From Luther to Steiner
III. The Spirit of Evolution
Der deutsche Geist hat nicht vollendet,
Was er im Weltenlaufe schaffen soll.
Er lebt in Zukunftssorgen hoffnungs-voll.
Er hofft auf Zukunftstaten lebensvoll.
In seines Wesens Tiefen fühlt er mächtig
Verborgenes, das noch reifend wirken muss.
Wie darf in Feindes Macht verstaendnisios
Der Wunsch nach seinem Ende sich beleben,
Solang das Leben sich ihm offenbart,
Das sich in Lebenswurzeln schaffend hält ?! —Rudolf SteinerThe German’s soul has not yet fully ended
Its destined task. He lives in hopefulness
f future labour; hopes in his full life
For future change and growth. Within, he feels
Deep down his hidden power, which ripening will
Accomplish much. In vain, imagining vain things,
is enemies wait his end, but still the spring
Of life wells up within him from its source
Creatively
19. Nature and Spirit
Among modern Thinkers there is none whose viewpoint so nearly approaches the Philosophy and Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner as does that of the late Eugène Heinrich Schmitt, of Budapest. The writings of this Gnostic are also in close keeping with those of Haeckel and Nietzsche. With regard to Schmitt, Steiner makes the following observation: “His views have gradually assumed a form which brings them into the closest proximity to mine.” Those words were used in the course of Steiner’s appreciation of Schmitt’s work, “Friedrich Nietzsche an der Grenzscheide zweier Welten,1“Friedrich Nietzsche, at the Boundary line of Two Worlds.” a study which Steiner pronounced to be “one of the most brilliant of morning stars in the firmament of the modern world of thought.” “It is long,” he continues, “since I have read a book breathing so free and pure an atmosphere of thought. Eugene Heinrich Schmitt sees Nietzsche’s conception of the world from the same point of view as that from which—not long ago—I considered Goethe’s,2Compare Steiner’s study, “Goethe’s Welt-Anschauung.” and to know of the existence of such a book is like finding some hand extended to grasp mine across many a distant mile. Schmitt’s views and mine, for instance, tally with regard to the position in which men stand to the great problems of life in the present day. He, too, recognizes the only means by which we moderns can come to an harmonious conception of life, enabling us to grasp the entire Cosmos in one great and all-embracing synthesis of thought and feeling, such as in its earlier, simpler, and more childlike form was known to the ancient Greeks.” And in connexion herewith Steiner describes that inner condition of soul which differentiates the man of the present day from the Greeks of old.
“The Greeks of olden times,” he observes, “lived in close touch with Nature herself, their humanity being no More than a part thereof. The image of the Great Creator was mirrored in their minds as that of a perfect human being. Then came Socrates, and after him Plato, and they made known the Great Truth—the truth that there was something hidden in man, something transcending all Nature, namely, The Spirit, And so this human spirit, until then perceived and felt as part of Nature, was tom, as it were, from out of Nature and from henceforth “Spirit” was taken to be a world in itself—as far as man was concerned—apart from, and above all Nature.
“Plato’s World of Ideas is Spirit, sundered from Nature, brooding over the waters like a shadowy form which had lost the rich sap of life. Christianity tried in vain to give life and substance to this Spirit, but it was unable to find the way back to Nature along the path by which Socrates and Plato had pressed forward in their eagerness to reach Spirit. And so it came about that Christianity assigned Spirit to a realm of its own, and what Plato had described as Ideas, were henceforth called God and Angels by the Christians. This ‘God,’ and these “angels’ were, however, not accounted natural beings or assumed to belong to this material world; but were relegated to a ‘Beyond’ while this world of the senses became discredited as an earthly ‘Vale of Tears.’
“But the way from Heaven to Earth has to be rediscovered, for it is earth itself that contains Spirit— that is, contains Heaven, It is men who have forgotten that it is here, on this earth, that they must look for Spirit, for which their souls long, We cannot return to the same conception of the world as was once held in ancient Greece, for we have come to know Spirit in its true form; but we can give life to the Spirit dwelling within us by allowing it to permeate our entire being when once we have really become conscious of its presence, and then, turning our vision back to Nature, we shall apprehend that Light which, as Spirit, illumines our minds, but which is, all the time, the same Spirit as that which irradiates Nature herself. We look within... and the Spirit shines; then, too, our eye—becoming like the sun— gazes upon Nature and beholds its spiritual counterpart.
“But we have to make a detour, which was not necessary in the case of the Greeks: we have in the first place to see Spirit within, before we are able to recognize it in Nature. Now, the ancient Greeks knew nothing of the Spirit within, nevertheless 'they could to the full enjoy the Spirit they beheld mirrored in Nature. It was by this circuitous route, namely, from Nature to Spirit, that Goethe in his best years also attained to knowledge, and by this knowledge he was able, while yet at the highest point of his powers to act in accordance with the inspirations which he received both as a Poet and as an Investigator in the realms of Natural Science.
“It is of this Spirit that Nietzsche has spoken as the ‘Super-man.’ (Ueber-Mensch). And here the views held by E. H. Schmitt again coincide with my own,” continues Steiner, ‘for in my book, ‘Friedrich Nietzsche, ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit’ 3“Frederick Nietzsche and his Fight Against the Tendencies of His Own Day.” I have put forward the same opinion in respect of “Supermen.”
In Steiner’s lecture, published under the title of " Goethe, als Vater einer neuen Aesthetic,” 4“Goethe as author of a New Theory of Aesthetics.” the reader will find some very interesting and illuminating passages, expressing the same views. Here, as elsewhere, Steiner plainly indicates how closely his own spiritual and monistic conceptions approach those held by Goethe, while he entirely rejects the combination of mind and matter in monism which our atomists of to-day find within the atom, and substitutes for it (see “The Philosophy of Freedom”) a spiritual monism solving the question of the “fundamental and primeval contradiction”” between Matter and Spirit by making it a question of the meaning of consciousness.
“For, true as it is that we” (through the awakening of our individual intelligence —our self-consciousness) “have become alienated from Nature, so true is it, too, that we, nevertheless, feel that Nature belongs to us and we to her: that, in fact, it can only be her own activity that is alive in us, and that we must retrace our steps to her. A simple act of reflection can show us the way; we have, it is true, severed ourselves from her, yet even in so doing we have borne away within us something which is hers. And it is this bit of Nature within us that we have got to rediscover; then, too, shall we be able to re-establish the connexion. Dualism has missed doing this. Dualism considers the inner man to be a spiritual being, entirely foreign to Nature, and is, therefore, compelled to try to couple the two together again. Small wonder, then, that the connecting medium cannot be discovered. We can only really reach Nature outside us after we have first found her within. Nature within us will then be our guide. This is the path marked out for us. We need engage in no speculations as to the interaction between Nature and Spirit. But we must descend into the depths of our own being and there find the elements which we took with us when we fled from Nature.”
While, therefore, ancient Greece may be said to have been entirely Nature-bound, and enmeshed in a Mythology which was overthrown by Socrates and Plato, we moderns, whose forbears stood rooted in Philosophy, have in our turn—and with Steiner—to overcome philosophy and replace it by the Anthroposophical teachings which he has been endeavouring so systematically to make known ever since 1883. Here, then, we have the three grades of human evolution: the Greco-monistic and Mythological, the Mediaeval-dualistic and Philosophical, and the Modern-monistic and Anthroposophical.
No less a man than Schiller—whom we ignore, while we run after “strange gods”—was well aware of this anthroposophical truth. Among his literary remains, edited by Otto von Leixner, there is an interesting and significant, yet wholly unknown, aphorism, entitled “The three evolutionary grades of humanity.” It runs as follows:
“May it not be that every experience which we really make our own counts in the sum total of human advancement? If so, three phases can be distinguished: (1) We have the object before us in its completeness” (i.e. actually, as well as spiritually, as in the Mythological epoch), “yet confused and in a state of flux. (2) We next single out certain separate characteristics’ (i.e. applying our reason, as in the epoch of Philosophy and Natural Science), “and what we now recognize is distinct, but detached and limited in extent, (3) We then unite that which had been separated” (doing so synthetically), “and the whole” (i.e. the sensible and the spiritual) “confronts us again” (this time clairvoyantly, as in the epoch of Anthroposophy), “yet no longer confused, but” (owing to Spiritual Science) ‘irradiated on all sides, The first period is that of ancient Greece’ (Mythology). “We ourselves are still in the second” (that of Philosophy). “A third is, therefore, still to be anticipated,” says Schiller, writing in 1800 (i.e. one of Anthroposophy and Synthesis), “and when this has dawned we shall no longer yearn for a return to the days of classic Greece.”
And what was still a matter of anticipation in 1800 was inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner about 1900, and now bids fair to be of the greatest importance and significance for the present day, as well as for the future. We need not long for the days of ancient Greece with its dependence upon Nature, nor yet for those of the ‘“speculative” Middle Ages; neither shall we remain immersed in the monistic materialism of present times: rather shall we ourselves assist in bringing about the birth of the coming conception of the universe, a conception which will give a rational basis to our individual and social views of life,
The broad and all-embracing horizon of Mythology has got to include the dialectical cleanness of the philosophical thinking, for philosophy, which is the work of the individual mind, must needs travel to the farthest limits of the horizon before it can reach the “vanishing point.” Or, to put it differently, the dialectal clarity of thinking known in Philosophy must penetrate the dark and confused depths and breadths of Mythology and there shed illumination. The more individualized man became, the more did his viewpoint narrow, while also the more circumscribed those viewpoints became, the more precise became his eye for detail. In bygone time he had embraced the ALL, as in a dim, dull, dreamlike sleep, while his vision in our day, though but partial, is nevertheless, that of clear daylight consciousness. But the time has now come for man to expand this individual clarity of vision (die ich-bewusste Klarheit) with which he has hitherto been able to apprehend the part, and extend it over the Whole, or, conversely, the Whole, or All, which he formerly apprehended but dimly, must now be perceived with the clearness derived from the present-day thought-power of man’s SeHConsceiousness, It is by these means that man enters the realms of Anthroposophy.
20. The Nature of Gnosis
Everything that has so far been said concerning theoretical knowledge, as well as the ethical presuppositions regarding Anthroposophy, corresponds very closely to the Gnostic philosophy of Schmitt, For, on the one side, Schmitt’s philosophy is diametrically opposed to dualistic metaphysics, emotional mysticism, and theology, and on the other it is opposed to monistic materialism, agnosticism, and atheism.
It is fascinating in the extreme to follow—even if only by the light of pure imagination—the flight of ideas emanating from this keen and consistent thinker as he rises to the spheres of the supersensible worlds, since these possess for him the same degree of reality and objectivity as do those of this world of the physical senses.
Gnosis was originally associated with knowledge relating to the inner conditions, or World of Ideas, and served to elucidate the esoteric basis of Religion in contradistinction to “Pistik,”” which was applied to the exoteric and popular Belief—the “edifice” erected by the Church for the purpose of imparting instruction. There were “heathen”—that is, pre-Christian—as well as Christian Gnostics, The Manichaeans were Gnostics who united the ancient mysteries of Persia with Christian occult teachings. In the same way there were Jewish, Greek, Syrian, and Egyptian Gnostics, so named according to the mysteries which they had made their special field of research.
Gnosis, therefore, is no Philosophy of Religion in itself, but may rather be called a philosophical method, applied to the elucidation of personal and other information and revelation; in short, its aim is to penetrate religious experiences by the aid of thought. The term “Gnosis” is now, by general consent, applied only to the Christian occult teachings of the first three centuries A.D,, in the form in which they were known to the well-known Church Father, Clement of Alexandria (who died about 220), and to his disciple, Origen (184-254). The exoteric Church of Rome, then aspiring to imperial power, did its utmost to crush this essentially spiritual movement in the earliest days of its inception, for it persecuted its representatives with the greatest severity, accusing them of heresy.
Clement himself gave an excellent definition of the true essence of Gnosticism when he called it an “esoteric tradition” handed down from the days of the apostles in unbroken succession, possessing no script, and only known to a few. Nevertheless, the Christian Gnostic was not only a Knower, but also one who, by reason of what he knew, was in a position to act, and of this Origen was a shining example.
There was nothing of the “faithful servant of the Church” about the Gnostic. Rather was he one “called to Freedom,” in the same sense in which St. Paul, Luther, Goethe, and Steiner all won their emancipation—Christians to whom neither the fear of Hell nor the hope of Heaven, nor, indeed, any other abstract law as to morals and customs, was of paramount importance, but whose actions were exclusively the outcome of “a love of the object” (see Steiner’s “Philosophy of Freedom,” Chap, X).
To attain to true worth of this kind or to a free morality was the effort of the Gnostics of the first three centuries of the Christian Era, and the Church of Rome, desiring none but slavish souls, ready to do her bidding, proceeded against these “free Christians” with a high hand. The same spirit which had led the Emperor Decius to persecute the Christians of the second century now began to animate the Christian Church of Rome, inducing her in turn to persecute her most distinguished sons. Bishop Demetrius branded Origen as a heretic of the worst kind, and the Synod, called together to pronounce judgment on this noblest of Gnostics, not only excommunicated him, but also banished him for life from Alexandria. How truly Christian was the spirit animating this great man may be gathered from the gentleness of his words spoken concerning his persecutors: “Let us pity them, rather than hate them, for we have been created in order that we should bless.”” Yet the Church reserved to herself the right of cursing, for Clement, as we know, was turned adrift by his Church, to be later imprisoned and tortured by Decius.
