensch niemals entziehen. Dafür sorgt, trivial ausgedrückt, eben der Magen. Es ist nicht möglich, daß die Menschen solche Kataklysmen auf dem Gebiete des Wirtschaftslebens unbemerkt erleben, wie sie unbemerkt erlebt werden auf dem Gebiete des Rechtslebens und des Geisteslebens. Das Wirtschaften war also da, und dieses Wirtschaften entwickelte sich auch in einer sehr geraden Linie. Das, was ich gestern angedeutet habe, die Verwandlung der alten, undurchdringlichen Wälder in Wiesen und Kornfelder mit alldem, was als wirtschaftliche Konsequenz davon dasteht, das entwickelte sich in sehr gerader, regulärer Linie. Das war eine sehr gerade Strömung. Aber es fiel in das Erleben dieses Wirtschaftlichen hinein wiederum ein Fremdes, das eigentlich schon länger stark war in der mitteleuropäischen Seele als das Griechische: Es fiel hinein das Lateinisch-Romanische. Und aus dem Lateinisch-Romanischen stammt alles, was sich auf Staats- und Rechtsleben, auf Politik bezieht. Und das ist ja diese merkwürdige Inkongruenz, wiederum etwas, was von der Geschichte der Zukunft scharf wird betont werden müssen, was aber übersehen wird von der parteiischen, für den Materialismus namentlich parteiischen konventionellen Geschichtsschreibung der unmittelbaren Vergangenheit: daß gewisse wirtschaftliche Vorstellungen, gewisse wirtschaftliche Hantierungen des Lebens, ein gewisses Nehmen des Wirtschaftens im Leben sich in gerader Linie aus den sozialen Verhältnissen fortentwickelte, die Tacitus beschreibt für das erste Jahrhundert der germanischen Welt nach der Begründung des Christentums. Aber diese wirtschaftlichen Denkgewohnheiten haben sich nicht ungehindert fortentwickelt. Da schlug die politische Denkart des Romanisch-Lateinischen hinein und infizierte sie ganz und gar und hielt auseinander die ursprünglichen europäischen Wirtschaftsgewohnheiten und das politische Rechtsleben. Und so waren künstlich nebeneinander, scheinbar geteilt, so daß die Teilung eine Maske war, Wirtschaftsleben und politisches Leben, weil das politische Leben die Nuance des Lateinisch-Romanischen und das Wirtschaftsleben die Nuance des Altgermanischen hatte. Weil zwei einander fremde Schichtungen ineinanderlebten, empfand man, daß das nicht zusammengehörte und schmolz äußerlich ineinander, aber man war zufrieden, weil man es ja doch innerlich, seelisch, als getrennt erlebte. Man muß nur einmal die Geschichte des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit studieren, dann wird man sehen, wie eigentlich diese Geschichte in Wahrheit in Mitteleuropa ein fortwährendes Aufmucken, ein fortwährendes Sich-Wehren, eine fortwährende Opposition ist der wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse, die aus den alten Zeiten heraufgebracht worden sind, gegen das Staatswesen, gegen den juristischen Romanismus. Man sieht förmlich, wenn man die Dinge bildlich sieht, wie durch die Köpfe der Verwaltungsbeamten der Romanismus als Jurisprudenz eindringt in die Menschen. Da dringt auch viel vom Romanismus gerade in die verfallenden Nibelungenwildlinge hinein. «Graf» hängt mit grapho, schreiben zusammen, das habe ich schon einmal gesagt. Da dringt der Romanismus hinein. Wie ich sagte: man kann es förmlich im Bilde sehen, wie die Bauern, die erfüllt sind von diesem wirtschaftsorientierten Denken, entweder die Fäuste in den Taschen ballen oder mit den Dreschflegeln sich gegen dieses Romanische, Juristische aufbäumen. Das geschieht natürlich nicht immer so äußerlich habhaft. Aber im ganzen moralischen Treiben, wenn man die Geschichte wirklich betrachtet, ist es schon so. So war das, was aus den Keimen der mitteleuropäischen Welt sich heraufentwickelte, durchsetzt — ich charakterisiere bloß, kritisiere nicht, denn alles, was da sich vollzogen hat, hat auch seinen Segen gebracht und war notwendig, war in der historischen Entwickelung in Mitteleuropa nicht zu umgehen -, es war durchsetzt, infiziert von dem juristisch-politischen Romanismus und dem griechischen Humanismus, von dem griechischen Geist-Seele-Begriff, Seelen-Geist-Begriff. Und erst als einschlug das moderne internationale wirtschaftliche Element mit allem, was es im Gefolge hatte, da war es eigentlich nicht mehr möglich, die alten Dinge aufrechtzuerhalten. Man konnte sehr gut klassisch gebildet sein und ein Ignorant sein in bezug auf die naturwissenschaftliche Bildung der neueren Zeit, aber man war dann eben trotzdem innerlich-seelisch ein Rückschrittler. Man konnte nicht mit seiner Zeit gehen, wenn man bloß klassisch gebildet war, wenn man nicht eindrang in dasjenige, was die naturwissenschaftliche Bildung der neueren Zeit gab. Und war man naturwissenschaftlich gebildet, war man vertraut mit dem, was die Naturwissenschaft der neueren Zeit bringen wollte, so konnte man wahrhaftig nur Kulturkrankheiten, Kulturscharlach, Kulturmasern durchmachen, wenn man sich bekanntmachte mit dem, was innerhalb des Zeitraumes, von dem ich Ihnen gesprochen habe, aus dem alten juristischen Romanismus geworden war. Im alten Imperium Romanum war dieser juristische Romanismus am Platze. Dann hatte sich dieses romanische Juristentum, die Res publica, beziehungsweise die Anschauungen darüber, vom alten Romanismus her, ebenso wie auf der anderen Seite die Nibelungenwildheit, durch die mitteleuropäische Bildung hindurch fortgepflanzt.
Ja, meine lieben Freunde, Kulturscharlach, Kulturmasern bekommt man, wenn man die Jurisprudenz nicht bloß abstrakt denkt, sondern mit gesunden naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffen durchtränkt sich einläßt auf dieses Etwas, das als moderne Juristerei in der Literatur und in der Wissenschaft figuriert.
Einen gewissen Höhepunkt hat das erreicht, als einer, der eigentlich geistreich war, wie Rudolf von Ihering, schon gar nicht mehr wußte, wie er zurechtkommen sollte mit diesen Jammerbegriffen von Jurisprudenz der neueren Zeit. Grotesk wurde das Buch, das Ihering schrieb über den «Zweck im Recht», weil ein Mensch, der ein bißchen sich hineingefunden hatte in naturwissenschaftliches Denken, diese sprachlichen Begriffe, die er hatte, nun auf die Jurisprudenz anwenden wollte, so daß ein Wechselbalg des menschlichen Denkens herauskam. Es ist tatsächlich ein Martyrium für ein gesundes Denken, sich in die neuere juristische Literatur einzulassen, denn man hat alle Augenblicke das Gefühl: das geht wie Regenwürmer durch das Gehirn. Es ist schon so, ich schildere nur die imaginativen Wahrnehmungen.
