The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Excerpt from the lecture, published in: Schriften des Bundes für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus, Mitteilungsblatt Nr. 7, n.d. [1919/20]

In economic life, the fact that modern capitalism, with its longing for rent, the competition of capital, throwing things onto the market and rules based on supply and demand, has crept in – it has crept into this economic life, first of all, through capitalism, a way of administration that, due to the nature of economic life, does not necessarily have to be in this economic life. For what is needed in this economic life? You need the soil with its ability to produce products for people; in the industrial economy, you need the means of production: you need the worker at the means of production, the manual laborer on the one hand, and the intellectual laborer on the other. Individuals have always realized that an economic life is complete in itself, which has the means of production, which has the soil, which has the physical and the intellectual laborer. That is why stronger thinkers of economic life, one of whom was even able to become a Prussian minister, spoke out: “Capital is the fifth wheel in the cart of economic life.” We cannot imagine economic life without the intellectual administrator of the means of production and the land; we cannot imagine it without the physical laborer; we can imagine it without the capital being disturbed, the work of capital.

That this is an economic truth is felt by today's proletarian; he feels it through what economic life brings him in body and soul. What is involved in an economic life in which only the factors I have just mentioned really prevail? Intellectual and physical labor, and the products of the means of production and the soil. Performance arises, which necessitates reciprocation in human life, and the archetype of economic life arises. Today, it is necessary to clearly define this primal structure of economic life in order to make social understanding possible. When a person enters into economic life – he must produce for himself and for other people. That is the yardstick by which he can keep himself and others economically in his achievements. That is the big question, as simple as it sounds, for all economic life. The big question for all economic life is this: I must be able, within the economic life, whatever kind of production I devote myself to, to exchange so much from the rest of the economy for what I produce that I can satisfy my needs of life from what I have exchanged until I am able to produce an equivalent production with what I have produced. Included in what comes into consideration here, I would say, as the atom of economic life, as the primary element of economic life, must be included, all that I have to give for those who cannot be directly productive labor in the present; included must be everything that is necessary for the children, for their education and so on; included must be the quota that I have to give for the poor, the sick, and the widows as old-age support. All this must be included in this original cell of economic life, which is expressed precisely by the fact that every person in economic life must be able to exchange for what he produces so much that he can satisfy his needs from what he has produced until he produces a product the same as what he has produced. But it is clear from this primal cell of economic life that it can only be regulated if it has nothing else in the cycle of economic life than the services themselves; if one has nothing else in the cycle of economic life than what the individual works for as his service and what the others can exchange with him as their services. Within this economic cycle, there is no place for what can be called 'capital'; it only enters in to disturb this economic life and contaminate this economic process. The economic process can only become pure if the equalization of value of goods, which is called for by life from its original cell of economic life, can take place in it.

Dr. Steiner's lecture on the threefold social order
Newspaper report by Hermann Heisler, published in: Tübinger Chronik, June 7, 1919, No. 130

Dr. Steiner's first impression on June 2 seemed to be a certain disappointment for some of the numerous listeners. For Steiner undoubtedly makes extraordinary demands on his listeners. He does not speak in the language of fixed scientific terms and avoids all the partisan slogans of professional politicians, the use of which is very convenient for the listener but which contribute nothing to the clarification of our situation. The strongly Austrian-sounding tone of the speech also seemed strange to some listeners. But such superficialities were soon outweighed by the impression that Dr. Steiner is a thoroughly independent and powerful personality who has thoroughly grasped the driving forces of our decisive time and who is motivated by the burning desire to save our people from the horrors of a second impending revolution and the resulting conditions of Russian Bolshevism. Steiner sees the means of salvation in the threefold social order.

In order to lead his audience to a proper understanding of our present circumstances, Steiner first revealed the roots of proletarian sentiment, which he knows not only as a sensitive observer of the people's soul, but also from his own experience. The domination of the machine and capital had inexorably harnessed the proletarian, as a person without freedom, into the economic cycle. The longer this state of affairs lasted, the more he came to see it as degrading. Nor did he find any compensation in the materialistic intellectual life offered him by bourgeois society for what the soulless machine robbed him of in the way of human dignity and inner satisfaction. Thus the conviction took root in the soul of the proletarian, which arose from bourgeois materialistic thinking, that the whole of intellectual life is only an ideology, a reflection of economic life; and therefore one need only change the economic life, then one will automatically arrive at a different intellectual life. Therefore, the proletarian threw himself with all his might into economic life and sought to transform it. He became a practical materialist in order to arrive at a more dignified spiritual life. Despite appearances to the contrary, the social question is thus fundamentally a spiritual question. The proletarian wants to escape from the soul-destroying existence into which modern capitalism and scientific materialism have pushed him.

Help should have come from the intellectual life. But this could not provide the help because it was itself dependent and completely in the thrall of the capitalist state and consequently became more and more alienated from the people and their lives. Our leaders know nothing about what moves the soul of the proletarian and how the monotonous work at the machine affects his soul. The government councilor Kolb experienced this when he gave up his office and worked in America first in a brewery and then in a bicycle factory as a simple laborer. There he confessed that he now understands why the workers have no joy in their work and often no longer want to work at all. Steiner is convinced that spiritual life would be less divorced from life and therefore more fruitful if it were removed from all state influence and paternalism, and left to its own devices. The state is only concerned with legal life, i.e. with everything that relates to the relationship between people. The legal is that which is the same for all people. Spiritual life, on the other hand, deals with what is individual, what the individual human being produces on the basis of his or her talent. This cannot be administered from the legal state, but the spiritual must create its own organs on the basis of complete freedom. Only then can it make the contribution to the advancement of state and economic life that it is called to make.

The political link of the social organism, the legal link, only has to do with the relationship between people, that is, with what makes all people equal. Therefore, economic life cannot be merged with state life. Otherwise, economic life cannot flourish. Every person is part of economic life through their occupation and consumption. To be active in economic life, it is not enough to be human; economic associations are also needed. This economic life can and must have nothing to do with anything other than the production, circulation and consumption of goods.

But now human labor, land and the means of production have crept into economic life, and with them capital. Capital is the “fifth wheel on the wagon” of economic life. It can be completely eliminated from the economic process. The big question of the economic process is only how am I able to exchange what I produce for something else that satisfies my needs? Therefore, in the cycle of economic life, there must be nothing other than goods or services, which in this context are also goods. When capital enters into the economic process, it contaminates the value balance of goods. The wage relationship is connected with capital, i.e. the consideration of human labor power as a commodity. And that is precisely what the proletarian finds unworthy. Because he cannot separate himself from his labor power as from a coat that one takes off, so he has to sell himself with his labor power and thus ends up in a real wage slavery. Therefore, labor power must be redeemed from [the character of a commodity]. This is one of the key issues of the social question. But this is only possible by removing labor from the economic process, in which it does not belong by nature, and bringing it onto the legal ground of the state. The constitutional state, which regulates the relationship between people, decides in principle on the type, extent and time of work. These questions must be decided before the person approaches a job. Then the “employee” does not conclude an employment contract with the “employer” as is the case today, but - these terms are no longer used - the worker and the manager are partners and jointly manage the land and the means of production, and reap the rewards of their individual performance at the means of production in an appropriate manner. In this way, the worker becomes truly free and is no longer a wage slave. His rights and his human dignity are secured by the constitutional state, because his labor power can no longer be drawn into the economic process like a commodity.

The same applies to land and the finished means of production. These cannot be included in the economic process, which is only concerned with the production, turnover and consumption of goods, because they are not for sale at all; but at most one can acquire the right to the sole use of the land or a means of production. Here, therefore, it is not an economic matter, but a legal one. And rights are decided on the basis of the state. Land and finished means of production therefore belong to the people as a whole, as an economic community, and are entrusted by the economic councils to the management of the spiritual leader who has the confidence of his colleagues and who promises to make the best use of the means of production. Capital no longer has a share in land and means of production. The extent and nature of production is based on existing needs. It must no longer be produced pointlessly in the private capitalist interest.

Steiner's vision of dismantling capitalism and transferring ownership of land and the means of production to the community has already been implemented to a certain extent in the field of intellectual production, in that intellectual property becomes the property of the general public 30 years after the death of its creator. Similarly, all property, including material property, must be put into flux. Just as the body falls ill when blood stagnates in any of its organs, so the social organism falls ill when, due to private capitalist economy, there is a stagnation in the circulation of economic goods. Money must be nothing more than an order to receive goods without any intrinsic value. Then its accumulation, that is, capitalization, will automatically become obsolete.

Thus we arrive at a solution to the social question without violent upheaval, by way of a proper structuring of the social organism, as required by circumstances themselves. There is no other way. Dr. Steiner emphasized in conclusion that such a threefold social order does not mean that the state will be cut into three parts. It is only to ensure that, for example, religious and ecclesiastical interests do not have a harmful influence on political life and vice versa, and that economic issues do not confusingly spread to the political sphere. This is how those tangles and ulcers develop in the social body, which must lead to crises and wars. Threefolding, on the other hand, leads to the recovery of the social organism. It does not artificially tear it apart, but simply puts it on its three healthy legs. Thus the three watchwords of the French Revolution, liberty, equality and fraternity, also cease to exclude each other, but find their fulfillment in our being able to say: liberty in the spiritual sphere, equality in the political and legal sphere, and fraternity in the economic sphere.

With an urgent appeal to those present to consider the seriousness of the hour and to follow the path to recovery of the social conditions offered by the threefold social organism, the speaker concluded his more than an hour and a half long remarks. The increasing attention of the audience and their generous applause showed that his words had not gone unheeded. Of course, given the scope and difficulty of the subject matter and the novelty of his ideas, Dr. Steiner's remarks left a lot of questions unanswered; and so there could be no lack of concerns and misunderstandings. These were expressed in the debate, which lasted until after 12 noon and in which 16 speakers took part, along with plenty of approval. We must refrain here from going into all the details of the debate. It was noteworthy, however, that despite various factual concerns, all speakers except for a few, whose speech was cut short by the assembly itself due to continuous unobjective personal attacks against Dr. Steiner, had received a deep impression of the seriousness and power of Steiner's ideas. It was particularly impressive that two representatives of proletarian parties spoke warmly and gratefully in favor of Dr. Steiner, while Mr. Kommerzienrat Molt from Stuttgart pointed out that he had already implemented Steiner's idea in his company by appointing a workers' council freely elected by the workers, as far as possible under the current circumstances, and that in his opinion nothing stood in the way of the general practical implementation of Steiner's ideas. Dr. Unger announced that a cultural council had just been established in Stuttgart with the aim of establishing a free, independent cultural life. Prof. Wilbrand, as a scientific expert, advocated the feasibility of Steiner's ideas and thus refuted a number of concerns that had been expressed from other quarters. Dr. Steiner attempted to do the same in a longer closing speech, in which he reminded the audience that one should not weigh the new against the old, but that one must first of all adjust oneself completely in order to be able to understand the proposed new order. In particular, Steiner reminded the audience once again that the three limbs of the social organism are not in hostile opposition to each other, as is apparently often assumed, but that they mutually enrich each other in a peaceful division of labor. The idea of threefolding does not serve any party or template, but the inner recovery of our ailing social organism. - Strong applause from the participants, who stayed until after 12 noon, thanked the speaker for his powerful remarks.

Some may ask what we can do to help implement Steiner's ideas. The answer is to join the “Bund zur Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” (Stuttgart office, Champignystraße 17) and thus strengthen the effectiveness of its efforts, so that they can prove themselves in the difficult times that will undoubtedly come as a remedy against the danger of Russian-style conditions. The Federation is non-partisan and calls on members of all parties to join in a common rescue mission. Steiner's idea has already been understood and taken up by many thousands from all parties. This proves that the idea of threefold social order is capable of inspiring the broadest circles with hope for an inner recovery of our social organism and of building a bridge between parties that are still hostile to each other today.

In view of this momentous fact, small concerns and anxieties about practical feasibility should recede, especially since Dr. Steiner allows the greatest freedom of movement here and in no way prejudges one's own judgment and the coming development. He says about this in his book 'The Core Points of the Social Question': 'A way of thinking that, like the one presented here, wants to be true to reality will never want to do more than point to the direction in which the regulation can move. If one enters sympathetically into this direction, then one will always find something appropriate in the concrete individual case. But the right thing will have to be found for life practice out of the spirit of the matter, out of the particular circumstances. The more realistic a way of thinking is, the less it will want to establish laws and rules for particular cases out of preconceived demands.

The first practical step that Steiner's ideas should take into consideration for workers is that they should immediately join together in the sense of the call of the working committee of the Federation for the Threefold Social Organism to form proper, free works councils, which should form the core for the future free organization of the cooperative economy. For intellectual workers in particular, but also for everyone else, it will be a matter of joining the newly founded Cultural Council, whose call is loud:

To all people! For centuries, our cultural life (school, science, art and religion) served the state and the economy. Legal paragraphs and regulations turned us into uninspired, dependent beings. Tightly bound into the one-sided economic life, there was no escape from the social hierarchy. A people completely untrained in politics – that is how the world war catastrophe found us. The collapse was the result. The lack of social insight on the part of the ruling class overlooked the needs of the proletariat, which had no property of its own and only received the crumbs of cultural achievements, while otherwise wasting itself in the struggle for its existence. The proletariat hoped that the revolution would liberate it from soul-destroying capitalism. Within economic life, it sought its salvation only in economic betterment. In truth, however, the urge for human dignity is striving to break through. Only in the cultural sphere, through schooling and education of the mind, can the great goal be achieved. There is a threatening danger that cultural life will be enslaved once more, with intellectual products being stamped as commodities. This must not be allowed to happen if human culture is not to perish. The whole of intellectual life must be placed on a free and independent footing. Only then can it fruitfully fertilize economic and political life. Only in this way will it be possible to truly educate the truly capable. Just as economic life is administered by the works council, so must intellectual life be administered by a cultural council. In it, all those must come together who are seriously willing, each in his or her own position, to renew intellectual life and to work towards it, free from the influences of the state and the interests of the economy, so that it can follow its own laws. A spiritual worker is anyone who strives for true humanity. His place of work is in the cultural council. Whether he is active in the old order in the political, economic or cultural field, whether he is a proletarian or non-proletarian, everyone should join immediately before it is too late! The time is serious!

In this foundation, we have the germ for building a free intellectual life. For all these organizations, the undersigned is willing to accept correspondence and forward it to Stuttgart.

Hermann Heisler

I do not want to give a program for solving the social question, but rather speak about observations of life.

It is said that never in the history of mankind have people experienced such terrible things as in this war: but then, to be consistent, one would also have to add: it takes a very special idea to find a solution to today's task. What is given, what people have to absorb, must be completely different now than it has been so far. The Communist Manifesto is not just a theoretical question, but a question of world history, one must understand that. What is called the social question lies deep, deep down in the development of humanity, only one must grasp it.

Thermometer – an indicator of the temperature of a room.

What consciously comes to the surface, the demands, are not the real thing at all. Everything that flares up in the Communist Manifesto of all countries is a historically necessary thing: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” It is not an idea that is being appealed to, but the impulses that arise from a certain life situation, precisely because one is a proletarian, the vague demands that arise from proletarian life, something un-ideological, a force arises. The proletarians do not want ideology, they do not want any ideas. But what comes from the bourgeoisie is and will be built upon. One speaks as if the proletarian programs were something new, but that is not the case. They have been adopted from the bourgeoisie. This will only be recognized later. A gap has opened up between the leading forces and the proletariat. But this is not the case; only the class differences are there; the proletarian world has learned a great deal from the leading circles. But when it saw that their science could not bring it salvation, it lost faith in that science and in those circles. The proletariat recognized the ideology of the intellectual life.

The earlier worldview still had a very different impact; it was still connected to the spiritual world. Today's worldview has no impact; the working of spiritual power is absent. This worldview does not fill people. It is a matter of the head, while the other is a matter of the heart. This difference is expressed in the Protestant confession: understanding everything that the world around us offers with the mind; for the other, faith must suffice. In the bourgeoisie there is still a remnant of the earlier worldview, a kind of connection with the spiritual world. The proletarian is placed in the factory, at the machine. Nothing passes into him, as it did, for example, in the old crafts, when the soul spoke out of the old door handles, for example, and so on. Cut off from any connection that the old craft still had, what spoke out of things and events.

“What am I in the world?” - “I am a highly developed animal organism.” This is the proletariat's perception of what he [the proletarian] has adopted from science. You can be inspired by such ideas, but you can't live with them in the long run. The intellect is convinced that this does not come from the spiritual, but the soul revolts against it. And this is what underlies all social questions. That is the real face. It is thought that everything that lives as art, as science, as custom, law and so on, is ideology, smoke. With such a view, one can think - one cannot live with it.

It is also connected with the fact that economic life has been absorbed by the state in recent centuries.

The municipal administrations have been absorbed and united with the interests of the princes. Intellectual life flows into this state structure. It was bound to happen that the school was wrested from the church and handed over to the state. The state has absorbed the church's “trailing resentment” with regard to schools. The demand for socialism and democracy must lead to the call for the liberation of intellectual life from the state.

Should the dependence of schools and education on the state be further increased? Intellectual life is now being crushed in Russia.

Every person who has come of age should be free to decide on the organization of everything that a person who has come of age has to decide on. In the spiritual life, only those who are knowledgeable and competent in this spiritual life should have a say. Only those who are active in the spiritual life, from the lowest teacher to the highest teacher at the university, should have a say. He must have sufficient time to be able to share in the administration of this life alongside his work in education. Not as it is today, when people who are not practically involved in the profession determine what has to happen.

Then we will have true democracy in the legal life and knowledgeable, efficient leadership in spiritual life.

But the decisions that are made in economic life can only come from knowledgeable and competent and capable individuals or groups of people. It is difficult to form appropriate judgments. The current economic structure of the state is a product of historical development. That is very true. Marx's friend, Engels, explained this very well in his book.

Dear attendees! When I published my “Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and the Near Future” in the spring of 1919, the public life of the West was somewhat different from what it is today. It should actually be made perfectly clear how fast the pace of current events is. We should realize how much the configuration of Western civilization has changed again in the last two years. In the spring of 1919, there was sufficient reason to hope that a sufficiently large number of people would unite in the belief that spiritual impulses could counteract the forces of social decline. The terrible experiences of the war years lay behind the Western world's humanity. These terrible experiences, which at the time many people felt were incomparable in the historical life of humanity. And from these terrible experiences had emerged the opinion that something very drastic had to be done, something that had to be brought about from the depths of intellectual life, so that the forces of decline could be paralyzed in an appropriate way and humanity could be brought out of the rising forces through work.

One would like to say: After only a few months, one could see that this opinion, which was very much present in the broadest circles, had actually receded considerably. Therefore, in February, March, April and May of 1919, one could have believed that by asserting such ideas, as they were presented in my “Key Points of the Social Question” and as they were summarized in my appeal “To the German People and to the World of Culture,” one could have believed that by putting forward such ideas one could reach those people who held the opinion just characterized. It was not necessary to cherish the arrogant opinion that the right ideas had been hit upon if they were put forward in this way. It was enough to believe that the ideas had been honestly drawn from the depths of existence, from the legitimate depths of of existence, such ideas had been brought up, and then one could believe that from the experiences that had just arisen, a sufficiently large number of people would be found to support the whole ductus, the whole will of such ideas, with understanding and energy.

One could see how very soon people again believed that humanity would be helped by first gluing together these or those old impulses that had been torn apart. One could see how the energy that had been noticeable for a while back then was gradually paralyzed and so on. At that time, in the spring of 1919, what I called “The Threefold Social Organism” had to be thrown into the situation, as it were. As I said, it might need to be corrected, as always, but it had to be thrown into the situation because it arose out of two presuppositions.

The first prerequisite is an historical one, a spiritual-historical one, one that is gained from observing the course of human development as it emerges from the spiritual-historical observation that is carried out here as anthroposophical.

The other prerequisite arose from decades of observation of the impulses that were striving from the undergrounds of spiritual, state-political and economic life everywhere towards the surface. The second prerequisite arose from the observation of what actually wanted to be realized, to which one should only help to realize, from this observation, from the directly practical observation of the three different formations of life. The first premise was not theoretical either. The purpose of spiritual science, as it is here, is to lead to full reality. Therefore, all its considerations, including those on the development of humanity, are imbued with a sense of reality. Who could not recognize the democratic principle by an unbiased observation of that which has asserted itself more and more intensely in the emergence of modern humanity?

I do not need to define this democratic principle. Of course, one person understands one thing by it and another person something else. But in general, one has a sense of what has been emerging in recent history as the democratic principle, the principle that man, simply by being man, must assert within the social community, that as much as the judgment of the individual human being is worth, this judgment must also mean in social events. This urge for democracy had been there for a long time, expressed through the most diverse movements and convulsions of the newer historical life of Western humanity, with its American offshoot.

But on the other hand, it could be seen that this democratic life cannot actually be realized in all respects. And it becomes apparent to the unbiased observer of human society that there is only one area of social life that can truly become democratic, and that is the political-state area. But the political-state area, if it wants to become democratic, can only include those matters on which every person who has come of age is capable of judgment. And if you think practically, you can clearly define the area of social life that can be subject to the judgment of every person who has come of age. On the other hand, there are two areas that simply cannot be democratized because they can only develop if they develop in terms of the expertise and specialist knowledge of the people, of the individual human individuality. This is, on the one hand, the entire area of intellectual life, namely that area of intellectual life that is actually public, the area of teaching and education, and, on the other hand, that of economic life.

Spiritual life and its main component, the system of teaching and education, can only develop properly if it arises from the professional judgment and expertise of the individuals active in this field and is also administered, administered in complete independence. Not every person who has come of age can judge in this area. Therefore, in this area there can be no such thing as a democratic constitution and democratic administration. Nor can there be democratic constitution and democratic administration in the field of economic life.

In this connection I should like to call attention to a fact which may be multiplied a hundredfold or a thousandfold by the experiences of life, a fact which has taken place in modern times. About the middle of the nineteenth century and towards the last third of it, the question of the gold standard, the actual gold standard, became particularly pressing, I might say. And one can make a very interesting observation if one considers everything that was said for and against the gold standard by very clever people in parliaments, trading companies, associations of entrepreneurs, industrial associations of entrepreneurs, and so on, up to the second half of the nineteenth century and towards the last third of it. I do not mean any irony when I say that in those days a huge amount of cleverness was raised for and against the gold standard. And in particular, a conclusion-type played a major role back then, namely that if one really came to this unified gold currency, then the pursuit of free trade and the realization of free trade would prevail everywhere. Free trade will finally triumph.

You can tell, my dear audience, when you read what was said at the time, what was said at the time, it is really clever, it was not said by stupid people, but it was said by extraordinarily clever people. But reality soon said the opposite. Reality has shown that everywhere the gold standard has led to efforts to establish protective tariff systems and to close the individual national borders. That is to say, the cleverest people, those people who, out of their industrial cleverness, said the most sensible things, had to be taught by reality that, in line with reality, the opposite should have been said! As I said, I am not being ironic when I speak of “cleverness”; I mean it quite seriously. For this fact - and it could be multiplied a hundredfold - points us in many directions. What does it point us to? That in the economic field the individual cannot be decisive at all, that he can only be decisive if his judgment coincides with that of others who, in turn, are experienced and skilled in another area of economic life, that is to say, that the individual with his judgment has only one value within the association.

And so we have two areas: the spiritual area of teaching and education, which must be placed in the power of the individual human individuality; and the economic area, which must be placed in the power of the association, the association of the appropriate cooperation of the individual economic sectors, of production, consumption, and the circulation of goods. The proper form of interaction that results from all of this, from the judgment within the associations, must shape economic life. So that we have three links, not parts; by speaking of the tripartite division of the social organism, one has given rise to many misunderstandings; one cannot speak of the three-part human being either, one cannot divide the human being into head, trunk, limbs and metabolism, whereas the human being really consists of these three parts; so one cannot speak of the three of the social organism, but only of the threefold social organism, because these three members should not go their own way, as it were, the head, the circulation system - the rhythmic one - and the metabolism system can go their own way, but precisely because of their relative independence, they also work together in the most economical and rational way. If you take this threefold social order seriously, you can be honest as a democrat, because then you can really implement democracy in the area where it should be implemented, in the area of state and political affairs, where the mature human being faces the mature human being, and where only that which can be judged by a mature human being is decided and administered. It is entirely possible to find the detailed, concrete form of how to work towards this threefold social organism.

However, you see, conditions have become so unnatural in this respect that sometimes, even back in the spring of 1919, when the threefold social organism was taken much more seriously than it is today, sometimes you had to give strange answers. In one country, for example, where a so-called Ministry of Labor had been set up, I was asked by the Minister of Labor: “Yes, but if the social organism is to be threefolded, where do I actually belong?” He meant as Minister of Labor. Well, if you think about the necessities very concretely, the Ministry of Labor is a hybrid between economic life and political life. That is why I said to the minister in question: Yes, unfortunately for you, you have to be cut in half. - Like the brave Swabian who was not afraid and cut the Turk in half, so a half labor minister should have fallen out of our unnatural present circumstances on both the left and the right. But it is precisely these things that prove how things are, and how everything is mixed up, confounded.

And so we have to say: the necessity of the threefold social order arose out of the historical, spiritual-scientific observation of the emergence of democracy. If we observe the quite radical change that occurred in the second decade of the twentieth century, we can also see that that experiences are now possible that could lead people to take such a thing seriously and understand it. One could also say that it was basically only the final consequence of what had already emerged at the end of the eighteenth century in the call for liberty, equality and fraternity. This appeal for liberty, equality and fraternity, which emerged from the French Revolution, is such that it cuts deep into the hearts of all unbiased people, that it must be taken for granted, that it must be striven for. But anyone who is even slightly familiar with the cultural-political literature of the nineteenth century knows how much has been said – and again not by stupid people, but by very clever ones – against these three ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity.

Just read the extraordinary multi-volume work of the very talented Magyar [Eötvös] from the 1850s, and you will see how it is proved in a very subtle philosophical that the idea of equality cannot be realized alongside [the idea of] freedom, and that, in turn, the idea of fraternity cannot be realized alongside the idea of absolute equality, and so on. It must be said: what is being put forward here is clever. One sees at last that these very ideas, in the course of the historical development of mankind, well up from the underground to the surface as something quite justified, but that nevertheless the whole of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century were still under the sway of the suggestion of the unitary state. This suggestion of the unitary state was so great that people worked more and more, especially in Central Europe and also over Western Europe, with the exception of England, to shape the unitary state more and more intensively in terms of its agents. One was under the suggestion of the omnipotence of the unitary state, which had to extend over everything. And into that one could not then fit the ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity.

If we recognize that this unified state is striving towards threefold order, then we also very soon realize that spiritual life is striving towards freedom, state and political life towards equality of all mature human beings, and economic life towards true brotherhood in associations, and from there out into all of life.

As soon as one has the idea of threefolding, one also has the agent for realizing freedom, equality and fraternity. Now, of course, there have been many people, my dear audience, who, when they heard something like the threefolding of the social organism, spoke of utopia. But it is not utopian. Just as it emerged from a spiritual-scientific-historical observation, on the other hand, it emerged from a practical observation of life itself, and it is simply not true that this threefold social order would be about imposing over humanity, which has become somewhat chaotic, but rather it is a matter of the fact that for the person who understands this threefold social order, it can be tackled from every single point of life. You can start anywhere, and then the individual beginnings will flow together into a whole by themselves. This is how we started with the threefold social order in the realm of spiritual life.

We started at our Stuttgart Waldorf School, because it is just a school like any other, but a school that has been created out of a truly free spiritual life, I want to mention it first. However, it is difficult to get through today, especially with views on the school system. In this regard, one also experiences strange things. I recently read an article in a magazine that was somewhat critical of the 'National Assembly' that took place in the city of Goethe and Schiller, Weimar, after the so-called German Revolution; of course I have nothing against criticizing this National Assembly, because basically one can say: it is really hardly an exaggeration to describe this national chatter – parliamentarism always has something to do with a chattering association or talkativeness, doesn't it, the special way of talking together! I have nothing against holding up a proper image of this National Assembly. But something strange was said. It was said that this Weimar National Assembly had actually only caused havoc in all areas of public life – with the exception of a single area where it had delivered something useful, namely in the area of schools, through the creation of the so-called primary school, the so-called unified school, and so on.

Now, this essay is based on nothing more than the fact that it is easier to see what nonsense the “Weimar National Assembly” has inaugurated in other areas of life than in the field of education, where everyone can prattle on for a very long time before the nonsense is noticed.

Now, when our “Freie Waldorfschule” was founded in Stuttgart, it was important that the spiritual life itself should be the foundation and soil with its own requirements, from which teaching and education are derived here. Of course, anthroposophical spiritual science is the source of the pedagogy and didactics of the Waldorf School. I gave the seminar course for the teachers of this Waldorf School based on anthroposophical spiritual science before the opening of the Waldorf School. But this Waldorf School was not misused to instill dogmatic anthroposophy into children in a school of world view. The founding of the Waldorf School was quite the opposite of this. The aim of the Waldorf School was to apply a pedagogy and didactics in which anthroposophical spiritual science can be practically demonstrated right down to the skill of the fingers; from the application of pedagogy and didactics and from what one did, one wanted to show the fruits of anthroposophical feeling and thinking, not by instilling any dogmas. That is why they almost, I would even say radically, refrained from making the Waldorf school a school of world view. That is why religious education was separated from the other subjects. Religious education for Catholic children was entrusted to the Catholic priest, and for Protestant children to the Protestant pastor.

And then, in the course of the school's effectiveness, it became apparent that there was a large number of children, dissident children, who did not attend any lessons, neither Catholic nor Protestant. What should be done with these children?

Initially, the children's group at the Waldorf School was made up of the children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory; after all, it was our friend Emil Molt in Stuttgart who founded this Waldorf School, and initially the children were “the children of workers” at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. Now, there were a great many parents who did not want to send their children to any of the religious lessons; but they felt that their children should not grow up without religion, without being introduced to spiritual things. And so we were obliged to set up a kind of anthroposophical free religious education alongside the other lessons, which we then also developed in terms of pedagogy and didactics, and which now stands as a third one, on an equal footing with the other two.

The Protestant religion teachers in particular had to state that they feared that the children would run away from them and run over to the anthroposophical religious education, didn't they? But as I said, it was precisely in this treatment of the religious education questions that it should be shown how far the Waldorf School is from wanting to be a school of world view.

On the other hand, anthroposophical spiritual science is able to answer the question: What are the forces that have taken on physical form in the child after it has descended from the spiritual world, and what are the forces that are particularly active in the child up to the year in which the teeth change, around the age of seven?

They are mainly powers of imitation, and everything that is to be brought to the child at this age must be achieved through a certain study of these childlike powers of imitation.

Other powers then emerge from the background of the child's mind around the seventh year. One has to take these powers into account. One then sees how one has to approach reading, writing and so on; from what one knew from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, a pedagogy and didactics were formed, a real art of education that works towards not introducing reading and writing to children in an abstract way, but in such a way that reading and writing are brought out of a certain artistic, holistic humanity.

Between the ages of six, seven and nine, teaching is such that nothing abstract, nothing that engages the mere head, the mere intellect, is presented to the child. Our mere numbers and letter signs engage the mere intellect if they are not taken from the full activity of the human being. And so it was particularly important for this childhood age to have a great deal of light shed on it through anthroposophical observation of human development. The corresponding pedagogy and didactics were based on this.

Between the ages of nine and ten, there is an important point in a child's development that must be taken into account by educators and teachers. Something occurs that usually goes unnoticed. Before that, the child hardly differs from his or her surroundings. It is best to teach the child in a way that appeals as little as possible to its sense of self. But between the ages of nine and ten, something breaks into the child's mind, the main development of which lasts only a short time. One must be grown to observe what is happening in the child's development, because sometimes it depends on a few days to find the right words, the right encouragement for the child, to bring the right thing forward in the right way.

