The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] I would like to begin today by following up on yesterday's and the day before yesterday's discussions with a few remarks about the development of humanity into the future, insofar as this development of humanity depends on a certain relationship that human beings themselves will enter into with certain spiritual powers in the course of the future of the earth. The day before yesterday, we saw how the human inner life appears upon closer examination; how, through such a closer examination, we can actually gain insights into how that which belongs, so to speak, to the outer world is united in the physical, soul, and spiritual human being, especially insofar as this outer world is understood as the world of etheric forces and beings that the human being draws upon for his own etheric body when descending into the earthly world. And we have seen how that which belongs more to the external world and becomes established in human beings then unites with what human beings themselves accomplish on earth, in other words, their deeds, their karma.

[ 2 ] Yesterday we saw how, at different times in human evolution, human beings can and should gain a relationship, a cognitive relationship, with the spiritual world in different ways.

[ 3 ] I have already mentioned several times that the present time is one in which a new stream of spiritual life simply wants to enter human existence on earth. Human development is now at a time that is to form the transition between the predominantly intellectual age that began in the first third of the 15th century and has now essentially come to an end, and a future devoted to the spiritual. In this intellectual age, it was primarily important for humanity to develop the intellect, to develop the intellect itself as such, based on the observation of external nature and technical practice.

[ 4 ] In this respect, great and powerful things have been achieved in recent centuries. But everything that has been achieved has actually been achieved in such a way that reason, the intellectual element in human development, was the main thing. And the legacy of this intellectual element still lives among us today. But, I would like to say, this legacy of the intellectual element is no longer creative.

[ 5 ] This intellectual element was creative in the highest degree at the time of Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and up until the 19th century. The great deeds of humanity, especially within Western civilization in recent centuries, sprang from the creative intellect.

[ 6 ] Anyone with an unbiased mind will be able to see from outward appearances that the creative element of intelligence has declined significantly in recent decades. Humanity is no longer in the same way, I would say, connecting enthusiasm with the intellect, with the mind. What has been practiced for centuries in terms of intellectual soulfulness lives on, I would say, as if through a certain cultural inertia. People think along the old lines, but the intellect no longer produces anything new. This is particularly noticeable in our youth. As I said, if one is unbiased enough, one will be able to notice this. If you look back to what our academic youth was like in the 1980s—and this probably applies to the whole of Western civilization; it was certainly not the case for everyone, but for those who mattered—then you can say that when a young person who had learned something began to speak, it was a source of pleasure, and you were eager to hear what they would say next. That is no longer the case today. You can see the change very clearly in the last few decades. When a younger person today, let's say someone fresh out of the lecture halls, starts to speak, you are not curious to hear what they will say next, because you already know. It happens automatically. People no longer show that their whole brain is active by developing their intellect. One has the feeling that intelligent activity has slipped from the head into deeper regions. This is something that anyone who looks at the world with an unbiased eye can already discover today through external perception. Human intelligence has taken on something machine-like, and this intelligence wells up from regions of the human organization that are no longer really the head. Well, this is precisely because, as I said, intelligence was originally elementary, and because it is inherent in the whole, in the whole world order, that during this age from the 15th to the 19th century, humanity was supposed to develop intelligence.

[ 7 ] But now a spiritual current wants to flow from the higher regions of world existence into the earthly life of human beings. Now that which should not develop further as intellect is to be fertilized by this spiritual current. And it must depend on human beings whether they open their hearts and souls to what I would call the spiritual world, which wants to enter the earthly world through many gates. This, however, makes it necessary for human beings to regain a receptivity to the perception of the spiritual in all of nature.

[ 8 ] Consider how, when we looked back yesterday at older human cultures, we had to mention that humanity in general perceived spiritual and soul elements in the things of the outer world, in every star, in every passing cloud, in lightning and thunder, in the beings of the natural kingdoms.