Man muß den Mut haben, auch diese Dinge gehörig ins Auge zu fassen, um einzusehen, daß wir an dem Zeitpunkt angekommen sind, wo nicht nur gewisse Einrichtungen, sondern wo die Denkgewohnheiten der Menschen metamorphosiert, umgestaltet werden müssen, wo die Menschen beginnen müssen, über manche Dinge anders zu denken. Dann erst werden die sozialen Einrichtungen in der Außenwelt unter dem Einfluß der menschlichen Denkgewohnheiten und Empfindungsgewohnheiten so werden können, wie es diese furchtbaren, schreckhaft sprechenden Tatsachen fordern.
Es ist schon ein gründliches Umlernen mit Bezug auf allerwichtigste Dinge der modernen Menschheit notwendig. Weil aber diese moderne Menschheit insbesondere in der Zeit, von der ich gestern sprach, 1200 anfangend, mit dem Goetheanismus schließend, solche wie Regenwürmer durch das Gehirn ziehende Gedanken in sich aufnahm und das nicht bemerkte, geschah es, daß jene Lässigkeit, jene Passivität des Denkens eintrat, die eine charakteristische Erscheinung der neueren Zeit ist. Diese charakteristische Erscheinung der neueren Zeit ist ja das Nichtvorhandensein des Willens im Element des Denkens. Die Menschen lassen ihre Gedanken über sich kommen, sie geben sich ihnen hin, sie haben die Gedanken am liebsten als Instinkt. Auf diese Weise kann man niemals zum Geiste dringen. Man kann nur zum Geiste dringen, wenn man wahrhaft objektiv den Willen in das Denken hineinlegt, so daß das Denken eine Handlung wird wie irgendeine andere Handlung, wie Holzhacken. Haben denn die modernen Menschen wirklich das Gefühl, daß man beim Denken ermüdet? Das haben sie nicht, weil das Denken für sie keine Tätigkeit ist. Die modernen Menschen haben das Gefühl, daß man beim Holzhacken ermüdet. Daß aber für den, der nicht mit Worten, sondern mit Gedanken denkt, ebenso nach kürzerer Zeit als beim Holzhacken jene Ermüdung kommt, die ganz genau ebenso ist wie beim Holzhacken, daß man nicht weiter kann, das haben die modernen Menschen nicht, das erleben die modernen Menschen nicht. Das muß erlebt werden, sonst wird nicht von der modernen Menschheit in ihrem Zusammenleben jener Durchgang vollbracht werden können, von dem ich nun gestern und vorgestern sprach, jener Durchgang von der sinnlichen in die übersinnliche Welt. Sie wissen, man braucht nicht hellsehend zu werden, um in die übersinnliche Welt überzugehen, sondern man braucht nur durch den gesunden Menschenverstand zu begreifen, was aus der übersinnlichen Welt heraus erforscht werden kann durch einen Hellseherweg. Nicht ist notwendig, daß die ganze Menschheit hellsehend wird, aber notwendig ist, was für jeden Menschen möglich ist: mit dem gesunden Menschenverstand die Einsichten in die geistige Welt zu bekommen. Nur auf diesem Wege kann Harmonie in die moderne Seele hineinkommen, denn diese Harmonie in den modernen Seelen geht gerade aus den Bedingungen der Zeitentwickelung heraus verloren. Wir sind heute einmal an einem Punkt, namentlich der europäischen Entwickelung mit ihrem amerikanischen Anhange und ihren asiatischen Vorposten, angekommen, in der von den Geistern der überirdischen Welt real das Fazit gezogen wird zwischen dem, was in älteren Zeiten gang und gäbe war mit Bezug auf das Nebeneinander der Bevölkerungen auf der Erde, und dem, was in späterer Zeit gang und gäbe geworden ist.
Wie waren in ältester Zeit die Völker auf der Erdkugel angeordnet? Bis zu einem gewissen Zeitpunkte, der eigentlich nicht weit vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha zurückliegt, da war alles, was an Völkerkonfiguration auf der Erde bewirkt worden ist, von oben herunter bedingt, dadurch bedingt, daß die Seelen sich einfach senkten aus dem Kosmos, aus der geistigen Welt in die Körper, welche an einem bestimmten Territorium lebendig waren in der physischen Menschheitsentwickelung. So waren in Griechenland in den älteren Zeiten aus den physiologischen, geographischen, klimatischen Verhältnissen heraus gewisse Menschenleiber da, auf der italischen Halbinsel gewisse Menschenleiber da. Die Eltern brachten zwar die Kinder zur Welt, doch kamen die Seelen von oben, waren nur ganz von oben bestimmt und griffen sehr tief in die ganze Konfiguration des Menschen, in seine äußere körperliche Physiognomie ein.
Dann kamen die großen Völkerwanderungen. Menschen wanderten in verschiedenen Strömungen über die Erde. Die Rassenmischungen traten ein, Völkermischungen traten ein. Dadurch kam in ausgiebigem Maße das Vererbungselement im irdischen Leben zur Geltung. Da lebte an einem bestimmten Orte der Erde eine Bevölkerung, die wanderte an einen anderen Ort; so lebten in gewissen Gegenden des Kontinents die Angeln und die Sachsen, die wanderten nach den englischen Inseln aus. Das ist solch eine Völkerwanderung. Nun sind doch die Nachkommen der Angeln und der Sachsen in physischer Vererbung abhängig von dem, was sich vorher auf dem Kontinente entwickelte; sie sehen so aus in bezug auf ihre Physiognomie, mit Bezug auf ihre Hantierungen und so weiter. Dadurch kommt etwas hinein in die Entwickelung der Menschheit, was horizontal abhängig ist. Während früher die Verteilungen der Menschen über die Erde nur abhängig waren von der Art und Weise, wie sich die Seelen inkarnierten, heruntersenkten, wurde jetzt mitbestimmend dasjenige, was an Wanderungen, an Strömungen auftrat. Aber mit Bezug darauf ist gerade um die Wende des 14. zum 15. Jahrhundert ein neues kosmisch-geschichtliches Element aufgetreten, ein neuer kosmisch-geschichtlicher Impuls. Es war eine Zeit hindurch so, daß eine gewisse Sympathie bestand zwischen den Seelen, die herunterkamen aus der geistigen Welt, und den Körpern, die unten waren. Also konkret gesprochen: Auf den englischen Inseln, über den englischen Inseln senkten sich Seelen, die sympathisch berührt waren von der Gestaltung der Leiber, die als Nachkommen der Angeln und der Sachsen auf der britischen Insel lebten. Diese Sympathie hörte mit dem 15. Jahrhundert immer mehr und mehr auf, und die Seelen richten sich seit diesem 15. Jahrhundert nicht mehr nach den Rasseneigentümlichkeiten, sondern wiederum nach den geographischen Verhältnissen, nach dem Klima, nach dem, ob da unten Ebene, ob da Gebirge ist. Die Seelen kümmern sich seit dem 15. Jahrhundert immer weniger darum, wie die Menschen rassengemäß aussehen; sie richten sich mehr nach den geographischen Verhältnissen. So daß es heute in der über die Erde hin ausgebreiteten Menschheit etwas gibt, wie einen Zwiespalt zwischen dem angeerbten Rassenmäßigen und dem Seelischen, das aus der geistigen Welt kommt. Und würden die heutigen Menschen mehr ihr Unterbewußtes wirklich ins Bewußtsein bringen können, dann würden sich heute die wenigsten Menschen - wenn ich mich trivial ausdrücken darf - in ihrer Haut wohlfühlen. Die meisten Menschen würden heute sagen: Ich bin doch heruntergestiegen auf die Erde, um in der Ebene zu leben, unter Grünem oder über Grünem, um dieses oder jenes Klima zu haben, und im Grunde genommen ist es mir gar nicht so besonders wichtig, daß ich ein romanisch oder ein germanisch aussehendes Gesicht trage.
