| 282. Speech and Drama: Style in Gesture
13 Sep 1924, Dornach Translated by Mary Adams |
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| PRINCESS My brother is most kind, to bring us here In this sweet season to our rural haunts; Here, by the hour, in freedom unrestrain'd, We may dream back the poet's golden age. I love this Belriguardo; in my youth Full many a joyous day I linger'd here, And this bright sunshine, and this verdant green, Bring back the feelings of that bygone time. |
| My father oft with Florence and with Rome Extoll'd Ferrara! Oft in youthful dream Hither I fondly turn'd, now am I here. Here was Petrarca kindly entertain'd, And Ariosto found his models here. |
| PRINCESS Thou hast with taste and truth portray'd the bard Who hovers in the shadowy realm of dreams. And yet reality, it seems to me, Hath also power to lure him and enchain. In the sweet sonnets, scattered here and there, With which we sometimes find our trees adorn'd, Creating like the golden fruit of old A new Hesperia, perceiv'st thou not The gentle tokens of a genuine love? |
| 282. Speech and Drama: Style in Gesture
13 Sep 1924, Dornach Translated by Mary Adams |
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My dear Friends, today we will take first a reading from Goethe that will illustrate for you many of the things of which we have been speaking in the previous lectures. You will have seen from the readings you listened to a few days ago—taken first from the earlier, and then for comparison from the later Iphigenie—what sort of an ideal for drama was living in Goethe at the beginning of his work as a playwright. He brought this form of drama to a kind of perfection in Götz von Berlichingen, also in some of the scenes in Faust, Part I. Goethe was working here essentially out of a feeling for prose—not yet out of an artistic forming of speech. The first Iphigenie, which may be described as the German Tasso, proclaims itself at once, in contradistinction to the Roman, as a striking example of well-formed prose, although a prose that has, under the influence of the poetic content, been allowed to run into rhythm. It was on his visit to Italy that Goethe began to interest himself in the artistic forming of speech. Contemplation of Italian art awakened in him a perception of how man's formative powers work, how they shape and mould a material artistically. With the whole strength of his soul, Goethe set himself to work his way through to what he now saw to be art in its purity. And this led him to feel that wherever possible he must re-mould his earlier work, he must form it anew, letting its form arise now from the language, from the formative qualities of speech. Goethe accomplished this in an eminent manner with the material he had at hand in his earlier Tasso and Tasso. And in Tasso he succeeded even in letting the speech shape the whole drama throughout. This was an achievement of remarkable originality. There is perhaps no other work of its kind where the conscious endeavour has been made to develop a drama entirely within the formative activity of speech itself. Now, it will of course be evident from what I was saying yesterday that speech formation alone is not enough; drama must have in addition mime and gesture. The intellect of the spectator—for that too should undergo artistic development as he watches the play—needs to see the gesturing as well as to hear the words. This was not sufficiently clear to Goethe at the time when he was working at his Roman Tasso and Tasso; he had not yet realised the importance of mime and gesture as an integral part of drama. Hence it is that we have in Tasso so striking an example of a drama where it is all a matter of speech, where everything follows from the forming of the speech. But now put yourself in the position of having to produce Goethe's Tasso. As you begin to develop your picture of the stage, scene by scene, you will find that many different possibilities are open to you for your stage settings. It will certainly not be easy to introduce modifications into the form of the speech, for speech has here been brought to a certain artistic perfection; but your picture of the stage you will find you can plan in the most varied ways. There is, however, a passage in Tasso where, as producer, you will come up against an insuperable difficulty. It is in the scene where Tasso makes himself intolerable to the Princess, acting in such a way as to give a most unfortunate turn to the whole drama. Here the producer is helpless. There is, in fact, no way out. Call on all the artistic means at your disposal, and see whether as producer you can make a success of this passage. You will not be able to do it. That such moments occur in plays must be known and recognised, if the art of the stage is to be cultivated in the right manner. You will of course finally manage to devise some way of meeting the situation, but you will not be able to give artistic form to your pis alle. This instance from Tasso can serve to show that in his work as dramatist Goethe did not altogether find the way from the forming of speech to the development of full drama that lives and weaves on the stage. That, one must admit, is an important fact; and the importance of it can be clearly seen in the further development of Goethe's work. For what do we find? In his Tasso and Tasso, Goethe may be said to live in the speech, to live in it as a supreme and perfect artist. In the sphere of speech, these two plays are unsurpassed. Goethe himself knew well of course that drama could not stop here, that it must develop further. While still in Italy, he composed also many scenes for his Faust. These, however, did not take on a Roman character. The ‘Witches' Kitchen’, for example, was composed in Italy, and is thoroughly northern, thoroughly Gothic in the old sense. Goethe knew that for these scenes he must wrest himself free of the Italian influence that surrounded him, must forget all about it and be a complete northerner. This comes out also in the letters he was writing at the time. What had been possible with Tasso and with Tasso was not possible with the material he was dealing with in Faust. And now we can follow the development a step further. Goethe began to write Die natürliche Tochter. In this play he shows that he wants to come right out on to the stage. He is not going to continue working in speech alone, he means to concern himself with the whole picture presented to the audience. He planned here a trilogy, but it was never completed; we have no more than the first part. As a matter of fact, only fragments, mere torsos, remain to us of all the plays that Goethe began after this time. Even Pandora—a work that was grandly conceived, as can be seen from the rough sketch the author made of the whole—was never completed. Faust alone was finished, but finished in such a way that only in the speech was the poet happy and successful; for the rest, he drew on tradition. The last grand scene is derived from the traditional imaginative conceptions of Roman Catholicism. Goethe did not find in himself the sources for that scene. Inherent of course in all this lies Goethe's profound honesty; Faust alone he finishes, and that, as can plainly be seen, out of a certain inability! The other plays he leaves unfinished, because he knew he could not complete them without entirely re-forming them. A dishonest artist would have finished them. Naturally, it is easy enough to polish off plenty of plays if one has no inclination or ability to delve down to the very deeps and make contact with the Archai of all creating. Oh yes, one can then complete many things to one's own satisfaction! A number of different people have set out to complete Schiller's Demetrius, for example, but not one among them all has left us an artistic creation; no single ending proposed can be said to develop the play artistically. And it is art that we must really begin again to care about and expect to find. We must get to know art in its foundations, we must develop again a genuine artistic sensitiveness. For a long time this has been lacking. Traditions have survived, they have been handed down; but sensitiveness to true art—that is what our civilisation needs. The art of the stage has unique opportunity for helping this sensitiveness to develop: it can turn to good account the living relationship that subsists between stage and spectator. Unless we seize on this opportunity, we shall not get any farther. In order to show you—or I should rather say, remind you, for I assume you are all of you familiar with the play—in order to remind you how far the forming of the speech dominated Goethe's dramatic work in the period of its highest attainment, we will ask you now to listen to the first scene from his Torquato Tasso. Frau Dr. Steiner will recite it for us. (Frau Dr. Steiner): Let me first recall to you the setting of the scene. It takes place in a garden ornamented with columns carrying the busts of epic poets. In the foreground are Virgil on the right and Ariosto on the left.
(Dr. Steiner): One fact has been entirely forgotten in the drama of recent years. When I tell you what it is, you will not very easily believe me; but I have been present at scarcely a single performance in recent years where the fact that we hear with our ears has not been forgotten. It seems such a simple obvious fact; and yet, from the point of view of art, it has been quite overlooked. The drama of our time has been working on the peculiar assumption that we hear- with our eyes ! It is accordingly considered necessary that whenever an actor is listening to another actor, he shall look straight towards him. In real life, it is certainly customary to turn to the person who is speaking, and it is perhaps justified there as a mark of politeness. Politeness is undoubtedly a praiseworthy virtue, it may even in certain circumstances be reckoned as one of the virtues that go to make up the moral code; and I am far from wanting to imply that there is no need for an actor to be polite; on the contrary! The actor on the stage, however, owes politeness first of all to the audience. (I do not mean some individual there; I shall have important things to say about the audience in the later lectures.) The only politeness that is due from the actor is in his relation to the audience, but in that he must not fail. It must never once be allowed to happen, for instance, that the audience see before them an actor speaking from the back of the stage, and four or five or more others standing in the foreground, turning their backs on the auditorium. That the stage should ever present such a picture is due to the intrusion there in recent years of the dilettantism that wants merely to imitate life. Blunders of this kind will disappear altogether as soon as we begin to take account again of style. And where a true feeling for style is present, what difference will it make? We shall find we are perfectly able to arrange our positions on the stage so that only on the rarest occasion does an actor need to turn his back to the audience—only, that is, where a particular situation in the play absolutely requires it. As a matter of fact, nothing should ever happen on the stage for which there is not a compelling motive inherent in the play itself. Take the case of smoking. In what I said yesterday I did not at all mean to convey the impression that I am against the smoking of cigarettes on the stage. But can there be any genuine motive behind it, when a number of persons, obviously merely to fill up dead moments with a bit of mime, are continually lighting cigarettes and smoking them in between their words, or even—as I have often seen—trying to cover their ignorance of rightly formed speech by standing there talking, holding cigarettes in their mouths as they speak? Yes, that does happen. All manner of detestable tricks of this sort have been finding their way on to the stage. If, however, a boy of seventeen or eighteen years old comes on the stage and lights a cigarette, then there may well be a perfectly definite motive behind the action: we are to understand that the young fellow is anxious to pose as grown-up. He wants us to see that he is quite a man. In that case, the lighting of the cigarette has behind it a conscious motive that originates in the play itself, and I would thoroughly commend it—as I certainly do when in the plays of today I see boys and girls of seventeen or eighteen (the age of the part, of course, not of the actor) lighting their cigarettes. There, it is right and good; the action must, however, always be prompted directly by the situation in the play. Do you see what is implied here—what demand we are making on behalf of art? We are asking that everything done on the stage shall be directly consequent on the inner texture of the play as an artistic creation. If our work is to have form and style, we must be able to see how every single detail in the acting springs straight from the fundamental intentions of the play. I have mentioned the matter of cigarettes merely as an example. Suppose it happens in a play that one person is giving a command, and one, two or three others are receiving it. There you have a clear situation to be staged. As to the manner and bearing of the one who is giving the command, I need only refer you to what I said the other day, when we went through the several gestures for the variously spoken word—the incisive, hard, gentle, etc. What we have now to consider is the behaviour, in dumb show, of those who are receiving a command. Naturally, what they would find easiest would be to stand with their backs to the audience, for then there would be no need for them to act at all. But there is no occasion for them to take up such a position; in fact, it mustn't be done, it would be quite inartistic. There are two things the audience must be able to see in one who is receiving a command. First, it must be evident that he is listening while the command is being given. And this, even when instead of facing the speaker he faces them, the audience will have no difficulty in seeing. If an actor who is receiving a command should ever turn his back to the audience, then we would have necessarily to conclude that he had some very particular reason for doing so. Imagine the speaker standing behind him, on his right; then the listener can still quite properly face the audience. He will be listening with his right ear and the audience will be able to see that he is doing so, by the way he turns just a little in that direction. No situation can possibly occur in a play where a listener is not perfectly well able to face the audience. And then, if the actor has his mime under proper control, the audience can see also in his countenance the impression that the command is making upon him. For that has to be seen too; it is the second of the two things that must be clearly visible to the spectator. The listener will therefore present to the audience a three-quarter profile more or less, his head inclined a little in the direction of the voice and slightly forwards. And if he has gone through beforehand the other exercises that I described yesterday, then as he assumes this position and enters into the feeling of it, his facial muscles will instinctively be set working in such a manner that the audience will see expressed in his countenance the nature of the command he is receiving. And if, in addition, he shows a tendency to move his arms and hands—not outwards, but more in the way of drawing them towards him—the gesture will be complete, will be exactly as it should be. And now, my dear friends, you will probably be wanting to say: But if I were to arrange the stage with three or four actors all listening in the way you describe, it would look stereotyped, it would look as if it were according to some set plan. Raphael would not have said so ! He would no doubt have introduced slight modifications into the gesture of the second listener, or of the third and so on, but the essential spirit and character of the gesture he would have maintained in them all. Raphael was not of course a producer; but he would, as onlooker, as critic, have demanded that gesture. He would, as I said, have modified it a little here and there, but the very similarity of gesture in the listeners would have impressed Raphael as aesthetically right. And should it ever be a case of some individual actor wanting his own way, then no question but that the stage picture as a whole must always receive the first consideration. What I have been describing has reference to the receiving of a command. We can, however, also consider how it will be with mere listening. One actor is speaking and others are listening. The gesturing here will naturally be not unlike what we have found to belong to the receiving of a command. The speaker's gesture will of course again be from among those I indicated in connection with the different categories that I named for the word : incisive, gentle, etc.; the precise gesture of the listener will have to be carefully determined in the following way. Let us suppose the content of what he has to say requires the speaker to speak quite slowly, so that his speaking falls into the category we named: slow, deliberate. We know then what his gesture will be. But what kind of a gesture will the listener have to make? The listener will have to adopt the gesture of a speaker who utters quick, decided words. Why is this? When someone