[ 9 ] It is precisely from this that the ancient yoga practice emerged. As I explained yesterday, the yogi sought to penetrate to the self. Through inner exercises, he sought, in a sense, what is natural to us today, for we are born with it and are brought up to have a certain sense of self, an ego-consciousness. The yogi first had to develop this within himself.

[ 10 ] Now, my dear friends, do not think that with the ordinary ego-consciousness of the present you can consider yourselves yogis! That would be a great mistake. There is a difference between working your way up to something through your own human effort and taking it for granted. If, like the yogi, you had to work your way up to self-awareness, then through this inner exercise you participated in the great, powerful world processes and world laws. If you are simply placed in the sphere of self-awareness, this is not the case. Standing on a certain level of human development does not mean the same thing as achieving this level through inner exercises.

[ 11 ] And from yesterday's explanations, you can see how humanity must gradually come to insights that arise from a liberation, for example, of the entire thought system from the breathing process, because then the thought system lives itself into — as I explained yesterday — into the outer rhythm of the cosmos, because by detaching itself from subjectivity, the thinking system submerges into the rhythms of the cosmos. So while the yogi, through the coupling — if one may express it thus — of his thinking system with the respiratory system, crawled into himself and identified with that which the spiritual-soul life in man can live out on the waves of the inner respiratory rhythm, we must pour ourselves out into the world with our thinking, give ourselves to the world in order to participate in all the rhythms that run through the mineral, plant, animal, and human worlds, all the way up to the world of hierarchies. We must settle into the outer rhythm of existence. But by settling into this outer rhythm of existence, we will also gain insights that will in turn give humanity something about what underlies our outer knowledge of nature.

[ 12 ] Today we study physics, chemistry, biology, and through thousands upon thousands of popular presentations, which today reach even the remotest villages, people receive information about how the world appears to the senses in connection with the intellect. But the age must begin when humanity learns once again to recognize what lies behind all this, what can be given through external observation and through the intellect.

[ 13 ] It is irrelevant whether we speak with the ancients of the four elements: earth, water, fire, air, or whether we speak with the more modern thinkers of solid bodies, liquid bodies, gaseous bodies, and the state of heat, if we want to speak in purely physical terms. It is irrelevant what names we give to these things for the purpose we are pursuing today. For when we speak today of the external world, of solids, liquids, and gases, we are speaking in terms of the external composition of matter, the separation of substances, and so on. But it must be noted that everything solid and earthly is based on an elemental spiritual substance. Today's enlightened human beings may laugh when reminded that an earlier humanity found gnome-like beings in everything earthly. But when we gain insights by living ourselves into the rhythm of the world, rather than merely into logical, abstract thought patterns, we discover in the solid, earthly realm those elemental beings that are contained in everything solid. These elemental beings contained in the solid, earthly realm are characterized by intelligence, cunning, and the one-sided development of the intellect. One might say: in the solid, earthly realm live spiritual-elemental beings who are more intelligent than humans, much more intelligent. The most intelligent humans in the intellectual sense are not as intelligent as those beings who, as supersensible beings, inhabit the solid earthly realm, the solid earth. One might say that these beings consist solely of cleverness. Just as human beings consist of flesh and blood, these beings consist of cleverness, of super-cleverness. And these beings have the peculiar characteristic that multiplicity prevails among them. If one is in a position, let us say, to examine a suitable earthly element to see what is going on inside it in terms of such elementary beings of intelligence, one can squeeze it like a sponge, spiritually and soulfully speaking, and then these beings come out. There is no end to them. There is an immense abundance of them.

[ 14 ] One might say that even counting becomes somewhat difficult with these beings that live in the earthy, solid elements, because if you count these gnome-like beings: one, two, three, four, five — you realize that you can actually count cherries and eggs with one, two, three, four, five, but these beings cannot be counted in this way. Because once you have counted to three, there are no longer three, there are already many more than three. So that with the counting that we learn on the physical plane, we cannot cope with these beings at all. And if we wanted to use the usual methods of calculation, these beings would play the strangest tricks on us. You would take two beings on one side and two beings on the other and say: two times two is four. But that would not be true at all, because these beings would meanwhile, through their super-intelligence, represent seven or eight, so that one would have to say: two times two is eight or something like that.

