Rudolf Steiner
Born Feb 27th, 1861 – Died March 30, 1925
Anthroposophy, August 1925, Vol. IV, No. 8
Rudolf Steiner, the Man
by the Editor
Future ages will estimate how the life work, of Rudolf Steiner was disseminated and carried on when his personality no longer actuated and inspired his students. Succeeding generations will also look to us of today for the life picture, the life presentation of his personality. We who have seen him as he moved among us in never ended activity, we who became familiar with the varying moods of his intensely human bearing, it is for us to recall with understanding what it was that lit in our hearts fire of enthusiasm, love and admiration.
To be leader of thousands of human beings is no unusual fact in history, but to be the intimate personal friend of over twelve thousand men and women is quite different and must be taken into consideration thoughtfully when Steiner’s work in the world is remembered.
Though he has left an autobiography, though pages and pages have been printed about him, it is only in the souls of those who knew it that Steiner’s real human nature, his ‘fellow feeling’ truly can live. And in what way does it live? How do his students, his pupils remember the man? I have more than once been asked to give a personal description of Steiner for English periodicals which more often than not care merely for what is most superficial, and I have always replied that as a man he must be known by what he has accomplished. No other living personality could have been so completely expressed in the outer deed. Of no one else could it be said today that what came from him was he himself. Anthroposophy is Steiner.
What distinguishes Anthroposophy from everything else is that it is a means for understanding how all things work, how all things evolve. Like mathematics, it gives a basis for working in numberless walks of life. Like all science and all special branches of science it classifies, but the classifications of Anthroposophy are not only of physical things, they stretch out beyond the earth into the universe, to the Cosmos. And this is due to the truth, gradually becoming part of ordinary human knowledge, that as cosmic wisdom is one with human knowledge, so are we and the Cosmos united. What happens in the heavens happens also on the earth. What is spiritual is also material, and what is material is spiritual.
Every 2,000 years a great change comes over the earth synchronizing with movements of the heavenly bodies, particularly of the sun. For a certain 2,000 years humanity was content to be in the ‘lap of the gods’ subject to inexorable fate. This period has been followed by 2,000 years of physical-sense perfecting during which time humanity has grown closer and closer to the earth and to the things of the earth as distinct from the gods and the things of the gods. Like the swing of a gigantic pendulum, the tendency of human intelligence has gone from one pole to its opposite. It is 2,000 years since Aristotle revolutionized human mental capacities by inaugurating a new way of thinking, by introducing logic into thought. If then this change brought our thinking from heaven to earth, we may ask in what direction should we now expect our thoughts to turn? And the reply comes to us in connexion with every branch of human study that is touched by the anthroposophical outlook: Our thinking powers must now bring about a union between what is of the earth and what is of the heavens. In art as treated by Rudolf Steiner this is most clearly expressed. His treatment of science, of purely physical science, is its blending with spirit. From every side the same answer comes to us: Now is the time when spiritual origins must be recognized in physical results. Expressed religiously, the work of Steiner is to make us see and understand “Emmanuel, God with us.” His life work can indeed be called the bringing together of God and man. The present day has lost sight of the actuality of the Divine, Christ is not understood, the Mystery of Golgotha is ignored. These things are earthly truths, as much so as the facts of physical science, and the exposition and explanation of this has been the chief work of Steiner’s life.
But all this can be entered into through the study of Anthroposophy and the study soon becomes absorbingly interesting. It is here in the world for all times. But what will always be significant in connexion with Anthroposophy is the fact that there has been a man who has in his daily life and daily activity lived the union of earth and heaven. He has shown the possibility of carrying out all that he has tried to instil into those who followed him but have not copied him. No great orator has been farther removed from ‘preaching’ than Steiner. There was never a note of command in any utterance. On one occasion he pointed out to me that he never said ‘I wish’ but that ‘one should’ was the most he would say. The freedom of the individual stands as of such paramount consequence in his teaching that one can well understand the absence of ‘check’ placed upon even flagrant delinquents at Dornach. The desires of the individual received there and still receive primary consideration. Woe betide those whose desires are at fault! Experience alone is the school for humanity, experience and example.
The strongest of all powers for leading others is that of sympathy. Steiner aroused love from others through his intense feeling for what might be the feelings of a student. The depth of the personal love for him is one of the chief facts to be realized in his students and it is a fact which must be recorded, for it sets a seal on the validity of the axiom which he places at the base – if not the basis itself – for all teaching. Unkind thought was precisely the same to him as unkind action.
Following upon this necessity for love came his gift of service. His example here is amazing. Every day of his life belonged to his followers. It has been estimated by a student that in the last month of his outward activity, Steiner gave private interviews to 400 persons. And when this is taken into account with the fact that he delivered about 78 lectures in the same month on special subjects to professional men and women as well as to his own Dornach students, we can gain a clear idea of his power for work.
Everyone who has lived near him knows that no sick person who wished to see him had long to wait. During the past year of his life when outside work, such as the new building, made especial demands upon his time, he used to pay two visits every day to one of his pupils who was ill beyond recovery. These facts are mentioned not to lay emphasis so much upon his phenomenal capacity for work as examples of his devotion to what was of consequence to someone else.
We speak today out of what we know today, but our words are for others who come after us and will have other knowledge. We believe that they will understand Rudolf Steiner with less difficulty than he is understood today. For he was a man beyond his time. He tried to prepare us for the higher development which is approaching and, viewed in this aspect, he was a teacher. He was a teacher who stood on the summit of a mountain and told us what he saw. None of us could climb up to him and therefore he stood alone. Dr. Rittelmeyer, after marvelling over the possibility of such a man having been in our midst, writes: “His tragedy was his being so far beyond all other people.” This aloofness, apparent in his outward person, even at first sight, deeply impressed one. It acted like a protecting wall against trivial attack; one dared not approach him idly. And this was not through any preconceived ideas or previous knowledge. On seeing him for the first time one felt: Here is a personality and holiness surrounds him.
A great deal will hereafter be written about him, more and more as time goes on, but as time goes on there will be fewer and fewer people in whose minds there lives the memory of outer facts and in whose hearts there lives the personal love connected with the name of Rudolf Steiner.
Side by side with the greatness of what he has written and said must be placed the greatness of the life of the man himself.
