From Luther to Steiner
II. The Spirit of the Revolution
It is alone worthy of man that he should seek after the truth himself; that he be led neither by experience nor by revelation. When this has come to be thoroughly recognized, then will Revealed Religion have been finally got rid of. —Rudolph Steiner, 1888.
10. The Scientific Spirit of Our Time
The refusal of Liberal Christianity (as represented by many well-known theologians) to accept the more profound Christian Mysteries must be primarily attributed to the progress of intellectual culture. It was,indeed, the natural consequence of this progress and may be regarded as typical of the passing away of the clerical dogmatism of the past, with its reliance on St. Peter so far as Catholicism is concerned, and so far as Protestantism is in question on St. Paul. The trend of the day is towards the super-clerical, to a critically scientific Christianity based upon spiritual knowledge—a Christianity founded on St. John, that best-beloved disciple of our great Lord and Master—in short, to a TheosophicAnthroposophical Confession of Faith such as awaits us in the Future. For to neither Catholicism nor Protestantism has it been given to respond to the full measure of spiritual culture which the twentieth century, with it individual contributions by all civilized peoples, demands. The man of the present day wants “modernity” in his religion. He craves for scientific proofs—proofs that will “hold water” for religion—and with remarkable logic has Rudolf Steiner put this craving into words, saying: “Truth is more to us in the present day than anything else; our desire is to strip it bare, even if, in so doing, our dearest treasures should be destroyed—treasures which men have accounted sacred for centuries.” 1“Magazin für Literatur,” 1899, No,23: “Idols and Confessions” (in German). (It will be seen, therefore, that Steiner by no means lags behind the critical spirit of the age, that he even sets an example, and we could wish that in these matters there had been more who had followed him!)
The wretched division—arising from no necessity inherent in human nature—between religion and science and between mediaeval and modern culture is entirely opposed to the true requirements felt by every honest, human, and self-respecting soul. It is, indeed, like some noxious poison of which all men would gladly be rid, primarily because they desire that the old doctrine of revelation should be replaced by a Rational form of Belief, which, conforming to the present conditions of scientific knowledge, based upon the results of empirical research, would be a form of “Ethical-Social Nature Religion,” such as the German Monisten-Bund of to-day provides. For even where this highest spiritual convictions are at stake the man of to-day stands with both his feet planted firmly on (God’s earth, his desire being to feel that, by reason of his God-endowed human nature, he is able to reach a point of view from which his outlook shall be both scientific and unprejudiced. “A sparrow” of irrefutable knowledge “in one’s hand” is, to start with, of infinitely greater worth to him than “ten revealed doves upon the house-top.” And rightly so! For, however broad, bare, flat, primitive, and elementary the facts upon which this Faith of Reason to which the Monists subscribe may be, it is nevertheless an advance upon the old Faith built on revelation, varied and “occult” though the contents of the old Faith may be. And it is this advance which counts for so much, both to-day and for the future.
Science is the cry of our day; never before has the appeal to science been so overwhelming, for that which cannot justify its existence when called before the judgment seat of Science is—and rightly so— accounted of no further use, Yet, on the other hand, earnest efforts are being made to come into contact with a realm of ‘“being,” hitherto deemed unapproachable except through the medium of Faith, and to bring the occult contents of the Mysteries of the ancient religions, as well as those of Christianity, into the full light of scientific knowledge. If, therefore, science has in truth set its stamp upon our times, it is but reasonable that all the phenomena of life should be subjected to scientific investigation, whether of an idealistic or materialistic nature; and so also it at once becomes of importance to us that the facts of mind which still float before man’s inner consciousness like huge notes of interrogation should be scientifically verified, just as facts of matter are, Should science in this respect neglect her universal mission, then will the cosmogony at which she is bound to arrive—at which she, indeed, has for the time being, already arrived—be neither “unified” nor “monistic,” as she is apt to assert, but simply one-sided—or, in other words, distorted.
Those who can only perceive and investigate the material side of this world, and who regard the mental aspect as no more than a function operating through matter, are indeed able to achieve very good results so far as concerns the “Origin of Species” or the “Nature of Matter,” or, indeed, any other similar question. They are also able to contribute usefully to the discussion of questions such as the Origin of the Bible, the Nature of Christianity, or... “Did Jesus ever live?” But they can only remain in the Outer Court so far as concerns the finding of the answer to the Great Riddle of Life and Existence. This can only be solved by a boldly and courageously entering into the Holy of Holies! From the point of view there gained the inquirer gets quite a different idea of God, man, and the world; for he literally sees the powers at work: he beholds the “germinating seed,” and need no longer fumble among mere words.
Liberal Protestantism has, in contradistinction to Catholicism, been more inclined to follow the scientific spirit of the times. Its attitude may therefore be called “scientific,” in so far that it is critical—for the critical spirit is essentially the spirit of science,
It approached Christianity and its documentary sources arrayed in full armour, so to speak, taking account only of that which its particular methods of investigation are able to accept, but
Das Pergament, ist das der heilge Bronnen,
Woraus ein Trunk den Durst für ewig stillt?
Erquickung hast du nicht gewonnen,
Wenn sie dir nicht aus eigener Seele quillt.
Is parchment, then, a quick’ning source divine,
Whereat thy thirst may be for ever still’d?
Never will a refreshing draught be thine
Unless from thine own soul it be distilled.
The very essence of Christianity, when submitted to such critical observations and philological tests, remains unobserved and untouched, since: is neither historical nor philological, but purely super-historical and occult. Its evidences, therefore, “slip through” the meshes of so coarse a “fishing net” as that employed by the “Higher Criticism,” which tries to explore “historical sources,” with methods just as unsuitable as those of scientists, who use the scalpel when searching for the human soul or apply experimental psychology to the same purpose. Not that we would in the slightest degree belittle these departments of science, as long as they confine their activities to their own proper field and do not interfere elsewhere. Each is able to accomplish useful preparatory work which may be most beneficial to the world at large, but it is when they overstep their justifiable limits and pronounce opinions on subjects which, owing to the circumscribed methods at their command, are quite out of their reach and ken that the danger becomes acute and even alarming; for the influence of such opinion is bound to have a serious and detrimental effect on the human soul, ready as it is to rely on “scientific authority.”
We must realize, therefore, that, “scientific” as such methods may be, when employed by Research in its own sphere of activity, they have nevertheless proved to be wholly inadequate to reach within even measurable distance of the true nature either of Christianity or of the human soul, for here we come up against a “mystical fact” which can only be grasped as an ideal and supersensible “object,” and which is therefore only approachable by methods of spiritual and occult investigation—a class of investigation which in its own sphere may, perhaps, claim to be far more scientific than that of those who rely upon history, anatomy,or psychology for their data and their work of experimental research.
But since science is the order of the day it is but natural for us to follow it—nay, we are quite ready to make common cause with science in as far as ever it can go, whether it be concerned with Natural History or with Historical Christianity. And we do not desire to do other than stand “four-square” upon the firm ground of true science in all that appertains to the concerns of the spirit, without indulging in metaphysical speculations as to God, Freedom, or Immortality. But—and this should be quite plainly understood— we maintain that we can have just as little to do with the dogmas of sense-observation, or with the abstract hypotheses of pseudo-science as it is preached from many a platform and generally accepted and believed, for our attitude towards the dogmas of revelation and the dogmas of experience is one and the same.
11. Action and Reaction
Those who are well acquainted with the works and the teaching of Dr. Rudolf Steiner will be ready to admit that the statements made above are in complete accord with both Philosophy and Anthroposophy, or Spiritual Science. Yet we venture to cite certain passages, turning in the first place to a couple of articles, now out of print, which appeared in the “Zukunft,” for both of them sketch accurately “what he hoped to achieve later.” One of the most significant aspects of the struggle of the modern spirit “to arrive at a new view of the Universe lies in its desire to 'have done’ with the doctrine of revelation, together with metaphysical speculations and irresponsible philosophies”—a desire, in short, to turn aside “from a cosmogony that regards Spirit and Nature as two entirely separate entities, and to recognize that both are but two modes of appearance appertaining to one and the same reality. It is the substitution for this two-world theory of a unified conception of the Universe that has set its stamp on the new era.”
In the endeavour of the modern soul to find a new system of ethics lies the meaning of its struggle to overcome and do away with a belief in moral “norms,” which seem to imply that some power exterior to the world is dowered with the right to dominate it, enforcing laws which owe their existence to nothing within human nature, but which, nevertheless, govern our actions as ready-made rules and precepts. In this endeavour, moreover, the modern mind is quite ready to turn aside from those “customs held to be common among all good people,” which are after all no more than “a sum total of commonplaces”—even though it be true that the Society for Ethical Culture has made them planks in its platform.
The old stock in trade, however great an effort may be made to bring it up to date, can no longer serve our modern requirements. Upon the intellectual side what is required is a new theory of belief determined by the loftiest and purest philosophy—by a philosophy which of its own and true inborn force shall rise to the height of practical knowledge, Upon the ethical side what is required is a new system of personal morality. Anthroposophy alone is able to meet these needs; yet for a generation past our educated and cultured classes have, with few exceptions, shown themselves to be quite incapable of comprehending either the spiritual or ethical endeavours of so truly remarkable a man as Rudolf Steiner—a man whose output of Theosophic-Anthroposophical writings, to say nothing of his cycles of lectures, covering a period of now nearly twenty years, has been met with almost complete indifference, while his philosophical Theory of Knowledge, dating as far back as the “eighties” and “nineties” has been subjected to prejudiced criticism and rebuff. Neither this new Theory of Knowledge, which became the philosophical basis for our spiritual or occult science, nor yet the new Ethics, which in turn resulted therefrom (Ethics which in their inner nature give proof of being the nearest approach we yet know to the pure Ethics of Christ), have been truly apprehended by those who might have been presumed to be in a position to apprehend such things. Indeed, though one of Steiner’s oldest disciples, the late Ludwig Deinhard, of Munich, stated in his book, “Das Mysterium des Lebens” (1910), that “Steiner has for a quarter of a century enjoyed public recognition as a philosopher and authority on the history of literature,” we must, nevertheless, acknowledge—sadly enough!—that Deinhard’s words were but “father to the wish,” for, truthfully speaking, such has not been the case.
