The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

Realistic attempts to solve social issues and needs based on a spiritual understanding of life, as demanded by life itself

[ 1 ] With regard to my remarks, I would like to ask you to consider these four lectures as a whole, so that what is presented in one of the lectures cannot be fully assessed on its own. The topic under consideration is so comprehensive that it can really only be dealt with in a series of lectures.

[ 2 ] In today's lecture, I would like to sketch out some of the attempts at solutions that can arise from a real understanding of the nature of the social organism, those possible solutions to the social question that do not arise one-sidedly from the demands of this or that class of people, this or that class, but which arise from a realistic, objective observation of the forces of development in humanity, especially those forces of development in humanity that are most pronounced in the present and the near future of this humanity. If one attempts to find a solution to what is today called the social question based on the aspirations and demands of a particular class or social group, or indeed of any part of the social organism, one cannot help but cause, through one's actions, effects on other classes, on other factors of the social organism, which in some way inhibit development or undermine the health of living conditions.

[ 3 ] What I am suggesting here as truth, and which I intend to substantiate in the course of these lectures, applies to our time: that modern life as a whole, or one might also say the modern social organism, has been shaped in a very specific way by what is often described as the characteristic feature of modern life, namely modern technology, the technical operation of economic life and everything associated with it, and the capitalist way of organizing this economic activity. Not only have people's observant eyes been directed toward what modern technology and modern capitalism have brought into life, but the more or less conscious or more or less instinctive organizing forces within the social structure of human society have also been directed toward it.

[ 4 ] One can now express the characteristic feature that has led to the particular form of the social question in modern times by saying that economic life, supported by technology, and modern capitalism have acted with a certain natural self-evidence and brought modern society into a certain internal order. In addition to the human attention being focused on what technology and capitalism have brought, attention has been diverted from other branches, other areas of the social organism, which must be just as effective if the social organism is to be as healthy as the economic sphere.

[ 5 ] In order to communicate what I believe I have just recognized as the nerve center of a comprehensive, all-round observation of the social question, I may perhaps start from a comparison. But please bear in mind that I mean nothing more than a comparison, something that can support human understanding in order to steer it in the direction that is necessary for forming ideas about the recovery of the social organism. Anyone who has to consider the most complex natural organism in this respect, the human organism, must focus their attention on the fact that the whole essence of this human organism is based on the fact that it has three systems working side by side in an internal structure. These three systems working side by side can be characterized in the following way. One could say that the human organism contains a system that encompasses the nervous and sensory life. One could also call it the head organism, after the most important part of the organism, where the nervous and sensory life is, so to speak, centralized.

[ 6 ] If one wants to gain a real understanding of the human organism, one must recognize as its second member what I would call the rhythmic system, which is connected with breathing, blood circulation, and everything that is expressed in the rhythmic processes of the human organism.

[ 7 ] The third system must then be recognized as everything that is connected as organs and activities with the actual metabolism. These three systems contain everything that, when organized in a healthy way, sustains the overall process that takes place in the human organism.

[ 8 ] In full agreement with everything that scientific research can already say today, I have attempted to characterize this threefold structure of the human natural organism, at least in outline, in my book “Von Seelenrätseln” (Mysteries of the Soul). I am aware that everything that biology, physiology, and natural science will produce in the very near future with regard to human beings will lead precisely to such a view of the human organism, which sees how these three parts — the head system, the circulatory or chest system, and the metabolic system — maintain the overall functioning of the human organism precisely because these members act with a certain independence, because there is no absolute centralization of the human organism, because each of these systems also has a special, independent relationship to the outside world: the head system through the senses, the circulatory or rhythmic system through breathing, and the metabolic system through the organs of nutrition.

[ 9 ] With regard to scientific methods, we are not yet quite ready to bring what I have indicated here, what I have sought to utilize for science from spiritual-scientific foundations, to general recognition within scientific circles themselves, as might appear desirable for the advancement of knowledge. This means, however, that our habits of thinking, our entire way of imagining the world, are not yet fully adequate to what, for example, presents itself in the human organism as the inner essence of nature's workings. In a certain sense, one could say: Well, natural science can wait; it will gradually catch up with its ideals and come to recognize such a way of looking at things as its own. But with regard to the observation and, in particular, the functioning of the social organism, we cannot wait. Not only must there be some experts, but there must also be at least an instinctive awareness in every human soul — for every human soul participates in the functioning of the social organism — of what is necessary for this social organism. Healthy thinking and feeling, healthy will and desire with regard to the formation of the social organism can only develop if one is clear, even if only more or less instinctively, that this social organism, if it is to be healthy, must be as tripartite as the natural organism.