Ja, es sieht schon einmal paradox aus, wenn man diese Dinge, die von eminentester Wichtigkeit sind für das Menschenleben heute, im Konkreten schildert. Pantheistisch von Geist, Geist, Geist reden auch die Menschen, die gute Lehren geben, die sagen, man solle sich vom Materialismus abwenden und wiederum dem Geiste zuwenden; das schockiert die Leute heute nicht. Aber wenn man in dieser Konkretheit spricht über den Geist, dann lassen sich das die Leute heute noch nicht recht gefallen. Aber so ist es schon. Und Harmonie muß wiederum gesucht werden zwischen, ich möchte sagen, einer geographischen Prädestination und einem Rassenelemente, das sich über die Erde hin breitet. Daher kommen die internationalen Neigungen in unserer Zeit, daß die Seelen sich nicht kümmern mehr um das Rassenmäßige.
Ich habe dasjenige, was jetzt geschieht, einmal verglichen mit einer vertikalen Völkerwanderung, während früher eine horizontale Völkerwanderung war. Der Vergleich ist nicht bloß eine Analogie, der Vergleich ist auf Grund der Tatsachen des geistigen Lebens ausgesprochen.
Zu alldem muß hinzugenommen werden, daß der Mensch einfach durch die geistige Entwickelung der neueren Zeit im Unterbewußten immer geistiger wird, und daß eigentlich jene materialistische Gesinnung, die im Oberbewußtsein auftritt, immer mehr widerspricht dem, was der Mensch in seinem Unterbewußtsein hat. Um das einzusehen, dazu ist allerdings notwendig, auf die dreifache Gliederung des Menschen selbst noch einmal einzugehen.
Diese dreifache Gliederung empfindet zunächst der heute nur dem Sinnlich-Physischen zugewendete Mensch so, daß er sich sagt: Ich nehme wahr durch meine Sinne, die sind durch den ganzen Körper verteilt, aber hauptsächlich im Kopfe zentralisiert; ich habe im Wahrnehmen das Nerven-Sinnesleben. Aber weiter kommt der Mensch heute nicht. Er kann dann allenfalls beschreiben, daß der Mensch atmet, und daß das Leben von dem Atmen in die Herzbewegung, in die Blutpulsation übergeht. Aber viel weiter kommt der Mensch nicht. Den Stoffwechsel studiert man ja sehr genau, aber nicht als ein Glied des dreigliedrigen Menschen; man betrachtet ihn eigentlich als den ganzen Menschen. Man braucht ja nicht so weit zu gehen, wie jener naturwissenschaftliche Denker, der gesagt hat: Der Mensch ist, was er ißt -, aber im Ganzen ist die naturwissenschaftliche Gesinnung ziemlich stark davon durchdrungen, daß der Mensch ist, was er ißt. In Mitteleuropa wird er ja bald dasjenige sein, was er nicht ißt!
Diese Dreigliederung des Menschen, die sich hineinfinden will in eine soziale Dreigliederung, weil sie immer deutlicher und deutlicher auftritt, die tritt auch differenziert über die Erde hin auf. Der Mensch ist wahrhaftig nicht bloß dasjenige, was innerhalb seiner Haut eingeschlossen ist. Es entsprach schon einer tiefen Empfindung, als ich in meinem ersten Mysterium «Die Pforte der Einweihung» Capesius und Strader allerlei Dinge verrichten ließ und darauf aufmerksam machte, daß das, was da auf der Erde hantiert wird von den Menschen, entspricht kosmischen Vorgängen draußen im Weltenall. Bei jedem Gedanken, den wir fassen, jeder Handbewegung, die wir tun, bei allem, was wir sagen, ob wir gehen, stehen, oder was wir sonst vollbringen, da geht immer etwas im Kosmos vor. Um diese Dinge wirklich zu durchleben, fehlen dem heutigen Menschen die Wahrnehmungsmöglichkeiten. Der Mensch weiß heute nicht - man kann es auch nicht verlangen, und es ist paradox, so zu reden, wie ich jetzt rede -, wie er sich ausnehmen würde, wenn er nur vom Monde aus meinetwillen beobachten würde, wie es auf der Erde hier zugeht. Da würde er sehen, daß das Nerven-Sinnesleben noch etwas ganz anderes ist, als dasjenige, was man davon weiß im physisch-sinnlichen Dasein. Das Nerven-Sinnesleben, also dasjenige, was vorgeht während Sie sehen, während Sie hören, riechen, tasten, das ist Licht im Kosmos, das Ausstrahlen von Licht in den Kosmos. Von Ihrem Schauen, von Ihrem Fühlen, von Ihrem Hören erglänzt die Erde in den Kosmos hinaus.
Anders wiederum ist die Wirkung alles dessen, was rhythmisch ist im Menschen: Atmung, Herzbewegung, Blutpulsation. Das geht in mächtigen Rhythmen, die von dem entsprechenden Gehörorgane gehört würden, in das Weltenall hinaus. Der menschliche Stoffwechsel geht als von der Erde ausströmendes Leben in den Weltenraum hinaus. Sie können nicht wahrnehmen, nicht hören, nicht sehen, nicht riechen, nicht fühlen, ohne daß Sie leuchten in den Kosmos hinaus. Sie können Ihr Blut nicht zirkulieren lassen, ohne daß Sie hinausklingen in den Weltenraum, und Sie können nicht den Stoffwechsel in sich vollbringen, ohne daß von außen sich das ansieht als das Leben der Erde, das Leben der ganzen Erde.