And so it is important to know what human nature wants every year, every week. And so you bring the child up, and we have developed this pedagogy and didactics to bring the child up to the age of 13, 14, 15, where something completely different occurs in child development.

Eight days ago, I was obliged to ensure in an evening course for teachers that our so-called tenth class could now be opened in the appropriate way. This is the class that children enter when they have reached sexual maturity, or, as we say in anthroposophical spiritual science, at the age when the childlike astrality, the astral body, as we say, the actual spiritual-soul body, is born. This requires a very special deepening into this important age. And in opening this class, the pedagogical-didactic maxim had to be found again to guide young people into this age.

You see, you have to feel the full weight of the age on your soul in a certain way if you really want to practice contemporary pedagogy and didactics in this way. Because you have seen it: in the last few decades – I would say it is an international affair – the so-called youth movement has emerged in the most diverse forms. What did this youth movement mean? The young suddenly demanded something completely new and were aware that the old could not give them what they were demanding. The wanderer instinct and so on, as they are all called, have become known to people.

Now this youth movement has clearly shown that the old were no longer able to be the right authority for the young. The young no longer expected what had previously been expected of the young by the old, and a terrible yearning went through the young. I would like to say: In this yearning, however mistaken and nebulous it was in certain respects, the call for a new pedagogy and didactics is clearly expressed. There is no need to [see] whether something that comes up with such elementary power from the depths of life, whether it is more or less right or wrong, but you only have to look at it in its actuality, then it can already prove this or that to you. In particular, anyone who has seen the latest phase of these youth movements, which have only emerged in recent years, must admit that this youth movement first expressed itself in such a way that the nebulous, chaotic urge of one person to join another emerged. I would like to say – the young lived out their lives in packs, in cliques. Then suddenly a strange turn occurred, only in the last few years and especially among the best members of this youth movement a colossal turn occurred. They got tired of connecting one to the other in small cliques. And those who had previously had a strong urge to join one another in small cliques began to feel a kind of disgust for being together. A certain hermit-like behavior asserted itself, youthful hermit-like behavior. They closed themselves off, they encapsulated themselves, the young people. A complete turnaround has taken place. This is also deeply significant. And again, it is not a Central European, but an international issue that has taken hold of all possible youth groups in the civilized world today. It is a matter of the necessity today to provide for spiritual life from the very depths of all of life.

Something like this should be created by the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which, I would like to say, was also created out of social circumstances. All the blustering about the unified school, which arises from all kinds of enmity and antipathy and sympathy, is of course immediately lost in the objective when one teaches and educates out of the nature of the human being. There, of course, people are taught and educated uniformly. But the matter is brought into being appropriately, not out of political proposals or antipathies and ranklings and räsonnements. The fruitful further development of humanity depends on this, that out of the factual the factual be founded.

But to achieve something like this, to really have teachers who can approach young people in such a way with such a pedagogy and didactics, you need a free spiritual life, because you have to be able to use the full power of the teachers. My dear attendees, many a person has thought for a long time, especially in times of liberal ideas, when freedom has been so greatly undermined, many a person has thought: we need programs, we need comprehensive ideas. Many programs have been devised about the best way to teach, especially about curricula.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, when you put five, six, twelve not particularly clever people together – forgive this somewhat delicate or undelicate allusion – when so and so many people sit down and let their abstract minds , then they come up with the most ideal programs, all of it perfect; Clause I, the teacher has to teach this in class, Clause II, the teacher has to treat the students in such and such a way, Clause III, this or that has to happen. For the eighth year, this is how it has to be done, and so on. In the greatest perfection, paragraph I to x, everything can be presented in this way, and you can get an ideal program out of it, with the average intellectual predisposition of the twelve people who sat down together. Not much is needed to define anything in abstracto. Only because these people have the urge to disagree, we have received not one, but many programs. There are programs and cleverness buzzing through the world. When would there have been more programs and cleverness – whereby the word “cleverness” is not even used ironically – buzzing through the world than precisely in the nineteenth century.

But you see, that is not what matters, what matters is what happens in reality. What matters is real, practical life. Well, we have indeed gradually entered into strange realms of abstraction. Today, people even think about very strange theories in theory. For example, they think about the fact that if they travel from point A to point B at ordinary speed, and a cannon is fired at point A and another cannon is fired at point B, they will hear the cannon that was fired later than the one that was fired earlier. But if they move faster and faster, the interval changes; and then they work out that if they move at the speed of sound, they even hear the one cannon that is fired later at the same time. And if they move faster than the speed of sound, they even hear the cannon that is fired later earlier than the one that is fired earlier!

Now, you see, that may seem quite correct in theory, and there is nothing to be said against it. But someone who thinks in a spiritual sense, thinks realistically, not just logically, has something to object to, because that is only one way to get to the truth, and he wants to think realistically, and then he also has to imagine what such a person would look like who would now move faster than sound. Einstein even calculated what a clock would look like if it were to fly out into space at the speed of light and then come back again. Theoretically, all this can be done, and of course it is all theoretically correct. It has been much admired. But just imagine what the clock would look like when it comes back, or what a person would look like if he were to move at the speed of sound! One thing is certain: one would not be able to judge the differences in the speed of sound, because the human being would have to become sound himself. This would lead one to the conclusion that one cannot help but let concrete reality flow into one's soul, not abstract theory. Only then are we on the right path to truth. But then we also realize that a dozen people can work out very beautiful programs. But a dozen teachers can only realize what lies within the power of these teachers. And the most beautiful ideals have no value at all compared to what really lives in people. Therefore, what is to be achieved must be taken from the reality of the human being. You simply have to create this school republic out of the individual personalities of the teachers, you must not want more than the teachers can achieve, who you can put in their place. You have to take the specific teachers into account, and the school program emerges from this specific teaching staff. But this is only possible in a free spiritual life, in a spiritual life such as is striven for in the threefold social organism, where the individual human being is actually directly confronted with the spiritual world, and feels responsible for what he has to achieve in the field of spiritual life, directly responsible to the spiritual world, not to the school inspector, or through him to the minister of education and so on, but directly to the powers of the spiritual world. For an education and training system such as I have just described can only be developed if one does not merely have an abstract, intellectual spiritual life, but a real spiritual life, when it is the spirit itself that reigns on earth through the deeds of men, when one appeals to the living spirit, not merely to concepts and ideas, not merely to the intellectual and the intellectualizing. But you can only bring it out, bring it forth, this living spiritual life, this active spirit, from the individual human personalities themselves. From the teacher of the lowest elementary school class up to the teacher of the highest school system, each one is integrated into the independent spiritual organism, so that each one can only follow himself, and has so much teaching to do that he still has time to perform administrative tasks, so that everything that is administered is done by those who are still teaching, who really still teach, not by those who have retired or been taken out of the school system. The administration of the school system is the responsibility of those who are still actively teaching. There would be no authority, people say. No, that is precisely where the true authority of spiritual life would be found, namely, the self-evident authority. In no other field can authority arise except that which arises of its own accord. I would like to know how authority can fail to arise when someone really has the will to do something beneficial and knows that someone else can give them advice, then it will come, and then the one who can give the advice will have the self-evident authority.

I have the task of running the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Each teacher is independent in his or her class. The person who does something in class does so on his or her own initiative. The opinion has never been expressed that I have ever ordered anyone to do anything at the Waldorf School. On the other hand, everyone seeks advice on all kinds of matters, and there is a unified spirit in this Waldorf School. The authority is there, as a matter of course. And one could see it grow, this self-evident authority, on the spirit of the Waldorf School in the last two years since this Waldorf School has existed. One could start in this school, which started two years ago with not quite 200 children, which now has over 500 children, who are once again facing difficulties because they do not want to increase the size of the classes, the lower four classes, there should only be as many children admitted as were there before the Elementary School Law was passed. Recently, however, it has become clear that parents will not put up with this. Now, [in] this Waldorf School, there is a place where you can actually realize in a certain area what you can know from the free spiritual life. Sometimes one has strange experiences there, which I perhaps, for easily understandable reasons, in so far as they arise from the interaction, in the social interaction that we do not, however, let into the teaching, with the official life, about which I I prefer not to make any comments on now; but it is already possible to see how the individual things that lie in this threefolding of the social organism can be tackled from the practical, concrete point of view, and how one does not have to deal with some utopia.

Likewise, this can be done in other areas of spiritual life. And in fact, the anthroposophical worldview will not impose itself dogmatically, but will prove its right to exist through its viability. Because, my dear audience, one should not believe at all that someone who writes something like 'The Key Points of the Social Question' from such a basis, from a realistic basis, is thinking of anything utopian. There is no question of that, not even in the choice of expressions: threefold social order. In recent years, when many people have made the threefold order into a sect, which of course it was certainly not meant to be by me, I have had to experience it again and again, especially in Germany: how is it to be organized? How this, how that? It is really quite bad when, even in the post-war period, you are always confronted with the word “organize,” and especially when you call something you would like to see realized an organism, and you still hear the words: “organize, organize”; you organize where there is something mechanical; an organism is precisely there so that you cannot organize it. You cannot organize the organic. That must appear as an organism. Where you want to organize something, you only have the [inorganic] at hand. You cannot organize an organism. You have to let it become.

You can see the thoroughly misunderstood nature of things when such things occur. And so the threefold structure of the social organism is based on the fact that things must form, that one only has to develop the formative forces, that the threefold social organism must arise. Therefore, it cannot be described in the abstract. Especially those who have spoken of utopia would actually always like to have utopias. When speaking of such things, one can hear it asked, well: what then will be the position regarding ownership of a sewing machine in the threefolded social organism? This question has been asked here at this place, and so on.

Now, my dear attendees, a free spiritual life is only possible under the condition of a real spiritual life. Once, when I was talking about such things in a Swiss city, a university teacher replied to me: Yes, but we already have the freedom of the spiritual life, because in all state constitutions it says: Science and its teaching are free. But, ladies and gentlemen, the point is that science, which is free, should only be there as a free science. If, from the outset, science is raised in such a way that people are trained who are suitable for this or that office, and who are taught the program of their office, then you can safely decree that science and its teaching are free. If science itself is enslaved, then enslaved science naturally feels very free when it is allowed to develop as a slave.

And so it was often replied: In such and such a country, the state does not interfere in schools at all. That is the worst thing to say, because then you no longer notice it, and that is much worse than when you notice it and rebel against it, than when you no longer even notice how what flows in is only based on state principles arising without factual or specialized knowledge from the incorrect democratic, when one no longer even notices what should arise from the abilities for each new generation, what the human being still brings with him from the spiritual world by entering into physical existence through birth. We simply need teachers and educators who stand with holy reverence before the child and say to themselves: something from the spiritual world has been entrusted to me in this child, which I have to fathom and solve as a mystery. I must inquire what message from the spiritual world they have given him. Knowledge of the spiritual world must be alive in teaching and education; this spiritual world must be real in teaching and education. When the coming generation is tyrannized by that which is already there, by the living generation, then the spiritual life is made unfree. And to a large extent, the question of teaching and education in a free spiritual life is a question of teachers, the question of finding the right teachers, those who stand before the growing children as I have just characterized it.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, I wanted to use a few strokes, which of course must always remain fragmentary, to point out how the free spiritual life is to be thought of in the threefold social organism. As I said at the beginning of my talk, today we are actually facing a different time from that in the spring, in the spring of 1919. At that time one could believe that there would really be a sufficiently large number of people who would support the realization of the threefold social order. Today one would be out of touch with the times if one had the same faith as one had then. Threefolding must not become a sect either, something that one can believe in and advocate everywhere and at all times, theoretically as one's opinion. Today it is quite clear, however heavy-heartedly one has to admit it, that within European civilization the people who actually do the economic work have no sense of progress, no insight into real needs, that one is preaching to deaf ears if one wants to work into economic life with reasonable foundations. Today it is clear that one can present individual productive examples to the world, as we tried to do in “The Coming Day” and “Futurum”. These examples will exist as individual white ravens, they will be careful to survive, and they will fulfill the expectations placed on them, at least as individuals. But today we cannot speak of the fact that one comes across an insight in general economic life in order to be able to grasp such things with such ideas, as one could still believe in the first urge of human experiences and results in 1919. In the meantime, people have become accustomed to glossing over the old declining forces. They are still downward forces, after all, and the collapse is still coming. They have only decided to delay the collapse a little, to let everything slide, so that they do not have to expend the energy to move forward to new ideas. And humanity is largely asleep and does not notice how the downward forces are actually raging, and how, with each quarter, civilized humanity is drawing closer to this decline. People would much rather face the convulsions and terrible upheavals that lie in wait for the future in the present if they cannot warm to ideas in the immediate present that could be properly extracted from reality in a calm development, which will nevertheless be needed in the future.

And so we can say that there is little hope to be placed in economic life today. People will have to be forced to take up the new ideas, through their own need, through the effect of the forces of decline. But in the spiritual life we must work unstintingly to develop the free spiritual life as a member of the threefold organism. This is what must not flag, what must be cultivated unconditionally, because the time in which we live is such that people's souls are becoming emptier and emptier, more and more desolate. They are too lazy to admit this to themselves today, but we are heading for terrible times in terms of people's mental state, which will also be reflected in their physical condition.

I have spoken of this often, including in public lectures. The spiritual life must save us through to the times when reasonable people will also see something on the economic front. It is necessary that this spiritual life be cultivated in its freedom wherever it can be cultivated. Anthroposophical soil is the best soil imaginable for this, because then work must be done out of complete freedom. For what needs to be worked out is not yet there. And since it is spirit, it can only be worked out through freedom. And so, especially in the near future, anthroposophical striving and true social striving will increasingly coincide. And we will have to face the souls with the fact that the economic will have to lag behind, that the spiritual simply has to go ahead today.

This is also shown by the qualities of our opponents; in Central Europe, a strange, well-organized opposition is now asserting itself. This well-organized opposition had already worked its way up to the point that at the time, on printed slips of paper distributed to all the people in this packed, largest Stuttgart hall, it was written, not only in allusions, but quite clearly, that it was actually my fault that the Battle of Marnesch was lost in 1914, and that Minister Simons in England has done poorly in recent times. It was not just in innuendo, but it was written on the slips of paper in a very crude way! You could see how it is here with widely extended parties that do not want to admit what has actually happened, that need scapegoats because it no longer works to say that the stab in the back, with which one first wanted to cover up a really eminently lost war, a war that was lost by every trick in the book, they wanted to cover that up with the 'stab in the back'; now they wanted to cover up the absolute incompetence of anyone who has ever led an army, of Ludendorffism, that's what they want to cover up. Today they want to make great geniuses out of people who are quite incapable. A cultural life steeped in lies is a cultural life in decline.

And the situation is no different in the West, no different in America. There, everything is a little more pronounced, where defeat makes things stand out more sharply. Everywhere we need to extract a real, a true, a free spiritual life from the corruption of humanity, which is suffocating in lies and untruthfulness today. For this is identical with truth, and this is at the same time identical with a striving that is in keeping with reality. Therefore, even if there is little prospect of success today, we may still believe that a sufficiently large number of people can warm to a full understanding of the idea of threefolding. Those who can muster the necessary enthusiasm and courage for a free spiritual life will help the threefold social organism to get back on its feet. Then a truly free spiritual life will become a reality. If it becomes a reality in people's hearts, in their powers and in their actions, then the threefold social organism will most certainly follow of its own accord out of the necessity, out of the need of the time. (Lively applause!)

Discussion

Question: How can an ordinary person, who has no influence on public institutions, work in the spirit of threefolding? Rudolf Steiner: The question that was asked here first is: How can an ordinary person, who has no influence on public institutions, work in the spirit of threefolding? Well, firstly, it is not quite clear to me how someone can be without influence on public institutions. Unless he is in prison or in some other place where he can hardly move, he is actually always subject to a certain influence on public institutions. The outside world ensures that one is never completely without influence on public institutions; one has to pay taxes and so on, so one always has some influence on public institutions. So the question cannot really be put that way.

But then, if perhaps what is meant is: How can one work in the sense of the threefold social order, when one perhaps does not have the opportunity to speak, to speak freely somehow, when one does not have the opportunity to be, let's say, a member of parliament or something similar, how can one work in the sense of the threefold social order of the social organism? Then you have to say: Well, this impulse for threefolding is something very concrete. And that is why you can actually only talk about it in concrete examples. You see, I want to say the following, for example. There are institutions everywhere in the sense of nationalization, partial or more or less extensive nationalization - let's say, of medical matters, of nursing. Now, it has happened time and again that good people – who, in their own opinion, are “good” followers of our philosophy – come and say that they would like to have this or that remedy, and so on! So they would actually like to encourage quackery and to violate the law! They can be won over for that, those people! They don't need to have any influence on public institutions, but when they lack something, they don't recognize - perhaps with more or less justification - the state-recognized doctor and want to cure somehow from behind. I have even known ministers who appeared in public parliament to speak out against quackery and for the protection of the medical profession by law, and afterwards, when they themselves became ill, or anyone else became ill, they turned to someone who was not a state-recognized doctor! It is terribly difficult to persuade people to really join those movements that simply correspond to the introduction of such institutions, which are necessary if one wants to have a free spiritual life, or in general, if one wants that which one professes! Many such examples could be cited, where everyone, in their place, by not being afraid to speak out wherever it is possible for them, takes a stand against what they recognize as evil. If you recognize the state protection of medicine as an absurdity, then speak up for it! Or, ladies and gentlemen, is it not an absurdity that over there, across the border, at Leopoldshöhe, there must be a different art of healing than here just a few steps away? But a doctor who is licensed over there is not allowed to help here. If you give in to reason, you will immediately see the matter as an absurdity. But if, let us say, for example, you are a member of the Federal Council or something similar, then you do not see this absurdity! And if you do see it, then you do not find it opportune to represent it. But if one person finds another, there will eventually be enough people to really come to reason. And instead of asking: How can an ordinary person, who has no part in public affairs, become active in the spirit of threefolding, do what one finds in every step and turn of life, in order to carry it out in the spirit of threefolding. Then one will see that every hour, every day, one finds opportunities to become active in the spirit of threefolding.

Question: In Holland, the constitutional ban on official Catholic processions is now to be lifted, which is causing quite a stir. Would this actually be a question of the free spiritual life or also of the public legal life? Rudolf Steiner: With some questions it is so with the threefold social organism, although the idea is quite right, of course: How does the blood of the chest or the head come to play this or that role in the migraine? The blood simply circulates, and so one cannot say that the blood of the chest organism is different from the blood of the head, but one can only speak of the blood in general. And so it is not easy to categorize things again. The threefold social organism is precisely manifested in the fact that things cannot be categorized. However, one does experience very strange things. In recent years I have always had to speak of the three-part human organism, the sensory organism, the rhythmic organism and the metabolic-limb organism, and in recent years a great deal has been done by myself and our medical and scientific friends to develop this idea of the three-part human being. But recently a book was written by someone called Kurt Leese, I believe. He has now, because I said that things should not be put together in boxes, but that the whole human being is head, nevertheless the human being is mainly head in the head, the whole human being is head. Things go into each other. The head is also taken care of and dependent on the limbs. Things all go into each other. Kurt Leese can no longer think this. He can only think of three if it is nicely next to each other, but he cannot think it when it goes into each other. He says: It's a shocking idea.

But we will have to get used to such shocks, even in the tripartite social organism, if we are to imagine, through the effect of abstractions, what a clock looks like when it flies away at the speed of sunlight and returns after years, is difficult to verify for a variety of reasons: firstly, because of the nature of the clock; secondly, because of the person who would then have to check it when the clock returns, and so on. So the present is not shocked at all by such ideas of the abstract. But it is shocked when something that is in line with reality is placed before it. So it is necessary not to press things so much that one now asks: Is this a matter of the free spiritual life or of the legal life? One can say: If one begins to prohibit any expressions or revelations of the spiritual life at all, to make legal provisions about it, then one is on a slippery slope with regard to the spiritual life. I must say, you see, with regard to those institutions, that I once showed you here – those who were there – a peculiar document, the document that was once issued as a patent in 1847, I believe, in Switzerland, where it says: It was through the power of the Almighty that the brave Swiss general Dufour succeeded in expelling the Jesuits from the country. Then it is explained in more detail. Today, in free Switzerland, it seems a little strange that the eradication of the Jesuits is attributed to the grace of God and the power that God has given! But it is preserved that way; I had the document photographed because it is so beautiful. I will show the photograph again on occasion. It is, after all, quite good to occasionally bring things home to people face to face. But even with regard to Jesuitism, I am not in favor of combating it by law. Those who want to fight it should fight it with intellectual weapons. One should not spare oneself the inconvenience of having to fight against everything intellectual with intellectual weapons, not by making laws. Laws can be made with majority decisions. One does not need to say that the majority is always nonsense, because then reality, social reality, would always be nonsense. Now, as I said, one does not need to go that far, but in any case one cannot say that the majority is always wisdom. And laws can be made in a democratic state, especially with majority decisions. But certain things just cannot be done by majority vote. They have to live out. And so everything that is regarded as the erring spiritual must also live out. Therefore, one must say: It is a matter of freedom and not of compulsion when efforts are made to reintroduce the banned Catholic processions and to lift the bans against Catholic processions. The only remedy is to show that these processions are not reasonable, and to educate people to this effect, so that they do not take part in them; then they will stop of their own accord! This is the only remedy in spiritual life, just as one can teach a person good taste and he will do the right thing of his own accord, but not by passing laws against it.

That is what a free spiritual life must demand. The one who has to resort to laws in the spiritual realm is on the path that I once described in Nuremberg in 1908 in a lecture cycle, where I said - it is not said without significance, using strong inks, but these strong inks should characterize adequately – I said at the time: Actually, today's humanity no longer strives to go out on the street without a doctor on the right and a police officer on the left, the doctor for physical protection, the police officer, well, for protection in materialistic times, yes, for physicality too! That has gradually become the ideal. I have heard many things in my life, but time and again I had to shrink back a little inside when I heard, with increasing frequency, over and over again: “That should be prohibited by law.” That had gradually become an awfully common saying – instead of taking the trouble to teach people good taste themselves, so that these things would stop of themselves – 'it should be banned by law', 'by majority decision' or something like that should be done. That is the one thing that must be asserted in principle. Therefore, all prohibitions against processions and the like should be lifted, and things should be allowed to run their course. Then spiritual life will also be able to express itself freely

It is absolutely essential that stupidity, folly and evil be conquered by cleverness and kindness, that ugliness be conquered by beauty, and that nothing be legally eradicated in the realm of spiritual life.

Question of the youth movement: The speaker explains that the individual members of the youth movements want and need to experience truth and reality; the economic sphere seems to them to be the area where everyone has a say, where everyone should be active and engaged. Later, the individual often withdraws again to reflect or simply to get away from society. It is almost impossible to reach a solution. Soon it is the economic that provides a value system; there is no recognition of the state or the political, but everything is conditioned by the economic. Individuals are diverted from their spiritual nature by economic life - or they withdraw into solitude].

Rudolf Steiner: In essence, the Lord has characterized what I have already said in the lecture: the phenomena of the youth movements of recent decades. But it would not be entirely correct to stop at this phenomenon of the youth movement. I have already found some understanding among members of this youth movement when I have struck what lives in the deeper foundations of the whole development of time. I had to say to some members of the youth movement, to which you yourself seem to belong and know very well: Yes, the year 1899, for example, is an extraordinarily important one for the development of humanity as a whole, and in particular for the development of Western civilization. And anyone who has an eye for such things knows how fundamentally different those people are who either lived through their childhood before 1899 was around, so they were a few years or ten years old, or those people who, let's say, were even born later, so they are hardly in their twenties now, and those people who were born before 90 and so on. At the bottom of their souls, very important things were going on, I would say, from the very source of existence, and that is connected with the fact that at the end of the nineteenth century, gates to the supersensible world were opened for the first time in the Western world. It was no longer possible, let us say, in the 1880s, to lead a different life, even with a powerful urge for the spiritual life; the Nietzschean life is more or less that life, which one must present as one that has become ill from the decline of Western culture because it could not find what it was looking for: the spiritual basis in everything phenomenal, in everything external, in everything sensual. The life of Nietzsche is therefore extraordinarily interesting to study from this point of view. He participates in Schopenhauerism, becomes ill from Schopenhauerism; he participates in historicism, becomes ill from historicism; he participates in Wagnerism, becomes ill from Wagnerism. He participates in naturalism, in positivism, becomes ill from it. He participates in the Darwinian molding of the idea of humanity, becomes ill from it, and so on, and so on. Instead of the idea of repeated earthly lives, he comes to the idea of the return of the same, becomes ill from it. Nietzsche could not help but fall ill from his urge for the supernatural world. It was simply not possible to achieve this directly and fundamentally at the end of the nineteenth century or before the end of the nineteenth century. The gates have opened, and today we cannot help but turn to the revelations of the spiritual world if we want to achieve an inwardly satisfied existence. Speaking of nature in the way that was justified in the 1880s is no longer justified today. Today we can point out how there was a current of opinion favoring an 'ignorabimus', how a naturalist, Du Bois-Reymond, spoke of 'ignorabimus', how Ranke, the historian, by seeking to present history as an event with the exception of the Christ event; that this comes from the primal forces, that history does not belong there - so 'ignorabimus'. Today we cannot do that. Today we are on the threshold of the supersensible world wanting to enter, and it is only the dull reluctance that is still bracing itself against the acceptance of a spiritual world view. And what is rumbling in the youth, that is the deeper thing, that is rumbling inside. And therefore, no matter how much individual members of the youth movement may say, “We do not want the abstract, we want the emotional,” they will still have to realize: What spiritual science in anthroposophy wants to be is precisely not something abstract, it is the full human being, it is what comes out of the whole human being, it is what expresses itself as art and as religion and as science, and it is the point at which the whole, full human being can come to his inner realization. And today we are only suffering from the fact that economic routine does not want to take leave of economic reason and that we must first begin to work on the recovery of spiritual life, until the unreasonableness of economic life must follow through necessity. And I am convinced that something good and right will come out of the youth movement, just as I do not despair when people keep saying, for my sake, that they cannot distinguish between expressionism and a windmill, a towel just pulled out of the water and hung up to dry, or a human portrait, say, for example, a boot heel. Of course, sometimes you can't distinguish that with the expressionists, but nevertheless, there are approaches to something in it, which, if it is refined in the most diverse places where it appears, will lead to that in which spiritual science, as it is represented here, only wants to be a guide and a leader and to work from the very most elementary.

But of course, sometimes you experience the fact that, despite the fact that you mean it to be so concrete, the opposite is held against you. I just want to say that last as a joke. The day before yesterday I had a lecture in Zurich. I spoke with slides about this building here. Then afterwards, one of the audience stood up and said: Yes, why do we need such a building, why do we need a Christ's head and Christ at all, why do we need it today? I was walking on the street this afternoon, there was a very drunk person, I followed him, and I joined him. This is a temple of God, this is a real temple and we do not need built temples. — On this occasion, I only regretted that no friendly spirit was found to find the right door with the person in question. But in view of the unnatural conditions of the present time, one may meet people who do not mean, as I say, that we should not build temples, but who mean that we should follow drunkards. They really want to work from the elementary, and they deserve, so to speak, to have spiritual science brought to their full understanding, because they can understand it. For the youth movement is connected with a very great change that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century and that is actually based not only on superficial historical forces but on profound cosmic forces.

The social question, which is to occupy us today, did not, as will immediately become clear for everyone, arise out of a mere idea or out of the undoubted need of a few people, but is a question that confronts us with facts as strongly and clearly today as ever. One who looks around just a little in the surrounding world will know what a distinct language these facts speak. It could well be that someone who does not want to hear this language of the facts will find out in the not too distant future that he has closed his ears too long to what was necessarily going on. With regard to the social question, the human being of the present is standing within the battle that is at times still playing itself out under the surface of our social order. One who wants to say, more or less precisely, how the social battle has increased in extent and violence doesn't need to go any further into externals, he needs only to draw attention to the violent workers' movement on the occasion of the work stoppage at Crimmitschau, to the miners' strike on the occasion of the lockout of the electrical workers, and, in sum, to what is going on in Eastern Europe.¹ In all this we will have to discern the social question being lived out.

The reproach has often been addressed to Theosophy that it has a number of dreamers among its followers, that it seeks to work only in those areas to which one retreats from the great common questions of the time, where one wants to linger in leisurely contemplation of the human soul, and so they say: Theosophists are a few people who have nothing particular to do, who in an egoistical way want to retreat into the self and cultivate it in the manner of Theosophy. One easily makes the reproach to Theosophy that it wants to stand apart from the great battle of the day, from what touches humanity in the present time. The Theosophist should be setting this right again and again. He should ever and again point out that wherever there is something to investigate and think regarding warranted human affairs in the present, there the Theosophists must be, that he must have a clear heart and clear thinking, that he must not lose himself in some cloudy utopia, but rather must stand within the everyday, helping and caring.

And this other reproach can also easily be made: that Theosophy is touted as a universal cure for all the evils and injuries of the present. That also is otherwise. To be sure, it is claimed that Theosophy, the Theosophical movement, has something to do with all that must prepare itself in the present for a salutary future, but not like a mastering, not as a universal cure do we extol Theosophy; rather we only want to show that with it something so comprehensive is given that without it today we cannot progress in the mosl essential things that we should be concerned about, and that all speculation and reforming must remain half- baked unless the human being approaches the matter with the Theosophical view. The doctrines of thinkers about grand encompassing cosmic connections, about the universal law of world destiny and world events occupy us, in the inner circles of our Theosophical movement, not merely so we can gaze at the starry vastness at leisure, but rather because we know that these laws we are studying and which are active in the great world-all are also active in the human heart, in the soul, and in fact give this soul the capacity really to see into the life of the immediate present. We are sort of like an engineer who absorbs himself for years in his technical studies, but not in order to engage in contemplations of the mysteries of the calculus and marvel at them; rather we seek the laws which we then apply to human life, as the engineer builds bridges and applies the laws to reality.

There is also something here that is universal and widespread and opens up a further horizon. Who would dare to present thinking as a universal remedy, even though this thinking is necessary for what can happen in the cosmos? Theosophy is no dead matter, no dead theory. No, it is something life-awakening. It is not a matter of the concepts, the ideas, that we take on. What is told here does not have the intention of dealing with the ideas as such, nor the intention of developing interesting notions about hidden facts, but rather, what is here passed before the human soul has a very special quality. Non-Theosophists may believe it or not, but one who has occupied himself with it knows that what I am about to say is correct in practice. One that has applied himself to how, in Theosophy, the world and life are considered will notice his life of the senses and of soul becoming something different from what they were before. He learns to think in another way and will observe human circumstances in a more unbiased way than previously.

We have a distant future in mind when we speak of awakening higher powers through inner development. But for the near future we also keep an eye on the life that we can bring about through Theosophical development: that is, the possibility of coming to a comprehensive, clear, and unbiased assessment of the human situations immediately surrounding us. Our culture, with all the scientific character which it has developed up to now, has come up with theories that are impotent regarding life. The Theosophical world-view will not produce such impotent theories. It will teach mankind thinking, awaken thinking forces in mankind that are not powerless regarding reality, but will empower us to take hold of human evolution itself, to take hold of the immediate conduct of life.