Thus even at this early date was Christian Gnosticism beset and attacked from two different sides, subjected on the one to the power of the “heathen” State, and on the other to that of the “Christian” Church. It would indeed have been difficult for the Church to have given a clearer proof of the Anti-Christianity to which it was destined to succumb. Origen refused to take any action against his ‘ Christian”’ opponents, but he extended to them the tolerance which he desired to be shown to himself, and he explained his attitude as follows: “The different directions taken by Christianity are but so many proofs of the spiritual wealth which dwells therein, and which reveals itself through each,” And this “spiritual wealth” of which the Church—then preparing to succumb to “spiritual poverty”— would take no account, this “esoteric tradition,” spoken of by Origen, is the newly found knowledge made accessible by Steiner’s spiritual discoveries—the ‘ esoteric tradition”’ which drew on Origen, the Gnostic, the hatred of his “brothers in Christ.” The declaration of the baptized Jew, Epiphanias of Constantia, that the teachings of Origen contained the most dangerous heresies, was officially confirmed by a general Conclave in the year 553 held at Constantinople. Thus early did the exoteric spirit of the Church begin to make common cause with Ahriman and pervert the truths of Christianity. The spirit of Christian Gnosticism, nevertheless, managed to survive, and its light illumined the German Mystics, who in their turn passed it on to our great classical and lyrical writers, until it found its most modern exponent in the person of the late E. H. Schmitt. But even Schmitt was only at the point of departure—on the lowest rung of the ladder—which leads to the heights of modern Gnosticism.
The modern Gnostic is therefore a Seeker in pursuit of Truth, Yet, since he can only find this Truth within his own being, he is bound to rest the edifice for his knowledge of Truth upon such cognizance as he has attained to with regard to his own self, His business is to expand this Self of his into a “world-Self,” and since the Self presents the greatest of all enigmas, it is the Self which most needs to be unriddled. Modern Gnosis is therefore, in the truest sense of the word, Self-Knowledge, on the Path to Freedom.
But, since our true self is spiritual and divine, Gnosis, too, may claim to be spiritual knowledge, or Apprehension of God. And, since like can alone apprehend like, it follows that Gnosis in the present day must be self-knowledge of the spirit, or of the in-dwelling God. In this sense, therefore, modern Gnosis is identical with Spiritual Science, or Divine Wisdom; with that knowledge of the in-dwelling Spirit of God to which man has of himself attained; identical, in short, with the Theosophy, which has become Anthroposophy.
Considering that there have been Gnostics, or Knowers, since the earliest times, there would seem to be no valid reason why they should not be at work in the present day, and it would be a bad thing for us—and for the world, too—if this stream of spiritual
life were checked and we were thrown back again on “officially approved” science and religion: on Universities and Churches, where all spiritual life has now become dried up. At no time has there been a greater need than now that we should give ear to the Gnostics, for our era has up to now been unable to reach up to either Spirit—or God. Never before, assuredly, was man so completely separated from both; indeed, this is an “achievement” in which we may be entitled to claim a unique “record,” for it is of entirely our own making! And never before has the need for scientific Gnosticism been so glaringly apparent.
Now, owing to natural inclination and ability, there are no people so given to the passion for knowledge as the Germans, with their “Faust-like” longing for understanding. The German Gnostic of to-day desires ardently to know the cause of unity “within the world’s profoundest depths”; “he desires to behold all forces which are active, as well as the seed thereof,” and refuses any longer to “toy with words.”
It is not our province to exclaim, as we find Kant;o constantly doing, that he “does not know,” thus making Agnosticism, or Ignoramus-ignoramibus the keynote of the doctrine of Science. The mysteries of existence should be revealed to man, he thinks, by the power and voice of the Spirit; and it is to these ends that he turns to magic and to occult research, so that he may be enabled to penetrate the “spiritual worlds,” which are “not closed” to him.
This, also, is the honest endeavour of the German Gnostic, and on it is based Germany’s mission to all people of the earth: it is her cosmically assigned task, her “after-war” mission to Europe and the world, It is for us, therefore, to apprehend modern. Gnosis in all its seriousness and all its depths, would we, following the example of E. H, Schmitt, accept its tenets. We must cling to it, regardless of all else, and scorn to waver midway along the path.
Those who in former days relied on Religion, independently of science, to satisfy their spiritual cravings, now find Religion no longer able to meet their needs. With every right they, therefore, turn to science, on which has devolved the sacred duty of rising to the demand thus made and diffusing light over all the acute problems of existence, which in past times Religion, through the mediumship of the Church, was wont to answer, although doing so in a manner which has now become wholly inadequate, Here, then, science has an opportunity of offering solutions which, while in complete accordance with the new knowledge at her command, may nevertheless prove satisfying to mind and soul alike. And, above all, the most acute and pressing of all these problems is the one touching immortality—the immortality of the human spirit, to which, as we have already said, the Fifth General Council of the Catholic Church, holding its session at Constantinople in 553, gave an entirely erroneous answer; for, until far into the fourth century, the doctrine of the reincarnation of the Spirit —with which Origen in particular was associated— had not been repudiated by the Church.
We should, indeed, be but indifferent Gnostics and Knowers should we not endeavour to probe these mysterious depths of our own inner consciousness; here, verily, would be a case in point of the “greedy hand, snatching at treasure” yet glad if it can find “rain worms.”
In his excellent book, “The Riddle of Man,” Dr. Carl du Prel 5At one time Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Munich. takes exception to the Agnosticism of our times, and very truly says that it should be accounted “a disgrace that man, the very apex of created things, is nevertheless entirely in the dark as to the origin of his own being. We are superior to the animal world in the matter of self-consciousness, but we need not pride ourselves on this, so long as we ourselves remain a riddle to which we can offer no solution.” It is, of course, possible to become a “"learned Don” without any knowledge of the true being of man, or his destiny; a man may even aspire to the high dignity of filling the position of Christ’s Infallible Deputy on Earth, and yet fall short of being a human being—in the fullest sense of that term.
There is much in du Prel’s book that may strike the reader as old-fashioned, when viewed in the light of Steiner’s Spiritual Science; it must, however, be remembered that this book was published in 1892. Taken as a whole, it is in complete agreement with the demands made and the methods pursued by true science, even though—as in the case with Schmitt's Gnosis—it is not entirely free from the materialism of the day. As a matter of fact, none but the greatest and most original thinkers and investigators are in a position to divest themselves completely of the Ahrimanic influence—doing so by reason of intensifying and deepening the power of thought metamorphosis, Nevertheless, du Prel makes short work of the entirely unfounded assertion that Spiritual Science is no more than a New Belief, based on old religious dogmas, for he states:
“Spiritual Science, in its modern form, is certainly not calculated to lead to Faith, but rather to prepare the way for a New Knowledge, and for this very reason there can be no harking back into the old (religious) ruts of the past, but a looking forward, far ahead, into the (scientific) future. Spiritual Science is destined to provide a conception of the Universe for coming generations, and work is even now going on which will in due season enable us to solve the great Problem of Humanity.”
21. Gnosis, or Anthroposophy
There are at present two schools of modern Gnosticism: one in which the methods are of a more elementary order, being devoted to the work of literary research, and affording brilliant intellectual results; the other which concerns itself for the greater part with clairvoyant investigation, carried out in accordance with a specially trained Spirituality, and is able so to penetrate to the highest conditions of Being. The representative of the former is (the late) Dr. Eugene Heinrich Schmitt, and of the latter Dr. Rudolf Steiner. The endeavours of both these men have been directed to attaining Wisdom by the application of Gnosis, or Anthroposophy, to the scientific and spiritual elucidation of the problem of Existence, probing that which is knowable by means of intensified spiritualized human effort.
Each of these men has sought to give form to a conception of life and the world that may unite Science, Religion, and Art, welding them to a synthetic whole. This conception, for which du Prel, after his own fashion, did much to prepare the way, will not, as he has himself observed, “be confined to any ‘caste’ of learned specialists, as is the case with the philosophy in our day, but will become part of the essential conditions of civilized life, when man, recognizing in life a new and more profound meaning, will also recognize new reasons for existence, and new aims and promises to urge him onward to fresh endeavours. Far from being reactionary, it is destined, indeed, to rejuvenate our entire life of culture and civilization.”
But that Anthroposophy is related to and m a way embraces Gnosis may be gathered from a purely mundane consideration, namely, from the affiliation of the two journals which were for some time separately devoted to the services of these two classes of literature. Until the year 1903 there had been issued in Berlin and Vienna, independently of each other, two monthlies —* Gnosis,” published by George Kohler in the latter city, and “Lucifer,”” edited by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin. But in January, 1904, the eighth issue of “Lucifer” appeared in conjunction with “Gnosis,” had their joint publication continued henceforth, under the editorship of Steiner, with the title of “Lucifer-Gnosis”—a proud name indeed, since Lucifer was the great Angel who lit his Torch of Knowledge at the very Heart of God, that he might be the bearer of Wisdom to humanity, yet who, as a punishment for his daring, was hurled from Heaven to Earth, whence he will rise again, to sit at the Right Hand of God.
As Steiner observed in his Introduction to the first number of this joint publication, both “were ever anxious to render service in presenting a view of life, and of the Universe, wherein Religion, Morals, and Philosophy should be viewed in a higher light and be fused and united... though there can be little hope of fulfilment for such an aim in the present day if forces are dissipated, instead of united for concerted labour”—which, in other words, means that, if present-day Gnosis is to be true to its principles, it will have to make common cause with Lucifer and become Anthroposophy.
The reason why Gnostics of the Schmitt school, for all their lofty modern attainments in the form of acquired knowledge and in spite of their high-minded endeavours, elect to remain in the “intellectual antechamber” of all true and intimate knowledge as to the Soul and Spirit, and do not attempt to probe the Holy of Holies, may be ascribed to the intellectual culture of recent centuries having weighed heavily upon their spiritual powers.6Steiner’s “Lucifer,” No. 2: “Die Kultur der Gegenwart im Spiegel der Theosophie,” (Out of print)
But in making this comment Gnostics of the Steiner school are by no means loth to give to others their due; indeed, we cannot but admire the strength with which these others “wrestle with truth,” and admire, too, the intrepidity with which they assail and disperse all prejudices obstructing their path. Here, indeed, is ground whereon to build; and even if they have, for the time being, elected to occupy a stationary position, halfway along the road, the Spiritual Enquirer may entertain high hopes with regard to their labours for the Gnosis in the Future, for he is convinced that they are preparing for a Future which will take the same direction as that in which he is himself travelling; that, in fact, they are acquiring views and forms of cognition, which will, if not in themselves, yet by other means, be productive of actual Spiritual Knowledge.
In this sense, therefore, their work is not done in vain, for they are the “next nearest” along the path by which the Heavenly Kingdom of Knowledge may be reached. But if the Gnostic of the Steiner school dares not linger, awaiting the future to which the disciples of Schmitt may from this point of view reasonably look forward; if the Steiner Gnostic inclines rather to “take a hand” in the work of the immediate future, spreading true spiritual knowledge, it is because the condition of the times in which we live emphatically calls for such action. What the other school is content to accomplish by easy stages and gradual culture (provided, that is to say, that culture does not succumb in the interval, owing to “malnutrition”—a contingency which would seem to be by no means unlikely!) what, then, our friends would defer to future ages, that it is which the Spiritual Enquirer makes it his business to grasp hold of now, and the methodical intensification of the powers of his mind enable him to succeed in doing so. The Supersensible World, the actual existence and objectivity of which the intellectual Gnostic is quite prepared to recognize to its fullest extent, but which he apprehends only in thoughts and and in terms, and therefore more or less as an abstract plan, after it has been mediated to him by the clairvoyant or mystical “intuition” of the Initiate, this supersensible realm is to the Investigator of the Steiner school an actual and immediate object, beheld through the medium of his spiritual organs of sight, by the use of which he “sees,” in just the same way as with the eyes of his body he beholds any tangible object in the world.
Schmitt and his school have so far not been able to arrive at this higher form of cognition, although he believes in the reality of this power, as employed by many important persons in history from whom he has himself received the contents of his own teaching. His method is to investigate the results of their spiritual insight by means of his own logical power of thought, and thus attain the scientific knowledge in which his modern Gnosis takes form. But without the writings of these historical “seers” Schmitt would not have been in a position to compile his Gnosis, and this is a fact which he frankly admits.
We have here, therefore, what may, in a certain sense, be called a division of labour—in the past, definite and mystical “seeing”; in the present, abstract and logical thinking—and modern Gnosis is a synthesis of these two. Gnostic Philosophy, as we have seen, cannot dispense with the Seer; it is—at all events as far as the present day is concerned— dependent on the evidence of documents, and these writings are the ‘ sacred source” at which it has to slake its thirst for knowledge. The loss of the “documents” which have been provided by the Seers would deprive these Gnostics of all super-sentient thought-contents and they would have to be satisfied with what they were enabled to derive from the application of sense-observation to the study of natural science.