speaks in a quick, incisive tone of voice, he tends involuntarily to make sharply defined gestures; you will remember how we designated them as ‘pointing’ gestures. The narrator, who is speaking slowly, will not make these pointing gestures; he will make the movements with the fingers that I showed at the end of yesterday's lecture. The listener, however, will—silently, to himself– accentuate, as he listens, the important words. He will thus be in • the condition for incisive speaking—speaking, as it were, inaudibly, within; and he will accordingly be right in making the pointing gestures. Then you will have a perfect harmony of gesture: the one making those finger movements that belong to the telling, the other making the’ pointing’ finger movements that rightly accompany the listening. These are suggestions that you can study and work out in detail for yourselves. Take another case. Again we have an actor relating something; but this time the content has the effect of making him speak his words out abruptly, as though they were cut short. This kind of speaking will always mean that the speaker particularly wants to drive home what he is telling; otherwise he would not tell it in that manner When the dramatist lets us see that a great deal depends on getting some information across to the listener, then the narrator will have to speak in this way, cutting his words short, and he will at the same time make the corresponding ‘flinging away’ gesture with his fingers—this gesture that you will remember I showed you before. The listener, on the other hand, will be true to his part and show the right response if he listens with all his ears—comes, that is, inwardly into the mood of a speaker who gives his words their full tone and value. Suppose someone wants to make sure of my taking in what he is telling me. Then I must stand before him in the manner of a full-toned speaker; for since I have to feel in full measure what he is saying, I must make the gesture that we saw to be right for the word that is spoken in full measure. These are ways to establish a right relationship between speaker and listener. It must only not be forgotten that what I have now been recommending should never be noticeable on the stage; it should have been so thoroughly worked with that it has passed over entirely into an instinctive sensitiveness for what is true in art. If ever a movement gives the appearance of being studied or artificial, that movement is immediately false. For in art, everything is false unless it is the artistic itself that the spectator has before him—the artistic itself as style. Consider in this connection what a difference there will be in their whole manner of speaking between some character in a drama who wants to convince, and one who wants to persuade. This difference must be brought out on the stage. Situations occur where we want to persuade another person, we want to talk him round. One can have this desire in a good or in a bad sense—or somewhere between the two. You have a classic and grand instance of persuasion in the famous saying of Wallenstein: ‘Max, bleibe bei mir! ’ (Max, stay with me!).1 There you have, not the will to convince, as will be evident from the context, but the will to persuade. Now, you could not imagine Wallenstein standing in front of Max Piccolomini, wringing his hands and saying: ‘Max, bleibe bei mir!’ But you can, and indeed you must, imagine him clapping Max on the shoulder, or showing at least an inclination to do so. That is the gesture that belongs properly to the words. Where, on the other hand, it is a question of trying to carry conviction by reasoning, the speaker must make some gesture upon his own person. He will have to clasp his hands, for example, or touch himself somewhere with his hands. He feels a need to discover within himself the power of conviction—as it were, to track it down. If, however, the speaker wants to persuade, he should make the gesture of touching the other person—or at least let it begin, making a movement, that is, which, if carried further, would be a complete gesture of touching. Note carefully also the fine distinctions we have to make for different kinds of persuasion. We may, for example, be using persuasion with the intention of giving comfort. Much will then depend on our powers of persuasion in the good sense of the word, for the one who needs comfort has not time to be convinced; what he wants, as a rule, is to be persuaded, not to be convinced by reason. We shall find, however, it makes a great difference whether we are in this way using persuasion to bring comfort, or are, for instance, wanting something from the other person. If we want to bring comfort, then we make this gesture of touching; it will work naturally and harmoniously, whether we only begin it, or carry it to completion. It need really only be begun. We can take the other's hand, or lay the palm of our hand on his forearm. The audience will then instinctively receive the right impression. This gesture will, however, not be right if you are wanting something for yourself, as in the famous example I quoted just now, not even if your wish be inspired by the very best intentions. ‘Max, bleibe bei mir !’ The actor who says these words will not lay his hand on Max's arm; he will have to place his hand on Max's shoulder or on his head, or anyway make a gesture of beginning to do so. Things like this will have to be grasped in all their exact detail, if we are ever to have again a genuine art of production that concerns itself with the whole practical work of the stage. And now let us go a little farther; for there are many more details of gesture and posture that require to be studied. We need, for example, to develop an artistic perception for the following. When a person is standing in front of you, you may be seeing him in profile, in part profile, or in full face; and there is a meaning for each of these three ways of being seen. Anyone who is an attentive observer of life will know how people sometimes place themselves instinctively so that others are seeing them in one or other of these ways. In real life a kind of affectation lies behind it, but in art it is done for artistic reasons. I once knew a professor (he was a German) who never lectured without presenting himself in profile to his audience—and not only before ladies, to whom he frequently gave lectures, but before his own men students too; and he knew very well what it meant. Standing in profile always calls up instinctively in the onlooker a sense of being in the presence of intellectual superiority. You cannot look at a person in profile without being impressed with his intellectual superiority—or inferiority, as the case may be; for in real life inferiority also occurs. The front-face view can never, for unprejudiced observation, tell us whether the person is clever or stupid. Looking him full in the face, we can remark whether he is a good or a bad man, whether he is kindly disposed or selfish; but if we want to observe whether he is clever or dull, we must see him in profile. And since one who makes use of profile is sure to be a person who believes himself to be clever, we shall know he is wanting in this way to show us his cleverness. The actor should also make here an additional gesture; he should at the same time hold his head back a little. Then the audience will be bound to feel that he is impressing his hearers with his intellectual superiority. If therefore you want the acting to be artistic, you must arrange that an actor who is to speak a passage wherein he has to appear superior to the one he is addressing shall turn his complete profile to the audience, holding his head back a little as he speaks. We must, you know, once and for all rid the stage of dilettantism. We must create again the possibility for students to learn the preliminaries for the art of the stage, just as painters have to learn how to use colour. For unless one has learned and studied these things, one is not an actor, one is not acting artistically, but at best merely performing à la Reinhardt or Bassermann! But now, suppose you stand before the audience in part profile. That will express, not intellectual superiority but intellectual participation in what the other is saying, especially if at the same time the head be inclined forward a little, so. A listener can in this way show to the audience that he is following the speaker with his understanding. It may, however, be that you want rather more the listener's feelings to be apparent to the audience. In this case, whilst the other is speaking, the listener must as far as possible allow the audience to see him full face. The situation on the stage can really come alive when the speaking is accompanied by these postures in the listener. Where the speaking is intended to make an impression on his intellect, you will choose for the listener the profile position; where it is rather his heart that is to be touched, you will let him stand full face to the audience. When details of this nature begin to be clearly envisaged and understood, then the art of the stage will be able to emerge from dilettantism and once again acquire content. We shall be able to see from the way an actor stands or walks, whether it is more with the intellect or with the feelings of the heart that he is participating in the situation. Passing on now to consider the will, we find that for the expression of will there has always to be movement, and here you will have to pay particular regard to what I said about form in movement. The expression of will or resolve calls forth in another an answering impulse of will. We know how this happens in life. Someone gives expression to his will in a certain direction. We listen to him. We can fall in with his will, or we can ourselves ‘will’ to hinder it. There you have the two extreme situations, and there are naturally many intermediate possibilities. A will that gives in to the will of the other must always be accompanied with a movement from left to right, either of the whole person or of the arms. Try it out for yourselves on the stage. Let one actor say something that has will in it, and another be standing there and making this gesture—that goes from left to right. You will feel at once that there is agreement on the part of the listener; the gesture expresses that he too wills the same thing Let him, however, make a right-to-left movement, and he is obviously on the defensive and may even be considering how he can put hindrances in the other's way. Still greater emphasis can be given to this’ will to oppose’ if the movement is made expressly with the head—naturally, the rest of the body also sharing in it. These are among the things that will have to be taught in a school for production that sets out to be comprehensive and take the whole art of the stage for its province. You will remember I told you yesterday—it may have seemed as though I were making rather paradoxical statements—I told you that in practising running one learns instinctively the walking that is required for the stage, and that leaping helps to modify the walking in the right way, making it now quicker, now slower, and that wrestling develops hand and arm movements, and so on. How is all this to be put into practice? The first thing the school will have to do is to arrange for the students to practise Running, Leaping, Wrestling, something in the nature of Discus-throwing, something like Spear-throwing; for that will help them to come easily and readily into all the bodily movements that are needed on the stage. Then we shall at any rate be saved from a feeling one has sometimes nowadays about an actor as soon as ever he comes on: that fellow, we feel, has no proper control of his body. How often we have the impression that all those people who are dancing and hopping about up there on the stage have not their bodies under control! They would have quite a different relation to their bodies if, right at the beginning of their training, they had practised these exercises. The next thing will be to draw forth from each exercise the particular ability it can develop for the stage. Let the students practise running for a quarter to half an hour, and then for half to three-quarters of an hour stage-walking; and the same with leaping and wrestling. For they must be able to unite the two : the exercise, and the skill in movement that the exercise helps them to acquire. And in order that, when they come to the last exercise, they may really succeed in drawing forth from their body the forming of the word, the four preceding exercises should be practised in the following way. For the practice of walking, and of modified walking, for the practice also of arm and hand movement and of play of countenance, you should have a reciter who does the speaking, while the student makes, in silence, the corresponding gesture or facial expression. And as far as these first four steps in the training are concerned, the same method should be continued even later on for one who is wanting presently to appear on the stage. He should practise his gestures, to begin with, without yet saying a word, while the speaker of the company does the speaking. This will give him the opportunity to make himself entirely familiar with the gestures in dumb play. When the students come to the fifth exercise, they can begin to speak; they can accompany the gesture with the speaking—which up to now they have been practising only separately, without gesture, in recitative. These two, gesture and the forming of the word, have then to be consciously combined, consciously fitted into one another. Only so will our acting have the necessary artistic style. We shall, you see, need to follow the example of certain directors of an earlier time and have a reciter. Laube,2 for instance, considered a reciter one of the requisites for the stage ensemble. Strakosch had repeatedly this part to perform. Only, Strakosch's inclinations did not allow him to be content with reciting; he was more disposed to train the students with a strong hand. It was really most interesting to watch how old Strakosch broke them in—going about it, you must understand, with the best will in the world, and not without something of real art in his method, judged from the standpoint of his time. When Strakosch was ramming something home to a pupil, you might have seen that pupil, at one moment standing bolt upright, and at the very next moment feeling as though Strakosch were going to dislocate his limbs, were going to bend his hip till the ends of the bone stuck out. Then again at another time you might have seen the pupil lying on the floor, with Strakosch on top of him—and that perhaps just when a performance was due to begin; and so on, through many other varieties of treatment. But there was temperament in all this. And the art of the stage needs temperament. I am far from saying that where such methods are in vogue, nothing can be achieved. Where there is genuine artistic striving, good results can be attained even with methods of this nature.The men of ancient India had a theory of the origin of man which, while it resembled our modern one, bespoke more feeling for the spiritual. For they too looked upon a certain species of ape as akin to man; but they were more consistent than we in their adherence to the mistaken theory. These apes, they said, can speak; they only don't want to—partly out of obstinacy and partly because they are a little bashful about it. If they are in any way human, if they are on the way to becoming man, then it follows that they must be able to speak. That was the conclusion, the perfectly correct conclusion of the ancient Indians. And I am always reminded of it when I meet with lack of temperament in the very people who need it. For I know well that these people have temperament; they are only unwilling to show it. I mean that quite seriously; the people of today are far more temperamental than they seem. We think it improper to show temperament; but it is by no means always so, and especially not in the case of little children. And yet how annoyed we often are when children begin to show temperament! But there too, you know, we shall have to learn to be more understanding! When we have a school of dramatic art, planned in the way I have indicated, we shall not need to have any misgivings about arranging for the students to practise leaping and wrestling and discus-throwing. If only the teacher has temperament, and does not go about with a long face, but is a person gifted with some humour, then that of itself will help to evoke in the students the necessary temperament. They will soon stop being shy of exhibiting it. We have the means at our disposal for evoking temperament, we only don't use them. And for art, in so far as its practice is concerned, temperament is an essential factor. My dear friends, we must know this; we must know how intrinsically temperament belongs to art. To write books on mysticism may not require temperament. If the books please, well and good; the readers do not the the author. But in those arts where the human being presents himself in person, there has to be temperament; there has to be also enhanced temperament—that is to say, humour. And therewith the moment is reached where it can all begin to be esoteric. And that is what we are minded to achieve in these lectures—that our study shall take us right into the esoteric aspect of the whole matter.