[ 15 ] So the peculiarities of these beings even defy counting. It is indeed necessary to familiarize oneself with this fact: the intellect, as it has developed in humanity in recent times, is something very beautiful; but these beings, which are super-intelligent, still exercise a certain dominion even over the intellect. They dominate the intellect even where it merely indulges in counting.

[ 16 ] When we then come to the liquid element, to water, these beings have developed primarily what human beings have developed in their feelings and sensations. We humans, with our sensations, are actually very far behind these beings who inhabit the watery, liquid element. We stand there; we like a red rose. We have a certain feeling when the leaves rustle on the trees. But these beings, who go with everything liquid in the plant juices that rise in the rose to the rose blossom, experience the red together with us. In a much more intimate way, they emotionally participate in the processes of the world. We stand outside of things with our senses. But they are inside the events and participate in them.

[ 17 ] Air beings are primarily beings who have developed a higher capacity for what we have in our will. It is very nice when chemists discover the atomic weight of hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, how hydrogen and oxygen combine, how they can be analyzed, how water can be analyzed, for example, or chlorinated lime or the like. That is all very nice, but behind all this there are spiritual-elemental beings. And human beings will have to acquire knowledge of the peculiarities of this elementary world. For during the time when human beings were developing their intellect, these elementary beings were, so to speak, left out in the cold. As I said, humanity developed the intellect from the first third of the 15th century until the end of the 19th century, and because the intellect played a creative role within human culture, these beings living in the elements could not do much. Because the elemental beings of the solid realm had to hold back, so to speak, and leave the intellect to humans, these beings also held back the other elemental beings, the beings of the liquid and airy realms. But now, when humanity is entering a period in which the intellect is declining, and it is indeed declining — we are already living in an age in which the decline of the intellect in the civilized world is beginning — if humanity does not now open itself to the spiritual stream coming in from the spiritual realm, then this dullness of humanity towards the spiritual stream will give rise to what is already clearly noticeable today, namely that these elemental beings will form a kind of union, join together and place themselves under the leadership of the predominantly intellectual power, under the leadership of Ahriman.

[ 18 ] But then, if these elemental beings were to place themselves under the leadership of Ahriman with the clear intention of opposing human development, humanity would not be able to continue its progress. Then it would be possible for the Ahrimanic powers, in conjunction with the elemental beings of the elements, to make something completely different out of the earth than what it was originally intended to be. The earth would not become what I described in my “Outline of the Secret Science” in reference to the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth ages. For the earth will only become what it was intended to be according to the original plan if human beings fulfill their task in each age in the right way.

[ 19 ] We can already perceive today how things actually are. You see, those who have already reached a certain age know that in earlier times people everywhere conversed with one another in such a way that if you wanted to know what was in their hearts, you could find out through ordinary language, through ordinary communication. People simply assumed that the mind, the intellect, was located in the upper chamber of the brain, and that what was in the upper chamber was then communicated to others through language.

[ 20 ] Today there are already people who no longer assume that the intellect is located in the upper chamber of the brain in some of their contemporaries, but assume that the intellect has slipped down lower, and then they analyze instead of letting them tell them about themselves. This is, albeit from a misleading angle, an admission that reason has slipped somewhat when people are psychoanalyzed instead of being allowed to speak. For psychoanalysis is necessary for that which has already slipped into the deeper regions of human nature. You want to bring it back up again because you assume that it has slipped down. And in this age of intellectual decline, it is already the case that people no longer really love it, or at least some individuals are beginning to no longer love it, when you address their intellect. They like to be analyzed because they do not want to participate with their heads in what their souls are actually expressing.