[ 10 ] At this point, I must take particular care not to be misunderstood. Ever since Schäffle wrote his book on the structure of the social organism, attempts have been made again and again to establish analogies between the organization of a natural being, say the organization of the human being, and human society as such. What attempts have been made to determine what the cell is in the social organism, what cell structures are, what tissues are, and so on! Just recently, a book by Meray, “Weltmutation” (World Mutation), was published in which certain scientific facts and laws are simply transferred to what is believed to be the human social organism. All these things, all these analogies, have absolutely nothing to do with what is meant here. And anyone who, at the end of these lectures, says: “Aha, here again we are dealing with such an analogy between the natural organism and the social organism” will only prove that they have not penetrated the actual spirit of what is meant here. For that is not what I want: to transplant some truth that is appropriate for scientific facts onto the social organism. Rather, what I want is for human thinking and human feeling to learn from the observation of the natural organism so that it can then apply its method, its way of feeling, to the social organism. If one simply transfers what one believes to have learned from the natural organism to the social organism, as Schäffle did, as others have done, as is done again in the book on “Weltmutation,” one only shows that one does not want to acquire the ability to view the social organism just as independently, just as for itself, to investigate it according to its own laws, as one does for the natural organism. So, just to make myself clear, I have drawn the comparison with the natural organism. For the moment one really proceeds in such a way that one objectively, like the natural scientist, confronts the natural organism, confronts the social organism in its independence in order to recognize its own laws, at that moment every play of analogy ceases in the face of the seriousness of the observation.

[ 11 ] I would like to point out right away how this analogy must cease. The observation of the social organism — admittedly, we are dealing here with something that is in the process of becoming, something that is actually only just emerging — insofar as it is to be healthy, also leads to three members of this social organism; but one recognizes both independently of each other if one can take things objectively. On the one hand, one recognizes the three parts of the human organism, and on the other hand, objectively, the three parts of the social organism. If one were to look for analogies, one might proceed in the following way. One would say: The human head or nervous sensory system is connected with human mental life, with mental abilities; the circulatory system regulates the connection between this spiritual system and the coarsest system, the material system, the metabolic system. The metabolic system is then regarded as the coarsest system of the human organism, based on certain feelings that one already has from certain underlying factors. What would be the most obvious analogy? The most obvious would be to say: Well, the social organism is also divided into three parts. Human spiritual life unfolds within it. That would be one part. Actual political life unfolds within it — we will talk about this division in a moment — but economic life also unfolds within it. Now, if one wanted to play with analogies, one might believe that what is subject to certain laws as spiritual life, as spiritual culture in the social organism, has laws that can be compared with the laws of the spiritual system, the nervous and sensory system. The system that is regarded as the coarsest, the most material in human beings, namely the metabolic system, would probably be compared, by mere analogy, with what is called coarse, material economic life. Those who can now consider things for themselves, who reject mere analogy, know that what is real is precisely the opposite of what emerges from mere analogy. For the social organism, the laws underlying life are as fundamental to economic production and consumption, to the economic circulation of goods, as laws are fundamental to the nervous and sensory life of the human natural organism, to its very mental system. However, what constitutes the life of public law, actual political life, the life that is often thought of as far too comprehensive, which can be described as the actual life of the state, can now be compared to the rhythmic system, the regulatory system, the respiratory and cardiac systems, which lie between the two natural systems, the metabolic system and the nervous-sensory system. But it can only be compared in this way because, just as in the human organism the circulatory or rhythmic system lies between the metabolic and nervous systems, so the system of public law lies between the economic system and the actual life of spiritual culture. And this life of spiritual culture, this life of the spirit in the social organism, does not have laws that can be thought of as analogous to the laws of human talents, the laws of human sensory and nervous life, but rather, what spiritual life is in the social organism has laws that can only be compared to the laws of the coarsest human system, the metabolic system.