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| 332a. The Social Future: Cultural Questions. Spiritual Science (Art, Science, Religion). The Nature of Education. Social Art
28 Oct 1919, Zurich Translated by Harry Collison |
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| They believe they are doing this purely in the interests of exact science, and do not dream that they are influenced by the Church's pretension to the monopoly of knowledge, the knowledge of the spirit and the soul as contained in their religious creeds. |
| Many who now believe that they are in communion with the Christ, only believe this. They do not dream how little their thought of Christ and their words concerning Him correspond to the experiences of those who draw near to the great Mystery of Humanity with a spiritual knowledge that is suited to our time. |
| Coming generations will look back to our times as to a long, terrible dream. But the darkest night is followed by the dawn. Generations have sunk into graves, murdered, starved, victims of disease. |
| 332a. The Social Future: Cultural Questions. Spiritual Science (Art, Science, Religion). The Nature of Education. Social Art
28 Oct 1919, Zurich Translated by Harry Collison |
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When we look over the history of the last few years and ask ourselves how the social problems and needs occupying the public mind for more than half a century have been dealt with, we can find only one answer. Although in the greater part of the civilized world, opportunity to carry out in practice their ideas of reconstructing social life was given to people who, after their own fashion, had devoted themselves for decades to the study of social problems, yet it must be regarded as extremely characteristic of the age that all the theories and all the views which are the result of half a century of social work from every quarter have shown themselves powerless to reconstruct the present social conditions. Of late years, much has been destroyed and, in the eyes of all observant persons, little, or probably nothing, built up. Does not the question force itself here upon the human soul: What is the cause of this impotence of so-called advanced views, in the face of some positive task? Shortly before the great catastrophe of the World-War, in the spring of 1914, I ventured to answer this question in a short series of lectures which I delivered in Vienna before a small audience. A larger number of hearers would probably have treated what was said with ridicule. In regard to all the assumptions of the so-called experts in practical affairs as to the immediate future, I ventured to say that an exact observer of the inner life of humanity could see in the social conditions prevailing all over the civilized world something like an abscess, like a social disease, a kind of cancerous growth, which must inevitably very soon break out in a terrible manner over this world. Those practical statesmen, who were then talking of the “improvement in political relations” and the like, looked upon this as the pessimism of an idealist. But that was the utterance of a conviction gained by a study of human evolution from the point of view of spiritual science, which I will describe to you this evening. To this kind of research the building known as the Dornach Building, the Goetheanum, is dedicated. Situated in the corner of the northwest of Switzerland, this building is the outer representative of the movement whose object is the study of the spiritual science of which I speak. You will hear and read all kinds of assertions about the aims and object of this building and the meaning of the movement which it is intended to represent. And it may be said in most cases that the gossip about these things is the very opposite of the truth; mysterious nonsense, false and senseless mysticism, many varieties of obscure nonsense are attached to the work attempted by this movement in the building at Dornach representing it. It cannot be expected that anything but misunderstandings without number should still exist regarding this movement of spiritual life. In reality, the meaning of the movement is to be found in its striving with set purpose to bring about a renewal of our whole civilization, as it is expressed in art, religion, science, education, and other human activities; in fact, it may truly be said that a renewal is sorely needed from the very foundations of social life upwards. This stream of spiritual life leads us to the conviction, already indicated by me. in these lectures, that it is no longer of any use to devise net schemes for world-improvement; from its very nature, human evolution demands a transformation of thoughts and ideas, of the most intimate life of feeling of humanity itself. Such a transformation is the aim of spiritual science, as it is represented in this movement. Spiritual science stimulates the belief that the views of society, of which we have just spoken, proceed from the old habits of thought which have not kept pace with the evolution of humanity and are no longer suited to its present life. These views have been clearly proved useless in aiding the reconstruction of social life. What we need is understanding. What is really the meaning of all the subconscious yearnings, of the demands, which have not yet penetrated into the conscious thought of our present humanity? What do they mean, above all things, with regard to art, with regard to science, religion, and education? Let us look at the new directions followed by art, especially of late! I know well that in giving the following little sketch of the development of art, I must inevitably give offence to many; indeed, what I am going to say will be taken by many as a proof of the most complete lack of understanding of the later schools of art. If we except a few isolated, very commendable efforts of recent years, the chief characteristic in the development of modern art is that it has lost that inner impulse which should drive it to place before the world that which is felt by humanity as a pressing need. The opinion has grown more and more common that, in contemplating a work of art. we must ask: How much of the spirit and significance of outer reality does it express? How far is external nature or human life reflected in art? One need only ask, what meaning has such a criterion with respect to a “Raphael”, or a “Leonardo”, or to any other real work of art? Do we not see in such great works of art that the resemblance to the outer reality surrounding us is by no means the measure of their greatness? Do we not see the measure of their greatness in the creation of something from within that is far removed from the immediate outer reality? What worlds are those that unroll before us as we gaze at the now almost effaced picture at Milan, Leonardo's Last Supper, or when we stand before a “Raphael”? Is it not a matter of secondary importance that those painters have succeeded more or less well in depicting the laws of nature in their work? Is it not their chief aim to tell us something of a, world which we do not see when we only use our eyes, when, we perceive only with our outer senses? And do we not find more and more that the only criterion now applied in judging a, work of art, or in judging anything artistic, is whether the thing is really true, and “true” here is to be understood in the ordinary naturalistic sense of the word. Let us ask ourselves—strange as the question may appear to the holders of certain artistic views—what does an art confer on life, actually on social life, what is an art, which aspires to nothing higher, than the reproduction of a part of external reality? At the time in which modern capitalism and modern technical science became a power, landscape painting began to be developed in the world of art. I know, of course, that landscape painting is justified, fully justified from an artistic point of view. But it is also true, that no artistically perfect landscape painting, however perfect, equals in any sense the scene lying before me, as I stand on a mountain side and contemplate Nature's: own landscape. Precisely the rise of landscape painting shows to what an extent art has taken refuge in the mere imitation of nature, which it can never equal. Art turned to landscape painting because it had lost touch with the spiritual world; it could no longer create out of the spiritual and super-sensible world., What will be the future of art, if it is inspired only by the recent impulses toward naturalistic art? Art such as this can never grow out of life, as a flower grows from its roots; it will be a luxury outside life, an object of desire for those only for whom life has no cares. Is it not comprehensible that people who are absorbed in the pressing cares of life from morning till evening, who are shut off from all culture, the object of which is the understanding of art, should feel themselves separated as by an abyss from art? Though one hardly dare to put the sentiment into words now-a-days, because to many it would stamp the speaker as a philistine, it is distinctly evident in social life that great numbers of people look on art as something remote, and unconsciously feel it to be a luxury of life, something that does not belong to every human life, and to every existence worthy of a human being, although, in truth, it brings completion to every human life worthy of the name. Naturalistic art will always be in one sense a luxury for those whose lives are free from care, and who are able to educate themselves in that art. I felt this when I was teaching for some years in a working-men's college, where I had the opportunity of addressing the workers themselves directly in order to help them understand the socialist theories which were being instilled into their minds, to their ruin, by those who called themselves “leaders of the people.” I learnt to understand—forgive the personal remark—what it means to bring scientific knowledge from a purely human standpoint7 within reach of those unspoiled minds. From a longing to know something also about modern art a request was made by my students that I take them through the museums and picture galleries on Sundays. Though it was possible, of course, to explain a great deal to them, since they had themselves the desire to be educated, I knew quite well that what I said did not at all make the same impression on these minds as did the things that I had told them from the standpoint of universal humanity. I felt that it would be a cultural untruth to tell them about the luxury art of the later naturalistic school, so far removed from actual life. This on the one hand. On the other hand, do we not see, how art has lost its connection with life? Here, too, praiseworthy endeavors have come to light in the last few decades; but these have been by no means decided enough, though much has been done in the direction of industrial art. We see how inartistic our everyday surroundings have become. Art has made an illusory progress. All the buildings around us with which we come in contact in our daily routine are as devoid of artistic beauty as possible. Practical life cannot be raised to artistic form, because art has separated itself from life. Art which merely imitates nature cannot design tables and chairs and other articles of utility in such a manner that when we see them, we at once have the feeling of something artistic. These objects must transcend nature as human life transcends itself. If art merely imitates, it fails in the shaping of practical life, and practical life thereby becomes prosaic, uninteresting and dry, because we are unable to give it an artistic form and to surround ourselves with beautiful objects in our everyday lives. This might be further amplified. I shall only indicate the decided direction which the evolution of our art has nevertheless taken. In like manner we have moved in other domains of modern civilization. Have we not seen that science has gradually ceased to proclaim to us the foundation which lies at the base of all sense-life? Little wonder that art has not found the way out of the world of sense since science itself has lost that way. By degrees science has come to the point of merely registering the outer facts of the senses, or at most to comprise them in natural laws. Intellectualism of the most pronounced type has over-spread all modern scientific activity to an ever increasing degree, and a terrible fear prevails among scientists lest they should be unable to exclude everything but intellectualism in their research, lest something like imaginative or artistic intuitions should perchance find their way into science. It is easy to see by what is said and written on this subject by scientists themselves how great is the terror they experience at the thought that any other means than the dry, sober intellect and the investigation by sense-perception should find entrance into scientific research. In every activity which does not keep strictly to intellectual thought men do not get far enough away from cuter reality to judge it correctly. Thus the modern researcher, the modern scientist, strives to carry on his work by intellectualism only; because he believes he can by this means get away far enough from the reality to judge it, as he says, quite objectively. Here the question might perhaps be asked: Is it not possible through intellectualism to get so far away from reality that we can no longer experience it? And it is this intellectualism, above all, which has made it impossible for us to conquer reality by science, as I have already indicated in these lectures and into which I will enter more fully today. Turning to the religious life: with what mistrust and disapproval is every attempt to penetrate into the spiritual world by means of spiritual science received by the religious communities! On what grounds? People are quite ignorant of the reason of their disapproval. From official quarters we learn of a science which is determined to keep to the mere world of the senses, and we hear that in these official quarters the claim is apparently allowed that it is only in this way that strict and true scientific knowledge can be attained. But the student of historical evolution does not view the matter in this light. To him it appears that for the last few centuries the religious bodies have more and more laid claim to he the only authority in matters relating to the spirit and soul, and have recognized as valid only those opinions which they themselves permit the people to hold. Under the influence of this claim to the monopoly of knowledge by the Church, the sciences have neglected the study of everything except the outer sense-perceptions, or at most they have attempted to penetrate into the higher regions with a few abstract conceptions. They believe they are doing this purely in the interests of exact science, and do not dream that they are influenced by the Church's pretension to the monopoly of knowledge, the knowledge of the spirit and the soul as contained in their religious creeds. What has been forbidden to the sciences for centuries, the sciences themselves now declare to be an absolute condition for the exactness of their research, for the objective truth of their work. Thus it has happened that the religious communities having failed to develop their insight into the world of soul and spirit, and having preserved the old traditions, now see in the new methods of spiritual research, in the new paths of approach to the soul and spirit, an enemy to all religion, whereas they ought to recognize in these new methods the very best friends of religion. We shall now speak of these three regions of culture, art, science, and religion. For it is the mission of Anthroposophy or spiritual science to build up a new structure in these three regions of culture. To explain what I mean, I must indicate in a few words the vital point of spiritual science. Its premises are very different from those of science as it is commonly known today. It fully recognizes the methods of modern science, fully recognizes also the triumphs of modern science. But because spiritual science believes it understands the methods of research of modern science better than the scientists themselves, it feels compelled to take other ways for the attainment of knowledge regarding spirit and soul than those which are still regarded by large numbers of people as the only right ones. In consequence of the enormous prejudice entertained against all research into the higher worlds, great errors and misunderstandings have been spread abroad regarding the aims of the Dornach movement. That here is truly no false mysticism, nothing in any way obscure in this movement, is plainly evident in my endeavors in the beginning of the 'nineties, which formed the starting-point for the spiritual-scientific movement to which I allude, and of which the Building at Dornach is the representative. At that time I collected the material which seemed to me then most necessary for the social enlightenment of today in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Whoever reads that book will hardly accuse the spiritual science of which I speak of false mysticism; but he may see what a difference there is between the idea of human freedom contained in my book and the idea of freedom as an impulse prevalent in our modern civilization. As an example of the latter, I might give Woodrow Wilson's idea of freedom; an extraordinary one, but very characteristic of the culture, the civilization of our age. He is honest in his demand for freedom for the political life of the present day. But what does he mean by freedom? We arrive at an understanding of his meaning when we read words like the following: ‘A ship moves freely,’ he says, ‘when it is adapted to all the forces which act upon it from the wind, from the waves, and so on. When its construction is exactly adapted to its environment, no hindrance to its progress can arise through the forces of wind or wave. Man must also he able to motive freely through life, by adapting himself to the forces with which he comes in contact in life, so that no hindrance may ever come to him from any direction.’ He also compares the life of a free human being with a part of a machine, saying: ‘We say of a part, built into a machine, that it can move freely when it has no connection with anything anywhere; and when the rest of the machine is so constructed that this part runs freely within it.’ I have just one thing to say to this; we can only speak of freedom with regard to the human being when we see in it the very opposite of such an adaptation to the environment, we can only speak of human freedom when we compare it, not with the freedom of a ship on the sea, perfectly adapted to the forces of wind and weather, but when we compare it with the freedom of a ship that can stop and turn against wind and weather, and can do so without regarding the forces to which it is adapted. That is to say, at the bottom of such an idea of freedom as this lies the whole mechanical conception of the world, yet at the present day it is considered to be the only possible one. This world-conception is the result of the mere intellectualism of modern times. In my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I have felt compelled to take a stand against views of this kind. I know very well—forgive another personal remark—that this book has fragments of the European philosophical conception of the world, out of which it is born, still clinging to it, as a chicken sometimes retains fragments of the eggshell from which it has emerged. For the book has. of course, grown out of European philosophical world-conceptions. It was necessary to show in that book the erroneous thought in those world-conceptions. For this reason the book may appear to some to be pedantic, though this was by no means my intention. The contents are intended to work as an impulse in the immediate practice of life, so that, through the ideas developed in that book, the impulse thus generated in the human will may flow directly into human life. For this reason, however, I was obliged to state the problem of human freedom quite differently from the usual manner of doing so wherever we turn, throughout the centuries of human evolution, the question regarding the freedom of human will and of the human being has been: Is man free, or is he not free? I was under the necessity of showing that the question in this form was wrongly framed and must be put from a different standpoint. For if we take that which modern science and modern human consciousness look upon as the real self, but which ought to be regarded as the natural self, then, certainly, that being can never he free. That self must act of inner necessity. Were man only that which he is held to be by modern science, then his idea of freedom would be the same as that of Woodrow Wilson's. But this would be no real freedom; it would be only what might be called with every single action the inevitable result of natural causes. But modern human consciousness is not much aware of the other self within the human being where the problem regarding freedom really begins. Modern human consciousness is only aware of the natural self in man; it regards him as a being subject to natural causality. But those who penetrate more deeply into the human being must reflect that man can become something more in the course of his life than that with which nature has endowed him. We first discover what the human being really is, when we recognize that one part of him is that with which he is born, and all that which he has inherited; the other part is that which he does not owe to his bodily nature, but which he can make of himself by awakening the real self slumbering within him. Because these things are true I have not asked: Is man free or not free? I have stated the question in the following way: Can man become a free being through inner development, or can he not? And the answer is: He can become free if he develops within himself that which otherwise slumbers, but can be awakened; he can only then become free. Man's freedom is not a gift of nature. Freedom belongs to that part of man which he can, and must, awaken within himself. But if the ideas contained in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity are to be further developed and applied to external social life, so that these truths may become clear to a larger circle of people, it will be necessary to build a superstructure of the truths of spiritual science on the foundation of that philosophy. It had to be shown that by taking his evolution into his own hands, man is really able to awaken a slumbering being within him. I endeavored to do this in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, and in the other books which I have contributed to the literature of spiritual science. In these books I tried to show that the human being can indeed take his own evolution in hand and that only by so doing, and thus making of it something different from that to which he is born, can he rise to a real knowledge of soul and spirit. It is true that this view is considered by a large part of humanity at the present day to be a most unattractive one. For what does it presuppose? It presupposes that we attain to something like intellectual humility. But few desire this today. I will explain what I mean by this quality of intellectual humility, to which we must attain. Suppose we give a volume of Goethe's lyric poems to a child of five. The child will certainly not treat the book as it deserves; he will tear it to pieces, or spoil it in some other way. In any case he does not know how to value such a book. But suppose the child to have grown ten or twelve years older, that he has been taught. and trained; then he will treat Goethe's lyric poems in a different manner. And yet there is no great difference externally between a child of five and one of twelve or fourteen with a book of Goethe's poems before him. The difference lies within the child. He has developed so that he knows what to do with such a volume. As the child feels towards the volume of Goethe's lyrics, so must the man feel towards nature, the cosmos, the whole universe, when he begins to think seriously of soul and spirit. He must acknowledge to himself that, in order to read and understand what is written in the book of nature and the universe, he must do his utmost to develop his inner self, just as the five-year-old child must be taught in order to understand Goethe's lyric poems. We must acknowledge with intellectual humility our impotence to penetrate the universe with understanding by means of the natural gifts with which we are born; and we must then admit that there may be ways of self-development and of unfolding the inner powers of our being to see in that which lies spread out before the senses the living spirit and the living soul. My writings to which I have referred show that it is possible to put this in practice. This must be said, because intellectualism, the fruit of evolution of the last few centuries, is no longer able to solve the riddles of life. Into one region of life, that of inanimate nature, it is able to penetrate, but it is compelled to halt before human reality, more especially social reality. That quality which I have called intellectual humility must be the groundwork of every true modern conception of the impulse towards freedom. It must also be the groundwork of all real insight into the transformation necessary in art, religion, and science. Here intellectuality has plainly, only too plainly, shown that it can attain no real knowledge which truly perceives and attains to the things of the soul and spirit. As I leave already pointed out, it has confined itself to the outer world of the senses and to the combining and systematizing of perceptions Hence it has been unable to prevail against the pretensions of the religious bodies, which have also not attained to a new knowledge of matters pertaining to the soul and spirit, but have on this account carried into modern times an antiquated view, unsuited to the age. But one thing must be conquered, that is the fear I have already described, the fear that we might become too much involved in the objects of the senses, in our endeavors to gain a spiritual knowledge of them. It is so easy to call oneself a follower of intellectualism, because, when we occupy ourselves merely with abstract ideas, even of modern science, we are so far removed from the reality that we only view it in perspective, and there is no danger of our being in any way influenced by the reality. But with the knowledge that is meant here, which we gain for ourselves when we take our own evolution in hand, with such knowledge we must descend into the realities of life, we must plunge into the profoundest depths of our own nature, deeper than those reached by mere self-training in intellectualism. Within the bounds of intellectualism, we only reach the upper strata of our own life. If with the help of the knowledge here spoken of, we descend into the depths of our own inner nature, we find there not only thoughts and feelings, a mere reflection of the outer world, we find there happenings, facts of our inner being, from which the merely intellectual thinker would recoil in horror; but which are of the same kind as those within nature herself, of the same kind as those which happen in the world. Then, within our own nature, we learn to know the nature of the world. We cannot learn to know that life of the world if we go no further than mere abstract conceptions or the laws of nature. We must penetrate so far that our own inmost being becomes one with reality. We must not fear to approach reality; our inner development must carry us so far that we can stand firm in the presence of reality, without being consumed, or scorched, or suffocated. When we stand in the presence of reality, no longer held at a distance by the intellect, we are able to grasp the truth of things. Thus we find described in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, the inner development of the human being to the stage of spiritual knowledge at which he becomes one with reality, but in such wise that, being merged in reality, he can imbibe from it knowledge which is not a distant perception by means of the intellect, but is instead saturated with reality itself and for this reason can merge with it. You will find that one characteristic feature of the spiritual science which occupies us here is that it can plunge into reality, that it does not merely speak of an abstract spirit, but of the real, tangible spirit, living in our environment surrounding us just as the things of the sense-world surround us. Abstract observations are the fruit of modern intellectualism. Take up any new work, with the exception of pure natural science or pure philosophy, and you will find the conception of life it contains, often a would-be philosophical view, is far removed from actual life or from a real knowledge of things. Read what is said about the will in one of the newer books on psychology, and you will find that there is no profound meaning underlying the words. The ideas of those who devote themselves to such studies have not the power actually to penetrate to the core, even of nature herself. To them matter is a thing outside, because they cannot penetrate it in spirit. I should like to elucidate this by an example. In one of my last books, Riddles of the Soul, Von Seelenraetseln, I have shown how an opinion of long standing, prevailing in natural science, must be overcome by modern spiritual science. I know how very paradoxical my words must sound to many. But it is just those truths which are able to satisfy the demands—already making themselves heard and becoming more and more insistent as time goes on—for a new kind of thought which will often appear paradoxical, when compared with all that is still looked upon as authoritative. Every modern scientist who has occupied himself with the subject maintains that there are two kinds of nerves8 in human and animal life (we are now only concerned with human life, one set, leading from the sense organs to the central organ, is the sensory nerves, which are stimulated by sense-perceptions, the stimulus communicating itself to the nerve center. The second kind of nerves, the so-called motor nerves, pass from the center out to the limbs. These motor-nerves enable us to use our limbs. They are said to be the nerves of volition, while the others are called the sensory nerves. Now I have shown in my book, Riddles of the Soul, though only in outline, that there is no fundamental difference between the sensory and the so-called motor nerves or nerves of volition, and that the latter are not subject to the will. The instances brought forward to support the statement that these nerves are obedient to the will as is shown by the terrible disease of locomotor ataxia really prove the exact opposite, which can easily be shown. They, indeed, prove the truth of my contention. These so-called voluntary nerves are also sensitive nerves. While the other sensitive nerves pass from the sense organs to the central organ, so that the outer sense-perceptions may be transmitted to it, the voluntary nerves, as they are called, which do not differ from the other set, perceive that which is movement within ourselves. They are endowed with the perception of movement. There are no voluntary nerves. The will is of a purely spiritual nature, purely spirit and soul, and functions directly as spirit and soul. We use the so-called voluntary nerves, because they are the sensory nerves for the limb which is going to move and must be perceived if the will is to move it. For what reason do I give this example? Because countless treatises on the will exist at the present day, or may