Let me bring in a little symptom that will further clarify what I mean to say. Recently a clear example in the political field was provided by a Prussian government councilor who went on leave to find work in America, to take part in and get to know conditions there.² A state councilman is normally called upon to be active in human evolution. Taken in a higher sense, it is his duty and obligation to let something live in his heart that corresponds to real conditions and not merely to theories. And if he has nothing that chimes with the conditions, then his theory is impotent. This man, who for years previously had been called upon to deal with the human element, got to know the human element himself. Of course what I am saying entails not the least reproach against the individual man. This deed is to the highest degree honorable and bold, and admirable. But what he has written is a symptom of what is urgent. It shows the discrepancy in his orientation toward the world and toward workers. Here are just a few words from his book As a Worker in America [4th edition, Berlin 1905, p.31] { Bracketed statements [ ] are insertions by the German editor.}: “How often, earlier on, when I saw a healthy man begging, did I ask, with moral indignation, why doesn't the lout go to work? Now I knew why. In theory things look different from practice; even the most unappetizing aspects of the national economy are easy enough to handle at your desk.”

There is no greater mark of poverty than when someone who is called upon to participate says that the theory which he had doesn't agree with the conditions. Here's the point at which one can take hold of the matter, just as logic enables people to think at all, and just as no one can become a mathematician without manipulating logic, just so no one can develop the power of practical thinking without Theosophy. Look at the national economy that is overwhelming our developmental [free] market. If you set about looking into things with healthy, comprehensive thinking, Theosophical thinking, you will find that things that are supposed to be guideposts, emanating perhaps from university professors or party leaders, are gray theory suitable for being dealt with at the desk, but are useless when one is facing reality. Such things reveal themselves, for instance, at congresses. One just has to look more closely. Congresses in general bear this character. If those who busy themselves would care to descend into practical life, they would soon find that they are capable of nothing. Merely gazing at life doesn't do it. Nor can someone who judges from the standpoint of today's customary culture pass judgment on the women's question or the social question, nor can someone judge who merely looks at things, for nothing is done by that either.

Now if you were to ask this gentleman who wrote these words, What can lead to an improvement?, then you would find that he has only learned how it looks; but how things should be done, that is a different question altogether. It is also not a question that can be answered in an hour or a day. It can't be answered at all by theoretical debate. No Theosophist worthy of the name will say to you: I have this program for the social question, for the women's question, for the vivisection question, or about the care of animals and so forth, rather he will say: Put people who are Theosophists into the institutions dealing with all these questions, set such people in professorial chairs of national economy; then they will have the ability to develop the thinking which will lead to making the single branches of their activity into guideposts in the realm of public life. As long as this is not the case, people in this realm will be charlatans and will have to witness the world collapsing around them, and how this idle circumlocution in congresses shows itself in its uselessness.

I say this not out of fanaticism, rather from what in every Theosophist is a real Theosophical attitude, real Theosophical thinking. Theosophical thinking develops clarity about the various realms of life, a clear, objective view of the forces and powers working in the world. To look at the matter rightly, that is what Theosophical life enables you to do. Therefore Theosophy is not a panacea in the ordinary sense, rather it is the foundation of contemporary life.

After these introductory words let us give a few indications about what has given our social question, as it arises from the facts, its special stamp. Whoever wants to see what will happen must know the laws of becoming, may not have gray theories, must know the laws of the becoming of humanity. We cannot find these laws through some sort of abstract science. Theosophy does not proceed abstractly. It proceeds from clear contemplative thinking. And so let me indicate with at least a few words how the life of today has shaped itself, how this life today has come to be. One who looks more closely at life will realize that some self-knowledge also belongs in these realms in order to see clearly. First I will picture the outer facts, then I will say a few things concerning what it is actually all about.

Every one of us knows what the human being needs in order to live. We all have an idea of what food and clothing we need. A few figures will tell us how much the majority has of all these. All we need to do in this regard is to examine the tax structure. It has been told over and over, but we can bring it to mind again and again. In Prussia, someone who has an income of less than 900 marks pays no taxes. One can very easily check how many people in Prussia have an income of less than 800 or 900 marks. That's 21 million people. Ninety five percent of the total population have less than 3,000 marks income. Take England. Only those who have an income over 150 pounds are taxed. [...] You see, we have most ample figures that speak of how many people have what one must have as absolute necessity.

Look at statistics. They speak a distinct language. But what has that to do with our self-knowledge? A lot. For it is a matter of gaining the right standpoint for ourselves regarding these facts. And in this connection people let themselves miss out a great deal on what is right. What are people around us doing? What is the cause of their receiving this low income? It is what we give them for what they do for us. We are now making no distinction between workers and non-workers, between proletariat and non- proletariat. For if one makes this distinction, then the matter is already entirely false. And that is the mistake of all our national economic considerations, that one does not proceed from self-knowledge, but rather from theory.

[The following sentences of the transcript reveal a few discrepancies, so that the original wording cannot be reconstructed. By the gist of it, Rudolf Steiner most likely described how every person lives from the products that another has produced. Even for someone out of work, whose means of livelihood are insufficient, products are produced. Even the seamstress working for starvation wages wears clothes that have been produced in turn for a starvation wage. Compare the paragraphs written in the same year in the essay “Spiritual Science and the Social Question,” in Lucifer Gnosis.]

And if in our emotions and perceptions we are able to feel a certain pain over the fact that the clothes we have on have been produced for a starvation wage, then we are looking deep into the heart of the question. When in all this you think over what you wear in the way of clothing, what you put in your mouth for nourishment, where it comes from, only then will you grasp the social question in all its depth. Not through speculation, but rather through a living contemplation does one get an insight into what it is all about.

It isn't right when they say that today's misery, even if we could portray it in its direst colors, is greater than it was in former centuries. That is not the case. We would decisively be committing a falsification of objective reality. Just try to study conditions objectively in the city of Cologne today and 120 years ago, and you will see that much has gotten better. And even so we have the social question. We have it because human beings have gone through yet another evolution, and this is because in large measure they have come to thinking, to self-consciousness, and because their needs have greatly changed. And there, if we study the question thus, we are indeed of necessity directed toward the broad contexts that arise for us in world history if we are not, like the modern researcher, too shortsighted. In order to judge these things it is necessary to get to know the great laws of life. What has brought it about that social affairs have taken this shape? It is the manner and method which the human spirit has taken on. Look back to the time of the French Revolution. At that time they demanded something else. It was a question tending more toward the juridical that brought out the ideal of Liberty - Equality - Fraternity. The French revolutionary heroes in Western Europe called for Liberty. Those now battling in Eastern Europe call for bread. It is simply two sides of the same coin, two different demands of human beings who have learned to put such questions because their souls have undergone a transformation.

This transformation of the soul we have to study more closely. We must study and understand why the souls of the great masses of human beings today—and this will spread over the centuries—have come to these demands. At this point the Theosophical world conception comes in with practical application, underpinning our comprehension. Only someone who understands the case is qualified to judge it. The only one who is able to look into the soul is one who, in the great world framework, sees what is going on in this soul. And only one who understands something of the laws of the soul is able to effect something in souls and lead into the future.

A small side remark: The sciences of today, biology, Darwinism, Haeckelianism, [The worldview of Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), German naturalist and philosopher.] have brought us great ideas. So also the idea that each living entity, in the first stages of its existence, even in its germinal state, recapitulates the forms of life that have previously been gone through out in nature. This brief recapitulation of the various stages occurs also in that being which includes them all, climbing higher on the ladder of evolution than all others: the human being. Assume that a spirit had consciousness at a time before there were any human beings, then he would have had to know not only what had already happened, but he would also—by contrast—have had to form a picture of future evolution. He would have had to form a picture for the future out of the animal condition of that time. Only the human being, who in his germinal configuration recapitulates the preceding conditions, can show us what to do. It is the doing that must pass beyond all knowing. No knowing occupies itself with anything but what was. But if we want to work into the future, we have to do things that haven't been there yet. The great laws that are to be realized in the future show us this. In a certain way everything that is to come about in the future has already been there in the past, namely through intuition. A spirit who had intervened at that time would have had to have had intuition in order to be able to find out about the hidden laws of existence that apply to the past and the future. That is why Theosophy cultivates intuition. That is what reaches out beyond the mere physical experience of the world. Theosophy looks for the laws that are to be cognized by intuition and which lead us into the future of the human race. [For a characterization of intuition as used by Steiner, see, for example, his essays from 1905, The Stages of Higher Knowledge.]

One of these great world laws that can be a guide for us is the law of reincarnation. First, it renders understandable for us how, in higher spiritual realms, what obtains as law is nothing else but what Darwin and Haeckel have intimated. It renders comprehensible why this or that was felt as a need in any given age. One who steeps himself in this knows the last time in which there was life thirsting for universal freedom, when human beings took up impulses for which they should be calling today. The ones who today call for liberty and equality—I say this with the same objective certainty with which the natural scientist has spoken about the physical—all those souls who today cry for liberty and equality have learned it at another stage of their existence, in an earlier incarnation. The greatest needs of the human being of today were embodied in the early time of Christianity, in the first Christian centuries. All human beings have taken up this press for equality, before which the human being of today stands in spiritual life. Christianity brought the message of equality before God. In times prior to that, there had been no such equality.

I do not say what I have just said in a derogatory way, I say it with the same sober objectivity with which I would speak of any scientific problem. If one considers the actual soul and everything which creates outward inequalities, the same soul that once took to itself as an impulse “they are equal before God and before mankind”—when one considers the actual soul—finds that everything that determines outward inequality has no meaning for contemporary life. When the grave closes over us we will all be and become equal. What the soul has taken up lives on in the soul and emerges in a different form. If we consider cultural progress from the perspective of the macrocosm we come to tremendous implications regarding education. I have already drawn attention to what this pedagogy on earth was like in pre-Christian times. Let us look back into Egyptian times. A large number of people there were occupied with work, the difficulty of which a man of today can no longer estimate. They labored willingly. And why? Because they knew that this life is one among many. Each one said to himself: The one who is in charge of my work is like the person I will be sometime. This life must be compensated in different incarnations, for it directs itself out of this knowledge.

Linked with this is the law of karma. What I have experienced in one life is either deserved or will be compensated for in later times. If it had merely gone on like that, however, then the human being would have overlooked the kingdom of the earth. This one life would not have been important to him. In that regard Christianity took measures for education in order to have this life between birth and death be of importance to him. It is merely illusory when Christianity deviates from that, for it has pointed strongly to the beyond; it has even made eternal punishment and eternal bliss a function of one life. Whoever believes that the one life is of primary importance learns to take this life seriously. It pivots around the truths that are suitable for the human being, and it is suitable for the human being to be raised in the idea of this one earth life. Such were the two tasks: education for the importance of earthly life between birth and death, and, on the other hand, that outside this earthly life everyone is equal before God. This earthly life has been bearable only by being so considered that all are equal before God. Whoever looks at it that way will observe, in the development of mankind since the rise of Christianity, a descent into the physical world. More and more the human being feels committed to physical existence. Through this he transferred the importance of the rule of the equality before God more and more to equality in material existence itself.

That picture should not be misunderstood. The soul that 1800 years ago was accustomed to claiming equality for the beyond now brings the impulse for equality with it, but in connection with what is important today: “equality before Mammon.” Please do not see a criticism or anything pejorative in this, rather the objective confirmation of a cosmic law of the developing soul. One must study the course of time this way. Then one will understand that only one thing will again bring about in this soul a change in direction, an ascent, namely if we get the soul who is calling for equality back into the beyond. Toward the beyond we looked up, from the here-and-now we looked out. Today, due to this impulse, the soul is turned back upon itself. Today it seeks the same thing in the here-and-now. If it is to find an ascent again, it must find the spirit in the present, the inwardness, in the soul element itself. That is what the Theosophical world movement is striving for: to prepare the soul for the third stage, [The German “drei Stadien” translates to “three stages.” We suggest this represents a stenographic error and take the liberty of correcting it for the sake of clarity.] because it is filled with God, filled with divine wisdom, and will thereby again know how to place itself in the world, so that it will again find the harmony between itself and the surrounding world.

Such thoughts have value in giving direction. We can't bring this about from one day to the next. But we also cannot consider only our individual deeds. Every deed must stand under some influence. Then it becomes practical, then it is something, then it is no gray theory, rather immediate life, because we are looking into the workings of the soul.

Our national economists and our social theorists today so often say: the human being is only the product of outer circumstances. The human being has come to this because he has lived in these or those outer conditions. Thus speaks, for example, in earnest, social democracy, saying that the human being becomes what the environment makes of him, that because he has become a proletarian worker, due to the entire development of industry, he has also become one in his soul, the way he has evolved through just these conditions. The human being is a product of circumstances. We can often hear that. Let us study the conditions themselves, let us consider what is round about us, what we are most dependent on. Are we dependent merely on nature? No! We notice what we are dependent on only when we stand starving in front of the bakery and have nothing in our pockets to buy anything with.

All these conditions are made and put into effect in turn by human beings. The spirit that is evolving through history has brought these conditions about. People have thought up, out of concern for their own welfare, sometimes only shortly before, what obtains today; they simply insert it. Thus the one who thinks people are dependent on circumstances is reasoning in a circle, because the circumstances were brought about by people. If we picture this to ourselves we must say: it isn't a matter of the circumstances, rather we have to look at how the circumstances have come to be. It is idle to insist on saying: the human being is dependent on his circumstances. In fifty years the human being will also be dependent on the conditions that surround him. You can concede to every social democrat [Social Democracy is “a political theory advocating the use of democratic means to achieve a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism.” American Heritage Dictionary, 1992. Social Democrat (with capitals) refers to a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Germany, which was founded in the late 19th century.] that the human being is dependent on circumstances, but on those that we cause today, that emanate from our disposition, from our soul. We create the social conditions! And what will live then will be the crystallized perceptions and feelings that we put out into the world today.

This shows us what it is all about: that one must learn the laws under which the world is evolving. It cannot be a matter of science, rather it can only be an intuition of what we must contribute as law. This comes directly out of a perception that seems most fantastic to most people, but which is much clearer and more objective than much of the fantastic fantasy of our scientists. One that can tell what lives in the soul and then crystallizes outwardly, can also, out of the wisdom, out of the divine in the soul, tell what an individual can spread out into the world and what is proper for humanity.

If in the future you want to have such circumstances around you, if you want to have it set up that way, as an institution which will satisfy people, about which people will be able to say: “That's it—we want to live under these conditions,” then you must first pour humanity into these conditions, so that humanity will stream out of them again. The deepest humanity, the deepest soul-inwardness must first stream out of our own hearts into the world. Then the world will be an image of the soul, and in this soul there will be an image of the world. This will be able to satisfy people again. Therefore the human being cannot expect anything from all those quackeries in the social area that are perpetrated by looking at outer circumstances. These outer circumstances are made by human beings; they are nothing else but human souls which have streamed outwards. The first things that have to be worked over, what we have to take up first as the social question, are the souls of today, which produce the environment of tomorrow. You can see how better conditions stream into the environment if only you would study it. Again and again I have had to hear from social politicians: Make the conditions better and human beings will become better. Just let these people study what individual sects, developing themselves cut off from world evolution pursue as soul culture, just let them study what the latter contribute to the shaping of outer conditions. If human beings realize that the improvement of conditions depends on themselves, if they acquire Theosophical knowledge, and if they cognize the first fundamental principle to establish the kernel of a universal brotherhood [Refers to the first fundamental principle of the Theosophical Society: “To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color.”] and develop it in themselves as a social feeling for the surrounding world, then the actual social is possible, and one is prepared for what will happen in the near future.

Our entire national economy today lives under false premises. Therefore our theories are mostly false because they proceed from assumptions entirely different from those that arise out of the human being and from humanity. One starts with production, or one believes one can achieve something with the development of compensation. All thinking moves in this direction. To be sure, an improvement will not occur immediately with a change in thinking. But it will occur when the direction is changed. Moreover, our proletariat has no inkling about what is here in question. What it demands is more pay and shorter hours. Take a look at the worker in any particular sector, say the electric sector, which has been unionized in order, through this collective, to get better pay and working conditions. What does he want with these better working conditions? He wants a different relation regarding compensation to take place between him and his employer. That's all he wants. The conditions of production don't change. All that happens is that the worker gets higher wages [...]. That's all that happens. If s just a shift in capital.

But that doesn't really change anything much at all, because if one gets more pay today, food will be more expensive tomorrow. It is not at all possible to bring about any kind of improvement for the future in this way. This ongoing endeavor is based on false thinking. There it's a matter of production and consumption. Here a great comprehensive worldwide law about work applies. One has to know this. Certain people who are used to thinking in today's national-economic terms will say perhaps that I am placing a foggy brain in front of them. One who has worked his way through to Theosophy has, as a rule, gone through today's thinking. Theosophy should be active in us as a life impulse. But as every thought will draw into us and stimulate every action in us, just so this also should stimulate us. We needn't think that we can realize it right away. Also, the government councilor who doesn't live in gray theories can look at life entirely differently. He doesn't need to travel to America in order to get the idea that someone who doesn't have any work has to be a lazy lout. In the course of time work has greatly changed its form.

Take a look at ancient Greece. What was work in those days? The worker stood in an entirely different relation to his master. At that time work was slavery. The worker could be compelled by force to work. What he received from his master was his living. But his master took the proceeds of the work; it had nothing whatever to do with the particular relation of the worker to his master. He had to work; moreover, he was maintained under precarious conditions; he was not compensated for the things he did. There we have labor under duress, without pay.

[A] commodity is the result of something other than directly compensated work. Thus its value also has nothing to do with what is to be paid in wages. Look at today's situation. Today we have jobs for which the worker is partly compensated—partly. What they bring in flows as profit into the pockets of the entrepreneur. Thus work is partly compensated. What, thereby, has the worker himself become? He invests his labor power into this work. In Greece, when one was confronting a unit of work, it was a product of slavery. Today's commodity involves something entirely different. Today the luxury that I receive is crystallized labor for which the worker is compensated. If we ponder this we will find that a half freedom has taken over from the old slavery. A contractual relation has taken its place. In that way labor has become a commodity in the figure of the laborer. So we have labor that is half compelled and half voluntary. And the course of evolution is in the direction of completely voluntary work. This path no one will change or reject. Just as the Greek laborer did his work under the compulsion of his master and a present laborer works under the compulsion of wages, just so in the future only freedom will obtain. Labor and compensation will in future be completely separated.

That will constitute the health of social conditions in the future. You can see it already today. Work will be a voluntary performance out of the recognition of necessity, out of the realization that it must be done. People perform it because they look at the person and see that he needs work done for him. What was labor in antiquity? It was tribute, it was performed because it had to be performed. And what is the labor of the present time? It is based on self-interest, on the compulsion that egoism exerts on us. Because we want to exist, we want labor to be paid for. We work for our own sake, for the sake of our pay. In the future we will work for our fellow human beings, because they need what we can provide. That's what we will work for. We will clothe our fellow men, we will give them what they need—in completely free activity. From this, compensation must be completely separated. Labor in the past was tribute, in the future it will be sacrifice. It has nothing to do with self-interest, nothing to do with compensation. If I base my labor on consumer demand, with regard to what humanity needs, I stand in a free relation to labor, and my work is a sacrifice for humanity. Then I will work with all my powers, because I love humanity and want to place my capacities at its disposal.

That has to be possible, and is possible only when one's living is separated from one's labor. And that is going to happen in the future. No one will be the owner of the products of labor. People must be educated for voluntary work, one for all and all for one. Everyone has to act accordingly. If you were to found a small community today in which everyone throws all one's income into a common bank account and everyone works at whatever he can do, then one's living is not dependent on what work one can do, but rather this living is effected out of the common consumption. This brings about a greater freedom than the coordination of pay with production does. If that happens, we will gain a direction which corresponds with needs. Already today this can flow into every law, every decree. Of course, not absolutely, but approximately. Already today one can organize factories in the right way. But that demands healthy, clear, sober thinking in the sense of Theosophy. If such things penetrate into human souls, then something will be able to live again in these human souls. And the way the one determines the other, just so this life of the human soul will also determine that the outer arrangements will be a mirror picture of it, so that our labor will be a sacrificial offering—and no longer self-interest—so that what controls the relations with the outer world is not compensation, but rather what is in us. What we have in our power to do, we offer to humanity. If we can't do much, then we can't offer much; if we have a lot, then we offer a lot.

We must know that every activity is a cause of endless effects and that we may allow nothing that is in our soul to go unused. We will be making every offering out of our soul if we completely renounce any pay that can accrue to us from external conditions. Not for our own sake, not for the sake of our welfare, but rather for the sake of necessity. We want to firm up the soul through the law of its own inner being, so that it learns to place its powers at the disposal of the whole from points of view other than the law of wages and self-interest. There have been thinkers who in some connection have already thought thus. In the first half of the 19th century there have been thinkers who have brought this feature of a grand soul-based contemplation of cosmic law. Is this feature not a sanctification of labor? Isn't it so that we can lay it on the altar of humanity?

Thus labor becomes anything but a burden. It becomes something into which we place what is most sacred for us, our compassion for humanity, and then we can say: Labor is sacred because it is a sacrifice for mankind.

Now there have been people who in the first half of the nineteenth century spoke of “sacred industry.” Saint Simon was one of those who had an inkling of the great ideas of the future.³ Whoever studies his writings will, if one deepens them in the theosophical sense, gain endlessly much for our time. Saint Simon spoke in a rudimentary way, but of a type of living together, as in an association. He has projected associations into which the single individuals deposited tribute, and thus existence became independent. He had great ideas about the development of humanity, and discovered several things. He said: The human races correspond to a planned development, and souls make their appearance one after the other and work their way upwards. That's the way to regard the development of humanity, for then one comes to the correct view. He also speaks of a planetary spirit that changes itself into other planets on which humanity will live. In short, here is a national economist whose works you can read and who lived in the first half of the nineteenth century. You read his work like a Theosophical book.

Today the palingenesis [continued rebirth, metempsychosis] of soul existence can be proved. Whoever acknowledges Haeckel will also have to acknowledge reincarnation if one carries Haeckel's ideas further. Fourier⁴ also thought in this way. You can find in him a primitive Theosophy. Thus for one who looks at things the way they are, Theosophy's first major principle for our social life—to establish the kernel of a universal brotherhood—is the only thing that can propagate healthy conditions in the environment. This view of the Theosophists is not impractical, rather it is more practical than the view of all those social theorists (you'll have to admit this if you apply these theories to life), and only someone like that will say, with good old Kolb: Studying theories of national economy is no burden. Only if Theosophy comes to be heard in debates on the social question can a healthy way of looking at it, a healthy thinking come into it. So it is necessary for someone who wants to see and hear in this area to come to terms with Theosophy.

For the Theosophists two things are clear, not out of fanaticism, but rather out of a knowledge that comes from looking at life: it is possible to stick with gray theory and relegate the matter to people who will later have to admit that at the desk it looks different from what it turns out to be in life out there. Then one will have to wait a long time, and what must come will come anyway. In the end, living theory will have to intervene in life—one can hear it already today—already today one can argue about what Theosophy has to say about the social question. Then one can't hear just one lecture, rather one has to deal with Theosophy in its entirety. From it one will derive the gift, the ability, in a healthy way to view life from top to bottom in its most secret and intimate forces, then healing and blessing can soon come into our social order.

Let us achieve in ourselves, as much as we can, what should happen. The reshaping of labor, working not for pay, is a sacrifice. Then we will have done our duty, then we will have regarded life in a healthy way. Or else we will keep looking at the world with gray theories, alien to life. Then it could turn out that future humanity could say: Questions were raised. When these questions were there to be raised, when recovery in a good way was possible, that was just when they did not want to study them. Goethe once said: “Revolutions are entirely impossible if the rulers do their duty.” He knew who was to blame for revolution.⁵ Let us try to consider what the history of the future can say about our present. You have seen what time has wrought, until the earth was drenched with blood, and how the time has raised the most burning questions in an even more frightful way.

• 1. Crimmitschau strikes: Among the numerous work stoppages in the first years of the 20th century, the strike of the textile workers of Crimmitschau, from 7 August 1903 to 17 January 1904, stands out especially because the management reacted to the strike of 600 textile workers in five factories with an unprecedented mass lockout: they locked out the entire work force. Subsequently, in Crimmitschau, with a population of 23,000, around 8,000 textile workers and 1500 who worked at home stood in conflict with a management that was obviously intensifying its measures against the workers. For details on this strike see F. Deppe et al., Geschichte der deutschen Gewerkschaftsbewegung (History of the German Trade Union Movement), Cologne, 1978, p.77f.
  
  Miners' strike: A further high point in the strike movement was the miners' strike in the Ruhr from December 1904 to 9 February 1905, at the center of which stood the demands for am eight-hour day, higher pay, better worker protection, and recognition of the workers organizations. For this also see the portrayal of F. Deppe et al. op cit. p. 78f. what's going on in Eastern Europe: On 22 August 1905, “bloody Sunday,” in Petersburg, peaceful demonstrators were shot down by the military. The strike wave now turned into revolutionary unrest that soon spread over all of Russia. In the fall of 1905 the socialistically organized workers called for a general strike and, with the participation of Bolsheviks, Menscheviks, social revolutionaries and independents, formed the first Soviet (Council).
• 2. a Prussian government councillor, Alfred Kolb: Rudolf Steiner also deals with him in the essay “Spiritual Science and the Social Question” in Lucifer Gnosis, GA Bibl. No. 134, and in the Hamburg lecture of the same name of 2 March 1908 in Die Welträtsel und die Anthroposophie (Anthroposophy and the Riddle of the World), Bn/GA Bibl. No. 54.
• 3. Saint Simon (Claude Henri de Rouvroy), 1760-1825: social reformer. Lettres d'un habitant de Geneve a ses contemporains (1803) (Letters of an Inhabitant of Geneva to his Contemporaries), Réorganisations de la societi europtenne (1814) (The Reorganization of European Society); Le nouveau christianisme (1825) (The New Christianity). Also see A. Voigt, Die sozialen Utopien, Leipzig, 1906 (Social Utopias). This book is also to be found in Rudolf Steiner's private library (Archives of the Rudolf Steiner Estate Administration) and contains numerous underlinings by him concerning Saint Simon. See p,107ff.
• 4. Fourier, François Marie Charles, 1772–1837; Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées générales (1808) (Theory of Four Movements and General Destinies), Lenouveau monde industrielet sociétair (1829) (The New Industrial and Societal World). See A. Voigt op.cit. p. 95ff.
• 5. Goethe once said: Literally it says: “I was also completely convinced that any great revolution is never the fault of the people, rather of the government. Revolutions are altogether impossible as long as governments are continually just and continually vigilant, so that they anticipate them with timely reforms and don't hold back until what is necessary is compelled from the bottom up” (Eckermann, 4 January 1824).

Illness and health are words that interest everyone and that are, to a certain extent, at the center of our thoughts and feelings; not only for selfish reasons, but because our ability to live and our life's work are connected with them. Those who enjoy good health can be of greater help to their fellow human beings than those who are weighed down by illness and suffering; they will fulfill their work, their profession and their mission in the world with more joy.

When we speak of health and illness from a spiritual scientific point of view, we must be aware that we have to take a different point of view than the materialist. We have to raise our approach to a higher level. But to justify the term “disease delusion” to some extent, I would like to present two images. From the first, you will see that disease delusion is something modern, and from the second, you will see to what extent one can speak of disease delusion.

I was traveling with a well-known personality past many ruins picturesquely situated on the hills, but among the many newer buildings built up on the hills, many sanatoriums also appeared. The fellow traveler said: “Those ruins are a reminder of the strength and power of times gone by, and all the sanatoriums, on the other hand, are a reminder of weakness and illness.” I had the need to visit a sanatorium for a short time, a quarter of an hour. At that time, I just saw all the patients passing by for lunch. I got the impression that most of them could do something better than be there.

Another picture: I traveled from Rostock to Berlin with a gentleman and a lady. They shared their ailments with each other. The lady recommended various prescriptions to the gentleman for his various ailments, but he, on the other hand, drew her attention to Lahmann's book, which he had with him and which led him to the sanatorium. The woman had a few ailments, but the man certainly lacked the will to get well. For someone who does not observe himself much, it is what is called an imaginary illness. When you hear about it, you imagine it to be something slight. Even if the man lacked the will to get well, it is not so easy to give him the will without knowing the real cause of the illness. There is a cause for the illness. He was in pain from all sorts of things, and here too one could not speak of an imaginary illness. When we speak of delusions, we must be clear about how the cause of the illness relates to the imagined illness.

Anyone who observes life, first of all the physician who has acquired the ability to see and has recognized what is mental disposition and what is physical basis, can say a great deal about the role that imagination plays. For example, if a much-read article about some disease describes all the sensations that are felt by the patient, many people will come to the doctor who feel that they have a predisposition for this disease. Without that article, this would not have been the case!

The following example shows how a doctor can act in such a case: a famous doctor was called to a family where not only the family but also the family doctor believed that the young girl was suffering from meningitis. At first he suspected that love stories were to blame; then he found out that the young girl was to leave school, although she had an urgent desire to be taught subjects that particularly interested her. He promised to see that she was, on condition that she dress immediately and be at the family table in ten minutes. There was no trace of meningitis. It was generally a matter of some combination of mental states.

Another example: a lady had suffered from a long-lasting foot ailment since the death of her husband; it was attributed to her mental state. A doctor found a large corn on the sole of her foot, and after it was removed, the nerve pain was also lifted.

A doctor experienced the following: A brother was watching his brother perform knee surgery and heard a crack that seized him so energetically that he suddenly felt pain in his knee, while the person being operated on felt nothing. — Sleeping pills often have deceptive effects. Those who cannot distinguish in such cases where the line lies will never come to clarity. Certain forms of illness originate in the soul; they are connected with the life of the present time in the broadest sense.

If we want to understand this, we must turn to spiritual science for help. We must take into account the interaction of the different parts or members in the human being. The physical body is completely permeated by the etheric body; the latter forms the physical body. If the physical body were left to its own devices, it would disintegrate. The etheric body fights every moment to hold the physical body together. When it separates, the physical body is a corpse.

I would like to touch on one thing here: one of the hopes of science is that in the future, living things could be built in the laboratory. Spiritual science is clear that this will one day be the case. What holds the chemical substances together is what we call the etheric body. The carrier of desires, of pain and joy, suffering and pleasure, is the astral body. Every being feels a push as pain; humans feel this in the same way as animals.

Now let us speak of the fourth limb of man, of which I in relation to his three bodies. Whoever visualizes this structure will clearly understand that what we call pain, joy, and displeasure presupposes an astral body. Pain is only present where an astral body is present. How do these three bodies relate to one another?

Pleasure and suffering are not just the result of what happens in the physical body; pleasure and suffering are the formers of the etheric and physical bodies. The astral body was the first and was already there long before. Why are they structured the way they are? Ultimately, the astral body did. If we go back far, far, we come to a state of man when he was only the astral body.

You ask: What did such bodies look like millions of years ago? To our modern concept they looked grotesque and comical, with their boneless, soft bodies and long tentacles that could stretch out and retract. At that time, the soul first took possession of this strange body and gradually formed it into its present shape. A faint echo of this influence can still be seen today in the blanching or the blush that comes from fright. You see how a physical change can take place through a feeling in the soul. In those days man could still work mightily upon his body because the body was still quite soft. The astral body first works upon the etheric body and this in turn upon the physical body.

Let us make it clear how this influence occurs. Let us take any pain, any pleasure in the astral body; what arises in the etheric body? An image, a form, and this form is what lives into the physical body, so that the physical body is an imprint of this image.

Where did the astral body get its joy and sorrow from in ancient times? It was not something inner. It experienced its environment. At that time it did not experience it through the eyes and ears. Body forms are the expression of the joy and sorrow of the environment. You must think of the four parts or limbs of the human being in a much more intimate connection than was the case with the previous world. Man increasingly became absorbed in his physical self. In the past, the astral body was more creative. It transformed the physical body. In essence, this transformation is now almost complete; that is why we also experience what is happening in the physical body.