Steiner’s works may have made him more or less known, though, alas! often not in the sense one would have desired. So far as his philosophy is concerned, the entire “trades union,” so to speak, has of one accord done its best to ignore both it and him. The small and earliest editions of his works (dating from the “eighties”) were bought up by his followers somewhere about 1910; and it was, indeed, a matter of some surprise to find that the publishers of these little faded “remainders” had not used them as waste paper long before! These are bitter facts, detracting no iota from Steiner’s greatness, but reflecting upon the apathy of his learned contemporaries. Even now his reputation as Theo-Anthroposophist rouses a perfect storm of controversy, though we may perhaps welcome this as “all to the good”! Read Karl Vorlaender’s essays on “Goethe’s Relations to Kant,” or, again, “Goethe’s Cosmic Conception,” in the first three volumes of that writer’s “Studies on Kant,” if you would behold Steiner being, metaphorically speaking, but at the stake! The reader of these edifying vituperations should, however, not neglect to read also Steiner’s terse rejoinder, to be found in the fifth volume of his edition of “Goethe’s Writings on Natural History,” together with the “Notes upon Goethe and Kant” which forms part of his essay “Haeckel und seine Gegner.” 2“Haeckel and his Opponents.” In the same spirit in which Vorlaender has attacked Steiner’s new Theory of Knowledge, so does Dr. Paul Barth also polemicize against Steiner’s new Ethics, while Ferdinand Tönnies, joining forces with both, exclaims that “upon his way to Hades” Steiner “could have met no more dangerous a Hermes than Friedrich Nietzsche!”
As an indication of the effect which Steiner has upon his learned confrères the following fact is worth attention. In 1911 the International Congress for Philosophy was held at Boulogne, and the liveliest debate was the one on the “Philosophy of Religion,” in which Rudolf Steiner took part, taking for his theme “The Psychological Basis of Theosophy.” The thread of his discourse was interrupted by the behaviour of a well-known savant, who strode from the hall exclaiming in tones of outraged horror, “Impostor!” In some earlier incarnation the same great man will doubtless have joined in the chorus of “Heretic!” with much the same gusto.
One of Steiner’s articles which appeared in a former number of the “Zukunft”—“raising the dust” to the dimensions of a storm—was a study in which he draws a contrast between Nietzsche on the one hand and Kant and the American Professor of Philosophy, Felix Adler, on the other. (Adler’s reactionary view of life had been selected by a “chosen few” among Germany’s men of Light about that time as a basis for their “Society for Ethical Culture”) At the close of this article Steiner refers to the vigorous words used by Nietzsche in his “Genealogy of Morals,” “which,” observes Steiner, “loudly and plainly put before us the evolution of Ethical Truths,” without a just apprehension of which “we should most assuredly not attempt the business of moral cures at a venture.”
But the German Society for Ethical Culture, which dates from the early “nineties,” would sever Ethics entirely from anything to do with Cosmic Conceptions!—the idea being that studies of a cosmic nature must tend to separate human beings from each other, whereas ethics emphasize “all that is common to all good men,” irrespective of the Cosmogony to which they may pin their faith. It was against this absolutely mistaken view that Steiner launched his “Zukunft” articles, and Dr. Paul Barth entered the lists with a retort addressed to Steiner in the next issue of the same journal. Then Ernst Haeckel came in, throwing all the weight of his authority on Steiner’s side, and declaring (as Steiner himself had done) that “it is impossible to solve the ethical question without solving—or at all events touching on—the religious question also, both being intimately connected, and, indeed, rooted in that Holy of Holies known to man as his Conception of the Universe.”
Conceptions of the Universe must therefore be readjusted, or, better still, revolutionized, before a new code of Ethics can be evolved. But such new Ethics, opined Haeckel, would no longer be found to agree with the old and time-honoured Religions and Creeds, and the Jena savant closed his article with the following very illuminating words: “... More particularly do I concur with many of the objections which Herr Rudolf Steiner has put forward, and I feel that I must adhere to my conviction that the great ethical questions cannot be solved without consideration of their relation to Religion and the Universe as a whole. It is not the absolute and mystical dogmas of the Church, but the rational and reasonable knowledge derived from science, which promises in the present day to provide us with foundation stones for the long-needed new Conception of the Universe.”
The Society for Ethical Culture has, in fact, proved itself to be reactionary, for its founders and principal supporters—while honouring Natural Science “with their heads,” so to speak—cling with their hearts to the old moralities of the Christian Church. It is really impossible for them to reform “ethics” on the lines laid down by scientific knowledge, so long as they believe that “ethics” can only be derived from entirely different and “religious” sources.
It does not seem to occur to those who maintain these views how untenable their arguments really are. They are not even aware, for instance, that such ethical teaching can, as to its meaning, appeal solely to those who believe in the Christian Cosmogony, and therefore that all those who decline to accept this particular conception of the Universe (including, we may add, Steiner, who never did subscribe to it) cannot very well talk of a reform so far as Christianity's conception of ethics is in question, but solely of a new birth in the matter of life’s ethics in general—a new birth conceived and evolved in accordance with the spirit of the modern scientific view of the Universe.
12. The Basis of Theories of Knowledge
The convictions unitedly held by Haeckel, Nietzsche, and Steiner, our three greatest authorities in the domains of Natural, Moral, and Spiritual Science, as regards the cardinal point of departure for a new, clear, and reasonable idea of the Universe, based upon sound scientific principles (which must of necessity also embrace the ethical standards of the future), find their expression in all Steiner's writings and lectures. Here we meet with a subject-matter which he has made his own, expounding his convictions with all his well-known and characteristic force, eloquence, and insight. Upon this foundation he has based not only his philosophy, but also his labours on behalf of Anthroposophical progress. Steiner has also inveighed against the “laggards” whom he has found on all sides, and who, however “modern” they may deem themselves to be, are yet ever ready to stem and oppose the trend of evolutionary movement. And for this reason it may be well to choose the point we have now reached for giving some details of Steiner as a Philosopher, by throwing more light on his original Theory of Knowledge and indicating to the reader how firm is the basis upon which rests his monumental edifice of Spiritual Science.
Modern science rests upon the results of thinking and observation. All that does not come within the experience of the human consciousness, all that oversteps experience, and has hitherto come under the term “transcendentalism,”” all that metaphysical speculation has sought to interpret by dialectical thought—all such “intangibilities”” are banned on the authority of the scientific spirit of modern times, and declared unreal. All the spiritual and moral values, that revealed dogma and theological philosophy, supported by the authority of the “Categorical Imperative,”’ have up to the present done their best to enforce, representing them to us as our highest blessings (yet at the same time neglecting to give us any definite reason for accepting their truth), have now, and with every justification, come to be felt to be no more than remnants of ancient conditions of civilization, which in their existing forms can no longer conduce to our welfare and well being.
It is in the efforts which it is thus making to approach reality that the modern spirit reveals its worth, and we must confess that its worth is great. Yet here, too, errors may be descried. They are errors which modern thought has not yet come to recognize, although Steiner}!himself has been quick to discern them, and has in the most careful manner avoided them. For if science is really to remain the highest and final court of appeal, so far as spiritual and modern life is concerned, if it is to be made our criterion in all our thinking and willing, then must there be no stopping half-way along the road, but the path, once we have begun to tread it, must be followed to its legitimate goal. Science, in short, must itself tackle the mighty tasks which it has taken upon itself, and in so doing it must prove itself equal to them. More still: science must in every way prove itself to be infallible. Science, however, is no abstraction, no “thing-in-itself,” independent of all connexion with man, but a definite and specific work of man, and, as such, only capable of responding to the demands made on it as long as the representatives of science combine in themselves both genius and the utmost versatility and originality of thought and perception—nay, further, also the most conscientious “objectiveness” in the matter of opinion—and thus avoid all insufficiencies and partialities.
How far we are justified in regarding Rudolf Steiner as the man able and destined to achieve this object we have attempted to show in our study entitled “Rudolf Steiner ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit” (“Rudolf Steiner, a Fighter Against His Time”), and we trust that the perusal of this book may lead to a greater amount of interest being taken in Steiner’s works. It may here suffice to state that Steiner has, as a matter of fact, made the “mechanically naturalistic conception of the universe” his point of departure, so to speak, but that intensified thought has brought him to the conclusion that it cannot be accepted as final.3Compare Steiner’s Introduction to the second volume of his edition of Goethe’s scientific works. Strict adherence to the natural and scientific method has been the means of leading him to a cosmic conception, which, in agreement with that of Goethe, he feels bound to describe as an “Objective Idealism,'’ and, seeing that this in every way concurs with the real or necessary requirements of the modern soul, it may be accepted as completely satisfactory. The ideas which we apprehend spiritually by reason of our power of thought are just as “objective” as the material things which we perceive by the use of our senses. The definition of ““objective” ought therefore to be wider than a definition which includes only matters: of sense-observation, for objects as perceived by the senses are only half the reality, and it is only when they are also ideally apprehended that our conception of reality is completely objective. And “Objectiveness,” so conceived—objectiveness, which grasps its object both by the senses and super-sensibly, both. by the use of perception and by the use of thought (the two fundamental pillars of all knowledge)—this it is that Steiner makes the basis of his system, as may be found in his Introduction to Goethe’s Works on Natural Science (1883-1897), as also in his books “Erkenntnis Theorie der goetheschen Weltanschauung” (“Goethe’s Theory of Knowledge Concerning the Universe”), “Wahrheit und Wissenschaft” (“Truth and Science”), and “Philosophie der Freiheit” (of which the enlarged English version, published by Putnam, is now known under the title of “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”).
Steiner’s theory of knowledge completely does away with all those prejudices and hindrances which have hitherto stood in the way of knowledge, and which either, as in the case of the Monists, tip the balance too far in the direction of empiricism, or on the other side have resulted in a dualism by a reaction against a one-sided Rationalism, and come back to the dogmas of Revelation, in the usual sense of that term. The “Categorical Imperative” itself belongs to the transcendental world, which is outside our conscious experience; we are but “executive organs” for its divine commands.4Compare Jellineck's “as Welten-Geheimnis” (“The World's Secret”). Indeed, reality can as little come to be apprehended by man by the means of mere sense-perception, as it can be by the means of mere thought (i.e. metaphysical speculation), neither can it be “revealed” from a supersensible world by order of the "Categorical Imperative.” It is by hard work, by the co-operation of sense-perception and thought, that we come, bit by bit, to secure knowledge and make it our own. On the one hand, the domain of experience must at no time be overstepped, as was the custom with metaphysicians of former times, and is still the case in the present day. On the other hand, it is not enough to abide by a mere classification. of sensibly observed facts, such as is found sufficient by Monistic circles to-day. We have to make this world of the senses, with its immediacy, our point of departure, and so far as we do depart from it we must at the same time pass into the World of Ideas, which is itself quite as much an object of experience—albeit a loftier one-and “of which Thought is the interpreter.”