In contradistinction to such methods, Steiner, as a Spiritual Enquirer, has himself become a Spiritual Seer, thus uniting both functions of his own person, and, in applying logical thought to the contents of spiritual vision, he reaches to the most modern form of Gnosis, namely, Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, He is no longer dependent on the writings of the Ancient Seers, for he has exchanged the merely literary source for the living one—for the “Akashic Records,” where in the highest spheres of the Spiritual World the Creative Memory of the God-Head provides an ever-flowing and abundant stream.
Were all the documents which relate to supersensible things to be lost in our day, and their contents forgotten, this most modern of Gnostics would, nevertheless, be in no-ways handicapped. For he is in a position to reconstruct their spiritual contents, restoring them in a fuller and richer form; for, being able to draw on the primeval source, whence floweth all that is and is to be, he is in touch with the same Fount of Knowledge to which every Seer known to history has in his day turned, namely, the Akashic Records.
His own thoughts and experience are therefore the fundamental supports of Steiner's knowledge. He never at any time forsakes the sane ground of experience, neither does he overstep its limits in regard to any point, as is the habit of speculative philosophy or metaphysics, to which the name of transcendental science has been given, though it has no legitimate right whatever to be called “science” at all! For science without the basis of experience is charlatanism, and modern Spiritual Science, as expounded by Steiner, has nothing whatever in common with anything so utterly amateurish as transcendental philosophy-cum-metaphysics, tainted as this is with the “Gospel according to Kant,” which infests our pulpits and platforms.
Modern spiritual investigation has therefore risen superior to methods of enquiry embodied in Schmitt’s Gnosis. It is a theory of cognition which makes no assumptions and meets all the demands that can be made on it by exact science, doing so, moreover, in a far higher sense than is the case with any other method of investigation. For these other methods either over-emphasize the principle of actual sense-observation, or empiricism, i.e. the a posteriori and take refuge in vague theories and hypotheses, such as, monistic natural science, or they assume a one-sided attitude with regard to the functions of abstract thought or metaphysical speculation, i.e. the a priori, and get befogged, as may be seen in the case of dualistic philosophy, where the basis of experience is lacking.
Now, it is at this point—where monism on the one side and speculative philosophy on the other reach their limits and are bound to fail, when brought up against Life and Reality—that Gnosis steps in and, transcending both, presents in their stead a loftier and more ideal conception of soul and spirit. Yet Gnosis, too, finds barriers before which it is compelled to halt, and where its wisdom can proceed no farther; it is there that Anthroposophy has continued the way, far surpassing Gnosis, and pressing forward to the Holiest of Holies, where there is intimate knowledge concerning Soul and Spirit.
The passage from Gnosis to Anthroposophy is therefore dependent on the development of a higher and differentiated capacity for perception, although the discipline to which thought is subjected remains very much the same for both methods; for just as sense-observation and logical thought lead to an apprehension of Nature, so, too, the interaction of super-sentient observation and logical thinking give rise to a true knowledge of the soul and spirit. Such is the case with the Initiate Steiner in the present day. The Sophia Of Anthropos, i.e. the Wisdom of Man, self-apprehendent as to his divine and spiritual mission, is therefore the highest level to which Gnosis, or Spiritual Apprehension (obedient to a strictly scientific reliance upon the factors of observation and thought) can in the present day attain.
Now, if Schmitt, the Gnostic, had but devoted as much interest to his contemporary Steiner, the Anthroposophist, as he did to Seers of bygone days, as well as to the Mystics of the Middle Ages, he would hardly have summed up the Spiritual Science of this the most distinguished of modern Thinkers in a mere paragraph of some fifteen lines—a paragraph which says practically nothing (see Vol. II, p. 399-400). Schmitt, moreover, committed the error of including the passage in a chapter entitled “Indian Theosophy” He would assuredly have done better to have devoted a separate chapter to the rich contents of German Spiritual Science | And we may further observe that although Schmitt, writing in 1907, was not in a position to enjoy a comprehensive view of the full and complete wealth of Spiritual vision to which Steiner, the greatest of Mystics and Occultists has attained (Steiner not having in those days published his discoveries to any very great extent, and being also at that time still to a certain degree connected with Mrs. Annie Besant and Adyar), yet, the situation had changed in all its essentials long before Schmitt’s death, which took place in ig16. It is, nevertheless, doubtful whether he would have made good those deficiencies had he brought out a second edition of his “Gnosis,” for we are quite accustomed to see the Great Departed honoured and lauded at the expense of the Great Ones who are still with us: the Prophet has no honour either in his own country or in his day. But this is a subject which requires separate treatment.
22. Orient and Occident
One of the most recent of investigators of Gnosis is Dr. Karl Jellinek, Professor of Chemistry at the Technical High School at Danzig. This gentleman has also approached his subject in an honest endeavour to propound a universal spiritual conception of the universe which shall accord with the achievements of modern science In his ambitious and important work, “Das Weltengeheimnis” (published by F. Enke, Stuttgart, 1921) Jellinek, whose literary attainments are considerable, and who has the advantage of being a specialist in his own department of science, has sought to bring about the “harmonious reunion of Natural and Spiritual science, philosophy and religion.”
It was Professor Hans Driesch, Professor of Philosophy and Natural Science at the University of Cologne, who fired Jellinek with the ambition of carrying out this work, and it is to Driesch, therefore, that his book is dedicated. But his work has also derived some portion of its inspiration from the late Franz Hartmann, the Theosophist, and from the Brahmin, Vivekananda, as well as from the teachings of Meister Eckhart; while all that Jellinek seems to have been able to assimilate from the teachings of Rudolf Steiner is what may be termed “the fruit of social culture,” being the results of Spiritual Science as embodied in the conception of “The Threefold State.” To this conception Jelinek devotes the greater part of his fifteenth Lecture. But, unfortunately, the passages he cites, as well as the interpretation he puts on them, are neither clear nor correct, for, being prejudiced throughout by his own antisophistic point of view, Jelinek has inserted corrections and made additions which produce no more than a painful caricature of the original. We trust, indeed, that no one will identify Jellinek's travesty with Steiner’s work, Rudolf Steiner’s idea of a threefold State-organism is about as far removed from Jellinek’s Utopian nonsense about “cosmopolitical democracy” and “unified peoples” or * world-state” as it is from the Brotherhood of the Human Races, or, say, a civilization of the world based on Esperanto! which, by the way, Jellinek strongly favours. But the roots of Steiner’s Spiritual Science are themselves sufficiently vigorous to enable the idea which it contains as to the factors necessary for a healthy social organism to take the right direction in its growth; there is no need that its pruning and training should be attended to by a form of spiritual life which is now decadent, and at the graveside of which Steiner’s Spiritual Science may be said to have performed the last rites.
Jellinek has indeed maintained the most profound silence with respect to the central idea of Spiritual Science, merely confining himself to certain literary allusions and to generalities, And this need hardly surprise us when we consider the “heroes ” in whose wake he is struggling to gain the Olympian Heights. For on the one side we have Professors Driesch, Scheler, and Becher, and on the other the old Gnostics of India, Persia, Egypt, China, and Greece; then, pursuing his way past Jesus and His Disciples, past the Apostles and the mediaeval Mystics, he comes to H. P, Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Franz Hartmann, and the late Swami Vivekananda, who, in Dr. Jellinek’s opinion, ‘stood among Thinkers as the Himalaya stands among mountains,” which accounts for his firm conviction as to “the World Mission of the Indian spirit.” Though Jellinek does not go so far as to subscribe literally to all that the Swami was, in his pride and ignorance, pleased to observe, namely, that “If the Occident desired to know anything about Soul, Spirit, and God; about the meaning and mysteries of the Cosmos, then, indeed,: must the Occident sit at the feet of the Orient”; yet do his sympathies incline so strongly that way that he would seem hardly conscious of the extent to which he practically admits the poverty of Western and, more particularly, of German thought and spirit.
Were there any truth in that proud, though more rightly styled arrogant, speech of Vivekananda’s, and were European, or even German, science to accept it as even partly true, as Jellinek has unfortunately invited us to, then indeed were the bankruptcy of European, and more especially German, spiritual life a foregone conclusion,
In as far as the spiritual life at our universities is concerned Vivekananda is in the right, and Jellinek’s agreement with the proud words spoken by his “titanic Thinker” may be said to be completely justified.
It is just this spiritual bankruptcy of academically conducted science that is the cause of the sympathy which Jellinek feels for the Indian’s claims, and which misleads him and other Professors into bowing down before “strange gods,” while crucifying or ignoring their own deities !
Did not Schiller raise a warning voice against this distrust which a German is so apt to have of himself and of his own powers when he pointed to the great World Mission awaiting the German Spirit ? Woe to us Germans, should we now fail to see this, and turn to India, seeking there for spiritual help, even as we sought to obtain political and economic aid from America. Not only did Wilson and Harding not help us, but their cowardly betrayal only drove us into greater misfortune. And it would be the same thing spiritually should we turn to the farthest East in the false delusion that the “Light” to enlighten us is to be found there. Nothing but tke illusions of Lucifer can flicker over to us from that part of the world, even as in turning West we meet no more than the Ahrimanic grin of Materialism. If, in our present straits we are incapable of depending upon ourselves, solely and alone, spiritually, economically and politically, then are we a decadent people, and rightly doomed to go under and succumb. Were it so, there could be no talk of a “World Mission” awaiting the German Spirit. Yet that the collapse of the Western world would coincide with that of the German people has been recognized (in spite of Vivekananda and his prating as to the world mission of the Indian Spirit) by the Rosicrucian Initiate, Steiner, and he has applied Ul his energies to prevent it. The Orient can do nothing in this matter.
It would be true that we Germans have reached the condition of bankruptcy of spiritual life described by Jellinek if it were true that we had identified ourselves with the representative of academic science, and if there were no such person on the other side as Rudolf Steiner, the representative of Spiritual Science, abused and slandered though it be by official science. By Spiritual Science the Occultist can acquire a far profounder knowledge of “Soul, Spirit, and God’; of “being” and of the “mystery of the Universe” than Vivekananda and his decadent Indian Wisdom ever dreamed of.
In the year 1875 the Theosophical Society set itself the same task as Jellinek, namely, that of revivifying the spiritually bankrupt life of the Western world and rejuvenating it by drawing on the “Capital” of an ancient Oriental Spirituality, even though the “currency” thus provided was hopelessly out of date, The results of this Society’s twenty-five years’ activity were such as could not blind the watchful eye of Rudolf Steiner—even when in his co-called “material’ period—to the fact that Theosophy was full of high-sounding phrases, pride, and pomposity, and of nothing else. He had joined the Movement in 1902, so that, working from within, he might be in a better position to oppose it and administer to it that coup de grâce of which it stood in need, for, as the proverb says, “To slay the dragon, you must needs slip within its skin.”
Mrs. Besant, the President of the Theosophical Society, had at an early stage become aware that this German Occultist was going his own way, and she therefore peremptorily excluded him from the Movement, after he had amply demonstrated how little need there was for the “West to sit at the feet of the East,” and we were not going to be humbugged by anything that might be imposed on us from that quarter, seeing that the Western world itself possessed a far deeper, far more comprehensive and “living” Wisdom upon which to draw at will. Yet Mrs. Annie Besant, enmeshed in the teachings of India, accused Rudolf Steiner of being a pupil of the Jesuits and turned him out of the Society. The recent exclusion of Germany from the League of Nations is but a parallel to this earlier episode, which was the spiritual turning adrift of Germany from the Theosophical World Movement, both acts being accompanied by boundless calumny, Thus were the shadows of impending great political events projected N earthward from the spiritual realm.
Jelinek, who stands in close connexion to the Theosophical Movement, and who acts under its inspiration, is entirely wrong when he speaks about the Anthroposophical Society, founded and conducted by Steiner, as being “one of the two German branches” of the Theosophical Society. From what has just been said it will be evident that the Anthroposophical Society stands in no relationship whatever to the Theosophical Society, and that it can therefore be no “branch” of the latter. It stands rooted in a true German soil; it is an independent tree drawing its sustenance from modern natural scientific thought, and its living branches are heavy with their yield of ripening fruit—branches extending far and wide across the Occident, for the Anthroposophical Society has its working groups actively engaged throughout all the countries of Europe, as well as in America, and if a choice had to be made as to whether Orient or Occident should learn from the other, then it would be the East which would have to sit at the feet of the West! Nor is this said in an access of spiritual h pride: it is rather due to an exact knowledge of the laws of spiritual evolution, which Jellinek unfortunately was not in a position to acquire, for he would otherwise not have so entirely belittled the old hereditary Wisdom of our forbears as he does by the | prediction that the revival of Western Culture depends on its acceptance of an artificially resuscitated conception of the Universe! Nor would he also (see his remarks on page 333 of his book) have felt so “permeated” with the belief that our Religion of the Future t is to be a “blend of Oriental and Occidental mysticism.”
On page 456 Jellinek does not hesitate to criticize the Theosophical Societies, observing that there is a “frequent tendency to treat the things appertaining to the soul and spirit materially”; also that there “are often evidences of being out of touch with modern science and modern philosophy—in short, with modern intellectual life”; and he seems to consider himself justified in applying the same strictures to Steiner and his Anthroposophical “branch.” For Steiner’s statements that things super-sentiently apprehended reveal themselves in tones and colours, as also Steiner’s terminology of an etheric body and an astral body, have caused Jellinek—and Eucken, t0oo—to speak of this as a ‘ materializing” of the things relating to soul and spirit. Jellinek’s objections might possibly hold good in the case of the Theosophical Societies, but the strictly scientific method of Steiner makes the charge in his case absurd. Indeed, that anyone should not be able to see this must show him to be not only dogmatic, but also lacking in a due sense of criticism, to say the least.
