The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

The Development of Social Thinking and Willing, and the Situation of Humanity Today

[ 1 ] Perhaps the lectures I have been privileged to give here over the course of last week and this week have demonstrated, from a certain point of view, that it is justified to say: The situation of humanity today is deeply influenced by the development that social thinking and willing have undergone in recent times up to the present. Perhaps more than many people realize today, the social impulse is intervening in the immediate life of the individual; but it will intervene more and more. It will become decisive for the forces of the most individual behavior. And it will be difficult to understand how we are now involved in the social life of humanity, which is permeated and pulsated by social impulses, unless we consider how social thinking and willing of different strata of humanity have actually arisen from two sources in the course of modern human life. For the survival of these origins into the present day actually has the effect in this area of shaping social life today.

[ 2 ] In one of the lectures, I pointed out that it is not enough to understand such a thing simply by looking at historical life in a linear way, according to the course of cause and effect, as we have become accustomed to doing, so that we always refer to what came before in relation to what follows. I have tried to point out that the historical life of humanity, in its essence or basis, is similar to the life of the individual human being in terms of certain crises in its course, or rather, the existence of crises in its course. In the life of the individual human being, there is also no linear development, so that what follows is always the effect of what has gone before without a leap. In order to refute the convenient, often misunderstood idea that nature does not make leaps, one must repeatedly point out how crises occur in the linear progression of individual life, how the crisis of the sixth seventh year with the change of teeth, how the crisis occurs that seems to well up from the elementary foundations of the organic in sexual life. And those who are knowledgeable about the course of human life will also see such crisis-like upheavals in later stages of life, even if they do not appear as decisively as the first two when viewed superficially.

[ 3 ] It is necessary to observe such crisis-like upheavals in the historical life of humanity in order to truly understand this historical life. As much as today's humanity is still reluctant to look and listen to such things, it is precisely in the present, when social understanding of life is required, that it is necessary to point out such things in a radically strong manner. One of the last great upheavals in the course of human development, as I have explained in previous lectures, occurred around the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. And it is only because we do not observe the historical course of events deeply enough that we do not know how radically different everything that goes on in the human soul, everything that prevails in the human soul as a demand, as a longing for certain satisfactions, has changed compared to what existed before that time.

[ 4 ] Now, at the same time as this fundamental change in recent human development, something else is happening that could be described as follows: what used to live in the human soul as social impulses, which then led to the social structure of human society, was lived out more instinctively before this period. People lived together socially and organized their affairs socially out of certain instincts. Around the time indicated, conscious grasping of social impulses takes the place of instinctive social thinking and willing. This occurs slowly and gradually, but the situation in which modern humanity finds itself as a result differs radically from that of medieval and ancient humanity. However, we then immediately see how, with the emergence of social impulses from instinctive to conscious life, two currents, two initial currents of social thinking and willing, clearly emerge.

[ 5 ] One emerges among those people who, to this day, can be called the leading, guiding social class of humanity. The other current emerges somewhat later, but clearly distinct from the other, in what we today call the proletarian world. As modern times dawn, the leading intellectual bourgeois circles, with all their interests in life, are connected with what has gradually emerged as the newer state structures from the forms of medieval human coexistence. These leading bourgeois circles are connected through their interests to what we can describe, among the three elements I have mentioned for the social organism, as the actual constitutional state, as the actual political entity which, either instinctively or consciously, aims at order in everything that relates to the relationship between people. More or less in line with the traditions of the past and, to a certain extent, with the newer economic conditions, the leading bourgeois circles link their interests with what many people still consider to be the only social structure today, namely the state. And in consciously transitioning from the old instinctive social life to the modern conscious one, they initially think in terms of the state in the sense of the constitutional state. And these leading circles are attempting to integrate modern economic life, which is becoming increasingly complex, particularly due to the expansion of human activity across the entire world, into the state structure. In a sense, they want to make the state more and more of an economic manager. This endeavor is making some progress, and we see that within certain circles, individual branches of the economy are increasingly being incorporated into the state structure. I referred to such economic sectors last time. What is essential from this point of view is that social thinking in these circles takes on a very specific form in that they want to conquer the emerging complex economic life for the state in which they are interested.

[ 6 ] The social impulse develops quite differently within the proletariat. In the development of modern times, this modern proletariat is not engaged in the same way with its interests within the actual state territory. It stands in a certain relationship, which I cannot elaborate on here due to lack of time—the matter is easy to understand—apart from what the bourgeois leading circles represent as their interests within the state structure. But it is precisely this proletariat that is driven in the most radical way into the shaping of economic life. Its entire thinking and willing proceeds in such a way that it is like a reflection of what is going on in economic life. And so the social impulses of the proletariat are determined just as much by the social structures of the economy of humanity, of economic life, as the social impulses of the bourgeois ruling classes and also of the intellectual circles are determined by the impulses of the constitutional state, by the impulses of the actual political structure. And both currents are developing more and more in such a way that what I pointed out in the introduction to yesterday's lecture is becoming apparent, namely that there is a gulf, an abyss, between the particular configuration of social thinking and feeling of the leading bourgeois and proletarian circles. For, I said, the most tragic aspect of recent developments in the current configuration of humanity's situation is that this abyss exists, that it is so difficult to find understanding, mutual understanding, between the two characterized strata of the population. So what we now see coming had to happen: that the two strata of the population face each other as if prepared for a struggle for life. And the essential thing in this struggle, which is already partly being played out, but partly still only in preparation, and which, as can be understood, even today only superficially affects social life, but will take on gigantic forms, the essential point is that, on the one hand, the bourgeois ruling circles want to conquer economic life more and more for the state, and in a peculiar way want to conquer for the state, along with this economic life, the labor and labor power of the proletariat itself, and that, on the other hand, the proletariat wants to conquer the state for what it experiences as its own interests in separate economic life.