It is by means of Thought that we are able to take hold of the full “Totality of Ideas” contained within the world, and these we must make our own would we penetrate and apprehend this world’s meaning. It is therefore imperatively necessary that scientific education should be raised “to a higher standpoint and be enabled to realize a state of ‘being’ (‘ein Sein’) which cannot be beheld with outward and Physical eyes, nor yet grasped with human hands, but which must be apprehended by man’s reason and by it be perceived to be a real and living thing.”
This is the only proof possible of an Idealism which is at the same time a Realism. Realists, relying on empirically received knowledge, are not able to conceive that the “real” is “ideal,” while idealists of the extreme rationalistic type fail to show that the “ideal” is “real.”
Now, Steiner’s Theory of Knowledge unites all these one-sided standpoints in as far as they have truth in them, doing so by means of a higher synthesis, and in this way he arrives at a complete, as well as scientific, method and form of discipline by which man’s spirit can grasp both the “Highest” and the “Lowest,” enabling him to penetrate to “the innermost being of Nature’ and there recognize what constitutes the fundamental reality of the world.
When we find that Thinkers, such as Haeckel and Nietzsche (men whose attitude towards metaphysics, mysticism, and religious revelation has been so marked), have, keeping to the firm ground of experience, yet overstepped the empirical and naturalistic points of departure; when we find such men as these have been compelled by the force of the facts to accept an Ideal of Knowledge which goes beyond sense-experience, the modern enquirer may, we submit, safely infer that he is warranted in assuming that the path on which he has started under Steiner’s guidance is not likely to be a “blind alley.” Indeed, there could be little reason for supposing that an honest thinker like Steiner, who has hitherto maintained so scrupulously critical an attitude towards science, should suddenly “go on the metaphysical ramp” and lose his bearings amid the quick-sands of a nebulous mysticism.
Every objection which Steiner in the course of his philosophical career has been known to raise against metaphysics, mysticism, and historically revealed Christianity, he still maintains in the present day, and he now does so upon the authority of his personal Spiritual Experience, This is worth putting on record, for it is characteristic of the “individual track” along which he has progressed for (now) an entire generation. But it has given rise to a certain degree of disappointment among some of his more superficial adherents—a matter on which we shall have occasion to touch in the course of the following chapters.
Steiner sets Metaphysics 5See “Wahrheit und Wissenschaft” (“Truth and Science”). aside because they transcend the realm of experience and, in their efforts to grasp the “thing-in-itself” (“das Ding-an-Sich”), become lost in arbitrary and fantastic imaginings. Since there is in actual fact nothing beyond our experience, that is, nothing “beyond consciousness,” and since whatever else the Metaphysicians may please to set up in the form of hypothetical transcendental bogies does not exist, it stands to reason that metaphysics itself can be no more than the outcome of prejudice begotten of dead and gone philosophies, and, since it owes its being to a tissue of vain and fanciful dogmas, it also is itself bound to vanish from the scene leaving no trace of its existence.
Nor can Mysticism respond to the demands made by science in the present day; for Mysticism refuses to accept the “world of clear and transparent ideas” as the medium for the higher Knowledge, being wedded to the subjective side of human nature, where I it would fain believe it can behold the source of all things. Yet, in as far as Mysticism comes into line with Goethe and declines to believe in a “beyond,” or any similar hypothesis, but accepts as truly spiritual that which is revealed in man himself, so far Mysticism may be accounted both fruitful and healthy.
On the other hand, the doctrine of revealed Christianity, as put forward by the Church—a popular form of Platonism— with “its faith in a Beyond” and its contempt for the world of the senses, this doctrine--laying hold, as it were, of “the emotional E side of occidental humanity””—has been responsible for the perverse trend of both Catholic and Protestant I Ei Theology. This trend is so at variance with the scientific spirit of the time that in its present form it must be completely done away with.
It cannot be right for the man of to-day to be called upon to accept and give his belief to “Truths” which are entirely beyond the bounds of his vision, and a Church that refuses to satisfy him as to the truth of its statements, yet demands his blind acceptance of them, must not be surprised if he, desiring plain and rational information, is minded to turn his back on it! And all that has here been said regarding these three remnants of a bygone culture applies equally to the entire dualistic system of Morals, with its Categorical Imperative, its rules of conduct and duty, all of which Steiner so emphatically sets his face against, since they are in contradiction, not only to the freedom, but also to the true morality of man.
13. The Revolt of Mind and Spirit
New religious and moral values, conformable to the times, can alone enable us to surmount the stagnant condition into which the present collapse has brought us; and these values must be entirely independent of all tradition. They should, indeed, be born of the new spirit which animates our modern conception of the universe, based as this conception is on Natural Science.
The stupendous struggle in which Haeckel engaged in his desire to attain to a new Monistic conception of the universe, as well as the honest endeavours made by Carneri to make Monism a basis for a new code of ethics, have, in principle, received Steiner’s support. Indeed, he goes even further, and is ready to follow out the ideas of Haeckel and Carmneri in all their consequences. In his remarkable article, “Neu Jahrs Betrachtungen eines Ketzers” (“The New Year Thoughts of a Heretic”) he makes. the following observation:
“We have lost the old belief that thinking by itself is destined to solve ‘the Riddles of the Universe,’ We now find but few thinkers like Haeckel, who are so still filled with the desire to penetrate beyond the confines of science and reach its meaning. It does not matter whether we are in complete agreement with the ideas put forward by Haeckel in his work, ‘Monism as a Link between Religion and Science’; but it does matter that we should answer the question with which we are faced, ‘In what way can modern science satisfy the human soul?’ This is the very question which the Religions of all times (as well as the Scholastics with the educational methods then at their command) have sought to solve. But it has to be owned that owing to the general lack of courage at the present day the importance of this question is not realized, and we need therefore be little surprised if reaction in intellectual and spiritual spheres is everywhere apparent. For as long as trained scientific thinkers show as little courage as they do in providing a substitute for the obsolete religious conceptions which still prevail—a substitute which must be based on the results of immediate experience — people who feel the necessity of holding some view as to the meaning of the Universe will be compelled to cling to the traditional conceptions, while the few who have made the effort to adapt their lives to the newer conception of the Universe will be like singers without a public. And having said this much 1 think I have sufficiently indicated why it is that the most advanced minds are so little understood.”
Steiner makes his position more precise, supported as it is, by that of Goethe, when he says: “At the best period of his life Goethe had renounced all beliefs; he had come to recognize Natural Science as the only source of truth, yet was it because of this very Science that he went on to reach out to the highest truths. It was clear to him that all those matters of supernatural revelation which had outlived their time, and which Jacobi was for holding on to by means of ‘faith,’ could alone be sought for and realized by the effort of the deeper consciousness—by an absorption in the eternal life of Nature. Goethe had explained his opposition to Jacobi’s views very aptly in the following extract from a letter: ‘God has punished you with the crime of Metaphysics, and has run a stake through your body! but He has blessed me with Physical Science I I shall abide in the worship of God as practised by the atheist (Spinoza), and am ready to leave you whatever you may call Religion. You believe in putting faith in God—-I believe in having evidence.’ 6“Das Magazin,” 1900, No. 4: ‘Von der modernen Seele.’ The man who could give utterance to this expression of his views might well feel able to win his way through from the evidences provided by Nature to Truth itself—and arrive at conceptions as satisfying to humanity as had been those earlier conceptions which were based upon divinely revealed truths. Goethe possessed the ability to construct a form of Nature-Knowledge which with its rich and abundant contents might well be said to rival the conceptions put forward in the name of Faith,
As we see, therefore, Steiner is not only opposed to religious revelation and philosophical metaphysics, but he would also abolish those moral anomalies which are the outcome of an obsolete way of regarding the concerns of life, and which are embodied in a morality chained to a “divine law,” or, to the “Categorical Imperative,”’ as Kant has called it.
In this decisive struggle the most modern thinkers of the day have remained far behind Steiner, the Philosopher, so that he has had to call on them again and again not to let their courage flag, using many a sharp word and jibe when he has seen them drifting back into the old religious, metaphysical, and moral views which had served for our forefathers. Steiner has made short work of the flaccid dualism of knowledge and belief to which such minds have been content to pander, and his words ring out in reproach to all“who shrink back from a clarity of vision that would destroy their smug and comfortable views as to this Universe”, 2NoteText who prefer to rely on some vague and mystical power, while at the same time they are most anxious to avoid the martyrdom of soul which is bound to be the lot of those who seek to set aside all the time-honoured elements of education, and replace them by an entirely new conception of the Universe. Yet persons whose weak and easy-going attitude of mind can rise to no new efforts of thought with regard to the creation of the Universe are very apt to persuade themselves that no such new thought is possible at all. But Steiner has nothing but praise for the logical attitude taken up by whole-hearted ecclesiastics. He respects, for instance, the conservatism of Dr. Bautz, Catholic Professor of Theology at the University of Muenster, who has the courage to carry his thoughts to their legitimate conclusions. “He maintains those ultimate ideas,” observes Steiner, “to which, having accepted the primary ones imposed on him by his Confession, he cannot do otherwise than subscribe. For this reason his conclusions are of far greater value than those of the liberal theologians, who water down the Christian teaching to such an extent that modern Darwinism can at a pinch even form part of their Christian Confession.”
Steiner pleads most earnestly for a definite cleavage between the new and the old; any attempt at blending the two—with all their irreconcilable contrasts, however well intentioned—he most decisively rejects, all such half-measures being only too sure to lead into some cul-de-sac, as the experiences of the past years have proved to be the case; for the rays of our new spiritual life need but a natural focus to enable them to flash forth with a power begotten of unity. Modern minds are mostly still far too old-fashioned for Steiner. They shirk the final consequences attaching to their intellectual and scientific knowledge, the reason being that they neglect to “delve down” into the ‘“depths of their own life of feeling” (“in die Tiefen ihres Empfindungslebens”), where strength would be forthcoming to revivify their will. “Thought,” continues Steiner, “goes on its way all the same; and the minds of our contemporaries are gradually adapting themselves to Darwinism, though their sensibility and feeling remain still completely Christian. Feeling, however, does not derive the same sense of elation from the facts of nature as it has been able to draw from religion, and it is this discord existing in their minds that gives rise in the case of would-be moderns to a want of courage when it comes to admitting the final conclusions to which their process of thinking must logically have led them. And how cowardly seems this chatter on the part of science declaring that ‘it does not as yet know enough’ to justify it in ‘giving a definite reply to final questions” when we compare such admissions to the daring with which Dr. Bautz stands up for his views concerning Helland Purgatory! Where is to be found the modern man who has the courage to bring his train of thought in this respect to its consistent issue? and— for the few who have the courage—what is the treatment meted out to them? ... Dullness and laissez faire are the distinguishing characteristic of our would-be moderns. In every respect they may be said to stand far behind the ‘pious orthodox,’ for the orthodox have their definite conception of the Universe, while what the “moderns” put forward is, at best, but patch-work. These thoughts possess me whenever I see the two views of the Universe—that of Christianity and that of modern Natural Science—brought up against each other. And, indeed, I far prefer my opponents to those whose opinions approximate more closely to my own! But least of all do I like those go-betweens —the theologians—who, like, for instance, Strauss, defend Darwinism, and the naturalistic teachers, who range themselves on the side of Christianity. ... The only “wholesome” attitude is an honest and open advance to the logical consequences of opinions which we have formed, It is the innate grandeur of its personalities that raised Christianity to greatness, and great personalities are needed to guide us upon the path of modern thought.”