The critical “bridge” erected by Jellinek to facilitate his passage from ordinary “science” to Theosophy, that is, to Hinduism and Buddhism, and so to a Jewish Christianity and to Mysticism, makes a brave show—on paper. In practice, however, it carries no weight, so we had best not set foot on it. Jelinek commits the same errors as the Theosophical Society, whose leaders either evince a strong preference for the ancient pre-Christian religions, or at least place them on the same level as Christianity. Neither they nor Jellinek seem able to realize that Christianity is essentially different—that it, indeed, occupies a place by itself, being the Religion of Humanity, whereas all other religions are but the religions of different peoples, or, in other words, Folk-Religions.
On page 455 Jellinek observes: “I have frequently spoken to you about Hinduism and Buddhism—two faiths which stand on the same level as Jewish Christianity—and I have read you specimens of their literature.” As if Christianity could be estimated in accordance with what it might have to offer in the way of “literature”!
The philosophical synthesis which he—and the Theosophical Society, too—have attempted to construct with respect to these three Religions may, indeed, be said to lack all meaning, since Christianity is in itself already a complete mystical, or occult, synthesis of all the pre-Christian Folk-Religions, and it is beneath the shelter of Christianity that these can all receive fresh life, for Rosicrucianism, the mysteries of which are interpreted in the present day by Steiner, provides Religion with the modern scientific basis so necessary to our times.
Now, when Jellinek (see page 457) states that “the entire Theosophical Movement works according to a synthesis alternating between Jewish Christianity on the one hand and Hinduism and Buddhism on the other,” he gives expression to the very mistake which Steiner has so constantly combated when dealing with the Theosophical Society. Indeed, the comparative study of Religions and Philosophies, to which much attention has also been devoted by the Anthroposophical Society, has proved that these three Religions are by no means identical in their values, and that Christianity has absorbed all the driving forces which once were active in the ancient Religious Systems. To resuscitate these mummified remains must therefore be in every way harmful to modern civilization. Besides, why make the attempt to find an artificial philosophical synthesis between the living and the dead? or even between the dead alone, seeing that the Jewish Christianity, that Jellinek has in mind, as being historical, is dead! A living Christianity, on the other hand, presents us with a perfectly natural synthesis, and unites the erstwhile powerful driving forces of now dead-and-gone Folk-Religions—remnants of an old-time world—to the redeeming and divine force which from the thirtieth to thirty-fourth year of His Life on Earth was immanent in Christ Jesus. And it is this living Christianity, including, as it does, the driving forces of those ancient Faiths, that, centring in the Mysteries of the Rosy Cross, and supported by the scientific spirit of the day, is able to make itself so effective a power. Ancient Religions can have no more than an historic importance for us men of the twentieth century; their value, as a civilizing influence, is nil. Living Christianity alone can supply this influence, and it is for us to learn to discern and apprehend the true import of such a Christianity. For apprehension and recognition of the living Impulse of Christ in the Spirit of the Rosy Cross is the noblest task that has been set us to solve, and one upon which we may well concentrate all our faculties, for on it depends Germany’s Mission to the entire world.
The Theosophical Society failed to see this task, as though its leaders had been stricken with blindness. It also misinterpreted the second of its own fundamental rules; for, instead of comparing Religions, it has reduced them to the same level. Indeed, it even went so far as to introduce missionaries into Europe to spread the cults of Hinduism and Buddhism, thus placing both these bygone Faiths on the same plane with and belittling Christianity. It has been entirely due to the exertions of Rudolf Steiner that this amateurish trifling with all that is most sacred in our Spiritual life has finally been made short work of, and the possibility has arisen of realizing the Living and universal Force of true Christianity to its full extent.
Jellinek would certainly have done better had he turned to Steiner, the Initiate of Modern Rosicrucianism, for information concerning the true basis of Christianity, rather than to Annie Besant and Franz Hartmann. Had he done so he could hardly have spoken, as he now so constantly does, of “the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth,” or about “Jewish Christianity.” For Christianity’s centre of gravity does not lie in the “Jew” Jesus, nor yet in “Jesus,” the Jew, but solely in the super-racial, supernational, superhuman, and Divine Individuality of Christ.
But Jellinek is blind to the living “Christ- Jesus,” as Steiner designates this divine Sun-Being, and the entire book, though an honest and conscientious effort, proceeds, nevertheless, along the selfsame road as was trodden long since by the Theosophical Society. As for “new territory,” with its promise of a new Spiritual Science for the Future, Jellinek has done no “surveying,” not even from a distance, for he disdains to seek enlightenment from Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science. And yet no modern enquirer will be able to dispense with the guidance of this great present-day Thinker, if he honestly desires to reach to any height, or engage in any really fruitful work in the field of Spiritual Culture, The arrogant words of Vivekananda may therefore fitly be replaced by those of Paracelsus, whom Steiner in this day may well claim as a kindred spirit: “He who pursues Truth must fain enter my Kingdom. ... You must follow me—not I you.” Therefore, Eucken, Keyserling, Müller, and Jellinek, “you must follow me—not I you”; you of “Jena, Darmstadt, Elmau, Koeln, Berlin, and Danzig,” and all the other places there are in Germany; also “you Islands in the Seas,” you “England, Italy, France, and you Russia, you Indians and you Israelites,” follow after me—not I after you for “mine is the Kingdom”!
23. Speculation or Spiritual Vision
Ir has already been pointed out in an earlier book, “Rudolf Steiner, a Fighter Against His Time,” that it is not requisite for all philosophical books, nor yet for all works on Natural Science, to be written from the point of view of Steiner’s Spiritual Science. But what the present writer would maintain is that the modern investigator who fails to recognize that “new methods of acquiring knowledge” are demanded on all sides at the present day will find himself at a loss where to place his intellectual ‘“lever”’ so as to raise this decrepit old world out of the rut and help it up the hill once more.
The methods of thought used by both Jellinek and Schmitt are old in principle—a fact which, indeed, both are ready to admit, since they do not advance beyond intellectualism and have to hark back to the old Mysteries and Founders of Religion. But Jellinek, in contradistinction to Schmitt, gives evidences in various parts of his work of not only intellectually assimilating the results of mystical “seeing,” but of being himself a Mystic—a Seer. The Ideal guiding him in his struggle for knowledge is not pure theoretical Philosophy but Mysticism, that is the union of the purest and most crystal-clear seeing and the purest practical action. Now, this is not the Ideal of the University Professor, but of the Mystic; not of Kant or Schopenhauer, but of Laotze, Buddha, and Zarathustra; of Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, St. Paul, and Meister Eckhart. That “titanic and gigantic power of thought” that “slumbers within each one of us,” and is “awake within the Mystic,” is what Jellinek believes has been “roused” within him too, and on page 11 he voices this thought in a more direct manner, saying, “The substance of our Readings has been the result of what has been given to me both by inward and outward experiences. The Wise Men and the Saints of all peoples and of all times have had similar experiences, and have, as already stated, shown both the way and the method.” Not that the “Wise Men,” or the “Saints” would have got far had they pursued the method which Jellinek would foist on us as being his own. For the inner experience which leads to occult wisdom far exceeds that which Jellinek calls “intuition”—an intuition of a kind which at its best, for instance, led Leibnitz to the invention of the differential calculus and Newton to the discovery of the laws of gravitation. To place this kind of intuition on a par with the experiences of the Founders of the Ancient Religions, or with that of the Mystics, is totally to misconstrue the very meaning of ‘“Spiritual Vision,” or “Clairvoyance.”
As a matter of fact, what is called intuition by the modern Scientist was not even known to the Ancients, for it is a product of our intellectuality and will have to be surmounted and “got the better of,” as also intellect itself will be.
That Jellinek is no Seer, but rather a Thinker of a deeply religious, though at the same time speculative, order, is proved by other passages in his book. The supersensible ether,7The term “ether,” as used here, must not be confounded with that “ether” known to the natural scientist; the term in its present sense being used to describe what is clairvoyantly seen.—Translator's Note. or life-body, as well as the astral bodies of plants, animals, and men, which Steiner beholds in his capacity of Seer, in the same manner in which a painter may be said to behold the physical body of his model—this supersensible nature of living entities is approached by Jellinek in an entirely speculative attitude of mind. He says, “If, after submitting the matter to the most carefully conducted tests, I have been led to the conclusion that there are intelligent forces active in the kingdom of the living body, and if I infer that these same intelligences consciously build up and guide matter in accordance with the well-known principles of everyday experience, this means that I have proceeded on far more scientific lines than if I imaginatively endow atoms and molecules with intelligence” (page 167).
In the same way Jellinek, on page 169, invests plant-life with a “soul,” for he says, “On the next occasion we will ascend to the sphere of the soul”; that is, of course, not with the“purest and crystal-clear vision,” but, purely speculatively. “Following the sensibly observed movements of men, animals and plants, we shall” (he says), “be able with certainty” (that is, speculatively, or intelligently) “to infer the existence of the souls which exist in their own right over against the material bodies.”
This is no spiritual “seeing.’ But in this way Jelinek proceeds, setting up metaphysical hypotheses which become more and more daring, and seeking with greater or lesser probability to reach the Reality {das Wirkliche), “which lies beyond our immediate consciousness,” but which sends its “waves,” or “signs,” ‘over into that consciousness” (i.e. sense observation: Thought, Feeling, and Will). Well, there is, of course, no objection whatever to all this: as little as there is to the descriptions which a blind in an might give of the things he contacts “by touch,” yet cannot see within this visible world.
But the way in which Jellinek “feels about”’ and draws his inductive conclusions cannot possibly be identified with first-hand and clear spiritual seeing, and to imply that it can be is only to show his own ignorance as to the true nature of spiritual vision. Whether or not the Spiritual Hierarchies and the Living Christ (to say nothing of everything else besides these) which are projected from the etheric, astral, and spiritual worlds into our plane of consciousness, come within the range of Jellinek’s “inductions” and “conclusions ” is a matter which he must decide for himself; anyway, we must decline most emphatically to discuss the question with him.
Jellinek himself acknowledges that the conclusions to which his analogies (from the known to the unknown) lead do not, even when dealing with knowledge of the organic world, carry him any farther than the usual metaphysical hypotheses of “intelligent forces,”” and that, having arrived at this point, his wisdom is at an end. On page 285 he says: “Upon the question of the existence of souls over against the bodies of the various races of men... I am uncertain, (!) and I feel that I must leave the details of this inquiry to more highly trained investigators.” It seems a pity, then, that Jellinek should not grasp that Steiner is that “more highly trained investigator”—one equal to the details of this enquiry and one whose accurate knowledge of these things provides excellent material for thought which has not reached the higher level of Vision.
The progress of recognized science would be very different were its representatives to follow Rudolf Steiner, instead of pinning their faith to, let us say, the Swami Vivekananda. Far from regretting such a step, they would, under tutorship of this extraordinary man, add lustre to the spirit and character of Germany’s men of learning. Our professors might then for once in a way show that in these times of change, fraught with so far-reaching and tragic a destiny, the “Prophet is honoured nowhere so highly as by his own people.”
When Jellinek comes to deal with sleep and dreams, as also with Reincarnation and Fate, very little of his “inductive analogy” is to be found. He has simply borrowed, and by his own thought-process adapted, what Steiner has consciously seen and explained. What he calls his “inner spiritual vision” and “distant perceptions” are entirely the results of his intellectual mastery of the Theospohic-Anthroposophical literature of the day. Without this literature Jellinek’s “seeing” or “knowing” what ‘lies on the other side of death” would not have been possible, and could therefore not have existed. Indeed, his “cognition” throughout is, like that of Schmitt, the result of the division of labours. Jellinek, the modern Thinker, could do nothing without the Seers of the past. He too, is dependent on their records, and from them he has to draw his supersensible thought-material. And even so Jellinek is unable to get beyond the point of view which he has acquired in the study of Theosophical literature, He frankly acknowledges his shortcomings and is ready to leave detailed research to more highly developed investigators.
All such difficult questions as, for instance, “the relationship between human, animal, and plant souls,” and whether “the human soul migrates in the first instance through the plant and animal kingdoms,” or, in the reverse order, also whether plant and animal souls ascend to the human level—these are questions which Jellinek is obliged to leave unanswered, doing so in spite of the ancient Seers and Mystics to whom he has had such constant recourse, and in spite, too, of his reliance on modern Theosophical literature. “These are questions to which I can give no answer,” are his words on page 388, and in the same manner we find him admitting his lack of knowledge in respect to the problem of races (see pages 390-402). All the observations which he makes on these questions are derived from purely personal impressions or from subjective inferences, and are therefore entirely without scientific support. “I do not know whether there is any connexion between a person’s race and the qualities with which that person’s soul and spirit may be endowed, nor am I at all sure that anyone can tell... It seems to me(!) that such is not the case; I am inclined to believe(!) ... On the whole I have had no experiences which would vouch for such a thing,” etc.
Unscientific “ways out” such as these will not be found in Steiner’s writings or in his Lectures, even though he does not (indeed, just because he does not!) go back to the old heritage of our forefathers in order to enrich the material of his thought. Steiner is never at a loss for knowledge, even when the old Seers and Mystics have no more to give and when their writings have been sucked as dry as an orange] Steiner needs no such help, for he is himself a true Seer, a true Initiate, standing on the very crest of Time’s Breakers as the Tide comes rolling in.