[ 7 ] This is essentially the basic principle of the struggle that plays such a significant role in the life situation of contemporary humanity. And above all that which is openly going on in consciousness, one has forgotten, left out of attention, I would say, pushed down into the subconscious of the human soul, what is actually hidden behind these two impulses that I have mentioned. What has been striving to rise to the surface of human life since the crisis-ridden upheaval in the 15th century in the development of modern humanity only now reveals what stirs and drives and pulsates in human life, while the other often plays out masked in consciousness: the striving for the full assertion of the human personality, as was unknown in earlier times. The assertion of the human personality, the feeling of human nature within oneself, is actually the fundamental nerve of the social question, and it only takes on the given forms according to these different living conditions, which are precisely determined by what has been stated. And so it came to pass that a struggle which is basically a struggle for the attainment of full human dignity for all people has itself become a struggle between different interests, a class struggle, a struggle which is throwing its forces into the present in such a disastrous way.

[ 8 ] The fact that something is hidden and masked in this recent development of humanity has meant that people have not focused their attention, or rather, that they have not yet learned to focus their attention on what is important. During the period in which social impulses acted instinctively, the social organism was also allowed to develop instinctively. Now that social impulses have entered human consciousness, albeit in a masked form, it is necessary, and indeed the most important thing in relation to the social problem of modern times, that social understanding, understanding for the formation of the social organism, should enter into every individual human soul, even if this understanding need not be scholarly, but rather one that lives in feeling, in feeling and lives itself out in what the individual human being feels as this or that necessity to place himself within human society. That is why it is so necessary today to do what I have tried to do in these lectures: to turn our gaze to that toward which everything in the striving of modern humanity tends, but which can only come to the surface today due to the special circumstances; to turn our gaze to the fact that the social organism must truly become a living entity, an entity that is understood in its living conditions, understood in a living way, not theoretically. That is why I pointed out that the health of the social organism depends on not chaotically mixing up the three members of the social organism: spiritual life in the broadest sense, legal or political life, i.e., state life in the narrower sense, 'and economic life. Only in this way will the forces at work in the three members undergo their necessary development and liberation, so that these three structures are not absorbed by one another, but develop freely alongside one another and, precisely in a certain independence, as I have already explained from various points of view, interact and cooperate with one another. Until now, the actual tendency of human development has been directed against this independence, based on certain assumptions. Differentiating what has become confused is now the most necessary question of life with regard to the social nature of contemporary humanity.

[ 9 ] Certain aspects of human thought and feeling have always sensed what I mean here, precisely in the light of the awareness of social impulses, as people began to think in one way or another about the conditions of state life and economic life, depending on their intellectual prerequisites. We see so-called social or national economic ways of thinking, habits of thought, developing – whatever you want to call them, it doesn't matter. It cannot be my task here to describe the development of social thinking in modern times. I would just like to draw attention to one thing, which, I would say, strongly illuminates many things that are particularly important here in these lectures.

[ 10 ] Among the various ways of thinking and imagining the interconnection between the economic, political, and spiritual life of humanity, one that emerged in modern times was what was known in the 18th century as physiocratic economic thinking. This physiocratic thinking developed as a necessary contrast to an earlier way of thinking that sought to organize economic life more within the state organism. Thus, it developed that people wanted to move away from tyrannizing economic life through the legal life of the state, through the political life of the state structure in the narrower sense, and instead wanted to leave economic life to its own natural laws, to the impulses to which it succumbs when people simply initiate the game of economic life freely out of their own interests. Some proponents of this system spoke very illuminating words on this subject, which can be paraphrased as follows. People said: Why should a system of laws be developed within the political structure of the state to regulate economic life? Either these laws will be the same as those that economic life gives itself when it is left to the free play of forces, or they will be different and opposed to it. In the former case, if they are the same, then they are unnecessary, then they are not needed, then economic life gives itself its own laws, then there is no need to first harness economic life to special state laws. But if state laws work against economic life, then they inhibit it, then they impair it, then they are harmful to it.