Let us try to understand the nature of pain that is caused from within. What causes pain? The astral body is the agent. Let us take the following case: If a finger is cut off, it only affects the physical finger; the astral one cannot be cut. Why does it hurt? Because the connection between the two is inhibited. Inhibition of the astral body is pain. Where the activity is not inhibited, there can be no pain.

What is to be considered here? Here is a comparison. Someone was quite clear that he had a defect in his eye that made him see a kind of ghost at dusk or in certain light effects; there was a cloudiness in his eye. The same thing that happens in the physical body can also happen to the higher body, the etheric body. A person's etheric body receives an incorrect impression, a clouding. The person's own clouding inhibits the astral process. What then occurs? Pain without a physical cause. The astral body has to create images. If the ether body is not right, then distorted images appear. Pain can arise from the physical body being damaged, but it is also possible for the astral body to form its own obstacle. If the ether body produces false images, it contradicts the physical body. This creates a false sense of being in the physical world,

Without a cause of the illness, imitation can occur. This has a profound consequence for our world view. It makes us independent. But it also makes it clear to us that a physical illness can only be cured by acting on the physical body. Whether we are outwardly injured or have a stomach upset, in truth it is outward injuries that must also be healed from the physical realm. What is it different when inhibition arises in the astral body? What harm does it do? If you hold that these are not three separate parts, if you assume that the higher bodies are formers, albeit within narrower limits than before, then you must assume that it cannot be meaningless for the physical body when inhibitions occur in the astral body. If you cut into the flesh, it hurts; cutting off hair and nails does not hurt. This fact is of fundamental importance for understanding. Everything that can be injured in a living being and does not hurt will grow again. In plants, the leaf or flower is replaced because it does not feel pain. Lower animals do the same; they can be cut into pieces and the detached parts are replaced again. The astral body is the carrier of pain and desire; the etheric body is the carrier of growth.

Pain is something that has a destructive effect on the etheric and physical body. Persistent pain gradually kills the limb that it seizes. How can we achieve a healing effect? The physical doctor achieves results through physical means. But he will never be able to intervene on the astral body, which imitates the disease, through physical means. What should we do then? If you were to give medicines, no effect would be achieved, and perhaps a disease would be created. In a pharmacopoeia you can read: a poison makes the body sick, except when it can fight with another poison in the body. Therefore, one must carefully distinguish the causes of disease.

How can we treat an ailing etheric body? Here I would like to point out just one specific fact: everything that affects a person in a way that is in harmony with the harmonious laws of the world destroys all such symptoms of illness that take hold in the physical body.

Here two modes of perception are important. One is where a person is always concerned with his ego. The other mode of perception goes beyond the ego, is concerned with art, takes pleasure in the world of the stars, in nature and in others, and can become absorbed and forget itself in this. The prevalence of the first mode of perception breeds bodies that tend towards illness and produce illness. Those who forget themselves are able to forget pain or causes of pain that arise in the astral body. Just as the former mode of perception can have a negative effect, the latter can have a healing effect. Every pain that is overcome is constructive. We must overcome pain through the power developed within us. For those who are devoted to the great cosmic connections, the processes of their astral body will be creative; where they are lacking, illness is produced.

Where do the many ailments of our time come from? The real reason is that so few people turn to the great interests of the universe. Those who send their spirit up there bring healing. Those who stand before a motley of color splotches that has no deep meaning derive no benefit. But those who stand before a work of art through which the divine spiritual shines through will feel a healing effect. To the extent that the materialism of our time exerts its effect, the astral and physical bodies must become ill. Such illnesses are all nervous disorders, neurasthenia and others. Plagues and epidemics can occur as materialism increases. If people were to free themselves from their limited ego, much would be released from them. The truth is that a high world view is the only thing that can heal and restore health.

But there is also a downside to this: if you brood over something once or twice, it does no harm. But if you do it several times, it has a bad effect because then the person is too concerned with his or her own ego. But anyone who seeks to break away from their ego, who seeks to bring themselves into harmony with the laws of the world and turns to the great facts of the universe, will come to the truth about how to get well. Superstition is the disease of the present time. It is more useful to do something to get away from oneself and to turn one's gaze thoroughly to the great spiritual world connections.

Theosophy and spiritual science are not given to satisfy curiosity, but so that man may learn to get away from the ego. In this way he will found his health more firmly.

Those researchers will not be harmed by materialism, such as Haeckel, who immersed himself in it in a particular way. When thoughts indirectly affect the three bodies, their frequent recurrence has an effect on the whole human constitution. In this way, the soul affects the physical. I would always like to point out that if we can attune ourselves to the harmony of the universe, we can expect real healing. The soul has built its body, and if the soul is given healthy spiritual nourishment, it will shape the body healthily.

Answer to question

{The question has not been handed down.]

Answer: Irreligiosity has a very special significance; it can be a cause of illness. Not only the thought, but also the feeling that turns to the divine, has its importance. [Question not handed down.] Answer: If one works with the whole person, overwork is almost out of the question.

The work must, however, be of benefit. All fruitless labor is harmful.

Today I want to talk about how Theosophy can be directly applied to the art of living, how it can refine and purify our everyday feelings and thus be made useful. Theosophical concepts can be applied directly to life in the context of husband, wife and child. However, there is great diversity here, because they are not as simple as one might imagine.

All ages have grappled with the question: What does the child get from the parents, what is the relationship of the parents to the child, and what relationship to the new generation in general? In our time, the question of how parental traits are passed on to the child is of particular concern, and to what extent the parents' traits become a kind of destiny for the children. These questions also arise in art, for example in Ibsen's “Ghosts”, where the inheritance from the parents is carried out in such a terrible fate for the child. It is reminiscent of the fate in the Greek tragedies, only drawn into materialism. All this shows that this question has aroused a deep interest. Only he can form a judgment on it who regards the human being as a whole in its fourfold nature. Our time, after all, sees only the physical body. But the question must be considered in two ways: first, in what form the child's part is to be considered, and then, to what extent the parents are involved in what comes from the child.

The physical sciences have a word for this relationship: “inheritance”. They use it for humans and also for lower organisms, and apply it to humans quite mechanically. These sciences are unaware of a fact: that a great lawfulness runs through all levels of existence, but that these facts increase.

Inheritance is something completely different for humans than for lower creatures. If we draw comparisons with facts from the lower nature, we find two closely related concepts: the concepts of reproduction and love. Love already occurs in lower creatures and becomes more refined up to humans. I am not talking about the concept here, but about something real, such as electricity. It is a real force that passes through all people, only this love is in a completely different situation. When a lower creature reaches its peak and is ready to reproduce, love comes into it. We see that these lower creatures are exhausted afterwards and soon die. For them, death is the connection to and the consequence of love. It is no different with plants; after fertilization and after the germ for the next plant has been created, they die. But if we go up to higher living beings, we see that they preserve something beyond love. The plant preserves nothing, it dies; we also find this in lower animals; love brings them death. But a higher being preserves its individuality. This is most highly developed in humans. In this, man differs quite essentially from the animal closest to him.

There is a fact that characterizes the fundamental difference between man and all animals. Usually this is not recognized in the right light, nor in the right weight. The fact seems simple: man can be described by us as a single, individual being. This is of the same interest to us as when we describe an entire species in the animal. In the case of the lion, for example, we are not so much interested in its characteristics, but our interest remains with the species. You cannot write a biography of an animal; that makes it clear to you. Man, as a single human being, is a species in itself. The biography shows us very clearly what esoteric science teaches us: the necessity of re-embodiment. In animals, we simply find a similarity to our parents. But do we understand Schiller when we observe his parents? He may well have his nose, his walk, his posture, even his predisposition to illness from his parents, but we will never find in them what makes Schiller Schiller for humanity.

It used to be assumed that fish could develop in river mud. The first to break the mold was the Italian naturalist Redi. He almost fell prey to the Inquisition for claiming that living things must arise from living things. Today we take this for granted. But in the realm of the soul and spirit, the whole of science believes it. It does not ask in the case of Schiller, where do the soul qualities come from? Theosophy answers: through re-embodiment. Schiller's innermost being did not come from his ancestors, but from the figure in his previous life. Thus, we see in every human being what has its origins in an earlier life, and this sheds a proper light on the relationship between father, mother and child. The parents only provide the shell for this being to take on, which is basically its own offspring.

It is similar with the plant germ that is sunk into the earth. The idea, the thought, contains the whole form, but it would never have come into being without this mother earth; likewise, nothing comes into being unless the germ enters into it. A patch of earth provides the opportunity for plant germs to develop, but it is the earth that helps to determine whether it will become a bean plant or a pea plant. For higher spiritual science, it is similar with the higher self of man. After the time between birth and death, man lives in another world, in Devachan. There he remains until he is ripe for new embodiment. Then something must be given to him so that the power within him can become saturated with material, and so the germ from the spiritual world receives its covering through the parents. We can no longer say that parents pass on to the child what is insofar as the earth has only a certain part of the plant.

Now let us consider the four-fold nature of man, and what part each has. The newborn child undergoes a different kind of development of its individual parts. From birth to the change of teeth, the physical body takes on its form. It comes to an end with the child's own teeth; the first teeth are inherited. The form grows and expands, but it itself is determined. From the seventh year to sexual maturity, the etheric body develops. This forms the final point.

When a person reaches sexual maturity, he becomes capable of producing an equal being. The astral body develops from about the ages of 14 to 21. Just as all the properties of the physical body develop up to the age of seven, the properties of the astral body, all the instincts and feelings that lead the person into the future, develop during this time. It is a crime if during this time the rosiness of hope is neglected, the bliss of the astral body. By the age of twenty-two the I in man comes out. Thus every single part of the human being develops gradually.

What part of it comes from our previous life and what part is inherited from our parents? We can learn a great deal about this from the fact mentioned above. In the lower animals, because nothing remains behind at sexual maturity, nothing will remain from previous lives; they will die out; no individuality is present; they die when they love.

Now you will understand that something is basically inherited, something is anchored in the physical and etheric bodies, and that the astral body and the ego must lead back to the previous life. What can be similar to the physical form comes out up to the seventh year. Until sexual maturity, we recognize which qualities are inherited from the father and mother. At sexual maturity, things come out that come from previous lives. The more the being rescues itself after it has reached sexual maturity, the more is not inherited. Nevertheless, what was acquired earlier is already there before, as can be seen from the fact that predispositions show up in early youth. They cast their shadows before, if they cannot come from father or mother. The father and mother have a mixed share in the physical body and etheric body.

Sometimes a child may resemble its mother more, then its father more. This is due to the fact that there is a feminine in every man and a masculine in every woman. Here, four influences are at work. For the astral body and the ego, the situation is more complicated. What was put into it earlier is important. By way of comparison, I would like to mention something here: A person who has a certain individuality lives in very comfortable domestic circumstances, but due to some event he has to make do with a miserable apartment. This will have a certain influence on him, but nevertheless the person remains the same, and he has to adapt to the circumstances. The parents are not the creators, they are only the dwelling, and the living beings have to fit into it.

What comes from the woman has its influence primarily on the astral body, what comes from the man on the “I” of the child. The artistic, poetic comes more from the mother, because these are qualities that are attached to the astral. On the other hand, what has more to do with the ordering, practical life, with the “I” is connected, comes from the father. As Goethe says:

From my father I have the stature
And manly leadership;
From my mother the cheerful nature
And the desire to tell stories.

Here we must mention alcohol and its devastating effects. Only those who are unaware of this can underestimate its influence on their offspring. Alcohol has a terrible effect on the “ego” and on astral things. If we observe a child whose father is an alcoholic, the race could be so strong that it overcomes the damage; we find tendencies towards morbidity that are all connected with crippledness of the “I”, with cretinism. They are much more widespread than one might think and will become much worse in the next generations if spiritual science is not used to counteract them.

There are facts below the surface of life where the “I” has much greater deficiencies than one might think. In many cases, people are considered particularly gifted, for example poets. Today, however, language is not an admirable gift at all. In truth, the times write; a columnist, an entertainment writer, can be weak-minded. There are bound to be effects of the “I” that are connected to alcoholism. In women, shadows are also evident in the formation of the astral body, through instability and a flight of ideas. Hysteria also shows that the astral body is not in order. In this disease you can find confirmation of what esoteric science says about the relationship between man, woman and child.

We see, then, that we must substantially reshape the superficial concepts of inheritance. The essential thing in all these things is that our horizons are broadened on the spiritual side, but also on the moral side. Transformation is the gold of morality. To what extent does Schopenhauer's brilliant glimpse of light find a certain justification: “By man and woman seeking each other, the offspring are already working?” It is a fine concept that we have to form for ourselves. You see ardent, passionate desire, which goes down to the animalistic and up to the highest, where love unites man and woman. There is a point of view, an egotistical one, that arises from desire. It is brought about by tremendous immoral stupidity. It is not true that every sexual urge must be satisfied; on the contrary, it benefits everything, even health, when this is not the case. Where love is combined with purity, a soul will find the best cover. There is an ideal where every lower urge is silenced, not out of abstinence, and yet still provides for human offspring. What that means for certain things, people are not yet ready to understand, but it will be a great happiness. They will learn to understand how the creation of one sex or the other is connected with cosmic and other conditions. If a word were to be revealed today, the greatest mischief would arise. Today, only these things can be touched upon.

What happens in the spiritual world after death? That which went up rests in Devachan to re-embody itself. This person first envelops himself in an astral body. Just as a magnet moving under a paper on which iron filings are spread arranges the filings, so the astral matter arranges itself into a new body. If you could see occultly, you would see the astral matter settling. What is it? It is something that is mixed with the embers of desire that goes from man to woman. Where desire is bad, bad things are mixed in, where love is pure, the astral matter is not defiled. The last stage lies in the greater or lesser purity of the love relationship. We cannot ascribe qualities from past lives, but we can prevent astral matter from becoming contaminated. In such views, purity becomes respect for the freedom of the incarnating human being. One must have grasped the ideas of re-embodiment.

From the child we move on to the future generation. Every child must be a mystery to the educator, because there is something supersensory behind their life that wants to come out. Nurturing and caring for this maturing, this supersensory in the child is the only way to educate it. And we can say: if we want to give the next generation an existence, then we must value the child's freedom in education.

In the life of the present, mainly the recognition of the sensual is shown. When the supersensible is recognized first, then the future is linked to the present and the past. When these ideas will have an effect on our actions, on our blood, then we have brought theosophy into life. Those who do not want knowledge because it is too inconvenient for them, figuratively speaking, cut off the tree at the root. Knowledge is the root and growing into the views is the trunk and crown, and we achieve this growth by incorporating Theosophy into our whole lives.

It is commonly believed that there are so many diseases, but only one health. This is nonsense, however, because in reality there are as many types of health as there are people. Health is something entirely individual and ultimately different for each person. However, we only have a very general idea of what it is to be healthy, and anything that does not match this image is considered an illness. We should endeavor to enable the patient to lead the best and most comfortable life possible despite the abnormality of the disease, as if he did not have this abnormality at all. But we should not want to reduce him to the general template that we have somehow created and now want to impose on everything.

Of course, some people need a certain abnormality. This does not mean that we should now let the diseases take their course. If we want to take the concept of “health” seriously, we have to consider a different concept of development in all its depth and meaning.

Animals in their natural environment never overeat themselves, but this often happens when they are adopted into civilization. In this care, they contract a variety of diseases. Animals also develop certain diseases as soon as they are captured, while they did not suffer from them in the wild. Certain mental illnesses are virtually a consequence of the culture of a particular stage.

Physically and chemically, the animal body is an impossible mixture. The life body is therefore a necessary link for its sustenance. The astral body contains the causes of what happens in the physical and etheric bodies. The astral body in an animal has no such wide-ranging potential for individual development as it does in a human being. It is a tightly closed circle of animal instincts, desires and passions. The animal fits perfectly into its circumstances, and that with its physical, etheric and astral bodies. The captive animal can only be taught different habits with regard to the physical and etheric bodies, but it is not possible to influence its astral body. This is why the animal cannot integrate itself into new circumstances in a healthy way, because this would have to start from the astral body.

In the case of human beings, too, far-reaching changes have to start with the astral body. If we want to remain healthy when transitioning from simpler to more complicated circumstances, we first have to adapt to those new circumstances from the inside out, from the I and the astral body. This adaptation is a work of the I on the astral body, and only it brings health to the etheric body and the physical body.

Man is absolutely designed for this development right into his physical body. Not every phenomenon means the same in all kingdoms of nature, as the materialistic way of thinking believes. This is the case, for example, with the softening of the bones, rickets. Man is in a state of progressive development with all his parts and members. The body has developed from very different, earlier forms to its present shape. The I and the astral body will continue to transform the human organism. In his bone system, the human being must still have the possibility of softening, so that he can also develop there. In the human being, on the one hand, there are tendencies towards softening and, on the other hand, towards hardening, so that he does not have to remain in a stationary state. The inner human being, his I and the astral body, properly guided by the I, must direct such transformations. Rickets is a premature remodeling of the bones because it is not properly guided by the ego.

Spiritual science must intervene in the area of disease predispositions, correcting medicine here and steering it in the right direction. Each person has their own specific place in existence and must accordingly remodel their organs in their own individual way for their personal health.

Paracelsus taught profound truths in this regard and was far ahead of his time. He believed that health is an entirely individual matter and cannot be considered and corrected in any stereotypical way when a disturbance occurs.

What criteria does the self use to maintain health? This cannot be studied empirically. The important thing is to recognize the right criteria for health in the sense of inner harmony, contentment, the joy of being, and an untroubled and undisturbed zest for life. This feeling of contentment is worth much more than all the external anointing and tanning from the sun. Wherever you find joy in flowers, trees and sunshine, wherever your zest for life is heightened and your love of life is strengthened, you will stay healthy or be able to restore balance to your disturbed health. A healthy soul also creates a healthy body. On the contrary, external concoctions and procedures can rob a person of their health. So, it is primarily a matter of keeping the soul healthy. “Mens sana in corpore sano!"

This saying can only be understood correctly with this in mind. A healthy body also indicates a healthy soul. On the other hand, a healthier soul can never be created by external transformation of the body.

But how does this attitude go together with the teaching of asceticism, as it is, for example, accused of theosophy? Theosophy is misunderstood if it is thought to preach mortification. The theosophist does not mortify himself; on the contrary, he would mortify himself if he had to take part in all the social hustle and bustle, for example, sitting down to dinner or going to a music hall. In the light of correctly understood Theosophy, it is nonsense to say that something or other is prescribed for man, that he must live in such and such a way. Theosophy has no dogmas in this sense, and no agitation for vegetarianism. Meanwhile, individual Theosophers come to refrain from eating meat through their feelings and intuitions.

For others, however, eating meat is still a necessity. It is also possible to develop the view that eating meat is no longer desirable in an even higher sense. A doctor who was not a theosophist answered the question of why he did not eat meat by saying that he was simply disgusted by the idea of eating cat or horse meat, just as most people would be. For those who advance in spiritual development, the desire for certain things no longer arises by itself. Their instinct for certain foods has simply changed. Those who still cling to the Tingeltangel must be left there, and those who have no desire for it should not go there. It is the sublimation of instincts and desires that keeps the physical organs healthy and makes them healthy.

Thus the spiritual-scientific world view wants to give people the ability to direct their astral body in such a way that it comes into harmony with the law of advancing humanity. One does not just occasionally stop in recognition, but also in the experience of one's life.

The ego of many people often follows the will-o'-the-wisps and thus generates selfishness, the spirit of lies and error, thus generating erring temperaments and passions. If the ego is not in harmony with the order of the world, it will stray restlessly and follow all the will-o'-the-wisps that appear. It is important to familiarize oneself with the erring temperaments and character traits. Few people today can be completely honest and truthful. But this shortcoming causes illness and infirmity. Some people can no longer be helped in some respects because they are caught up in overly complicated relationships with communities, so that they are unable to break away from them. Often, in a community where sick people live alongside healthy ones, the actual causes of illness lie with the healthy and not with the sick. And the more receptive natures absorb these illnesses, which are basically the fault of the strong natures. Keeping oneself healthy is therefore a duty towards all fellow human beings. Some people carry an illness from their neighbor without having caused it themselves.

By keeping ourselves healthy, we have the opportunity to align ourselves with the great laws of the world and thus make our own and other people's illnesses disappear. However, this requires people to work together properly. Only in this way is it possible to guarantee general health.

Short-sightedness, for example, is due to the fact that in our current education system, the eye has to remain passive for too long, always receiving impressions only from the outside, but not being prompted by the soul to look and observe in the open air, where there are near and far objects. This adaptation must be brought about by the soul. Where this does not happen, the eye loses its ability to adapt.

A world view that allows everything to be dictated from the outside is extremely unhealthy, whereas one that drives and creates from within is a truly healthy world view. The constant absorption of impressions from the outside has the same effect as what we have described as myopia in the eye.

One must form one's world view in an open-minded love. Today's books are often written in such a way that the truths are smeared into people's mouths, so to speak. However, those books that require long study and reflection to grasp their content are the truly good books in the theosophical sense. They are designed to stimulate inner productivity.

In the classroom, you can dissect plants with children, but when you are out in nature with young people, you should bring them closer to the whole of living nature. In this context, analyzing and destroying would be inappropriate. Love, in whatever form it appears, has a healing effect on people because it produces noble feelings and gives something out of itself. It is also healthy to produce in art and science or in similar behavior. Anything that encourages people to work independently is healthy. Theosophy aims to ennoble and harmonize people's inner emotional life by showing them the developments in the outside world and pointing out the harmony that prevails in it. This makes our mind productive and creates health in soul and body. A worldview such as this makes people capable of creating counterweights within themselves against all external influences, thus arming themselves against hypochondria and hysteria. Where this fixed point is developed within, the person is then stabilized for every external situation. They can then also give themselves over to pleasure without being harmed by it. It becomes an expression of their deep and true health.

When Theosophy is introduced into life in this way, it proves itself in our lives, and thus its validity is also proved, without objections having to be logically refuted.

It is an oft-repeated and a justifiable opinion, with regard to all the realms of human spiritual life, that man's greatest riddle here in our physical life is man himself. And we may truly say that a large part of our scientific activity, of our reflection, and of much besides in man's life of thought, is applied to the solving of this human riddle, to discerning a little wherein the essence of human nature consists. Natural science and spiritual science try to solve from different sides this great riddle comprised in the word Man. In the main, all the more profound natural scientific research seeks to attain its final goal by bringing together all the processes of nature, and so forth, in order to comprehend the external laws. And all spiritual science seeks the sources of existence for the sake of comprehending, of fathoming, man's being and destiny. If then, on the one hand, it is unquestioned that in general man's greatest riddle is man himself, we may say that in relation to life this expression may have a still deeper significance, in that it is necessary on the other hand to emphasize what each of us feels upon meeting another person: namely, that fundamentally each single person is in turn an enigma for others and for himself because of his special nature and being. Ordinarily, when we speak of this human enigma, we have in mind man in general, man without distinction regarding this or that individuality; and certainly many problems appear for us when we wish to understand human nature in general. But today we have not to do with the general riddles of existence, but rather with that enigma, not less significant for life, which each person we meet presents to us. For how endlessly varied are human beings in their deepest individual essence!

When we survey human life we shall have to be especially attentive to this riddle which each person presents, for our entire social life, our relation of man to man, must depend more upon how in individual cases we are able to approach with our feeling, with our sensibility, rather than merely with our intelligence, that individual human enigma which stands before us so often each day, with which we have to deal so often. How difficult it is regarding the people we meet to come to a clear knowledge of the various sides of their nature, and how much depends in life upon our coming to such clear knowledge regarding those people with whom we come in touch. We can of course only approach quite gradually the solution of the whole riddle of the human individual, of which each person presents a special phase, for there is a great gap between what is called human nature in general and that which confronts us in each human individual.

Spiritual science, or as we call it more recently, Anthroposophy, will have a special task precisely regarding this individual enigma—man. Not only must it give us information about what man is in general, but it must be, as you know, a knowledge which flows directly into our daily life, into all our sensibilities and feelings. Since our feelings and sensibilities are unfolded in the most beautiful way in our attitude toward our fellow men, the fruit of spiritual science, of spiritual scientific knowledge, will be revealed the most beautifully in the view we take of our fellow men because of this knowledge.

When in life a person stands before us, we must always, in the sense of this spiritual science, or Anthroposophy, take into consideration that what we perceive outwardly of the person is only one part, only one member, of the human being. To be sure, an outer material view of man regards as the whole man what this outer perception and the intellect connected with it are able to give us. Spiritual science shows us, however, that the human being is something very, very complicated. And often, when one goes more deeply into this complexity of human nature, the individual is then also seen in the right light. Spiritual science has the task of showing us what the innermost kernel of the human being is; what we can see with the eyes and grasp with the hands is only the outer expression, the outer shell. And we may hope to come to an understanding of the external also if we are able to penetrate into the spiritual inner part.

In the great gap between what we may call human nature in general and what confronts us in each individual, we see nevertheless many homogeneous characteristics in whole human groups. To these belong those human qualities which today form the subject of our consideration, and which we usually call the temperament. We need only utter the word ‘temperament’ to see that there are as many riddles as men. Within the basic types, the basic colorings, we have such a multiplicity and variety among individuals that we can indeed say that the real enigma, of existence is expressed in the peculiar basic disposition of the human being which we call temperament. And when the riddles intervene directly in practical life, the basic coloring of the human being plays a role. When a person stands before us, we feel that we are confronted by something of this basic disposition. Therefore it is to be hoped that spiritual science is able to give also the necessary information about the nature of the temperaments. For though we must admit that the temperaments spring from within, they nevertheless express themselves in the whole external appearance of the individual. By means of an external observation of nature, however, the riddle of man is not to be solved; we can approach the characteristic coloring of the human being only when we learn what spiritual science has to say about him.

It is of course true that each person confronts us with his own temperament, but we can still distinguish certain groups of temperaments. We speak chiefly of four types, as you know: the sanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic, and the melancholic temperament. And even though this classification is not entirely correct in so far as we apply it to individuals—in individuals the temperaments are mixed in the most diverse way, so we can only say that one temperament or another predominates in certain traits—still we shall in general classify people in four groups according to their temperaments.

The fact that the temperament is revealed on the one side as something which inclines toward the individual, which makes people different, and on the other side joins them again to groups, proves to us that the temperament must on the one side have something to do with the innermost essence of the human being, and on the other must belong to universal human nature. Man's temperament, then, is something which points in two directions; and therefore it will be necessary, if we wish to solve the mystery, to ask on the one hand: In how far does the temperament point to what belongs to universal human nature? and then again on the other: How does it point to the essential kernel, to the actual inner being of the individual?

If we put the question, it is natural that spiritual science seems called upon to give enlightenment, for spiritual science must lead us to the innermost essential kernel of the human being. As he confronts us on earth, he appears to be placed in a universality, and again on the other side he appears as an independent entity. In the light of spiritual science man stands within two life streams which meet when he enters earth existence. And here we are at the focal point of the consideration of human nature according to the methods of spiritual science. We learn that we have in the human being, first of all, that which places him in his line of heredity. The one stream leads us from the individual man back to his parents, grandparents, and further ancestors. He shows the characteristics inherited from father, mother, grandparents, and all preceding ancestors farther and farther back. And these attributes he transmits again to his descendants. That which flows down from ancestors to the individual man we designate in life and in science as inherited attributes and characteristics. A man is placed in this way within what we may call the line of heredity; and it is known that an individual bears within him, even in the very kernel of his being, qualities which we must certainly trace back to heredity. Very much about an individual is explicable if we know his ancestry, so to speak. How deeply true are the words uttered with regard to his own personality by Goethe, who had such a deep knowledge of the soul:

My father gave my build to me,
Toward life my solemn bearing,
From mother comes my gayety
And my delight in yarning.

Here we see how this great knower of human nature has to point even to moral qualities when he wishes to refer to inherited characteristics. Everything we find as transmitted from ancestors to descendants interprets for us the individual person in a certain respect, but only in a certain respect; for what he has inherited from his ancestors gives us only one side of the human being. Of course the present-day materialistic conception would like to seek in the line of ancestry for everything under the sun, would like even to trace back a man's spiritual being (his spiritual qualities) to ancestry; and it never wearies of declaring that even a man's qualities of genius are explicable if we find signs, indications, of such characteristics in this or that ancestor. Those who hold such a view would like to compile the human personality, so to speak, from what is found scattered among the ancestors. Anyone who penetrates more deeply into human nature will of course be struck by the fact that beside these inherited attributes, in each man something confronts us which we cannot characterize otherwise than by saying: That is his very own; we cannot say, as a result of close observation, that it is transmitted from this or that ancestor. Spiritual science comes in here and tells us what it has to say about it. Today we are able to present only sketchily what is involved in these questions, to indicate only sketchily the findings of spiritual science.

Spiritual science tells us: Certainly it is true that the human being is placed in the stream which we may call the stream of heredity, the stream of inherited attributes. Besides that, however, something else appears in an individual, namely, the innermost spiritual kernel of his being. In this are united what the individual brings with him from the spiritual world and what the father and mother, the ancestors, are able to give to him. With that which flows down in the stream of the generations is united something else which has its origin, not in the immediate ancestors, the parents, and not in the grandparents, but which comes from quite other realms, something which passes from one existence to another. On the one side we may say: A man has this or that from his ancestors. But if we watch an individual develop from childhood on, we see how from the center of his nature something evolves which is the fruit of foregoing lives, something he never can have inherited from his ancestors.

What we see in the individual, when we penetrate to the depths of his soul, we can only explain to ourselves when we know a great comprehensive law, which is really only the consequence of many natural laws. It is the law of repeated earth lives, so greatly tabooed at the present time. This law of re-embodiment, the succession of earth lives, is only a specific case of a general cosmic law.

It will not appear so paradoxical to us when we think the matter over. Let us observe a lifeless mineral, a rock crystal. It has a regular form. If it is destroyed, nothing of its form remains which could pass over to other rock crystals. The new rock crystal receives nothing of its form. Now if we rise from the world of minerals to the world of plants, it becomes clear to us that a plant cannot originate according to the same law as a rock crystal. A plant can originate only when it is derived from the parent plant. Here the form is maintained and passes over to the other entity. If we rise to the animal world, we find that a development of species takes place. We see that the 19th century considered this discovery of the development of the species as among its greatest results. Not only does one form proceed from another, but each animal in the body of the mother repeats the earlier forms, the lower evolutionary phases of his ancestors. Among the animals we have a rising gradation of species. Among human beings, however, we have not only a gradation of species, a development of kinds, but we have a development of the individual. What a man acquires in the course of his life through education, through experience, is just as little lost as the animal's succession of ancestors.

A time will come when a man's essential core is traced back to a previous existence. It will be recognized that the human being is a fruit of an earlier existence. This law will have a peculiar destiny in the world, a destiny similar to that of another law. The opposition against which this teaching has to assert itself will be overcome, just as the opinion of the scientists of earlier centuries was overcome: that the living can originate from the lifeless. Even into the 17th century the learned and the unlearned had no doubt whatever that from ordinary lifeless things not only lower animals could be evolved, but that earthworms, even fish, could originate from ordinary river slime. The first who declared energetically that the living can originate only from the living was the great Italian natural scientist, Francesco Redi (1627 to 1697), who showed that the living derives only from the living. That is a law which is only the forerunner of another: namely, that the soul-spiritual derives from the soul-spiritual. On account of this teaching he was attacked, and only with difficulty escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. Today burning is no longer the custom; but anyone who appears with a new truth today, for instance, anyone who wishes to trace back the soul-spiritual element to the soul-spiritual, would not be burned, to be sure, but would be looked upon as a fool. A time will come when it will be considered nonsense to think that a man lives only once, that there is not something permanent which unites itself with his inherited characteristics.