It is the “conscious”’ and the “superconscious,” in whose spheres are rooted all “active realities” that project their leaves and blossoms into the realms of our limited daytime consciousness, it is this spiritual basis itself, and not the results of its activities, not any “waves’ and “signs”—it is this that Steiner, by grace of his initiation, is able to include within his all-embracing consciousness. He has in very truth enlarged his ‘ Self” (or Ego) until it has become a World-embracing Self, and he has realized in himself the “cosmic experience” concerning which Jellinek in the same way as the late Franz Hoffmann, and Swami Vivekananda, to say nothing of Omar al Rashid,8Neither of these worthies was Turk or Indian, as their names are calculated to suggest, but Central European Germans! Bo Vim Ra,: Rudolf Eucken, Graf Kayserling, and Johannes Müller descant with fine words and vague generalities, This cosmic experience has been his, is known to him, he therefore is the leader whom we elect to follow.
Indeed, we most positively decline to commit ourselves to the old leaders whom Jellinek would favour; for the ancient “recipes” they prescribe for reaching a selfless “ecstasy” or merging the Self in the “Logos” are no good. In this way we shall only reach a Luciferan cul-de-sac. Steiner has throughout his career taken up a very decided position on this question, and has inveighed against the unprogressive tendency displayed by the Theosophical Society when it favours, say, either the Buddha or Meister Eckhart as a leader. For, to do so is to retrogress, and to act in opposition to the laws of spiritual evolution. In contradistinction to the self-effacement of Buddhism it is the task of the Occident, in the present day, to evolve the Self completely, and not to limit, forget, or strip ourselves of it, as Jellinek would invite us to do. Rather should we retain it in its full strength, enlarging it to the full dimensions of “a World Self.” By his ability to do this Steiner himself has already attained to the highest possibilities, and this is one more reason why we should acclaim him as our leader. To him there is nothing spiritual so “unknown” that he needs must first approach it from “things known ” and infer its existence by the use of his intellect, for his spiritual vision enables him to perceive it at once as clearly and directly as we with our sense of sight perceive material things.
Yet, even if Jellinek did possess the inward experience —or spiritual vision—with which the old Seers and Saints were dowered, he would not be a step nearer solving the difficult questions which dominate the present day, for the Riddle of the Universe is not to be solved thus. It is, of course, far easier to rise to fantastic heights in the company of Vivekananda, or to enthuse on the subject of the “Logos” and the “superpersonal deity” than correctly to apprehend the most simple functions of life in the organization of this earth. Nevertheless this actual and detailed experience, which is reached by,the occult investigator (being, as it of course is, limited by the scheme of “cosmic experience””), is more valuable and of greater importance in the present day than all the emotional abstractions indulged in by those who follow either metaphysics or theosophy. Not but that Steiner’s spiritual consciousness explores these heights too, but he would disdain to make the visions touching those spheres a subject for “common chatter”; his reverence of things divine forbid him to “take God’s name in vain.”
24. The Resuscitation of the Mysteries
Just as Jellinek is not himself gifted with, or able to apprehend, the ancient power of seership, so too he is not possessed of, or capable of comprehending, the power of Intuition of the modern Occultist; for were he able to do so he would assuredly have added the distinguishing term of “Master”’ to the name of Rudolf Steiner when alluding to him in company with those others who are, by common consent, honoured by this prefix. But, as we have before observed, it is usually the custom to honour the Dead rather than the Living!
Steiner has himself set the best example as to how to honour the great historic Dead. No one else has done them justice more fully than he has, nor has anyone else made so clear all that the earlier Initiates contributed to the evolution of the human race, or so clearly perceived the occult nature of their services, as also the meaning of the Mysteries. With him as our guide we may fathom the Wisdom of China and Japan; he can lead us to apprehend the Wisdom of Zarathustra, of Buddha, of the Brahmins; he can guide us to Jesus of Nazareth and to Mystical Christianity, for he is more deeply familiar than any other living man with the inner being of those mysteries, from which the earlier Leaders of Humanity have themselves come forth and with which he in his turn is now identified.
Let us, then, guard against the errors committed by the Pharisees and Scribes, who swore by Moses and the Prophets, and who derided Him Who sought to lead them to greater heights, who called Him ‘ Blasphemer !” for the man of the twentieth century, who desires to serve the sacred Spirit of Evolution must refuse to be himself guilty of the accusation, “Fill ye up the measure of your fathers” (Matt. xxiii, 32). For just as the whole world is ever in a state of flux, so too has the condition of human nature sensibly altered in time and space since the days of Sankaracharya, of Buddha, Zarathustra, Loatze and Socrates, even of Jesus, John, and Meister Eckhart. And to these changes in human nature correspond different methods of thought compared with which those of earlier dates have lost their value. We should have to digress too far were we to enter into a detailed explanation on these points, but they may be found in full in Steiner’s various works. We shall therefore give no more than what may serve as a kind of general explanation.
The methods of knowledge which are calculated to serve our times were prepared in the fourteenth century, for the twentieth century, by Christian Rosenkreuz, and have been brought to perfection in the present day by the Rosicrucian Initiate, Rudolf Steiner, in conjunction with modern Natural Science. Those who believe in the real existence of the Mysteries, and who are not content to look for them merely among the Ancients, or even in the Middle Ages, but rather at this actual present day—those, we say, who believe in their reality, will be ready to acknowledge that neither Driesch, nor Scheler, nor yet any other of our University professors can have aught to do with the newer Mysteries, and they will expect the guardians and delegates of such Mysteries to be persons of a very different kind, and to be marked out from the men of their own time (which is itself marked out from other times) in the same way as Jesus, Socrates, Giordano Bruno, and Galileo were marked men in their day.
And even as human nature changes so too does science, This is why we say that Steiner—by reason of his totally different human nature (which is of a kind that, being true to the times and the immediate future, will become more common in other men)—has in actual truth founded a new science, which he has very properly named Anthroposophy, or Spiritual Science. This, it must be understood, has nothing in common with academic spiritual sciences, largely dependent as these are on ordinary philosophy—a domain which Steiner has long since left behind. The contention that Steiner has found no new methods by which to carry out his work of Investigator is based on a complete ignorance of Steiner’s writings, to say nothing of an evident lack of any deeper understanding of their contents. For the methods, or means, according to which Steiner works are absolutely new: neither Buddha, nor Zarathustra—no, nor yet Jesus, nor Meister Eckhart—knew of or apprehended them, for they would have been useless in their times, as well as for the people about them. These methods are entirely the products of modern times, arid of the German Folk-Spirit. But when we say this we do not mean to imply that the methods used by the great men of bygone ages did not give results similar to those of Steiner. Yet similar as these results may be, when superficially regarded, they were nevertheless essentially inferior; for not only does the Spirit of Evolution require that all these old Mysteries should be sacrificed, but it demands that they shall also be replaced by others—others of an entirely new form; and it is this Necessity for Evolution, this desire for free progress, which it has been Steiner’s great task to realize; and to this he has devoted forty years of ceaseless energy, and he has now brought it to fulfilment in the most masterly way.
All the forms of Ancient Knowledge are no more than remnants of older civilizations, and should never be foisted on modern educated humanity under the pretext of being representative of “great and eternal truths,” for to do so is to “blunt men’s perceptions and sensibilities for the signs of turbulent unrest besetting these days, and must render them unfit to take part in the work of the immediate future,” as Steiner said as long ago asi892. The Ancient Mysteries have become worn out (morsch, i.e. rotten) and must disappear, if others are to take their place. And here Steiner is not only the complete destroyer, but also the genius, able to create new Mysteries. To the present time, as well as to the immediate future, he is what in their day were Sankaracharya, Buddha, Zarathustra, and Jesus (but not Christ, be it understood!), what were also St. John and Meister Eckhart—namely, a Renewer of the Mysteries. This being so, Steiner too and all that his work stands for will in the fullness of time yield pride of place to some later Initiate (possibly to a reincarnation of Steiner himself), who will again renew what will by then have become in its turn the “remnant of a bygone civilization.” For there is no absolute truth or morality which can serve for all times, and every period in time must give spiritual birth to that which is best suited to its own evolution.
Even the conception of a synthetic and authoritative form of science, to which Jellinek has sought to give the widest possible expression, remains at the level of a philosophic intellectuality. Jellinek would like to cure by a philosophical synthesis our ailing spiritual life, which on the one side has hopelessly divided the spheres of science, art, and religion, and on the other is torn asunder by the anarchy resulting from this specialization of Science, Art, and the various Faiths. But, honest and conscientious as is his mode of approaching the subject (and we must certainly admit that Jellinek by his own methods has achieved as much as can be achieved by them), yet has it not been given to him to discover the Great Truth in pursuit of which he was ready to spend his very heart’s blood, and this simply because it is not to be sought there where his line of investigation takes him, Unfortunately the passion for truth which inspires the writer of a book is not necessarily a guarantee for its trustworthiness.
It is the duty of Philosophy to provide a synthesis of all the other special sciences, and thus to reach a view of the Universe which is calculated to satisfy both feeling and reason. But Philosophy, by itself, is no more than a small subdivision and a passing phenomenon in man’s conscious life, and should therefore be accounted but one among many other stones all of which have to find their place in any synthesis such as Jellinek desires. But if Philosophy is no more than a form of discipline applied to the human spirit, and one which does not transcend a particular niveau, then this, in itself, points the necessity for a kind of super-philosophy, or super-science, which could be trusted to provide “the tremendous synthesis now lacking between the natural sciences and the sciences of mind, as well as between science, philosophy, and religion.” It is thus that Jellinek describes the synthesis which he claims to construct on the basis of his religio-philosophic-metaphysical speculations, with help of what he elects to call his “intuition.” The sketch, as devised by him, is a bold one, for he includes in his system not only the results of the special natural sciences and the sciences of mind but adds to these the profound contents of the ancient Mysteries, although these are touched on but superficially. Yet, in spite of the bold lines of his sketch, he fails to rise above the old intellectual anarchy because he takes the worn-out metaphysical and speculative thought-discipline and the methods of materialistic science, and applies these to the supersensible contents of the old Mysteries—Mysteries that are now no more than spiritual fossils, incapable of being galvanized into new life. And Jellinek, for all his efforts, does not succeed in “waking the dead.” All his heart’s blood cannot do it.
But the synthesis we have in mind, and for the bringing about of which Steiner has laboured so hard, is of quite another kind. This synthesis is like the method applied by Jesus of Nazareth to the old Folk-Religions, being what may be called a natural or organic synthesis; for it lays bare the living roots of the ancient Mysteries. The Mysteries, we must remember, have been changed in the course of time, and have not now a real connexion with that for which they originally stood, having become like the withered or petrified fruits that fill the museums of religious literature with their faded documents and scrolls. But what we need to nourish us in soul and spirit is fresh fruit. Fresh fruit cannot be found among the “dried legumes” of history, and the consumption of such fare would soon tend to petrify and shrivel us up too! But our modern spiritual food, derived through Steiner, has the power to give elasticity, adaptability, and eternal youth,
We stand, therefore, in need of this great Renewer of the Mysteries; for having descended into and explored chaos he can transform it and make even chaos a rejuvenating source, drawing from its depths the most stupendous synthesis of spiritual lore that has ever yet been known.
Steiner’s Anthroposophical Spiritual Science is the only “super-philosophy,” or “super-science,” which is able to restore health to Germany—indeed, to Europe and to all humanity. It is the only great synthesis possessing a working basis, and, by applying it to our needs, rather than relying on any other mechanical and philosophical synthesis, we may yet prevent the dreaded decline of the Occidental world.
Steiner is also a Philosopher, and, helped by the discipline of thought, he has explored Spiritual Science to its depths. But the powers he has here displayed are not the highest which he has at his command but belong to a lower function, just as for an ordinary man the physical body belongs to a lower function than the intellectual capacity. His philosophical synthesis is necessarily the greatest ever put forward at any time, and yet it is not in it that his real strength lies: his strength les in his super-philosophical work as an Adept, as an Occultist, as an Initiate, and as one who has restored life to the Mysteries.
25. Ahriman, Lucifer, and Christ
Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy and Anthroposophy may be said to bring together and unite all the best attributes of German Culture as seen in the spirit of the Reformation at the close of the Middle Ages, and again during the second half of the eighteenth century, when our classical writers were at the height of their fame. It is the fruit of these earlier stages that Steiner now gathers for us.
Luther’s work as a Reformer extended far beyond Germany; it spread across Europe to all peoples of the earth who were able to receive its civilizing influence. And so too will Steiner’s spiritual science, with its social and political consequences (which are of such great immediate importance to Germany), extend over all the civilized world, carrying with it the blessings which result from spiritual development.
If ever there was a man more capable than any other of understanding the dire needs of his own people, and of responding to their Call, then is Steiner that man. Let us, then, close round and follow him along that “independent path” which he, conscious of the heavy burden laid upon him, is slowly, yet surely, treading. And while following thus behind him, may we gaze steadily at this universe and life, seeing things as he sees them with the comprehensiveness which distinguishes his World of Ideas. With our help Steiner can become what, indeed, he years to be to Humanity—its Emancipator and its Redeemer, freeing it from the Yoke of Tradition and the Dead Letter, the Bringer of a new and all-embracing Knowledge, “alive” with the scientific spirit of the times and capable of solving the Riddle of the Universe.