be read and heard, in which the will is dealt with. But the ideas developed have not the impelling power to advance to real knowledge, to press forward to the sight of will in its working. Such knowledge remains abstract and foreign to life. While such ideas are current, modern science will continue to tell us of motor nerves, of nerves of volition. Spiritual science evolves ideas regarding the will which at the same time show us the nature of the physical human nervous system. Spiritual science will penetrate the phenomena and facts of nature. Instead of remaining in regions foreign to life, it will find its way into reality. It will have the courage to permeate material things with the spirit, not to leave them outside as things apart. For spiritual science everything is spiritual. Spiritual science will be able to pierce the surface and penetrate into the social order, and will work for a reality in social life, which baffles our abstract, intellectual natural science. And thus, spiritual science will again proclaim a spiritual knowledge, a new way of penetrating into the psychic and the spiritual in the universe. It will proclaim boldly that those spiritual worlds, represented in pictures envisioned by artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci, can no longer suffice for us. In accordance with the progress of human evolution, we must find a new way into the spiritual world. But if we learn to understand the spiritual world anew, if we penetrate into that world, not in the nebulous manner of pantheism, by a continual repetition of the word “spirit”, a universal, abstract, vague spirit which “must he there”: if we pierce through to the real phenomena of the spiritual world not by spiritualism, but by the development of the human forces of spirit and soul in the manner described above, then again we shall know of a spiritual world in the only way adapted to the present development of humanity. Then the mysteries of the spiritual world will reveal themselves to us, and then something will happen of which Goethe spoke. Although he was only a beginner in the things which modern spiritual science goes on developing in accordance with his own spirit, but of which he had a premonition, Goethe beautifully expressed that which will happen in the words: “He to whom nature begins to reveal her open secrets, experiences a profound longing for her worthiest exponent—art.” Once more will the artist receive a revelation from the spiritual world; he will then no longer be led astray in the belief that his portrayal of spiritual things in a material picture is an abstract, symbolic, lifeless allegory; he will know the living spirit and will be able to express that living spirit through material means. No longer will the perfect imitation of nature be considered the best part of a work of art, but the manifestation of that which the spirit has revealed to the artist. Once more an art will arise, filled with spirit, an art which is in no way symbolical, in no way allegorical, which also does not betray its luxurious character by attempting to rival nature, to the perfection of which it can never attain. It demonstrates its necessity, its justification, in human life by proclaiming the existence of something of which the ordinary, direct beholding of nature, naturalism, can give us no information. And even if the artist's attempt to give expression to something spiritual be but a clumsy effort, he is giving form to something which has a significance, apart from nature, because it transcends nature. He makes no bungling attempts at that which nature can do better than he. A way opens here to that art in which a beginning has been made in the external structure and the external decoration of the Goetheanum at Dornach. The attempt has been made there to create a University of Spiritual Science for the work to be carried on within it. In all the paintings on the ceilings, the wood carvings, etc., an attempt has been made to give form to all that spiritual science reveals in that building. Hence the building itself is a natural development. No old architectural style could be followed here, because the spirit will be spoken of in a new way within it. Let us look at nature and consider the shell of a nut; the kernel within determines the form of it; in nature every sheath is formed in accordance with the requirements of the inner core. So the whole of the building at Dornach is formed in consonance with that which as music will one day resound within it; with those mystery dramas which will one day be presented there; with those revelations of spiritual science which will one day be uttered within its walls. Everything described here will echo in the wood carvings, in the pillars, and in the capitals. An art as yet only in its beginnings, which is really horn of a new spirit, altogether born of the spirit, is there represented. The artists who are working there are themselves their own severest critics. In such an undertaking one is, of course, exposed to misunderstandings; this is only natural. Objections are raised against the Dornach Building by visitors, who say: “These anthroposophists have filled their building with symbols and allegories.” Other visitors who increase in number from day to day, understand what they see here. Now the characteristic of the building is that it does not contain a single symbol or allegory; in the work attempted here the spirit has flowed into the immediate artistic form. That which is expressed here has nothing of symbolism, nothing of allegory, but everything is something in its own form. Up to the present we have only been able to build a covering for a spiritual center of work; for external social conditions do not yet permit us to erect a railway station or even a bank building. For reasons, which may perhaps be easily comprehensible to you, we have not yet been able to find the style of a modern bank or of a modern department store; but they must also he found. Above all things, the way must be found along these lines to an artistic shaping of actual practical life. Just think of the social importance of art, even for our daily bread; for the preparation of bread depends on the manner in which people think and feel. It is a matter of great and social significance to men, that everything by which they are immediately surrounded in life should take on an artistic form; that every spoon, every glass, should have a form well adapted to its use, instead of a form chosen at random to serve the purpose; that one should see at a glance, from its form, what service a thing performs in life, and at the same time recognize its beauty. Then for the first time large numbers of people will feel spiritual life to be a vital necessity, when spiritual life and practical life are brought into direct connection with each other. As spiritual science is able to throw light on the nature of matter, as I have shown in the example of the sensory and motor nerves, so will art, born of spiritual science, attain to the power of giving direct form to every chair, every table, to every man-created object. Since it is plainly evident that the gravest prejudices and misunderstandings come from the churches, we may ask: What is the position finally reached by the religious creeds? If they have any justification at all, they must have a connection by their very nature with the spiritual world. But they have preserved into our period of time old traditions of these worlds, grown out of very different conditions of the human soul. Spiritual science strives to advance to the spiritual world, in accordance with the new mode of thought, with the new life of the soul. Should this be condemned by the religious sentiment of humanity, if it understands itself aright? Is such a thing possible? Never! What is the real aim of religious sentiment and of all religious work? Certainly not the proclamation of theories and dogmas pertaining to the higher worlds. The aim of all religious work should be to give all men an opportunity to look up with reverence to higher worlds. The work of religion is to inculcate reverence for the super-sensible. Human nature needs this reverence. It needs to look up in reverence to the sublime in the spiritual worlds. If human nature is denied the present mode of entrance, then, of course, the old way must still be kept open. But since this way is no longer suited to the thoughts of our day, it must be enforced, its recognition must be imposed by authority. Hence the external character of religious teaching as applied to modern human nature. An antiquated outlook on the higher worlds is imposed by the religious teachers. Let us suppose that there are communities in which an understanding exists of the true nature of religion consisting in reverence for spiritual things. Must it not be to the highest interest of, such communities that their members should develop a living knowledge of the unseen world? Will not those whose souls contain a vision of the super-sensible, whose knowledge gives them a familiarity with those worlds be the most likely to reverence them? Since the middle of the fifteenth century human evolution has taken the line of development of the individuality, of the personality. To expect of anyone today that he should attain a vision or an understanding of the higher worlds on authority, or in any other way than by the force of his own individuality or personality, is to expect of him something which is against his nature. If he is allowed freedom of thought with respect to his knowledge of the super-sensible he will unite with his fellow-men in order that reverence for the spiritual world, which everyone recognizes in his own personal way, may be encouraged in the community. When men have attained freedom of thought to approach knowledge of the spiritual world through their own individuality, then the common service of the higher worlds, true religion, will flourish. This will show itself especially in the conception of the Christ Himself. This conception was very different in earlier centuries from that even of many theologians of the later centuries, especially of the nineteenth. How greatly has humanity fallen away from the perception of the true super-sensible nature of the Christ, who lived in the man Jesus! How far is it removed from the understanding of that union of a super-sensible being with a human body, through the Mystery of Golgotha, in order that the earth in its development might have a deeper meaning! That union of the super-sensible with the things of the senses, which was consummated in the Mystery of Golgotha, how little has it been understood even by theologians of a certain type in recent times! The man of Nazareth has been designated “the simple man of Nazareth”, the conception of religion has become more and more materialistic. Since no one was able to find a way into the higher worlds, suited to modern humanity, the super-sensible path to the Christ-Being was lost. Many who now believe that they are in communion with the Christ, only believe this. They do not dream how little their thought of Christ and their words concerning Him correspond to the experiences of those who draw near to the great Mystery of Humanity with a spiritual knowledge that is suited to our time. It must be said that spiritual science makes absolutely no pretension of founding a new religion. It is a science, a source of knowledge; but we ought to recognize in it the means for a rejuvenescence of the religious life of humanity. As it can rejuvenate science and art, so can it also renew religious life, the very great importance of which must lie apparent to anyone who can appreciate the extreme gravity of the social future. Much, very much has been said recently on the subject of education, yet it must be acknowledged that a large part of the discussion does not touch the chief problem. I endeavored to deal with this problem in a series of educational lectures which I was asked to deliver to the teachers who are to form the staff of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded last September [1919], in conformity with ideas underlying the Threefold Social Order. At the foundation of the school I not only endeavored to give shape to externals, corresponding to the requirements and the impulse of the Threefold Order; I also strove to present pedagogy and didactics to the teaching-staff of this new kind of school in such a light that the human being would be educated to face life and be able to bring about a social future in accordance with certain unconquerable instincts in human nature. It is evident that the old-fashioned system of normal training, with its stereotyped rules and methods of teaching, must be superseded. It is true nowadays that many people agree that the individuality of the pupil ought to be taken into account in teaching. All sorts of rules are produced for the proper consideration of the child's individuality. But the pedagogy of the future will not be a normal science; it will be a true art, the art of developing the human being. It will rest upon a knowledge of the whole man. The teacher of the future will know that in the human being before him, who carries on development from birth through all the years of life, a spirit and soul element is working through the organs out to the surface. From the first year of school, he will see how every year new forces evolve from the depths of the child's nature. No abstract normal training can confirm this sight; only a living perception of human nature itself. Much has been said of late on the subject of instruction through observation and, within certain limits, this kind of tuition is justified. But there are things which cannot be communicated through external observation, yet which must be communicated to the growing child; but they can only be so communicated when the teacher, the educator, is animated by a true understanding of the growing human being, when he is able to see the inner growth of the child as it changes with every succeeding year; when he knows what the inner nature of the human being requires in the seventh, ninth, and twelfth years of his life. For only when education is carried on in accordance with nature, can the child grow strong for the battle of life. One comes in contact with many shattered lives at the present day, many who do not know what to make of life, to whom it has nothing to offer. There are many more people who suffer from such disrupted lives than is commonly known. What is the reason.? It is because the teacher is unable to take note of important laws of the evolving human being. I will give only one instance of what I mean. How very often do we hear well-meaning teachers say emphatically that one should develop in the child a clear understanding of what is being offered him as mental food. The result of this method in practice is banality, triviality! The teacher descends artificially to the understanding of the child, and that manner of teaching has already become instinctive. If it is persisted in, and the child is trained in this false clarity of understanding, what is overlooked? A teacher of this kind does not know what it means to a man, say thirty-five years of age, who looks back to his childhood and remembers: “My teacher told me such and such a thing when I was nine or ten years old; I believed it because I looked up with reverence to the authority of my teacher, and because there was a living force in his personality through which I was impressed by his words. Now, looking back, I find that his words have lived on in me; now I can understand them.” A marvellous light is shed on life by such an event, when through inner development we can look back in our thirty-fifth year at the lessons we have learnt out of love for our teacher which we could not understand at the time. That light, which is a force in life, is lost when the teacher descends to the banality of the object-lesson, which is praised