[ 12 ] This is what an objective observation of the social organism leads to. However, this must also be assumed so that no misunderstanding arises with regard to these points, so that one does not believe that physiological or biological aspects are simply transferred to the social organism. However, the social organism must be considered independently if anything beneficial to its prosperity and recovery is to be achieved.

[ 13 ] The word “socialization” echoes here from various parts of Central and Eastern Europe. This socialization will not be a healing process, but rather a process of quackery on the social organism, perhaps even a process of destruction, if at least the instinctive recognition of the necessity of the threefold social organism does not enter into human hearts, into the human soul. This social organism does indeed have three such members within it if it is to function healthily.

[ 14 ] The first of these members, if one begins on one side — one could of course also begin with spiritual life, but we want to begin with economic life, because this has quite obviously dominated all other life in human society through modern technology and modern capitalism — so, as the first member of the social organism, we must consider economic life. This economic life, as we will see in part today and in part in the further course of these lectures, must be an independent link within the social organism, as relatively independent as the nervous-sensory system is relatively independent in the human organism. This economic life has to do with everything that is commodity production, commodity circulation, and commodity consumption. Economic life has to do with everything related to these three things. We will discuss its peculiarities in more detail shortly.

[ 15 ] The second link in the social organism is the life of public law, the actual political life, the life that could be described as the actual life of the state in the sense of the old constitutional state. While economic life has to do with everything that humans need from nature and from their own production, while economic life has to do with goods, the circulation of goods, and the consumption of goods, this second link in the social organism can only have to do with everything that relates to the relationship between humans on a purely human basis. I ask you to take this into account, because it is essential for understanding the links in the social organism to know the difference between the system of public law, which can only deal with the relationship between human beings on the basis of human foundations, and the economic system, which only deals with the production, circulation, and consumption of goods. One must know this just as one must know how to distinguish in the human natural system the relationship of the lungs to the outside air, to the processing of this outside air, just as one must know how to distinguish this from the way in which the food taken in is transformed by the third natural system in humans and used for humans.

[ 16 ] As a third link, which in turn must stand independently alongside the other two links, one must distinguish in the social organism everything that relates to the spiritual life. More precisely, because the term “spiritual culture” or everything related to spiritual life is perhaps not entirely accurate, one could say: everything that is based on the natural talents of the individual human being, which must enter into the social organism on the basis of the natural talents, spiritual and physical talents of the individual. Just as the first system, the economic system, has to do with everything that must be there so that human beings can regulate their material relationship to the outside world, while the second system has to do with everything that must be present in the social organism because of the relationship between people, the third system, the system that I call, just for the sake of having a name, the spiritual system, has to do with everything that must spring forth and be integrated into the social organism from the individual human personality.

[ 17 ] Just as it is true that modern technology and modern capitalism have actually shaped our social life in recent times, it is equally necessary that the wounds that have necessarily been inflicted on human society by this side be healed by bringing human beings and human society itself into a proper relationship with what I have characterized here as the three members of this social organism. Economic life has simply taken on very specific forms in recent times. It has, so to speak, forced its own laws upon human life. The other two members of the social organism are in a position to integrate themselves into the social organism in the right way, according to their own laws, with the same self-evidence. For them, it is necessary that human beings undertake social organization out of independence and consciousness, each in their own place, where they stand. For in the sense of the attempts to solve social questions that are meant here, each individual human being has their social task in the present and in the near future.

[ 18 ] The first link in the social organism, economic life, is based primarily on nature. Just as the individual human being, in terms of what he can become through learning, education, and life, is based on the talents of his mental and physical organism, on the gifts and talents he has been given, so all economic life is based on a certain natural foundation. This natural basis simply leaves its mark on economic life and thus on the entire social organism. But this natural basis is simply there, without it being possible to influence it in any original way through any social organization or socialization. It must be taken into account. Just as in the education of human beings, their talents in various fields and their natural physical and mental abilities must be taken into account, so too must the natural basis be taken into account in all socialization, in every attempt to give human coexistence an economic form. For all the circulation of goods, all human work, and all intellectual cultural life are based on something fundamental and original that chains human beings to a particular piece of nature. We really need to think about the connection between the social organism and the natural basis, just as we need to think about the individual human being in relation to learning, education, and their talents. This can be illustrated by extreme cases. One need only consider, for example, that in certain areas of the world where bananas are an obvious food source for humans, the work that must be expended to transport the bananas from their place of origin to a specific destination where they can be consumed must be taken into account in human coexistence. If we compare the human labor that must be expended to make bananas consumable for human society with the labor that must be expended in our part of Central Europe to make wheat consumable, the labor required for bananas is, conservatively estimated, three hundred times less. The labor required to make wheat consumable is, conservatively estimated, three hundred times greater.