[ 21 ] To look at these things only in such a way that one takes, I would say, an external, superficial view of them, leads to nothing. Not much comes of it when these things are viewed externally, superficially. You have to look at them as we have just done, placing them in the context of the whole world. Only then do they become clear. Psychoanalysis may have some good points from the point of view I discussed yesterday. People no longer want to accept certain things that they used to take for granted, so they seek treatment. And there are no longer enough treatments to meet the needs of people today. So, since external, material treatments are no longer sufficient, psychological treatments are invented, aren't they? But all of this must be viewed in a larger context.

[ 22 ] Outwardly, there is no need to argue against all the good reasons, against all the appealing things that psychoanalysts have to offer. That is not difficult to understand, even when viewed from a broader perspective of the world, which people still shy away from today, a perspective that leads to the recognition that a spiritual current is seeking to enter our present civilization in order to take the place of the mind and intellect, which are in decline.

[ 23 ] To understand this is what should actually be the task of humanity today, and what people today are in a certain sense fleeing from. But only then is it revealed what such things are all about, whose external justification can be very easily proven, especially in an age of decaying reason. Little by little, it will be possible to prove a great deal, because the intellect is in decline and the declining intellect will gradually be able to prove that an extraordinary amount is justified. But what is truly justified will only become increasingly apparent from the insights that come to humanity through spirituality.

[ 24 ] You see, this is one side of the coin that points to what threatens the future of human development on Earth. On the other hand, we must also point out that just as the lower elements, earth, water, and air, are inhabited by elemental beings, so too are the higher elements, the etheric elements, light, the chemical ether, and the life ether. However, these elemental beings differ greatly from the elemental beings of the lower elements. The beings of light, but especially the beings of life, do not strive for multiplicity. It is precisely the beings of the earthly element that strive most strongly for multiplicity. The beings of the etheric elements strive for unity. It is not really possible to distinguish them from one another. Their individualities are not pronounced. These beings strive to merge into one another, to unite.

[ 25 ] An older initiatory power of certain initiates or initiators, from whom the deeper teachings of the Old Testament originate, turned its knowledge primarily toward these etheric elements. And according to this striving of the etheric elements toward unity, the impression was formed which then found expression in monotheism, in the strict monotheism of Judaism.

[ 26 ] This Yahweh religion arose initially primarily through the spiritual perception of the etheric regions. But spiritual beings live in the etheric regions who do not strive to separate themselves, to become many individualities, but who want to disappear into one another, to grow together, to form a unity.

[ 27 ] Now, when these beings are ignored by people, when people do not turn toward spirituality and say to themselves: There is not only the sun up there, but with the sun's warmth and sunlight, beings descend from the ether onto the earth — if people remain stuck in their external perception of the material world, then these beings find the opportunity to connect with the Luciferic. So that if humanity does not grasp, on the one hand, the danger posed by the Ahrimanic forces through their connection with the beings living in the lower elements, and the danger posed by the Luciferic forces through their connection with the striving for unity of the etheric elements, then there would be a possibility that in the future of the Earth, something completely different would emerge from the Earth than what was originally intended.

[ 28 ] My dear friends, one cannot emphasize enough that understanding the spiritual is the destiny of humanity on Earth, and that something different would actually happen to the Earth than what is supposed to happen if people do not deign to engage with the spiritual. For it is simply the case that we are surrounded by the material world. But no matter how much we investigate this material world today with our advanced chemistry and physics, we are only investigating that which is destined to perish with our earthly existence. What value does all this chemistry and physics have beyond the end of earthly existence? For at the end of earthly existence, the mineral substances will dissolve into the world, and only the plant, animal, and human elements will pass over into the Jupiter existence. So everything that is currently being achieved with today's magnificent, powerful sciences only relates to something that is transitory. But humanity needs knowledge that does not relate to this earthly transience, but has to do with what goes beyond the earthly transience.

[ 29 ] No matter how much we study the atomic weights of individual elements today, no matter how many chemical formulas we establish, no matter how many physical laws we discover, they only deal with what has a transient significance for earthly existence. Human beings must grow beyond this earthly existence through the knowledge of what I have just explained. This is an extraordinarily important and essential thing.