Mitt Bezug darauf aber ist ein großer Unterschied zum Beispiel zwischen Asien und Europa. Von außen angesehen würde die eigentümliche Denkweise der Asiaten selbst heute noch, wo schon ein großer Teil der Asiaten unspirituell geworden ist, sprühendes, helles Licht in den geistigen Weltenraum hinaus verbreiten. Das wird immer dunkler, je weiter man nach dem Westen geht, immer weniger wird hinausgeleuchtet in den Weltenraum. Dagegen pulsiert immer mehr Leben hinaus in den Weltenraum, je weiter man nach Westen geht. So allein entsteht in der menschlichen Seele das, was man nennen könnte die Anschauung von dem kosmischen Aspekt der Erde; und zur Erde gehört die Menschheit dazu.
Solche Vorstellungen wird man brauchen, wenn die Menschheit einer heilsamen und nicht einer unheilsamen Zukunft entgegengehen soll. Jenes Idiotentum, welches erzeugt wird in der Menschheit allmählich, indem man die gegenwärtigen geographischen Karten bloß zeichnet und die Menschen lernen läßt: hier Donau, hier Rhein, hier Reuß, hier Aare, hier liegt Bern, hier Basel, hier Zürich - bloß dieses äußerliche theoretische Liniieren, das dann, den Globus ergänzend, nur das Sinnliche verbreitet, diese Art von Bildung wird die Menschheit immer mehr herunterbringen. Gewiß, sie ist notwendig als eine Grundlage, sie soll nicht angefochten werden, aber sie wird die Menschheit immer mehr und mehr herunterbringen. Der Globus der zukünftigen Zeit muß verzeichnen: da leuchtet die Erde, weil in den Köpfen der Menschen da Spiritualität ist; da strahlt die Erde mehr Leben in den kosmischen Raum hinaus, weil das eben den Menschen auf diesem Territorium besonders entspricht.
Damit hängt es auch zusammen, was ich schon einmal hier bemerkt habe. Man muß immer das eine durch das andere beleuchten. Ich sagte Ihnen, daß wenn die Europäer sich allmählich in Amerika ansiedeln, sie indianerhafte Hände bekommen, dem Typus des alten Indianers ähnlich werden. Das rührt davon her, daß heute die Seelen, die herunterkommen und sich senken in Menschenleiber, sich mehr nach dem Geographischen richten, wie in alten Zeiten, wo noch die Indianerkultur eine nächstgegebene ist. Jetzt richten sich die Seelen nicht nach den Rassen, richten sich nicht nach dem, was sich aus dem Blute heraus entwickelt, sie richten sich nach den geographischen Verhältnissen. Es wird notwendig sein, daß man innerlich durchdringt dasjenige, was in der Menschheit vorgeht. Diese Durchdringung wartet auf die Menschheit, auf die Geneigtheit der Menschheit zu beweglicheren Begriffen, die eingehen können in solche Dinge. Die können sich aber nur entwickeln auf geisteswissenschaftlicher Grundlage. Und geisteswissenschaftliche Grundlage ist nur möglich, wenn der Geist in der Menschenseele geboren werden kann. Dazu braucht man das emanzipierte freie Geistesleben. Dazu braucht man die Herauslösung des Geisteslebens aus dem politischen Staatsleben.
Nun, meine lieben Freunde, ich habe Ihnen über dasjenige heute einige Andeutungen gegeben, was sich so durchzieht durch jene Menschheit, die heute streben muß nach einer sozialen Neugestaltung. Man kann heute nicht mit den gewöhnlichen Trivialbegriffen soziale Forderungen aufstellen. Man muß eine Einsicht haben in die Natur der gegenwärtigen Menschheit. Man muß einholen dasjenige, was man versäumt hat im Studium der gegenwärtigen Menschheit.
Da wir jetzt doch bald abreisen müssen, so werde ich morgen zum letzten Male über diese Dinge sprechen. Wir werden uns also morgen um halb acht Uhr hier wiederum versammeln. Vielleicht werden einige eurythmische Stückchen dann auch gegeben werden können, und dann wollen wir morgen noch einen Vortrag hier haben, eben aus dem Grunde, weil wir ja vermutlich diese Woche hier wegfahren müssen. Ich habe Ihnen dann auch einiges zu sagen morgen, was anknüpft an mein Buch über die soziale Frage, das jetzt ausgedruckt ist und demnächst, allernächst erscheinen wird. In Anknüpfung an dieses Buch habe ich dann einiges zu sagen, was mir besonders am Herzen liegt.
Eleventh Lecture
From the two lectures given the day before yesterday and yesterday, you will have seen that it is truly not out of any subjective opinion or subjective desire on the part of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that we must speak at present about the threefold social order, which we have now discussed so often and which has also been made the subject of public presentations. As far as yesterday's discussions are concerned, I must say that my intention was to point out the profound impulses that are at work in the life of the nations of the present civilized world, that is, the world of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. I tried to show how, from about 1200 onwards, an impulse arose in Central Europe which actually meant the rise of what what can be called the bourgeois social order, but that this bourgeois social life in Central Europe was mixed with a backward spiritual life from earlier centuries, a decaying Nibelung culture, which developed as a spiritual life, especially in the administrative and ruling upper classes of the Central European countries. And I emphasized in particular what a striking contrast existed in this Central European life from the 13th to the 20th century, which then led to that terrible social agony that also broke out across Central Europe. I tried to point out what a striking contrast there was between the inner spiritual experience of the broad bourgeois population and that of the people who, had emerged from the old knighthood, from the old feudal lords, from everything that was a remnant of the old Nibelung spirit in spiritual terms, basically made up the politics of this Central Europe, while the broad masses of the bourgeoisie remained unpolitical and apolitical. One must seriously try to understand this difference in mentality that exists or existed, especially if one wants to be a scholar of the humanities from a practical point of view, namely between the so-called educated bourgeoisie and its members and between all those who sat in government seats of one kind or another in Central Europe. I characterized this yesterday.
Now let us take a closer look at why this essentially magnificent intellectual movement, which stretches from Walther von der Vogelweide to Goetheanism, experienced such a sudden decline after Goetheanism, why this intellectual movement failed so completely to come to terms with social life, to grasp ideas in social life. Just consider that even Goethe, who was able to develop the most comprehensive ideas about many things in the world, was actually only able to speak in certain hints, which one can boldly say were not entirely clear to him, about what was to come as a new social order for civilized humanity. Basically, the tendency toward the threefold social order had been present in people's subconscious since the end of the 18th century. And the calls for freedom, equality, and brotherhood, which will only make sense once the threefold social order is realized, testified to the existence of this subconscious longing for the threefold social order. Why did it not come to light?