[ 19 ] Admittedly, this is an extreme case. But such differences in the amount of labor required in relation to the natural resources are also present in our branches of production, among the branches of production represented in any social organism in Europe. Not in such a radical difference as between bananas and wheat, but these differences do exist. It is therefore entirely justified in the economic organism that, due to the relationship between humans, their consumption and nature, the amount of work capacity depends essentially on the natural basis, just as the nature of a human being depends on his natural physical or mental abilities. And one need only compare, for example: In Germany, in areas with average yields, the yield of wheat cultivation is such that approximately seven to eight times the amount sown is returned through the harvest. In Chile, the yield is twelve times the amount sown, in northern Mexico it is seventeen times, in Peru twenty times, and in southern Mexico twenty-five to thirty-five times. Here you have the yield of wheat cultivation in relation to the soil and the yield of the soil for different regions of the world. However, this essentially affects the amount of work that must be expended to integrate wheat into economic life as a commodity in the appropriate manner.

[ 20 ] Just as one can provide such information about the amount of labor necessary to make wheat consumable in different regions, one can also distinguish between the amount of labor necessary to make the most diverse branches of production, raw products of the most diverse branches of production, consumable within the economic life of a social organism. This whole interconnected entity, which runs through processes that begin in the relationship between humans and nature and continue with everything that humans have to do to transform natural products and make them consumable for humans, all these processes that lie within these overall processes from the natural basis to consumability, all these processes, and only these, are incorporated into the pure economic element of the social organization for a healthy social organism. This economic element of the social organization would now have to be integrated into the entire social organism with the same independence as the human head system is integrated into the entire human organism.

[ 21 ] And independent of this economic system, there must be another system that deals only with the relationship between people. What lives in the purely economic system has to do with the need for this or that, which determines man's relationship to objective goods. What must develop as the second element in the social organism if a healthy social life is to awaken is everything that regulates the relationship between human beings.

[ 22 ] People have failed to acquire the correct perspective for distinguishing between these two links in the social organism because, as if hypnotized by modern economic life and ancient habits of thought, they believed in recent times that economic forces and processes could necessarily be transferred either to individual areas or, in the socialist sense, radically to the whole of economic life, to what I have to describe here as the second link, as the actual state sphere in the narrower sense, as the sphere of public law, as the sphere of human relationships.

[ 23 ] This state domain will only be able to develop healthily if it takes the opposite developmental path, which is considered by some to be the correct one. While many people today believe that a recovery of the social organism is only possible if as much as possible is nationalized, if as much as possible is socialized, it is rather a matter of recognizing and applying to all individual branches of life that there must be a thorough independence between economic life on the one hand, with its own laws, and the narrower sphere of state life on the other, which again has its own laws.

[ 24 ] I can well imagine how many people there are who say: For God's sake, why should things be so complicated! What we now want to bring together out of the necessities of recent developments is to be broken down into different systems! Those who say that this is too complicated for them, that they cannot imagine that what is natural can come about in this way, are like those who do not want to know that the human organism can only live by concentrating and centralizing the rhythmic life, the respiratory and cardiac life, in the chest, in the respiratory and cardiac system, with relative independence. The whole of the human organism is based on the fact that each such system life is self-contained and that they then interact with each other. The health of the social organism is based on the fact that economic life obeys its own laws, that legal life, the life of public law, public security, everything that can be described as political in the narrower sense, in turn obeys its own laws and has its own institutions. Then the two areas of the social organism will interact in the right way. And even if it may cause some people to shudder, who believe that they have finally come to the right conclusion based on certain assumptions, it must be said: there will be no recovery of the social organism as long as economic life and political life are administered centrally in one party, in one administration. We will then see that this also applies to the third area. It is necessary that, just as the circulatory system has its own lungs and the nervous and sensory system has its own brain system, there should be a separate administrative organism, an independent administrative and representative organism, i.e., a party or other representative body, for economic life, for political life or public legal life, and for the third area, again independently, for intellectual life.