[ 11 ] I would like to say that what is expressed in these two contradictory statements still haunts many minds today. It haunts many minds because modern humanity, as much as it believes itself to be practical and to have a sense of reality, is nevertheless terribly infected by a certain sense of abstract, theoretical one-sidedness. And if one were to examine how much of what appears to many people today as practical life is nothing more than realized one-sidedness, realized one-sided theory, then one would encounter many a mystery of life and be able to bring about a partial solution to it. What sounds more plausible, what sounds more obvious than when I say: Either the laws of the state run in the same direction as the laws of economics, in which case they are unnecessary, or they contradict them, in which case they must harm economic life. But one only thinks in these opposites if one views the social organism as something that can be regulated by concepts, by laws, by principles, by programs, if one cannot rise to the view that the social organism is something that must have life within itself, that must live through its own essence. But that which flourishes and sprouts through its own life content, through its own life impulses, has opposites within itself in real life. And the social organism, if it is to be a real one, must have opposites within itself.

[ 12 ] Therefore, what may seem absurd to many theoretically minded souls of the present day is actually correct: state life, purely legal and purely political life, must in a certain way restrict and counteract economic life in its laws, so that the total life of humanity, which is not merely economic, not merely legal, but economic, legal, and spiritual, can unfold, just as in the individual human organism — I use the comparison again, pointing out that I do not wish to play with analogies from physiology and sociology — the digestive system functions in a certain way relatively independently, alongside the rhythmic system, the respiratory and cardiac systems, and both are restricted and mutually limited in their processes within the living organism. Thus, it is necessary that economic life on the one hand and political state life in the narrower sense on the other be juxtaposed in the real social organism, and that spiritual life must join them with relative independence, as I showed last time from a different point of view.

[ 13 ] For what matters is based on the following: economic life has completely different internal forces than legal life, with which it must interact so that the overall life of humanity can flourish, and again different ones than spiritual life. If one wanted to express something more or less concrete and living in abstract forms, which, however, perhaps from one side, even if one-sided, make things understandable, one could say the following: In economic life, as it exists in the production, circulation, and consumption of goods, everything depends on the creation of value that corresponds to life. And this value formation essentially takes place in such a way that, if the social organism is to be healthy, value must be formed under the influence of the impulse that the consumption of what the economic organism claims for itself — call it the market or something else — and keeps ready for consumption, that the consumption of the commodity is as expedient and advantageous as possible. If the social organism is healthy, a commodity must be offered for consumption in such a way that it can be consumed in the most appropriate manner, that it lasts as long as is appropriate, or can be consumed as quickly as is appropriate, but in any case that its entire content is geared towards consumption.

[ 14 ] If human labor were fully integrated into economic life—and this economic life can only develop healthily from the point of view of commodity pricing according to corresponding consumption— then the Marxist view of the proletariat would be fulfilled, namely that human labor power itself is a commodity, and thus this labor power, as a commodity in the social organism, would have to obtain its value by being fully consumed in the most expedient manner. On closer inspection, the economic limb of the social organism also has a tendency to consume human beings, and if the economic limb of the social organism were to follow only its own laws, human labor power would be consumed within this limb. By ignoring this, the bourgeois ruling circles have contributed to the emergence of the nerve center of the modern social question within economic life and the position of the proletariat in economic life, which shows its vitality in the fact that the modern proletarian in particular claims the right to strip his labor power of its commodity character. As many other aspects of the social question are masked and much of it lives in the subconscious of the modern proletarian, it is an essential factor that the proletarian soul strives for the liberation of human labor from the character of a commodity.

[ 15 ] But this can never happen if the economic process proceeds according to its own laws and if the entire life of the state is turned into a single economy, as is the ideal of many modern socialists. Nor can it happen if one wants to make the state an economist in a one-sided manner. A healthy relationship can only be achieved if the economic organism is allowed to develop its relative effectiveness within itself, if, as happens in natural organic life, a system is allowed to develop in relative independence, so to speak, in order to fully develop its inherent powers, and then what results is limited and improved by a neighboring, relatively independent system, just as in the natural organism a system develops fully, also expresses its damage, but this damage is continuously paralyzed by the neighboring system. All organic effectiveness is based on this. The recovery of the social organism must also be based on this.

[ 16 ] It really does not matter to me how one defines the economic organism or the state organism, or how one thinks about them, but what matters to me is that these two elements must exist side by side, and that one must develop relatively independently, even developing the predisposition for its damage from within itself, so that the other system must develop alongside it and paralyze what would otherwise result in damage to the other system. That is the essence of life; that must also be the essence of the living social organism. Only when the economic body administers itself, administers itself on the basis of its own conditions, and the legal and political body administers itself, again on the basis of its own conditions, which arise from the regulation of legal relationships between people, and when each of these organisms regulates itself independently, interacting with each other and influencing each other, can a healthy social life emerge. The social question cannot be solved by theory, cannot be solved by laws, but can only be solved by allowing one type of force, the economic force, to act alongside the other, the state, the political force, in immediate, independent existence, allowing the two to develop alongside and within each other, but in such a way that each remains independent.