[ 30 ] When one looks in all seriousness at such significant things as we have now, I would say, brought out as the result of yesterday's and the day before yesterday's considerations, then one would also like to look again at the anthroposophical movement, which is striving to take into account the fact that spiritual life wants to enter the earth. One would also like to turn to the anthroposophical movement itself, and so allow me to say a few words about this anthroposophical movement now.

[ 31 ] You sometimes get the impression from what is happening in the anthroposophical movement today that things are very different from how they were years ago. The entire anthroposophical movement actually arose more from an esoteric deepening into the spiritual world. And when anthroposophy began twenty years ago, at that time within the Theosophical Society, everything that was being pursued, presented, and put forward in smaller circles grew, but also everything that was carried out of the smaller circles into the public sphere grew out of esoteric foundations. And what kind of esoteric background this was can be felt today in a publication such as my cycle “The Orient in the Light of the Occident” in “Drei,” where this cycle was printed in 1909; one feels the esoteric impulse throughout this cycle.

[ 32 ] Now, my dear friends, some older members look back on the earlier days of the anthroposophical movement with a certain dissatisfaction because they believe that this esoteric current no longer exists today — not really with good reason, because it is hardly possible to present anything more esoteric than what has been presented here during these last three days. So one cannot say that esotericism has ceased to be pursued in our inner circles, especially here in Dornach, and this esotericism also flows through the public lectures. But the older members do not look back because esotericism is no longer there, because it does not flow into what is being offered, but because today they find other things as well.

[ 33 ] People find that university courses and congresses are now being held. A whole series of university courses have already been held in Dornach and in other cities — Dornach is not a city — in Dornach and in other places. A conference has been held in Stuttgart, and now we are facing a conference in Vienna. Now, our older members notice that there is a different tone at these university courses, at these conferences, that anthroposophy is treated in a different way [than they are used to], that anthroposophy is treated with a certain scientific character. Some of the older members are angry about this and say: That doesn't really interest us. They engage in logical acrobatics, developing one thing from another according to the pattern that prevails in science today. We have become accustomed to approaching the spiritual world in great leaps through inner understanding; we find it possible to approach the spiritual world out of a certain inner understanding. And now people come along and talk of chemical and physical principles, and in recent times even from mathematical formulas, stringing one thing after another, just as is customary in science today, except that they speak anthroposophically and show how anthroposophy has no reason to shy away from appearing fully valid in scientific circles. That doesn't interest us, say the older members today.

[ 34 ] Yes, my dear friends, there is something peculiar about this lack of interest. It was not actually this second stream of anthroposophical life that we sought, but it came to us. Anthroposophy has such a widespread literature today that many more people in the world are familiar with it than one might think. They just don't dare to come forward. But it is nevertheless a rarity that a book like my Outline of the Occult Science, which is difficult to read — it was meant to be difficult to read! — which is not written in a way that endears itself to the soul — it is not exactly travel literature — has had fifteen editions since 1909, all of which are now out of print. So, anthroposophy came out into the world, and it was only natural that it became known to people with a scientific or pseudo-scientific education. And then one day we were faced with the fact that other people were drawing anthroposophy into the current scientific enterprise. That was not a matter of choice. It was indeed the case that one day we were faced with a fait accompli. Anthroposophy was scientifically examined, scientifically rebuked, scientifically criticized, and held accountable before science, even if only inadequately today. On the other hand, it was natural that a number of younger friends took a different path than older scientists in our movement.

[ 35 ] I may have already mentioned here an older scientist with whom an anthroposophical conversation years ago was downright exasperating. The person in question is an exceptionally learned botanist. Well, I was so naive, or thought I had to be naive for certain reasons, that I thought the best way to talk to this gentleman about anthroposophy would be to start with botany. So I spoke to the scholar about the essence of plants, the essence of flowering, the essence of germination, in such a way that these individual things pointed to anthroposophy. It did not occur to him to take an interest in this. On the other hand, he was interested in—and very well versed in—all the descriptions that came from the Theosophical Society about the etheric body, the astral body, and so on. For heaven's sake, he thought to himself, I have to lecture on botany and explain plants to my university students in the botanical cabinet; yes, if anthroposophy comes into play there, it will be a fatal story. That won't do, it must be protected from that; I have to be a respectable professor who is not so different from the others. — Therefore, he was not at all interested in how I could talk about plants from an anthroposophical point of view, even though he is a botanist. Yes, one had to speak quite separately from the etheric body and the astral body and, in his opinion, preferably from Kama-Manas and Budhi-Manas and so on, and one could already talk to him about races and rounds, because so-called empirical research does not go that far.

