The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

Hive mentality and realistic outlook on life in social thinking and willing

[ 1 ] In last week's lectures, I already pointed out that the current social situation is experiencing particular obstacles and difficulties in its development because understanding between the different classes of contemporary humanity is still a relatively distant prospect. The leading class of the population, as it has developed over the last centuries and decades up to the present, has certain habits of thought, certain inner impulses from which it feels, thinks, and wills. And one might say: there is a gulf between these habits of thought and what has developed, as I characterized it last week, as the very specific peculiarity in the habits of thought of the modern proletariat, in which lies the origin of what is today called the social question.

[ 2 ] For those who strive to penetrate real life, the forces at work in the social context of human beings, it seems much more important to observe these impulses, which lie, one might say, beneath people's consciousness, beneath what they consciously discuss, than what actually occurs in consciousness itself. One can hear many different views within the circles of the bourgeoisie who think about these things today. One can also hear the views of the personalities of the proletariat or the leaders of this proletariat; but one will not gain as much for a realistic view of life and for the formation of a judgment with regard to the social reality of the present from observing these views as from what lies behind them, so to speak. And there is much more social psychology, social psychology, than either side actually thinks.

[ 3 ] Anyone who—and I can say this, since I am attempting to describe these things here—who has made an effort to penetrate all sides, both the habits of thought of the bourgeois ruling circles on the one hand and the impulses of the soul of the aspiring proletariat on the other, knows how great the gulf between the two is and how difficult understanding is; and this lack of understanding is, first of all, a world-historical phenomenon and, secondly, a social fact of the present. We are now seeing Paris and Bern again. If one has a sense for hearing such things, one will say: a completely different language is spoken in both places. In both places, the language spoken is so different that one might initially despair that what is spoken in one place is even remotely understood in the other, and vice versa. That is why it is so difficult in the present to direct attention, both in bourgeois circles and in proletarian circles, to those things that are actually the main driving forces in the social question. For not everything that happens historically is equally important; among historical events, there are those that significantly indicate what the effective, the truly effective forces are. Other phenomena, which the superficial observer may consider equally important, are not even considered in terms of true reality.

[ 4 ] Anyone who has been able to follow the proletarian movement as it has developed over the last few decades will have noticed, among many other significant facts, that the modern proletariat, which has truly absorbed its impulses in a scientific form, was able to say from its own point of view how the things that brought it into its present situation one might say, scientific form, has absorbed what its impulses are, that this modern proletariat, based on its views, has been able to say how the things that have brought it into its present situation must be resolved, how the economic and social order that the old classes of the population have brought about must gradually disappear and how something else must take its place.

[ 5 ] There is a fact here that has found many mockers. But we should not join the mockers here; rather, we should point out the historical seriousness of this matter. When one has just dealt with reasonable representatives of the modern proletarian view of life – perhaps one did so more in the early years, when one became acquainted with this movement, than later, when one had already become more familiar with these things, when one had come to terms with them more, when one nevertheless raised the question: What form of society, of human coexistence and human activity, what form of social organism is actually considered within this view of life to be what should come, what should be brought about? – one always received the answer that was entirely appropriate to this view of life: That does not interest us at this point. For us, the most important thing is to bring about the dissolution of the current social order, to bring it to the point where it reduces itself to absurdity. What will then take its place will become apparent. People were always concerned with the view that the modern proletariat must take over positions of power and authority. If it succeeds in doing so after overcoming the class marching ahead of it, then, once it has power in its hands, it will find what it does not need to think about for the time being.

[ 6 ] That was programmatic. But it is not really appropriate in the true sense of the word. It is also agitational, but it is not realistic. For those who have a sense of the developmental forces of history, the realistic question is: Yes, what does this modern proletarian worldview actually mean within the development of humanity into the present? — And here one is repeatedly distracted because, as I said, the views themselves are less important than what people say about how they feel, how they feel about their own lives, how they think about the other classes of human society. In short, one is distracted from the proletarian question to the living conditions of the proletariat itself. In a sense, it confronts us not with words, not with statements, but with the specific existence of a class of people who, by the way they are, tell us what it is all about. And the answer that reality now gives, that the real living proletariat as it is today gives itself, this answer could be formulated something like this. It could be said: this modern proletariat, with its life opportunities and living conditions, with the way it stands within the modern social order and feels itself within it, this modern proletariat feels itself, experiences itself as the critique of this modern economic order that has emerged from technology and capitalism.

[ 7 ] I find it extremely interesting that, if one has a sense of realistic observation, one finds the answer, as it were, in the proletariat itself, in what is there, not in a theory, not in some theoretical debate, but in the proletariat itself. It is a critique. The fact that this modern proletariat has become what it is provides, in a sense, a critique of what has developed outside this proletariat and this proletariat itself as a modern economic order.