It is hardly necessary for us to remind the reader that the Christianity to which Steiner here alludes time and again is historical Christianity—the Christianity of Peter and of Paul; of Roman Catholicism and of Protestantism,. It is this that he declines to accept, because, to use the words of Nietzsche, “it is diseased to the very marrow, hypocritical and deceitful, and has degenerated until it has come to be at variance with its own original object.”
The modern method of thought to which he refers is that spiritual Monism for which Steiner paved the way as early as 1883, and which has in the present day developed into the system of anthroposophical and spiritual science—a natural science of the highest power, for it seeks and finds spirit in Nature, and not “beyond.”
Steiner takes up the same uncompromising attitude in respect of what is in Germany known as “' Reformed Catholicism,’ for he takes both theWürzburg Apologist, Hermann Schell, as well as the Bavarian Cleric, Dr. Joseph Müller, severely to book. In a diametrically opposite attitude to Dr. L. Wahrmund (Professor of Catholic Ecclesiastical Law at the University of Innsbruck), who inveighs against ‘“Catholicism as embodying the principle of the “standing pat,” Schell is moved to regard it as making rather for “advancement,’ and is of opinion that what stands in the path of spiritual progress cannot be essentially catholic. The reactionary elements in Catholicism should, however, he considers, be run to earth and fought down without mercy, so that Catholicism may be free to evolve without hindrance. To this Steiner observes: “Not very long since the Pope gave expression to a very plain opinion; and it showed whether he was of the same mind as this Würzburg Professor in the matter of true Catholicism, for he placed Schell’s books upon the Index, and thus made them inaccessible to the Faithful; this being as much as to say that the teachings of this theologian amount to heresy.”
Cardinal Rauscher is therefore entirely right when he says that “the Church knows no progress.” It was this utterance on the part of his Eminence that made such a “deep and lasting impression” upon Steiner, when, as a youth, he heard it spoken in the Austrian House of Lords. “It seemed to me at the time,” he has observed, “to be imbued with a truly religious spirit, and this would seem to attach to it still. Were I a true, believing Catholic I should probably seize every opportunity to prove and defend the truth of such a statement.”
According to Steiner, people like Schell are animated by two souls: “They feel the power of that knowledge to which man can attain by the effort of independent thought, yet they cannot free themselves from the trammels of their religious Confession. Thus they seek for some means by which to unite their faith to their scientific leanings. In opposition to such an attitude we are bound most emphatically to say that all independent science has been evolved by the human spirit, and that Catholicism has itself never produced anything of the kind. Catholicism has never moved a step farther than it has been driven to do by the force of human intellect. It has merely admitted things which it has been unable to explain away. There is no chance of Catholicism being able to bring its teachings into harmony with the progress of the human intellect, and it would be better for this to be acknowledged on all sides, A true Catholic must of necessity take up a hostile attitude towards everything that the spirit and intellect of man has of itself evolved, as, for instance, Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, and the modern spirit (that of the Anthroposophist) is bound to be opposed to everything given out by the Church as being based on Revelation. Every attempt made to build a bridge between the two is an objective, if not necessarily a subjective, falsification of the facts of the case, and this is in itself harmful, for it prevents the fight between the two views of the Universe being fought to a finish.
“When Professor Schell inquires, ‘Why should it be deemed contrary to the Church to attempt to bring about a fruitful union between the doctrine of revelation and the advanced, profound, and broadening Philosophy of the New Era?’ the very standpoint he is setting up becomes a stumbling block to the progress which the facts require of us, for he thus introduces a centre group between the honest adherents of the Church and their equally honest opponents, and this central ‘buffer’ prevents the impact and delays the final settlement between the two. Indeed, those who stand for freedom of thought prefer the Pope to Professor Schell; for, when they say yes the Pope says no! And this is as it should be, for the Pope has every right to do so, seeing that infallibility is claimed for him in respect of all things uttered ex cathedra! So that those who support Catholicism need but keep to what the Pope says, and this has been recognized ever since the dogma of infallibility has been set up.”
Steiner's argument is that an ancient and decaying system must be left to go its way,and that meddling with it in the vain hope of resuscitating something which no longer contains the germ of healthy life can but contaminate its would-be healers. It is this point of view that Steiner has endeavoured with so much strenuous earnestness and convincing eloquence to put before the men of his time. Minds must be “revolutionized.” In this lies the task. For modern thought must bring about a “spiritual revolution” based on a natural and scientific system, the spiritual meaning of which Goethe was the first to apprehend, and this spiritual revolution will lead us to its own logical and enlightening goal.
14. Foes Within and Without
THoseE who are inclined to bestow no more than superficial attention on Steiner’s writings (both philosophical and spiritual) are likely to find in them what they will take to be many a contradiction. It should, however, be borne in mind that here is a man of outstanding genius and originality—fearless withal—who is proceeding along a path of his own making, and that for this reason, if for no other, no common and hitherto accepted “theories” or catchwords can be expected to explain his meaning.
Philosophy, in its capacity of a “closed corporation” has been wroth because Steiner has had the audacity to knock Kant off his pedestal. The monistic guild took umbrage in its tum because he declined to acquiesce in the stationary point of view which they have made their own but, electing to go farther afield, has been led to consider the laws of evolution in the German and spiritual sense they had come to have for Goethe, rather than in the more English and materialistic one of Darwin. And, finally, the theological caste, comprising the Pharisees and Scribes of both confessions, have come to regard Steiner as their most dangerous rival, for the spiritual rebirth he has brought about in the life of Christianity threatens, sooner or later, to make their ministrations superfluous.
The jibe cast at him in earlier days to the effect that he dabbled in “Buddhistic theosophy” can no longer, even by the greatest stretch of imagination, be made to fit the case; for though it is true that Steiner acted for some years as General Secretary 7Though Dr, Steiner worked hard in this position he did so entirely without remuneration in any form whatever. — Transtator's Note to the German section of the Theosophical Society, he resigned his post as such in 1910, for he had outgrown Mrs. Besant’s leading strings, and was not inclined to dance to any English-Oriental piping.
Socialists and Communists are also up against him, for he has declined to be a party to the follies and vagaries of either, and his outspoken criticism of the various “programmes” and the short-sighted political quackery put forward by them to hasten the millennium has made him many an enemy among those who would not have been ill pleased had they been able to use Steiner as their “party-man” and “Steinerism”’ as their “party cry.”
But even within the ranks of Steiner’s adherents we now and again meet those who are inclined to quibble at his grand range of vision, although they call him their master. But the reason for this hesitation is generally to be found in a lack of all the qualities which are so necessary for arriving at a full and sympathetic understanding of their teacher. Inabilities of this. kind have their origin more often than not in the mental and spiritual tumult occasioned in the souls of men by the times in which we now live. Those who have been most deeply stricken and who, unlike Haeckel and Nietzsche, feel themselves unequal to casting from them for good and all the faded remnants of a religious and moral code that has outlived its day, have indeed failed to understand either Steiner the Philosopher, or Steiner the Anthroposophist in the manner in which he desires to be understood. In spite, therefore, of their “Card of Membership to the Anthroposophical Society” such members remain practically at the same level—mentally and spiritually speaking—at which they were when first joining, save, possibly, for such crumbs of superficial knowledge they may have picked up from the teachings of spiritual science. Indeed, such members are (and will in all probability increasingly prove themselves to be) unsuited to co-operate in the great work of the present and the near future, for they are wanting in the most elementary qualifications needed. Persons of this kind have often not the faintest interest in philosophy: they may be deficient in scientific training, or again they may lack the ability to think “logically.” They may, indeed, be victims of the inner soul-revolution, and have been caught in the throes of the seething unrest that is so poignant a sign of the conditions of the times; but in many such cases we find that the people thus affected still possess the old type of religious mind and have simply joined the Movement for the sake of what new sensation it may offer, much as they might don a garment of a more modish cut. It is for this reason that they accept Steiner’s theosophical teachings with so much enthusiasm, letting them sink into their minds in the very same spirit in which they have been wont to take the “Revealed Scriptures” of clerical dogma to their emotional souls, while at the same time their master’s wonderful work in the field of theoretical knowledge and in ethics makes no impression on their reasoning souls. At times, indeed, such members as we are now alluding to have been inclined to “apologize” for Steiner in regard to these—to their minds—less interesting and important writing. The plea they set up is that they belong to “an earlier and as yet unripe period” of their teacher’s career—a time when Steiner was no more than a ‘ Seeker” and bent, like Haeckel and Nietzsche, on “attacking”” Christianity, as well as those moralities to which “all good people subscribe.” And in their heart of hearts they would gladly see these “discomforting” evidences of an “ebullition,” which they can hardly approve, relegated to the scrap-heap. But as this is not possible they take another attitude, and try hard to explain away what is too strong meat for them, or they throw out sly hints as to “occult”” interpretations. In the main, however, they have been intent on clinging to what they are pleased to call Steiner’s “later and more mature work”’ and a diet of his privately delivered cycles of lectures on theosophical and anthroposophical subjects. As to there ever having really been any change in Steiner’s convictions—any volte-face so far as his ideas on these matters are concerned—nothing of the kind can be seriously suggested. Rather it may be said that his entire philosophy may be taken as forming the basis of his theosophy, and that it has not lost any of its value for this purpose with the lapse of time. This is a fact to which Steiner himself has referred, in his introduction to his little book, “Goethe, the Father of a. New Aesthetic.” Indeed, those who still venture to make such assertions, or pretend that there are irreconcilable contradictions, changes, and gaps between what was said then and now display obviously too prejudiced a mind to be able to entertain Steiner’s “world of universal ideas.” And any such persons, having made the initial mistake of coming to Steiner at all, would now be best advised to “allow him to go his own way” and themselves, like Max Seiling, return to the fold of the Catholic Church. For, assuredly, Steiner’s writings are not the right sort of food for “sturdy Christians and Philistines” (Steiner), “and must thoroughly upset their digestive organs. For there is in these writings something concerning which we may say as did Nietzsche in Zarathustra (“Vom hohen Menschen,’ 6): But such things are not for them that have long ears, nor is every word seemly to all mouths: for these are superfine and far-off things, which may not be nibbled at by sheep.”