Spiritual science shows how that which is our own nature unites with what is given to us by heredity. That is the other stream into which the individual is placed, the stream with which the present civilization does not wish to have anything to do. Spiritual science leads us to the great facts of so-called re-embodiment, of reincarnation, and of karma. It shows us that we have to take into consideration the innermost essential kernel of man as that which descends from the spiritual world and unites with something which is given by the line of heredity, unites with what it is possible for the father and mother to give to the individual. For the spiritual scientist that which originates from the line of heredity envelops this essential kernel with outer sheaths. And as we must go back to father and mother and other ancestors for what we see in the physical man as form and stature, and so forth, for the characteristics which belong to his outer being, so we must go back to something entirely different, to an earlier life, if we wish to comprehend a man's innermost being; perhaps far, far back, beyond all hereditary transmission, we may have to seek the human being's spiritual kernel which has existed for thousands of years, and which during these thousands of years has entered again and again into existence, again and again has led an earth-life, and now in the present existence has united itself again to what it is possible for father and mother to give. Every single human being, when he enters into physical life, has a succession of lives behind him. And this has nothing to do with what belongs to the line of heredity. We should have to go back more than centuries if we wished to investigate what was his former life when he passed through the gate of death. After he has passed through the gate of death he lives in other forms of existence in the spiritual world. And when again the time comes to experience a life in the physical world, he seeks his parents. Thus we must go back to the spirit of man and his earlier incarnations, if we wish to explain what in him confronts us now as the soul-spiritual part. We must go back to his earlier incarnations, to what he acquired in course of them. We have to consider how he lived at that time, what he brought with him, as the causes of what the individual possesses today in the new life as tendencies, dispositions, abilities for this or that. For each person brings with him from his former life certain qualities of his life. Certain qualities and his destiny he brings with him to a certain degree. According as he has performed this or that deed, he calls forth the reaction, and feels himself thus to be surrounded by the new life. So he brings with him from earlier incarnations the inner kernel of his being and envelops it with what is given him by heredity.

Certainly this one thing should be mentioned, because it is important, since actually our present time has little inclination to recognize this inner kernel of being, or to look upon the idea of reincarnation as anything but a fantastic thought. It is considered today to be poor logic, and we shall hear materialistic thinkers objecting over and over again that what is in man arises entirely through heredity. Just look at the ancestors, he says, and you will discover that this or that trait, this or that peculiarity, existed in some ancestor, that all the individual traits and qualities can be explained by tracing them in the ancestors. The spiritual scientist can also point to that fact, and he has done so. For example, in a musical family musical talent is inherited, etc. That is all supposed to support the theory of heredity. Indeed, the law is expressed point blank, that seldom does genius appear at the beginning of a generation; genius stands at the end of a line of heredity. And that is supposed to be a proof that genius is inherited. Here one proceeds from the standpoint that some person has a definite characteristic—he is a genius. Someone traces back the peculiar abilities of the genius, seeks in the past among his ancestors, finds in some ancestor signs of a similar characteristic, picks out something here and there, finds this quality in one, that in another, and then shows how they finally flowed together in the genius who appeared at the end of the generation; and he infers from it that genius is transmitted. For anyone whose thinking is direct and logical that could at best prove the opposite. If finding qualities of genius among the ancestors proves anything, what does it prove? Surely nothing else than that man's essential being is able to express itself in life according to the instrument of the body. It proves nothing more than that a man comes out wet if he falls into the water. Really it is no more intelligent than if some one wishes to call our special attention to the fact that if a man falls into the water he gets wet. It is only natural that he takes up something of the element into which he is placed. Surely it is quite self-evident that the qualities of the ancestors would be carried by that which has flowed down through the line of heredity, and has finally been given through father and mother to the particular human being who has descended from the spiritual world. The individual clothes himself in the sheaths which are given to him by his ancestors. What is intended to be presented as proof of heredity could much better be looked upon as proof that it is not heredity. For if genius were inherited, it would have to appear at the beginning of the generations and not stand at the end of a line of heredity. If anyone were to show that a genius has sons and grandchildren to whom the qualities of genius are transmitted, then he would be able to prove that genius is inherited; but that is just not the case. It is limping logic which wishes to trace back man's spiritual qualities to the succession of ancestors. We must trace back spiritual qualities to that which a man has brought with him from his earlier incarnations.

If now we consider the one stream, that which lives in the line of heredity, we find that there the individual is drawn into a stream of existence through which he gets certain qualities: We have before us some one possessing the qualities of his family, his people, his race. The various children of the same parents have characteristics conditioned in this way. If we consider the true individual nature of a human being, we must say that the soul-spiritual essential kernel is born into the family, the people, the race; it envelops itself with what is given by the ancestors, but it brings with it purely individual characteristics. So we must ask ourselves: How is harmony established between a human essence which perhaps has acquired centuries earlier this or that quality and the outer covering with which it is now to envelop itself, and which bears the characteristics of family, people, race, and so forth? Is it possible for harmony to exist here? Is it not something in the highest sense individual which is thus brought into earth life, and is not the inherited part at variance with it? Thus the great question arises: How can that which has its origin in quite other worlds, which must seek father and mother for itself, unite with the physical body? How can it clothe itself with the physical attributes through which the human being is placed within the line of heredity?

We see then in a person confronting us the flowing together of two streams; of these two streams each human being is composed. In him we see on the one side what comes to him from his family, and on the other what has developed from the individual's innermost being; namely, a number of predispositions, characteristics, inner capacities and outer destiny. An agreement must be effected. We find that a man must adapt himself to this union, in accordance with his innermost being on the one side, and on the other in accordance with that which is brought to him from the line of heredity. We see how a man bears to a great degree the physiognomy of his ancestors; we could put him together, so to speak, from the sum of his various ancestors. Since at first the inner essential kernel has nothing to do with what is inherited, but must merely adapt itself to what is most suitable to it, we shall see that it is necessary for a certain mediation to exist for that which has lived perhaps for centuries in an entirely different world and is again transplanted into another world; the spirit being of man must have something here below to which it is related; there must be a bond, a connecting link, between the special individual human being and humanity in general, into which he is born through family, people, race.

Between these two, namely what we bring with us from our earlier life and what our family, ancestors and race imprint upon us, there is a mediation, something which bears more general characteristics, but at the same time is capable of being individualized. That which occupies this position between the line of heredity and the line which represents our individuality is expressed by the word TEMPERAMENT. In that which confronts us in the temperament of a person we have something in a certain way like a physiognomy of his innermost individuality. We understand thus how the individuality colors, by means of the qualities of temperament, the attributes inherited in the succession of generations. Temperament stands right in the middle between what we bring with us as individuals and what originates from the line of heredity. When the two streams unite, the one stream colors the other. They color each other reciprocally. Just as blue and yellow, let us say, unite in green, so do the two streams in man unite in what we call temperament. That which mediates between all inner characteristics which he brings with him from his earlier incarnation, on the one side, and on the other what the line of heredity brings to him, comes under the concept temperament. It now takes its place between the inherited characteristics and what he has absorbed into his inner essential being. It is as if upon its descent to earth this kernel of being were to envelop itself with a spiritual nuance of that which awaits it here below, so that in proportion as this kernel of being is able best to adapt itself to this covering for the human being, the kernel of being colors itself according to that into which it is born and to a quality which it brings with it. Here shine forth the soul qualities of man and his natural inherited attributes. Between the two is the temperament—between that by which a man is connected with his ancestors and that which he brings with him from his earlier incarnations. The temperament balances the eternal with the transitory.

This balancing occurs through the fact that what we have learned to call the members of human nature come into relation with one another in a quite definite way. We understand this in detail, however, only when we place before our mind's eye the complete human nature in the sense of spiritual science. Only from spiritual science is the mystery of the human temperament to be discovered.

This human being as he confronts us in life, formed by the flowing together of these two streams, we know as a four-membered being. So we shall be able to say when we consider the entire individual: This complete human being consists of the physical body, the etheric body or body of formative forces, the astral body, and the ego.

In that part of man perceptible to the outer senses, which is all that materialistic thought is willing to recognize, we have first, according to spiritual science, only a single member of the human being, the physical body, which man has in common with the mineral world. That part which is subject to physical laws, which man has in common with all environing outer nature, the sum of chemical and physical laws, we designate in spiritual science as the physical body.

Beyond this, however, we recognize higher super-sensible members of human nature which are as actual and essential as the outer physical body. As first super-sensible member, man has the etheric body, which becomes part of his organism and remains united with the physical body throughout the entire life; only at death does a separation of the two take place. Even this first super-sensible member of human nature—in spiritual science called the etheric or life body; we might also call it the glandular body—is no more visible to our outer eyes than are colors to those born blind. But it exists, actually and perceptibly exists, for that which Goethe calls the eyes of the spirit, and it is even more real than the outer physical body, for it is the builder, the moulder, of the physical body. During the entire time between birth and death this etheric or life body continuously combats the disintegration of the physical body. Any kind of mineral product of nature—a crystal, for example—is so constituted that it is permanently held together by its own forces, by the forces of its own substance. That is not the case with the physical body of a living being; here the physical forces work in such a way that they destroy the form of life, as we are able to observe after death, when the physical forces destroy the life-form. That this destruction does not occur during life, that the physical body does not conform to the physical and chemical forces and laws, is due to the fact that the etheric or life-body is ceaselessly combating these forces.

The third member of the human being we recognize in the bearer of all pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, instincts, impulses, passions, desires, and all that surges to and fro as sensations and ideas, even all concepts of what we designate as moral ideals, and so on. That we call the astral body. Do not take exception to this expression. We could also call it the “nerve-body.” Spiritual science sees in it something real, and knows indeed that this body of impulses and desires is not an effect of the physical body, but the cause of this body. It knows that the soul-spiritual part has built up for itself the physical body.

Thus we already have three members of the human being, and as man's highest member we recognize that by means of which he towers above all other beings, by means of which he is the crown of earth's creation: namely, the bearer of the human ego, which gives him in such a mysterious, but also in such a manifest way, the power of self-consciousness.

Man has the physical body in common with his entire visible environment, the etheric body in common with the plants and animals, the astral body with the animals. The fourth member, however, the ego, he has for himself alone; and by means of it he towers above the other visible creatures. We recognize this fourth member as the ego-bearer, as that in human nature by means of which man is able to say “I” to himself, to come to independence.

Now what we see physically, and what the intellect which is bound to the physical senses can know, is only an expression of these four members of the human being. Thus, the expression of the ego, of the actual ego-bearer, is the blood in its circulation. This “quite special fluid” is the expression of the ego. The physical sense expression of the astral body in man is, for example, among other things, the nervous system. The expression of the etheric body, or a part of this expression, is the glandular system; and the physical body expresses itself in the sense organs.

These four members confront us in the human being. So we shall be able to say, when we observe the complete human being, that he consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. That which is primarily physical body, which the human being carries in such a way that it is visible to physical eyes, clearly bears, first of all, when viewed from without, the marks of heredity. Also those characteristics which live in man's etheric body, in that fighter against the disintegration of the physical body, are in the line of heredity. Then we come to his astral body, which in its characteristics is much more closely bound to the essential kernel of the human being. If we turn to this innermost kernel, to the actual ego, we find what passes from incarnation to incarnation, and appears as an inner mediator, which rays forth its essential qualities.

Now in the whole human nature all the separate members work into each other; they act reciprocally. Because two streams flow together in man when he enters the physical world, there arises a varied mixture of man's four members, and one, so to speak, gets the mastery over the others, and impresses its color upon them. Now according as one or another of these members comes especially into prominence, the individual confronts us with this or that temperament. The particular coloring of human nature, what we call the actual shade of the temperament, depends upon whether the forces, the different means of power, of one member or of another predominate, have a preponderance over the others. Man's eternal being, that which goes from incarnation to incarnation, so expresses itself in each new embodiment that it calls forth a certain reciprocal action among the four members of human nature: ego, astral body, etheric body and physical body; and from the interaction of these four members arises the nuance of human nature which we characterize as temperament.

When the essential being has tinged the physical and etheric bodies, that which arises because of the coloring thus given will act upon each of the other members; so that the way an individual appears to us with his characteristics depends upon whether the inner kernel acts more strongly upon the physical body, or whether the physical body acts more strongly upon it. According to his nature the human being is able to influence one of the four members, and through the reaction upon the other members the temperament originates. The human essential kernel, when it comes into re-embodiment, is able through this peculiarity to introduce into one or another of its members a certain surplus of activity. Thus it can give to the ego a certain surplus strength; or again, the individual can influence his other members because of having had certain experiences in his former life.

When the ego of the individual has become so strong through its destiny that its forces are noticeably dominant in the fourfold human nature, and it dominates the other members, then the choleric temperament results. If the person is especially subject to the influence of the forces of the astral body, then we attribute to him a sanguine temperament. If the etheric or life-body acts excessively upon the other members, and especially impresses its nature upon the person, the phlegmatic temperament arises. And when the physical body with its laws is especially predominant in the human nature, so that the spiritual essence of being is not able to overcome a certain hardness in the physical body, then we have to do with a melancholic temperament. Just as the eternal and the transitory intermingle, so does the relation of the members to one another appear.

I have already told you how the four members express themselves outwardly in the physical body. Thus, a large part of the physical body is the direct expression of the physical life principle of man. The physical body as such comes to expression only in the physical body; hence it is the physical body which gives the keynote in a melancholic.

We must regard the glandular system as the physical expression of the etheric body. The etheric body expresses itself physically in the glandular system. Hence in a phlegmatic person the glandular system gives the keynote in the physical body.

The nervous system and, of course, what occurs through it we must regard as the physical expression of the astral body. The astral body finds its physical expression in the nervous system; therefore in a sanguine person the nervous system gives the keynote to the physical body.

The blood in its circulation, the force of the pulsation of the blood, is the expression of the actual ego. The ego expresses itself in the circulation of the blood, in the predominating activity of the blood; it shows itself especially in the fiery vehement blood. One must try to penetrate more subtly into the connection which exists between the ego and the other members of the human being. Suppose, for example, that the ego exerts a peculiar force in the life of sensations, ideas, and the nervous system; suppose that in the case of a certain person everything arises from his ego, everything that he feels he feels strongly, because his ego is strong—we call that the choleric temperament. That which has received its character from the ego will make itself felt as the predominating quality. Hence, in a choleric the blood system is predominant.

The choleric temperament will show itself as active in a strongly pulsating blood; in this the element of force in the individual makes its appearance, in the fact that he has a special influence upon his blood. In such a person, in whom spiritually the ego, physically the blood, is particularly active, we see the innermost force vigorously keeping the organization fit. And as he thus confronts the outer world, the force of his ego will wish to make itself felt. That is the effect of this ego. By reason of this, the choleric appears as one who wishes to assert his ego in all circumstances. All the aggressiveness of the choleric, everything connected with his strong will-nature, may be ascribed to the circulation of the blood.

When the astral body predominates in an individual, the physical expression will lie in the functions of the nervous system, that instrument of the rising and falling waves of sensation; and that which the astral body accomplishes is the life of thoughts, of images, so that the person who is gifted with the sanguine temperament will have the predisposition to live in the surging sensations and feelings and in the images of his life of ideas.

We must understand clearly the relation of the astral body to the ego. The astral body functions between the nervous system and the blood system. So it is perfectly clear what this relation is. If only the sanguine temperament were present, if only the nervous system were active, being quite especially prominent as the expression of the astral body, then the person would have a life of shifting images and ideas; in this way a chaos of images would come and go. He would be given over to all the restless flux from sensation to sensation, from image to image, from idea to idea. Something of that sort appears if the astral body predominates, that is, in a sanguine person, who in a certain sense is given over to the tide of sensations, images, etc., since in him the astral body and the nervous system predominate. It is the forces of the ego which prevent the images from darting about in a fantastic way. Only because these images are controlled by the ego does harmony and order enter in. Were man not to check them with his ego, they would surge up and down without any evidence of control by the individual.

In the physical body it is the blood which principally limits, so to speak, the activity of the nervous system. Man's blood circulation, the blood flowing in man, is that which lays fetters, so to speak, upon what has its expression in the nervous system; it is the restrainer of the surging feelings and sensations; it is the tamer of the nerve-life. It would lead too far if I were to show you in all its details how the nervous system and the blood are related, and how the blood is the restrainer of this life of ideas. What occurs if the tamer is not present, if a man is deficient in red blood, is anemic? Well, even if we do not go into the more minute psychological details, from the simple fact that when a person's blood becomes too thin, that is, has a deficiency of red corpuscles, he is easily given over to the unrestrained surging back and forth of all kinds of fantastic images, even to illusion and hallucination—you can still conclude from this simple fact that the blood is the restrainer of the nerve-system. A balance must exist between the ego and the astral body—or speaking physiologically, between the blood and the nervous system—so that one may not become a slave of his nervous system, that is, to the surging life of sensation and feeling.

If now the astral body has a certain excess of activity, if there is a predominance of the astral body and its expression, the nerve-system, which the blood restrains to be sure, but is not completely able to bring to a condition of absolute balance, then that peculiar condition arises in which human life easily arouses the individual's interest in a subject, but he soon drops it and quickly passes to another one; such a person cannot hold himself to an idea, and in consequence his interest can be immediately kindled in everything which meets him in the outer world, but the restraint is not applied to make it inwardly enduring; the interest which has been kindled quickly evaporates. In this quick kindling of interest and quick passing from one subject to another we see the expression of the predominating astral element, the sanguine temperament. The sanguine person cannot linger with an impression, he cannot hold fast to an image, cannot fix his attention upon one subject. He hurries from one life impression to another, from perception to perception, from idea to idea; he shows a fickle disposition. That can be especially observed with sanguine children, and in this case it may cause one anxiety. Interest is easily aroused, a picture begins easily to have an effect, quickly makes an impression, but the impression soon vanishes again.

When there is a strong predominance in an individual of the etheric or life-body—that which inwardly regulates the processes of man's life and growth—and the expression of this etheric body—that system which brings about the feeling of inner well-being or of discomfort—then such a person will be tempted to wish just to remain in this feeling of inner comfort. The etheric body is a body which leads a sort of inner life, while the astral body expresses itself in outer interests, and the ego is the bearer of our activity and will, directed outward. If then this etheric body, which acts as life-body, and maintains the separate functions in equilibrium, an equilibrium which expresses itself in the feeling of life's general comfort—when this self-sustained inner life, which chiefly causes the sense of inner comfort, predominates, then it may occur that an individual lives chiefly in this feeling of inner comfort, that he has such a feeling of well-being, when everything in his organism is in order, that he feels little urgency to direct his inner being toward the outer world, is little inclined to develop a strong will. The more inwardly comfortable he feels, the more harmony will he create between the inner and outer. When this is the case, when it is even carried to excess, we have to do with a phlegmatic person.

In a melancholic we have seen that the physical body, that is, the densest member of the human being, rules the others. A man must be master of his physical body, as he must be master of a machine if he wishes to use it. But when this densest part rules, the person always feels that he is not master of it, that he cannot manage it. For the physical body is the instrument which he should rule completely through his higher members. But now this physical body has dominion and sets up opposition to the others. In this case the person is not able to use his instrument perfectly, so that the other principles experience repression because of it, and disharmony exists between the physical body and the other members. This is the way the hardened physical system appears when it is in excess. The person is not able to bring about flexibility where it should exist. The inner man has no power over his physical system; he feels inner obstacles. They show themselves through the fact that the person is compelled to direct his strength upon these inner obstacles. What cannot be overcome is what causes sorrow and pain; and these make it impossible for the individual to look out upon his contemporary world in an unprejudiced way. This constraint becomes a source of inner grief, which is felt as pain and listlessness, as a sad mood. It is very easy to feel that life is filled with pain and sorrow. Certain thoughts and ideas begin to be enduring; the person becomes gloomy, melancholic. There is a constant arising of pain. This mood is caused by nothing else than that the physical body sets up opposition to the inner ease of the etheric body, to the mobility of the astral body, and to the ego's certainty of its goal.

And if we thus comprehend the nature of the temperaments through sound knowledge, many a thing in life will become clear to us; but it will also become possible to handle in a practical way what we otherwise could not do. Look at much which directly confronts us in life! What we see there as the mixture of the four members of human nature meets us clearly and significantly in the outer picture. We need only observe how the temperament comes to expression externally.

Let us, for instance, take the choleric person, who has a strong firm center in his inner being. If the ego predominates, the person will assert himself against all outer oppositions; he wants to be in evidence. This ego is the restrainer. Those pictures are consciousness-pictures. The physical body is formed according to its etheric body, the etheric body according to its astral body. This astral body would fashion man, so to speak, in the most varied way. But because growth is opposed by the ego in its blood forces, the balance is maintained between abundance and variety of growth. So when there is a surplus of ego, growth can be retarded. It positively retards the growth of the other members; it does not allow the astral body and the etheric body their full rights. In the choleric temperament you are able to recognize clearly in the outer growth, in all that confronts us outwardly, the expression of what is inwardly active, the actual deep inner force-nature of the man, of the complete ego. Choleric persons appear as a rule as if growth had been retarded. You can find in life example after example; for instance, from spiritual history the philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the German choleric. Even in external appearance he is recognizable as such, since in his outer form he gave the impression of being retarded in growth. Thereby he reveals clearly that the other members of his being have been held back by the excess of ego. Not the astral body with its forming capacity is the predominant member, but the ego rules, the restrainer, the limiter of the formative forces. Hence we see as a rule in those who are preeminently men of strong will, where the ego restrains the free formative force of the astral body, a small compact figure. Take another classical example of the choleric: Napoleon, the “little General,” who remained so small because the ego held back the other members of his being. There you have the type of the retarded growth of the choleric. There you can see how this force of the ego works out of the spirit, so that the innermost being is manifest in the outer form. Observe the physiognomy of the choleric! Take in comparison the phlegmatic person! How indefinite are his features; how little reason you have to say that such a form of forehead is suited to the choleric. In one organ it is shown especially clearly whether the astral body or the ego works formatively, that is in the eye, in the steady, assured aspect of the eye of the choleric. As a rule we see how this strongly-kindled inner light, which turns everything luminously inward, sometimes is expressed in a black, a coal-black eye, because, according to a certain law, the choleric does not permit the astral body to color that very thing which his ego-force draws inward, that which is colored in another person. Observe such an individual in his whole bearing. One who is experienced can almost tell from the rear view whether a certain person is a choleric. The firm walk proclaims the choleric, so to speak. Even in the step we see the expression of strong ego-force. In the choleric child we already notice the firm tread; when he walks on the ground, he not only sets his foot on it, but he treads as if he wanted to go a little bit farther, into the ground.

The complete human individual is a copy of this innermost being, which declares itself to us in such a way. But naturally, it is not a question of my maintaining that the choleric person is short and the sanguine tall. We may compare the form of a person only with his own growth. It depends upon the relation of the growth to the entire form.

Notice the sanguine person! Observe what a strange glance even the sanguine child has; it quickly lights upon something, but just as quickly turns to something else; it is a merry glance; an inner joy and gaiety shine in it; in it is expressed what comes from the depths of the human nature, from the mobile astral body, which predominates in the sanguine person. In its mobile inner life this astral body will work upon the members; and it will also make the person's external appearance as flexible as possible. Indeed, we are able to recognize the entire outer physiognomy, the permanent form and also the gestures, as the expression of the mobile, volatile, fluidic astral body. The astral body has the tendency to fashion, to form. The inner reveals itself outwardly; hence the sanguine person is slender and supple. Even in the slender form, the bony structure; we see the inner mobility of the astral body in the whole person. It comes to expression for example in the slim muscles. It is also to be seen in his external expression. Even one who is not clairvoyant can recognize from the rear whether a person is of sanguine or choleric temperament; and to be able to do this one need not be a spiritual scientist. In a sanguine person we have an elastic and springing walk. In the hopping, dancing walk of the sanguine child we see the expression of the mobile astral body. The sanguine temperament manifests itself especially strongly in childhood. See how the formative tendency is expressed there; and even more delicate attributes are to be found in the outer form. If in the choleric person we have sharply-cut facial features, in the sanguine they are mobile, expressive, changeable. And likewise there appears in the sanguine child a certain inner possibility to alter his countenance. Even to the color of the eyes we could confirm the expression of the sanguine person. The inwardness of the ego-nature, the self-sufficient inwardness of the choleric, meets us in his black eye. Look at the sanguine person in whom the ego-nature is not so deep-rooted, in whom the astral body pours forth all its mobility—there the blue eye is predominant. These blue eyes are closely connected with the individual's invisible inner light, the light of the astral body.

Thus many attributes could be pointed out which reveal the temperament in the external appearance. Through the four-membered human nature we learn to understand clearly this soul riddle of the temperaments. And indeed, a knowledge of the four temperaments, springing from a profound perception of human nature, has been handed down to us from ancient times. If we thus understand human nature, and know that the external is only the expression of the spiritual, then we learn to understand man in his relation even to the externalities, to understand him in his whole process of becoming; and we learn to recognize what we must do concerning ourself and the child with regard to temperament. In education especially notice must be taken of the kind of temperament that tends to develop in the child. For life's wisdom, as for pedagogy, an actual living knowledge of the nature of the temperaments is indispensable, and both would profit infinitely from it.

And now let us go further. Again we see how the phlegmatic temperament also is brought to expression in the outer form. In this temperament there predominates the activity of the etheric body, which has its physical expression in the glandular system and its soul expression in a feeling of ease, in inner balance. If in such a person everything is not only normally in order within, but if, beyond this normality, these inner formative forces of ease are especially active, then their products are added to the human body; it becomes corpulent, it expands. In the largeness of the body, in the development of the fatty parts, we see that which the inner formative forces of the etheric body are especially working on. The inner sense of ease of the phlegmatic person meets us in all that. And who would not recognize in this lack of reciprocal action between the inner and the outer the cause of the ofttimes slovenly, dragging gait of the phlegmatic person, whose step will often not adapt itself to the ground; he does not step properly, so to speak; does not put himself in relation to things. That he has little control over the forms of his inner being you can observe in the whole man. The phlegmatic temperament confronts one in the immobile, indifferent countenance, even in the peculiarly dull, colorless appearance of the eye. While the eye of the choleric is fiery and sparkling, we can recognize in that of the phlegmatic the expression of the etheric body, focused only upon inner ease.

The melancholic is one who cannot completely attain mastery over the physical instrument, one to whom the physical instrument offers resistance, one who cannot cope with the use of this instrument. Look at the melancholic, how he generally has a drooping head, has not the force in himself to stiffen his neck. The bowed head shows that the inner forces which adjust the head perpendicularly are never able to unfold freely. The glance is downward, the eye sad, unlike the black gleam of the choleric eye. We see in the peculiar appearance of the eye that the physical instrument makes difficulties for him. The walk, to be sure, is measured, firm, but not like the walk of the choleric, the firm tread of the choleric; it has a certain kind of dragging firmness.

All this can be only indicated here; but the life of the human being will be much, much more understandable to us if we work in this way, if we see the spirit activating the forms in such a way that the external part of the individual can become an expression of his inner being. So you see how significantly spiritual science can contribute to the solution of this riddle; but only if you face the whole reality, to which the spiritual also belongs, and do not stop merely with the physical reality, can this knowledge be practically applied in life. Therefore only from spiritual science can this knowledge flow in such a way as to benefit the whole of humanity as well as the individual.

Now if we know all that, we can also learn to apply it. Particularly it must be of interest to learn how we can handle the temperaments pedagogically in childhood. For in education the kind of temperament must be very carefully observed; with children it is especially important to be able to guide and direct the developing temperament. But later also it is still important, for anyone in self-education. For the person who wishes to train himself it is invaluable that he observe what is expressed in his temperament.

I have pointed out to you here the fundamental types, but naturally in life they do not often appear thus pure. Each person has only the fundamental tone of a temperament, besides which he has something of the others. Napoleon, for example, had in him much of the phlegmatic temperament, although he was a choleric. If we would govern life practically, it is important to be able to allow that which expresses itself physically to work upon our soul.

How important this is we can see best of all if we consider that the temperaments can degenerate, that what may appear to us as one-sidedness can also degenerate. What would the world be without the temperaments—if people had only one temperament? The most tiresome place you could imagine! The world would be dreary without the temperaments, not only in the physical, but also in the higher sense. All variety, beauty, and all the richness of life are possible only through the temperaments. Do we not see how everything great in life can be brought about just through the one-sidedness of the temperaments, but also how these can degenerate in their one-sidedness? Are we not troubled about the child because we see that the choleric temperament can degenerate to malice, the sanguine to fickleness, the melancholic to gloom, etc.?

In the question of education in particular, and also in self-education, will not the knowledge and estimation of the temperaments be of essential value to the educator? We must not be misled into depreciating the value of the temperament because it is a one-sided characteristic. In education the important thing is not to equalize the temperaments, to level them, but to bring them into the right track. We must clearly understand that the temperament leads to one-sidedness, that the most radical phase of the melancholic temperament is madness; of the phlegmatic, imbecility; of the sanguine, insanity; of the choleric, all those explosions of diseased human nature which result in frenzy, and so forth. Much beautiful variety results from the temperaments, because opposites attract each other; nevertheless, the deification of the one-sidedness of temperament very easily causes harm between birth and death. In each temperament there exists a small and a great danger of degeneracy. With the choleric person there is the danger that in youth his ego will be determined by his irascibility, by his lack of self-control. That is the small danger. The great danger is the folly which wishes to pursue, from the impulse of his ego, some kind of individual goal. In the sanguine temperament the small danger is that the person will lapse into fickleness. The great danger is that the rising and falling tide of sensations may result in insanity. The small danger for the phlegmatic is lack of interest in the outer world; the great danger is stupidity or idiocy. The small danger in the melancholic is gloominess, the possibility that he may not be able to extricate himself from what rises up within him. The great danger is madness.

When we contemplate all that, we shall see that a tremendously significant task in practical life lies in the directing and guiding of the temperaments. It is important for the educator to be able to say to himself: What will you do, for example, in the case of a sanguine child? Here one must try to learn from the knowledge of the entire nature of the sanguine temperament how to proceed. If other points of view must be considered concerning the education of the child, it is also necessary that temperament, as a subject in itself, be taken into account. But in order to guide the temperaments the principle to be observed is that we must always reckon with what is there and not with what is not there.

We have a child of sanguine temperament before us, which could easily degenerate into fickleness, lack of interest in important things, and, instead, become quickly interested in other things. The sanguine child is the quickly comprehending, but also the quickly forgetting child, whose interest it is difficult to hold upon anything whatever, just because interest in one subject is quickly lost and passes over to another. This can grow into the most frightful one-sidedness, and it is possible to notice the danger if we look into the depths of human nature. In the case of such a child a material-minded person will immediately come forward with a prescription and say: If you have a sanguine child to bring up, you must bring it into reciprocal activity with other children. But a person who thinks realistically in the right sense says: If you begin with the sanguine child by working upon forces which it does not at all possess, you will accomplish nothing with it. You could exert your powers ever so seriously to develop the other members of human nature, but these simply do not predominate in this child. If a child has a sanguine temperament, we cannot help him along in development by trying to beat interests into him; we cannot pound in something different from what his sanguine temperament is. We should not ask, What does the child lack? What are we to beat into him? But we should ask, What as a rule does a sanguine child possess? And that is what we must reckon with. Then we shall say to ourselves: We do not alter these characteristics by trying to induce any sort of opposite quality in this child. With regard to these things which are rooted in the innermost nature of man we must take into consideration that we can only bend them. Thus we shall not be building upon what the child does not possess, but upon what he does possess. We shall build exactly upon that sanguine nature, upon that mobility of the astral body, and not try to beat into him what belongs to another member of human nature. With a sanguine child who has become one-sided we must just appeal to his sanguine temperament.