[ 25 ] These three areas have a certain sovereignty within a healthy social organism and negotiate with each other through their independent representatives in order to establish a mutual relationship between the three members of the social organism. This corresponds to the relationship between the three members of the human natural organism, which is also established independently. It will become apparent that, essentially, those representations and administrations that emerge from the economic member of the organism will have to work toward ensuring that this economic organism is built on an associative basis, cooperatives, trade unions, but higher cooperatives, trade unions, such cooperatives and trade unions that are concerned only with the laws of commodity production, commodity circulation, and commodity consumption. This is what will form the basis, what will form the content of the economic member of the social organism. It will be based on associative life. It will be based on what compensates for the necessary inequalities that are given by the natural basis. I have pointed out how different the human labor input is, depending on the relationship to the natural basis of a branch of production. All this enters into an unnatural social organization when nature, human labor, and capital work together as they have done up to now. Nature, human labor, and capital have been confused in the most chaotic way in the unified state or have remained anarchically outside this unified state. It must be recognized that both the life of intellectual culture, which is based on the physical and mental abilities of human beings and their education, and public, political, and legal life have the task of separating out and bringing to life on its own what the system of the economic organism is.

[ 26 ] To make myself understood, insofar as this is necessary today, I can resort to the following. Although based on foundations other than those in which we now live, a call for a reorganization of the social organism arose from the depths of human nature, and the motto of this reorganization was expressed in three words: brotherhood, equality, freedom. Now, anyone who approaches everything truly human with an open mind and a healthy sense of humanity cannot help but feel the deepest sympathy and understanding for everything that lies in the words brotherhood, equality, and freedom. Nevertheless, I know of excellent thinkers, profound and astute thinkers, who repeatedly throughout the 19th century endeavored to show how it is impossible to realize the ideas of brotherhood, equality, and freedom in a unified social organism. For example, an astute Hungarian sought to prove that these three things, if they are to be realized, if they are to penetrate the human social structure, contradict each other. He astutely demonstrated, for example, how it is impossible, if equality is implemented in social life alone, for the freedom that is necessarily inherent in every human being to also come into its own. He found these three ideals to be contradictory. Strangely enough, one cannot help but agree with those who find this contradiction, and one cannot help but sympathize with each of these three ideals out of a general human feeling! Why is this so?

[ 27 ] Well, precisely because one can only understand the true meaning of these three ideals when one recognizes the necessary threefold structure of the social organism. The three members should not be joined together and centralized in an abstract, theoretical Reichstag or other unity; they should be a living reality and, through their living interaction, bring unity together. When these three members are independent, they contradict each other in a certain way, just as the metabolic system contradicts the head system and the rhythmic system. But in life, these contradictions work together to create unity. Therefore, one will come to understand the life of the social organism when one is able to see through the realistic structure of this social organism. Then one will recognize that in the interaction of people in economic life, where they have to regulate themselves in their own particular field, this first social link, that in this field, in what people do, brotherhood must be at work. In the second link, in the system of public law, where one has to deal with the relationship of human beings to one another, only insofar as one is human at all, one has to deal with the realization of the idea of equality. And in the spiritual sphere, which in turn must stand in relative independence within the social organism, one has to deal with the idea of freedom. Suddenly, these three golden ideals only gain their real value when one knows that they must not be realized in a chaotic jumble, but in what is a social threefold organism oriented toward laws that correspond to reality, in which each of the three members can realize for itself the ideal of liberty, equality, and fraternity that belongs to it.

[ 28 ] Today, I can only sketch the structure of the social organism. In the next lectures, I will explain and prove all this in detail. But what I have to add to what has been said is that the third member of a healthy social organism must be everything that comes into it from human individuality, everything that must be based on freedom, everything that is based on the physical and mental talents of the individual human being. Here we touch on an area which, when correctly characterized, still causes a slight shudder in many people today. What must be enclosed within this third area of the healthy social organism is everything that relates to the religious life of human beings, to schooling and education in the broadest sense, and to intellectual life, the arts, and so on. And, today I will only mention it, in the next lectures I will also explain it in detail: everything that belongs to this third sphere is not related to public law, which belongs to the second sphere, but to private law and criminal law. I have found many people to whom I could explain this threefold social organism, and they understood many things — they could not understand that public law, the law that relates to the security and equality of all people, must be separated from what is right in relation to a violation of the law, or in relation to what are precisely the private circumstances of people, that this must be separated from each other, and that private law and criminal law must be counted as part of the third, the spiritual member of the social organism.