The German Spirit which in Luther, Lessing, and Schelling strove to find a for in of Christianity such as Christ Himself might have taught has now, in the person of Rudolf Steiner, risen to a height which it has.never reached before; and if Luther “freed us from the yoke of tradition,” then is it Steiner, “the great and unrecognized man,” who, by the power of the indwelling Spirit, has answered Lessing’s anxious cry, “But who will free us from the still more unendurable yoke of the Letter ?”
Lessing’s invocation of the genius of Luther, “who will at length give us a Christianity such as you in this day would have taught, such as Christ Himself would teach us!” has found its echo in Steiner's genius— Steiner, whose forty years of unremitting work has been directed towards this high aim, and verily realizes the “Johannine Christianity” which Christ Himself would bring, and to which Schelling pointed when, a century ago, he said that it ‘“was on the way,” and would replace the Catholicism founded on St. Peter, as also the Protestantism based upon St. Paul, the days of both being numbered beyond recall.
“The rebirth of Religion by the aid of the highest science” is, as Schelling said, ““the task awaiting the German Spirit and the aim of all its efforts.”” And this “highest science” is no other than Steiner’s Anthroposophical SpiritualScience. If, then, guided by Spiritual Science we desire to see the meaning of this struggle ‚for synthesis—this effort- of the German Spirit to balance the contradictions of material and intellectual culture—we must give full weight to the following considerations.
Germany's great Spiritual World Mission culminates in the fact that she is called on to unveil the secrets of three cosmic powers, and to apply the results so gained to life. The secrets referred to are those of Lucifer, of Ahriman, and of Christ. Lucifer and Ahriman are the powers reigning over the EastandtheWest respectively. The efforts of those who seek after a one-sided religious and spiritual culture are ruled by Lucifer, while the aims of those who are bent on a one-sided scientific and material form of culture are inspired by Ahriman. Now, both these powers have their raison d’ être; they are very necessary factors in the world’s progress, and it would be foolish should we spurn them from us in contempt, or try to “suppress” either. In their own fields each is a highly beneficent power, but they must not be permitted to exceed their limits and get “out of hand.” They should be brought into perfect equipoise, be made to balance each other to a nicety; and here it is that we have need of the third cosmic power—the Living CHrist; for it is He Who alone can assign their just limits to Lucifer and Ahriman and bring about the harmony or balance for which Central Europe still waits. It is Germany’s Cosmic Mission to turn aside the ex oriente lux which, with its pseudoreligious speculations, is flowing in upon us from the East, and also to deliver us from the onslaughts of Western scientific materialism. Germany has thus to bring about an even balance between the two. Where ever we find spiritual tendencies at work which, though at their inception excellent, have, so to speak, become rigid and unable as well as unwilling to move with the times in obedience to the laws of growth and evolution, there the Luciferan power is in evidence. We behold it in the clerical orthodoxy of the East, which, coming from the Orient, extends via Russia into Germany, and which has to a great extent permeates the Christianity of our Churches. Its powers are very evident in Roman Catholicism and in Jesuitry. Here the Luciferan element has been stronger and more insistent than anywhere else, owing to its struggle against the spirit of the Reformation. In the same way, also, the orthodox Protestants, by their passionate adherence to Luther, are kept back by the power of Lucifer from the realization of the spirit of Revolution and Evolution.
Catholicism and Protestantism not only direct their energies against the material tendencies of science—with which we could find no fault, if they would but use the right weapons !—but they attack with the greatest acrimony the spiritualistic tendencies of Spiritual Science, which is engaged in the clairvoyant investigation of the supersensible worlds and in unveiling the deeper mysteries of Christianity.
Lucifer is, then, the true Inspirer of Religious Fanaticism. He portrays the origin of being in false colours, and changes the Christian Mysteries to their very opposites. And in so doing he makes a strong appeal to the egoism of “the Faithful,” for he befools them with promises of “entering Heaven and attaining eternal salvation” at the close of but one experience of life upon earth. Such prospects held out with regard to the life after death are, of course, decidedly more attractive than those put forward by Spiritual Science. A boundless personal egoism of the most dangerous kind is the true explanation of this longing for " life everlasting,” as interpreted by orthodox Religion. It is therefore easy to understand that “pious” people recoil in horror from the mere idea of reincarnation, and are wont to speak of the “intolerable burden” that Spiritual Science lays on man when it “preaches the curse of a return to earth.” 9This view was expressed by the Protestant Professor of Theology at Erlangen, Dr. Bachmann.
Yet we question whether the “curse of eternal damnation,” with which these same “pious” people like to saddle those who differ from them in religious beliefs, might not be far more unendurable! For, as Goethe has observed, “The doctrine of eternal damnation of the heathen is one of those questions ... over which we have to hasten as though we were crossing over red-hot iron.” 10«Brief eines Pastors zu... an den Pastor zu... ("Letter of a Parson at ... to the Parson at. ..”). When will Justice and Mercy come to consider what Goethe called “the returning” (Wiederbringung, i.e. Wiederverkoerperung = reincarnation), and console itself “in secret” with this doctrine? When will all the “unbelievers” be left to the care of eternal and “returning” love? Not until “God’s peculiar people” understand that they are in the grip of the Luciferan “devil” who has “got them by the collar!”
And so it is also in regard to the Ahrimanic power. This, too, “started well,” until what had been a healthy materialistic tendency became an exaggeration and one-sided, to such an extent that everything appertaining to soul and spirit came to be regarded as unreal, or unverifiable—as no more than Ideology or as the “functioning of matter.” These are the results of material science, with its accompanying technical refinements of life, and this point of view for the most part originating in America, has, via England and France, invaded Germany and permeated our culture. Wherever we turn our eyes, be it to science or to our imperialism or to our capitalism, this trait becomes apparent. Had Haeckel, instead of following Huxley, Locke, and Darwin—all of whom interpreted the doctrine of evolution in a purely materialistic sense— turned to Goethe, who stood for the doctrine of spiritual development, and had he recognized in him his master, then would our natural science have been German, instead of English, by which we mean materialistic.
In this same sense, too, can Kant’s “awakening from his dogmatic slumbers” be traced to Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. It was Kant who materialized our philosophy, for his crude exposition of dualism is but an offshoot of English materialistic thought. It is the stress laid on the value of what is apprehended by the senses, and the indifference to that which is ideal, as well as the error committed in removing the Ideal to a “beyond,” “on the other side” of our consciousness or experience, where it is supposed to be quite inaccessible (j.e, metaphysical), that enables Ahriman for Mephistopheles) to draw man away from his spiritual and “primeval source ” and to “feed him on dust” (i.e. Materialism).
Material Science is therefore in conflict not only with the doctrine of revelation, in that within proper limits it would be quite justified, but it is also in conflict with the doctrines of Spiritual Science as founded by Goethe on thoroughly German soil. Here, therefore, we come to see Ahriman as the inspirer of scientific materialism, for he, too, can trick man with a false vision of this world, and induce him to regard the Material World as the only possible world, thus depriving him of all hope of an after life, to be lived in the spirit.
But both Luciferan and Ahrimanic forces are, as we have already observed, important forces, for on them depend Humanity’s emancipation and development, and Goethe, who knew so much about these matters, makes constant allusion thereto in '‘ Faust.” It is therefore most important that these two forces shall be consciously recognized, and brought to a balance against each other, so that one does not get the supremacy over the other; for a one-sided opposition to the Ahrimanic taint of Materialism must inevitably tip the balance in favour of the nebulous mysticism which is the bane of Lucifer, while those who flee from Lucifer fall an easy prey to the wiles of Ahriman. It is even possible to become enmeshed in both Materialism and Mysticism at one and the same time, as, for instance, in the case of Karl Jellinek, a dualistic ‘Thinker, who, after a thoroughly materialistic (Ahrimanic) discussion arrives at an entirely Luciferan conclusion !
The ancient Greek myth of Scylla and Charybdis gives a very apt illustration of the danger, for from the East we are threatened by a religio-Luciferan Scylla, while in the West looms the danger of an Ahrimanic scientific Charybdis! Germany has for centuries past permitted ingress to both these powers, and hence the torn and divided state in which we find ourselves today, sure proof of the sickness assailing us. On the one side orthodox churches and a priesthood exercising their egoistical religiosity, their obtuse fanaticism, and on the other liberal Free Thought, coupled with material science. But in saying this we only point out the two obvious extremes, for there are innumerable varieties and gradations to be found in between. And lastly, we come to the Theosophical Movement, as known in Central Europe, saturated as it is in the Luciferan direction by the Indian and Buddhistic conception of the Universe, introduced from the East and brought into Germany by H. P. Blavatsky, only to be subsequently taken in hand and guided into the river-bed of Ahrimanic materialism by Annie Besant. In America this Luciferan wave has “stiffened,” as it were, into Christian Science and Spiritualism—a state of thing inevitably due to the strong Ahrimanic influence prevailing in that country.
We therefore see that Steiner has to contend with two opposites at the same time, would he keep the German Spirit and German culture uncontaminated as well as assert his freedom from the “false wisdom ” of Eastern Theosophy. For Annie Besant’s attempts to foist the Indian youth, Alcyone Krishnamurti upon us, under the pretext that he was a reincarnation of the Christ, and the Coming World Teacher, was but a fiction due to an Oriental-American—or, in other words, a LuciferanAhrimanic, or, again, religio-materialistic error, and one to which the German Spirit, within which the Living Christ-power now functions, had to be strenuously opposed.11Functioning only to the extent of the etheric body, not physical, since Christ, having made the Great Sacrifice upon Golgotha, will never assume a material body again. — Translator's Note. It is the people of Central Europe who have been called upon to find the equipoise between these two extremes, and the (third) CosmicEntity to inspire and guide this struggle towards an organic synthesis into its rightful course is the Living Christ, Whose work lies entirely in that sphere which is at the back of our everyday consciousness and beyond our powers of sense-observation. We can, nevertheless, become receptive to this Christ Influence, as soon as we are able to include the supersensible, the etheric 12“Etheric,” see earlier note. world—in which He now appears—within our field of conscious clairvoyance. We then shall also learn what our attitude towards Lucifer and Ahriman should be, for we shall then recognize them both in their true natures, and the powers of both will be shattered before the knowledge which then will be ours; for it is only as long as we are “in darkness” as to their true being that they have power over us.
And this is the Knowledge which Spiritual Science, focusing in the Living Christ, makes known to us to-day. Spiritual Science is therefore, in the first place, Christ Science (not “Christian Science”), and by its aid we may penetrate into those spheres of light which have been so long distorted or obscured to our vision by the arts of Lucifer and Ahriman. Those materialistic thinkers and Jesuits who deny that we possess any immediate clairvoyant powers of perception, who scoff at any experience of the supersensible worlds, and, indeed, decry efforts in this direction as “dangerous materialism,” do so because they are slaves to Lucifer and Ahriman; for in so doing they deny the Living Christ, Whose Will it is that He should now be seen, even as He was seen by Paul on the road to Damascus.
Here, in the one-sided activities of these two cosmic powers, we may see the cause for the“fall of historic humanity”; while the equalizing power of regeneration, the Living Christ, may even now be found in Germany—the Heart of Europe—centred in our Movement for Anthroposophical and Spiritual Science. It is from this primeval source of all higher cultures that the peoples of the earth, but more especially those of Europe and America, will in coming times draw strength for the renewal of their spiritual, moral, and social life, Yet, before these things can happen, Germany will have to rise triumphant and victorious above her own dissensions, having settled her own religious, scientific, social, and political bickerings and her selfish aloofness; she will also have to banish her destructive party, hatreds and bitternesses, all of which have contributed to make her sick unto death. To overcome these she must develop a more concentrated power of action and greater sense of unity in Thought, Feeling, and Will, all of which these years of heavy sacrifice and sorrow should indeed have done much to foster in us. For it is no chance thing that Germany, who for fifty years has neglected her world-historic task, should now find herself on the road to Golgotha. The dire distress of life must however gift her with an insight which would have been wanting in more affluent circumstances. It must depend on an unbiased judgment of the spiritual necessities of life whether we turn the scale of this our present condition of acute distress or—sink down beyond redemption.
26. The Root of SociaL Evil
We will now take the purely spiritual point of view which we have gained from our contemplation of the secret concerning the three cosmic Entities and apply it to social life. In doing so we shall at once perceive the necessity of a threefold organization of Society, for this, too, corresponds in its constituent parts to those of man with his body, soul, and spirit.
When the Catholic Church in 869, acting under the influence of Ahriman and Lucifer, limited man to a body and a soul, and decreed the Spirit to be a superfluity—this being “extirpated” in favour of papal imperialism—Christ was practically banished from religion. The result was that science became not only spiritless, but, being also deprived of soul, fell entirely beneath the influence of Ahriman, for whose purposes the body alone sufficed. And this Ahrimanic science, which, together with Luciferan religion, gave its stamp to Social Life, could not do otherwise than shape this too on lines devoid of soul and spirit and crystallize the whole into an Ahrimanic form of State Government. But the Luciferan soul, of which this was the outer covering became no more than an “ideologic” superstructure, while the spirit through which the J. CH. (the I-AM-I) in man—the Jesus-Christ— proclaimed its presence, was entirely absent. It is therefore but natural that a social organism of this kind, diseased to the very marrow, should be doomed to utter collapse. Now, the question touching the recovery of the Social organism must be preceded by one which concerns the recovery of Spiritual Life.