[ 17 ] This is what has been neglected out of a certain historical necessity. For what has happened is, of course, necessary. This is not meant to be a criticism, but rather a description of the circumstances. However, this is what must become a necessity in human progress for life in the present and the near future. It will turn out that, for the sake of the recovery of the social organism, economic life will become associative, that it will be structured in such a way that the predisposed cooperatives, trade unions, and so on will develop in such a way that they will shed what they have still taken on from the prejudice that everything must be formed according to the model of the old constitutional state. Whatever remains of state life in these associations serving economic life must be discarded. They must become bodies that serve purely economic life, bodies that are based on the relationship that people must have within economic life, whether it be to the natural basis of economic life, to the necessity of utilizing raw materials in this or that way, of bringing goods into circulation, of bringing the consumption ratio into the right relationship to production and trade, and so on. The complexity of human life today makes it necessary for a whole system of associations and coalitions to form among people, associations and coalitions that are essentially based on an understanding of how to utilize the natural basis of economic life and how to direct goods toward appropriate consumption. It is precisely this complexity that requires the formation of a whole system of associations in this area. But these associations will be shaped by the connection between humans and the economic forces themselves. It will turn out that what happens again and again in real life is that economic life tends to consume humans.

[ 18 ] Economic life must be accompanied by political life, which, in contrast to economic life, which must be based on associations, must be based more on democracy, because state life encompasses the relationship between people. It encompasses everything in which all people have an equal interest. Just as economic life is based on the economic value of goods, so public life must be based essentially on public law, which is founded in the law or which establishes the law that determines the relationship between people. And in a lively interaction, what develops out of economic life will have to be limited and restricted. Approaches to this already exist, but a thoroughgoing social understanding must take hold. What will have to develop is, above all, something that protects people from being consumed by economic life, which is oriented toward consumption, in relation to their own labor.

[ 19 ] Just as price formation and value formation are essential within the economic sphere, so too is the formulation of concrete law, concrete public law, which regulates the life of people alongside other people, essential in the life of the political state. With regard to the perception that exists towards public law, can one not still say today that it has not achieved any particular clarity? One can ask those who should know about the matter, who should have thought and researched it a great deal, one can ask them a great deal about what is actually meant by the essence of law, of law that always appears in concrete forms. One only begins to grasp the difficulties involved when, for example, one engages with a question such as the one that my late friend Ludwig Laistner based his doctoral dissertation on, “the right to punish.” This in itself can become a question of what, in concrete terms, constitutes the right of human society to punish.

[ 20 ] One can try many things to get closer to the impulse of law. Especially in our time, when so much is said about law from so many different sides, it is obvious to want to approach again and again what the essence of law actually is. If one tries to get to the bottom of what such a concrete right is based on—even the right of ownership is based on a right; the relationship of ownership is based on the right to use a piece of land or anything else exclusively for oneself, for one's own activities, with the exclusion of others—which is the subject of the actual political limb of the social body—some find that it ultimately boils down to nothing other than power. Others find that it goes back to a primal human feeling. When one wants to get to the bottom of the matter, it is all too easy to resort to empty forms. Without going into a full explanation, which would take hours, I would like to say that the right establishes a certain relationship between a person and something, a thing or a process or the like, or a sum of processes, to the exclusion of other people. What is it, then, that enables us to develop the feeling, the sense, that a particular person or a particular people has a right to what we have in mind? And no matter how hard one tries, one can come up with nothing other than to say: in public life, the legal claim is based on the assumption that the person who is allowed to devote his activities to a thing or a process or a series of processes is more likely to do so in the interests of humanity in general than anyone else. The moment one has the feeling that someone's relationship to a cause or to something else expresses the benefit to humanity in general more than if someone else were to use this cause or enter into this relationship, then one can grant the person concerned the right to this cause. This will essentially be what tips the balance in the perception of humanity when the major legal issues of international life now come into existence, into real existence. The right to a certain territory will be fully granted to those who are likely to administer that territory in the most fruitful and secure manner for the good of humanity as a whole.

[ 21 ] This brings us to what can permeate and flood a democratic state system: the impulses that must guide life from person to person, whether in workers' insurance or in other types of insurance that exist to protect against the damage caused by economic life. In all of this, life must be the foundation of the law that I have just spoken about. And an understanding, but not an understanding of some general abstract definition of law, but an understanding of the effectiveness of law in individual concrete cases, that is what must be achieved for the sake of a healthy social life for humanity. This legal life, this life of the political state in the narrower sense, the second link in a healthy social organism, will also be what will eliminate the actual crux, I would say, of the modern social question, not through any realization of theoretical views and principles and programs, but through immediate life, namely the point I described earlier as the demand of the modern proletariat: to strip human labor of its commodity character.

[ 22 ] To this end, however, it is necessary to understand, I would say, to understand from the ground up, what is important in the share that human labor has in general human life, in the structure of human society. Again, it would take hours if I wanted to justify a basic social law of human labor here in detail; Intuitively, I believe, and instinctively, anyone who has even a moderate understanding of life can comprehend what I am about to say. At the beginning of the century, I attempted to draw attention to this fundamental social law in an essay on the social question that appeared in my magazine LuziferGnosis. But at that time, and unfortunately still today, many things in this area were preached to deaf ears. This law consists in the fact that no one, insofar as he belongs to the social body, the social organism, actually works for himself. Mind you, insofar as man belongs to the social organism, he does not work for himself. Any work that a person does can never fall back on him, not even in its actual yield, but can only be done for other people. And what other people do must benefit us ourselves. It is not merely an ethically demanded altruism that lives in these things, but simply a social law. We cannot do otherwise, just as we cannot make our blood flow differently, than to act in the circulation of human activity in such a way that our activity benefits all others, and all other activity benefits us, so that our own activity never falls back on ourselves.