[ 36 ] Yes, you see, the learned people of the older generation were not very interested in integrating anthroposophy into their science. So younger friends gradually came along, but because of their more inwardly coherent soul nature, they felt the need to deal with anthroposophy in their science as well. And so, on the one hand, you had, forgive me, the mob that attacked anthroposophy, and on the other hand, the younger people who now wanted to engage with their sciences from an anthroposophical perspective. This meant that, in a completely natural way, from outside, the scientific work was able to take place. And then, of course, it couldn't be that in university courses and congresses, I myself would have spoken in a way that was, I don't want to say unscientific, but anti-scientific, that is, apart from science. And so, through what came from the world, these institutions, these enterprises, acquired a kind of scientific character, which was also demanded by the fact that anthroposophy gradually had to intervene in practical life, even in therapy. All this, as I said, came to anthroposophy as a demand from the world. As I said, if older friends take into account that esotericism is still continuing, and are content with this, taking note out of general interest of how the scientific current flows when it is fertilized by anthroposophy, then they will soon come to the conclusion: We go to the conferences, we hear things about differential equations, integrals, and so on, and we find: Yes, now things have changed somewhat, but it is necessary that they have changed in this way.

[ 37 ] The difficulty actually lies elsewhere; it does not lie so much in these two currents, which you can see everywhere and about which you have more or less mixed feelings. My dear friends, I did not want to talk so much about these two currents, but rather about what is important to me in the present. Today, when one participates in anthroposophical life, one experiences on the one hand the continuation of the old esotericism and on the other hand the exoteric, scientific striving. Between them there is still an abyss; there is no connection. And that is what needs to be considered above all else. We have very significant, beautiful debates of an anthroposophical nature in the individual sciences, and on the other hand we have the continuation of the old esotericism. But today we simply do not yet have enough people and workers who can build bridges across the abyss that yawns between them. Today, individuals speak very beautifully about anthroposophy in botany, about anthroposophy in chemistry, about anthroposophy in physics, and so on. One can also continue the old esotericism, but it does not build a bridge from one to the other, and therefore so many people are no longer familiar with it. This bridge is, of course, entirely possible, and it must be built at some point; but today there is still a chasm, and there are still too few active workers among us for what should actually happen to happen in all areas. However, such shortcomings – for they are indeed shortcomings – are still largely overlooked.

[ 38 ] My dear friends, if we develop the necessary seriousness that can arise from such considerations as those I put forward at the beginning today, as well as yesterday and the day before, if we face the whole seriousness of the present situation of humanity, then we will say to ourselves: However many shortcomings the anthroposophical movement may still have at present—and we must keep an open eye for these shortcomings—we must nevertheless recognize that patience is needed to wait until we have enough active workers so that something like this abyss between our present exoteric and esoteric endeavors can be filled or at least bridged.

[ 39 ] Of course, there is a difficulty in relation to the world in that, despite all our conferences, everything that is achieved there always remains, I would say, within the conference. One need only remember the wonderful Stuttgart conference, which was extremely successful as such, but remained an internal affair. There was no question of implementing the results of the congress or making known what had been achieved there. No one is concerned with implementation. And so it has been with every single undertaking so far. So today we have far too few active workers to be able to achieve in a thoroughgoing manner what actually needs to be done. As a result, it happens again and again—when someone gets a whiff of the anthroposophical movement and listens to a single lecture here or there, from which they cannot form a judgment, but nevertheless form a judgment—as a result, it happens again and again today that we are inundated with assessments of anthroposophy by people who actually know nothing about it. This is partly because we have too few active workers, and partly because the seriousness I spoke of again today is not sufficiently present in reality.