[ 8 ] Because this is so, a doctrine that is abstract in itself, one might say based on scientific stilts, but a doctrine that is permeated precisely by the impulse that, as I have just characterized it, is present as the actual life impulse in the modern proletariat itself, has struck a particular chord in the soul of this modern proletariat: the doctrine of Marxism, the doctrine of Kar/Marx. It is a unique example in the intellectual history of humanity that an unspoiled class of people, a class of people with an intellect that is not yet decadent, with such full hearts, such open souls, and as if the forces at work within them were their own life forces, has taken up a scientific theory, as has happened on the part of the modern proletariat with the Marxist doctrine.

[ 9 ] In this regard, one must have studied things in real life. One must have seen how even the most difficult things, considered difficult by other classes, have found their way into the elementary feelings and sensibilities of the proletarian soul, how millions and millions of the modern proletariat have been gripped by a seemingly theoretical doctrine. But what lives in this theoretical doctrine? This is again the peculiar thing, that what lives in it is not what is commonly called a social ideal. What lives in it does not have any formulation of what a future state or a future social structure should look like, but what lives in it is essentially a critique of the modern bourgeois social and economic order, and there is, in a sense, an instinct in this Marxist work, the instinct: If I point out to the proletariat what is a critique of the modern technical capitalist economic order, then I point out to it its own life forces, then I lead it to its own reality. In a certain sense, it is already expressed as a reflection of immediate proletarian life in Marxist doctrine. And those who believe that Marxist doctrine is obsolete for the proletariat fail to understand, on the one hand, that external formulations, certain views and ideas may long since have been overcome, but that what remains is the specific élan, the specific impulse that lives in such a cause, and that, on the other hand, precisely in the opposing views that have emerged from Marxism, in all kinds of revisionist attempts, there lives on only a further development of what has been drawn into the soul of the modern proletariat as impulses through Marxism.

[ 10 ] This is only to characterize a social fact of the present that seems to me more important than the elementary discussions that are being conducted, because it points, in a sense, to social psychology. And even if it does not provide a direct answer—we will see in the course of the lectures what the answer is—it points to the existing questions from perspectives that are probably the first to be considered in real life today. And what feeling does one get when one approaches this fact impartially, without prejudice? One gets the feeling of a certain peculiarity of modern life in general. This modern life—as I have often emphasized in my lectures here in Zurich—has developed habits of thought, forms of thinking that prove extremely fruitful for a certain direction of natural science. This modern thinking has also sought to penetrate the understanding and reformative understanding of social life itself, of the social phenomena and impulses of life. But with this penetration, one has the feeling everywhere that the people of the present, who are immersed in the forms and habits of thinking of the present, do not have concepts that can actually grasp the complex phenomena of social life. In a sense, the concepts are too narrow. They cannot grasp the complex phenomena of social life itself. They remain abstract, they remain vague, but they do not penetrate into real life itself, which takes place in the social body. One might say that narrow-minded thinking characterizes modern humanity. And this narrow-minded thinking, this thinking that breaks down everywhere when one wants to immerse oneself in real life, this thinking has also carried over into the aspirations of the modern proletariat. And so it happens that this thinking is sufficient for criticism, but not sufficient for shaping real impulses out of human experience that could stand as guiding forces leading into the future. Everywhere, thinking breaks off when it wants to strive for such impulses.

[ 11 ] And this describes something that has a profound impact on the whole of contemporary life. Anyone who is capable of grasping in all seriousness what is necessary for this present life must focus their gaze precisely on the point of view that is touched upon here, precisely now, at this moment in world history, when there is truly little time for discussions that are merely theoretical, because the facts are urgent and pressing. Right now, at this moment, we can see how people are confronted with these urgent and burning facts, and how they everywhere display this very phenomenon of thinking that cannot penetrate reality. People are often imbued with good will, but not with thinking that is equal to the facts. At this moment in world history, for those who are able to seriously penetrate the situation, we see the emergence — often masked in all kinds of other forms, completely unconsciously to people — of a tendency in people that is particularly disastrous for a truly serious way of life when burning and pressing questions are at hand: the emergence of a certain fanaticism, as I would like to call it. This fanaticism, which manifests itself in various guises in various fields, is what makes it so difficult for us to engage in appropriate action in the present. And this fanaticism has arisen from the development that I referred to as historical in last week's lectures, which began around the turn of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries.