This has to do with the whole nature of spiritual life in Central Europe. Yesterday, at the end of my talk, I pointed to a peculiar phenomenon. I said that Herman Grimm, whom I held in such high esteem, who was able to shed light with his ideas on so many aspects of art, of what is universal in humanity, of antiquity, fell into the strange error of admiring a mere phrase-monger like Wildenbruch. Over the years, I have often pointed out—if you will allow me this personal remark—something that, when told in this way, might seem quite insignificant to the listener, but which can have a great and profound meaning for those who view life symptomatologically. Among many other conversations I had the privilege of having with Herman Grimm during the time I knew him personally, I once had a conversation with him in which I pointed out, from my point of view, a number of things that are to be understood intellectually. And when I recounted this, I always pointed out that Herman Grimm had only a dismissive gesture for such talk about the spiritual; he meant that this was something he would not engage in. At that moment, this gesture was an immensely true remark. In what sense was this remark immensely true? It was true insofar as Herman Grimm, despite all his interest in certain aspects of the so-called spiritual development of humanity, in art, and in the expression of the “universally human,” had not the slightest idea of what spirit actually must be for human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Herman Grimm simply did not know, from the point of view of a person of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, what spirit is. When discussing such a matter, it is necessary not to take a harsh stance from the point of view of truth; at least up to the level of the spirit, a person like Herman Grimm was true—because he knew nothing about the way of thinking about the spirit, he made a defensive move. If he had been one of those phrase-mongers who today go around masquerading as prophets and want to improve people, he would have believed that he could talk about the spirit, he would have believed that when one says spirit, spirit, spirit, then something is being said that corresponds to a content that one cherishes in one's own soul.
Among those who have also spoken a great deal about the spirit in recent decades without having any idea what spirit is, the majority of theosophists can also be counted. For it can actually be said that among all the spiritless chatter that has been engaged in in recent times, the theosophical chatter has been the most distressing and has also borne some of the worst fruit. But when one says something like what I have just said about Herman Grimm, whom I do not regard as a personality but as a representative, as a type of our time, then one may well ask how it is possible that such a man, who so completely represents Central European life, has no idea how one must think when thinking about the spirit. In this respect, Herman Grimm is really only representative of Central European life. For if we consider the culture I characterized yesterday, which emerged as the culture of the bourgeoisie, say in the year 1200 — approximately, of course — and then extended into Goetheanism, if we consider this culture, this splendid culture, then what must strike us as characteristic of this culture, which need not be esteemed any less for that reason, is that it is permeated in the most beautiful sense by what we call soul, but that it completely lacks what we can call spirit. One must be able to grasp this with all the necessary tragic feeling, that this glorious culture lacks precisely that which one might call spirit. Of course, one must take spirit in the sense that one learns to take it through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.
I keep coming back to this representative personality, Herman Grimm, because thousands upon thousands of educated people in Central Europe thought the same way he did. Herman Grimm wrote an excellent book about Goethe, which summarizes lectures he gave at the University of Berlin in the 1870s. With regard to everything Herman Grimm said about Goethe, it is true that he actually said the best things that were said about Goethe in a comprehensive way by this educated class. And Herman Grimm had the gift, from his soulful point of view, of characterizing people, but also the gift of understanding human characteristics in the right way, of assessing them correctly. In this respect, he was brilliant at finding the words to characterize anything. I would like to recall just one example. Herman Grimm was, of course, one of the people I spoke about yesterday who were mistaken about the Nibelung savages. He was enthusiastic about Frederick the Great and had a very specific idea in his mind of how he should imagine Frederick the Great as a Germanic-German hero. Now, the English historian and writer Macaulay gave a characterization of Frederick the Great that was, of course, written from an English point of view. In an essay on Macaulay, Herman Grimm wanted to make it clear that only a true German could understand Frederick the Great and draw the lines that characterize this character, and he characterized Macaulay's portrayal of Frederick the Great very aptly when he said: Macaulay turns Frederick the Great into a tricky English lord with snuff on his nose.
Well, finding such a characteristic is something that means something, namely that one can round off one's ideas, one's conceptions, that these conceptions can become plastic. There are many examples that illustrate how a mind like Herman Grimm's can characterize so aptly, but also from other similar minds from the entire cultural period of Central Europe, which I characterized yesterday. But when you look at his Goethe monograph, which is by far the best that has been written, with this goodwill that comes from such recognition of Herman Grimm, what impression do you get? You get the impression that it is something very beautiful, something extraordinarily good—but it is not Goethe! All that remains of Goethe is basically a shadow image, as if one were to take a three-dimensional object and cast a two-dimensional shadow image of it onto a wall. I would like to say that, chapter by chapter, Goethe wanders like a ghost from 1749 to 1832. A ghostly Goethe is portrayed, not the Goethe who was, who thought, who felt, who wanted, but rather the Goethe who wandered and changed like a ghost through the decades I have just described.
Goethe himself did not bring everything that lived in his soul, everything that lived in his soul, especially spiritually, to conscious awareness. That is precisely the great problem with Goethe today: to bring what lived spiritually in Goethe to consciousness in a truly spiritual way, something Goethe himself was unable to do, because at that time it was not possible to have anything other than a soulful, not a spiritual culture. Thus, Herman Grimm, who is completely rooted in the Goethe tradition, when he speaks of Goethe's spirit, has only a shadow, a ghost, a schema. And it is already a characteristic phenomenon that what one must describe as the best of Goethe and Goetheanism emerging from today's culture is only a ghost of Goethe. That is a significant phenomenon.
Yes, but where does it come from that throughout this entire splendid cultural development the concept, the experience, the feeling of the actual spirit is missing? People like Troxler, and sometimes Schelling, have pointed tentatively to the spirit. But viewed purely objectively, one must say that spirit is lacking in this entire culture. And because spirit was lacking, people did not know the needs of spirit, they did not know the conditions necessary for spirit to live. This, in turn, is something that can emerge as a tragic feeling from the perception of this cultural current, that within it people were unable to perceive or feel the conditions necessary for spirit to live, including the social conditions necessary for spirit to live. But this is why Central European social life was able to develop over the centuries and, because it had no real experience of the spirit, did not feel the need to fulfill the basic conditions of this spiritual life by emancipating spiritual life, placing it on its own footing, and separating it from state life. Because people did not know the spirit, they did not know the innermost conditions of spiritual life and therefore did not feel the need—I am speaking only of these areas; in other areas of the present civilized world, people did not feel it either, but for other reasons—to place the spirit on its own, but instead allowed it to merge with that in which it could only develop in chains: with the state. 1200, I said, is the time when the activities of Walther von der Vogelweide can also be recorded, the time when the spiritual life of Central Europe pulsated with powerful imaginations, of which conventional history records little. This intellectual life then glides through the centuries, but from the 15th and 16th centuries onwards it actually begins to show the seeds of decline, and it is into this intellectual life of Central Europe that the universities of Prague, Ingolstadt, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Rostock, Würzburg, and so on are founded. The founding of these universities, which spread their seeds throughout Central European life, took place almost entirely within a single century. With this way of thinking, with this life that radiated from the universities, a tendency toward the abstract was brought about, toward that which was then idolized and revered as purely scientific thinking—idolized, of course, only in a comparative sense, and which today has such a devastating effect on people's habits of thought.