[ 40 ] You see, my dear friends, if the anthroposophical movement were working uniformly everywhere, the time would have come today when people would quietly begin — I must say “quietly” — here and there to strike a note showing that anthroposophy has to do with the most serious issues not only of our age but, in fact, of the entire future of humanity. What appears in journals and so on is mostly written with a complete ignorance of anthroposophy, and in some cases with malicious intent.

[ 41 ] You see, I received a review of my last lecture cycle in Germany from a person unknown to me. It concerns the lecture cycle which, as you will have heard, was subjected to those appalling disturbances, which are clearly aimed at further and more gruesome attempts to eradicate the anthroposophical essence. I have said so often that these things will increase more and more; there is no need to repeat it. But I am accustomed to the fact that when something happens again, no matter how terrible it may be, people in the widest circles, even within our society, are of the opinion that this is the worst that can happen and that we therefore need not concern ourselves with it. It is not the worst, you can be sure of that!

[ 42 ] But I do not want to talk about that. I would rather point out that here and there today there is a quiet awareness of the importance of the impulse of the times. The person who wrote what I am referring to here has no idea of the significance of what I said yesterday, for example: that we must not ignore what has been achieved in recent centuries within Western civilization as a culture of reason, that we cannot return to the ancient Indian yoga breathing techniques, for example, and that we must not seek in earlier, more primitive epochs of human development the forces that can enable us to penetrate the spiritual world. The author of the article is one of those who believe that there is no other way forward in the present, that since we are cut off from all real human dignity and all real human nature, we must return to earlier paths by which humanity entered the spiritual world. — That is the great error, that people cannot find their way into a path that is adapted to the immediate present, to the soul nature of the immediate present.

[ 43 ] So the person concerned believes that when I always say that we should take into account what is necessary in the present, I am making compromises. That is why he says:

[ 44 ] Steiner's personal calling ends where he attempts practical compromises in the face of the enormous complex that is Europe.

[ 45 ] It is not a compromise, but rather what is necessary from the inner connection of the matter! We do not want to give anything away in the way he forms the terminology here. Well, I cannot now tidy up the whole essay, and so I will read the passage to you as it stands.

[ 46 ] However, it must be the prophets who are most dismayed by the harsh inviolability of a “ground of given facts.” But he ceases to be a “prophet” in the full sense of the word when he becomes a political philosopher and makes corresponding concessions to this ground.

[ 47 ] So these concessions are not made. That is precisely the great mistake.

[ 48 ] For it is precisely in its radicalism that the radiant power of all prophecy lies. The prophet must—without the intervention of any human small-mindedness in everyday politics—give birth to the living spirit; he must hurl the seeds of powerful principles into humanity like an insensitive mediator, seemingly unconcerned about the seasons of their realization. He must leave the realizations to the creative function of the peoples.

[ 49 ] With the recognition of the necessity of saving Europe — which, with its poor cosmic circulation, is gradually clogging up the entire planet — anthroposophy no longer stands alone.

[ 50 ] At least there is already a very faint awareness that there is something wrong with the current European civilization, that it is in a “bad circulation community with the cosmos.”

[ 51 ] The objectified synthesis of all European philosophy emerges: the doctrine of the polarity of contrasts and their central resolution and balance—creative indifference. This means a revolution of the entire human standpoint. We see the human complex on a rushing precipice, completely skewed toward the universal force, filled with one-sidedly differentiated energy, closed off from the entire cosmos, an arteriosclerotic giant carcass, a catastrophe in the solar system, a “digestive disorder of God.” — Here, insights converge, anthroposophy identifies with the doctrine of creative indifference, and the mystery cults of the Egyptians and the breathing exercises of the Indian yogis emerge with new meaning.