[ 12 ] What is the essence of this fanaticism? The essence lies precisely in the fact that, through a certain unrealistic view of life, through a view of life that lacks what I called last week the driving force of inner experience, that through a certain view of life, a spiritual, intellectual, scientifically seeking inner life seeks, as it were, an island or a multitude of islands, and does not want to build a bridge to what life is in everyday reality. We find that many people today, if I may use the expression, find it somehow intellectually superior to think about all kinds of ethical and religious problems in a certain, albeit schoolmarmish, abstractness, in the lofty heights of cloud cuckoo land. We see how people think about the ways in which humans can acquire virtues, how they should behave in love toward their fellow human beings, how they can be blessed. We see concepts of salvation, grace, and so on developing, which certain proponents of worldviews want to keep as high as possible in the spiritual and mental realms. At the same time, however, we see the inability to build a genuine bridge between what people call good, loving, benevolent, legal, and moral, and what surrounds us in external reality, in everyday life, as capital, as remuneration for work, as consumption, as production in relation to the circulation of goods, as credit, as banking and stock exchange. We see how two world currents are juxtaposed, even in people's habits of thought: one world current that wants to remain, as it were, at a divine-spiritual level, that does not want to build a bridge between what is a religious commandment and what is a customary practice of ordinary commerce. But life is a unified whole. Life can only flourish if the driving forces of all ethical and religious life work their way down into the most everyday, most profane life, into the life that appears less distinguished. For if we neglect to build this bridge, we fall into mere fanaticism with regard to religious and moral life, which is far removed from everyday true reality, and then this everyday true reality takes its revenge. Then, out of a certain religious impulse, man strives for all possible ideals, everything he calls “good,” but he is powerless and insensitive to the instincts that stand in opposition to the ordinary everyday needs of life, the satisfactions that must come from the economy. He does not know how to build a bridge from the concept of divine grace to what goes on in everyday life. Then this everyday life takes its revenge. Then this everyday life takes on a form that wants nothing to do with what is held to be ethical impulses in more noble, spiritual heights. But then the revenge becomes such that ethical-religious life, because it keeps its distance from everyday, immediate life practice, that this ethical-religious life, without one noticing it, because the matter appears masked in life, actually becomes an inner lie of human life.

[ 13 ] How often do we see people today who, out of a certain ethical-religious nobility—as they believe—show the best of intentions with regard to living together harmoniously with their fellow human beings, who show the best of intentions to do only the very best for their fellow human beings, but who fail to to actually do so because they do not acquire a social emotional life that is embedded in practical habits of living.

[ 14 ] And so we experience it — if I may use the expression again — at this moment in world history, when social issues are so visibly, so tangibly pressing that from all sides the swarm spirits, who sometimes consider themselves very strong practitioners of life, come and say: We need people to turn away from materialism, from the outwardly material life that has driven us into catastrophe and misfortune, and return to a certain spirituality, to a spiritual conception of life. — And people never tire of quoting or citing the personalities who in the past — it has to be the past, as the present is less fair — have spoken out in favor of a certain ideal way of life, a certain spirituality. Yes, one can experience that when someone tries to point out what is as necessary for practical life today as daily bread, they are made aware that what matters most is to bring people back to the spirit. This admonition contains a great deal of what has led people into today's catastrophe, namely fanaticism, which appears in the most diverse guises today and has an effect on reality. Certainly, on the one hand, it is fanaticism when someone, without knowing the external practical conditions of life, sets up social ideals, which are called utopias, in which he shows, in a very finely dressed-up and crystallized form, the system in which people should live in order to be happy or satisfied or otherwise. Basically, even if such utopias are very astute, it is not astuteness that matters, nor is it good will that matters; what matters is how they relate to the practice of life. Today, it is not important to point out to people that they should return to the spirit, but rather that spirit is present in how we think about the social organism today. It depends on the manner, on the how of thinking. For my part, let us not talk about spirit at all, but in the manner in which we talk about the practice of life, let there be spirit. Then we will serve the present age much better than if, out of fanaticism, we point out to people in every third sentence that they should return to the spirit, because usually those to whom we speak in this way cannot imagine what the spirit is, precisely because those who speak in this way cannot imagine what the spirit is either. But the utopias themselves that are put forward — and even today they are not so few in number — the social ideals that are finely thought out, are not even the worst thing, because as a rule people do not think much of these things. One soon realizes that these things are impractical, that they are not thought out from the true conditions of life. Much worse in today's reality are the masked swarm spirits, which appear to be based on practical experience, but do not actually embody this practical experience; rather, they live in insubstantial abstractions. We have experienced these swarm spirits — one must always speak freely in such matters — in the events of the present in a most significant way. And they are difficult to recognize. They are difficult to recognize because it is precisely in these areas that our gaze has not been sharpened.

[ 15 ] When we consider a person today who essentially has the characteristic of a swarm spirit – and this is not to say anything against some other qualities of such swarm spirits, they can also be good people, they can do their duty in their field, they can even be outstanding people, but when one emphasizes the fact that a certain personality is a swarm spirit, people today are quite astonished because they think they have self-evident judgments in this regard, but in reality these self-evident judgments are nothing more than wild superstition. For example, over the course of the last few years, I have also looked at some “practitioners of life” — I say this now in quotation marks — in terms of their enthusiasm. In this regard, if humanity wants to advance to real knowledge, it will have to experience many internal paradoxes. For example, you will be astonished when I present Ludendorff as a swarm spirit in the most eminent sense. The judgment of his supporters and opponents goes in a completely different direction. The most essential aspect of his personality is that, with the exception of the field in which he was academically great, strategy, he was in the most eminent sense an abstract thinker in relation to all other thinking, a person completely alien to life, who formed enthusiastic ideas about things that had nothing to do with reality and who caused unspeakable harm by trying to put his fanciful ideas into practice. And so some of the personalities who today, because they are considered practical in life, cause endless harm, could be presented as typical representatives of fanciful thinking.