[ 23 ] As paradoxical as it may sound, if you examine the actual circulation process of human labor in the social organism, you will find that it emanates from human beings, benefits others, and that what some people gain from labor is the result of the labor of others. As I said, as paradoxical as it sounds, it is true. One can no more live from one's own labor in the social organism than one can eat oneself in order to feed oneself.

[ 24 ] Although the law is basically very easy to understand, you may object: But if I am a tailor and, among the clothes I make for others, I also make a suit for myself, then I have applied my labor to myself! — That is only an illusion, as it is always an illusion when I believe that the result of my own work falls back on me. By making myself a skirt, pants, or the like, I am not really working for myself, but rather putting myself in a position to continue working for others. That is the function of human labor as a purely social law within the social organism. Anyone who violates this law works against the social organism. Therefore, one works against the social organism if one continues to implement what has emerged in recent historical life, namely, allowing the proletarian worker to live off the proceeds of his labor. For that is not truth; it is a falsehood realized and concealed by social circumstances, which intrudes destructively into economic life. But this is what can only be regulated in economic life if this economic life develops independently and, alongside it, the political, the narrower life of the state develops relatively independently, which constantly deprives economic life of the possibility of directing human labor toward itself. Within the legal system, this is achieved through a correct social understanding that human labor should be given the function it must have in accordance with the true course of life in the social organism. The economic organism in itself always has a tendency to consume human labor. Legal life must always assign labor its natural altruistic position, and it is always necessary anew to wrest from economic life, through new concrete democratic legislation, what economic life wants to realize in untruth, and to wrest human labor anew from the clutches of economic life by means of public law. Just as the digestive system must work together with the respiratory and circulatory systems, absorbing from the circulating blood what is incorporated into the digestive system, so too must what goes on in economic life and what goes on in legal life work together and interact with each other, otherwise neither will flourish. The mere constitutional state, if it wants to become an economist, paralyzes economic life; the economic organism, if it wants to conquer the state, kills the system, the life of public law.

[ 25 ] This is what I would like to add to what I said in my previous lectures to justify the threefold structure of the social organism. Because the bourgeois ruling circles had, as it were, fixed their gaze hypnotically on the state, the state became something of an idol to them. Attention was not directed to the necessary differentiation of the social organism into three members. And so it came about that in recent times, spiritual life was also absorbed by the state, by political life in the narrower sense. Just as the circulation of goods in economic life is based on the formation of prices and values, just as life within the political social organism is based on legal life, so all intellectual life is based on the immediate content of what is produced. And just consider what an enormous difference there is between economic life and intellectual life. In economic life, everything depends on goods being driven to the most expedient consumption. Intellectual production, whether in the field of education, schooling, art, or any other intellectual field, is completely absurd to relate to the concept of consumption. It cannot be done. One cannot place intellectual production on the same level as that which circulates in the economic process. This is what has also caused the absorption of, for example, the school system by the state, the university system by the state, and the like, to become an inhibiting factor in modern development, even now in a real sense. And this is what humanity must be made aware of, that this spiritual life must be liberated, unleashed again. And I have already pointed out that this spiritual member of the social organism must now also include what may still seem paradoxical to some today, namely the actual practice of private and criminal judgment. Strange as it may sound, there is already a tendency in modern life that is simply not being judged in the right way. What has been increasingly claimed by a misguided psychology for the administration of justice is what tends toward a principle that has not yet been recognized, but necessarily recognizable principle of incorporating private and criminal law into the spiritual sphere, which in turn stands with relative independence, also with relative independence from all of life that develops as narrower political life, that develops as the life of public law and legislation. Certainly, in the future, in a healthy social organism, the criminal, for example, will have to be sought from what emerges in the second member, the political member. But once he is sought, he will be judged by the judge, whom he faces in an individual human relationship.

[ 26 ] This question can only be judged by someone who, like me, who is speaking to you now, has been able to observe for years and years a territory where it was truly difficult to govern uniformly, and where, I would say, there was a compulsion to govern uniformly: a territory such as Austria. There, one could observe what would have happened if there had been free jurisdiction across pure language boundaries; if, despite the language barriers, the Bohemian living in a German area could have chosen the neighboring Czech or Bohemian judge across the border, and the Bohemian resident could in turn have chosen his judge in the German area. We have seen how beneficial this principle has been in the efforts of the various school associations, which unfortunately never got off the ground. There is something in this which, I would say, still weighs heavily on the minds of those who experienced this Austrian life, that this egg of Columbus has not been found: the free choice of judge and the lively interaction between the plaintiff, the judge, and the defendant, instead of the judge from the centralized political state, who can only be authoritative not for the administration of justice, but for the search for and delivery of the criminal or then for the execution of the sentence.