And this way of life basically gave the entire educated bourgeoisie a certain nuance. What was this nuance of the entire educated bourgeoisie? Of course, there are many factors at play here that did not have a direct influence on each individual, but whose effect carried over to each individual. It was influenced by the fact that during this period there was a growing receptivity to a completely foreign spiritual life, which was formed by the bearers of education in this bourgeoisie and then culminated in Goethe, Herder, and Schiller. In addition to what lay in their own souls, this essentially developed foreign elements, foreign impulses.
I am pointing to an extremely characteristic phenomenon. The souls of these people, who were the bearers of the bourgeoisie, were searching for the spirit, a concept they did not even have. But where did they search for the spirit? In Greek education. They learned Greek in their secondary schools, and what flowed into their souls as spiritual content was Greek content. When one spoke of the spirit in Central Europe from the 13th to the 20th century, one always had to say: that which the instilled Greek education taught about the spirit. No independent life arose through the spirit. But Greek education about the spirit was not yet the education of that period in human development which we call the period of consciousness development. That only began in the middle of the 15th century. Thus, this bourgeoisie carried within itself an outdated education, a Greek education, and that alone gave it what the Greeks actually felt and perceived about the spirit.
But what the Greeks felt from the spirit was entirely the soul side of the spirit. Therein lies the depth of Greek culture, that the Greeks, in a sense, rose directly to the perception of the highest soul. This they called spirit. Certainly, the spirit shines down from on high. As I describe it here, it shines down from on high, pulsing through the soul. But when one looks upward, one has the soul of the spirit.
But it became the task of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch to rise up into the spirit itself. This cultural development was not yet capable of doing so. This is much more important than is usually thought. For it clarifies the whole way in which modern-medieval education was able to take possession of the spirit.
What was necessary in order to arrive at a concept of the spirit, at an inner experience of the spirit in the modern sense? It is precisely in such a representative figure as Herman Grimm that it is possible to study what was necessary in modern times to work one's way through to an inner experience of the spirit. This required something that a classically educated person like Herman Grimm had no idea about: scientific endeavor, scientific thinking. Why? Scientific thinking is spiritless. Scientific thinking, especially when it is great, contains not a shred of spirit, nothing spiritual at all. All scientific concepts, all concepts of natural laws, are spiritless because they are only shadows of the spirit, because when one knows something about natural laws, nothing of the spirit is present in consciousness. One can then go two ways. One can devote oneself to science, as many do today, and remain with what science provides; then one becomes spiritless. One can be a great natural scientist in this way, but one must be spiritless. That is one path.
The other path is to experience the spiritlessness of natural science, precisely where it has manifested itself in its greatness, as something tragically internal, to immerse one's soul in the knowledge of nature. If one immerses one's soul in what has been found in abstract natural laws, which are very interesting and shed light on many things, but which are spiritless, if one immerses oneself in the natural laws of chemistry, physics, and biology, which are obtained on the dissecting table and already indicate how they give only the dead from the living, if one tries to live with this not only in human arrogance as a piece of knowledge, but if one tries to ask: What does this give to the human soul? – then it is experienced! There is nothing spiritless about it. This is also the tragic problem of Nietzsche, who is torn apart in his soul by the feeling of spiritlessness in modern scientific education.
And then the reaction can occur within the soul. Then one can experience how, when looking at nature, the spirit remains completely silent, saying nothing. The soul rears up, gathers its strength, and then seeks to give birth to the spirit from within. This can only happen in an age when people like those of the Central European bourgeois education lack an immediate natural disposition, and when scientific culture approaches them. Then, if they are not inwardly dead, if they are inwardly alive, the impulse of the spirit itself gathers within them. Since the middle of the 15th century, the spirit must be born in the dead if the spirit is to enter human soul life at all. Therefore, those who, with only a classical education, live out that afterglow of Greek culture which allows the soulfulness of the spirit to pulsate through the human soul, will still be satisfied in the inner experience that gives them the feeling of this Greek soul-spirit, this Greek spirit-soul. But those who are compelled to take natural science seriously in their inner lives and to feel its death, its corpse-like nature, will then allow the spirit to arise in their souls.
In order to have a real, immediate experience of the spirit in modern times, it is not enough to have been in laboratories and smelled cyanide or ammonia, or to have been in the dissection room and looked at the fresh preparations of corpses. one must have sensed the smell of corpses from the entire scientific direction in order to come to the light of the spirit from this sensation. This is an impulse that must revive in modern times. This is one of the trials that people must go through in modern times. Natural science is much more there to educate people than to convey truths about nature. Only naive people can believe that there is any inner truth in the natural laws recorded by learned natural scientists. No, it is not there; but spiritless natural science is precisely what is needed to educate people to the spirit. This is one of the paradoxes of the world-historical development of humanity.
Thus, only in the most recent period — the period that followed Goetheanism, for it was then that the actual corpse-like nature, the actual death of natural science, came to the fore — did the spirit shine forth, albeit only for those human beings who were willing to receive its light. And so, until Goethe's time, people protected themselves against the devastating effects of a spiritual life shackled by state coercion by essentially assimilating the Greek spiritual life, which did not belong to the modern state because it did not belong to modern times at all. The separation of spiritual life from state life was achieved surrogately by absorbing a foreign spiritual life, the Greek one. It was precisely this Greek spiritual life that covered up the inner spiritual poverty of the modern European world. That was on the one hand.