If we wish to have the right relation with this child, we must take special notice of something. For from the first it becomes evident to the expert that if the child is ever so sanguine, there is still something or other in which he is interested, that there is one interest, one genuine interest for each sanguine child. It will generally be easy to arouse interest in this or that subject, but it will quickly be lost again. There is one interest, however, which can be enduring even for the sanguine child. Experience shows this; only it must be discovered. And that which is found to hold a special interest must be kept in mind. And whatever it is that the child does not pass by with fickle interest we must try to bring before him as a special fact, so that his temperament extends to something which is not a matter of indifference to him. Whatever he delights in, we must try to place in a special light; the child must learn to use his sanguineness. We can work in such a way that we begin first of all with the one thing that can always be found, with the forces which the child has. He will not be able to become lastingly interested in anything through punishment and remonstrance. For things, subjects, events, he will not easily show anything but a passing, changeable interest; but for one personality, especially suited to a sanguine child—experience will show this—there will be a permanent, continuous interest, even though the child is ever so fickle. If only we are the right personality, or if we are able to bring him into association with the right personality, the interest will appear. It is only necessary to search in the right way. Only by the indirect way of love for one personality, is it possible for interest to appear in the sanguine child. But if that interest, love for one person, is kindled in him, then through this love straightway a miracle happens. This love can cure a child's one-sided temperament. More than any other temperament, the sanguine child needs love for one personality. Everything must be done to awaken love in such a child. Love is the magic word. All education of the sanguine child must take this indirect path of attachment to a certain personality. Therefore parents and teachers must heed the fact that an enduring interest in things cannot be awakened by drumming it into the sanguine child, but they must see to it that this interest is won by the roundabout way of attachment to a personality. The child must develop this personal attachment; one must make himself lovable to the child; that is one's duty to the sanguine child. It is the responsibility of the teacher that such a child shall learn to love the personality.

We can still further build up the education upon the child's sanguine nature itself. The sanguine nature reveals itself, you know, in the inability to find any interest which is lasting. We must observe what is there. We must see that all kinds of things are brought into the environment of the child in which he has shown more than the ordinary interest. We should keep the sanguine child busy at regular intervals with such subjects as warrant a passing interest, concerning which he is permitted to be sanguine, so to speak, subjects not worthy of sustained interest. These things must be permitted to affect the sanguine nature, permitted to work upon the child; then they must be removed so that he will desire them again, and they may again be given to him. We must cause these things to work upon the child as the objects of the ordinary world work upon the temperament. In other words, it is important to seek out for a sanguine child those objects toward which he is permitted to be sanguine.

If we thus appeal to what exists rather than to something which does not exist, we shall see—and practical experience will prove it—that as matter of fact the sanguine force, if it becomes one-sided, actually permits itself to be captured by serious subjects. That is attained as by an indirect path. It is good if the temperament is developed in the right way during childhood, but often the adult himself has to take his education in hand later in life. As long, indeed, as the temperaments are held in normal bounds, they represent that which makes life beautiful, varied, and great. How dull would life be if all people were alike with regard to temperament. But in order to equalize a one-sidedness of temperament, a man must often take his self-education in hand in later life. Here again one should not insist upon pounding into oneself, as it were, a lasting interest in any sort of thing; but he must say to himself: According to my nature I am sanguine; I will now seek subjects in life which my interest may pass over quickly, in which it is right that the interest should not be lasting, and I will just occupy myself with that in which I may with complete justification lose interest in the very next moment.

Let us suppose that a parent should fear that in his child the choleric temperament would express itself in a one-sided way. The same treatment cannot be prescribed as for the sanguine child; the choleric will not be able easily to acquire love for a personality. He must be reached through something else in the influence of person upon person. But in the case of the choleric child also there is an indirect way by which the development may always be guided. What will guide the education here with certainty is: Respect and esteem for an authority. For the choleric child one must be thoroughly worthy of esteem and respect in the highest sense of the word. Here it is not a question of making oneself loved through the personal qualities, as with the sanguine child, but the important thing is that the choleric child shall always have the belief that the teacher understands the matter in hand. The latter must show that he is well informed about the things that take place in the child's environment; he must not show a weak point. He must endeavor never to let the choleric child notice that he might be unable to give information or advice concerning what is to be done. The teacher must see to it that he holds the firm reins of authority in his hands, and never betray the fact that he is perhaps at his wits' end. The child must always keep the belief that the teacher knows. Otherwise he has lost the game. If love for the personality is the magic word for the sanguine child, then respect and esteem for the worth of a person is the magic word for the choleric.

If we have a choleric child to train we must see to it before everything else that this child shall unfold, bring to development, his strong inner forces. It is necessary to acquaint him with what may present difficulties in the outer life. For the choleric child who threatens to degenerate into one-sidedness, it is especially necessary to introduce into the education that which is difficult to overcome, so as to call attention to the difficulties of life by producing serious obstacles for the child. Especially must such things be put in his way as will present opposition to him. Oppositions, difficulties, must be placed in the path of the choleric child. The effort must be put forth not to make life altogether easy for him. Hindrances must be created so that the choleric temperament is not repressed, but is obliged to come to expression through the very fact that certain difficulties are presented which the child must overcome. The teacher must not beat out, educate out, so to speak, a child's choleric temperament, but he must put before him just those things upon which he must use his strength, things in connection with which the choleric temperament is justified. The choleric child must of inner necessity learn to battle with the objective world. The teacher will therefore seek to arrange the environment in such a way that this choleric temperament can work itself out in overcoming obstacles; and it will be especially good if these obstacles pertain to little things, to trifles; if the child is made to do something on which he must expend tremendous strength, so that the choleric temperament is strongly expressed, but actually the facts are victorious, the strength employed is frittered away. In this way the child gains respect for the power of facts which oppose what is expressed in the choleric temperament.

Here again there is another indirect way in which the choleric temperament can be trained. Here it is necessary first of all to awaken reverence, the feeling of awe, to approach the child in such a way as actually to arouse such respect, by showing him that we can overcome difficulties which he himself cannot yet overcome; reverence, esteem, particularly for what the teacher can accomplish, for his ability to overcome objective difficulties. That is the proper means: Respect for the ability of the teacher is the way by which the choleric child in particular may be reached in education.

It is also very difficult to manage the melancholic child. What must we do if we fear the threatened one-sidedness of the melancholic temperament of the child, since we cannot cram in what he does not possess? We must reckon with the fact that it is just repressions and resistance that he has power within himself to cling to. If we wish to turn this peculiarity of his temperament in the right direction, we must divert this force from subjective to objective activity. Here it is of very special importance that we do not build upon the possibility, let us say, of being able to talk him out of his grief and pain, or otherwise educate them out of him; for the child has the tendency to this excessive reserve because the physical instrument presents hindrances. We must particularly build upon what is there, we must cultivate what exists. With the melancholic child it will be especially necessary for the teacher to attach great importance to showing him that there is suffering in the world. If we wish to approach this child as a teacher, we must find here also the point of contact. The melancholic child is capable of suffering, of moroseness; these qualities exist in him and we cannot flog them out, but we can divert them.

For this temperament too there is one important point: Above all we must show the melancholic child how people can suffer. We must cause him to experience justifiable pain and suffering in external life, in order that he may come to know that there are things concerning which he can experience pain. That is the important thing. If you try to entertain him, you drive him back into his own corner. Whatever you do, you must not think you have to entertain such a child, to try to cheer him up. You should not divert him; in that way you harden the gloominess, the inner pain. If you take him where he can find pleasure, he will only become more and more shut up within himself. It is always good if you try to cure the young melancholic, not by giving him gay companionship, but by causing him to experience justifiable pain. Divert his attention from himself by showing him that sorrow exists. He must see that there are things in life which cause suffering. Although it must not be carried too far, the important point is to arouse pain in connection with external things in order to divert him.

The melancholic child is not easy to guide; but here again there is a magic means. As with the sanguine child the magic word is love for a personality, with the choleric, esteem and respect for the worth of the teacher, so with the melancholic child the important thing is for the teachers to be personalities who in some way have been tried by life, who act and speak from a life of trial. The child must feel that the teacher has really experienced suffering. Bring to his attention in all the manifold occurrences of life the trials of your own destiny. Most fortunate is the melancholic child who can grow up beside a person who has much to give because of his own hard experiences; in such a case soul works upon soul in the most fortunate way. If therefore at the side of the melancholic child there stands a person who, in contrast to the child's merely subjective, sorrowful tendencies, knows how to tell in a legitimate way of pain and suffering that the outer world has brought him, then such a child is aroused by this shared experience, this sympathy with justified pain. A person who can show in the tone and feeling of his narration that he has been tried by destiny, is a blessing to such a melancholic child.

Even in arranging the melancholic child's environment, so to speak, we should not leave his predispositions unconsidered. Hence, it is even advantageous if—strange as it may sound—we build up for the child actual hindrances, obstructions, so that he can experience legitimate suffering and pain with regard to certain things. It is the best education for such a child if the existing tendency to subjective suffering and grief can be diverted by being directed to outer hindrances and obstructions. Then the child, the soul of the child, will gradually take a different direction.

In self-education also we can again use this method: we must always allow the existing tendencies, the forces present in us, to work themselves out, and not artificially repress them. If the choleric temperament, for example, expresses itself so strongly in us that it is a hindrance, we must permit this existing inner force to work itself out by seeking those things upon which we can in a certain sense shatter our force, dissipate our forces, preferably upon insignificant, unimportant things. If on the other hand we are melancholic, we shall do well to seek out justifiable pain and suffering in external life, in order that we may have opportunity to work out our melancholy in the external world; then we shall set ourselves right.

Let us pass on to the phlegmatic temperament. With the phlegmatic child it will be very difficult for us if his education presents us with the task of conducting ourselves in an appropriate way toward him. It is difficult to gain any influence over a phlegmatic person. But there is one way in which an indirect approach may be made. Here again it would be wrong, very wrong indeed, if we insisted upon shaking up a person so inwardly at ease, if we thought we could pound in some kind of interests then and there. Again we must take account of what he has.

There is something in each case which will hold the attention of the phlegmatic person, especially the phlegmatic child. If only through wise education we build up around him what he needs, we shall be able to accomplish much. It is necessary for the phlegmatic child to have much association with other children. If it is good for the others also to have playmates, it is especially so for the phlegmatic. He must have playmates with the most varied interests. There is nothing to appeal to in the phlegmatic child. He will not interest himself easily in objects and events. One must therefore bring this child into association with children of like age. He can be trained through the sharing of the interests—as many as possible—of other personalities. If he is indifferent to his environment, his interest can be kindled by the effect upon him of the interests of his playmates. Only by means of that peculiar suggestive effect, only through the interests of others, is it possible to arouse his interest. An awakening of the interest of the phlegmatic child will result through the incidental experiencing of the interest of others, the sharing of the interests of his playmates, just as sympathy, sharing of the experience of another human destiny, is effective for the melancholic. Once more: To be stimulated by the interest of others is the correct means of education for the phlegmatic. As the sanguine child must have attachment for one personality, so must the phlegmatic child have friendship, association with as many children as possible of his own age. That is the only way the slumbering force in him can be aroused. Things as such do not affect the phlegmatic. With a subject connected with the tasks of school and home you will not be able to interest the little phlegmatic; but indirectly, by way of the interests of other souls of similar age you can bring it about. If things are reflected in this way in others, these interests are reflected in the soul of the phlegmatic child.

Then also we should particularly see to it that we surround him with things and cause events to occur near him concerning which apathy is appropriate. One must direct the apathy to the right objects, those toward which one may rightly be phlegmatic. In this way quite wonderful things can sometimes be accomplished in the young child. But also one's self-education may be taken in hand in the same way in later life, if it is noticed that apathy tends to express itself in a one-sided way; that is, by trying to observe people and their interests. One thing more can also be done, so long as we are still in a position to employ intelligence and reason at all: we can seek out the very subjects and events which are of the greatest indifference to us, toward which it is justifiable for us to be phlegmatic.

We have now seen again how, in the methods of education based upon spiritual science, we build upon what one has and not upon what is lacking.

So we may say that it is best for the sanguine child if he may grow up guided by a firm hand, if some one can show him externally aspects of character through which he is able to develop personal love. Love for a personality is the best remedy for the sanguine child. Not merely love, but respect and esteem for what a personality can accomplish is the best for the choleric child. A melancholic child may be considered fortunate if he can grow up beside some one who has a bitter destiny. In the corresponding contrast produced by the new insight, by the sympathy which arises for the person of authority, and in the sharing of the justifiably painful destiny,—in this consists what the melancholic needs. They develop well if they can indulge less in attachment to a personality, less in respect and esteem for the accomplishment of a personality, but can reach out in sympathy with suffering and justifiably painful destinies. The phlegmatic is reached best if we produce in him an inclination towards the interests of other personalities, if he can be stirred by the interests of others.

The sanguine should be able to develop love and attachment for one personality.

The choleric should be able to develop esteem and respect for the accomplishments of the personality.

The melancholic should be able to develop a heartfelt sympathy with another's destiny.

The phlegmatic child should be led to the sharing of the interests of others.

Thus do we see in these principles of education how spiritual science goes right into the practical questions of life; and when we come to speak about the intimate aspects of life, spiritual science shows just in these very things how it works in practice, shows here its eminently practical side. Infinitely much could we possess of the art of living, if we would adopt this realistic knowledge of spiritual science. When it is a case of mastering life, we must listen for life's secrets, and these lie behind the sense perceptible. Only real spiritual science can explain such a thing as the human temperaments, and so thoroughly fathom them that we are able to make this spiritual science serve as a benefit and actual blessing of life, whether in youth or in age.

We can also take self-education in hand here; for when it is a question of self-education, the temperaments can be particularly useful to us. We become aware with our intellect that our sanguineness is playing us all kinds of tricks, and threatens to degenerate to an unstable way of life; we hurry from subject to subject. This condition can be countered if only we go about it in the right way. The sanguine person will not, however, reach his goal by saying to himself: You have a sanguine temperament and you must break yourself of it. The intellect applied directly is often a hindrance in this realm. On the other hand, used indirectly it can accomplish much. Here the intellect is the weakest soul-force of all. In presence of the stronger soul-forces, such as the temperaments, the intellect can do very little; it can work only indirectly. If some one exhorts himself ever so often: “For once now hold fast to one thing”—then the sanguine temperament will again and again play him bad tricks. He can reckon only with a force which he has. Behind the intellect there must be other forces. Can a sanguine person count upon anything at all but his sanguine temperament? And in self-education too it is necessary to try to do also what the intellect can do directly. A man must reckon with his sanguineness; self-exhortations are fruitless. The important thing is to show sanguineness in the right place. One must try to have no interest in certain things in which he is interested. We can with the intellect provide experiences for which the brief interest of the sanguine person is justified. Let him try to place himself artificially in such situations; to put in his way as much as possible what is of no interest to him. If then we bring about such situations in ever such small matters, concerning which a brief interest is warranted, it will call forth what is necessary. Then it will be noticed, if only one works at it long enough, that this temperament develops the force to change itself.

The choleric can likewise cure himself in a particular way, if we consider the matter from the point of view of spiritual science. For the choleric temperament it is good to choose such subjects, to bring about through the intellect such conditions as are not changed if we rage, conditions in which we reduce ourselves ad absurdum by our raging. When the choleric notices that his fuming inner being wishes to express itself, he must try to find as many things as possible which require little force to be overcome; he must try to bring about easily superable outer facts, and must always try to bring his force to expression in the strongest way upon insignificant events and facts. If he thus seeks out insignificant things which offer him no resistance, then he will bring his one-sided choleric temperament again into the right course.

If it is noticed that melancholia is producing one-sidedness, one must try directly to create for himself legitimate outer obstacles, and then will to examine these legitimate outer obstacles in their entire aspect, so that what one possesses of pain and the capacity for suffering is diverted to outer objects. The intellect can accomplish this. Thus the melancholic temperament must not pass by the pain and suffering of life, but must actually seek them, must experience sympathy, in order that his pain may be diverted to the right objects and events.

If we are phlegmatic, have no interests, then it is good for us to occupy ourselves as much as possible with quite uninteresting things, to surround ourselves with many sources of ennui, so that we are thoroughly bored. Then we shall completely cure ourselves of our apathy, completely break ourselves of it. The phlegmatic person therefore does well to decide with his intellect that he must take interest in a certain thing, that he must search for things which are really only worthy to be ignored. He must seek occupations in which apathy is justified, in which he can work out his apathy. In this way he conquers it, even when it threatens to degenerate into one-sidedness.

Thus we reckon with what is there and not with what is lacking. Those however who call themselves realists believe, for example, that the best thing for a melancholic is to produce conditions that are opposed to his temperament. But anyone who actually thinks realistically will appeal to what is already in him.

So you see spiritual science does not divert us from reality and from actual life; but it will illuminate every step of the way to the truth; and it can also guide us everywhere in life to take reality into consideration. For those people are deluded who think they can stick to external sense appearance. We must go deeper if we wish to enter into this reality; and we shall acquire an understanding for the variety of life if we engage in such considerations.

Our sense for the practical will become more and more individual if we are not impelled to apply a general prescription: namely, you must not drive out fickleness with seriousness, but see what kind of characteristics the person has which are to be stimulated. If then man is life's greatest riddle, and if we have hope that this riddle will be solved for us, we must turn to this spiritual science, which alone can solve it for us. Not only is man in general a riddle to us, but each single person who confronts us in life, each new individuality, presents a new riddle, which of course we cannot fathom by considering it with the intellect. We must penetrate to the individuality. And here too we can allow spiritual science to work out of the innermost center of our being; we can make spiritual science the greatest impulse of life. So long as it remains only theory, it is worthless. It must be applied in the life of the human being. The way to this goal is possible, but it is long. It becomes illuminated for us if it leads to reality. Then we become aware that our views are transformed. Knowledge is transformed. It is prejudice to believe that knowledge must remain abstract; on the contrary, when it enters the spiritual realm it permeates our whole life's work; our entire life becomes permeated by it. Then we face life in such a way that we have discernment for the individuality, which enters even into feeling and sensation and expresses itself in these, and which possesses great reverence and esteem. Patterns are easy to recognize; and to wish to govern life according to patterns is easy; but life does not permit itself to be treated as a pattern. Only insight will suffice, insight which is transformed into a feeling one must have toward the individuality of man, toward the individuality in the whole of life. Then will our conscientious spiritual knowledge flow into our feeling, so to speak, in such a way that we shall be able to estimate correctly the riddle which confronts us in each separate human being.

How do we solve the riddle which each individual presents to us? We solve it by approaching each person in such a way that harmony results between him and us. If we thus permeate ourselves with life's wisdom, we shall be able to solve the fundamental riddle of life which is the individual man. It is not solved by setting up abstract ideas and concepts. The general human riddle can be solved in pictures; this individual riddle, however, is not to be solved by this setting up of abstract ideas and concepts; but rather must we approach each individual person in such a way that we bring to him direct understanding.

That is possible, however, only when we know what lies in the depths of the soul. Spiritual science is something which slowly and gradually pours itself into our entire soul so that it renders the soul receptive not only to the large relations but also to the finer details. In spiritual science it is a fact that, when one soul approaches another, and this other requires love, love is given. If it requires something else, that will be given. Thus by means of such true life wisdom we create social foundations, and that means at each moment to solve a riddle. Anthroposophy works not by means of preaching, exhortation, harping on morals, but by creating a social basis on which one man is able to understand another.

Spiritual science is thus the sub-soil of life, and love is the blossom and fruit of such a life, stimulated by spiritual science. Therefore spiritual science may claim that it is establishing something which will provide a base for the most beautiful goal of the mission of man: genuine, true, human love. In our sympathy, in our love, in the manner in which we approach the individual human being, in our conduct, we should learn the art of living through spiritual science. If we would permit life and love to stream into feeling and sensibility, human life would be a beautiful expression of the fruit of this spiritual science.

We learn to know the individual human being in every respect when we perceive him in the light of spiritual science. We learn to perceive even the child in this way; we learn little by little to respect, to value, in the child the peculiarity, the enigmatic quality of the individuality, and we learn also how we must treat this individual in life, because spiritual science gives to us, so to speak, not merely general, theoretical directions, but it guides us in our relation to the individual in the solving of the riddles which are there to be solved: namely, to love him as we must love him if we not merely fathom him with the mind, but let him work upon us completely, let our spiritual scientific insight give wings to our feelings, our love. That is the only proper soil which can yield true, fruitful, genuine human love; and this is the basis from which we discover what we have to seek as the innermost essential kernel in each individual. And if we permeate ourselves thus with spiritual knowledge, our social life will be regulated in such a way that each single person, when he approaches any other in esteem and respect and understanding of the riddle “man,” will learn how to find and to regulate his relation to the individual. Only one who lives in abstractions as a matter of course can speak from prosaic concepts, but he who strives for genuine knowledge will find it, and will find the way to other people; he will find the solution of the riddle of the other person in his own attitude, in his own conduct.

Thus we solve the individual riddle according as we relate ourselves to others. We find the essential being of another only with a view of life which comes from the spirit. Spiritual science must be a life-practice, a spiritual life-factor, entirely practical, entirely living, and not vague theory.

This is knowledge which can work into all the fibers of man's being, which can rule each single act in life. Thus only does spiritual science become the true art of living—and that could be particularly shown in the consideration of those intimate peculiarities of man, the temperaments. Thus the finest relation is engendered between man and man when we look a person in the face and understand not only how to fathom the riddle, but how to love, that is, to let love flow from individuality to individuality. Spiritual science needs no theoretical proofs; life brings the proofs. Spiritual science knows that something can be said “for” and “against” everything, but the true proofs are those which life brings; and only step by step can life show the truth of what we think when we consider the human being in the light of spiritual-scientific knowledge; for this truth exists as a harmonious, life-inspired insight which penetrates into the deepest mysteries of life.

Allow me today to take up some of the material that I could only hint at yesterday and which will then lead us to our reflection today. Yesterday I had to take up a sentence that emerged from the worldview of the 19th century, insofar as it prevailed in Central Europe, to the sentence that the tongue draws the word, that is, the power to speak, from the teeth just as it draws in air from the environment. And I drew your attention to how the 19th-century scholar has only to add to this sentence that he can laugh at it. But I have also characterized the distance that lies between the time in which such an instinctive view as the one quoted yesterday falls, and the age in which this philistine-ironic criticism then asserted itself, the age that begins with the first third of the 15th century. That saying falls into the previous age and is, for that age, in a certain way extraordinarily characteristic, for the reasons that I gave you yesterday.

But it must also be felt as characteristic in terms of its content. For I explained to you yesterday how, in order to understand the ability to speak and language in general, one must first familiarize oneself with what spiritual science has to say in the sense of what I have explained in my small writing “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”. There I have shown what significant process takes place at the change of teeth, how that which later still fulfils the human being as a rhythmic human being and a human being with limb metabolism, but which had previously fulfilled him completely, withdraws from the nerve-sense organization and therefore brings about precisely this process, which is formulated there in my writing “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science” as the birth of the etheric body. I then showed you how, in a similar way, we must grasp the process that occurs around the fourteenth or fifteenth year, namely sexual maturation, and I explained how what is involved here can be expressed in the formula: birth of the astral body. But I have said that the events that occur in this way in the life of a human being at any stage of life also take place in metamorphosis at other times — but then in metamorphosis — and that what takes place externally between the human being and the external world at the time of sexual maturity must be sought internally as a process that occurs between the soul and spirit and the physical body within the human being as the process that is essentially the physiological correlate of the child learning to speak, and that we must therefore also seek the clues to a truly rational linguistics by starting from a penetrating intuitive knowledge of this process.

I then said that through the establishment and development of abstract logic and abstract logical thinking, the sphere of experience in which what takes place between the spiritual-mental and the physical-corporeal , is, as it were, displaced, pushed down into the subconscious, and that precisely by leading consciousness into abstraction, Aristotle has cut off the possibility of looking towards the prenatal. For if one had had a vivid picture of the workings of the astral in sexual maturation and in speech, as one instinctively could in early antiquity, as we must now strive to achieve again, then one could also have gradually gained a visual understanding of what the connection is between the I itself and the whole physical-etheric-astral human being. That is to say, one could have advanced in this field through the knowledge of learning to speak to the knowledge of the integration of the human spiritual-soul I into its bodily-physical. And Aristotle established his dogma precisely for the reason that with every single human being born here, the soul-spiritual also comes into being. With that, he removed from the world of knowledge the concept of the pre-existing human soul.

Only the concept of this pre-existing human soul provides real knowledge of the eternity of the human soul. This knowledge is not provided by any kind of philosophical speculation, but solely and exclusively by an intuitive judgment in the direction that I have just indicated. This dogma of the non-existence of pre-existence was then adopted into the church doctrine of Christianity. And it must be emphasized that the denial of pre-existence, in that it was then confirmed by councils, is not Christian in the true sense of the word, but is Aristotelian, and with the penetration of Aristotelianism into Christian doctrine, it became a Christian dogma. The moment that Christianity is able to free itself from this element of Aristotelianism, the way will also be clear for an acknowledgment of pre-existence.

It must be said that this pre-existence, which was not doubted by Western Christian doctrine until Origen, disappeared from Western Christian doctrine as a result of the state decree of Justinian, who helped to have Origen condemned as a heretic. That is why the followers of this non-Christian Christian doctrine of the West are so uncomfortable when someone points out the historical facts in the first centuries of Christianity. They then conjure up all the untruths they can muster about the connections between anthroposophy and gnosis and so on.

Now, I cannot go into these things in more detail here. But what I want to say is this: if one bases the spiritual and soul life in man solely on what lives for the contemplation of consciousness since birth, then one gradually comes to what makes the teaching of immortality a mere article of faith.

It can be said that what was prenatal, what was pre-existent in man, comes through the process of birth into a completely unconscious state. This can only be looked at again when one rises up to imagination and inspiration. But at the other pole of the human being, it appears in his will and emotional nature. In the threefold human being, we have on the one hand the nerve-sense human being, who is connected with the imaginative human being, and on the other hand the limb-metabolic human being, who is connected with the will nature of the human being and with his emotional nature. Because the life of imagination is dampened, subdued to the point of objective observation, pre-existence is initially closed to this objective imagination in knowledge. But what is present with it lives in the sphere of the human being that emerges at the other pole. The nature of the will and the emotions comes to the fore. Initially, no knowledge can be gained from this, only mere belief. And if what is prenatal can become knowledge through the expansion of knowledge, then without this expansion of knowledge, what lives in will and emotion can become nothing more than an article of faith for the human being. Therefore, with the dawning of supersensible knowledge, there also comes the dawning of knowledge of the eternity of the human soul, even in language. It should be striking that we have a word for immortality in the more well-known languages of civilization, that is, for life in the afterlife, but that we do not have a word that would express the eternity of the human soul at the other pole of the human being, its being unborn. But modern humanity will have to reclaim this for itself in language: that the eternity of the human being can be expressed in a word like “unborn-ness” — which, of course, will become more sophisticated with increasing civilization — just as it is expressed on the one hand, on the side of death, in the word “immortality”. But then what can be said about the eternity of the human soul will no longer be a mere article of faith, but a content of knowledge. As long as one remains merely with the afterlife, the question of immortality must be a question of faith. As soon as one passes over to a real knowledge of the supersensible, the question of immortality becomes a question of real knowledge.

This is a connection that must be recognized, this is a Rubicon that must be crossed by modern civilization. For what follows from this crossing will not only have a theoretical effect, but will have an effect in a completely different way. We can say: if we learn to ascend appropriately from something like the understanding of the change of teeth, the understanding of language, to what we then come to, we thereby acquire a knowledge of the immortal nature of the human soul.

Those who in the 18th century thought and spoke of the tongue drawing language out of the teeth, they did not believe, as Wilhelm Scherer strangely enough assumes, that there are only dental sounds, but in their instinctive knowledge they were imbued with the fact that in order to understand language one must penetrate down into the human being, just as one must penetrate down in order to understand the change of teeth. Just as the forces arise there, so must one penetrate down to the origins of the path that, with the change of teeth, points to what appeared at a previous step in the development of man: the emergence of language. These insights were instinctive, subconscious. But anyone who brings the corresponding thing out of consciousness today will find what depth they breathe in a certain respect, and what philistinism such objections breathe, like those I discussed yesterday. But we also gain, by soaring to such insights as those about language, at the same time, I would say, access to the way to recognize immortality. Therefore, the recognition of this supersensible world is at the same time connected with the attainment of a sound judgment about that which surrounds us in life, such as language. And we cannot, without becoming inwardly dishonest, pretend to penetrate into something in our environment, such as language, if we do not at the same time admit: here there are limits that are not merely to be recognized as limits of ordinary knowledge, but which make it necessary to transcend them through a different kind of knowledge.

Thus, true knowledge of the external sense world is already connected with the ascent to supersensible knowledge. In truly healthy knowledge, supersensible and sensory perception must work together, with one supporting the other. Therefore, we may believe that with the attainment of sound judgments about the supersensible, sound judgments can also be obtained in relation to what surrounds us in another sphere as human beings, with which we are connected as human beings and with which we must enter into intimate relationships: social life.

In the style of my previous lectures, I have tried as much as possible to adhere to what could be called a completely scientific style. Today, as we move on to what follows from such an inner state of mind as a social science and social practice, as it must arise from spiritual science as it is meant here, we find ourselves in the midst of practice in the present day. For what is to be said in a social context cannot today be considered in the same way as what has gone before.

It is necessary to take the following into account. By rising to imagination, inspiration and so on, what would otherwise be conceptual and cannot directly motivate the will is pushed into the will. Therefore, supersensible knowledge motivates the will, and there is no moral or religious ideal that is not rooted at least unconsciously in the supersensible. What is gained through imagination only from the sense world can never be socially or morally motivating because it remains ineffective for the will. Therefore, one must say that it could perhaps be conspicuous that the people who got hold of my writing on the social life of the threefold order, when they read it, found nothing in it of what they were accustomed to finding as the basic tone, for example, in my anthroposophical writings. Perhaps some people expected that when someone who professes to be an anthroposophist writes on a subject such as the one contained in my Threefolding of Man, then all kinds of familiar “anthroposophical” judgments must flow into all the details that are discussed there; one must very much mystel to all sorts of admonitions and so on.