Yet, what is there that the sheep do not try to nibble at? “I meed only mention,” says that apostate disciple, Erich Bamler, in his accusation written against Steiner, “that I had been brought up in a most Christian manner, and that under the term ‘divine’ I was trained to conceive that which really as divine and not some anthroposophical figment of an idea.” While as to Max Seiling, of whom the present writer has already given particulars in an earlier work, it may here be said that he, having overcome “Anthroposophy’s pseudo-Catholicism,” as his publisher calls it, is now safely back in the bosom of the Catholic Church, “where alone salvation may be found.’ And this being so, Seiling ‘feels much satisfaction,”’ as he says at the close of his Christian pamphlet directed against Steiner, “in being able publicly to proclaim his return to Catholicism”— while Seiling’s publisher, Wilhelm Heims, who during these onslaughts on Steiner also blossomed forth as a writer, comments as follows upon Seiling’s closing sentence: “In the same way, too, will those Protestant Christians, who have drifted into the anthroposophical movement, find that their revulsion against its activities as well as its false Christianity, will constrain them to return to the fold of the Protestant Church, doing so to their great blessing.” (N.B.—Bamler being one of these shining examples !) “But those who still feel that they cannot do without metaphysical (!) speculations should turn their attention to Christian Mysticism to satisfy their yearnings, for here they will run no danger of straying into the by-paths of the newer—or newest—theosophy.”
Heims further emphasizes the fact that Seiling,“having found the way back to his old Faith and away from the bewilderments of Anthroposophy ... assumes no hostile attitude towards Protestantism,” though he feels bound all the same “to range himself ‘most emphatically’ on the side of what ‘he cannot but regard as being the true Catholicism.” And by this, of course, is meant Jesuitry. How well we can imagine the joy among the Jesuits at the return of this sheep they had given up for lost! Here, indeed, was “water on their mill-wheels” to aid their activities against Steiner—activities that have, indeed, been conspicuous ever since the disaffection of Seiling. And in view of this disaffection it may not be out of place to quote some words of the poet Hebbel, for they would seem to apply with a peculiar fitness to the case of Steiner: “Should a low type of person quarrel with you he will at once be able to count on having as many friends as you will have enemies.”
In contemplating the trend of Seiling's spiritual development, we particularly notice one dominant characteristic: he is perpetually being either “amazed” or “taken aback”; indeed, he never gets away from these conditions. His first juvenile “amazement”’ had to do with the Master of Bayreuth whom the erstwhile pupil of the Jesuits at Speyer will doubtless have also renounced by now. For Wagner’s Germanized Christianity “cannot,” as Seiling himself has repeatedly pointed out, “be reconciled with all the contradictions inherent in the clerical dogma of the Roman Catholic Church—contradictions which led even Luther in his ‘Table Talk’ to speak of the Christian religion as being a ‘crazy’ one.” 8“Wer war Christus?” (“Who was Christ?”): Seiling, 1915, p. 52.
Now, when Seiling, in 1915, rushed into print with his book “Wer war Christus” in which he desired to show himself a devoted apostle of Steiner, he was again “taken aback” by Steiner’s refusal to give his approval to the book. The fact is that Seiling was still badly “bitten” with spiritualism, and, this being so, he could not help placing a spiritualistic interpretation on the miracles associated with the Personality of Christ. Yet if Seiling, during the several years that he was presumably studying under Steiner, had really immersed himself in spiritual science, it would not have been possible for him to have applied his spiritualistic “wisdom,”’ dating from the year 1901, to the interpretation of Christianity and its Founder. But the rebuff which Steiner administered to him was more than the vain and over-indulged “Councillor” 9Hofrat Seiling. could endure, and was a particularly nasty “jar” following 10Compare his confession, “Zum Fall Steiner,” which might more correctly have been called “Zum Fall Seilings,” in “Physische Studien,” January, 1917. as it did, upon so “many a thing touching this new Paul” which had "taken him aback”’ during the course of “recent years.” It is in this fact that the whole explanation of his conduct may be found to lie. But his final “amazement” was roused by certain papers in the Jesuitical contemporary, “Stimmen der Zeit” (1918), in which Father Zimmermann, S. J., "a learned man in the best sense of the term,” closed his article “Wege zum Wahn” (“Paths to Madness”), which denounces Anthroposophy as a false doctrine, with the words, “the essential relationship of Catholicism and Anthroposophy to each other is that of yes to no”. and Seiling, having by this time run off the rails, so to speak, so far as Anthroposophy was concerned—having indeed, proved his own “unripeness” for the acceptance of an anthroposophical view of the Universe, and being adrift, while ardently desiring security—bethought him of the Catholic Church, where guarantees were ampler and more imposing than anywhere else. Seiling, therefore, came to feel that he had been “wondrously guided” to those Jesuitical papers at the very moment when he was thinking of severing his connexion with the Anthroposophical Movement and “the study of this new literature,” the work of authors who “amazed me” by their “knowledge and objective manner of stating their facts,” brought this sheep, now escaped from the anthroposophical thicket to the “increased conviction that true salvation can alone be found in the bosom of the Catholic Church.”
15. Persons and Things
We may seem to have delayed somewhat unduly over the case of Seiling,1Some of the discussion has been omitted in this translation. but our reason was that it offers a typical example of the psychology that distinguishes Steiner’s opponents, as well as that of many of those who, after having been his disciples, fall away from him. Here we have had the edifying sight of Seiling himself giving evidence of his own want of loyalty to men and to ideas; of the way, too, in which he made the attempt to foist all his own waverings, changes, and “abandonings” on to Steiner—whose World of,Ideas had become vaster and more profound as time progressed, but who has never fallen from one extreme into the other, as Seiling would like to make his readers believe. It must in all fairness be admitted that every kind of intellect is not adapted to the ready acceptance of the combination of Philosophy and Anthroposophy, which, in its unity and interdependence, constitutes Steiner’s conception of the Universe. But at the same time the man and his thought, the man and his logically conceived system of spiritual science, are inseparable. Indeed, when referring to the Parsival Mystery in the earlier pages of this book we had occasion to point out the conditions under which men are called to serve and guard the Holy Mysteries.
In the case of the Grail only the purest among human beings was in the German story held fit to be its guardian, whereas, if we take the view held by the Romish Church, the Pope, as “Christ’s Representative on Earth,” is of practically no account in his capacity of man. Upon this view the Holy Office is completely separate from the individual, who may fill the office. It is only when the Pope delivers his message from the Holy Chair, ex cathedra Petri, that he is infallible, and this be it observed, only since 1870, and as the result of the dogmatic finding of a majority in the Conclave of Cardinals.
It is difficult to imagine anything which can more completely separate the claim of a human being to be infallible from that individual’s holiness, than that it should be admitted that, divested of his office, the individual may commit errors or fall into sin to what ever extent he pleases! Nevertheless it can at once be seen that what may seem natural enough where Roman Catholicism is concerned cannot be applied in the same manner to Anthroposophy. Here the person and the thing stand in the closest possible connexion one to the other, and so long as there is any attempt made to dissociate the two, there can be no proper understanding either of the person or of his work; for anthroposophy {the “thing”) depends entirely upon the “person,” its Founder, and he stands or falls with it. Seiling, while a member of the Anthroposophical Movement, must have had as great a craving for “authority” on which to “believe” as he now claims to have for the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church and for statements made by the Jesuits, in whose hands he now finds himself. Had Seiling not believed so blindly in Steiner, but had he rather by hard thinking thought himself into Steiner’s conclusions, and thus reached his inner meaning, as Steiner requires his pupils to do, he could not, to our thinking, have “slithered”’ down an uneven decline, until there was nothing for it but to plunge into the abyss of the Romish Church, an establishment that would rather swallow the entire anthroposophical movement whole than permit the mystery of the Living Christ to be made known.
But Seiling was very soon to discover that in our movement the person and the thing go together: and the more “human” the personality of Steiner appeared to him, the less did he seem able to maintain his belief in the sanctity of the thing. At first it can certainly have been no easy matter for him to lay profane hands on it, but now—now that he is safely ensconced among the Jesuits, where he can count on encouragement and support—he doubtless finds little difficulty in “blackening that which is so radiant, and dragging those who are exalted in the dust.” If ever anyone has shown a preternatural ability for “turning his coat,” then that person certainly is Seiling, for he treats his conceptions of the Universe as he might a garment—to be put on or off at will.
The opposite method to the one which we have just been considering, namely, the method of treating the person with respect because of the sanctity of the thing for which the person stands, is the only method which can lead to the desired goal, but it is unthinkable to minds nurtured amid the decadent thought and feeling obtaining in the Catholic Church, the reason being that the Jesuits have taken care to keep alive the un-German distinction between person and thing in all that appertains to spiritual life.
Richard Wagner (for whose sake Seiling was ever ready to go through fire, as long as there was no fear of its burning) has in his capacity of German artist identified himself most ardently with the German Monism which treats the person and the thing as one and indivisible. How much more must not this have been the case with the German Mystics of the Middle Ages,
as we have attempted to show in the earlier pages of this book, to say nothing of the German spiritual thinkers of the present day ?_“To separate the artist from the man,” says Wagner, “is about as thoughtless an idea as to talk of separating soul and body. No artist could be loved—never could his art be comprehended— were it not that he, at all events, unconsciously and involuntarily, is also beloved as a man, and that— along with his art—his life has also come to be understood.”
But in appraising both the mind and the character of a strong and outstanding personality, who by reason of special and peculiar endowments stands outside the common run of everyday humanity, we cease to have any right to apply commonplace and average standards. To do so, indeed, is as often as not tantamount, not only to damning the individual, but to setting up a barrier to all human progress upon the path to a higher civilization. “This much have learnt,” observes Nietzsche,11“Der Wille zur Macht,” Book IV, 100 “had our supply of great men depended upon a ‘majority vote’ as to their qualifications (allowing for the sake of argument that the majority is able at all to appraise “greatness’ and the qualifications which go to make it possible), well, it is extremely unlikely that there would have been such a thing as a great man at all. For it is owing to the fact that evolution is independent of the consent of ‘the many’ that anything worthy of admiration ever happens at all upon our earth.”