[ 52 ] Now the person in question would like to argue, according to his view, that there is no other solution to the disturbed digestive system of modern civilization with its arteriosclerosis and constipation than to return to the practice of yoga. But at least he is beginning to grasp the seriousness of the situation, albeit in a somewhat strange, uninformed, and amateurish way. The author continues:

[ 53 ] At night we switch off our consciousness — insofar as we are not yet so disturbed that we barricade ourselves with individuality in our sleep from cosmic renewal — ...

[ 54 ] This is, of course, a completely wrong view, because human beings cannot draw any forces of renewal from sleep; on the contrary, it is precisely when they do not turn to spirituality that they draw forces from sleep in the last resort.

[ 55 ] ... without the inhibition of isolated consciousness, they absorb the healing forces of the cosmos.

[ 56 ] This is not the case with sleep.

[ 57 ] The moment we isolate ourselves, our whole life becomes nothing more than a mere existence, a living off capital, a running down of stored energy, nothing but a process of decay. The consequence of all individuality (individuality in the sense of bourgeois ideology) is therefore inescapable: death. Nothing stands in the way of human immortality—today a great utopia—except the false disposition of humans toward central balance.

[ 58 ] He also has no real understanding of what this is all about, that it is ultimately something he describes in very abstract terms as balance, and which can be understood in concrete terms when one sees how the astral body and the etheric body come together in the region of the human heart. There is also the central point for a real balance. This balance has a cosmic meaning. People today talk in abstract terms; they are simply incapable of penetrating the concrete realities.

[ 59 ] Today, anthroposophy is approaching the practice of yoga.

[ 60 ] It does not do this, but rather through a different practice.

[ 61 ] Whatever objections one may have to the dogmatism of anthroposophy, Steiner has accomplished an unprecedented work of rebellion against the entire monistic-materialistic natural science, which is only historically burdened instead of historically oriented. Perhaps Rudolf Steiner will succeed in establishing the practice of yoga against the narrow-minded materialism and arrogance of Europe.

[ 62 ] It would not be the practice of yoga itself. But to assert something against the narrow-minded materialism and arrogance of Europe is certainly something that is right and that is interpreted here in an unhealthy but nevertheless subtle way.

[ 63 ] Having reached the limits of its viability, Europe will, out of organic necessity, turn to this ancient wisdom of Indian yogis and recognize the spiritual significance of the breath.

[ 64 ] It would be very, very bad for Europe if it did that, if it returned to the practice of yoga. But at least we can see that here and there a quiet awareness of the seriousness of the situation is beginning to emerge, something to which humanity should commit itself.

[ 65 ] Well, it is possible that anthroposophy will be brutally crushed before it is able to carry out what is entirely possible according to its inner nature. But that is at least something that is significant. I am not merely pointing to this newspaper article, whose author is unknown to me. It was sent to me by those who organized this series of lectures. As I said, quite apart from this article, one can say that today, here and there, people are quietly beginning to point out the seriousness of our situation, of our human situation in modern civilization.p>

[ 66 ] And I would like to say: Only from such an understanding of the tremendous seriousness of the situation can that which can truly stand up to anthroposophy in a genuine way emerge. And we should strive to summarize what is emerging today as currents, on the one hand esoteric and on the other exoteric-scientific, out of the necessity of the times. We should take into account that these things have developed out of necessity and that the time will come—if anthroposophy is not killed off, as I said—when enough active forces will be found to bridge the gulf between these two currents. You see, that is what I wanted to give you today as an internal guide, following on from such an important consideration as I have tried to present to you here over the last few days.

[ 67 ] I will announce when we will have the next lecture, as I cannot yet determine the exact day when I will return from the Vienna Congress. I hope that this Vienna Congress will be well attended. I have not had the opportunity to find out who from here has been able to attend. But hopefully this Vienna Congress will be something that will have a greater impact on the general anthroposophical movement than our other events have had. For it is indeed the case that what happens at these congresses should then flow over into the entire anthroposophical movement and from there be further developed throughout the world. Otherwise, the great energy that is always expended at such events is more or less wasted.