[ 27 ] As paradoxical as it still sounds to humanity today, the relationship between the individual and his judge in criminal and civil law must be incorporated into the spiritually independent member. The day before yesterday, I pointed out that the external administration and the election of persons in the spiritual member will not depend on the state. Anyone who can look into modern conditions will also see that the innermost life of science and art and everything spiritual becomes dependent on that from which it must not become dependent if this spiritual member cannot develop in relative independence alongside the other two members. It still seems paradoxical to many today when I say, in summary, that each of these areas must have a certain sovereignty, its own representative system, its own legislation that has grown out of its circumstances, that has grown out of the associative relationships in the economic sphere, i.e., its own administration and legislation. In a democratic way, the actual political state will grow out of the total humanity of a particular social sphere, in which the relationship of human beings to one another, the relationship to the economy, and the relationship to spiritual life are regulated; without, however, the laws of the state interfering in either of these, and from the forces active in spiritual life itself, the structure of the administration of spiritual life will also emerge. To an even greater degree than was the case in ancient times, spiritual life can be emancipated from truly modern life, when the only spiritual life that was considered for many people consisted of religious life, from which the school system and the university system were also formed.

[ 28 ] Certainly, the intervention of the modern state was necessary in order to remove from outdated forms of religion and outdated administrations what no longer belonged to them. But independent spiritual life must develop again from modern life itself. This is precisely what a spiritual scientific approach, such as that underlying these social considerations, must claim for itself, because it knows that the entire real productive spiritual life, including that which finds expression, for example, in technical inventions and technical ideas, can only develop with impulses that are truly beneficial to humanity if it develops from the living, independent spiritual realm, independent of the other two members of the social organism. The spirit will only have the right kind of productive force in human beings if this spiritual life is relatively independent. One can speculate, theorize, think things up, and, for my part, also invent, as has been done admirably in modern technology and natural science, particularly in their methods, but the truly productive idea, which is so productive that it serves true human progress and at the same time true human welfare, this idea can only be born within a spiritual life that is self-reliant.

[ 29 ] Today, we are still so far removed from what I actually mean here and what must be understood if the social question is to be placed on a healthy foundation that some people have replied to me when I have explained this to them: Yes, but that is only a modern reinterpretation of the old Platonic idea of the tripartite division of society into three estates: the productive, the military, and the scholarly. No, this is not a reinterpretation of this old Platonic idea, but in a certain sense the radical opposite of it, and that is what matters. For between what could be thought of as something great in Greece and even in later times, and what must be thought of today for the salvation and recovery of the social organism, lies the great, crisis-ridden turning point in human history around the 15th century. At that time, in Platonic times, the structure of the social organism was such that people were divided into classes. The structure I am talking about here does not divide people, it divides the social organism; it divides this social organism in such a way that, under certain circumstances, a person can be in all three parts and do the corresponding work, but because the social organism is structured, he is not in a position to exert any harmful influence from one branch to another, not even when, as has often happened in modern parliaments, the same person is a farmer and at the same time a member of a state party. Today, it is still possible for him to inaugurate a representation of interests through some kind of association, for an economic representation of interests to enter into legal life. Last time, I gave an example where an entire state was permeated by such a representation of interests in its legal life. That is ruled out. But what I call threefold in a healthy social organism is the social organism separated from the human being. The human being becomes independent precisely because of this, is stripped of the character of a slave to the social organism precisely because of this, because it is not human classes or strata that stand as members, but because the social organism itself is structured. This indicates at the same time that the thinking underlying this is truly realistic, far removed from everything I described the day before yesterday as swarm mentality.

[ 30 ] This swarm mentality occurs in a wide variety of parties. It is just as prevalent in bourgeois circles as it is on the part of social democracy. And this swarm mentality takes hold of people when they repeatedly fail to develop any idea of what the social organism as such can actually strive for when it is healthy. Time and again, social thinking suffers from the influence of the feeling, the idea, that it is possible to strive directly, through some program or other, for a social organism that will bring about the happiness of humanity or the satisfaction of humanity or the like. This cannot be striven for directly. What can be strived for directly is a viable social organism, one that has the living forces of life within it. Placed within such an organism, living in such an organism, human beings can establish their happiness on entirely different foundations. These foundations are entirely different. But these foundations must be freed from their shackles. And they can only be freed if there is a viable organism as a basis. Just as in a truly viable organism the soul can develop and be present in an appropriate way, so in a viable social organism a happy, contented, willing and capable workforce can develop. That is what is important for the recovery of the social organism.