[ 29 ] Unfortunately, modern life has so far completely turned away from taking these three members of the social organism into account. Just as the economic body with its interests has penetrated state, or rather political, life, bringing its interests into the representative bodies of political life, thereby clouding the possibility of truly shaping this second member of the social organism in such a way that the equality of all people is realized within it, so too have economic and state life absorbed that which can only develop in a free form. Out of a certain instinct, albeit a misguided one, modern social democracy has attempted to separate religious life from public state life: “Religion is a private matter”; but unfortunately not out of a special respect for religion, out of a special appreciation of what religious life gives to human beings, but precisely out of a disregard, an indifference towards religious life, which is connected with the things I explained in my previous lecture the day before yesterday. But what is correct about this demand is the separation of religious life from the other two areas, from the organization of economic life and from the organization of political life. But it is equally necessary to separate the entire lower and higher education system, as well as intellectual life in general, from the other two branches. And only then will a truly healthy life of the social organism come about, when within those bodies that are responsible for ensuring the equality of all people before the law, when these bodies ensure that schools, religious and other spiritual life can develop from free human individualities, when care is taken to ensure that this life develops in freedom, when no claim is made to regulate school, educational, and spiritual life on one's own initiative, from the economy or from the state.

[ 30 ] That seems radical today. However, such radical ideas must be expressed as soon as they are recognized. Spiritual life, including education and the administration of justice in civil and criminal matters, is so very much subject to what flows from the individuality of human beings in complete freedom that the other two members of the social organism must not be allowed to influence the configuration, the shaping of this life.

[ 31 ] Today, I have only given you a sketch of the line of thought that must guide attempts to solve the social question, attempts that are based on the real necessities of life, not on the abstract demands of a single party or class, but on the developmental forces of modern humanity as a whole.

[ 32 ] I would like to say: I can understand every objection that is made, but I would ask you to wait with your objections until you have heard what I have to say in the next lectures to elaborate on this general outline. Today in particular, I could understand objections, since I have only attempted to characterize where the evidence is not yet available. But I would like to say: I can understand every objection based on the various experiences I have had with the ideas that I also want to represent here and that I believe to be the basis of reality in life, which I have gained from the often misunderstood spiritual science.

[ 33 ] We have left behind us the most terrible catastrophe in human history. In the life one had to lead during this catastrophic time, one would not have had one's heart in the right place if one had not looked ahead to the best of one's ability: Where can we find help to escape the terrible chaos into which we were driven? I told you the day before yesterday that I would talk about the special circumstances of this war, its causes and its course in connection with the social question in the next two lectures. Today I would like to say that it was clear to me, even when we were still deep in the events that have now entered a crisis which some short-sighted people believe to be already over, that among the things that can lead out of the chaos, out of the terrible catastrophe in one or other area of the so-called civilized world, is also correct thinking, a correct conception of true, realistic impulses for the human social organism. I have presented to many personalities who have been active and advisory in recent years in what has happened in such a terrible way within the development of modern humanity, what is also the nerve center of my remarks here today; I have tried to make clear to many personalities who apparently mattered how different events would be if authoritative, decisive voices in the world were to say: We want to strive toward a healthy human social goal. The whole relationship between states would have had to be different if, instead of mere legal and state programs, comprehensive human programs in the sense meant here had been brought to humanity from here or there.

[ 34 ] One cannot even say that such things have not found a certain theoretical understanding. What I have explained in these lectures has even seemed quite appealing to some. But to build a bridge between understanding such a thing and the will to really do everything to realize these things in life, each in his own place, to build this bridge, that is another matter. In many cases, this seems uncomfortable. Therefore, some people like to numb themselves and say: The whole thing seems dreamy and impractical to me. — They numb themselves only because they do not have the will to really intervene in the course of events. This does not mean a revolutionary course of events, not something that should happen overnight, but rather the direction in which all individual measures of public and private life must be taken if the social organism is to be restored to health. What I said the day before yesterday, I said in a different form to some people on whom one would want to rely in these difficult times, with the following words: Today, I said, for example, we are in the most terrible of wars. If one were to express what is socially necessary for humanity in this most terrible of wars, one would say: we commit ourselves to giving this or that empire a humane content by wanting to realize something like this for humanity, then we would give the terrible course of events a completely different, more salutary direction than through the mere sword, through mere cannons and the like, or through mere politics, which in certain areas do not even exist. I said: You have the choice either to realize through reason what is presented here, what is recognized from the conditions and forces of human development, or to be faced with something else.