[ 16 ] In the 1890s, this fanaticism became virtually epidemic, coming over from America and flooding Europe in the form of what was then called the “Society for Ethical Culture.” There, people tried to spread something that was alien to life, something that was supposed to flow only from this refined, abstract feeling of certain ethical impulses, as ethical culture. And if someone, as I had to do at the time, pointed out that such things lead to fanaticism, that they imprison and restrict human thinking so that it cannot submerge itself in true reality, then one was either not understood or misunderstood or ridiculed.

[ 17 ] This fanaticism should be countered by realistic thinking, which, I believe, arises from the truly spiritual scientific worldview that has been represented here for many years. What is the essence of this spiritual scientific worldview? The essence is that it does not speak of the spirit as something that arises as a mere reflection of the perception of external sensory reality, but that it speaks of the spirit from a real supersensible experience of a world that is just as real as the one seen by the eyes, heard by the ears, and touched by the hands. It is less important what one says in detail about this spiritually real world in theory, but much more important that through everything that becomes known to one from this spiritual knowledge of the world, one acquires an inner state of mind, an inner state of life through which one knows oneself to be alive as a spiritual being in a real spiritual world. What matters is not what one says about this spiritual world, but how one feels when standing within this spiritual world. It may be nice to believe in this or that supernatural phenomenon. But that can just as easily lead to fanaticism as to good intentions in a certain sense. What matters is that one feels: in thinking, in feeling, in the thoughts that flash through one's own soul, in the feelings that flash through one's own soul, there is the living, active spirit.

[ 18 ] This living, active spirit is within us. It is there, just as things are there outside in space and events are there outside in time. And when one not only thinks one's way into this position of real spiritual knowledge, but lives one's way into it, then this spiritual knowledge gives rise to an inner impulse that drives us to make the spirit real in the world through ourselves, that drives us to experience the spirit as reality and to realize it in a completely different way than is possible through what is merely a reflection of ideas and concepts that deal with the spiritual. There is a big difference between saying, “I think about the spirit, I believe in the spirit,” and saying, “The spirit thinks in me, the spirit feels in me.” The ordinary concept of belief actually loses its meaning in comparison to this experience. Something of soul-spiritual strength must enter into human development out of this spiritual experience. And this something of soul-spiritual strength that is to enter into human feeling is of greater social importance than one might think, for it is the remedy for the paralyzing ideology characterized here last week, which the proletariat has inherited from the bourgeoisie as an oppressive legacy.

[ 19 ] This is what really lives in the first true form of the social question, if one understands how to penetrate the depths of this question, that the development of modern spiritual life at the turn of the modern era, or since this turn of the modern era in the 14th century, has gradually become so dulled and weakened, and become so dulled that people no longer knew that the spirit lives in them as something real and alive, but believed that only ideas, only reflections of some reality, live in them — which then became, in the worldview and outlook on life of the modern proletariat, that this proletariat says: There is only one ideology in the spiritual realm. Reality exists only in economic processes, in class struggle; that is where reality takes place. But from this, something rises up in some way into the souls of human beings; it comes to light in the form of images, images that are lived out in science, in customs, in religion, in art. This provides a superstructure for the only truly real substructure. And even if one cannot help but admit in sociology that what lives in this superstructure as an ideology has a real effect on economic life, it remains ideology. There is no remedy for this ideology unless one reaches for the real spiritual experience that spiritual science wants to introduce into modern humanity, unless one reaches for this spiritual experience. Healing from the damage caused by ideology can only be achieved through real immersion in the true spirit and its manifestations, through immersion in the real supersensible world. What has caused all spiritual life, into which man has been introduced through culture, to appear as mere ideology within the modern proletariat, leaves the soul unsatisfied and empty, because ideology is not something that can fill the soul with a certain élan, with a certain momentum, with a certain awareness of what it actually is in a higher sense. This emptiness of the soul has given rise to the mood, the bleak mood in the proletarian worldview, which forms part of the real social question. And as long as it is not recognized that people's inclination toward ideology must be cured, as long as it will not be possible to bring positive impulses into the modern proletarian soul, as long as a mere criticism of the emerging technical-capitalist economic order and worldview will remain in the modern proletarian soul. And as long as it is not recognized that people's inclination toward ideology must be cured, as long as it is not possible to bring positive impulses into the modern proletarian soul, as long as a mere criticism of the emerging technical-capitalist economic order and worldview remains in the modern proletarian soul.

[ 20 ] But this will not be achieved unless there is a willingness to adopt a truly practical outlook on life, an outlook that does not consist of theories, not even merely religious theories, but one that wants to live, to create life, to give birth to life impulses itself. This requires many things that modern man shies away from as something quite radical. But what is meant here is much less radical than what will come upon people from the life that is unleashed in modern instincts if they are too comfortable to turn to what is necessary.