as an ideal method. The teacher must know what forces should be developed in the child, in order that the forces which are already in his nature, may remain with him throughout his life. Then the child need not merely recall to memory what he learnt between his seventh and fifteenth years; what he then learnt is renewed again and again, and wears a new aspect in each successive stage of life. What the child learnt is renewed at every later epoch of life. The foregoing is an effort to place before you an idea of the fundamental character of a system of pedagogy which, if followed, may truly grow into an art; by its practice the human being may take his place in life and find himself equal to all the demands of the social future. However much people may vaunt their social ideals, there are few who are at all capable of surveying life as a whole. But in the carrying out of social ideals, a wide outlook on life is indispensable. People speak, for instance, of transferring the means of production to the ownership of the community and believe that by withdrawing them from the administration of the individual human being, much would be accomplished. I have already spoken on this point, and will go into the subject again more thoroughly in the following lectures. But assuming for a moment that it is possible to transfer the means of production to the ownership of the community at once, do you suppose that the community of the next generation would still own them? No! For even if the means of production were transmitted to the next generation, it would be done without taking into account the fact that this next generation would develop new and fruitful forces, which would transform the whole system of production, and thus render the old means useless. If we have any idea of molding social life. we must take part in life in its fullness, in all its phases. From a conception of man as a being composed of body, soul, and spirit, and from a real understanding of body, soul, and spirit, a new art of education will arise, an art which may truly be regarded as a necessity in social life. Arising from this way of thinking, something has developed within the spiritual movement, centered at Dornach, which has to a great extent met with misunderstanding. There are a number of persons who have learnt in the course of years to think not unfavorably of our spiritual-scientific movement. But when we recently began, in Zurich and elsewhere, to give representations of the art known as eurythmy, an art springing naturally out of spiritual science itself, but, as we are fully aware, as yet only in its infancy, people began to exclaim that after all, spiritual science cannot be worth much, for to introduce such antics as an accompaniment to spiritual science only shows that the latter is completely crazy. In such a matter as this, people do not consider how paradoxical anything must appear which works towards reconstituting the world on the basis of spiritual science. This art of eurythmy is a social art in the best sense; for its aim is, above all things, to communicate to us the mysteries of human nature. It uses the capacities for movement latent in the human being, bringing to expression these movements in a manner to be explained at the next representation of the eurythmic art. I will only mention here that eurythmy is a true art; for it reveals the deepest secrets of human art itself by bringing to evidence a true speech, a visible speech expressed by the whole human being. But beside the mere movements of the body, founder on physiological science and a study of the structure of the human form, eurythmy presents to us at the same time a capacity of movement through which man, ensouled and inspired, yields himself up to movement. The purely physiological, gymnastic exercises of our materialistic age may also be taught to children, and they are now taught in the Waldorf School of which I have spoken. Ensouled movement, however, actually employs the whole being, while gymnastics on physiological, merely material lines employs only a part of the whole nature of the human being, and therefore, unless supplemented by eurythmy, allows much to degenerate in the growing human being Out of the depths of human nature spiritual life in a new form must enter into the most important branches of life. It will be my task in the next few days to show how external life may really be given a new form in the present and for the future, when the impulse for the change comes from such a new spirit. Many people of all sorts, noteworthy people, feel today the necessity of understanding spiritually the modern pressing demands of social life. It is painful to see the number of people who are still asleep as regards these demands, and the many others who approach them in a confused way as agitators. We find faint indications of a feeling that none of the mere superficial programs can be of any use without a change of thought, of ideas, a new mode of learning from the spirit. But in many cases how superficial is the expression of that longing for a new spirit! We may say that the yearning for a new spirit is dimly and imperceptibly felt here and there in remarkable men, who most certainly have no idea of that which the Dornach Building represents in the outer world. But the expression of a longing for this new spirit can be heard. I will give one out of many examples of this. In addition to the numerous memoirs published in connection with the disaster of the World War just ended, those of the Austrian Statesman, Czernin, will soon appear. This book promises to be extremely interesting. It is difficult to express what I wish to say without the risk of being misunderstood; I mean that it is interesting, because Czernin was a good deal less pretentious than the others who up to now have given expression to their opinions on the War, and he should therefore be leniently judged. In this book of Czernin's we may read something like the following passage:
Even this man speaks of a new spirit, but this new spirit is only a shadowy conception, a dim presentiment in heads like his. In order that this new spirit may take hold of the hearts, of the minds, of the souls of men in a really concrete form, the spiritual science and the art of education of which I wished to speak today in connection with human evolution, will labor for the social future of humanity.
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| 65. From Central European Intellectual Life: A Forgotten Quest for Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
25 Feb 1916, Berlin |
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| About this, Schubert, who was himself a deeply spiritual person, writes of a person who has wonderfully immersed himself in the secrets of nature, who tried to follow the mysterious weaving of the human soul into the dream world and into the abnormal phenomena of mental life, but who was also able to ascend to the highest heights of human intellectual life. |
| He once said: "In the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body, or assumed that the soul was a kind of covering for the face within this body, that the soul had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and that the soul was the higher inner man... In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously dreams, in jest, an entire inward, spiritual man who carries all the limbs of the outward on his spirit body." |
| This connection with the ancient times in the striving of the German people for the spirit, how beautifully Robert Hamerling expresses it: But however proudly you aspire, high above other swarms, you will always keep the ancient, sacred fire: the dream-filled, drunken rapture of God, the blessed warmth of heart of the ancient Asian homeland. This holy ray, a temple fire of This holy ray, a temple fire Of humanity, free of smoke, with pure flame Glow away in your chest and soul mate You remain and pilot your rudder! |
| 65. From Central European Intellectual Life: A Forgotten Quest for Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
25 Feb 1916, Berlin |
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I have often characterized spiritual science, as it is meant here, in these lectures. It seeks to be a true continuation of the natural scientific world view, indeed of natural scientific research in general, in that it adds to those forces of the human soul that are used when man faces the external sensory world and uses his senses and mind to explore it, which is connected to the brain, that it adds to these forces, which are also used by all external science, those forces that lie dormant in the soul in ordinary life and in the work of ordinary science, but can be brought out of this soul, can be developed and thus enable the human being to relate in a living way to what, as spiritual laws and spiritual entities, interweaves and permeates the world, and to which man, with his innermost being, also belongs, belongs through those powers of his being that pass through birth and death, that are the eternal powers of his being. In its entire attitude, in its scientific attitude, this spiritual science wants to be a true successor of natural science. And that which distinguishes it from natural science and which has just been characterized must be present in it for the reason that, if one wants to penetrate into the spiritual world, one needs other powers for the spiritual world in the same way that natural science penetrates into the natural world. One needs the exposure of the cognitive faculty in the human soul, of cognitive powers attuned to the spiritual world. Today, I want to show in particular that this spiritual science, as it is presented today as a starting point for the spiritual development of people in the future, is not brought out of spiritual life or placed in spiritual life by mere arbitrariness, but is firmly anchored in the most significant endeavors of German spiritual life, even if they have perhaps been forgotten due to the circumstances of modern times. And here we shall repeatedly and repeatedly encounter – and they must also be mentioned today, although I have repeatedly presented them in the lectures I have given here last winter and this winter – when we speak of the German people's greatest intellectual upsurge, of the actual summit of their intellectual life, we must repeatedly and repeatedly encounter the three figures: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. I took the liberty of characterizing Fichte, as he is firmly rooted in German intellectual life, in a special lecture in December. Today I would like to draw particular attention to the fact that Fichte, in his constant search for a fixed point within his own human interior, for a living center of human existence, is in a certain sense a starting point for endeavors in spiritual science. And at the same time — as was mentioned in particular in the Fichte lecture here — he is the spirit who, I might say, felt from a deep sense of what he had to say, as if through a dialogue with the German national spirit. I have pointed out how Fichte, in contrast to Western philosophy, for example, to the Western world view, is above all concerned with attaining a higher human conception of the world by revealing the human inner powers, the human soul powers. For Fichte, the human ego, the center of the human soul, is something that is constantly being created within the human being, so that it can never be lost to the human being, because the human being not only shares in the existence of this center of the human being, but also shares in the creative powers of this human being. And how does Fichte imagine that this creativity in man is anchored in the all-creative of the world? As the highest that man can attain to when he tries to immerse himself in that which weaves and lives in the world as the Divine-Spiritual. As such supreme spiritual-divine, Fichte recognizes that which is volitional, which, as world-will permeated by world-duty, pulses through and permeates everything, and with its current permeates the own human soul, but in this own human soul is now grasped not as being, but as creativity. So that when man expresses his ego, he can know himself to be one with the world-will at work in the world. The divine-spiritual, which the world, external nature, has placed before man, wants, as it were, to enter into the center of the human being. And man becomes aware of this inner volition, speaks of it as his self, as his ego. And so Fichte felt himself to be at rest with his self, but at the same time, in this rest, extremely moved in the creative will of the world. From this he then draws the strength that he has applied throughout his life. From this he also draws the strength to regard all that is external and sensual, as he says, as a mere materialized tool for the duty of the human being that pulsates in his will. Thus, for Fichte, the truly spiritual is what flows into the human soul as volition. For him, the external world is the sensitized material of duty. And so we see him, how he wants to point out to people again and again throughout his life, to the source, to the living source of their own inner being. In the Fichte lecture, I pointed out how Fichte stood before his audience, for example in Jena, and tried to touch each individual listener in their soul, so that they would become aware of how the All-Creative lives spiritually within. So he said to his listeners: “Imagine the wall!” Then the listeners looked at the wall and could think the wall. After they had thought the wall for a while, he said: “Now think of the one who thought the wall.” At first the listeners were somewhat perplexed. They were to grasp inwardly, spiritually, each within themselves. But at the same time, it was the way to point each individual to his own self, to point out to him that he can only grasp the world if he finds himself in his deepest inner being and there discovers how what the world wills flows into him and what rises in his own will as the source of his own being. Above all, one sees (and I do not wish to repeat myself today with regard to the lecture I gave here in December) how Fichte lives a world view of power. Therefore, those who listened to him — and many spoke in a similar way — could say: His words rushed “like a thunderstorm that discharges its fire in individual strikes”. And Fichte, by directly grasping the soul, wanted to bring the divine spiritual will that permeates the world, not just good will, to the soul; he wanted to educate great people. And so he lived in a living together of his soul with the world soul and regarded this precisely as the result of a dialogue with the German national spirit, and it was out of this consciousness that he found those powerful words with which he encouraged and strengthened his people in one of Germany's most difficult times. It was precisely out of this consciousness that he found the power to work as he was able to do in the “Speeches to the German Nation,” inspiring his people to a great extent. Like Fichte's follower, Schelling stands there, especially in his best pages, one could say, like Fichte, more or less forgotten. If Fichte stands more as the man who wants to grasp the will, the will of the world, and let the will of the world roll forth in his own words, if this Fichte stands as the man who, so to speak, commands the concepts and ideas, then Schelling stands before us as he stood before his enthusiastic audiences – and there were many such, I myself knew people who knew the aged Schelling very well – he stands before us, not like Fichte, the commander of the world view, he stands before us as the seer, from whose eyes sparkled what he had to communicate enthusiastically in words about nature and spirit. He stood before his audience in Jena in the 1790s, at what was then the center of learning for the German people. He stood in Munich and Erlangen