To the ordinary middle-class person (bürgerlicher Philister) the very characteristics of genius are “suspect,” as denoting dubious, and probably immoral, tendencies; so that Nietzsche is not far out when he refers to the ‘typical immorality of genius.” How far more incomprehensible to the common herd (Herdenmensch) must be the character of an Initiate, who is as far above genius as genius is above the Philistine | Indeed, we may say that Nietzsche’s “typical immorality of genius’ bears much the same relation to the character of an Initiate as simple arithmetic to the higher mathematics. The higher includes the lower at a higher potency, and the “higher potency” appears accordingly to the Philistine mind as a more ‘“abundant evil,”” so that his outraged susceptibilities are bound to express themselves in a desire to “turn and rend,” The Jewish Philistines thus necessarily considered Christ to be “highly immoral,” for He rode “rough-shod” over their ideas of morality, as expressed in the letter of their narrow-minded laws, treating them as traps which had been set to catch His Feet.
Steiner himself draws a distinction between two states of moral consciousness: a Philistine state, which is here (i.e. of the earth, earthy), and a higher state, which takes the larger, the more spacious view, and stands beyond the commonly accepted definitions of “good”and‘“evil” And in reference to a verse from the “Bhagavad-Gita,” which speaking of the “wise man’ says that he cannot er or sin, Steiner, in his book entitled “Mysticism,” gives the following explanation:—
“Should he apparently err, or sin, then it must be that his thoughts illumine his actions with a light by which what we call sin and error cannot be so judged.”
The apparent error or sin, then, on the part of Steiner, the Initiate, which Seiling assumed to be actual, should be left to the consideration of qualified minds—minds which are able to bring to bear upon questions of good and evil a less commonplace standard of judgment than that of the ordinary average individual; for the average individual will in Steiner’s case inevitably lose his power of right judgment and finish up with the desire to “burn and crucify.”
In the two “Zukunft” articles, of which mention has already been made, both of which, by the way, have been totally misunderstood by his critics, Steiner has stated his attitude in respect to “Alte und neue Moralbegriffe” (“Old and New Concepts of Morality”) doing so, moreover, in the same spirit that distinguishes his treatment of the subject in his earlier book, “The Philosophy of Freedom.” And here Steiner’s lucid exposition of the thoughts and actions animating great men, set down in sentences dating back to the year 1893, applies to his own relationship to members of the Theosophical and Anthroposophical Societies, and is calculated to explain and clear away any doubts as to his conduct in the minds of any ethical individualist or social evolutionist who is accustomed to judge matters for himself without regard to standardized morality. After having cited numerous standpoints, all of which he condemns as being one-sided, Steiner proceeds to explain his own individual evolutionary standpoint that the “individualistic or socialistic utilitarian” who derives his rules for conduct from the nature of the individual or from that of the Community is guilty of the same mistake as is committed by those who believe in the rules of conscience. They all ignore the fact that all universal rules and laws become null and void as soon as the human being is face to face with the realities of life (as, for instance, in the Theosophical and Anthroposophical Societies). After all, laws are abstractions, but action “is ever the result of definite and concrete circumstances.” It is our business to weigh the various possibilities and select the most practical as being the most fruitful (not necessarily the most “moral”). It is this that concerns us when it comes to action. Each individual person is always being confronted with an entirely different situation, and his decision must always be in accordance with what to him appears best to meet each particular situation. In one case it may be that a self-regarding decision, in another that an act of self-abnegation will be found to be right; in one case the interests of the individual, in another those of the community, will have most weight. Egoists and those who sing hymns of praise on the subject of sympathy are both equally wrong. What stands higher than the benefit accruing to oneself or to others is the consideration as to which of any two given lines of action is the most important. In no case should action be the result of feeling, be that feeling selfish or altruistic, but simply and solely the result of right judgment as to what has, in any given case, to be done. It is possible for a person to regard some action as right and carry it out, although in so doing he is stifling all his own personal feelings, as in the case of a surgeon performing an operation (or an Initiate, putting tests to his pupils). As, however, there is no such thing as absolute right judgment, the validity of all truth being relative and dependent upon the standpoint of the person expressing it, so, too, the judgment of any person with regard to what he may, in any given case, consider to be the right thing to do is obviously bound to be in accordance with his relations to the world. (As, however, the personality of an Initiate stands in an entirely distinctive relationship to the world, it will readily be seen that the judgments of an Initiate will be very different from those of ordinary men.) Two different people will approach the same set of circumstances from entirely opposite points of view due to their characters, experience, and education. Those who understand that right judgment is the decisive factor in conduct are bound to think of ethics in an individualistic sense. The formation of right judgments does not depend upon any rules, but results from natural insight. General rules can only be deduced from facts, but it is by the (creative) action of man that the facts of ethics themselves are first called into being.
Only really progressive minds are fit to deal with the “facts” which Steiner here creates, and which are “hard nuts” upon which unprogressive people will “break their teeth.”
16. Anthroposophy and Catholicism
In the year 1916 Steiner’s Roman Catholic disciple, Freiherr von Bemus, brought out the first number of a new monthly called “Das Reich,’ against which the Rev. Ludwig Heilmaier took exception in the “Allgemeine Rundschau.” It also stimulated Father Zimmermann, S.J., to launch his series of denunciatory articles dealing with Catholicism versus Anthroposophy.
Freiherr von Bernus was most anxious to place his Anthroposophy en rapport, so to speak, with his Catholicism——-an attempt to which there could naturally be no objection whatever, so far as he was concerned in his capacity of a private individual. But he went beyond this. He sought to effect a general reconciliation, which was to include all Catholics as well as all Anthroposophists, and, having taken up this attitude, he met Heilmaier’s attack in the next issue of “Das Reich” (3, 1916) with the following statement as to his “Anthroposophical Roman Catholicism”:—
“There is nothing in Spiritual Science that can be regarded as fundamentally inimical to the structure of the teaching of the Catholic Church. But in matters where the Church demands mere faith spiritual science goes farther, and points the way to super-sentient knowledge.”
That Heilmaier should in the name of his Church have risen up in arms against such doctrine need hardly surprise anyone! The statement of Herr von Bernus was so erroneous that the reader could not help thinking that he was not only insufficiently informed on the subject of spiritual science, but was equally at a loss as to the tenets which form the “structure” of the Roman Catholic Faith. Heilmaier, like Cardinai Rauscher and the Jesuit, Father Zimmermann, recognized the true state of affairs when he declared Anthroposophy and Catholicism to be respectively “as far apart as the poles.”
Now, von Bernus speaks “of the structure or edifice of Catholic teaching” (Lehrgebäude der katholischen Kirche), but surely this “structure” or “edifice” shelters the teaching of eternal damnation for all unbelievers, reserving salvation for all the Faithful at the close of one earthly existence; likewise the teaching of the physical virginity of Mary, the Mother of Jesus; and furthermore, it teaches the forgiveness of sins by the first priest who happens to come along, and the doctrine of personal life everlasting; it teaches that the Pope, Christ’s Representative on Earth, is above all errors of belief or action, by virtue of his perpetual illumination by the Holy Ghost; and then there is the teaching of transubstantiation— the turning of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ by a priest at the mass; and finally, the doctrine that ‘man has no spirit,” which was proclaimed by the Eighth General Council at Constantinople in 869, and which introduced materialism into religion as well as into philosophy and natural science.
And, in view of the above, how can Roman Catholicism be reconciled to spiritual science, which teaches the repeated incarnation of the spirit, and no more than a short spell of both Kamaloka (Purgatory) and Devachan (Heaven), following on each earth life? Here, surely, are obstacles which are bound to give us pause.
Yet Herr von Bernus, still labouring persistently in his effort to bring about some rapprochement, is even ready to fall back on historical evidence, and, greatly daring, call to witness “that which—beyond the veil of this world of the senses—has nevertheless been revealed to the Mystics, Seers, and Initiates of all ages and of all peoples.” Certainly, we are quite ready to agree that it was the same... that is to say, nearly the same; for, had it been completely identical we should in this day have had no need of Steiner: we should have only have had to turn back to enjoy the teachings of Sankaracharya, or of the Buddha; we could have gone to Zarathustra or Laotze, Hermes or Moses; to Jesus, Paul, or Meister Eckhart. ... Yet such action on our part would not have met the needs of the present day, for to revive those remnants of ancient cultures could have carried us no step farther along the road we have to go. Besides, what has the lore known to these ancient Mystics, Seers, and Initiates to do with the “edifice”’ of the Catholic Church in the present day, decadent and thoroughly corrupt as it is, stigmatized by Schiller as a “rotten edifice of stupidity,” and one in which, according to Goethe, none but a “dull-witted crowd could feel at home? Does Herr von Bemus so entirely forget the war of extermination waged by Rome against these very same “Mystics, Seers, and Initiates,” and the sentences of the excommunication or martyrdom, as the case might be, which it passed upon them ?
These heroic spirits brought the “edifice” many a “pearl of great price”—gifts of knowledge which were by no means to the Church’s liking, seeing that they fundamentally contradicted its teaching. These men, too, had the courage to face the clerics and cast their heresies in their teeth, knowing the while that their love of truth might well cost them their lives. Verily, it is the Church that has joined forces with Lucifer and Ahriman against the living Christ, and on good fruit but only “frightfulness ” could be the result of a union between Anthroposophy and Catholicism.
Ludwig Heilmaier, who is well informed in all that concerns Catholicism, is therefore perfectly right when he says that if “Das Reich” is going to make it its business to represent spiritual science it would be opening up “ancient heresies slain by the Catholic Church in spiritual encounter ages ago.”
The most cursory glance into the history of the Church would have enlightened von Bernus on this heading; yet he persists, and declares::
“The Catholic Church should not approach spiritual science in a spirit of enmity; it should recognize, rather, how deep and close is the relationship binding them both together so that they might stand united against the materialism of the day.”
But this is just what Schell also said: “Why should it be deemed contrary to the Church to attempt to bring about a fruitful union between the doctrine of revelation and the advanced, profound, and broadening philosophy of this New Era?” A Church that could in 869 deny the ‘spirit,’ making shift, as it were, with a “body and soul,” has most certainly prepared the way for material science in its turn to discredit the existence of the soul, and thus reduce what had been a trinity to a unity consisting of the visible and tangible body.
The natural science of which Copernicus, Kepler, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, and Goethe were the exponents had been conducted in a spirit of reverence (geistgemaess), yet the Church scented heresy in their work, and banned their discoveries, just as in the first centuries of the Christian Era it excommunicated the Gnostics, and in the Middle Ages persecuted the Mystics for pursuing the “Hidden Way.” But when, at a later date, Newton and Haeckel approached natural science from a more material point of view the Church changed its attitude and became more conciliatory. A thoroughly “Ahrimanic” science is therefore no longer considered heretical by a “Luciferan” Church: indeed, it has begun to take a deep interest in science!