[ 31 ] A look at what we have experienced in a catastrophic time can also, I would say, confirm from an international perspective and from a broader historical perspective how what I am presenting here as these three elements is a real necessity for the current way of life of humanity and the way of life of humanity for the near future. One might say that before this terrible catastrophe, which we call war, befell humanity, the culmination of the confusion and disorder of the three elements that must be differentiated had been reached. And precisely because these three elements could not function alongside each other in relative independence, much of what must truly be counted among the starting points and causes of this warlike catastrophe has come to pass. One need only point to a few things. Everyone's attention was focused on how the war had started from the relationship between the Austrian state and the Balkans, particularly Serbia. Anyone who had been familiar with Austrian affairs for decades knew how the economic relations between Austria and southeastern Europe were unnaturally intertwined with the purely political relations that should have developed relatively independently alongside them, and how this amalgamation by the fact that political conditions were now suddenly to decide on something that was deeply rooted in economic conditions, a realized untruth arose and exploded.

[ 32 ] How different this situation would have been – I can only hint at this at the end of today's lecture – if the relationship between such neighboring states had been in accordance with the threefold structure, if the relationship across the border had been a purely political one, based on democratic principles and separate from the other elements, as is usually the case with the form of government. But if economic and spiritual factors were to act independently across the border in a corrective and harmonizing way, then something like a harmony of interests and a merging of interests would spread across the system of states, the so-called states, where one corrects the other, where one cannot unilaterally cause an explosion. Healthy conditions across borders would arise through this tripartite division in international relations between nations.

[ 33 ] And again, how did the international community view Germany, which, at least outwardly, took the lead in declaring war? Those who are knowledgeable in this area know how the misfortune came about. It has often been said that in July and August, during those fateful days, politics failed alongside the actual warfare and the military. But politics and the military are, where both are at work, parallel entities. They cannot be easily separated. They can only develop in a healthy way if they operate within the one, the state structure in a tripartite social organism. Otherwise, politics will necessarily have to take on a uniform character, at least in one branch. At a certain point in time, it will culminate either in the military or in the non-military sphere. For what is by its nature, even if it is intertwined with other systems through human error, something uniform, cannot manifest itself externally, with one correcting the other. In that terrible state of fear from which arose in Berlin what arose in the last days of July and the first days of August, the crowding together into a single system of what should have been distributed had an effect. It was forced together under the responsibility of a single system, which a single system must never bear for the good of humanity. The concrete circumstances will teach this, once these things are examined without prejudice and with an open mind. Oh, how much nonsense has been said, especially with regard to politics and military administration! So much nonsense has been said in the last four and a half years! I will just explain one thing: because politics and strategy can only function as an inseparable part of the social organism, politics can never influence strategy in a healthy way if strategy is caused to look only at itself. People have said, repeatedly invoking a Clausewitzian phrase, that warfare is the continuation of politics by other means. I do not wish to criticize this statement insofar as it relates to the context of the entire war. But the way in which the gentlemen—and ladies, too—have repeatedly applied this statement, it makes about as much sense as saying: Divorce is the continuation of marriage by other means.

[ 34 ] A great deal of nonsense of this kind has been produced by unnatural thinking, which in turn has intervened unnaturally in real circumstances. Once you look at things impartially, you will see how everything would have turned out differently. Of course, what has happened is historically necessary, and what is to be said should be taken as an impulse for the future, but hypothetically one can still say how everything would have turned out differently if the structure of European international relations had been built up under the influence of social threefolding. One might say that what has come about has come about through alliances. But these alliances could never have come about under the influence of social threefolding. The end of alliances such as those that led to the misfortune of the last four and a half years will come when people orient themselves in the sense of the threefolding of a healthy social organism.

[ 35 ] What I am discussing here is meant in a very real sense; it is based on reality. That is why I always said, when I tried during those terrible years to point out the threefold social order in an authoritative manner appropriate to the times: What is real changes from day to day, and it could be self-evident that when circumstances have changed again, I would have to speak differently about these things. I said to people: What is presented here is not a program, it is not an ideal, it arises from the observation of what will become reality in the next ten, twenty years in Central and Eastern Europe, in Europe as a whole. You have the choice of either applying reason today or facing revolutions and cataclysms.

[ 36 ] It has already begun and will manifest itself in other ways. But today I would like to repeat what I have said on other occasions. I have always said: anyone who is a utopian, a theorist, who does not think in terms of reality but in terms of certain abstract demands or party impulses, has an interest in ensuring that what he presents as a program or the like is actually implemented in the way he specifies in detail. In the case of the things I have to represent, that is not important to me – that is what I said at the time. It could be, I said, and I still say today, that nothing will remain of the formulation of what I represent. For what matters is not that some imagined things be realized, but that reality be tackled at a certain point. Then, by tackling it, we will find out how to proceed. It may turn out in further discussions that all formulations will have to be changed. If one is not a utopian, not an idealist, it does not matter that things are carried out literally, but that a real start is made at some point. And I wanted to point out such a place where we must begin, and I still want to point it out today, before it is too late, before human instincts are unleashed to such an extent that understanding among people would no longer be possible, perhaps for decades to come.