On the other hand, however, there was no perceived need to separate economic life from legal life, from the life of the actual political state. Why not? Human beings can never escape economic life. To put it trivially, the stomach ensures that. It is not possible for people to experience such cataclysms in the realm of economic life unnoticed, as they are experienced unnoticed in the realm of legal life and spiritual life. So economic activity was there, and this economic activity developed in a very straight line. What I hinted at yesterday, the transformation of the old, impenetrable forests into meadows and cornfields, with all the economic consequences that entailed, developed in a very straight, regular line. That was a very straight current. But something foreign fell into the experience of this economic life, something that had actually been strong in the Central European soul for longer than the Greek: the Latin-Romance culture fell into it. And everything that relates to state and legal life, to politics, comes from the Latin-Romance culture. And that is this strange incongruity, again something that will have to be sharply emphasized by the history of the future, but which is overlooked by the partisan, conventional historiography of the immediate past, which is particularly partisan to materialism: that certain economic ideas, certain economic practices of life, a certain approach to economic activity in life developed in a straight line from the social conditions described by Tacitus for the first century of the Germanic world after the establishment of Christianity. But these economic habits of thought did not develop unhindered. The political mindset of the Roman-Latin world struck them, infecting them completely and keeping the original European economic habits and political legal life apart. And so economic life and political life existed artificially side by side, seemingly divided, but the division was only a mask, because political life had the nuances of the Latin-Romanic culture and economic life had the nuances of the Old Germanic culture. Because two foreign strata coexisted, people felt that they did not belong together and outwardly melted into one another, but they were satisfied because inwardly, spiritually, they experienced them as separate. One only has to study the history of the Middle Ages and modern times to see how this history in Central Europe is actually a continuous rebellion, a continuous resistance, a continuous opposition of the economic conditions that have been brought down from ancient times against the state system and against legal Romanism. When you look at things figuratively, you can literally see how Romanism penetrates people's minds through the heads of administrative officials as jurisprudence. Much of Romanism also penetrates the decaying Nibelung savages. “Graf” (count) is related to “grapho” (to write), as I have already said. That is where Romanism penetrates. As I said, one can literally see in pictures how the peasants, who are filled with this economically oriented thinking, either clench their fists in their pockets or rebel with flails against this Roman, legalistic system. Of course, this does not always happen in such an outwardly tangible way. But in the whole moral hustle and bustle, if you really look at history, that is how it is. So what developed from the seeds of the Central European world was permeated — I am merely characterizing, not criticizing, because everything that took place there also brought its blessings and was necessary, could not be avoided in the historical development of Central Europe — it was permeated, infected by legalistic-political Romanism and Greek humanism, by the Greek concept of spirit and soul, of soul and spirit. And only when the modern international economic element struck with all that it brought in its wake was it actually no longer possible to maintain the old ways. One could be very well educated in the classical sense and yet be ignorant of the natural sciences of the modern era, but then one was still, inwardly and spiritually, a reactionary. One could not keep up with the times if one was merely classically educated, if one did not penetrate into what the natural sciences of the modern era had to offer. And if you were educated in the natural sciences, if you were familiar with what modern natural science wanted to bring, then you could truly only suffer from cultural diseases, cultural scarlet fever, cultural measles, if you became acquainted with what had become of the old legal Romanism during the period I have been talking about. In the old Roman Empire, this legal Romanism was appropriate. Then this Roman legalism, the res publica, or rather the views of it, spread from the old Romanism, just as the Nibelungen savagery spread through Central European education.
Yes, my dear friends, cultural scarlet fever, cultural measles, is what you get when you don't just think about jurisprudence in the abstract, but immerse yourself in this thing that appears in literature and science as modern jurisprudence, steeped in healthy scientific concepts.
This reached a certain climax when someone who was actually very intelligent, such as Rudolf von Ihering, no longer knew how to cope with these lamentable concepts of modern jurisprudence. The book that Ihering wrote about the “purpose in law” became grotesque because a man who had found his way into scientific thinking wanted to apply the linguistic concepts he had to jurisprudence, with the result that a changeling of human thought emerged. It is indeed torture for healthy thinking to delve into recent legal literature, because one has the feeling at every moment that it is like earthworms crawling through one's brain. That is how it is; I am only describing my imaginative perceptions.
One must have the courage to look these things squarely in the face in order to realize that we have arrived at a point where not only certain institutions, but also people's habits of thinking must be transformed, where people must begin to think differently about some things. Only then will the social institutions in the outer world, under the influence of human habits of thinking and feeling, be able to become what these terrible, frightening facts demand.
A thorough re-learning is necessary with regard to the most important things of modern humanity. But because modern humanity, especially in the period I spoke of yesterday, beginning in 1200 and ending with Goetheanism, absorbed thoughts that ran through the brain like earthworms and did not notice it, that laxity, that passivity of thinking arose which is a characteristic phenomenon of the modern age. This characteristic phenomenon of modern times is the absence of will in the element of thinking. People allow their thoughts to come over them, they surrender to them, they prefer to have thoughts as instincts. In this way, one can never penetrate to the spirit. One can only penetrate to the spirit if one truly objectively puts the will into thinking, so that thinking becomes an action like any other action, like chopping wood. Do modern people really feel that thinking is tiring? They do not, because thinking is not an activity for them. Modern people feel that chopping wood is tiring. But modern people do not realize, do not experience, that those who think with thoughts rather than with words feel just as tired after a short time as those who chop wood, and that they cannot continue. This must be experienced, otherwise modern humanity will not be able to accomplish in its coexistence the transition I spoke of yesterday and the day before yesterday, the transition from the sensual to the supersensible world. You know, you don't need to become clairvoyant to enter the supersensible world; you only need to use your common sense to understand what can be explored from the supersensible world through clairvoyance. It is not necessary for all of humanity to become clairvoyant, but what is necessary is what is possible for every human being: to gain insight into the spiritual world through common sense. Only in this way can harmony enter the modern soul, for this harmony in modern souls is being lost precisely because of the conditions of the development of the times. We have now reached a point, namely in European development with its American appendage and its Asian outposts, where the spirits of the super-earthly world are drawing real conclusions between what was common in earlier times with regard to the coexistence of populations on earth and what has become common in later times.
How were the peoples of the earth arranged in ancient times? Up to a certain point in time, which was actually not long before the Mystery of Golgotha, everything that had been brought about in terms of the configuration of peoples on Earth was determined from above, in that souls simply descended from the cosmos, from the spiritual world, into bodies that were alive in a specific territory during the physical evolution of humanity. Thus, in ancient times, certain human bodies existed in Greece due to physiological, geographical, and climatic conditions, and certain human bodies existed on the Italian peninsula. Parents gave birth to children, but souls came from above, were determined entirely from above, and intervened very deeply in the entire configuration of the human being, in his or her external physical physiognomy.