This throws the “Christianity” of the Church into strong relief, for it would seem to imply that only such matters as are beneath it, and are of purely materialistic value, can be recognized as the proper field for science; while what is above, what is beyond matter... .. what is irreconcilably antagonistic to the Church’s point of view—to this the Church would deny science all right of entry. Not that the Church need any longer fear such attempts on the part of natural science, for natural science has lost its desire to take this stronghold. The Church in its day of power cast the coarsest of matter before the investigators of natural science—much as one might throw a bone to a dog for it to “sharpen its teeth” on, and having done so to forget all about “that affair of the soul,” which was to remain the domain of the priesthood. This dualism between material science and Luciferan mysticism is dear to the Church; it is, indeed, its own creation. Woe, then, to him who would seek to put it aside and introduce in its stead the monism of a Christian spiritual science, relieving the soul of both Ahrimanic materialism and Luciferan mysticism.
Haeckel would have never been able to imbue natural science with materialism to the extent to which he did had not the Church forestalled him and given a materialistic interpretation to the Bible. Hence it may be said that scientific materialism is not as noxious in its effects upon civilization as is the religious materialism that has brought about a treatment of the Christian Mysteries which must be regarded as not only unspiritual but as in direct contradistinction to their true spirit.
It is very probable that the Church was not aware that her own actions were to beget an opponent who, in the fullness of time, should endanger her position—aye, her very existence; an opponent who would deny to her her own “soul”!
Thus does evil dig its own grave.
But far greater than any danger which might assail her from a science limited to the things of this earth is the danger awaiting her “from on high”—from those spheres where spiritual science works in its own fields. Now, if in this day the spirit rises against the Church {after the Church has discredited the belief in there being anything of the kind), then, indeed, her “last state will be worse than her first,” when it was a matter of merely defending herself against “matter.” Asa last resort the arts of Jesuitry will probably serve her for a time; but in a struggle waged with spiritual science—-with that stronger opponent “from above”—the blunted weapons of faith must in the long run yield the day. The position that has been created accounts for the campaign of calumny now being waged by Jesuitry against Steiner and his gigantic task; the Church and Materialistic Science are allies, united against the ““common foe,” whom they have found and “marked down” in Spiritual Science. Together they make common cause against the strictly scientific incursions into the spiritual worlds which Anthroposophy undertakes, and with respect to which they would permit of no more than the emotional drug provided by metaphysical abstractions, or—maintain complete silence. Lucifer, therefore, is obliged to strike his bargain with Ahriman, so that both may be in a position to resist their strongest and most dangerous enemy— CHRIST.
Yet in spite of this Herr von Bemus imagines a situation contrary to all reason, and suggests that the most reactionary of Churches, the Roman Catholic Church—with its dual taint of Lucifer-cum-Ahriman— a Church where none may dare to hold his own opinion, and where the worst and most sinister forces are at work undermining the very existence of civilization, he imagines that i4ai Church might ally itself to Rosicrucian Spiritual Science with its revolutionary Christian and Germanic outlook !—an alliance to the impossibilities of which von Bernus is blind, since he deems that “it” (the Church) “should recognize how deep and close is the spiritual relationship binding one to the other...” and that it is for them, therefore, “to stand united against the materialism of the day!”—a materialism which, be it understood, is deliberately encouraged by the Church herself. And so, in spite of the impassioned and illogical appeal of our friend, Herr von Bernus, the Rev. Father Zimmerman, S.J., shows a clearer insight and a more consistent grasp of the whole question when he says that “Catholicism and Anthroposophy stand to each other in the relationship that yes does to no,” thus incidentally once more confirming the statement made by Cardinal Rauscher: “The Church knows no progress.”
17. The Victory of Things
Having made his attempt to convince all who cared to listen of the affinity existing, in his opinion, between Anthroposophy and the “edifice” which is held by the reactionary spirit of the Roman Catholic Church, Herr von Bernus, two years later (see “Das Reich,” aid year of issue, Vol. IV), declared that this affinity no longer exists.12In this connexion it may be stated that the movement started by Dr. Freidrich Rittelmeyer for the “renewal of religious activity” (Christengemeinschaft) now issues its own monthly “Tatchristentum” {i.e. “Active Christianity”), obtainable from the Editorial Offices, “Tatchristentum,” 41, Urachstrasse, Stuttgart. It had taken him some considerable time to perceive what had been patent to every thinking person, however moderate his intellectual endowment, from the days of Luther up to those of Goethe. But having arrived at his belated conclusions, Herr von Bernus now writes that neither the "Catholic Confession nor yet the Church have shown themselves equal to meeting and grappling with the heavy trials of these changing times,” and that “their inadequacy and state of coma has made itself very evident, Should the papacy, then, within a period of no great length, and as the result of a movement emanating from the plotting of the Entente lodges, be brought to the verge of collapse, the Church will be meeting no more than the just fate due to the materialism of which it is the accomplice. But it would seem to be her (the Church’s) Karma that she should now no longer be capable of finding the impetus which might be able to save her.” Now, after this we might have been led to expect that von Bernus would have recanted his former utterances, have beaten his breast and penitently ejaculated mea culpa! But no; instead of doing this and craving indulgence at the hands of his critical opponent, he “reverses his spear” and cries out on him for being “a weak-head.” “It is to be hoped,” he says, in a footnote to his statement, “that the above furnishes a clear impression as to our opinion of the Catholic Church, and that it may deter any weakhead from writing anything further in opposition to ‘Das Reich’ ... for there would seem to be in some quarters a most burning desire to advance hand in hand with the teaching ‘edifice’ of the Catholic Church” (and we would beg the reader here to note the symbology, “hand in hand” with an “edifice”) “against modern scientific and ethical tendencies. May that somewhat self-centred Polemist, therefore, take this opportunity of reconsidering his futile and petty opinions as to our position so far as the Catholic Church is concerned.”
Had Herr von Bernus, who might himself be called somewhat self-centred and didactic, only taken the trouble to be more explicit in the first instance with regard to the position in which he stood to the Catholic Church, no such “futile and petty opinion” as to any connexion between Anthroposophy and Catholicism could have arisen and much useless polemic might have been avoided.
Yet in spite of having applied the epithet “weak-head,” Herr von Bernus feels in no way hindered from making an appeal to mutual brotherly love, quoting Christ’s words: “But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: ... but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire,” Now, however, as “fool” and “weak-head” mean one and the same thing, and seeing that von Bernus, in his baronial pride and utter lack of self-criticism, applies these names to another, it becomes evident that he himself should be sentenced to a double dose of hellfire. The metaphors employed by his adversary are hardly happy, yet Herr von Bernus, the poet of countless vers d’occasion (see his “Vorgesang der neuen Zeit”), should surely have exercised greater forbearance since, in this respect, he himself inhabits a glass-house,
And, lastly, let us consider von Bernus’s attitude towards Protestantism. This he declares to be practically “at an end’ and to have “no further spiritual existence,”” while Roman Catholicism he believes to still “harbour possibilities” such as might “enable it to recover its fertility with the assistance of spiritual science.” And this is an observation he sees fit to make on the very same page on which he deplores the Church’s “insufficiencies”” and its “withered and moribund”” condition! It is, indeed pathetically evident that Herr von Bernus cannot get over the parlous state of his Holy Church—aye, that his heart still bleeds for her.
But let the facts now speak for themselves; for it happens that it is from the haunts of Protestantism that men are now coming forth eager to receive and assimilate the new spiritual truths.
Let us name no more than three Protestant clergymen: the Rev. Drs. Friedrich Rittelmeyer, Christian Geyer, and Hermann Heisler (whose writings in reference to Rudolf Steiner and his work belong to the best and most informing we as yet possess). Where, indeed, is the Catholic priest to be found who can be said to have dealt with Anthroposophy or its founder in the same unprejudiced spirit, with the same “objectivity”? No; not a voice has been raised in the clerical camp of the Catholic Church, although an increasing volume of opinion in support of spiritual science is growing up among Protestants. And this fact furnishes but one more proof that it is Catholicism that is “over and done with,” having, indeed, since 869 been “spiritually non-existent”!
When Boos, Rittelmeyer, and some other of the newer disciples of Steiner observe that “Das Reich” has laid itself open to hostile comments, by declaring that “all is not well,” they do but emphasize what may be regarded as having been a lamentable side-slip on the part of its editor when he undertook to advance his utterly untenable arguments about “Anthroposophic-Catholicism.” Yet what has thus found expression in public and in literary circles percolates through into the more private strata of general society. At one time this seemed likely to produce a certain narrow sectarianism, against which Steiner himself was the first to warn us all, and with such good effect that we may now be permitted to say that these symptoms have almost entirely vanished from our midst. Indeed, the general staff of workers which surrounds the doctor may be said to be in every way an honour to its distinguished chief. That the “human element” should still from time to time assert itself need be no obstacle, but rather gives force to Dr Rittlemeyer’s appeal for the reorganization and for the necessity for that “threefold division”of the work to be done which is laid down in Dr. Steiner’s teachings, so that the threefold aspect thus presented to the mental and spiritual vision may serve to “revolutionize completely the hearer’s inward point of view.” 13Rittelmeyer: “Vom Lebenswerk Rudolf Steiner’s; eine Hoffnung neuer Kultur” (“Concerning Rudolf Steiner and His Work; The Hope of a New Culture.”) Indeed, should this “revolutionary process” not take place in the manner indicated, then would there be little hope of the greatest conception of spiritual science which the world has hitherto known reaching its fulfilment; rather would it then peter out as “the dogma of some obscure sect.” Dr. Karl Unger, of Stuttgart, has given expression to similar views. “We may be ready to admit,” he observes, “that those concerned in the defence have not always played their cards with the skill one might have hoped for, having, indeed, on occasions been to blame for encouraging the foolish idea that there really was something sectarian about the movement. But Anthroposophy is now confronted by fresh tasks which cannot be said to touch any clearly defined “following,” but which are rather the concern of a far wider public.” 14Karl Unger: “Lebenswirkungen der Anthroposophie” (Die Drei) (“The Effect Anthroposophy has on Life”).
Now, if Steiner has many a time almost verged on the extreme in his toleration of an entourage which was often nothing short of compromising, there have, nevertheless, been good grounds for this attitude on his part. He has stood in bitter need of a “following,” even if only “of sorts”—a following “of numbers,” if of nothing else, to assist in propelling his great work forward along the road to its goal; and we may safely say that to have waited and not to have founded the Anthroposophical Society, and not to have raised that monumental building at Dornach, the Goetheanum,15The Goetheanum at Dornach was burnt to the ground on the night December 31-January 1, 1923; the fire was due to incendiarism.— Translator's Note. would have been by far the greater misfortune. For the Goetheanum may be said to mark already the nascent life of that third phase of Christianity—the phase of which St. John, the writer of the Apocalypse, is the representative, and one in which the spiritual science of the future will come into full recognition.