and Berlin in the 1840s. Everywhere he went, he radiated something of a seer, as if he were surrounded by spirituality and spoke from the realm of the spiritual. To give you an idea of how such a figure stood in the former heyday of German intellectual life in front of people who had a sense for it, I would like to bring you some words about the lecture, which were written down by an audience member, by a loyal audience member because he met Schelling again and again: Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert. I would like to read to you the words that Schubert wrote about the way Schelling stood before his audience, “already as a young man among young men,” back in the 1790s in Jena. About this, Schubert, who was himself a deeply spiritual person, writes of a person who has wonderfully immersed himself in the secrets of nature, who tried to follow the mysterious weaving of the human soul into the dream world and into the abnormal phenomena of mental life, but who was also able to ascend to the highest heights of human intellectual life. This Schubert writes about Schelling: “What was it that drew young people and mature men alike, from far and near, to Schelling's lectures with such power? Was it only the personality of the man or the peculiar charm of his oral presentation, in which lay this attractive power?” Schubert believes that it was not only that, but rather: ”In his lively words lay a compelling power, which, wherever it met with even a little receptivity, none of the young souls could resist. It would be difficult to make a reader of our time – in 1854 Schubert was already an old man when he wrote this – who was not, like me, a young and compassionate listener, understand how it often felt to me when Schelling spoke to us, as if I were reading or hearing Dante, the seer of a world beyond that was only open to the consecrated eye. The mighty content, which lay in his speech, as if measured with mathematical precision in the lapidary style, appeared to me like a bound Prometheus, whose bonds to dissolve and from whose hand to receive the unquenchable fire is the task of the understanding mind.” But then Schubert continues: “But neither the personality nor the invigorating power of the oral communication alone could have been the reason for the interest in and excitement about Schelling's philosophy, which soon after it was made public through writings, in a way that no other literary phenomenon has been able to do in a similar way before or since. In matters of sense-perceptible things or natural phenomena, one will at once recognize a teacher or writer who speaks from his own observation and experience, and one who merely repeats what he has heard from others, or even has invented from his own self-made ideas. Only what I have seen and experienced myself is certain for me; I can speak of it with conviction, which is also communicated to others in a victorious way. The same applies to inner experience as to outer experience. There is a reality of a higher kind, the existence of which the recognizing spirit in us can experience with the same certainty and certainty as our body experiences the existence of outer, visible nature through its senses. This reality of corporeal things presents itself to our perceptive senses as an act of the same creative power by which our physical nature has come into being. The being of visibility is just as much a real fact as the being of the perceiving sense. The reality of the higher kind has also approached the cognizing spirit in us as a spiritual-corporeal fact. He will become aware of it when his own knowledge elevates itself to an acknowledgment of that from which he is known and from which, according to uniform order, the reality of both physical and spiritual becoming emerges. And that realization of a spiritual, divine reality in which we ourselves live and move and have our being is the highest gain of earthly life and of the search for wisdom... Even in my time,” Schubert continues, ‘there were young men among those who heard him who sensed what he meant by the intellectual contemplation through which our spirit must grasp the infinite source of all being and becoming.’Two things stand out in these words of the deep and spirited Schubert. The first is that he felt - and we know that it was the same with others who heard Schelling - that this man speaks from direct spiritual experience, he shapes his words by looking into a spiritual world and thus shapes a wisdom from direct spiritual experience that deals with this spiritual world. That is the significance, the infinitely significant thing about this great period of German idealism, that countless people then standing on the outside of life heard personalities such as Fichte, such as Schelling and, as we shall see in a moment, Hegel, and from the words of these personalities heard the spirit speak, looked into the realm of these geniuses of the German people. Anyone who is familiar with the intellectual history of humanity knows that such a relationship between the spirit and the age existed only within the German people and could only exist within the German people because of the nature of the German people. This is a special result that is deeply rooted in the very foundations of the German character. That is one thing that can be seen from this. The other thing is that, in this period, people were formed who, like Schubert, were able to ignite their own relationship to the spiritual world through these great, significant, impressive personalities. From such a state of soul, Schelling developed a thinking about nature and a thinking about soul and spirit that, one might say, bore the character of the most intimate life, but also bore the character of which one might say shows how man is prepared, with his soul, to descend into all being and, in all being, first of all into nature, and then into the spirit, to seek life, the direct life. Under the influence of this way of thinking, knowledge becomes something very special: knowledge becomes inner experience, becoming part of the experience of things. I have said it again and again: It is not important to place oneself today in some dogmatic way on the ground of what these spirits have said in terms of content. One does not even have to agree with what they said in terms of content. What matters is the way of striving, the way in which they seek the paths into the spiritual world. Schelling felt so intimately connected — even if he expressed it one-sidedly — with what lives and moves in nature that he could once utter the saying, “To know nature is to create nature.” Certainly, in the face of such a saying, the shallow superficial will always be right in comparison to the genius who, like Schelling, utters such a saying from the depths of his being. Let us give the shallow superficialist the right, but let us be clear: even if nature can only be recreated in the human soul, in Schelling's saying, “To recognize nature is to create nature,” means an intimate interweaving of the whole human personality with natural existence. And for Schelling this becomes the one revelation of the divine-spiritual, and the soul of man the other revelation. They confront each other, they correspond to each other. The spirit first created itself in soulless nature, which gradually became ensouled from the plant kingdom to the animal kingdom and to man, as it were, creating the soil in which the soul can then flourish. The soul experiences the spiritual directly in itself, experiences it in direct reality. How different it appears, when rightly understood, from the spiritual knowledge of nature which is striven for as the outcome, let us say, of Romance popularism. In the development of the German spirit there is no need to descend to the level of tone which the enemies of Germany have now reached when they wish to characterize the relation of the German spiritual life to other spiritual lives in Europe. One can remain entirely on the ground of fact. Therefore, what is to be said now is not said out of narrow national feelings, but out of fact itself. Compare such a desire to penetrate nature, as present in Schelling, where nature is to be grasped in such a way that the soul's own life is submerged in that which lives and moves outside. Compare this with what is characteristic of the Western world view, which reached its highest level with Descartes, Cartesius, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but has been continued into our days and is just as characteristic of Western culture as Fichte's and Schelling's striving is for German culture. Like Fichte and Schelling later on, Cartesius also takes up a position in relation to the world of nature. He starts by taking the standpoint of doubt. He also seeks within himself a central point through which he can arrive at a certainty about the existence of the world and of life. His famous “Cogito, ergo sum” is well known: “I think, therefore I am.” What does he rely on? Not, like Fichte, on the living ego, from which one cannot take away its existence, because it is continually creating itself out of the world-will. He relies on thinking, which is supposed to be there already, on that which already lives in man: I think, therefore I am — which can easily be refuted with every night's sleep of man, because one can just as well say: I do not think, therefore I am not. Nothing fruitful follows from Descartes' “I think, therefore I am”. But how little this world view is suited to submerging into nature with one's own soul essence can best be seen from a single external characteristic. Descartes tried to characterize the nature surrounding the soul. And he himself sought to address the animals as moving machines, as soulless machines. Only man himself, he thought, could speak of himself as if he had a soul. The animals are moving machines, are soulless machines. So little is the soul out of this folklore placed in the possibility of immersing itself in the inner life of the external thing that it cannot find inspiration within the animal world. No wonder that this continued until the materialism of the eighteenth century and continued - as we will mention today - until our own days, as in that materialism of the eighteenth century, in that material ism that conceived of the whole world only as a mechanism, and which finally realized, especially in de Lamettrie in his book “L'homme-machine”, even came to understand man himself only as a moving machine. All this is already present in germinal form in Cartesius. Goethe, out of his German consciousness, became acquainted with this Western world view, and he spoke out of his German consciousness: They offer us a world of moving atoms that push and pull each other. If they then at least wanted to derive the manifold, the beautiful, the great, the sublime phenomena of the world from these atoms that push and pull each other. But after they have presented this bleak, desolate image of the world, they let it be presented and do nothing to show how the world emerges from these accumulations of atoms. The third thinker who should be mentioned among those minds that, as it were, form the background of the world view from which everything that the German mind has achieved in that time through Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and so on has sprung, is Hegel. In him we see the third aspect of the German mind embodied at the same time. In him we see a third way of finding the point in the soul through which this human soul can feel directly one with the whole world, with that which, in a divine-spiritual way, pulses, weaves and permeates the world. If in Fichte we see the will grasping directly in the innermost part of man, and in Schelling, I might say, the mind, then in Hegel we see the human thought grasped. But in that Hegel attempts to grasp the thought not merely as human, but in its purity, detached from all sensual sensations and perceptions, directly in the soul, Hegel feels as if, in living in the living and breathing and becoming of pure thought, he also lives in the thought that not only lives in the soul, but that is only meant to appear in the soul, because it reveals itself in it, as divine-spiritual thinking permeating all of the world. Just as the divine spiritual beings scatter their thoughts throughout the world, as it were, thinking the world and continually fashioning it in thought, so it is revealed when the thinker, alone with himself, gives rise to pure thinking, thinking that is not borrowed from the external world of the senses but that the human being finds as thinking that springs up within him when he gives himself to his inner being. Basically, what Hegel wants, if one may say so, is a mystical will. But it is not an unclear, dark or nebulous mysticism. The dark, unclear or nebulous mysticism wants to unite with the world ground in the darkest feelings possible. Hegel also wants the soul to unite with the ground of the world, but he seeks this in crystal clarity, in the transparency of thinking; he seeks it in inner experience, he seeks it in the world of thoughts. In perfect clarity, he seeks for the soul that which is otherwise only believed in unclear mysticism. All this shows how these three important minds are endeavoring from three different sides to bring the human soul to experience the totality of reality by devotion to the totality of reality, how they are convinced that something can be found in the soul that experiences the world in its depths and thus yields a satisfying world view. Fichte speaks to his Berlin students in 1811 and 1813 about attaining such a world picture in such a way that it is clear that he is well aware that one must strive for certain powers of knowledge that lie dormant in the soul. Fichte then says to his Berlin students in the years mentioned: If one really wants to have that which must be striven for in order to truly and inwardly grasp the world spiritually, then it is necessary that the human being finds and awakens a slumbering sense, a new sense, a new sense organ, within himself. Just as the eye is formed in the physical body, so a new sense organ must be developed out of the soul in Fichte's sense, if we are to look into the spiritual world. That is why Fichte boldly says to his listeners in these years, when, as far as he could achieve it in his relatively short life, his world view has reached the highest peak: What I have to say to you is like a single seeing person entering a world of blind people. What he has to say to them about the world of light, the world of colors, initially affects them, and at first they will say it is nonsense because they cannot sense anything. And Schelling - we can already see it in the saying that Schubert made about him - has drawn attention to intellectual intuition. What he coined in his words, for which he coined a wisdom, he sought to explore in the world by developing the organ within him into an “intellectual intuition”. From this intellectual intuition, Schelling speaks in such a way that he could have the effect that has just been characterized. From his point of view, Hegel then opposed this intellectual view. He believed that to assert this intellectual view was to characterize individual exceptional people, people who, through a higher disposition, had become capable of looking into the spiritual world. Hegel, on the contrary, was thoroughly convinced that every human being is capable of looking into the spiritual world, and he wanted to emphasize this thoroughly. Thus these minds were opposed to each other not only in the content of what they said, but they were also opposed to each other in such profound views. But that is not the point, but rather the fact that they all basically strive for what can truly be called spiritual science: the experience of the world through that which sits in the deepest part of man. And in this they are united with the greatest spirit who