[ 35 ] Today, because humanity has, in a sense, failed to recognize what lies in these things in recent decades, we are facing the most terrible catastrophe that has befallen us like a disease, like a disease that attacks an organism that does not live according to its natural laws. This catastrophe of war is intended to show, to show clearly, what could have been recognized before it happened, but because it was not so clear, it was not recognized. It is intended to show what is necessary for the recovery of the social organism of humanity. And I have said to some people: In these hints about human development in social relations, you have given what will come to pass in the civilized world in the next twenty to thirty years. I am not talking about a program or an ideal, but rather the result of observing what will come to pass in the next ten, twenty, thirty years through what is already germinating in humanity today. And you have only one choice, I said, either to work toward this realization through reason, or to face revolutions and social cataclysms, terrible social upheavals. There is no third option. War may be the time—I said to many—when reason can still be accepted. After that, it may be too late. For this is not a program that can be carried out or abandoned, but rather a matter of recognizing what wants to be realized and what humanity must therefore realize because it lies within its necessary historical forces of growth for the present and the near future.

[ 36 ] Another particular obstacle to understanding was that some people repeatedly believed that such things only related to the internal structure of a particular state or territory of humanity. No, such social thinking is at the same time the basis for the truly necessary shaping of the external politics of states among themselves. Just as the human organism directs each of its systems toward the outside world through special organs, so too can only the state, if I may use this overall expression, as a social organism, set its three limbs in motion outwardly. The relationships between individual states turn out to be quite different when it is no longer centralized governments and administrations that interact with each other, but when the representatives of intellectual life in one social entity interact with the representatives of intellectual life in another social entity, and likewise the representatives of the economic sphere and the political sphere interact with their counterparts in the other entity. While the merging and intermingling of the three areas has the outward effect that, if I may say so, conflicts are bound to arise at the borders due to the chaos inherent in the intermingling of the three areas, if the representatives of the three branches were to act independently across the borders of the individual states, the action of one member in international relations would not only not be disturbed by the action of the other, but on the contrary would be corrected and balanced.

[ 37 ] That is what I would like to outline again today, I would say, in order to reinforce the point that this is not merely a matter of asserting a certain internal social structure of the state, but of the international and social life of humanity. I already tried to make all these things clear while we were in the midst of the terrible catastrophic events. Now, terrible misfortune has befallen many people in Central and Eastern Europe, terrible misfortune that for every individual, for every discerning person, is also a misfortune that threatens the rest of the world. This must take hold with regard to a real understanding of humanity for its tasks in the present and future: that those who want to transform life into its recovery based on the true, real conditions of humanity's development are finally taken not as impractical idealists, but as real practitioners of life. The self-evident shaping of modern life out of technology and capitalism must be countered by the shaping of spiritual, independent spiritual culture and independent state culture, based entirely on innermost human initiative, which establishes true equality between human beings and which, as we shall see shortly, can also regulate working and wage conditions in a way that is desirable for the proletariat.

[ 38 ] The question of the organization of human labor, of the liberation of human labor from commodities, can only be solved when the threefold social organism comes into being. What modern socialists want is certainly justified as a desire; what they themselves regard as the remedy would be the least effective remedy if it were implemented in external reality as they want it to be.

[ 39 ] But I would like to emphasize this again and again: I am not trying here to speak from any one-sided class or party position, but from the observation of human developmental forces about what some call socialization, others the healing of social life, and still others the reawakening of a healthy political sense, and so on. But the fact that we are dealing with something that is not an arbitrary program, but rather the deepest impulse of reality for the next decades of human development, is what actually underlies the whole opinion and intention that I want to realize with these lectures; that we are not dealing with the opinion of one person from this or that position, but with what speaks from the deeper basis of humanity's will for the coming decades. I would now like to justify, explain, and prove this in detail through the two lectures next week.