[ 21 ] What I have outlined here from a certain perspective refers to one link in the social organism that must arise from the living conditions of modern humanity, one of the three links that I sketched out here last Wednesday. I explained then that, in a certain sense, the misfortune of modern humanity, even if it is not understood — and it is not understood — lies in the fact that what should be threefold, and whose three members should interact with each other in a certain independence, has been made into an organism whose forces appear chaotic and confused, and that there is still a desire to make it even more so.

[ 22 ] Just so that I am not misunderstood, I would like to note once again, in parentheses, that I am certainly not advocating any kind of radical change that should take place overnight. What I am proposing is a guideline, a certain direction that can be used to orient every single question that may arise for people in the state, in intellectual life, and in economic life. There is no need to believe, as some people to whom I have explained these things do, that what we call “the state” today must be turned into something else tomorrow. One need only have the will to realize the Christian “change your mind” in relation to these things, that is, to orient the details, the individual measures that one is faced with when one has to intervene in them, in a certain direction with regard to their design.

[ 23 ] And so I have argued that what people today want to muddle together into a unified state, just as if they wanted to turn the human organism into a homunculus — so that its three systems would be confusedly centralized, that what people want to centralize today, to make into the entire state enterprise, must fall apart into three living parts if a healthy social organism is to develop. Everything that is spiritual culture must develop as an independent member of this social organism, everything that is today called political state life in the narrower sense must develop as an independent organism, connected not through centralization but only through a living interaction with spiritual life, and the economic organism must develop as a third independent member. Spiritual organism, state organism, economic organism—that is what we must say: in the next ten to twenty years, the forces of human development will strive toward this. And whoever resists this development resists what are the possibilities of life for modern humanity.

[ 24 ] I touched on the first point from the perspective I have discussed today, first of all: the life of so-called spiritual culture, encompassing everything that can be called school and education, everything that can be called religious life, everything that is artistic and literary life, but also everything that relates to private and criminal law. I will characterize these things in more detail. Everything that is contained within this life of spiritual culture must be placed on a communal but independent basis in relation to the foundations of the rest of the social organism. It must be placed entirely on its own, it must be placed on such a foundation that one can say: the element of life within this limb of the social organism must be the free development of its physical and spiritual faculties, acting out from the center of the human being. Everything in this area must be based on individuality. For what flows into this area must come from the center of human individuality, and the physical and spiritual faculties of the human being must have the opportunity to develop freely, but at the same time must be restrained so that they cannot in any way harm or inhibit or unjustifiably interfere with the rest of cultural life.

[ 25 ] There are many examples that could be cited in this area. I would like to give a grotesque example. I apologize that the example will be somewhat grotesque, but it will perhaps express what I want to say in relation to this area. Let us assume that a young student, a person who is in the early stages of intellectual development, has to write his doctoral thesis. He is advised by an authoritative figure to work on a topic that has been little or not at all researched — let us say, for example, the swear words of an ancient Roman writer. Such things do exist, as those who are involved will know. Now the young man spends a whole year working on the swear words of some ancient writer. Today we say: that is scientifically important. Yes, from the point of view of the ideas that people have in certain fields, it is certainly scientifically important; but there is something else to consider. That is the insertion of such a thing into the whole social organism. One must divert one's gaze from the fact that it can be very interesting to write about the swear words of some ancient writer. I know of a dissertation in which the young man struggled terribly; it dealt with the parentheses in an ancient Greek writer. I have nothing against what can be said about such things from a purely scientific point of view. Philistine arguments should not be made here. But with regard to its place in the social organism, the following is true: the young man may need a year of hard work. He has to eat, he has to drink, he has to clothe himself. To do this, he needs a certain income, a certain amount of capital. What does it mean that he consumes a certain amount of capital? In real life, this means nothing other than that many, many people have to work for him. What he eats, what he drinks, what he wears, engages an entire army of people during this year. He engages a small army of people for his food, drink, and clothing, and this must be taken into account in relation to the social effect of the matter. Today, many people believe that one can simply put things into the world without social understanding, out of a certain inclination to serve purely scientific interests. However, our life in the present demands that every branch, in its relationship, in its living connection to all other branches of life, be understood in terms of social understanding, in terms of social feeling.

[ 26 ] As I said, I apologized for giving a grotesque example; less grotesque examples could be given, but I gave this example to show you how necessary it is to develop a social feeling for how intellectual life, the whole functioning of intellectual life in the social organism, must be integrated in such a way that it is justified by the general interests of humanity. The general interest of humanity must be asked whether it attaches such great importance to the identification of swear words used by some ancient Roman writer that a small army of workers must be employed for a year to do this work. The question could, of course, be elaborated in a less grotesque way in many other ways. Then one would come to the conclusion that what intellectual culture encompasses, which also includes, for example, the invention of technical ideas, has a lively effect precisely on the other structure, the constitutional state, when things have a relative independence in life. Centralization, on the other hand, causes everything to descend into chaos.