[ 37 ] Therefore—let me say this in conclusion, although it is not strictly part of my lecture—I also think that today, anyone who is somehow connected to the social question with their soul has not only the task of speaking out, but also of using all means to bring it to the understanding of their fellow human beings. For that is the first thing we can do: foster mutual social understanding. Much has been corrupted, corrupted in various areas of the world, because a narrow-minded way of thinking, as I characterized it here recently, has been propagated throughout the world, because the right things were not thought of at the right time. That is why I must welcome with a certain satisfaction the fact that it has become possible, despite the difficult circumstances of the present, to achieve something in a relatively short time, also with regard to the practical effects of the ideas presented here. Those personalities who, in a certain sense, if I may say so, have caught fire with what has been developed here as a realistic view of the social question, have committed themselves to working toward a understanding of these things, at least in this area, where misfortune can be the great teacher today. However, I would consider it particularly fortunate if here in Switzerland, where there is still relatively ample opportunity for calm objectivity, precisely because of the possibility of this calm objectivity, a deeper understanding could emerge, to the effect that people recognize the necessity of doing something to promote mutual social understanding among humanity in the sense indicated in these four lectures. After all, amid the pain and suffering that one may feel today about the course of so many events and the fate of so many members of humanity, it can be a source of some satisfaction that misfortune has taught some people something. Thus it could happen—allow me to mention this, because it may be significant after all, if one wants to deal with the social question not merely in the abstract but in concrete terms—that an appeal, into which I have incorporated what I have presented here in detail in short sentences, that an appeal, which is actually intended to have an effect throughout the world, has so far found its way into the hearts of those in Germany and German Austria who have been severely tested by misfortune and have learned something from it. In this appeal, I have attempted to explain how the German Empire, when it was founded, fell into a period in which the development possibilities of modern humanity would have required such a new foundation, in the most eminent sense, to move toward new social tasks. People devoted themselves comprehensively to small things; but they failed to see what this empire should have done, namely, to give its framework a content corresponding to the developmental forces of modern humanity, which are now moving toward this threefold structure. And this is why the rest of the world took this attitude toward Central Europe. How could the rest of the world understand the justification for this particular founding of an empire if nothing emerged from this founding that irresistibly proved its right within the international human process!

[ 38 ] That is why I believed, as a right program, if I may say so now—but you know from what has gone before that it is not a program, it is a reality—that is why I believed I could formulate in an appeal to humanity a task that could now become adult for European humanity, which is, after all, faced with the necessity of rebuilding. And after all, it was satisfying to see that by yesterday noon this appeal had already received more signatures in Germany than the former appeal of the ninety-nine intellectuals of ill-fated memory, that there are over a hundred signatures for this appeal from Germany and, as of yesterday noon, over seventy signatures from German Austria for this appeal. I mention this because I want to speak from reality and thereby draw attention to the fact that I am no longer completely alone in what I believe is necessary in the process of social development, even if it is important to assert this for the mutual social relationship between people.

[ 39 ] And so we must continue to work, first of all, by means of genuine social education. For that is the next step. Humanity today, in relation to a large part of the civilized world, is faced with the necessity of confronting the social problem head-on. In doing so, it will have to solve a problem—let me say this in conclusion—that is extremely uncomfortable for its habitual ways of thinking. Many people are still willing to admit that a transformation of institutions, a transformation of the social structure, is necessary. But has not the whole spirit of the lectures I have taken the liberty of discussing here, has not this whole spirit proven that something else is also necessary? When Marxist-educated proletarian leaders repeatedly emphasize that the Marxist saying is true: “Philosophers have interpreted the world, but the point is to change it,” this is nevertheless only half a measure, perhaps not even a quarter of a measure, in view of today's drastic demands. What is necessary is not only to apply ideas to some kind of transformation of institutions and social structures, but also to transform the ideas themselves. Only from new, transformed ideas can a healthy social organism develop. People are still willing to put up with institutions; they are less willing to put up with rethinking. But this is necessary. And until this is understood, it will not be possible to orient oneself and participate in the healing of the social organism.

[ 40 ] For a long time, the social question has been knocking at the door of the most important human considerations and decisions. Now it has penetrated the house of humanity. It cannot be thrown out again, for in a certain sense it is a sorceress in relation to human development. It affects not only the exterior of the human structure, but also forces people to face the necessity of either rethinking their attitudes or adding ever-increasing misfortune to the misfortune that already exists.

[ 41 ] This indicates what is necessary, what must be realized if it is not to be too late in the sense that, as I have already said, instincts take on forms that make understanding between different classes of people no longer possible. We can only move toward the healing of the social organism if we do not want to base the new things we expect, the healing we hope for, on old ideas, but if we boldly and powerfully decide to turn our energy toward new ideas for the further development of humanity; for it is only from new ideas that the possibility of life for new generations will blossom. So we will have to think that the social question has arisen, that it has outgrown the conditions of modern life. But it would be wrong to believe that it can somehow be solved at the moment. Socialism is not something that is a solution or an attempt at a solution; no, modern life and the life of humanity into the future have brought up the social question. It will always be there. In the living social organism, it will always have to be resolved. Part of the life of future humanity will have to consist of resolving this question anew in each generation, resolving it in new forms, this question that has once arisen, warning and shaking the whole structure of human thought and will, the social question. Let us turn to it with all our hearts, with all our souls, otherwise it will turn to us, but then certainly not for our good, but for our harm.