In our day Spiritual Life can alone be healthy when it gives us such a sense of the immediate and vital reality of the Spirit as may enable us to counteract the abstract thought schemata and defunct conceptions which acquire shape by reason of our physical (Ahrimanic) senses to haunt our souls. Spiritual life, in our day, can only be sound if Luciferan and Ahrimanic dualism are exterminated from Religion and from Science, and true Christian Monism, as represented by Spiritual Science, takes their place. And not only does this apply to Religion, with its welter of Confessions, all due to the alienating influences of Luciferan Orthodoxy, but it also applies to specialized Science, bondsman to Ahriman, and further to the Art of the day, which under these two powers is dragged in opposite directions and must also be brought within the controlling influence of Christian Monism, that is, of Spiritual Science. When thus raised to a higher level Art will acquire the impetus so imperatively needed in order to assist it to find new expression. Indeed, nowhere can healthful spiritual life be found in this day except under the influence of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, whose task it is to revolutionize and restore the old and sick spiritless Religions, Sciences, and Arts, as well as to revivify Social Life, Economics, and the Law, each and all of which are suffering ‘ sympathetically” from the complaints which have been generated within the constitutions of the three first named.
But no organism is capable of being reformed by the application of mere conventionally expressed ideas, “inspired” by materialistic Natural Science, and reaching their full development in the doctrine preached by Marx. For it is this form of thought that has brought about our debacle. Every social reform that only considers the economic side of life, that looks primarily to the process of industrial production, and treats man and spiritual life as no more than an “ideologic” superstructure will never accomplish anything; indeed, such a method of treating the subject must sooner or later lead to even greater chaos. A Spiritual movement is therefore needed which shall be directed against the tendency to ascribe exclusive importance to personal self-interest in the field of economics, so that both the Ahrimanic and the Luciferan devils may each be assigned their appointed limits by Christ. The ‘“mobilizing” of Spirit and intellect that has been going forward in Germany, under Rudolf Steiner, ever since 1900 is now almost complete; at the given moment the “troops”’ standing in readiness will carry out their appointed parts in the operations and strike a blow for German Idealism, for the German Spirit, and for German Culture, doing so against the pseudo- and un-German barbarism, as exemplified by Russian Bolshevism, Roman Catholicism, and Jesuitry, against Roman Law and against Anglo-American Materialism and Imperialism, all of which have sought to make their home on our soil. It is this un-German barbarism that in the present day infests our nobility, our middle classes, and our proletariat, Not one of these three classes has proved itself worthy of leadership, for they are corrupt through and through and a prey to the vilest form of materialism. Our Ahrimanic nobility, vowed from time immemorial to militarism and a policy of force, were originally also in possession of the means of production (i.e. land and soil), having in the first place secured them by violence, and they still govern the political and legal sides of State life. The middle classes, standing between the aristocracy and the proletariat, are mainly engaged in science; it is they who hold authority over the Luciferan life of the spirit as known in Religion, in Science, and in Art. This class, taking over militarism from the nobility, democratized it to some extent by introducing the system of Universal Service, and they also acquired command of the means of production by the introduction of the Capitalist system. In this day the power of the middle classes is due on the one hand to the scientific authority exercised by its representative members, as well as to the possession of productive property, and on the other to the condition of things which resulted when Industrialism and Commerce enabled the journeyman to become an Employer of Labour and a ‘ Limited Liability Man” And lastly we come to the proletariat, the modern wage-earning caste, the class that has been dispossessed “in body and soul,” yet who bear within them, though for the time being quite unconsciously, the impulse of a truly Christian life. The middle-class employer of the present day exploits the proletariat in the same way as the noble lord of the manor in olden times exploited his peasantry, yet the overlord in his day saw that the serfs had the protection of his mercenaries against aggression and violence of other robber barons; but what protection does the modern employer afford to his wage-earners ? The Sick Insurance and the Old Age Pensions schemes, to which he ultimately acceded, were, indeed, no more than laughable substitutes for a reform the just demand for which rises from the very depth of the human soul. Now, the heritage which has devolved on the proletariat from the middle classes is material science, and (as they are convinced as to its final authority) science has been “popularized” in the most purblind fashion to suit the masses. Our National Schools busy themselves in. systematically instilling “science”’ into the already barren soul of the ‘“Factory Hand,” dull and weary as he is from the strain of continuous mechanical labour. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Liebhart and Kautzky, Lenin and Trotzky have all sat at the feet of those bourgeois Philosophers Kant, Hegel, Avenarius, and Mach, and of those equally bourgeois Natural Scientists, Darwin, Büchner, Vogt, Moleschott, and Haeckel, to say nothing of such bourgeois Theologians as David Strauss and Ernest Renan; but what they there learnt is directly opposed to the unconscious driving forces latent within the proletarian souls. Yet the masses have been quite logical in their understanding of this absolutely perverse materialistic science, so dear to the bourgeois; and if our middle-class students of Economy and Sociology happen to have arrived at different conclusions to what the proletarian have done, the reason is merely that selfish class interests have made the middle class thoroughly illogical! For the Bourgeois, by his Ahrimanic science and his Luciferan religion and art, by his sensual enjoyment of life, which is the fruit of his capital, has been so completely befogged that he cannot understand the inevitable conclusions which are forced upon the Proletarian, who had no such “dope” at his command, and who is, moreover, incapable of responding to the “free of cost” efforts made on his behalf by the Church.
But, having made a tabula rasa, as far as the Luciferan fraud is concerned—the Proletarian has proceeded to fall all the deeper into the Ahrimanic deception. The brutal doctrine of the survival of the fittest (which, as Darwin and Haeckel taught, include the higher animal, Man) became the Watchword of the Red Flag, and is now quoted and bandied about in the cause of the class warfare waged by a brutalized proletariat against a decadent middle class and a corrupt aristocracy. The Revolution, which in the present day is directed against both these classes, against their militarism and their capitalism, is therefore the unavoidable result of a bourgeois materialism, of which proletariat and nobility are alike sick.
Thus, then, the Revolution may be said to be really the fault of those against whom it is directed—the fault of the educated classes, whose culture is that false pseudo-culture of the worst kind, against which Nietzsche, when a young man, took up the cudgels so energetically, without, however, being able to point out the way to true culture or to the Spirit; for as soon as ever these theories based on a pretence to science and this Philistine culture are applied to real life, it at once becomes patent that they are destructive of all culture, and that any section of humanity, working on such lines, must either court self-extermination or become ridiculous; for the crux of the evil lies not so much in the conditions which have been brought about by mistaken action, but rather in a form of erroneous thinking; in a condition of thought that regards the Spirit as superfluous, and would foist this false doctrine on economic and political life.
The theoretical thoughts of one generation become the motives to practical action in the next, and, in view of the theoretical materialism of our fathers, extending as it did all through the ’fifties, ’sixties, and ’seventies, we may well say, with Johannes Scherr, “Folly! thou hast triumphed !”
The “New Faith” alluded to by Nietzsche in 1873, which may be traced to “Strauss’s Gospel according to the Philistine and the Pub,’ has come into its own. “Were I to think,” observes Nietzsche, “that young men might not only endure such a book, but might even lay store on it, I should sorrowfully have to renounce my hopes as to their future”; and yet this wretched, hopeless, and most contemptible philistinism has come to be the Credo of the many thousands of whom Strauss speaks as “we,” and the we here alluded to were the fathers of the succeeding generation!
“What a terrible prospect lies before those who are anxious to be of help to the coming generation in achieving that which the present one (1893) has not been able to attain to, namely, true German Culture. To anyone who strives for this the soil seems covered with ashes, and every star is hid, while every tree and barren field cries out: ‘fruitless and lost! nevermore can there here be Spring!’” How emphatically the events of recent years have borne out the truth of Nietzsche’s words!
A system of Theology imbued with natural science, such as Strauss and those of his school stood for, completely lost sight of the fact that the being within man is essentially a spiritual substance. According to such teaching man was no more than the most highly evolved type of animal, and this theory is doomed to failure when applied to man’s cultural requirements. The worD, veiling as it does the Mystery of man, had to give way before the “phrase,’ that product of the non-spiritual, which was then under various forms the fashion, All the culture of soul and character to which the generation of our fathers aspired, and to which many of our contemporaries, too, have been quite content to cling, consisted in no more than a set of empty phrases, the fruits of which it has been left to us to gather. The science of the non-human and the sub-human had to descend into this maze of Luciferan Phrase-coining when it desired to find a term for that which is distinctive of man, and which it had no other way of approaching. Non-spirit, however, commits itself to many an absurdity as soon as ever it forsakes “books and heads”—where the most incompatible ideas seem to find it easy to live “cheek-by-jowl” as it were I—and goes wandering out into the open market-place of economic and political life; for it is there that we find things up against each other—up against each other, too, to such an extent that man has been torn and crushed beneath them. And he was bound thus to become a victim because of his ‘nonhuman’ thoughts, which had become breeding grounds for the wildest anarchy, seeing that his spirituality had had no part assigned it in the shaping of things, or in settling the conditions of social life.
If the deep and sacred Wisdom of the Bible revealed to Mankind the high destiny to which, through evolution, it was to rise-—" Ye shall be like unto gods, and have knowledge of good and evil””—the doctrine inculcated by Strauss and,the followers of the New Faith certainly led to the opposite results—“Ye have become like unto the beasts, knowing neither what is g00d, nor what is evil.”
27. The Threefold Social Organism
If the social organism of mankind is to become sound again it must be fashioned in the likeness of man’s own true being. Now the entity known as man is threefold and consists of body, soul, and spirit—a trilogy that functions in thinking, feeling, and willing, each of which funds expression through man’s physical organism. Thought is governed by the sense-nerves situated in the head; feeling by the process of breathing, by the rhythmic beat of the pulses, and its centre is the chest; while the will is intimately bound up with the process of metabolism in the abdominal regions, and finds its expression also in man’s extremities--in his limbs.
This threefold organism of man, as recognized by Spiritual Science, also belongs to Humanity’s Social Organism; for even as the threefold division of life in man—thinking, feeling, and willing—finds expression in three different portions of his body, so, too, the spiritual activity, the economic productivity, and the system of law and equity ought each to be separately located in separate self-governing members of the Social Organism; for, as it would be impossible for the head itself to breathe, or prepare the nutriment required for the maintenance of its activities, but is obliged to be dependent on each of its fellow members so far as their particular functions are involved, so, too, should no Social Organism be called upon to evolve its own system of “rights” or its own spiritual life, but it should look to receive them ready made by the processes of the political life of the State and of its culture organizations, The material requirements of life depend similarly upon the economic organ.
Now, curious though this may at first sight seem, it is the head’s thinking—an intellectual activity—that corresponds to the process functioning in economics in the social organism, when we compare the individual with the State; while feeling, connected with heart, corresponds to the State’s judicial life; and the Will or the metabolism of the Individual is paralleled by the spiritual life of the State. In this order of correspondence we have to recognize a complete reversal of what might be expected. As the economic life of the State is dependent on the natural material endowments of each country and can yield no more than it contains, so, too, is the spiritual life of each individual dependent on his own individual capacities. The coal, metals, and the minerals contained within the earth, as also the fruitfulness of the soil, form, so to speak, the “talents” belonging to the Social Organism. And on the other side these endowments are used or “consumed” by the spiritual factors which man, by reason of his soul life, brings to bear upon them, namely, by his Religion, Science, Art, and Technical Inventions, to which they supply food and nutriment to be transformed by the process of metabolism. A physically barren country is like a man lacking in spiritual gifts. A country to which its clergy, thinkers, artists, and inventors do not sufficiently contribute, each according to his kind, or where they do not contribute the right kind of nourishment, is in the position of a man who is either under-fed or poisoned, and is bound to succumb. The threatening collapse of the West may be traced to “spiritual under-feeding” due to Ahriman, and to “metabolic poisoning” on the part of Lucifer. Christ-inspired spiritual science can alone tum aside this evil, since it alone affords, in abundant measure, the spiritual food best calculated to maintain the health as well as the life of Humanity’s Social Organism. The Social Organism, therefore, derives its nourishment from our spiritual output and from our spiritual gifts, and our individual capabilities are the soil wherein it may grow arid thrive.
When considered in the light of what has here been said, the cry which arose at the time of the French Revolution for “Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood,” issiuing from some dim, yet vital, subconscious feeling which was struggling to find human utterance, can be more clearly appreciated. In the case of the old centralized systems of Government such demands were bound to cause men to oppose and devour one another, and thus reduce all alike to misery. On the other hand, in the Threefold State these demands supplement and mutually support each other, and cause men in the fulfilment of their respective functions to work together for the harmony, stability, and blessing of Mankind.
Freedom is only possible in man’s Spiritual life, It should, therefore, there be respected and cultivated as something holy. Woe to us should we allow our individual talents to wither, or leave them uncultivated! Woe to us, also, should our spiritual gifts, which can alone flourish by the enjoyment of Freedom, become choked and stifled before they reach maturity—owing to the uniform teaching supplied by our State schools—a state of things which unfortunately has so far been the case, In these institutions the best and most promising natural materials for spiritual life have been systematically ruined; no mines, no mineral deposits, no cornfields have been so wasted, for the young human being has been helpless in the hands of these educational Vandals.