[ 27 ] Intellectual life must exist with relative independence; it must not only be based on the inner freedom of human beings, but it must also exist within the social organism in such a way that it is subject to completely free competition, that it is not based on any state monopoly, that what intellectual life achieves in terms of validity among human beings — what it means for the individual human being is another matter; we are talking about the structure of the social organism — can only reveal itself in completely free competition, in completely free accommodation to the needs of the general public. Let anyone write poetry in their spare time as much as they want, let them find friends for this poetry, as many as they want — what is justified in intellectual life is solely what other people want to experience with the individual human personality. But this can only be placed on a healthy basis if all intellectual life, all school and university life, all educational life, and all artistic life is stripped of its state monopoly character and placed on its own feet—as I said, not overnight. The direction is thus indicated when people are placed on their own feet. This builds a bridge to something else. At the beginning of the 1990s, in my Philosophy of Freedom, which has now been republished, perhaps at just the right time, I endeavored to show how the real experience of freedom in human beings can never be based on anything other than the real spiritual life that plays into the human soul. At that time, I called this the influence of intuition on the human soul, the influence of the real spiritual. This real spiritual must be born in the human soul in the light of freedom and free competition, then it will live its way into the social organism in the right way. But then, and this is important, it must not be subject to any supervisory authority of any other member of the social organism; it must be able to reveal itself in complete freedom, challenged only by general needs.

[ 28 ] I know — and I will refute this in the next lectures — that many people believe: Well, if the school is free, then we will again be surrounded by illiterates. — I will show that this is not the case. What is important to me today is to show, from the inner nature of the matter, the necessity of free spiritual life in the social organism. There are states in which science, as is the case almost everywhere today, is a monopoly, its operation is also monopolized by the state, and in which the law states: Science and its teaching are free. — But that remains a mere phrase and must remain a mere phrase if spiritual life is not left to its own devices. Not only does this spiritual life become dependent on another member of the social organism in terms of the personalities who work within it and in terms of what may or may not be said publicly, if this other member establishes schools and universities, to mention just one example; Not only, as I said, are the external operations, the employment of personalities, and the limitations on what may or may not be said determined by this, but the inner content of intellectual life itself is also determined. Our entire scientific life has taken on the character of political life since the sphere of political life has expanded over intellectual life in recent times. But spiritual life cannot be the concern of any other member of the social organism; it can only obtain its proper content if it develops out of free human individuality.

[ 29 ] This spiritual life is opposed, as the digestive system is opposed to the head system in the human natural organism, by mere economic life. This economic life has its own laws. It is precisely proletarian science that has worked out the character of modern economic life in a sensitive, life-oriented way, not just theoretically as academic science does, so that one can see from this proletarian science how economic life relates to human beings in general.

[ 30 ] Now, one point in particular should be emphasized again and again. I have already pointed this out in these lectures. What is particularly striking about economic life today, or rather about the proletarian scientific view of economic life, is that the proletariat has also taken over the legacy of the other classes in this regard. With the development of modern technology and modern capitalism, human attention has been hypnotically directed toward this economic life as the only real thing in the social organism, for the reasons already mentioned here last week. When talking about human development, people believe that they only need to refer to this economic life. The fact that this economic life, as we have seen, has been particularly engaged, that through this economic life a particularly effective impulse of the modern proletariat has been brought into the bright light of the sun of human feeling, of human dignity, must be taken into account precisely in relation to economic life. This is why Karl Marx had such an inspiring effect on millions and millions of proletarians, who believed that he was the first to point out in clear terms what was inhumane for the modern proletarian in his entire position; that he, Karl Marx, was the first to point out that for the proletarian, his labor power is a commodity, like other commodities circulating on the commodity market and subject to the law of supply and demand.

[ 31 ] Karl Marx pointed out the underlying facts in many erroneous ways. However, the fact that he pointed out this innermost nerve of the modern social question is credited to him as a special merit by the proletarian soul. Here, too, social psychology is of much more realistic significance than the theories, considerations, and discussions that are linked to many aspects of economic and other social life. But this raises the vital question: How can this perception of human dignity being violated be overcome: that human labor is a commodity and is treated as such? — That is what Marx said at first. As I said, this is erroneous in many respects, but that is not the point now, because when an erroneous fact has such a powerful impact on the souls of millions of people, it is simply a social fact. That is what Karl Marx said, and that is how modern proletarians understood him. This understanding, even if it has changed in some respects, still has an impact today, and is particularly alive in people's feelings today. He said: Within the economic organism, goods are brought to market and sold. There are owners of goods, proprietors of goods, and there are buyers of goods. Goods circulate between them. The modern proletarian owns nothing but his own labor power. Certain production costs are necessary for every commodity. The production of this or that commodity, until it is ready for consumption, costs this much or that much. The modern proletarian has only his physical strength, he has only his labor power. To produce this labor power, he needs everything he has to acquire in terms of food, clothing, and so on. Through what he has to acquire in terms of food and clothing, the labor power he has expended is constantly replaced. These are the production costs for his labor power. Now, Karl Marx said, and in his innermost being this is also what the modern proletarian means: without coercion, without compulsion, the employer gives him no more than the so-called wage for his work, than these production costs for his labor power. But if, for example, five hours of work were to cover all the production costs, the modern entrepreneur would not be satisfied with that. He demands longer working hours. The worker then works for free, because he only receives as much as the production costs of his commodity “labor power.” What he works beyond that is surplus value. That is what he offers up on the altar—if one may call it an altar—of capitalism, which accumulates as capital, but which comes from his labor power, and therefore comes from him, because he only receives the production costs, because he is forced to offer for sale on the labor market, to offer for sale under the economic conditions, what he alone has: his commodity “labor power.”