Even if such a judgment has been heard many times from the anthroposophical side, it is no different in quality from the judgments of those who wanted to find in my Theosophy, as I was writing it, a literal transcription of what was in my arguments with Haeckelianism, for example. People just cannot understand how real anthroposophy, when it passes over into the will, leads to the environment, that is, to the objective observation of every field that it undertakes, so that one does not simply need to carry the formulas that are found in one field into another. It is easy to believe that those who have been accustomed to hearing this or that word for word over long periods of time will then find it unusual and uncomfortable to hear the same thing in another language. However, the different areas of life require different languages. And the point is that when they are spoken about, they should be spoken about in the same spirit, but not that the same concepts and ideas should be expressed in the same words everywhere. And in anthroposophy it is important that it is not only taken in according to its wording, but that it is taken in according to its spirit. But then one will recognize, when it wants to be active in an eminently practical area, such as the social question: which activity is called for by the need of the time, by all the forces of decline that are coming to light in our time. Inwardly, this treatment of the social question is entirely connected with what flows from other aspects of knowledge, but not from other practical aspects, even through the more theoretical sides of anthroposophy. Therefore, I must ask you today to bear in mind that I will have to depart from the style of my previous lectures, which were kept within the bounds of objective science. For it is necessary that what must live in direct life as impulses of the will, and what must still fight for its position, be grasped in a different form, so that it approaches our souls in a different way from that which one can say: That is how it is! Please refer to what is given in my book 'The Core Points of the Social Question' about threefolding. And today I want to speak more from the point of view of great social practice. Not theoretically, but from the point of view of social practice, I want to speak of what must be done first in the broadest sense. What must be done is connected with what has been done in recent years with regard to the threefold social order, despite the fact that it has aroused such tramping disapproval from fellow students, as it did, for example, in Stuttgart the day before yesterday in such a repulsive form. Therefore, I would like to give you a characterization that is very much of our time, which is based on the content that you can read about in my book 'The Core Points of the Social Question', in my book 'In Practice: Threefolding', and which you will then find characterizing various aspects of the lectures that are still to be given here today. I just wanted to give a kind of introduction to the general tone that will be struck. But I would like to say that precisely because, in the course of more recent times, humanity, for the reasons that have already been developed, has increasingly — despite believing that it is so very practical, believing that it has to an abstraction that can never bear favorable fruit anywhere else than in the scientific consideration of the inorganic, that humanity thereby became utterly impractical. Humanity had settled into this abstraction and had gradually begun to speak out of this abstraction even about what directly surrounds us as socially concrete life. If you read through all the theoretical discussions that modern, learned economists usually precede their system, you will find how the question figures everywhere: To what extent can the scientific observer of the national economy see into what is happening around us in practical terms? And how should the political economist, in order to do justice to the scientific claim – but that means nothing other than the scientific claim that one has acquired out of habit from the scientific point of view – how should he, this political economist, act in order to meet these scientific demands?

The confusion surrounding this question, and the fact that this confusion expresses a lack of contact with real social life, was something I first had to show in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question”. I had to show how, in this more recent period, hurrying on to abstraction, the leading human personalities have indeed found the way to live in the technical and social workings of the capitalist system, but how, precisely because their sense for what is human has been lost, nothing has come from these leading personalities for that which is so closely connected with man and his knowledge as the social question. For the connection between theoretical knowledge and so-called practical knowledge had been lost philosophically, too; in spite of Schopenhauer's saying, or perhaps because of the meaning of it, which was so much alive in modern humanity. In spite of the saying, “It is easy to preach morals, but difficult to found them,” word, one could not see how necessary it is to search for those foundations of life that not only preach morality, as Schopenhauer says, and thus want to provide a theoretical proof for it, but that want to establish morality through facts, by pointing to what really lives in the world of facts.

In Kantian philosophy, the confusion in this area is expressed by the fact that a sharp distinction is drawn between what is theoretical reflection, what is criticized in the “Critique of Pure Reason,” and what is the content of a mere imperative and therefore of a mere belief, and what is criticized in the “Critique of Practical Reason.” No attempt should be made to bridge the gap, although, as you have heard from this platform in recent days, Goethe objected to this with his concept of “contemplative judgment,” of “intellectus archetypus,” and then tried to approach what is really practical in the justification of human action from a different angle. Schopenhauer could not find it because he regarded everything that lives in the world of ideas from the outset as something merely pictorial, as something that cannot be imbued with the content of being. He also only referred to the will, which, however, cannot be brought into consciousness for objective knowledge without higher supersensible knowledge. Thus he felt the inadequacy of the theoretical basis of practical action. Through mere theoretical reason he was incapable of pointing out the basis of practical action itself, because in the will he saw only a blind thing, never one to be penetrated by the light of knowledge. For this light can only be the supersensible. And to that Schopenhauer did not want to rise either.

Then came other attempts, such as that of Herbarts. In Herbart we find the attempt to find a kind of basis in practical life for what practical action is. But the characteristic feature of Herbart is that in his practical philosophy he seeks what is basically an aesthetic judgment, that he tries to found practical philosophy as a part of aesthetics. In this way — by implicitly going beyond what he has theoretically in his consciousness — the five well-known practical ideas of perfection, goodwill, inner freedom, right and equity emerge. But man's relationship to them is one of consent, which in turn also requires the motivating force. Here, too, I can only hint at how an attempt was made, I would like to say, to break through what was given with the merely abstracting intellect, but how this attempt, because it did not want to penetrate to real spiritual science, failed in all possible respects.

Therefore, I must point out that the reason why the leading personalities could not find what appeals to people lies in this development of modern historical life. And so they found the way to the machine, so they found the way into technology, so they found the way to capitalism. They did not find the way to the human being, whom they left standing beside the machine, just as the natural scientist leaves the real human being standing beside what he is investigating theoretically through his natural science.

What is being lived out in natural science is rooted in a deep habit of life and expresses itself in all areas. Therefore, the first chapter of my “Key Points” could only be such that it illuminates this effect of a life-alien spiritual life in modern times. It had to be pointed out sharply to me, not by a theoretical consideration, but by the life experience described in my book, that the personalities who were the leaders in all traditions in the artistic, religious and scientific fields, in addition to what mere conception in the imagination in modern times, they created a religious content of feeling that could not arise in the class that was removed from the life of tradition and placed at the machine, which, of what emerged in this modern time, only took on the theoretical abstraction, so that in addition to the life of toil and labor, this class was also confronted with what comes from the emptiness of the soul, which can theoretically be filled with what a theoretical scientific way of thinking can provide, but which cannot live with it.

Thus what was to live through my “Key Points of the Social Question”, and already in the “Call” that preceded it, was conceived in the most eminent sense in practical terms, conceived as something that must pass directly into life, that should not merely take hold of the intellects, but should take hold of the will. And it had emerged from what should take hold of the will.

When it became clear to a larger number of personalities in the outside world how the terrible catastrophic events of the second decade of the 20th century would unfold, something intervened in the events - I will only hint at the direction today, as I said, you can find more details in my books -– that was the most bloodless abstraction, something born entirely out of abstract spirituality. With this abstract type of spirituality, the man who had become President of the United States of America from a scholar had emerged, Woodrow Wilson. In his Fourteen Points, he presented to the world as an impulse for practical action something that emerged only from an abstraction that was alien to life. The practical proof of this was provided by the situation – you can read about it in Maynard Keynes – in which Woodrow Wilson found himself during the negotiations in Versailles, where what lived in his theory was increasingly eroded in the face of what had been worked out in Versailles from the most outdated traditional views. Historical development itself has provided the proof of the lack of life in Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. When they were drawn up, however, they testified that with such abstraction one can also introduce something into reality: one introduces something into it, but one introduces only error! It is not that abstractions, when they pass through human beings, cannot conjure up realities; but it is the case that they will always cause confusion or inadequacies in these realities, because they have not been taken from life. Thus the Fourteen Points were able to transport ships and armies across the sea, but these Fourteen Points could not send a vital impulse into modern civilization.

I fear that what is at stake within modern civilization has still not been grasped by a sufficiently large number of people. For in the post-war period in America, Woodrow Wilson was followed by Harding – and we were recently able to read this Harding's inaugural address: the same abstract phrases, the same talk of “human brotherhood” that cannot be motivating because it lives in abstractions, the continuation of Wilson's policy under a different name. I cannot find that there is sufficient understanding in a sufficiently large number of people for the inadequacies that are perpetuated here. It is as if modern man has lost all connection with any enthusiasm for truth, for living truth, and would pass by asleep even such a lack of contact with life as was again heard in the inaugural address of the American president.

At the time when the Fourteen Points first entered modern life, what was contained in these Fourteen Points in the way of alienation from life should be countered by a real practice of life, something that emanated from life, emanated at the same time from the most important components of modern public life, from real social practice, from an understanding of what pulsates through contemporary humanity as a social question.

In a Stuttgart lecture a short time ago, I pointed out such things in a way that was true to life, after Lloyd George wanted to prevent the then impending outbreak of strikes and smoothed over the circumstances. After this gluing of social conditions, I said in Stuttgart: You can use such things, which, despite coming from Lloyd George, are only theoretical, to glue conditions, but you cannot direct realities, and people will see that only theory has been gluing, but that nothing has been achieved in practical life, and that this will soon become apparent. — Now you have it! Now you can see for yourself, from what has actually happened, whether in that Stuttgart lecture the knowledge of social forces was spoken of or whether it was only spoken of in theory, whereas today one not only speaks in theory but also acts in theory in public and especially in social life, where it is truly out of place.

And so at that time, when, I might say, in a classical way, the political fruit of modern abstractism appeared in Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, an attempt was made to awaken understanding in those who listened to it at the time, discouraged and reluctant to act , but who were curious about it in a certain way, to try to awaken understanding for the fact that from Europe - at first only Central Europe was accessible - in the form of the threefold social order, something concrete and practical was being opposed to the impractical Fourteen Points. And one could have been convinced if one had had a sense of realities, not just of beloved theories that had then become “practical”. One could have been convinced that just as the impractical abstractions in reality have set armies and ships in motion, that which would have been spoken out of a reality, if only it had been conveyed from the right place, would also have conjured up realities.

But those who had a say at the time did not want to listen. Social practice was far from their minds. They were accustomed to what had emerged in the course of modern times: to go the way to the machine, to the machinery of the social order, but not to go the way to the human being who stands at the machine, who lives as a human being within the machinery of the social order, and who, as a human being, is an active being.

Since people at that time did not understand what the necessities of life demanded, it was a necessary consequence that, immediately after the bloody catastrophe of war had ended, at the instigation of friends in Stuttgart, what is contained in my “Appeal to the German People and the World of Culture” and what is contained in my “Key Points of the Social Question” came about. And in the period when the old powers had disappeared in certain areas of modern civilized life, an attempt was made to speak to the broad masses of the people, to those who had suffered most from all the conditions that I have now indicated and otherwise described again and again. The beginning was basically a good one. It was possible to reach the broad masses of the people. They gradually understood the significance of the impulse of the threefold social order. For it is nonsense to say that it is difficult to understand in itself. The difficulty in understanding it lies only in the fact that one cannot escape from old habits of thinking, that one cannot refrain from imposing one's own habitual, rigid way of thinking on something that presents itself as something quite different. That is the reason, not the difficulty of the matter itself. Therefore, there was also the possibility of finding understanding precisely within those who, out of their own needs, were striving for a relative solution to the social question, and who had already seen that they could not arrive at a satisfactory organization of social life in modern times from the old dogmatic Marxism.

A spanner was put in the works by the fact that on the one hand, not the workers, but the leaders of these workers, and on the other hand, leading figures of the old bourgeoisie, reacted negatively. From all sides, one was, so to speak, left in the lurch with regard to the impulse of threefolding.

At first, in the spring of 1919, those in leading positions were gripped by a terrible fear and grasped at anything that had anything to do with the social question. As a result, some found themselves in the first stirrings of threefolding, as it came to them, but they did not have the strength or the courage to persevere with it. One of the celebrated leaders of the bourgeoisie of a Central European region said to me at the time, when we were in the midst of what was to happen: Yes, in the way you understand and speak to the broad masses of the people, one could indeed have high hopes; but such a thing, you will admit to a party leader of the old parties, must not be left to two people; others are not yet not yet – I am just quoting – that would be effective in this direction; therefore, we do not rely on this whole broad movement, but we want to hold the old order, despite the fact that it may only last for another fifteen or twenty years at most, with the cannons and rifles.

That was the response from one side. But let me also speak of the response from the other side, because I have to characterize practically what it is about. The working population, insofar as I was able to speak to them, tried to get involved in the threefolding movement with relative ease and with inner understanding. Then the labor leaders came, and they became, I might say, green with envy, because now they could be addressed from a different side than from the side of their instilled Marxism. And they, like the others, invented all kinds of slander and dirty tricks to prevent the workers, who are so credulous in their faith in authority in their relations with their leaders, from finding the right way to understanding. But the workers have not yet reached the point where they can find their way in the right way in their faith in authority, which has been handed down from past decades. The moment the workers realize what the lower and higher-ranking labor leaders are really after, much of the well-intentioned belief that still exists in this area will evaporate. They will realize that those at the top, of the Lenin and Trotsky, Lunach arskij, are at the head of the movement, they do not have the happiness and well-being of the masses at heart. They say to themselves and to each other: The broad masses of the people are stupid and will always be racked by passions; there is nothing to be done with them but to tyrannize them; therefore it must not be conspicuous that we also tyrannize, whether we are called Czar Nicholas or Lenin; for us, it is only a matter of those who used to sit on the curule chairs falling down and us now sitting on them; for us, it is a matter of conquering the seats of government!

The moment this realization dawns on the broadest sections of society, many things will change. But then the time will also have come when social practice can really be introduced into social life. Then people will look with practical understanding at what I have said in the second and third chapters of my “Key Points of the Social Question”, which I would like to say exemplifies what can be achieved from such a spirit. Then it will be seen that nothing here has been invented out of thin air, but that everything has been gained out of a hard-won practical life experience, just as in the past, after Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points had become known, this idea of the threefold social organism first appeared.

I speak as someone who spent half of his life, thirty years, in Austria, in this experimental country for social impossibilities. I speak as someone who knows well how people spoke in this Austrian experimental country in a ministry, a liberal ministry. At the height of Austrian liberalism, when the social question was already looming behind liberalism, the liberal Giskra said: In Austria we have nothing to do with the social question, because the social question stops at Bodenbach! — This was proclaimed in the parliament of liberalism in Austria by the responsible Minister of the Interior, in the last third of the 19th century.

Anyone who wants to study how the impossible mixing of the three parts of the social organism worked in this Austrian parliament – I would like to say in its purest form, which I have already expressed in my “key points” by stating that the composition of parliament was based on four economic curiae – can see how things gradually developed.

But what must emerge from every such consideration is that it is a matter of finding impulses for practical social life that speak from this life itself. Then we may come to the time when there will be a sufficiently large number of people who, uninfluenced by the old designations of direction, “right” and “left”, turn their attention to the factual and practical, which, because it flows from reality, may believe it has a right to have a say in the most important matters of life. And these are the social matters.

Today, many people take the view that the world will be put in order if only they can continue the old impulses, and for a long time now they have been trying again to see how it can work by letting the old continue. They turn their eyes away from the fact that under this unobjective, unrealistic approach, more and more comes about that must have a demoralizing effect on the whole of modern civilization.

But a possibility to move forward will not arise until people realize that, without looking to the left or right, they must look objectively at direct life. For only in this way can we develop an understanding of such practical and social ideas that can not only preach an ethical and social life, but also found it. For it is the foundation of this life that should be emphasized in the threefold social organism. Theorists have long repeated from their theoretical point of view that today we must look at what also lives in ethics in a “social” way. Since the division of labor, man has been placed entirely in the social sphere, and one must understand “from the social” what motivates man when he is to act.

As long as this judgment remains bloodless, as long as it remains an abstraction, it will achieve nothing. For as an abstraction it is just as true as it is false. That it is false I have shown in my Philosophy of Freedom. The other, truly alarming aspect is that man hands himself over more and more with his freedom to the objective economic process and the like, as is even theoretically expounded in Marxism. And in that man hands himself over to the economic process or the state process or the other social institutions that we have now, naturally more and more his motivation for action becomes a social one. This can and may be understood. For modern civilization aims at people learning to live with people in a division of labor. But if the social order is to motivate appropriate social action in the individual, then it must be a social organism that is capable of motivating the will through its own inner laws. In a living social organism, one must not only preach morals, but establish social morals. In this field, morals must be established not through words and ideas, but through the realities of the situation. These realities should be stimulated by the impulse of the threefold social organism.

The matter was so little understood that the abstract thinkers even mocked me because I kept using the word “impulse” instead of “idea” to suggest that there should be power in this tendency of the threefold social organism, not just talk. That should already be in the life of this work for threefolding: that there is reality in it, not just talk. Otherwise, one can also go around as an ethical traveling speaker, as there are so many of them now, trying to persuade people: Just become ethical again, just become good again, and social harmony will arise! I have always said to those who wanted to hear it, when speaking to the stove in the room: You stove, according to your nature, it is your categorical imperative to warm the room – it will not warm the room. But you don't need to preach if you put wood in and light it. You don't need to moralize in theory, mystify, aestheticize. What is needed is not just a “practical” mixture of ideas, but real impulses to stimulate social forces that are filled with ideas, if it is to be a social practice. And only when we have developed an understanding for this fact will we learn to think correctly about what threefolding actually wants.

But because this reaches down into the soul and will, an enthusiasm and commitment to the truth is required for this understanding of threefolding, not just a theoretical interest in the truth and in a theoretical discussion. As long as we are unable to take truth into our will, to extract it from theory and permeate our whole being with it, there can be no beginning to a fruitful treatment of the social question and social practice.

That is what it is about: that those who seek understanding for what threefolding wants to achieve may seek it with their whole being. Then enthusiasm will not come from blind instincts, but will be stimulated by light-filled knowledge. Then it will not remain blind itself, but will shine itself. When the impulses of the will do not come from instincts and drives, but from an overview of social life, then they do not remain blind and dark, but become themselves seeing and luminous. And the path of the impulse of the threefold social order depends on the will and enthusiasm for the truth becoming ever more luminous and radiant in this sense. And I would like to express the hope that what can be said here in this direction will contribute to inspiring not a blind and dark enthusiasm and will, but a light-filled, willed shaping of life.

Final Word on the Fourth Evening of the Disputation

In the course of the very lively disputation on the topic “Social Science and Social Practice”, a Dutch member of the Society came back to the “World School Association” (see p. 92 ff.). He called for “immediate action”, namely to proceed with the founding immediately (following a Dutch initiative that was supported by iso names). In doing so, it referred to the fact that in April 1912, members of the “German Section” of the “Theosophical Society”, at the suggestion of a member who had travelled from England, had founded a “bund” through such an “act”, from which “what is known today as the Anthroposophical Society originated”.

I do not wish to detain you much longer, but would just like to make a few comments, firstly in connection with what our friend v.L. has proposed here, which is certainly quite commendable, or will be if it leads to the promised goal. I would just like to note that it would be a questionable basis if the matter were built on the same foundation as the “bund”, to which reference has been made. At that time, work was indeed carried out with a certain zeal, in the way Mr. v.L. has roughly outlined it today: people sat down in small committees, discussed all sorts of things, what should be done and so on. But then Mr. v.L. made a statement which, of course, is a small mistake at first, but which, if it were to continue to have an effect, could lead to a big mistake. It was said that the Anthroposophical Society emerged from the work that was so tirelessly carried out that night. No, that is not the case at all: nothing emerged from that night and from that founding of the society! I would like to protect the intended “restless work of this night” from this fate. There was a lot of talk back then about what needed to be done, but nothing came of it. And the mistake that could arise is based on the fact that one might think that something should now be done in the direction indicated by that “covenant”. What actually happened was that those who had been involved in our anthroposophical work, who were already very much with us, founded the Anthroposophical Society quite separately from this federation, and this then developed further, while the “federation” gradually passed from a gentle slumber into social death, let us say.

So, it would be a small mistake! And this must be emphasized, so that the mistakes of that night committee are not repeated in its second edition. That is one thing.

The other point I would like to make is that the aim of a world school association should be based on something really broad and should be tackled from the outset with a certain courage and a comprehensive vision.

Our friend v.L. has quite rightly emphasized that what is to be advocated in relation to a free spiritual life in connection with the threefold social organism must be treated in different ways for the most diverse fields. But this must then also really

so that the way it is treated is appropriate for the territories concerned. I myself will always point out that, for example, in England it will be necessary to present things in a way that is appropriate to the English civilization. |

One must thoroughly understand what is imagination in the face of the great human questions of the present, and what is reality. So one must not present the matter in such a way as to create the belief that English intellectual life is freer than other intellectual lives. And you will see, if you really go through the “key points”, that less emphasis is placed on the negative aspect – the liberation of intellectual life from the state – and much less emphasis is placed on the establishment of a free intellectual life in general. And there it will always remain a good word: that it depends on the human being, that it really depends on the spiritual foundations from which the human being emerges, which spiritual foundations are created for his education. It is not so much a matter of emphasizing the negative aspect, but rather the positive. And I need only say this: if, let us say, spiritual life were formally freed from state control, and everything else remained the same, then liberation from the state would not be of much use.

The point is that positive spirit, as it has been represented here this week, as it has been tried to represent it, that this free spirit be brought into intellectual life internationally. And then things will happen as they should happen.

For example, the Waldorf School is not only a truly independent school, it does not even have a director, but the teaching staff is a truly representative community. It is not a matter of all measures being taken in such a way that 'nothing else' speaks except what comes from the teaching staff themselves, so that here we really have 'an independent spiritual community', but it is also a matter of the fact that in all countries there is a lack of the spiritual life that has been talked about here all week. And when one hears it emphasized somewhere that “intellectual life is free in this country” – I am not talking about Switzerland now, I am talking about England – that is another matter. And it is this positive aspect, above all, that matters. It must then be emphasized: Of course, this will only exist if one tries to actually respond to the specific circumstances in the individual countries and territories.

But one must have a heart and mind for what unfree intellectual life has ultimately done in our time. Not in order to respond to what was said here yesterday, but to show the blossoms of human thinking, both intellectually and morally, that our current intellectual life brings to light, I would like to read you a sentence. I do not wish to detain you for long, and I do not wish to speak from the standpoint from which there was such virulent opposition to anthroposophy and the threefold social order here yesterday; but I would like to read out a sentence from the brochure that had to be discussed here yesterday. General von Gleich writes about me: “At the turn of the century, which also marks a turning point in the supersensible world of Anthroposophy, Mr. Steiner, then almost forty years old, was gradually led to Theosophy through Winter's lectures on mysticism.”

Now you may ask who this Mr. Winter is, whom Mr. v. Gleich cites here as the person through whose lectures I was converted to Anthroposophy in Berlin. One can only put forward the following hypothesis: in the preface to those lectures that I gave in Berlin in the winter of 1901/1902, there is a sentence in which I say: the movement I want to talk about began with my lectures in the winter of 1901/1902. — From this winter, during which I gave my lectures, that Mr. 'Winter' was born, who converted me to theosophy in 1901/1902.

You see, I do not want to use the expression that applies to the intellectual disposition of a person who, because of it, is now called to lead the opponents of the anthroposophical movement; I do not want to use the expression; but you will certainly be able to use it sufficiently. This is the kind of intellectual product of the spiritual life that one could pass through in the present day to the extent of becoming a major general.

So one must look at the matter from a somewhat greater depth. Only then will one develop a heart and a mind for what is necessary. And just because the spiritual life must be tackled first and foremost through the school system, it is so desirable that this World School Association could be established, which would not be so difficult to establish if the will for it exists. But it must not be a smaller or larger committee, but must be established in such a way that its membership is unmanageable. Only then will it have value. It must not — I do not want to give any advice on this, because I have said enough about it — it must not, of course, impose any special sacrifices on an individual. It must be there to create the mood for what urgently needs a mood today! — That is something of what I still had to tie in with what has come to light today.

Finally, I must say something that I would rather not say, but which I must say, since otherwise it would not have been touched upon this evening and it might be too late for the next few days, when the pain of departure will probably set in. I must point this out myself. The point is that it is taken for granted that everything that has been said today will be worked for. But this work only makes sense if we can maintain the Goetheanum as it stands here, and above all, if we can complete it.

Now, however well things are going with “Futurum A.-G.” and however well things are going with “Kommenden Tag”, they will not be any economic support for this Goetheanum for a long time to come. Certainly not. And the greatest concern that weighs on me today, despite all my other concerns, is this: that in the not too distant future we may find ourselves with no economic support for this Goetheanum. Therefore, it is necessary above all to emphasize that each of us should work towards this, that each of us who can contribute something towards this, that this building can find its completion, may do so! That is what is needed above all: that we are put in a position by the friends of our cause to be able to maintain this Goetheanum, to be able to finish this Goetheanum above all. And that, as I said, is my great concern. I must say so here. Because ultimately, what would it help if we could do as much propaganda as we want and we might have to close the Goetheanum in three months from now? This is also one of the social concerns that, in my opinion, are connected with the general social life of the present day. And I had to emphasize this concern because the facts on which it is based should not really be forgotten: this makes it possible to strengthen the movement that emanates from this Goetheanum.

We can see the intellectual foundations on which those who are now taking up their posts against us are fighting. That will be a beginning. We must be vigilant, very vigilant, because these people are clever. They know how to organize themselves. What happened in Stuttgart is a beginning, it is intended as a beginning. And only then will we be able to stand up to them if we spark such idealism – I would like to say it again this time – that does not say: Oh, ideals are so terribly high, they are so exalted, and my pocket is something so small that I do not reach into it when it comes to exalted ideals. – It must be said: Only idealism is true that also digs into its pockets for the ideals!

Closing Remarks at a Student Assembly

At the suggestion of German students, a meeting was held on the afternoon of 9 April 1921 to discuss how anthroposophical work could be established at universities. Dr. Steiner spoke at the end.

Dr. S. has, however, pointed out the three most important issues at stake here: whether to organize or not, as desired. But above all, I would like to emphasize one thing: if you are involved in a movement like ours, it is necessary to learn from the past and to lead further stages of the movement in such a way that certain earlier mistakes are avoided.

What it will depend on in the first place is this: that anthroposophy, to the extent that it can already be accepted by the student body in terms of understanding and to the extent that it is at all possible through the available forces or opportunities, that anthroposophy in its various branches be spread among the student body as positive spiritual content. Our experience has basically shown that something real can only be achieved if one can really build on the basis of the positive.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to point out that years ago an attempt was made to establish a kind of world federation for spiritual science, and that nothing came of this world federation, which actually only wanted to proceed according to the rules of formal external organization. It ended, so to speak, in what the Germans call “das Hornberger Schießen” – a shooting match in Hornberg. But because a sense of cohesion and collaboration were needed at the time, the existing adherents of anthroposophy had to be brought together in the “Anthroposophical Society”. These were now more or less all people who had simply been involved with anthroposophy. It is only with such an organization, where there is already something in it, that one can then do something.

Of course it will be especially necessary for the student body not only to work in the sense of spreading the given anthroposophical problems in the narrower sense, but also to work out general problems and the like in the sense that Dr. S. just meant. Of course, at first it will not be so necessary to work towards dissertations with such things. It has often, really quite often, happened recently that I have been asked by younger students along the following lines: Yes, we actually want to combine anthroposophy with our particular science. How can one approach this in such a way that one works towards one's goal in the right way after the doctorate, after the state examination? What should one do? How should one set up one's work? — I have always given the following advice: Try to get through the official studies as quickly as possible, to get through them as quickly as possible – and I am always very happy to help with any advice – then choose any scientific topic that seems to emerge from the course of your studies, as a dissertation or state examination or the like. Whichever topic you choose, one of them is of course diametrically opposed to the other approaches in anthroposophical terms, there can be no doubt about that. Each is diametrically opposed. But now I advise you to write your dissertation in such a way that you first write down what the professor can censor, what he will understand; and take a second notebook, and write down everything that comes to you in the course of your studies and that you believe should actually be worked in from anthroposophy. You then keep that for yourself. Then you make your two sheets, that's how long a dissertation must be. You submit these. And try to finish them. Then you can really help anthroposophy with what you have acquired in addition to this one in the second issue, bit by bit. Because you actually only really notice what significant problems — special and specialist problems — arise when you are faced with the necessity of really working scientifically on a certain topic and the like. But there is a danger of, I would say, unclear cooperation with the professorship. And submitting dissertations to the professors that are written “in the anthroposophical sense” – these usually do not suit professors – I do not consider this to be a good idea because it actually slows us down at the pace that the anthroposophical movement should be taking.

We need as many academically trained co-workers as possible. If there is anything we lack in the anthroposophical movement today, it is a sufficient number of academically trained co-workers. I do not mean the externality of needing, say, people with degrees. That is not what I mean. But first of all, we need people who have learned to work scientifically from within. This inner scientific work is best learned in one's own work. Secondly, however, we need staff who come from the student body as soon as possible, and who are no longer held back by considerations for their later specialized studies. (You see, it is not at all wonderful that it is as difficult as it is in Switzerland, for example.) As a student, you naturally have the opportunity to join such a group in the first few semesters, if you are free-minded enough to do so. Then come the last semesters. You are busy with other things, and it becomes more difficult. And so the threads that you have pulled are constantly being torn away. This has just been emphasized.

So I would like to say, especially for scientific collaboration: the topics must be processed twice during such a transition period: one that the professor understands, and the other that is saved for later.

Of course, I am not saying that very special opportunities that arise are not seized, and that these opportunities, which arise, are not vigilantly observed by the student body in the most eminent sense and also really exploited in the sense and service of the movement: On the one hand, I hope, and on the other hand, I fear almost silently, that our dear friend, Professor Römer in Leipzig, will now be inundated with a huge number of anthroposophical dissertations! But I think that would also be one of the things he would probably prefer. And such a document of student trust would show that he is not one of the professors just mentioned. That would come from the foundation.

Now, however, we need an expansion of what has already been discussed here in Dornach, namely a kind of collaboration after all. You will work out among yourselves later how best to do this technically. It would be good if, with the help of the Waldorf teachers, who would be joined by other personalities from our ranks – Professor Römer, Dr. Unger and others – a certain exchange could take place, especially regarding the choice of topics for dissertations or scientific papers, without in any way compromising the free initiative of the individual. It can only be in the form of advice. It is precisely for this scientific work that a closer union should be sought – it doesn't have to be an organization, but an exchange of ideas – between you.

The economic aspect is, of course, a very, very important one. It is a fact that the university system in particular, but actually more or less the entire higher education system, will suffer greatly from our economic difficulties. Now it is a matter of really seeing clearly that it is only possible to help if it is possible to advance such institutions, as it is for example for Germany the “Kommende Tag”, as it is here the “Futurum”. So that a reorganization of the economic situation of the student body can also emanate from these organizations. I can assure you that all the things we are tackling in this direction are actually calculated on rapid growth. We do not have time to take our time; instead, we actually have to make rapid progress with such economic organizations. And here I must say that the members of the student body, perhaps with very few exceptions, can help us above all by spreading understanding for such things. It has indeed already happened in relation to other things that a student could achieve something for this or that with his father, or could achieve something with his relatives. Not everyone has only destitute friends. And then there really is something that works like an avalanche. Just think about how powerfully something like an avalanche works, based on experience: when you start somewhere, it continues. Something like this continues to have an effect when you act out of the positive: try to study these brochures that have been published by “Kommender Tag” and “Futurum”, and try to create understanding for something like this.

It is this understanding that the oldest people in particular find extremely difficult to work their way up to. I have seen how older people, I would say, have chewed on the desire to understand what “Tomorrow” or “Futurum” want, how they have repeatedly fallen back on their old economic prejudices, like a cat on its paws, with which they have rushed into economic decline, and how they cannot find their way out. I believe that there really is a bright understanding among our fellow students that could also have some effect on the older generations. We cannot make any progress in any other way. Because I can tell you: when we have come so far in relation to these economic institutions that we can effectively do something, that we first of all have enough funds to do something on a large scale – because only then does it help – and on the other hand can overcome the resistance of the proletariat, which is particularly hostile to an economic improvement in the situation of students, then it must indeed be the first concern of our economic organizations to work economically in relation to the student body.

The 'battle problems'! Yes, you see, that's the problem: the Anthroposophical Society, even if it wasn't called that before, has existed since the beginning of the century, and it has always actually only worked positively, at least as far as I myself am concerned. It let the opponents rant and do all sorts of things. But naturally then the opponents come with certain objections. They say, there it has been said, there that has been said, yes that, that has not even been refuted. It is already so that one finds understanding for it that actually the one who asserts something has the burden of proof, not the one to whom it is attributed. And we could really experience it again and again, that strange views emerged precisely among academics, I now mean lecturers, professors, pastors and those who had emerged from the ranks of academics. Just think, that from, I would like to say, for the outside world honorable - but I say it only between quotation marks: “honorable” - professors, things are put forward against Anthroposoph , and so on, that if one follows these proofs with reasons, it is a mockery, a bloody mockery of all possible methods of asserting something in science. Therefore, with someone like Professor Fuchs, I simply had to say: It is impossible that this person is anything other than a quite impossible anatomist! Am I supposed to believe that he examines things conscientiously when, after everything that has been presented, he examines my baptismal certificate in the way he has examined it? You have to draw conclusions about the way one area is treated from the way another is treated. Such things simply show – through the fact that people step forward and show their particular habits – the symptoms of how science is done today. Even the things that are presented at universities and technical colleges today are basically no better founded than the things that are asserted in this way; it is just that the generally loosened habits in scientific life are revealed in this way. And that is what is needed: to take the fight to a higher level, so to speak.

And there it is not necessary, as my fellow student wished, for example, which I understand very well, to play as a “fighting organization.” That is not necessary. Rather, only one thing: to avoid what has occurred so frequently in the Anthroposophical Society. In the Anthroposophical Society, this always came to the fore, as incredible as it is – not in everyone, of course, but very often: one was obliged to defend oneself against a wild accusation, and then to use harsh words, for example, we say in the case when a Mr. v. Gleich invents the term “Winter” for a lecturer by reading that I myself have given winter lectures, then invents a personality “Winter” and introduces it into the fight in a very nasty way. Yes, you see, I don't think that in this case one would say too harsh words if one spoke of Trottelisis! Because here, even if it occurs with a general, one is dealing with a genuine Trottelisis in its purest form. And in the Anthroposophical Society it was usually the case that it was not the person who was at fault who acted like Mr. von Gleich, but the person who defended himself. Until today! We have learned a few times that it was said: You must not become aggressive in this way. In the eyes of many people, becoming aggressive means defending oneself in this way. It is necessary that you, without emphasizing that you are a fighting organization or the like, still follow things with a watchful eye and reject them. You have to act positively in this regard; and then the others have to stand behind you, behind the one who is forced to defend himself. It is not a matter of our becoming fighting cocks ourselves; but it is a matter of the others standing behind him when it becomes necessary to defend himself. And it is a matter of really following the symptoms of the world-descriptive, scientific, religious, and so on, in this respect in our time, taking an interest in them.

Take this single phenomenon: I was obliged to characterize philosophical, or whatever you want to call it, scribblings by Count Keyserling in the appropriate way, because in his incredible superficiality he mixed in the madness that I started from Haeckel's views. This is not only an objective untruth, but in this case a subjective untruth, that is, a lie, because one must demand that anyone who makes such an assertion should search for the sources; and he could have seen that the chapter I wrote in the earliest years of my writing career is in my arguments with Haeckel, in the introduction to Goethe's scientific writings. You can all read it very well. Now Count Keyserling has had a small pamphlet published by his publisher: “The Way to Perfection”. I will not characterize this writing further, but I recommend that one or two of you buy this writing and pass it around; because if everyone wanted to buy it, it would be a waste of money; but I still recommend that you read it so that you get an idea of what, so to speak, goes against all wisdom in this writing “The Way to Perfection” by Keyserling. There is the following sentence, which he put together, more or less as I remember it: Yes, if I said something incorrect, that Dr. Steiner started from Haeckel, then Dr. Steiner could simply have corrected that; he could have set me right, because I have - and now I ask you to pay close attention to this sentence - because I have no time for a special Steiner source research.

So now, you see, we have already brought scientific morality to such a pass that someone who founds a “school of wisdom” considers it justified to send things out into the world that he admittedly has no time to research, that he has therefore not researched! Here one catches a seemingly noble thinker - because Count Keyserling always cited omnipotence in his writing - that is what is so impressive about Count Keyserling, that he always cites omnipotence. All present-day writing has reached a point where it is most mired and ragged. And despite the omnipotence, there is a complete moral decline of views here. And so people have to be told: Of course, nobody expects you to do Steiner source research either; but then, if you don't do any Steiner source research, if you don't have time, then – with regard to all these things about which you should know something: Shut up!

You see, it is necessary that we have no illusions, that we simply discard every conventional principle of authority and the like, that we face ourselves freely, really and truly examining what is present in our time. Then we will be able to notice quite a lot of it today.

I would certainly advise you to take a look at some of the sentences that the great Germanist Roethe in Berlin occasionally and repeatedly coins, purely in terms of form – I will completely disregard the view, which can certainly be respected. Then you will find it instructive. We do not need to be a fighting organization. But we must be ready and alert to take action when the things that are leading us so horribly into decline actually materialize. Do we need to be an organization of anthroposophical students to do that? We simply need to be alert, decent, and scientifically conscientious people, then we can always take a stand against such harm from our most absolute private point of view. And if we are also organized for positive work, then the number of those who are organized for it can stand behind us and support us. We need the latter. But it would not be very clever of us to present ourselves as a fighting organization. On the other hand, it is important that we really work seriously on improving our current conditions. And to do that, we first have to take note of the terrible damage that is coming to light in one field or another – and which really cannot be overlooked, because it involves enormous sums of money – and have the courage to take a stand against it in whatever way we can.

You have already done something if you can do just that: simply set the record straight for a small number of your fellow students with regard to such things, even if it happens only in the smallest of circles. Yesterday, I said to one of our members here with regard to the World School Association: I think it is particularly valuable, especially with regard to such things, to start by talking to one or two or three others, that is, to very small groups, even if there are only two of them; and, to put it quite radically, if someone cannot find anyone else, then at least say it to yourself! So these things are quite tangible in terms of what the individual is able to do. Some will be able to do much more, as has actually already happened with a doctor who was a member and whose fellow students proved to be very enthusiastic. The point is not to make enemies by appearing as fighting cocks in a wild form, but also not to shy away from the fight when others start it. That's it: we must always let the other start; and then the necessary help must stand behind us, which does not allow the tactic to arise, because it has arisen: that we would have started. If they start from the other side, then one is forced to defend oneself; and then you can always read that the anthroposophical side has used this or that in the fight as an attack and so on. They always turn the tables. That is the method of the opponents. We must not let that happen.

As for the World School Association, I would just like to say this: in my opinion, it would be best if the World School Association could be established independently of each other in Entente and neutral countries, but also in the German-speaking area of Central Europe. If it could happen at the same time, so that things could develop independently of each other, so to speak, it would be best. Of course, a certain amount of vigilance is required to see what happens. I believe that Switzerland, in particular, should mediate here. It would be good if we could do it right now. I can assure you: things are on a knife edge – and if the same possibilities for war existed today as existed in 1914, then we would have had war again long ago. Things are on a knife edge in terms of sentiment and so on. And we won't get something like this Weltschulverein (World School Association) off the ground if, for example, it is founded in Germany now, and then the others, for example, if only for a week, had to follow suit. It would simply not come about, it would be impractical to do so.

On the other hand, we must not allow any possibility of our in the least denying our position on these matters. This School of Spiritual Science is called the Goetheanum. We gave it this name during the World War, here and now. The other nations, insofar as they have participated in anthroposophy, have adopted the name and accepted it. We have never denied that we have reasons to call the School of Spiritual Science 'Goetheanum', and it would therefore not be good if in Germany things were allowed to appear as some kind of imitation from the other side.

So it would be a matter of proceeding in this regard — forgive the harsh word — a little less clumsily, of doing it a little more skillfully in the larger world cultural sense! Switzerland would now have to work with full understanding here. So it would actually have to be taken up simultaneously by Central Europe, by the Entente and by the neutral countries.

For the time being, I don't know whether it will take off in just one or two places. This morning I received the news that the committee, which was convened yesterday and which wanted to work so hard, went to bed a few minutes after yesterday's meeting left the hall; it was postponed until tonight. Whether they will meet tonight, we will wait and see. We have already had very strange experiences; and based on this knowledge, that we have already had the most diverse experiences, I have taken the liberty of speaking to you here about the fact that in the further course of the movement, the experiences made should be taken into account.

On the other hand, I am convinced that if the necessary strong impulse and proper enthusiasm can be found among our fellow students, especially for what I myself and other friends of mine have mentioned in the course of this lecture: enthusiasm for the truth – then things will work out.

I would like to say one more thing: I recently read an article from a feature page and I can assure you that what recently took place in Stuttgart is not the slightest bit an end, but only a beginning, and I can assure you that things will get much, much worse. I have often said this to our friends here – a very, very long time ago – and I recently read a piece from a feature page in which it says: “There are enough intellectual sparks that flash like lightning after the wooden mousetrap, there are plenty of sparks of intellectual fire, and it will take no little cleverness on Steiner's part to reconcile people and prevent a real spark of fire one day bringing the Dornach glory to an inglorious end.

I really do think that whatever must occur as a reaction against such action, which will grow ever stronger and stronger, will have to be better shaped and, above all, more energetically carried out. And I believe that you, my dear fellow students, need to let all your youthful enthusiasm flow in this direction, in what we have often mentioned here during this course: enthusiasm for the truth. Youthful enthusiasm for the truth has always been a very good impulse in the further development of humanity. May it be so in the near future through you in a matter that you recognize as good.

Although I will be giving a lecture this evening at eight o'clock for all course participants this week, which is to some extent outside the program, we are now at the end of our spring lecture series. In the short time available to us, we were only able to give hints and guidelines about what we have in mind for a certain goal. And this goal – as you will have been able to sense from these lectures – is none other than this: to show how what is referred to here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can have a fruitful effect on the various individual specialized sciences and also on the various branches of practical human life in the present day. In order to show how we envision this goal, we have first covered, day by day, those sciences that lead into the life of the outer world, of outer nature. We have endeavored to show how barriers and limitations are everywhere being erected by the cognitive endeavors of the present, but which cannot be real barriers and limitations to human soul activity at all, because if they could apply, that which must be the essential goal of knowledge for man, the insight into the human being itself, would never be attainable. And above all, there would have to be a lack of knowledge that can become the driving force of human will and human action. Human will and human action would have to be condemned to continue to shape social life only out of instincts and drives, while a dignified existence can only be established if spiritual insight has the power to dive beyond the mere contemplation of nature into the purely spiritual life and to bring from there moral and social ideals that are powerful enough to impel the will.

Thus, on the one hand, we had to point out how spiritual science seeks to overcome the limitations that are supposed to be placed on external science, insofar as it relates to external nature and the external world, according to the will and the opinion and belief of our time. And on the other hand, we had to point out the other direction of human knowledge: the one that goes inwards, that aims to grasp the human being and himself, so that one can descend into what lives in man as his actual core of being. And we have shown that only when this impulse truly penetrates into the inner being of the human being, lives in knowledge, can a real linguistics, for example, or a real historical science come about, and that this impulse of inner knowledge is necessary to penetrate and fertilize the linguistic and historical sciences.

Thus we have pointed out two directions in which we must go beyond the boundaries that contemporary science wants to set: outwards and inwards. And we have pointed out in these days how the appeal to such a spiritual knowledge resounds to us from the most important signs of the times.

On the one hand, we have the numerous signs that people in the broadest circles are striving to delve ever deeper into the mysteries of the human soul in order to find a secure hold there and maintain a proper balance with regard to their external social life. And when we listen to the most important voices of the human heart and mind, we must say that it sounds everywhere from the demands of the present that scientific knowledge must lead to what must be found for the inner security of the human soul. No prospect of such a goal can be found in current popular science. Because it is not to be found in this, spiritual science believes it must take the step of showing these other sciences how they can be fertilized by true spiritual scientific research.

From the other side, the sounds of social confusion can be heard. Great, formidable social tasks face the people of our time. We will only be able to cope with them if we realize that only what we can acquire in insight into human life, in knowledge of the human being, can give us the strength to approach the great social tasks of the present. The insights that arise from genuine, true spiritual scientific research must again become leading, because only that can also provide direction for the socially necessary endeavors.

It is precisely our intentions that are resented, that we have to approach the question indicated here in a somewhat different way than many of our contemporaries. I have already had to point out this difference on a wide variety of occasions. But this is something that must always be said again. Therefore, I want to say it here today, at the end of our event. Certainly, there are already many people who say: Insight must go beyond the broadest sections of the population; knowledge must be popularized, because it must live in a sufficiently large number of people; only if it lives in them will social insights also develop. And the good will that undoubtedly underlies it is evident from everything that is undertaken in the direction of establishing adult education centres, public libraries, popularization of science, as it is cultivated at our present educational institutions. It is believed that if we only spread what is cultivated at our educational institutions to the widest circles, then it should be avoided in the future that we enter into such catastrophic epochs as ours.

But can we believe that what was there for the people who were directly involved with the causes of this present catastrophic time, that what was broadcast by our educational institutions to the leading circles and did nothing has borne fruit in leading them to better deeds than those to which they have come, can we hope that the same 'spiritual knowledge', as it is also called, will now have an effect when it is spread among the masses? One can only believe such a thing if one wants to throw sand into one's own eyes. Because we do not want that, we who feel connected here with the aspirations of Goetheanism, therefore we must say, despite all that is immediately invoked in all possible enmity and antagonism: No, something else is still necessary! — Not only should something be carried out of our educational institutions, something should be carried in. What must be brought into them is that which can only be brought in if one wants to recognize spiritual research alongside external sensual and intellectual research. What is then brought into our educational institutions will already take hold of the hearts and minds of people, because it is drawn from the nature of the hearts and minds of people, because that which unconsciously slumbers in the depths of people is thus brought to light as a guiding force for human activity. We have already been put in the unpleasant position of having to admit that not only should something be brought into our educational institutions, but above all, much, much should be brought into them. And the fact that we dare to point out such things is what has earned us so much hostility.

Now, believe me: personally, it would be my dearest wish if the urge for such a spiritual calling of the sciences were to arise above all from the seats of our education to date, if there were those who would point out what is needed. Nothing would please me more, nothing would satisfy me more than to see such striving. Yes, that is why I really had some joy — forgive me for this interjected episode — when I was recently in Basel and discovered a writing in a shop window that was entitled “University Reform”, written by a university professor himself, as it turned out. That, I thought to myself, perhaps makes the pursuit of a foundation for the World School Association quite unnecessary when such voices come from such a source. And the writing begins in an extraordinarily auspicious way. One has the feeling that something must be struck with such sentences, which understands the signs of the times in a certain direction: “The organization of our universities suffers from great deficiencies. A reform is urgently needed here. But only those who know the university system from the ground up should participate in this work.

One could also be pleased about this, if those who know the university system from the ground up would participate. But because I would like to characterize a symptom in what I have further learned in this writing, you must allow me to speak briefly about the experience of this writing. On page 4, you will find an expression of what the author now excludes from his consideration of this reform work with regard to the universities: “For example, I will not comment on the question of the semester schedule and university vacations. Because these things are not yet ripe for discussion.”

Another thing that is to be excluded from this consideration: “Furthermore, I will leave the legal status of the assistants in our clinics or our scientific institutes undiscussed. Because I do not trust myself to make an expert judgment on this.”

Now, one could be quite satisfied if these two points were excluded from a consideration of how necessary a reform of our universities is.

Then the actual reforms are discussed in individual chapters. The first chapter is entitled: “The Division of University Teachers into Different Classes.” From this we learn that there are full and associate professors, private lecturers, honorary professors, lectors and assistants. One learns from this that it is necessary to start here with a major reform, that it is necessary, for example, that certain people who, according to current practice, have remained associate professors all their lives, because, for example, they only had to represent a minor subject – otolaryngology or Egyptology – must now, well, now, have to be appointed full professors too; only that one should not go too far, one learns that for all those who are to be appointed from associate professor to full professor, one will have to allow the salary to be less than that received by the real full professors.

Then we move on to the next chapter on the appointment of university teachers. Among other things, attention is drawn to the extraordinary and significant fact that discrepancies have arisen between the governments and the faculties or the professorial colleges, and that it would be somewhat questionable if, for example, too much reliance were placed on the fact that the professorial colleges themselves could be solely responsible for the appointment. Governments have sometimes done better than the professorial colleges.

One must look for a way out. It is true that the writing is written for German conditions, but I believe that it is at least symptomatic of world conditions and can therefore be cited here. They are looking for a way out, for a way to get around the fact that the discrepancies between the colleges and the governments are disappearing, and they point out that the important institution of a “Reich University Council” must be brought into being!

We come – I will quickly go over the things – to the third chapter: the salary of university teachers. Well, there is a discussion of the wishes regarding the salary regulations. I have already told you a little about it.

We come to the fourth chapter: the transfer of lecture fees to university teachers. It is pointed out that some who are very capable only have a very small college, while others who happen to read something popular have a large college and thus receive a lot of college fees. It is pointed out that, for example, someone who only has to read three hours on his subject is given five or six hours so that the lecture money is higher. In short, the only way out is to subject this matter to a thorough reform.

Then, in the fifth chapter, the awarding of prizes to university teachers is discussed, which is also a matter that requires thorough reform.

In a sixth chapter, the way in which university teachers leave their teaching positions is discussed. It is pointed out that many injustices could occur in this regard. However, if a “University Service Court” is set up, which consists in part of the most worthy members of the “Reich University Council”, then these matters will be taken care of.

Then it is pointed out how such instances as the “Reich University Council” and the “University Service Court” can bring order to what is stated in the seventh chapter, the “Service Criminal Law of University Teachers”, which has to be done if one wants to dismiss them or if they are only to receive a reprimand or something similar.

Then we find a special chapter on “Special service assignments for university teachers”. We find a chapter on the “administration of university affairs”, but it only talks about things that require discussion, including whether associate professors and private lecturers should perhaps participate through a representative, and how this should happen, in terms of what is decided.

In an eleventh chapter, the “university assets” are discussed. In a twelfth chapter, how to deal with people who have not quite passed their preliminary examination. In a thirteenth chapter, attention is drawn to the fact that, due to various circumstances, being a doctor is nonsense, and that in the future, therefore, one should not do a doctorate through exams, but that those who have passed the state exam, the assessor exam, the philological school teaching exam and the like should be entitled to call themselves a doctor in the future. But that in turn leads to difficulties, namely, if those who are employed by the state can call themselves doctors – I don't know the inner logical connection, I don't understand it – then there would be no guarantee that they would also be scholars, and therefore a scholars' examination would have to be introduced. Of course, one cannot expect people to be particularly keen on taking this additional academic examination; but one could introduce an extra substitute for it, for example, that the year in which the examination is taken should be counted double towards the period of service for those who have passed it and are subsequently awarded a doctorate.

Yes, my dear audience, I am talking about a very serious matter, I am talking about a book on university reform that begins: The organization at our universities suffers from major deficiencies, a reform is urgently needed, and I saw when I had gone through thirteen chapters, I had already reached page 43, now there were only one and a half pages left; I hoped, now it will come! But lo and behold, now comes a fourteenth chapter: “Scientific Research Institutes.” It says that there is indeed something to be done for these too, that, for example, only those who have been university professors should be employed as real researchers, because only they are real researchers. And then, on page 44, this document concludes: “It is therefore recommended that the salary of members of research institutes should not be set quite as high as that of full university professors of the same seniority; they cannot complain about it, since they are quite exempt from the heavy teaching load. Some kind of provision must also be made to ensure that the members of the research institutes do not use their position as honorary professors to secure excessive lecture fees."

Yes, that really is the end of the writing. And I actually left some things out without noticing. However, when I had finished reading the writing, I had the feeling that the universities consist of professors, ordinary and extraordinary professors, private lecturers, lecturers and assistants. But then I realized: at the university, there are also students, and I wondered if perhaps these students are also somehow connected with the purpose of the universities? I was then able to state that seven and ten lines are devoted to the student in this writing, which covers almost forty-four pages. But the first seven lines on page 5—I couldn't make anything special out of them. Because they actually say so terribly little positive: “Therefore, I will not go into whether the relationship between university teachers and students could not be made more intimate and, above all, whether the office hours of university teachers could be made more fruitful than is now generally the case. Because here administrative regulations would achieve nothing. Here any compulsion that came only from outside would be hopeless.”

Then I wanted to refer to the page about the student body, which deals with students in ten lines. But I couldn't do anything about that either, because they only deal with the “student disciplinary code”.

Now, I didn't actually share what I shared in order to be ironic, to provoke laughter or the like, but rather as a sign of the times, and I would like to make it explicitly clear that I consider the man who wrote this, I consider him to be an extraordinarily good and extraordinarily clever man who just can't decide to reflect on his reform work in terms of anything other than what – as he himself says – can be implemented through administrative measures. Well, I think we have more pressing needs today than those that can be implemented through administrative measures. The signs of the times demand something completely different.

But not only is the author of this paper on “University Reform” a well-meaning, clever person, he is also a person who knows himself well, and he reveals why he does not actually go beyond such things. And there we find something very strange on page 4: “Thus I shall pass over in silence the reform of university teaching in the narrower sense. It is, of course, very close to my heart and is at least as important as all the other reforms, which I will discuss in more or less detail in the near future. Therefore, I find it difficult to remain silent. But what I know about it would essentially only apply to teaching in law and economics, and would have little significance for teaching in philology, medicine, and the natural sciences. However, an investigation limited to teaching in law and economics would not fit into the framework of a treatise that deals with the reform of the university as a whole.

Yes, we think to ourselves, if a lawyer hadn't written the thing, it could say here: “My silence is therefore difficult for me. But what I would have to say about it would essentially only apply to teaching medicine and would therefore be of little importance for teaching law and economics. But an investigation limited to medical instruction would not fit into the framework of a treatise dealing with the reform of the university as a whole.

And now, with a change of subject, I could read this sentence to you quite often and you would see from it – if you call the underlying fact to mind – what specialization, in particular, has led to, as it has become rampant. It has condemned the scientist to inaction. No one knows enough about the big picture to talk about it because they are a lawyer, an economist, a medical doctor, a philologist, and so on. Today, one becomes a scientist in order to have to admit that one knows nothing about the actual matters of human knowledge. Such a symptom is significant because it comes from a clever, well-meaning person who also has the necessary modesty. But I think it points all the more to the necessity that something must be brought into the places in question, not just that something can be taken out to the ends I mentioned earlier.

Therefore, I believe that we not only had to, but must always point out what, on the part of spiritual science, is to have a fruitful effect on the individual branches of specialized knowledge, but ultimately also on the individual branches of practical thinking. For the way in which we have gradually arrived at abstractions in the sciences has given science a position in a dry, impractical, and unrealistic zone of existence. And one can experience it even for the social area that a man like Schumpeter, who is again an extraordinary, clever, clever man and has written a clever essay on imperialisms, concludes with the words: “An ethical, aesthetic, political or cultural evaluation of this process is far from the goals of these studies. Whether this process heals ulcers or extinguishes suns is, from their point of view (namely from a scientific point of view), completely irrelevant. It is not for science to judge.

That is to say, it is the business of science to produce something that stops short of life, that does not lead to evaluations in ethical, aesthetic, or cultural life. In the course of this lecture series, we have seen what a remarkable fact has emerged as a result of this abstract shaping of the definition of science. We have seen how the philosophy of value, the Rickertian, Windelbandian, and so on, has been drawn up. I think it was clear to you from Dr. Stein's remarks what it was about. The point was that on the natural science side, being is now being claimed, but that on the natural science side, where being is being claimed in its totality, one does not want to engage in any further philosophical work. They want to sit down on the chair of science, which represents existence, and they want to make out everything that can be made out about existence from the scientific point of view. On the philosophical side, they make no effort – forgive me, the image is not as bad as I mean it when I say it – to turn the chair into a bench, to push the others aside a little and sit down on the chair of being themselves. No, because the evaluation is left to you, because scientists say: ethical, aesthetic, cultural evaluations are far removed from science, are not a matter for science, you sit on the chair of evaluations so that you have a clear demarcation. One specializes to the point of intellectualism and loses the possibility of really approaching the human being, who certainly cannot help but, by living in being, to experience something that must represent an ethical, aesthetic, and cultural evaluation for himself.

The issues at stake today are truly profound. And that is why the contemporary world should develop the inclination to answer the fundamental question: Is this spiritual science, which claims that it can fertilize the individual specialized sciences and also branches of practical life, is this spiritual science itself scientific? And in this respect, spiritual science will take the view that any engagement with it from the individual sciences of the present day, with full scientific thoroughness and with good scientific prior knowledge — but of course not with dilettantism — is welcome to spiritual science, any engagement with it from a good scientific standpoint is welcome. It does not shrink from the scrutiny of those who know something, and it will be all the more pleased the more those know who want to scrutinize it from the point of view of the individual sciences.

That is the first thing I would like to say to you today at the end of our spring courses.

But the second thing is what many people reproach us for: that we strive for the supersensible in an impermissible way, that we talk to people about an investigation of the supersensible, but that this is unscientific from the outset, because one cannot know anything about the supersensible.

Now, the tenor of this week's lectures was, I might say, automatically directed towards showing that we do not want to go in for supersensible research because we want to go beyond science to some nebulous stuff, not to strive for the supersensible because we want to be unscientific, but to place ourselves on the ground of science as it is now, but to place ourselves honestly on this ground. And by placing ourselves honestly on this ground, we find where in these sciences the gates are out of themselves and into the supersensible world. Not because we want to go beyond the sciences, not because of unscientificity, we speak of the supersensible, but because we are led out of science itself into the supersensible on scientific grounds.

We profess a knowledge of the supersensible that is based on science. Not only is our supersensible knowledge scientific and can be tested by any scientific method, but because we recognize what the other sciences should recognize in their fields, we strive — out of scientificness, because we must out of this scientificness — to the knowledge of the supersensible.

In this way, however, we are truly led to an understanding of the human being as a whole. For what I just mentioned as the way out leads to clarity about the so-called limits of knowledge of nature. But it also leads to an insight into what the human being as a whole becomes when he immerses himself in a knowledge that assumes such limits. It is not just that we do science, but by doing science we are human beings, even if we do not take it into account. We become human beings through the practice of science. We can strike out of our consciousness the concepts of the human essence, but we cannot, in truth, dehumanize ourselves within science. We have to penetrate to the human essence. We cannot do this if we set ourselves the limits and boundaries that are spoken of today in popular science and that are also demanded in practical scientific work. We are set back, so that we lose abilities. If you do not use the muscles of a hand, they become weak. If you do not use certain abilities because you imagine that there are limits and that the abilities must not be applied because otherwise they would exceed the limits, you lose those abilities.

Now, dear audience, from what you have seen here over the past eight days, you will have realized what a connection exists between the development of these abilities, which do not bind themselves to the commonly assumed limits of nature, and that which lives in nature itself. That which only wants to go as far as the limits of the sensory world in the external nature, cannot develop those forces that lead down below the surface of the sensory being and from which something must also be gained for human life.

Goethe points to this, to what must be gained, in his very meaningful, I would even say weighty, statement: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to anyone, he feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” Here we have the path where that which is living knowledge does not kill the artistic, but leads directly into the artistic.

When the last university courses were held here in the fall, I pointed out how what is said here should lead to what was instinctively present in humanity in ancient times: a unification of science, art and religion. This is found. For if we do not cut ourselves off from our abilities, if we do not paralyze them by accepting the “limits of natural knowledge” scientifically, then we will notice how, little by little, what we understand of the laws of education in nature must give way to what, out of this understanding of the laws of education, shapes itself artistically. One cannot understand the human form, which is also formed out of nature, if one does not convert into artistic intuition what are otherwise only general rules in one's own knowledge. When people then come and say: Yes, but an analysis of the cognitive faculty shows that we must not go beyond logic in cognition, but that we must grasp everything with abstract logical rules, and with observation, with experiment — then one must reply to them: But insight, spiritual-scientific insight into the facts of the world, shows something else. It shows that we can talk at length about how knowledge must be, how we must shape knowledge; but nature does not yield to such knowledge. For she herself creates artistically, and from a certain point on she wants to be understood artistically.

There is a continuous path from science into art. And the bridge is not an unnatural one, the bridge is a self-evident one. And the other way should lead across the boundaries that are erected within man. It has been hinted at during this week that one does not come to some nebulous, spongy mystical depth, but that one comes to a clear understanding of the human organization. But one comes to it by going this other way – spiritual science shows this by also ascending to insights on this other way – to something that one would now like to express with a word similar to the Goethean word just quoted. Goethe says: “To whom nature begins to reveal her secret, he feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” With regard to what one can really recognize when developing scientific thought truth, one can say: When the human soul begins to reveal its mysterious essence, one feels a deep longing for the most dignified feeling of religious devotion to creative existence.

And so, by penetrating outward into nature, we find the path to art; by penetrating inward into the human being through knowledge, we find the path to religion. Whatever has specialized in these three fields must still interact uniformly in the human soul. The possibility of this unified interaction must be found. If, then, knowledge is once more able to immerse itself in the secrets of things, which, as you have seen, has been the aim here during these eight days, then it will be able to approach what wells up from the human being: the social question. Here, because the human being is the external embodiment of a spiritual soul, the impulses that we can gain from an understanding of the spiritual soul must help. The social question, which is so urgent and burning that it must touch our hearts today, especially if we belong to today's youth, can only be mastered, insofar as it must be mastered, if we find our way, so to speak, into the object of the social question, into the thinking, feeling, desiring human being, who is pushing for a dignified existence. That spiritual science strives in this direction is part of its essence.

And when one realizes what it has to say about man, then one will no longer be able to say: an ethical, aesthetic, political or cultural evaluation of the social process is far removed from the goal of such a study. Whether this process heals ulcers or extinguishes suns is completely irrelevant from the point of view of science. The only thing missing is for someone to say that the task of medicine is to understand the human organism, and that, from a scientific point of view, whether or not medicine succeeds in healing patients is completely irrelevant. The way of thinking that lives in sentences like the first one, and the way of thinking in such an absurd sentence as the one I have just quoted to you, is basically one and the same. We have come so far that we no longer recognize absurdities as such when they are clothed in popular scientific formulas, when they sound out into the crowd formed by authorities.

That is what moves us here at the Goetheanum to speak out. We cannot help it, even if there were so many enemies and opponents, but to work together with the student body in such a direction.

We know what it means to be a student. That means carrying in your hearts what must flow over as strength into the future. Yes, this future that now awaits humanity will need powerful souls in whose will and emotions a clear insight into the nature of the world and human life plays out. We know that you will need something like this, and so we speak to you, provided you are willing to meet us with understanding. We have truly called you here with us – although, as you can believe me, we all very much like to see you in person – we have called you here with us because we hope that you will become collaborators on a path that we see as necessary for the present and for the near future, and because we want to do the test – and we will do it more and more, I hope it will be possible despite all resistance – because we wanted to do the test to see how many people can be found in whose hearts there is an echo of what we believe to be a necessity of our time.

We now have to part again, my dear course participants. But I believe there is one thing we can all be united on, united in spite of the distance between us: the realization that we must move forward in the direction indicated here, that we must work, that we must develop the will in this direction, each to the best of our ability. He will develop this will if he gains the necessary insight.

We are not yet in a position – and this is addressed to you, my dear fellow students – to bring what we are able to offer you here to a conclusion by enabling you to pass final exams that will give you life-long positions. We are poor people in this respect, who can only appeal to the sense of truth and enthusiasm for knowledge that prevails in human souls and hearts. We can only hope that despite all the unhealthy influences at work in the examinations and job placements, there are still enough young people with hearts and souls who want to find the truth, for the sake of truth, in what can be believed to be necessary in the signs of the times, for the sake of this purely human necessity. We believe that there is still so much free feeling present that out of this pure desire for freedom, these two endeavors can arise.

Because we must believe this, we who have given these lectures and organized these events over the past week stand here to bid you farewell as you return to the rest of your lives. But we stand here, hoping that you will be our helpers, accompanying you with the thoughts that we have let pass through our souls together, accompanying you with the best wishes that your will to clarity, your will to appropriate action, be strong. In this hope and with these wishes, we part, hoping to see each other again, and from this place we say a heartfelt farewell and goodbye!