In the interests of evolution and in accordance with the cosmic scheme whereof such labours are the outward and visible manifestation—indicating a new condition of things to be—Steiner has been preparing the way, even as Luther did before him. He has had —-and still has—need of ‘human material,” and it is not given to him to be at all times able to “pick and choose.” Like many a mariner on the high seas he has had to “set his sails to the wind,” to “tack about”’ and take the course open to him at the moment. I£, then, in so doing he has at times been misunderstood, both within and without the Society, it may indeed be said that such misunderstanding is a grievous tragedy for Steiner, the man, since what has thus been undeservedly thrust upon his shoulders he bears for the sake of his mission—-for the cause he has made so inseparably his own. There have also been fanatical adherents who bore within them, as it were, the very seeds of ultimate desertion, and several of these, more especially in the case of men engaged in literary work, have become Steiner’s violent opponents. Some of them have not been so entirely in the wrong, when all their various points of view come to be taken into consideration, and indeed we may say that they have done us far less harm than have certain types of “disciples.” But the staff that is now so thoroughly well organized for the work of “defensive action” is fully alive to their responsibilities and to the labour entailed, and with members on it such as Rittelmeyer, Boos, Unger, and Uehli—speakers all, and men of literary ability—the defence, as well as the other interests of Anthroposophy, may safely be considered to be at last in good hands. Indeed, the flotsam and jetsam which in earlier days drifted in and out of the Society, bearing about them a tinge of pseudo-theosoPhic aspirations, can, in the present day, hardly be said to feel quite comfortable or “at home’ in connexion with either the Anthroposophical Society or yet the Threefold Commonwealth, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for either of these organizations to find any use for them! Rather do they serve to hinder progress and all active work; for the goal has been reached, and as the flower falls, the fruit will begin to ripen. The scaffolding is removed as soon as the house is up; and so too is it with us and with the tangible evidences which represent our cause. The important thing is that out of the chaos of scaffolding and building, person and thing, shell and kernel, this movement—the Thing Itself—has now come forth, clean and undefiled, and able to claim its undoubted victory.
18. The Al-Destroyer and the All-Renewer
The German Spirit, which is essentially that of reformation, of revolution, and of evolution, has a formidable and difficult mission to perform. It is no less than a world-mission, and one which, begun in the days of Charlemagne, is now, in this our twentieth century, nearing its predestined fulfilment.
It was about the year 1500 that Luther delivered his revolutionary blow against Rome, and his action finally brought about the Reformation, the far-reaching influence of which has reacted on the world at large, Three hundred years later, another and second blow— albeit delivered upon another plane—was directed against the French Spirit: it was aimed at the Napoleonic yoke, the shattering of which resulted in the founding of a united German Empire. The third and last blow is the one now being inaugurated by the German Spirit and led by Rudolf Steiner and “his men,” and it is directed against Anglo-American materialism on the one side and against Indo-Russian mysticism on the other. The fronts, therefore, lie both west and east: materialistic science on the former, and wordy religiosity on the latter, against both of which naught but the highest, purest, and most spiritual forces—the Power of the Living Christ—can prevail: for that which is lowest and basest needs all that is most high before it can be brought under subjection. The evil forces, both in this world as in that of the spirit, have conspired to bring about Germany’s undoing, so that it is in Germany that we must in the first place “break and disarm” them. And this Breaker of the World-Evil, and of “World Phrases”’— both of which have resulted from a reactionary form of thought—must be a man, whose spiritual and mental grasp is “world-embracing” and capable of penetrating the world in both its heights and in its depths: such a man is Rudolf Steiner.
In earlier days it was the fashion to call Kant the “All-Destroyer”: yet is such a term a misnomer when applied to him. For, what did Kant “destroy”? Nothing, forsooth! He was the most reactionary of all thinkers, and he managed to preserve the ancient heritage of Religion and Morality from all incursions on the part of Reason, which would fain have destroyed it!
Goethe, on the other hand, took the field and courageously stood his ground in the “Adventure with Reason”—an encounter in face of which Kant ignominiously “turned tail”! And why? Because Goethe, who, unlike Kant, had not permitted his slumbers to be disturbed by English Philosophy, felt the German spirit fully awake and working mightily within him. It is therefore with Goethe’s “Adventure with Reason”’ that Steiner identifies himself, and in so doing he is following the path of Reason to its end. Kant was therefore the “All-Preserver,” for he succeeded in metaphysically embalming an already old and moribund form of spiritual life.
This, however, is the spirit which Rudolf Eucken wishes to instil into us today when he assumes the rôle of Guide and Prophet, heralding a new condition of humanity. Plans have been made for the dissemination of his ideas—even a “Eucken-Bund” has been formed which acclaims Eucken as the Reformer of our time. Now, it so happens that what Eucken, like Kant, is so extremely anxious to preserve, deeming it essential to a new impetus towards life (quite regardless of the fact that it is this that has so largely been responsible for landing us in chaos), is precisely what Steiner is for getting rid of, cutting down, root and branch! And, what is more: Steiner dare do so, being, as he is, that “Strong One from Above” who, according to a prophecy, is to come “before 1932,” and who shall be “as a wave of spiritual force’ to the German people—a force which will be worth a thousandfold the heritage received from our fathers, a heritage moreover that is already rotting and has fallen to pieces. Our revolutionary All-Destroyer is therefore at one and the same time also our most productive and most active AllRenewer, “For,” says Nietzsche, “he who shall create Good and Evil; such a one must of a truth first be capable of annihilating and must destroy that which had heretofore been esteemed valuable.” All “Strong Ones from Above” who have destroyed so that they might create have ever reaped the hatred of the weaklings beneath them—hatred and persecution; for the weak believe in the permanence of that which they deem “Good” and “Evil” and are loth to admit that each must in its turn pass over into the other according to the process of evolutionary development.
University men, whose mentality is on a par with that of Eucken, “cannot help themselves,” so to speak, from vilifying Steiner; for he gives his own experiences of the spiritual worlds, whereas they can do no more than speculate, according to the faith that is in them. To such as these Steiner is a “materialist,” for the only realm to which they have been able to apply the tests of their experience is that of this physical world. Indeed, the abuse levied at Steiner from this camp differs little from that which has been heaped on him by the Jesuits. Both of them—Lucifer, together with Ahriman—would slam the door wrenched open for us by Christ, Goethe and Steiner—slam it in our faces! The Pan-Germans, who had seized upon the prophecy as to the “Strong One from Above” have, of course, sought to turn its meaning to fit their own Chauvinistic uses, claiming that it foreshadows the coming of a second Bismarck, or Hindenburg, or even a “third William”! But here they are about as far out in their reckoning as the most decadent Jew, who may still be awaiting the Coming of some political and national Messiah. Yet, even as Judah derided and defamed the true Messiah, the World-Saviour, accounting Him a danger to the State and no better than a common criminal for daring to “revolutionize” their souls, so too are Germans going the best way to crucify morally the greatest Leader who is among us in the present day, since he too aims at something higher than that which is “national” or “metaphysical,”’ and would point the way to a World-Renewal by organizing the spiritual foundations of mankind so as to make a Peace of Nations such a reality as neither the League of Nations nor yet Lenin’s economic “World Revolution” can ever hope to bring about, since both are Jacking in that spirit which is the Organizing ChristForce.
For the German life and interests (Deutschtum) that Steiner represents and is fighting for is neither of the political kind so dear to the Imperialists, nor yet of the economic kind, for which the Capitalists would make a stand, but it embraces all those spiritual values which are inseparable from German Idealism. And here the reader may ask, ‘‘ Who are the Idealists in the Germany of to-day?” And is this not an empty phrase? Has not the blight of Anglo-American imperialistic economics and a blend of Jesuitry combined with Bolshevism most effectually usurped its place? And yet if is the German Idealists whom Steiner has called upon to line up under his banner in order that they may fight the Powers of Darkness in Germany, as elsewhere in the world. Nor need they even all be Germans, for this German spirit, aglow with the living Impulse of Christ, is not a national spirit in the narrowing sense of the term, but stands for the Universal—the Cosmic Spirit.
German life and spirit (Deutschtum) means for us the supreme type of humanity, which, while rooted, as it were, in German soil, yet extends out into the entire international world, its branches, leaves, blossoms, and fruit being shared alike by all. And here, in Central Europe, in Germany itself, where all that is inhuman and repellent to man’s better nature, has of late thriven in rank luxuriance, here it is that the great mission of the German Spirit led by Rudolf Steiner has found its initial work ready to hand. For the old and useless ballast must be cast overboard; we must be free from all such traditions... and again the question may arise, “Free to what ends?” and the answer is, Free to create anew!
Steiner’s “Philosophy of Freedom” may be regarded as the modern basis of German Individuality. Schiller’s letters concerning the “Aesthetic Education of Man,” written now some one hundred and thirty years ago and addressed to the Duke of Augustenburg, bear the imprint of the same spirit as that which meets us in the pages of Steiner’s great book. It was in this spirit, too, that Luther nailed the ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg, and was inspired to write the Address “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation anent the Betterment of the Christian Position,” as well as “The Freedom of a Christian.” Thus is Steiner performing the arduous and weary work of revolutionizing us in soul and spirit—a work begun long ago, with Luther’s first and effective rebellion against Rome; a struggle to remove radically from the world all that is unworthy of us. For it is only by so doing that our ideal can gain life and our great work be completed. What we are here engaged in is a spiritual revolution, and on a scale such as has never before been attempted: the terrible events of the World War have made this sternly inevitable. The old forms of spiritual life, far from preventing that inhuman massacre among the peoples, were indeed mainly responsible for bringing it about; and, were it for that alone, the old order of things has signed its own death-warrant. It must yield pride of place to what is new, for the souls and spirits of the Fallen of all Nations, heroes whose graves encircle Central Europe on all sides, are even now supplying the driving force derived from the zeal and energy of their unexhausted strength and youth. It is they who are bidding us be up and doing, calling on us to awaken from our dreams and our uneasy sleep—a sleep which we in our folly have mistaken for life, yet which in itself is more deadly than death. And even as the Spirits of the Fallen—who now know—so too, does Steiner, the Knower, strive to shake and dispel the lethargy which dulls our souls, so that the inner eye of the spirit now dimmed by metaphysics and materialistic culture—twin offsprings of Lucifer and Ahriman—may awaken and respond to the Light of the Living Christ, to the end that, expanding in the warmth of the Spiritual and Cosmic Sun, we too may rise strong and rejuvenated, fit and able to perform our share in the great social work of the World’s Regeneration.