[ 32 ] You can apply the greatest human acumen, you can apply the deepest insights of political economy to discuss how to ensure that workers no longer have to offer their labor power as a commodity on the market, that they can eliminate this ultimate consequence of slavery, and even if you could ponder this for several lifetimes with the greatest acumen and the deepest insights of political economy, you will not come to any conclusion. You cannot come to any conclusion, because this is, in the most eminent sense, a question that cannot be discussed, that cannot be answered theoretically, but that can only be answered by life itself, can only be answered by creating something that has such an effect in life that labor is stripped of its commodity character.

[ 33 ] If I may use a comparison, I would like to refer to the little man that Wagner creates in a retort in Goethe's “Faust”: the homunculus. He is composed of what a human being can conceive of as ingredients from nature; but he does not become a human being, he merely becomes a little man, a homunculus. You may compose something from ingredients of understanding or from ingredients produced by national economy—you will only get a social homunculus! Just as conditions must be created for a living human being to exist, so conditions must be created for a living social organism to function in such a way that, in life, not through theories or arguments, a distinction must be made between what is to be lived out in the mere circulation of goods and what is human labor and must not be lived out in the mere circulation of goods.

[ 34 ] You can only achieve this by accepting that the living social organism must contain, as independent members, not only the intellectual member, but also the legal-state member, which is political-state in the narrower sense, and, relatively independently alongside it, the economic organism, which must live according to its own laws. Just as little as the stomach can breathe or the heart can beat, the economic organism cannot develop rights from its own powers. And it will never develop rights if it acts solely on the basis of its own real foundation. From this real foundation, the social organism will only drive consumption through production and trade.

[ 35 ] Just as this circulation of goods is opposed by nature itself, the natural basis of all production and consumption and all human events, including crafts and trades, so too must what lives in the political, constitutional state be opposed on the other side and not be determined by the economic organization, but rather determine that economy. It must be as independent of the economic organism as the lung-heart system is relatively independent of the head system, the nerve-sense system. It is precisely because these things act independently and interact that they establish the right relationship in life. It is only because the lungs and the heart are separated from the stomach in organic life that they, being relatively independent, interact in the right way. Only because there is an independent member in the living social organism, which does not determine the labor force as a commodity on the basis of economic considerations, but which ensures that labor is integrated into the social structure in such a way that it is embedded in this social structure as a right, only in this way can you allow economic life to be determined on the other side by what is the legal life, the political life of the state in the narrower sense, just as economic life is determined by its natural basis. Only when these three members exist relatively independently side by side, when there is an independent spiritual member, an independent legal system member, actual state life, and an independent economic life, and these elements work alongside each other with relative independence, when each of these elements has its own representative body, its administrative body, let us say, its Reichstag, its Bundestag, its ministry, and the individual elements are almost as sovereign in relation to each other as individual states, negotiating with each other only through delegates, only then does the social organism become truly healthy. Then, in the field of economic life, the bases of interest develop which alone can be decisive as impulses in this economic life. And then the question will be raised by life itself, based on what happens in the other member of the social organism, in the legal organism: if, as a result of the impulses of this legal organism, the limitation of human labor, which henceforth has not the character of a commodity but the character of a right, if this labor flows into a particular branch of the economy in such a way that this branch of the economy is not profitable, then this branch of the economy will have to be regarded in the same way with regard to this unprofitability as if it were unprofitable because of the high cost of a raw material. This means that human labor will become a dominant factor in economic life, not an oppressed or enslaved one. But this will not be achieved by enacting certain laws, but by creating a body in living life which, simply because something else in terms of human impulses must be present in this separate body, continually, from epoch to epoch, wrest labour from its commodity character, for it must be wrest from its commodity character, otherwise it will always be absorbed again, because the economic body always has the tendency to absorb labor power and turn it into a commodity. The state body must always be vigilant in order to strip labor power of its commodity character.

[ 36 ] Everywhere, life shows us that the muddling together – if I may use the trivial expression – of the three social spheres of life is disastrous. One need only study what has emerged as this social and other human catastrophe over the last four and a half years. Study it in terms of actual events. It is a fascinating study, for example, to study Austria, which has now disintegrated like atoms: How has the internal structure actually managed to hold together for more than half a century? There was a so-called Imperial Council. This Imperial Council represented the people to a certain extent, but only certain classes. This representation disintegrated — not recently, but when events were already in preparation, in the second half of the 19th century — into four curias: the curia of large landowners, rural communities, towns and markets, and industrial centers, chambers of commerce; in other words, rural communities, towns, large landowners, and chambers of commerce. You see, this representation was essentially driven by economic impulses. And this representation was now the state representation. This representation made laws. This came about only because, under the influence of modern developments, as I indicated at the beginning of my remarks today, people were powerless to permeate economic life itself with their own organization, because their thinking had become too short-sighted, too narrow-minded and limited, because they could not immerse themselves in it at all. The emerging state was taken as the framework for economic life, and economic and state life were botched together. And until it is understood that this botching together has laid countless causes that have led to our catastrophic present, the true remedies will not be found.