The Freie Waldorf Schule (the Free Waldorf School) at Stuttgart, where the system of teaching provides man with what is most needful to his spirit, without regard to what “use” he may be to the State, is out to put an end to all this wanton human waste and to effect a radical change... and in this lies the reason for our new system of education being so hated in certain quarters. But what the Free Waldorf School is doing for the human child, the Freie Hochschule für Geisteswissenschaft (the High School for Spiritual Science at Dornach (the Goetheanum) is doing for older youths, thus providing that the young B.A. of the future shall not be let loose on society for the purpose of “spoofing” poor helpless humanity. And here, again, we may find the true cause for much of the calumny to which Steiner is exposed.
The normal impulse of Lucifer is limited to the free life of the spirit, in all its many-hued multiplicity, and as long as he is content to confine his activities within these limits he brings blessing to all concerned; for active efforts made in the attainment of knowledge, finding expression in diverse individual talents or abilities, whose healthy development can only be helped by freedom, are inspired by Lucifer. The name, therefore, given by the French Writer and Thinker, Eduard Schuré, to those who press forward to the Light!—“The Childern Of Lucifer”—is most apposite, for it is only when this benign and constructive cosmic power exceeds its just limits and trespasses on the neighbouring domains of either economic or political life (as was so frequently the case under the old regime of the centralized system of State Government) that it becomes evil and obstructive. The condition of Anarchy which exists in American and European economic life and in Russo-Bolshevistic State life may serve as illustrations of this.
In the same way in which freedom finds expression in Spiritual life, so, too, do the personal rights of the Individual find their rightful place in Law, which is the province of the Political State, and whose rule should be consistent with a true Democracy; for the Democratic State, as now conceived in the West, is a mere Luciferan delusion, in which the old Imperialism reigns supreme. It is here, in the affairs of the Political State, that Ahriman should find scope for his useful tendencies—these conservative tendencies which are so entirely justified, within certain limits. Here, again unless the boundary is passed, the effects of his conservatism are sound and healthy. Ali values, which, like customs, take a definite form under Jurisprudence, and are thus permitted to crystallize into Law, owe their fixed characteristics to the Ahrimanic principle. In face of the LAw, which gives expression to JUSTICE, all men are equal; and this entitles them to an equal share in the framing of laws.
Yet here again this intrinsically good power can be evil, and cause untold desolation, if being permitted to step outside its proper domain it attempts to regulate the functions of free Spiritual life, or tries to interfere with the affairs of economic life (as has been the case, under the old centralized system of State Government, that “coldest of all cold horrors,” as Nietzsche stigmatized it). Nor is the Parliamentary System, as known in the West, any better; for this system, with its tendency to Ahrimanic reaction, is as destructive as is the Luciferan revolutionary Bolshevism of the East,and neither of them can serve the Social Organism of Mankind, for both infringe and encroach on domains where their activities become either explosive or paralysing even as dynamite and poison would be.
This is why Steiner put forward the following demands as representing the most urgent needs in the reconstruction of the Social State:
(1) The complete emancipation of Spiritual life on the one side, and of Economic life on the other side from Politics. This means, in other words, the freeing of man’s spiritual and economic life from the claws of Ahriman, or the overthrow of scientific and economic materialism.
(2) The abolition of selfishly vested interests in the sphere of Economic life and Law by closing down all capitalized private undertakings and instituting in their stead a personal management of capital and of estates under the direction of capable authorities; the prohibition of the use of the Code of Roman Law, which is really the reflection of personal egoism and founded on the right of personal possession, and the introduction in its stead of a’ new Germanic Code of Law based on general principles of human rights; or, in other words, the freeing of Economics and the system of Personal Rights from the fetters of Lucifer, thereby destroying economic and political selfishness.
With Ahriman and Lucifer thus thrown back to their rightful ground the recovery of the Social Organism would be assured. The third power, how ever, placed between the Luciferan Scylla of the revolutionary East, and the Ahriman’s Charybdis of the reactionary West, those eddies through which we Germans are fated to steer our course, bidding the cosmic powers personified by them keep within bounds—this third power is the Living Christ. It is this power which we must cultivate within us as free individuals, and learn to express in our economic life, if we really desire to assert ourselves and regenerate the world.
“The place in the sun,” for which we fought in vain, was no true ideal—neither for us nor for the world; but we have a task—a mission to the world;—and woe to us should we fail to recognize it!
Christian brotherly love may be best proved and yield the best results when brought to bear on the field of economic life. For here work done for the common weal is not tainted by egoism. Those, then, who pursue the brotherly ideal in Economics realize the demand made by Schiller in the lines:
Nicht an die Gueter haenge dein Herz;
Die das Leben vergaenglich zieren.!Wealth’s glamour in a passing show,
Hang not thy heart upon it.
The feeling for equal personal rights in the hearts of men forbids them to regard the means of production, which are the common property of all society, as though they were the private possessions of any single individual. A man may properly desire to be an overseer, but not to be the proprietor of any particular factory or estate and the development to the best advantage of property, to anyone imbued with the right ideal, can never be a matter of selfish concern. The feeling for Equal Rights inspiring men will also make men anxious that conditions favourable to the well-being of economic life generally should be protected by the Political State, by the police, and, if necessary, by the military forces, and it is in those directions that the particular duties devolving on the State 5Compare W. Von Humboldt’s “Ideen zu einen Versuch die Grenzen der Wirklichkeit des Staats zu bestimmen” (“Ideas put forward in Aid of an Attempt to Determine the Actual Limits of State Control”). should be defined and circumscribed.
In the present old and moribund organization of society it is Lucifer who binds the hearts of men to their possessions, and Ahriman who gives rise to the selfish partiality for the Roman Code, embodying the system of Rights which has been “nailed down” in so hard and fast a manner in our laws. Under such adverse conditions it is obvious that our economic life, wherein the Christ-power should be made manifest, becomes sick unto death, while the character of those engaged in it deteriorates and is corrupted. A terrible curse tests on Capital so long as it remains in private hands, but Capital will become a blessing when it is at length made public and employed on lines which make for culture, for its results will then be the fruit of the Christ impulse and create brotherhood in the field of Economics.
Those who cannot see their way to assimilating these ideas, owing to their being at variance with old and habitual modes of thought which are based on the selfish craving for “profits,'” will probably consider them utterly Utopian and incompatible with human nature. But our reply to any such objection is that a group of employers at Stuttgart, who had hitherto worked their concerns as private men of business, is now engaged in putting these ideas into practice. This should therefore be enough to prove that these ideas are not incompatible with a sane and healthy state of human nature, but are, indeed, the expression of it.
The Stuttgart “Aktiengesellschaft zur Foerdering wirtschaftlicher und geistiger Werte” (Limited Liability Company for the Furtherance of Economic and Spiritual Interests), known as “Der kommende Tag” (The Coming Day), is working with a capital of about thirty-five millions of marks (1921), and its success up to date makes it reasonable for us to anticipate for it a still wider usefulness. Anyhow its success is sufficient to provoke the bitterest hate of t:he profit-loving private Capitalists of yesterday and to-day.
In the same way in which the “Freie Waldorfschule” and the “Freie Hochschule für Geistenwissenschaft” are proving themselves to be powerful instruments for the renewal of Spiritual Life in our midst, so, too, does “Der kommende Tag,” together with the commercial enterprises associated with it, give promise of a thoroughly healthful change in the state of our economic life. The “Bund für Dreigliederung” 13The term used in this country is the “'Threefold State.” has set itself the task of entirely reconstructing the system of Personal Rights in the political department of State. If, then, these three departments can, owing to the initiative of the very capable men who are engaged in them, become self governing, and if the political parliament, which is now obliged to wrestle with both spiritual and economic questions, were to confine itself to the domain of Personal Rights, where it is at home, it would be in a position to delegate spiritual matters to a parliament representing Spiritual Life, and economic matters to a parliament representing economic life. Then would the German Spirit have gained its high aim, and its World Mission would be crowned with success; for the German Spirit, which was awakened by Luther to serve the interests of the whole civilized world, the Spirit which burnt with so bright a flame in the works or our great classic writers that all were filled with amazement at its power, this same German Spirit is to-day fulfilling its appointed task through the agency of Rudolf Steiner, and in him it is ordained to reach its supreme height. His gigantic labour is the Masterpiece of the German Spirit, and one by the stature of which every German may well measure his own worth and his own claim to be called a German. Those Germans who look for the mote in Steiner’s eye, while they ignore the beam in their own, are sinning against all that is holiest in their own being; against that which finds its purest and strongest expression in the person of this extraordinary man. Must we not, then, “feel a sense of bitter pain,” to use Goethe’s words, at the thought that the German people, “individually so worthy of respect,” are yet “so contemptible as a whole”? Have we Germans ever lacked great examples—men who strove with noblest courage on behalf of culture? Or have we wanted for eminent leaders and pioneers in such work? No, indeed! Never have they been wanting, but what they have oftenest lacked has been the support of Germans! We have, it is true, our Luther, Lessing Goethe, Schiller, and Humboldt, and, in this day, we have our Steiner, but the tragedy is that all these great men have not got us!—that, moreover, in these days of serious stress we deny our innate right to the German Spirit (Deutschtum), turning, rather, to strange gods, be their names Vivekananda or Newton, Bergson or Lenin, Darwin or Wilson, the while we could o’er-top these all by the strength of a native force which is our own. Vivekananda’s Hindu Faith and Wilson’s Fourteen Points have been surpassed and overshadowed by Steiner’s “Spiritual Science’ as well as by his “Threefold Commonwealth,” even as Newton’s materialistic doctrines concerning Astronomy and the Spectrum were displaced and surpassed by the more spiritual explanation of Kepler and Goethe. So, too, does Goethe’s spiritually conceived science of metamorphoses far transcend Darwin’s materialistic doctrine of evolution. And yet, in spite of all this, Englishmen and Indians, Italians (pinning their faith to the authority of the Roman Law) as well as Frenchmen (with their “intuitions’), and Americans (with their League of Nations) find followers enough among us, whilst we ourselves, being content to erect monuments to our Illustrous Dead and to belaud them with redundant phrases, think it no shame to burn and crucify the Great Ones who still live among us.
Macht Europas Herz gesunden
Und das Heil ist euch gefunden.Make the heart of Europe sound
Your salvation then were found.
So sang Geibel to all people on earth in his poem “Deutschlands Beruf.” Yet what hope of recovery are we to expect from foreign vampires—least of all from Harding—if the Luciferan and Ahrimanic taints of consumption exist in our own blood, and if our dear fellow-Germans are themselves bent on refusing, all curative medicine, but place their would-be Physician in the pillory, crying “Charlatan!” and “Impostor!”
But, have patience, you dear Germans! For the present you are still too well off, and your condition is much too healthy, and so you believe that you can dispense with the services of this Christian Doctor, and career after your Luciferan and Ahrimanic humbugs, and after anyone who is ready to trick you with all sorts of hopes for the Future, the while he is cheating you of your true salvation! Yet the hour is at hand when you, too, having reached the limits of your strength, will be glad to turn to the life-giving power of Christ, pleading passionately that Germany may receive health and that you may receive the healing-force so lovingly proffered to-day by the Great Physician of Anthroposophy in his plea for the Threefold Commonwealth.
Germany can and will recover if only Germans will strive to “find themselves,” if only they come to understand their own being and take up their position manfully in the world. But as long as they wander after strange gods, and, more especially, so long as they believe themselves obliged to imitate the materialistic West, so long too will the West—and quite rightly—show its teeth, for the West desires no rival in its own field.
Germany is sick because of the un-German taint now poisoning her blood. Nor is this due to the Jews, hated though they be by the Pan-German element that would gladly make them the scapegoat for its own sins. The most un-German symptom about us is the Pan-German element itself, and it is against this that Anthroposophy and the Threefold Commonwealth have especially to direct their energies. In PanGermanism, Western Materialism joining hands with Eastern Irreligion, meets and opposes us, and Ahrimanic Militarism consorts with Luciferan Jesuitry in bonds of brotherly love! These forces range themselves instinctively shoulder to shoulder when it becomes a matter of obscuring the light of the Spirit—of which mankind stands in greater need to-day than ever it did before... . and the Christ living within this Light is once more nailed to the Cross!
But, thanks to the indefatigable activity and watchfulness of Rudolf Steiner and his well-organized staff, Christ, the Bearer, Inspirer, and Inaugurator of all the highest Spiritual Values, of all that is best in character and in culture, must in the long run rise triumphant over the unclean elements infesting our German life-blood,
It is only when applied in this sense that the often misapplied lines of the poet with which I close this book come to have any real meaning—only when we Germans, through a true apprehension of the Living Essence of Christ shall also come to apprehend the I-CH dwelling within us. Then, too, shall Germany be made whole; then, too, shall we bring health to all other peoples of the earth—that true health for which, Bi albeit unconsciously, all are yearning, but to which they can never attain of their own unassisted efforts. What Lucifer and Ahriman have to bestow, that each one of them possesses; but that which verily is Christ’s, they must consent to receive from us:
A Und so mag am deutschen Wesen
Noch ein mal die Welt genesen.Oh German Spirit! 'tis they goal
Once more a sick world to make whole.