Then came the great migrations. People migrated across the earth in various waves. Racial mixing occurred, and peoples mixed. As a result, the element of heredity came to play a significant role in earthly life. A population lived in a certain place on earth and migrated to another place; thus, the Angles and Saxons lived in certain regions of the continent and migrated to the English Isles. That is such a migration of peoples. Now, the descendants of the Angles and Saxons are physically dependent on what previously developed on the continent; they look like that in terms of their physiognomy, their mannerisms, and so on. This introduces something into the development of humanity that is horizontally dependent. Whereas earlier the distribution of human beings across the earth depended only on the manner in which souls incarnated, descended, now migrations and currents also became a determining factor. But in relation to this, a new cosmic-historical element, a new cosmic-historical impulse, appeared at the turn of the 14th to the 15th century. For a time, there was a certain sympathy between the souls descending from the spiritual world and the bodies below. Specifically, souls descended upon the English Isles who were attracted to the physical form of the descendants of the Angles and Saxons living there. This sympathy gradually ceased in the 15th century, and since then souls have no longer been guided by racial characteristics, but rather by geographical conditions, by the climate, by whether the terrain below is flat or mountainous. Since the 15th century, souls have cared less and less about how people look according to their race; they are more concerned with geographical conditions. So that today, among the humanity spread across the earth, there is something like a conflict between the inherited racial characteristics and the soul, which comes from the spiritual world. And if people today were able to bring more of their subconscious into consciousness, then very few people—if I may express myself trivially—would feel comfortable in their own skin. Most people today would say: I came down to earth to live on the plains, among greenery or above greenery, to have this or that climate, and basically it is not particularly important to me that I have a Roman or Germanic appearance.
Yes, it does seem paradoxical when you describe in concrete terms these things that are of the utmost importance for human life today. People who give good teachings also talk pantheistically about spirit, spirit, spirit, saying that we should turn away from materialism and turn back to the spirit; that doesn't shock people today. But when one speaks about the spirit in such concrete terms, people today are not yet ready to accept it. But that is how it is. And harmony must be sought between, I would say, a geographical predestination and a racial element that is spreading across the earth. Hence the international tendencies of our time, whereby souls no longer concern themselves with racial matters.
I once compared what is happening now to a vertical migration of peoples, whereas in the past there was a horizontal migration of peoples. The comparison is not merely an analogy; it is based on the facts of spiritual life.
To all this must be added that, simply through the spiritual development of recent times, human beings are becoming increasingly spiritual in their subconscious, and that the materialistic attitude that appears in the conscious mind is actually increasingly at odds with what human beings have in their subconscious. In order to understand this, it is necessary to return once more to the threefold structure of the human being itself.
This threefold structure is initially perceived by people today, who are focused solely on the physical and sensory world, in such a way that they say to themselves: I perceive through my senses, which are distributed throughout the body but mainly centralized in the head; in my perception I have the nerve-sense life. But modern man cannot go any further than this. At best, he can describe that man breathes and that life passes from breathing into the movement of the heart, into the pulsation of the blood. But human beings do not get much further than that. Metabolism is studied very precisely, but not as a member of the threefold human being; it is actually regarded as the whole human being. One need not go as far as that natural scientist who said: “Man is what he eats” — but on the whole, the scientific attitude is quite strongly permeated by the idea that man is what he eats. In Central Europe, he will soon be what he does not eat!
This threefold division of the human being, which wants to find its way into a threefold social order because it is becoming clearer and clearer, is also emerging in a differentiated form throughout the world. The human being is truly not just what is enclosed within his skin. It was already in keeping with a deep feeling when, in my first mystery, “The Gate of Initiation,” I had Capesius and Strader perform all kinds of things and pointed out that what human beings do on earth corresponds to cosmic processes outside in the universe. With every thought we conceive, every movement of our hands, everything we say, whether we walk, stand, or do anything else, something is always happening in the cosmos. Modern humans lack the powers of perception to truly experience these things. People today do not know — one cannot expect them to, and it is paradoxical to speak as I am doing now — what they would think if they were to observe what is happening here on Earth from the moon, just for my sake. They would see that the nerve-sense life is something quite different from what they know of it in physical-sensory existence. The nerve-sense life, that is, what happens while you see, while you hear, smell, and touch, is light in the cosmos, the radiation of light into the cosmos. From your seeing, from your feeling, from your hearing, the Earth shines out into the cosmos.
The effect of everything that is rhythmic in human beings is different: breathing, heartbeat, blood pulsation. These proceed in powerful rhythms that would be heard by the corresponding hearing organs, out into the universe. Human metabolism proceeds as life flowing out of the earth into the world space. You cannot perceive, hear, see, smell, or feel without shining out into the cosmos. You cannot let your blood circulate without sounding out into the universe, and you cannot carry out your metabolism without it being seen from outside as the life of the earth, the life of the whole earth.
In reference to this, however, there is a great difference between Asia and Europe, for example. Viewed from the outside, even today, when a large part of the Asian population has become unspiritual, the peculiar way of thinking of Asians would still spread sparkling, bright light into the spiritual world. The further west one goes, the darker it becomes, and the less light shines out into the world space. In contrast, the further west one goes, the more life pulsates out into the world space. This alone gives rise in the human soul to what might be called the view of the cosmic aspect of the Earth; and humanity belongs to the Earth.
Such ideas will be needed if humanity is to move toward a healthy and not an unhealthy future. The idiocy that is gradually being created in humanity by merely drawing the present geographical maps and teaching people: here is the Danube, here is the Rhine, here is the Reuss, here is the Aare, here lies Bern, here is Basel, here is Zurich—merely this external theoretical drawing, which then, supplementing the globe, only spreads the sensual, this kind of education will bring humanity down more and more. Certainly, it is necessary as a foundation, it should not be contested, but it will bring humanity down more and more. The globe of the future must show: there the earth shines because there is spirituality in the minds of the people there; there the earth radiates more life into cosmic space because that corresponds particularly to the people in that territory.
This is also connected with what I have already mentioned here. One must always illuminate one thing with another. I told you that when Europeans gradually settle in America, they acquire Indian-like hands and become similar to the type of the old Indian. This stems from the fact that today the souls that descend and sink into human bodies are more oriented toward geography, as in ancient times, when the Indian culture was still close at hand. Now the souls are not oriented toward races, not toward what develops from the blood, but toward geographical conditions. It will be necessary to penetrate inwardly what is going on in humanity. This penetration awaits humanity, the readiness of humanity for more flexible concepts that can enter into such things. But these can only develop on a spiritual scientific basis. And a spiritual scientific basis is only possible if the spirit can be born in the human soul. For this, we need an emancipated, free spiritual life. For this, we need to separate spiritual life from political state life.
Now, my dear friends, I have given you some hints today about what is permeating humanity, which today must strive for a social reorganization. Today, one cannot make social demands using ordinary, trivial concepts. One must have insight into the nature of present-day humanity. One must catch up on what one has neglected in the study of present-day humanity.
Since we must leave soon, I will speak about these things for the last time tomorrow. We will gather here again tomorrow at half past seven. Perhaps we will be able to perform a few eurythmic pieces, and then we will have another lecture here tomorrow, precisely because we will probably have to leave here this week. I will also have a few things to say tomorrow that tie in with my book on the social question, which has now been printed and will be published very soon. In connection with this book, I have a few things to say that are particularly close to my heart.