[ 37 ] Today, I could only give a few hints. I will take the liberty of providing further explanations the day after tomorrow. I would just like to note that even with regard to global politics, you could find confirmation of what I have said if you are willing to look at the underlying causes of life. Anyone who studies the genesis of this terrible war, which is not a war in the old sense, but a great human catastrophe brewed from many ingredients, which has now entered not its end but its crisis, anyone who studies the genesis of this catastrophe will find, for example, that an essential factor in the starting point in the whole preparation was the fact that modern economic life developed in a certain way, and that this modern economic life, because people did not know how to separate it in the right way into a natural, truly viable social organism or into an organism above the world, became connected with the mere life of the constitutional state, which should have remained relatively independent. And so, essentially, there were economic factors, economic elements, which have made use of the powers of the state over the last few decades, economic forces that have worked against each other in a disharmonious way. Had they been encouraged to develop solely on the basis of their economic life and on the basis of their mutual harmony, they could never have led to this catastrophe. They led to this catastrophe as mere economic forces because these economic forces were allowed to make use of a false political body of political state forces, which sent their armies into the field for them.

[ 38 ] This matter must be considered in the appropriate manner, not just theoretically. Certainly, some people do that today. But it must be understood in relation to what is the real impulse of the social question that is pressing and burning in the modern present, in order to be seen in the right light as the true symptom of contemporary life. Then one emerges from swarm mentality, from mere admonition, and enters into what is real, what makes it possible for the three members of the social organism to work together in life. What no discussion, no economic judgment can achieve, the coexistence of economic life and political life, will solve the labor force question and will be able to permanently eliminate one of the most essential and difficult points in the perception of the modern proletariat in the right way.

[ 39 ] Well, I will continue these reflections here the day after tomorrow, going into detail, and some of what must remain questionable today will then be clarified in an appropriate manner. There is just one thing I would like to point out. It is already the case, and will remain so for a long time to come, that people, out of their comfortable habits of thinking in the present, find what is in truth not abstract idealism but practical life too radical, perhaps too academic or otherwise objectionable. There is just one thing I would like to point out. It is already the case, and will remain so for a long time to come, that people, out of their comfortable habits of thinking in the present, will find what is in truth not abstract idealism, but practical life, to be too radical, perhaps too academic, or otherwise objectionable. Some will say: Well, here comes a humanities scholar who wants to have a say in an eminently practical question, in a question of world historical importance, in a social question. It is not to say anything special for myself or for the representatives of the direction I am advocating here, but with reference to those people who find such things impractical, hopeless, because they cannot see the prospects, cannot envisage the perspectives, for these people, not for myself, I would like to use a comparison here at the end today. I would like to refer to that poor boy, Stephenson, who was condemned at the time to sit at a Newcomen steam engine and had to alternately open and close the valves through which the steam was let in on one side and the condensed water on the other. Then the little boy noticed that the balance wheel was swinging up and down, and it occurred to him: What if I tied one valve and the other valve to the balance wheel with a string? One time, as it swung up, it would pull out one tap and insert the other, and the next time, it would insert one tap and pull out the other. The balance beam would do my work for me, and I could just watch, thought the little boy. And he actually did it. Now, something could have happened back then that often happens in such matters when something new is brought into life, spoken or said, that a very clever person might have said: You stupid boy, you have to do what you are supposed to do! What kind of strings have you tied to the balance wheel? Take them away quickly, or I'll beat you! Well, that didn't happen, but one of the most important inventions of modern times, the self-control of the steam engine, grew out of this experience of the little boy. Spiritual science does not claim to have developed more than the right view of what leads to the self-regulation of the social organism, to the living interaction and cooperation of the three members – to the self-activity of the spiritual member, the legal-political member, and the economic member. But now it depends on whether the very clever people say to this spiritual science: You stupid boy, do your job — or whether they will respond to it. One must often say this, when one is involved in these matters, in all modesty and without presumption. The belief in the swarm spirits who consider themselves practitioners may soon give way to the realization that the true practitioners of life are the notorious idealists who can respond to the realities of life, that it is they who must investigate the true conditions of human development, and that only through the recognition and application of the true conditions and forces of development of modern humanity can the path be found that can lead to that solution to the social question — we will talk about this next time — which is actually possible in real life. The right path will not be found through the presumption of those who are still widely regarded as practitioners today, but rather it will probably be the notorious idealists, who are nevertheless able to respond to the realities of life, who will prove to be the true practitioners of life.