created out of German folkhood, with Goethe, as Fichte, Hegel and Schelling have often said. Goethe speaks of this contemplative power of judgment in a beautiful little essay entitled “Contemplative Power of Judgment”. What does Goethe mean by this contemplative power of judgment? The senses initially observe the external physical world. The mind combines what this external physical world presents to it. When the senses observe the external physical world, they do not see the essence of things, says Goethe; this must be observed spiritually. In this process, the power of judgment must not merely combine; the concepts and ideas that arise must not merely arise in such a way that they seek to depict something else; something of the world spirit itself must live in the power that forms concepts and ideas. The power of judgment must not merely think; the power of judgment must look at, look spiritually, as the senses otherwise look. Goethe is completely at one with those who have, as it were, provided the background for the world view, just as they feel at one with him. Just as Fichte, for example, when he published the first edition of his seemingly so abstract Theory of Science, sent it to Goethe in sheets and wrote to him: “The pure spirituality of feeling that one sees in you must also be the touchstone for what we create. A wonderful relationship of a spiritual kind exists between the three world-view personalities mentioned and minds such as Goethe; we could also cite Schiller, we could also cite Herder, we could cite them all, who in such great times drew directly from the depths of German national character. It must be said that all that was created in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and in the others, contains something that is not fully expressed in any of them: Fichte seeks to recognize the spiritual world by experiencing the will as it flows into the soul; Schelling turns more to the mind, Hegel to the thought content of the world, others to other things. Above all of them, as it were, like the unity that expresses itself in three or so many different ways, hovers that which one can truly call the striving of the German national spirit itself, which cannot be fully expressed by any single personality, but which expresses itself as in three shades, for example, in relation to a world view in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Those who do not stand as dogmatic followers or opponents to these personalities – one could be beyond such childishness today, that one wants to be a follower or opponent of a spirit if one wants to understand it in its greatness – but have a heart and a mind and an open feeling for their striving, will discern everywhere, in all their expressions, something like the German national soul itself, so that what they say is always more powerful than what is directly expressed. That is the strange and mysterious thing about these minds. And that is why later, far less important personalities than these great, ingenious ones, were even able to arrive at more significant, more penetrating spiritual truths than these leading and dominant minds themselves. That is the significant thing: through these minds something is expressed that is more than these minds, that is the central German national spirit itself, which continues to work, so that lesser minds, far less talented minds, could come, and in these far less talented minds the same spirit is expressed, but even in a more spiritual scientific way than in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel themselves. They were the ones who first, I might say, set the tone and for the first time communicated something to the world, drawing it from the source of spiritual life. Even for geniuses, this is difficult. But once the great, powerful stimulus had been provided, lesser minds followed. And it must be said that these lesser minds in some cases captured the path into the spiritual worlds even more profoundly and meaningfully than those on whom they depended, who were their teachers. Thus we see in Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, how he strives in his own way for a spiritual science, and in such a way that he seeks a higher human being in the sensual human being who stands before us, who is grasped by the outer senses and outer science , whom he calls an etheric human being, and in whom lie the formative forces for this physical human being, which are built up before the physical body receives its hereditary substance from the parents, and which are maintained as the sum of the formative forces when the physical body passes through the gate of death. Immanuel Hermann Fichte speaks of an ethereal human being, of an ethereal human being who is inwardly strengthened and filled with strength, who belongs to the eternal forces of the universe just as the human being here belongs to the physical forces of the hereditary current as a physical human being, probably because of his association with his father, who was a good educator for him. And one would like to say: How carried to higher heights we find the Fichtean, the Schellingian striving in a man who has become little known, who almost belongs to the forgotten spirits of German intellectual life, but in whom is deeply rooted precisely what is the essence of the German national spirit - in Troxler. Troxler - who knows Troxler? And yet, what do we know of this Troxler? Under the influence of Schelling, in particular, he wrote his profound > Blicke in das Wesen des Menschen in 1811 and then gave his lectures on philosophy in 1834. These lectures are certainly not written in a piquant way, to use the foreign word for something foreign, but they are written in such a way that they show us: A person is speaking who does not just want to approach the world with the intellect, with which one can only grasp the finite, but one who wants to give the whole personality of the human being with all its powers to the world, so that this personality, when it immerses itself in the world's phenomena, brings with it a knowledge that is fertilized by the co-experience, by the most intimate co-experience with the being of the world. And Troxler knows something about the fact that among those powers of the soul that are initially turned towards external nature and its sensuality, higher spiritual powers live. And in a strange way, Troxler now seeks to elevate the spirit above itself. He speaks of a super-spiritual sense that can be awakened in man, of a super-spiritual sense that slumbers in man. What does Troxler mean by that? He means: The human spirit otherwise thinks only in abstract concepts and ideas that are dry and empty, mere images of the external world; but in the same force that lives in these abstract concepts and ideas, there also lives something that can be awakened by man as a spiritual being. Then he sees in supersensible images the way one can see external reality with the eyes. In ordinary cognition, the sensory image is present first, and the thought, which is not sensory-pictorial, is added in the process of cognition. In the spiritual process of cognition, the supersensible experience is present; this could not be seen as such if it did not pour itself through a power that is natural to the spirit into the image, which brings it to a spiritual-descriptive sensualization. For Troxler, such knowledge is that of the super-spiritual sense. And what this super-spiritual sense bypasses, Troxler calls the supersensible spirit, the spirit that rises above mere observation of the sensual, and which, as spirit, experiences what is out there in the world. How could I fail to mention to those esteemed listeners who heard a lecture like the one I gave on Friday two weeks ago that in this supersensible sense and supersensible spirit of Troxler, the germs — if only the germs, but nevertheless the germs — lie in what I had to characterize as the two paths into spiritual science, But there is another way in which Troxler expresses it wonderfully. He says: When the human being is first placed in his physical body with his soul, with his eternal self, when he stands face to face with the moral, the religious, but also with the outer, immediate reality, then he develops three forces: faith, hope and love. These three forces, which he continues to develop, he develops in life within the physical-sensual body. It simply belongs to the human being, as he stands in the physical-sensual world, that he lives in faith, in love, in hope. But Troxler says: That which is proper to the soul of man here within the physical body as faith, as justified belief, is, so to speak, the outer expression of a deeper power that is within the soul, which, through this faith, shines into the physical world as a divine power. But behind this power of faith, which, in order to unfold, absolutely requires the physical body, lies supersensible hearing. This means that faith is, in a sense, what a person makes out of supersensible hearing. By making use of the sensory instrument for supersensible hearing, he believes. But if he frees himself from his sensory body and experiences himself in the soul, then the same power that becomes faith in the sensory life gives him supersensible hearing, through which he can delve into a world of spiritual sound phenomena through which spiritual entities and spiritual facts speak to him. And the love that a person develops here in the physical body, which is the flowering of human life on earth, is the outer expression of a power that lies behind it: for spiritual feeling or touching, says Troxler. And when a person delves deeper into this same power, which lives here as the blossom of the moral earthly existence, of the religious earthly existence, when he delves deeper into this love, when he goes to the foundations of this love, then he discovers within himself that the spiritual man has organs of feeling through which he can touch spiritual beings and spiritual facts just as he can touch physical facts with his sensory organs of feeling or touching. Behind love lies spiritual feeling or touching, as behind faith lies spiritual hearing. And behind the hope that a person has in this or that form lies spiritual vision, the insight through the spiritual sense of seeing into the spiritual world. Thus, behind what a person experiences as the power of faith, love and hope, Troxler sees only the outer expression of higher powers: for spiritual hearing, for spiritual feeling, for spiritual beholding or seeing. And then he says: When a person can give himself to the world in such a way that he gives himself with his spiritual hearing, spiritual feeling, spiritual seeing, then not only do thoughts come to life in him that so externally and abstractly reflect the external world, but, as Tro “sensible thoughts”, thoughts that can be felt themselves, that is, that are living beings, and ‘intelligent feelings’, that is, not just dark feelings in which one feels one's own existence in the world, but something through which the feelings themselves become intelligent. We know from the lecture just mentioned that it is actually the will, not the feelings; but in Troxler there is definitely the germ of everything that can be presented in spiritual science today. When a person awakens to this seeing, to this hearing and sensing of the spiritual world, when in this feeling a life of thought awakens through which the person can connect with the living thought that weaves and lives in the spiritual world, just as thought lives in us essentially, not just abstractly. Troxler feels his striving for spiritual science so deeply. And I would like to read a passage from Troxler from which you can see just how profound this striving was for Troxler. He once said: "In the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body, or assumed that the soul was a kind of covering for the face within this body, that the soul had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and that the soul was the higher inner man... In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously dreams, in jest, an entire inward, spiritual man who carries all the limbs of the outward on his spirit body." Troxler then draws attention to others who have more or less sensed this other side of the nature of the world from the depths of German spiritual endeavor. Troxler continues: "Lavater writes and thinks in the same way, and even when Jean Paul makes humorous jokes about Bonnet's undergarment and Platner's soul corset, which are said to be , we also hear him asking: What is the purpose and origin of these extraordinary talents and desires within us, which, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cut our earthly shell? Why was I stuck to this dirty lump of earth, a creature with useless wings of light, when I was supposed to rot back into the birth clod without ever wriggling free with ethereal wings?" Troxler draws attention to such currents in German intellectual life. And then he comes up with the idea that a special science could now arise from this, a science that is a science but that has something in common with poetry, for example, in that it arises from the human soul, in that not a single power of the soul, but the whole human soul, surrenders itself in order to experience the world together with others. If you look at people from the outside, Troxler says, you get to know anthropology. Anthropology is what arises when you examine with the senses and with the mind what the human being presents and what is revealed in the human being. But with this one does not find the full essence of the human being. What Troxler calls in the characterized sense, spiritual hearing, spiritual feeling, spiritual seeing, what he calls supersensible spirit, superspiritual sense, that is part of it, in order to see something higher in the human being. A science stands before his soul, which does not arise out of the senses, not out of mere intellect, but out of this higher faculty of knowledge in the human being. And Troxler speaks very characteristically about this science in the following way. He says - Troxler's following words were written in 1835 -: "If it is highly gratifying that the newest philosophy, which we have long recognized as the one that founds all living religion and must reveal itself in every anthroposophy, thus in poetry as well as in history, is now making headway, it cannot be overlooked, that this idea cannot be a true fruit of speculation, and that the true personality or individuality of man must not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it confronts with as absolute spirit or absolute personality. In the 1830s, Troxler became aware of the idea of anthroposophy, a science that seeks to be a spiritual science based on human power in the truest sense of the word. Spiritual science can, if it is able to correctly understand the germs that come from the continuous flow of German intellectual life, say: Among Western peoples, for example, something comparable to spiritual science, something comparable to anthroposophy, can indeed arise; but there it will always arise in such a way that it runs alongside the continuous stream of the world view, alongside what is there science, and therefore very, very easily becomes a sect or a sectarianism. , but it will always arise in such a way that it runs alongside the continuous stream of world view, alongside what is science there, and therefore very, very easily tends towards sectarianism or dilettantism. In German spiritual life — and in this respect German spiritual life stands alone — spiritual science arises as something that naturally emerges from the deepest impulses, from the deepest forces of this German spiritual life. Even when this German spiritual life becomes scientific with regard to the spiritual world and develops a striving for spiritual knowledge, the seeds of what must become spiritual science already lie in this striving. