| 337b. Social Ideas, Social Reality, Social Practice II: Questions on Economic Life I
10 Oct 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| They are only interested in how much they will acquire through their labor, that is, they reduce all interest they have in the outer material world to the interest they may have in the amount of money that can come to them from this outer world through their particular constellation in relation to this outer world. This reduction to the interest in acquiring, not in the thing that is being made, is what basically poisons our entire economic life. |
| 337b. Social Ideas, Social Reality, Social Practice II: Questions on Economic Life I
10 Oct 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear assembled guests! A wish has been expressed that I should say something here about more economic questions, that is, about the economic realm of the threefold social organism. Actually, my intention during this School of Spiritual Science course has been to devote my energies to showing how spiritual science can have a fertilizing effect on the most diverse scientific fields and on life in general. The field of economic life is precisely that which most urgently requires the insightful collaboration of those active within the anthroposophical movement. And above all, it is necessary that what these practitioners can gain from their practical experience be brought to the spiritual scientific field, just as the scientific knowledge from many different fields has been so beautifully brought to it from so many different sides. We shall be speaking about these matters in greater detail in a moment. Since the wish has been expressed that I should also say something about the third link of the social organism, I thought it best to put down on paper the wishes that have been expressed by the honored audiences themselves, so that I could, as it were, work them into today's lecture. Today, however, was so busy that this could not be done in the way I would have liked, because the most diverse wishes were formulated in 39 questions, which really could not be studied in the short time available to me today. But in addition, I have seen from the way in which these questions were asked how much still needs to be done in this area in particular, and so it will be necessary for me to discuss some of this today, which to a certain extent emerges from the general impression created by these questions. And I will then take the opportunity to continue today's reflections in more detail next Tuesday at 8 a.m., so that perhaps those asking the questions and others who would like to learn more about these questions will get their money's worth. Today, I would like to speak only preliminarily, so to speak, so that on Tuesday we can go into the details in a very practical way. But such preliminary speaking is necessary for a healthier mutual understanding. Then, perhaps, on Tuesday evening, a kind of general discussion, a kind of discussion, can be added to what I will have to say, and in this way we will perhaps be able to cope with the matter. Dear attendees, although I have already done so here in the late evening hours, I would like to emphasize once again that my book “The Key Points of the Social Question” and, in connection with it, the other book , which has now been published by the Stuttgart publishing house “Der Kommende Tag”, “In Ausführung der Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” (The Threefold Order of the Social Organism), that these two books are intended to be read in a practical way and that those who take them theoretically misunderstand them. They are intended for those people who, as it were, have a vivid and lively sense of social life and are able to grasp it. It will hardly be possible to substantially advance what is today called the social question through other people as such. Above all, I have already emphasized that nothing utopian should be sought in these two books. But I have noticed that many people who approach these two books, basically translate the matter into utopianism out of a certain tendency of our time, that they form ideas according to their own taste, which then appear utopian. I would like to draw your attention to a remark that you will find on some page of my “Key Points”. There I say explicitly: In a matter that is conceived in practical terms, conceived as a challenge for our time, one can think differently about the details of the implementation. And that is why in the book “The Core Points of the Social Question” I only give examples of the details. What is said about one or the other detailed question concerns things that can be carried out in the most diverse ways in practical life. The fact that I also speak about these things in the sense that I present a [possible] realization [happens, therefore,] so that one can see vividly how the whole impulse of the threefold social organism is put into practice. Above all, it was my opinion that after this book was published, people who are practical in their lives would set about letting the results of their practical life enter into the stream of the social question, inspired by this book. From the questions that have been put to me again today, I can see how much thoroughly impractical thinking lives in our time and how difficult it is for people in the present day to think practically. This is precisely the tragedy of our time, this is the great difficulty that does not really allow us to approach life, that on the one hand we are completely immersed in materialistic views and ideas that we have absorbed through the one-sided pursuit of natural science, that we have become accustomed to looking at all things as we necessarily have to look at external natural things - including things that have to be looked at differently from these external natural things, things that above all necessitate that one penetrates more deeply than one has to in relation to external natural things - that we have actually lost all feeling for the appropriate treatment of these things. And so, on the one hand, one thinks in a completely materialistic way and, on the other hand, in a completely abstract way, especially when it comes to social issues. Thoughts are expressed that have no prospect whatsoever of having any real impact on real life. Or one also finds that people who believe they are putting forward something quite real simply indulge in generalities. We are accustomed to hearing practitioners expound in generalities when discussing something as specific as the social question. It is simply the case that through centuries of education within Western civilization, we have not been brought closer to life, but have actually been alienated from life. And I would like to say: this realization leaps out of everything, how much one has actually been alienated from life, but how one misjudges the nature and character of this alienation. This is misjudged within the most diverse parties, and each party always blames the other. This was particularly evident to me from the questions that were asked. There were questions that reminded me of some of the bitterness I have felt in dedicating myself to the study of modern, contemporary social conditions over the decades. For example, the question arises in several forms, which suggests the almost impossibility of an understanding that should play a role between the proletariat on the one hand and the other classes of humanity on the other. On the proletarian side, there is a question that is actually couched in the form of an accusation, a bitter accusation. I may, so that nothing remains in the background, but so that we face each other in full sincerity, honesty and truth, I may read this question, which actually involves an accusation, here:
That, on the one hand, my dear attendees: no knowledge at all of how much there is a struggle within the student body to come to terms with the social demands of our time! A terrible mistrust has taken hold, especially in the circles of the proletariat. And anyone who is able to look at the social question with open eyes cannot ignore this mistrust, because it is one of the most real factors. But it actually concerns less the student body, which, it seems to me, is wrongly accused by the proletariat, at least it does not concern part of the student body. But, ladies and gentlemen, in general it must be said that in our time, especially in the circles of the bourgeoisie and those just above and below the bourgeoisie, there is little inclination to really look at the social question from its proletarian aspect, to really gain an understanding of how the proletarian question is intimately connected with the entire social question and thus with the fate of our modern civilization in general. As I said, I am only speaking preliminarily today, so that we can then understand each other better, because one can only present these things sympathetically if one knows the background to them. You see, my dear audience, when we began last year to work from April onwards from Württemberg in the sense of the “Appeal” I had written and my “Key Points of the Social Question” for a recovery of our social life, there was the time, which in a was still, in a certain sense – let us say, overshadowed by the one or illuminated by the other – overshadowed or illuminated by what was like a kind of revolutionary wave sweeping over Europe; and at that time one met above all the big bourgeois and their followers, the entrepreneurial class, in the stage of fear. They were terribly afraid of what could arise from the depths of proletarian social existence, and in April and May one came into a social wave where socialism, or at least socialization, was dreamed of, or rather, dreamed up in wide circles. But then came different times. It turned out how little the proletariat is actually trained in the first place to arrive at any clear formulation of its demands in such a way that something socially positive could arise from it. Certainly, the broadest circles of the proletariat would be sympathetic to the impulse towards threefolding in particular if it were possible to overcome that which is the leadership of this proletariat. And we must not deceive ourselves about this, as can be clearly seen from the experience we have just had with our efforts: the proletariat will only come to a clear understanding when all the leaders are gone and when it can rely on its own instincts and reason. One will be able to speak to them. One can speak to the instincts of the proletarians, one can speak to the reason of the proletarians, but one cannot speak to the leaders, who combine two characteristics: firstly, a terrible parroting of what the bourgeois have thought out for them, and secondly, in all their behavior, an exaggeration of the most vulgar philistinism. But that, as I said, is directed only against the leadership. But it must be recognized, as it is necessary in our time in general, to take it very seriously and radically into account that everything that stands out from the old times and would like to bring up what was before 1914, that it is not suitable for further development – that must be recognized. And as long as people in all parts of the civilized world think of nothing but how to get so-and-so back into this or that office because he was in such an office before, before 1914 or during the war, as long as people think like that, as long as they do, practically nothing can be worked out that can lead to progress. We absolutely need new people who emerge from a new way of thinking. We have no use for those who want to fall back on the old ways because they are too lazy to develop ideas that will lead to the appreciation of new people. I said that different times were coming. The proletariat proved that it could not come to any clarity on its own. The panic gradually turned into a kind of certainty, certainty to the extent that people said to themselves: Now we can try to continue along the old lines. I would like to say that at the time, from week to week, one could see how everything that was previously entrepreneurial fell back into the old ways of thinking; and now it is basically back on track, but just doesn't realize that it is dancing on a volcano. That was the first experience, that the complete uselessness of the leaders of the proletariat had emerged, so to speak, and that on the other hand the complete impotence of those who had previously held leading positions in the economic field had emerged. Yes, in these circles and in the entourage of these circles there is really no inclination to get to know what is actually pulsating in the present, what often wants to work its way to the surface from the proletariat in an unclear way. They simply do not want to get involved in what is important. That is why so little of the first third of my “Key Points of the Social Question” has been understood, that first third, which is mainly concerned with presenting that “double bookkeeping”. I am not talking about the one Mr. Leinhas spoke about here in a historical context, but I am talking about another one that he even hinted at. It is that double bookkeeping that has gradually been consists in regarding the world, so to speak, only in terms of its material, mechanical context, in thinking only within this material, mechanical context, in, as I once put it, turning the practice of life into a routine, and then, on the other hand, wanting to develop all kinds of beautiful, all kinds of spiritual, all kinds of moral things. We know how much the aim of practical people is to have their practice inside the factory, but then, when they have closed the door of the office in the evening, their aim is to be able to indulge themselves somewhere where thoughts can live freely, where the soul can develop, where one can become inwardly warm in thoughts that finally free one from what is behind the office door and so on; there should be a spiritual life outside of the factory – that will be such a motto [for these people], and my book actually wanted to reverse this motto. In this book I wanted to draw attention to the fact that it is not a matter of closing the factory behind you to find spiritual life outside, but that it is a matter of carrying your mind into the factory in the morning when you go into the factory so that reason, spirit and so on might permeate the material, mechanical life, so that the spirit does not develop alongside real life as a luxury, which it has gradually become through this double accounting. On the one hand, there is the business practice, which I don't need to describe to you further, as it is often found today; on the other hand, there is the church, there are the folded hands, there is the asking for a happy, eternal life, the interweaving of the two. What is needed, this thinking together, is highly inconvenient for many people. On the one hand, they want a spiritless routine that they can adopt without really being present to it, and on the other hand, they want a mystical haziness through which they can satisfy the lust of their souls. How often have we experienced, especially at the time when the transition should be made from anthroposophical spiritual striving to practical striving, that people of practical life approached us who wanted to become successful in practical life from the practices that have arisen in recent decades. How do these people want to become successful? Discussions that have been held, when it came to recruiting people, say for the future or for the coming day - people who were supposed to work with the real spiritual, but who conquer the material - these discussions have shown: Such people are extremely difficult to find today for the simple reason that out of economic life, the practice has developed that the young person actually allows himself to be trained from the outside. He lets himself be brought into a business somewhere, and while his thoughts are actually somewhere else, on a spiritual level, sometimes on a very good one, he does not carry the spirit into his business. He is not there with his soul, he lets himself be trained from the outside, he lets himself be made business-savvy; then he lets himself be sent somewhere, to America or London, and there he is trained further. Afterwards he knows how to do it, and then he goes back, and then he does this or that. Yes, my dear attendees, this leads to the social question, because we cannot make progress with such people; if we do not decide to shine a light into these things and work on them, nothing can be done. We need people who are educated, even through school, to intervene with their initiative when it comes to preparing themselves in the right way for practical life, so that, as it were, the initiative wants to come from within. To do this, however, it is necessary that the school does not stifle this initiative. I would like to say that, especially when viewed from the human side, this is the case. A completely different spirit must enter into our economic life. Above all, this spirit will invigorate the connection that must exist between the human being and what he or she produces directly or indirectly in the world. For many branches of our lives, this connection no longer really exists. Many people are utterly indifferent to what they work on and how what they work on fits into the social context. They are only interested in how much they will acquire through their labor, that is, they reduce all interest they have in the outer material world to the interest they may have in the amount of money that can come to them from this outer world through their particular constellation in relation to this outer world. This reduction to the interest in acquiring, not in the thing that is being made, is what basically poisons our entire economic life. But here also lie the serious obstacles to understanding the impulse of the threefold social order. As I said, I am speaking preliminarily, but I would like to refer to a few aphorisms today. It has been mentioned again and again – and rightly so – that we must work towards an economic life that is governed by the impulse of association. Associations – I have had a strange experience. I once spoke about associations in a circle of proletarians in Stuttgart. They said to me: We have heard of all kinds of things, of cooperatives, of trusts, of cartels, of syndicates, but we have not heard anything about associations. - One must be able to grasp the novelty of this concept quite practically, especially from the point of view of economic life, quite practically, I would say quite vividly, if one wants to find one's way around in these matters. Associations are not cooperatives, associations are not cartels, associations are not syndicates; above all, associations are unions, or rather, federations that work towards a specific goal. What can this goal be? We will gradually approach a practical understanding of economic life: what can this goal be? My dear audience, this goal can be none other than working towards a very specific pricing of individual goods. It will not be possible to think correctly in terms of political economy until one is able to place the price problem at the center of this economic thinking, as the third third of my book “The Core of the Social Question” does, perhaps not always pedantically with theories, but certainly in the spirit of the whole. What is important about the price problem? It is important to realize that each good can only have one specific price, at most there should be small fluctuations up and down. Each good corresponds to a specific price, because, dear attendees, the price of a good is – now let go of the money, I will also talk about that the day after tomorrow – the price of a good is nothing other than what represents its value in comparison to the value of the other goods that a person needs. The price expresses a ratio, for example the ratio between the value of a skirt and a loaf of bread or a boot and a hat. This proportionality is what ultimately leads to the price problem. But this proportionality cannot be solved by any ordinary arithmetic, nor can it be determined by law, by any body at all, but can only be achieved through associative work. What is it in today's economic life that works against the healthy formation of prices, and what is it that has led us into such economic misery? It is that the price of commodities is not formed out of economic life, but that something intervenes between the commodities – the goods that correspond to needs – that cannot be a commodity, that can only serve as a means of equalization for the mutual value relationships of the commodity: money. As I said, we will discuss all of this in more detail, but I would like to touch on a few general points now. Money has been endowed with a commodity character, namely through the emergence of the real ambiguity between paper money and gold money, which is now at its culmination. Thus it has become possible not only to exchange commodities, with money serving merely as a means of facilitating exchange in a large area with a rich division of labor and employment, but also for money itself to become a commodity. And this is simply demonstrated by the fact that one can trade in money, that one can buy and sell money, that the value of money changes through speculation, changes through what one accomplishes on the money market. But now something is coming into play here that very clearly shows how the unitary state still holds together today what wants to become tripartite. Money as we have it today: its value is, so to speak, determined by the state in accordance with the law. It is the state that sets the impulse that essentially determines the value of this 'commodity'. And through this interaction of two things, the exchange of goods and the determination of the monetary value on the part of the state, our entire economic life is made confusing, so that it is no longer comprehensible to the person who is in it today. If only the people who are involved in economic life would honestly admit to themselves that, on the one hand, any amount of money that is circulating is a complete economic abstraction – circulating like the most abstract concept in our thinking, and that on the other hand there is the production, exchange and consumption of goods, which is so closely connected with human weal and woe, and that, to a certain extent, the present monetary value, like a great forgery, drowns out everything that is supposed to be alive. These things, however, must not be viewed in an inflammatory way, but must be considered soberly and soberly, quite objectively, otherwise one cannot get to the bottom of them. It is ideal, in the first place, that every kind of commodity within economic life should be based, in a very real sense, on having a very definite value. Some kind of commodity X must have a definite relationship to the other kinds of commodities in terms of its value. But for this value to emerge, various things are necessary. First, it is necessary that the knowledge be available, the real technical-universal knowledge, to be able to produce the relevant goods in the best possible condition and in a rational way, that is, with the least labor and without harming the human being, for any particular age. And secondly, it is necessary that no more people are employed in the [whole production process] than are necessary to ensure that this one commodity, in particular, receives the one specific price, the clearly defined price, based on its production costs and so on. If too many workers are employed in the direction leading to a particular type of goods, the goods will receive a price that is too low; if too few workers are employed, the goods will receive a price that is too high; and it is therefore necessary to understand how many people must be employed in a particular area of goods production in order to be successful in economic life. This knowledge of the number of people employed in the production of a particular type of goods intended for consumption is necessary in order to arrive at the culmination of economic life, the price problem. This is done by working positively, by negotiating with people in economic life how they are to be placed in their jobs. Of course, this must not be understood in a pedantic or bureaucratic sense. You will notice that complete freedom, including economic freedom, is secured for the human being precisely through the means that The Core Problems of the Social Question propose. It is not a matter of a bureaucratic or mechanistic Leninization or Trotskyization, but of an association through which, on the one hand, industrial life in particular is considered in the right way and through which, on the other hand, the freedom of the individual is fully preserved. So you see what ultimately matters. But how money comes into it: we will see that the day after tomorrow. What matters first, despite the intervention of money, is the mutual value of the goods, that is, the mutual value of the products of human labor. That is what matters, and the associations must work to extract this value through their actions in economic life, through their negotiations, through their mutual contracts, and so on. Yes, but how do such negotiations come about that deal with the mutual value of goods? Never through an organization of equals, through a corporation of equals, but only through associations. How are you supposed to figure out what the ratio of the price of a boot to the price of a hat should be if you don't let the hatmakers and cobblers work together associatively, if there is no association, if no associations are formed? Associations within a branch do not exist, because these are not associations, but associations go from branch to branch, and above all go from the producers to the consumers. Associations are the exact opposite of what leads to trusts, syndicates and the like. We shall then also see how certain connections between the entrepreneurs of a product category are necessary; but these then have a completely different function. But the process by which the right price comes into being – I do not say is fixed, but comes into being – can only develop through associative life, passing from branch to branch; only when the associations work together with their experiences can the right price be fixed on the basis of experience. It will not be more complicated than, for example, life in our police states or in our democracies; on the contrary, although it goes from industry to industry, it will be much simpler. Now, it must be clear to everyone that life thinks quite differently, if I may put it this way, than the abstract thinkers, even if they are practitioners. These abstract thinkers will think above all: So, it depends either on the associations of the producers [with each other] or on the associations of the producers with the consumers. Yes, but, ladies and gentlemen, that is only a matter of time. Just imagine (it is drawn on the board) that you associate the producers of industry A with some number of consumers of B, these with the producers of industry C and these in turn somehow with some number of consumers of D – well, then an association arises.  But it arises in such a way that initially one only looked at the producer or only looked at the consumer; but the consumer is, after all, a producer of another article, unless he is a rentier or a loafer. It is not at all important that you proceed according to [abstract] categories; if you think about the matter in a more universal way and make associations out of all the connections, then you also have the consumers in the connections. But the way things are today, you can't even start with the producers among themselves, because only trusts or cartels would arise that only want to have business interests, I don't even want to say, but can only have. Today, the main task is to form these associations according to the model that I once mentioned as a very primitive model. We wanted to establish a consumer association for bread in the Anthroposophical Society and associate a bread manufacturer with it, so that a relationship would arise between all those who could pay a certain price the Anthroposophists, by producing something else at the same time; and for the value of what they produced, they received what the baker in question produced. So, it actually came down to influencing the price in mutual business transactions. That will be the essence of these associations, that they gradually, by actually functioning properly, strive towards the correct, economically justified price. If you consider this carefully, you will see that it does not contradict practical experience, insofar as it can still be gained at all in today's perverse economic life. Because take the simplest economy: in the simplest economy, the person who knows how to manage ultimately also has to find the right prices, and he develops the right prices based on his conditions. He determines the right prices from two specific components: firstly, from what he would like to get for his products, and secondly, from what he gets; that is, even if it is still so vague, he enters into an association with the consumer. It is always there, even if it is not externally closed. It is just that our lives have become so complicated that we have to bring these things to full consciousness and external form. If you don't think your way into these things, then something utopian always comes out. But above all, it would be necessary to bring together the experiences that are related to production and consumption. And in those circles that work with us, we would need, above all, practitioners who could, so to speak, synthesize the experiences of life into a science of experience about economic life, so that - and this could well be - it would start from experience. But today, my dear attendees, you can read about economists in the following style: For any given territory, let's say Germany, they calculate how much of the total wealth, or let's say of the total annual income generated in that territory, is made up of entrepreneurial profits, and how much is made up of the sums that have to be used for intermediate trade in the broadest sense. And those who talk about these things as economists usually reduce everything to the abstract monetary relationship. But that does not give any insight into the real course of economic conditions. One would only get an insight if one heard from those who are involved in economic life how they work in intermediate trade. One would have to be told, for example, how lives are ruined in intermediate trade. And one would also learn, for example, the interesting fact that in a closed economic area, approximately as much entrepreneurial profit is reaped as unnecessary stocks of goods are brought onto the market. Quite curiously, the number given for any territory as the sum of entrepreneurial profits roughly corresponds to the market price of those goods that are unnecessarily in stock on the market and are not sold. You see a connection there that you can see, look at together, but which would only be interestingly illuminated if the practitioners, who basically don't understand the real practice, if these practitioners would come and show you how things really work for them, so that it comes out exactly how the connections are between what is worked and not sold on the market and the entrepreneurial profit that now comes from surplus labor, I mean the pure capital profit. It is quite natural that people who have no idea of how such connections are in economic life are also not in a position today to talk about the actual composition of associations. For what is the task of these associations? Their task is to use the very knowledge that is still lacking in order to arrive at the economically justified price. When association and association exchange their experiences, when these experiences are exchanged in a lively way, instead of being calculated, the price problem can be solved simply and practically in the end. There is no theory to solve the price problem. It cannot be formulated, but only by starting with any given product and really experiencing in life which other products are exchanged with it. Only then can you practically determine how much this product should cost, but practically and with almost complete accuracy. This cannot be done with numbers, but by having a group of people who have experience in one industry, another group who have experience in a different industry, a third in a third industry, and so on, so that these groups can pool their experiences. The matter is not as complicated as one might imagine today; and you can be quite certain that the number of people needed to get the associations up and running in this way and solve the price problem is not as high as the number of people that certain states have used for their militarism and policing. And that is the most important thing in economic life. Then, in a sense, everyone has a standard; they can see from the price how much they need to work. There is no need to think about how to get people to work, because they can see from the price-determining factor how much they have to work; they will be able to act accordingly, and they will be able to negotiate on a completely different basis with other people, on a reciprocal basis, about the amount of work they do, the time they work, and so on. I would just like to say this today: What is the most important thing in economic life? The price of goods. If you look beyond economic life, in the sense of the “key points of the social question”, you will also find what is most important in state life – but we must think of a living state life. In the life of the state, the most important thing is the rights and duties that can be established through democratic coexistence, which people set for each other. We must bear in mind how, in economic life, experiences are gathered through the activity of associations, in order to arrive at the price of goods that ultimately dominates economic life; we must bear in mind how everything that does not tend towards this price fixing must be removed from economic life. In the life of the state, democracy, or, when it comes to the life of the mind, the free integration of the spiritual element into the social organism; in the life of the mind it is trust that founds the constitution, in the life of the state it is the intuitive sense of rights and duties. The associative principle works towards the right price. Economic life needs trust as a force of spiritual life, needs a sense of right and duty. With this rhythm of right and duty, we have a duality, just as we have exhalation and inhalation in human life. This is what should pulsate in state life, and trust is what should pulsate in spiritual life. Regarding the questions – as I said, today I have only taken the general impression from the various questions – there is, for example, something that comes into question in relation to such a general impression: it is the question of how this spiritual life should actually work on the other two limbs of the social organism, how it should be constituted in itself. But we will talk about that the day after tomorrow. But just let your soul be filled — intuitively and without prejudice, not influenced by what is already there and has been constantly brought into the spiritual life from the state side — let your soul be filled with what the self-contained spiritual life is. Now, my dear audience, I think you will all be able to understand me quite well in this: When spiritual life is free, then the first thing to take effect in it will be the steadfastness that is born of trust; this steadfastness will take effect to the same extent that this spiritual life is emancipated from the state. And with all those “pigtails” who wanted nothing to do with our cultural advice, it was quite clear – I have already hinted at this from a different angle – that if it came down to the efficiency borne by trust, not the efficiency stamped by the state, then they would very soon no longer be sitting on their curule chairs. That is why the people fled so quickly from our call for a cultural council on all sides that, figuratively speaking, the tails of the tails and coats flew far, far in the wind from the speed with which they fled when we called on them to join us in a free intellectual life. Now, I wanted to speak today, my dear attendees, about some preliminary matters that may lead us to address individual issues in response to the questions raised. Above all, because I see that there is an urgent need for it, I would like to address the specific question regarding the organization of the individual members of the social organism and their interaction. But I want to be understood, and to do so I want to study and process the questions thoroughly for next Tuesday. But you will see from studying the “Key Points of the Social Question” as well as from everything else I have said in this regard, based on our spiritual scientific work, that it is truly not utopian. But perhaps this also gives me a certain right to say that what is meant by the “key points of the social question” should not be translated into utopianism. I hear this utopianism in many of the ways people talk to me, for example, when someone comes and asks: “If we have the threefold social organism, what will happen to this or that?” — That is precisely how the utopian thinks. The practical person, however, thinks above all about whether something positive will be established. It really does not matter what should happen to the banker A, the milliner F, the sewing machine owner C - all these questions are raised - but something else is essential. What is important is that steps be taken that are in line with one or other of the three impulses for the threefold social order. It is important that some kind of start be made with associations. It must be shown how neither the productive cooperatives nor the consumer cooperatives can work well for the future. We must turn away from the productive cooperatives because they have shown in practice that people with real personal initiative do not devote themselves to them, nor could they. But we must also turn away from the consumer cooperatives, although they are still the best, especially when they start producing for themselves; but they cannot achieve the necessary goal for the future for the simple reason that they do not arise from the association of what is there, ation of what is already there, but because they are still rooted in the most ordinary capitalism – at least in one corner of it, in that they initially organize consumption only on one side and actually incorporate production only into the organization of consumption, if they incorporate it at all. Even less indicative of real progress are cooperatives such as the raw materials cooperative and so on; such cooperatives have no sense of associative life at all, but instead they actually only amount to doing something in a partial area of economic life, in any old corner, while the raw materials question is closely related to the consumption question. One might say, but this is a somewhat figurative way of putting it: within the whole of economic life, it is actually the smokers who should have the greatest interest in the work of processing tobacco raw materials in tobacco-producing areas. Now I would like to know how, in our decadent, perverse economy, the interest that the smoker has in the raw materials question, in the raw materials economy, is connected to the product that he finally vaporizes into the air; after all, he only considers the very outermost periphery. I have chosen only one example, which seems a bit strange because it is so far away; in other examples, the connection is much more noticeable. The necessary associative connection between the procurement of raw materials and consumption is not noticed at all today. It is simply the case that this abstract thinking always translates what is actually meant in a practical way in the “key points” into a theoretical one. And I found the most theory, the most bare business mysticism, if I dare use the term, when today's practitioners translate the practical ideas of the “key points” into their language, because they usually think only from a very tiny corner; and everything that is outside of this corner, which they, as routiniers, dominate, becomes blurred for them in a nebulous business mysticism. But that is precisely against the associative principle. The associative principle must work towards the value of the goods being determined by their mutual relationship. However, this can only happen if the most diverse sectors associate, because the more sectors that are directly or indirectly associated, the more sectors tend to work out the economically appropriate price of the goods through their activity. You can't calculate the price, but you can combine economic sectors associatively, and if they combine in such a way that the result of this combination is the number of people who have to be employed in each individual sector in the economy as a whole, according to production and consumption, then it comes out all by itself: you give me your boots for so many hats, which I give you. - Money is then only the mediator. But behind what is mediated by money, however much money is inserted as an intermediate product, there is still the value of the boot that determines the value of the hat, the value of bread that determines the value of butter, and so on. But this only comes about as a result of branch rubbing against branch in associative life. To believe that associations can only be established between producers in one branch is to fail to recognize reality. We shall see what that means next time, the day after tomorrow. Association is the union, the uniting, so that this uniting can produce that common exponent which then lives in the price. That is the living development of economic life, and only in this way does this economic life come close to a proper satisfaction of human needs. This can only happen when people place themselves with full interest in economic life, not just asking: What are the interests of my industry? What do I acquire in my industry? How do I employ the people in my industry? - This can only happen when people care about: How my industry must relate to the other industries, so that the mutual values of goods are determined in the right way? As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, it is not just a cliché when I say that it is a matter of changing the way we think. Anyone who believes that they can get ahead by continuing to bubble along in the old way of thinking is only leading people further into decadence. We must believe today that we really do need to relearn most of all in economic life. So I'll talk about that the day after tomorrow. |
| 351. Nine Lectures on Bees: Lecture IV
01 Dec 1923, Dornach Translated by Marna Pease, Carl Alexander Meir Rudolf Steiner |
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| This is not due to the Sun alone, but because as the Sun shines down upon the earth, behind it, in this instance, in the Cosmos stands the constellation of the Ram. What the Ram gives, the Sun first absorbs and then pours it forth again with its rays. |
| 351. Nine Lectures on Bees: Lecture IV
01 Dec 1923, Dornach Translated by Marna Pease, Carl Alexander Meir Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
Herr MÜLLER has handed me another number of the “Swiss Bee-keeper's Journal” with an article dealing with the results of certain experiments with honey-cures—(“Our further Experiences with Honey-cures in the Frauenfeld Children's Home, Amden,” by Dr. Paula Emrich. Weeson.) (No III of the “Schweizerische Bienenzeitung” March 1923). (Certain passages from this article were read aloud). Dr. Steiner: It will be quite interesting, gentlemen, to add today a few remarks on this article. In this Children's Home an attempt was made to give honey treatments to children found to be suffering from some form or other of mal-nutrition. As described here, the treatment was to dissolve the honey and stir it well into moderately warmed milk, not brought to boiling point but kept just below it. This mixture was given to the children. Excellent results were thus attained. The author, Dr. Paula Emrich, mentions the satisfactory result that the percentage of red corpuscles in the blood of these children increased to an extraordinarily high degree. For instance, two children were admitted belonging to the same family. On arrival the younger child had only 53% of red blood-corpuscles. On leaving, after a honey-treatment, the percentage had risen to 82%. The elder child had at first 70%, and on leaving this had risen to 78%. In this case there was thus less improvement, but still some improvement. The elder child had milk only, and benefited by it, but the percentage rose only from 70% to 78%; it was therefore, to begin with, not so weakly, but did not get stronger in the same proportion. There are still quite a number of very interesting experiments. As I shall refer to them, I should like to ask you to note carefully the ages of the children concerned. If one is to observe the effects of some special substance on a person, it is no use simply to make experiments in the laboratory; one has always first to find out the age of every patient; one must always note the age in any experiments in nutrition, or in healing. Here we have a boy aged 11; he went through a honey-cure lasting 8 weeks, with the result of a very considerable improvement in his glands. A case of catarrh of the upper parts of the lungs also improved, the red corpuscles—those really significant elements—increasing from 55% to 75%. Then again we have a boy aged 11. He shows a rise from 50% to 74%. Then a girl aged 11, with a rise from 70% to 88%. The rise is throughout, significant. She then gives the increase in weight also, which shows that the children became stronger. I will not read the further details. Mention is also made of a girl aged 10, of another of the same age; then a boy aged 13, a girl of 7, a boy aged 11, a boy aged 8, a boy of 12, a boy of 9 and a boy of 7. The experiments show that children of these ages, let us say roughly, the school-age, derive great benefit from a honey-cure. Now, this doctor tries to discover why the children benefited so remarkably from this treatment with honey. And here, gentlemen, he mentions something very interesting, something which in a most remarkable way condemns what is so largely applied in science today. For what does science do now-a-days when it tests food-stuffs in respect to their nutritive value? Science analyses certain food-substances to discover how many components of one or another chemical substance are to be found in it. This is what science does. Now the following thing happened—a pupil of the famous Bunge, the Professor of Physiology—(you very probably know him by name, he was at one time in Basel)—made experiments in feeding mice with milk. These mice had a good time of it, they throve extremely well when they were fed on milk. So now he made the experiment in another way. He said:—milk consists of casein—i.e. cheese-substance, fat, sugar and salts. He said to himself:—the mice throve splendidly on milk; milk consists of casein, fat, sugar and salts; consequently, I shall give some mice casein, fat, sugar and salts. This is exactly what is contained in milk. And behold! when he gave the mice casein, fat, sugar and salts, they died within a few days! They got the same things, but they all died. You see, gentlemen, the composition of the substance is not the whole matter. Those gentlemen ought to have said to themselves: something else must be in question here. But what did they say? They said: “substance is everything: substance must be everywhere where anything happens.” Well, yes, but the substances that are there in casein, fat, sugar and salts—well, they do not make milk. So the gentlemen said, evidently there must be a new substance here, in such minute quantities that it cannot be found by chemical analysis. This substance is what people now call—vitamin. Vita means life; min is connected with “make”; therefore, vitamin “makes life.” Once, gentlemen, when Heine wanted to mock at something, he said: “There are people who wish, for instance, to explain poverty, the cause of poverty. Well, the simplest way is to say—‘poverty comes from being Poor!’” One has found another term, but one has not explained anything! I was once in a society where people discussed the question where what is “comic” came from. Some of them had arrived at quite interesting ideas as to the source of the “comic”—of what one laughs at. Then however, someone got up and went to the platform in a way that one knew at once—“he has the feeling he has a great deal to say.” So then he brought forward his ideas of “comic” and said:—“The ‘comic’ originates solely from the fact that man possesses a ‘vis-comica.’ ‘Vis’ is force—‘comica’ is comic. Man has the ‘comic force.’ This is where what is ‘comic’ originates.” This is just as though one should say in economics:—where does money come from? Money comes from the money-making force. Nothing is explained in this way. Well—in economics one would at once remark that anyone saying that money comes from the money-making-force was a queer fellow! But in science people do not notice it when someone asks:—where does the life-giving property of milk come from? and then answers:—from the vitamin! That is the same as saying that poverty comes from being poor! But it is not noticed. People think they have said something wonderful, but in truth nothing at all has been said. And that, you see, is what I should like to call the disturbing element in modern scientific methods. People claim to have something to say; they announce it in gigantic words, and everybody believes what is said. But if this continues further in the history of the world, things will come to a point where everything will dry up and perish. For the world depends on the fact that something can be done, not that things are merely discussed and many words made about them. Words must signify what is there in reality. And truly, gentlemen, in earlier times a kind of knowledge existed that was directly connected with practise. Today there is a science which no longer knows anything about practical matters. Often it merely spins out words. This has naturally come about because a new authority has superseded an old authority. You need only consider how short a time ago it is that we did not have so many journals on special subjects as we have today. Communications which were to be made on various subjects—let us say for instance bee-keeping—were given out at special bee-keepers' meetings. This was still so in my youth. At such a gathering of bee-keepers one could learn how things were being dealt with. One would tell the other what he knew from his own experience, and one felt at once whether a man was merely a wind-bag, or whether he had real practical knowledge behind him, which is a very different matter. When you hear someone speak, you know at once whether he knows something, or whether you can find it all in print somewhere. For printer's ink has come as a new authority in addition to all the rest. If anything is printed people believe there must be something in it! But there is something further to be considered in this article. This doctor has indeed achieved something of great value with her honey treatments. What she has done in her practical work is really admirable. But when she begins to think it all over on scientific lines, the result is really nil. Further she says this:—“It is much to be desired that these results of our experiments should be made known as widely as possible, and that more honey should be given, especially to the young ... For the moment our communications only give the results of our practical experiences; but we do not doubt that with the further development of the theory of vitamins the pharmacologists and physiologists will give their attention to the problem of the working of honey on the human organism.” The author also says at the beginning: “I feel obliged to give this account of the effects of honey-cures from the medical point of view. Our good results encourage us to seek their deeper connections, as I am well aware that I am far from having penetrated their innermost nature.” It is evident from her own words that this doctor is modest enough to admit that the whole theory of vitamins does not enable her to reach the real heart of the matter. And now let us consider very exactly the following question. Let us see on what these effects of honey-treatments really rest. You see, these experiments show us something; they show that the effect of honey is an especially strong one, and that further experiments will increasingly show this, not in the case of very young children, but with those who have reached the change of teeth, or with those who are well beyond it. This is shown by the actual experiments, and it is extremely important to take this into account. But the experiments indicate something further. They indicate that honey is most effective when one gives it in moderately heated milk. It is this admixture of milk and honey that has such especially favourable results with children. If one went a little further one would discover that honey is important even in the case of the younger children. One must then put only a little honey in the milk—more milk and less honey. With old people it is the honey without any milk that is good. Excellent results can be obtained with really old people if one persuades them to take honey without milk. We must say that milk and honey have very great importance in human life; these experiences make it evident. You see, the old wisdom, as I have often told you, was not so stupid as modern learning thinks. This old wisdom is sometimes expressed in very simple words, but it was really wise. In the ancient saying:—“This is a land where milk and honey flow,” the meaning is that it is a land of health, a country where men can live healthily. Thus, of old, men knew that milk and honey have a tremendously strong relation to human life. Nature often speaks in a very reasonable way. One observes her utterances if only one takes simple matters sufficiently simply. If one knows that Nature works with great wisdom, one does not need much proof of the fact that milk is good for little children, for were it not so, honey would flow from the breasts of women and not milk. This would by no means be beyond the sphere of Nature's possibilities, for the plants produce honey and it certainly might be possible that the glands of the female breast secreted honey. One must only take things simply enough. One must not say:—Nature is a bungler, she makes only milk to flow from the woman's breast and not honey, but one must say:—Behind this lies the knowledge that for the small child, milk above all else is necessary; one can add the honey as the child grows older. Well, then, surely we should not form such an idea as the above, which is nothing but mere words, and say to ourselves; “poverty comes from being poor; the comical from the vis-comica, and the life-giving power of honey from the vitamin!” One must look for what has reality in this connection. We will now, gentlemen, gather together some of the things we have long learnt to know from these lectures, for the important thing is that one should always observe things in the right way.  When you go into the mountains you find, just where the rocks are hardest, where so to speak, the very hardest earthly substance pours in—there you find the quartz-crystals. They are very beautiful. You find many kinds of crystals. You will remember I drew these quartz crystals for you; they look like this:—(Diagram 10). When they are entire, they are formed below just as they are above, but usually, they are not perfect. They come out of the rock; they grow, as it were, out of the rock in the form I have just drawn for you here. What does this signify? It signifies that the earth permits crystals to grow out of itself which are hexagonal, growing to a point. Within the earth there is thus the power to build up this six-angled form. As I have so often explained to you, the forces that are within the earth and in the universe, are also in man. The earth in her turn receives this force from the universe; man has it from the earth. Man has the same force within him which, in the earth, drives out the crystal. How is it then within him? Truly, gentlemen, the human body is full of quartz. Quartz as you find it in the mountains is one of the very hardest of substances, But substances are not everywhere just as they present themselves to us here or there. In man there is something quite similar to quartz, but it is in a more fluid form. Why?  You see, if one observes—and one must really observe in the right way, and with a true inner vision—what flows continually from man's head into his limbs (see Diagram 11), and this is most interesting, there streams incessantly downwards from the head what the earth once upon a time caused to flow from within outwards, and which became hard up above there, and settled down, for instance, as quartz crystals. It streamed out from the interior of the earth. In man it flows from his head through the whole of his body. It is quartz, or silicic acid. But the human body does not permit the quartz to become a crystal. That would indeed be a fine business if we were all to be filled up inside with quartz crystals! Only to a point where the quartz is about to become hexagonal does man allow the thing to go; there he stops it; he does not allow it to go any further. Thus we have only the beginnings of the quartz formation in our body, and then it is arrested; it must come to an end. Our whole life rests on this—that we are perpetually on the point of forming hexagonal crystals from the head downwards, but we do not permit it actually to come about. These hexagonal crystals always wish to take form in us, but in reality they do not do so. They are interrupted, arrested, and then we have, so to speak, the quartz fluid in the highest possible state of solution within us. If we had not this quartz-fluid within us, we could for example, eat ever so much sugar and we should never have a sweet taste in our mouth. This tasting of the sugar is brought about by the quartz we have within us, not by its substantiality, but by what is the will within it to become hexagonal like a crystal. That is what causes it; that is the essential. You see, in the interior of the earth this crystallising process is continued. Man arrests the silicic acid when it wants to grow spiky up above inside him. The earth allows it to become spiky up above. But man needs this force, this silicic acid force—i.e., this power to bring forth hexagonal forms—man has need of it. I imagine that you are not all of you good geometricians. Geometry is not exactly familiar to you all; you could perhaps not straight away, draw a quartz crystal, or model one in clay. But your body is a very good geometrician, and wants always to be forming such crystals. We are prevented from doing this. All life consists in the holding back of death, and when we can no longer hold death back, we die. Now let us look at the bees. The bee flies out and gathers nectar. This it works upon in its own body, and in so doing provides its own life-forces. Further the bee prepares the wax. What does it do with the wax? It makes hexagonal cells. You see, the earth makes hexagonal silicic-acid crystals. The bee makes hexagonal cells, and this is extremely interesting. If I could draw the bees' cells for you—or if you remember Herr Müller showing them to you—then they look just like quartz crystals, only they are hollow. But in their form they are the same.  You see, these cells are hollow (Diagram 12), but what is put in them? The bees' eggs are laid there. Where there is silicic acid in the quartz, here in the cell is a hollow, and there the bee places its eggs. The bee is shaped by the same force that is within the earth and forms the quartz. Here the finely dissolved silicic acid (Diagram 13) is at work. A force is at work there, though this cannot be physically proved. The nectar works in the body of the bee so that it can shape the wax in a form which man really needs, for man must have those six-cornered spaces within him. Man needs the same thing. Inasmuch as the bee is the creature best able to give form to this hexagonal force, the bee is the creature that everywhere collects that particular food which can best be transformed in the body into this hexagonal force.  You need only eat some honey and you receive an immensely strengthening force. If you are too weak to develop this hexagonal force in yourself which has to pass from the head into the whole body, if you no longer have the power to give the blood so much firmness that this force is always present in it, then honey must intervene—or milk in the case of the child. The child has not yet got this hexagonal force; therefore, it must receive it from what is prepared in the human being as milk. Now you see, gentlemen, that you can give as much casein, fat, sugar and salts to the mice as you please—and they will die. Why? Because the animal also needs this hexagonally-working force. If one only mixes together chemically casein, fat, sugar, and salts, then the force present in the hexagon is not there. When you give the mice milk then it is there. Only in milk it is not so strongly present that when the milk is turning sour it crystallises hexagonally. If this hexagonally-working force were a little stronger in milk, one could drink sour milk and it would form little silicic-acid crystals on the tongue. This would taste as though the milk were full of tiny little hairs. But it does not go so far, because milk comes from the human or animal body, and there it remains fluid. This is sufficient for the child but not for the grown man. But to become adult is something that already begins in childhood, so we must give the child the more powerfully-working hexagonal force that honey contains. You see, gentlemen, it is very interesting that when you take milk, even if it comes from the human being, it is still something belonging to the animal-nature in man. In man it is animal. If you take honey, it comes from the plant kingdom—indirectly through the bee. But it comes from the plant world and has a plant nature. If you take silicic acid—quartz—then this has a mineral-nature; it has quite a definite hexagonal form. The wax which is produced within the bee itself through the food which is its nourishment, the wax has received its form; it does not originate it, it receives the form as developed in the hexagonal cell. In milk this form is dissolved again; only a shadow-picture of the hexagonal crystal remains in the milk (see Diagram 14). Thus, one can say that honey is a substance most suitable and health-giving for man.  One might however, be inclined to think that it would be just as good if man were to take some silicic acid instead of honey, for then he would also obtain this hexagonal force. But the silicic acid which has been driven as far as the hexagonal form, as far as to evolve this silicic acid form, contains too powerful a crystallising force; it would work much too strongly in man. Now let us imagine the following. Picture to yourselves some poor child not so fortunate as to be given this honey-cure (as described in the article), at the age of 16 or 17, or at 13 or 14, when it is most suitable. This child has not had this good fortune and the iron-corpuscles in the blood get weaker and weaker. The percentage in the blood gets less and less. The child grows up, let us say to the age of 30, and has grown up into a weak man. The writer of this article describes this also when she says, “they collapse.” When the man is 30 years of age it may often be a very good thing to give him a honey-treatment, but he is already too much exhausted; he would have to eat so much honey to get any real benefit from it that his digestion would be ruined. Honey teaches man moderation; if you eat too much honey you ruin your stomach. This rests on quite a simple fact. Honey is sweet; it contains a great deal of sugar. The stomach especially needs acids, and when you put too much sugar into the stomach you hinder the working of the acids. Thus, briefly put, honey must only be eaten in moderate quantities, and when a man is already exhausted at the age of 30, one would have to give him so much honey, if a honey-treatment was to help him (and this it would doubtless do), that he would first get bad stomach disturbances and then intestinal troubles. Thus, one cannot do this, but one can do something else. One can at first give the man very highly diluted, pulverised quartz, that is, silicic acid as a remedy. When you have given him this highly diluted silicic acid as a medicine for a time, then after a time he will be able to benefit by small quantities of honey. The strongly diluted silicic acid will have called forth in him the power to make use of the hexagonal force, and then a small amount of honey can follow. The silicic acid has prepared the way for the honey. One might also help a man with whom the content of the blood in regard to hæmoglobin has become exhausted, by adding to the honey, suitable to an adult, some highly diluted silicic acid the honey can then take effect. In the case of a child one should give plenty of milk. You see, it is necessary to know these connections. One might ask: what then is it that works through the honey into man? It is the formative forces of the hexagonal principle. This is within the bees themselves. One can see it in the waxen cells of the comb, and it is this that makes honey so beneficial. It was for this reason that I said just now that it is primarily the force of milk that works in the child, and this can be further enhanced by the addition of honey, whereas in the adult person the forces of the honey are more especially active. Nevertheless, when a man has grown older this honey force must be strengthened by that of silicic acid, as I told you. Also, a milk and honey cure can be of use because the forces of early childhood still exist in the older man; this is beyond contradiction the good effect of a honey-cure remains undoubted. In practise, this is well-known, and one should really insist on making these things so clear to people, that a right amount of good honey should be available. On this matter people are very readily deceived. I do not mean this in a bad sense; I might say people are easily mislead by the conditions of present day civilisation. If you have ever asked for honey in hotels when travelling, it was certainly not honey that you were given there, it was sugar-honey, artificially produced. If people realised that this is by no means the same thing, for there can be no question of any hexagonal force being in such honey, they would never claim that imitation-honey could have the same effect as pure bee-honey. One could very well feed mice with pure honey, they would like it very well. But if you were to feed them on this artificial honey, they would die, though not perhaps in a few days. I have now added what I wished to say about this article on milk and honey cures. Now another interesting question has been put to me about which I would like to speak, and also to hear what you yourselves have to say about it; also what Herr Müller has to say to you. You see, there are so many matters to be considered that it will really be worth our while to discuss these things further next time. You will then be able to ask your questions, and Herr Mailer or I will answer them. I want first to touch quite briefly on two other points. They may seem rather strange to you, but I am really eager to know what you will have to say about them. Written Question: Among old-fashioned bee-masters there is a conviction that a certain soul-relationship exists between the bee-master and his bees. It is said that when the bee-father dies, then his death must be at once announced to all the bees. If this is not done, then the whole stock will die out in the course of the following year. That a certain relationship of soul does exist between the two is again indicated by the fact that one gets far more stung when one approaches one's work in the hive in an angry or irritable mood, then when one does the same work in a peaceful and harmonious one. Is there any objective reality at the base of this old idea of the bee-masters? DR. STEINER: It would be interesting if Herr Müller would tell us quite simply whether he believes such things to be quite in the air or no? Such things are customary among the peasant bee-keepers; they announce a death to the bees. But this soul-relationship, this connection between the bee-father and his bees, is what I now have in mind. Perhaps Herr Müller can tell us more. HERR MÜLLER: Two cases were cited which had occurred in Basel and in Zurich. In one family a woman who had helped a good deal with the bees had died, and in the course of a year all the bees were dead. In the other case, at Basel, it was also a woman who died who had given much care to the bees; the same thing happened. It was a very large apiary; in a year's time twenty-eight stocks were reduced to six. One cannot explain this by anything connected with the general conditions, or with the bees themselves. One could trace no disease that the bees may have had. It may have been a “soul” connection. DR. STEINER: Let us remember what I once told you about the relation between man and the animals. You may perhaps have heard, gentlemen (I have spoken of it before), that some time ago people talked a great deal about the so-called “counting” horses, horses which, for instance, were asked the question: “How much is four and five?” Then one counted—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9—and the horse stamped its foot at nine. Really remarkable and not inconsiderable sums were done in this way—by the horses. You may perhaps have heard of these “Elberfeld counting horses;” they were very celebrated. Whole delegations went to investigate the matter. I did not myself see these horses, but I saw another horse belonging to Herr von Osten that could count equally well. One could form an exact judgment of the whole matter. People simply racked their brains over these “counting horses,” for it is naturally something fundamentally terrible that horses should suddenly begin to count. Science itself was put to shame by such a thing! Naturally one was quite aware, for it is an obvious conclusion to reach, that a horse cannot count; one had to find out how it was that the horse stamped its foot at a correct number. In reality, it cannot count; it would be quite idiotic to think a horse could count. Even a University lecturer knew this who scientifically investigated the matter, but he constructed a theory. He said: “Herr von Osten makes a slight facial movement when he counts; the horse observes the lines in his face, and in response to those it stamps its foot.” But he himself then made the following objection: “Yes,” he said, “but in that case the horse should be standing in front of Herr von Osten, and be looking at him, observing his face so that it knows when to stamp.” So he then took this position himself and saw nothing. Still, he did not give up his theory, he merely said: “The change of face is so minute that I cannot perceive it, but the horse can!” Well gentlemen, it then follows that a horse can see more than a University lecturer! Nothing else can be inferred! The matter was naturally otherwise. If one is trained by spiritual science and then observes the facts, one does not then lay much stress on some small facial change, for it happened in this way: there on the one side stood the horse; there stood Herr von Osten, very lightly holding the bridle. In his right hand waistcoat pocket Herr von Osten had plenty of sugar. Now Herr von Osten perpetually gave the horse little lumps of sugar. The horse licked them, found them sweet, and loved Herr von Osten very dearly. It loved him ever more and more through these little lumps of sugar, and thus an affectionate relation was set up between the horse and Herr von Osten. The latter had no need to make faces, he had merely to think—nine is the correct number; then the horse could sense it, for animals have a most delicate perception for what is going on around them. They sense what is going on there inside man's head even if he indulges in no small grimaces which a horse might be able to see but not a man. The horse senses what is happening when the brain thinks—nine—and then it stamps. But if the horse had not had any sugar its love would be a little changed into hate, and it would not have stamped with its foot any more. Thus, you see, the animal has a very delicate perception of things; not of little grimaces, but of things actually not visible; for instance, with the horse, this sensing of what is going on in the brain of Herr von Osten. One has only to observe the facts, and then one knows how wonderful a sensitiveness the animals have. Just imagine for a moment that you go near a number of bees, and are very much afraid of them. The bees will feel this fear in you, that is undeniable. Well, what does it mean when one is afraid? When one is afraid of something or other one grows pale, fear makes people pale. When one turns pale the blood flows inwards, it does not go outwards into the skin. When the bee comes near a man who is afraid, it senses more than it normally does when the blood is in the skin. It senses the hexagonal force of the blood, and stings into it; it would like to get honey or wax from you. On the other hand, when a man works quietly and his blood is flowing evenly in his veins, then the bee senses something quite different. And now think of a man who is angry, and in his anger he goes to the bees. Anger makes a man red, and a great deal of blood flows into the skin, for the blood would absorb the hexagonal force. This, too, the bee senses in its delicate feeling and believes you would deprive it of this force—and it stings you. So fine are the subtle sensibilities of the forces of nature at work here. And now we come to the question of habit. Think of the bee-father, the bees do not see his approach as men would do, the bee “senses”—if I may use this expression—everything that emanates from him—how all this is constituted. The bees get used to this, and should the bee-father die they must re-adjust themselves, and this means a great deal to them. And now, for a moment, think what one finds even with dogs when the master dies. It has been known to happen that the dog will go to the grave and die there, because it cannot adjust itself to a new master. Why should one suppose that the bee with its fine sensitiveness should not be aware of what happens, why should one not think that the bee also, accustomed as it is to the bee-master cannot at once adapt itself to a new one? Indeed something very significant lies at the root of all this. But you may say: “Is it then the same with these tiny little creatures as with dogs and horses?” Well, perhaps you may not have noticed, but it is nevertheless true, that one finds men who have, as the saying is, a specially lucky hand in the cultivation of plants. Even when they sow plants, or grow flowers in a pot, everything thrives with them, while another person may take equal care of the plants, but none will thrive; he is not successful. This is due to the “emanations” man has, and which work favourably on the plants in the one case, and unfavourably in the other. It is quite impossible for some people to cultivate plants. They have an unfavourable reaction which above all affects the forces in the flower that produce nectar, the forces that sweeten the flower. So we can say, Man works even on the flowers, and in a much more pre-eminent way upon the bees. One need not wonder at this, but one must bring the facts before one as they appear; then one begins to understand that things really are so, and can bring them to bear in practical life. QUESTION: According to an old peasant rule it is held that if it rains on the third of May, the Day of the Finding of the Holy Cross, the honey is washed out of all the flowers and trees, and there will be no good honey harvest that year. My observations of the last four years seem to confirm that there is some truth in this rule. Is such a thing at all possible? DR. STEINER: This question leads us very deeply into the great processes of Nature. You see, it is just this day of the Finding of the Holy Cross, this third of May which is of less importance; it is of much greater importance that it is just this season of the year. What does it actually mean when it rains at the beginning of May? It means this. You know that on March 23, the Sun enters the Sign of the Fishes. I have told you before that the spring equinox is now in this Sign of the Fishes. The Sun remains in this Sign till April 20, then it passes on into the Sign of the Ram. Thus the rays of the Sun come at the beginning of May from an entirely different corner of the Universe than at other times. Suppose now that it is fine weather in the beginning of May—on the third of May—what does this signify? It signifies that on the third of May the Sun has a powerful influence on all that is earthly. Whatever happens on the earth is under the influence of the Sun when the weather is fine. What then does is mean when it rains on May the third—that is in the beginning of May? It means that the earth has the strongest forces, and hinders the influences of the Sun. This is immensely significant for the whole plant kingdom, for when the rays of the Sun come from the direction of the Ram, they can so work that their whole power is directed to the plants. Then the flowers can develop the sweet substance which is present in honey. Then the bees can make honey. When, however, the earth has the greater power, when it rains at this season, the flowers cannot develop in the rays of the Sun which come from the Ram, but must await later events, or maybe even be altogether interrupted in what they have already developed. Then the flowers do not mature the nectar rightly and the bees find none. A matter such as this only becomes comprehensible when we know that everything that happens on this earth is, as I have repeatedly told you, under the influence of the Cosmos, of all that is outside and beyond the earth. Rain means that the influences of the Sun are chased away. Fair weather means that the Sun forces can unfold in all their power. The question here is not that the power of the Sun comes only in a general way, from where we look up to it, but that it comes definitely from that part of the heavens where the Ram is. The forces of the Sun differ according to the particular corner of the heavens from which they come. This is not due to the Sun alone, but because as the Sun shines down upon the earth, behind it, in this instance, in the Cosmos stands the constellation of the Ram. What the Ram gives, the Sun first absorbs and then pours it forth again with its rays. Thus, it is quite different if the Sun sends its rays to the earth at the beginning of May, or at the end of May. In the beginning of May the full force of the Ram is working; by the end of the month the Sun is already in the Sign of the Bull. These forces of the Bull cannot work with the same strength on the plants, they tend to harden and dry up the plant, and this means above all that the plant is no longer able to mature the forces for honey-production. Thus something has really come to light from these old peasant rules that has sound reason, and one should take note of it. Naturally, as I have previously said—the consciousness of these things has been lost, and we have fallen into superstitions, for when one is no longer able to distinguish things one may easily become superstitious. Then these old peasant rules are of about the same value as the saying: “If the cock crows on the dunghill the weather will change, or will remain as it was before!” This does not apply however, to all these old rules, for many of them are based on deep wisdom, and this we should once more study. The peasants who have applied these rules have sometimes done very well! A deeper wisdom will also lead us to the point where we can once more make use of them. |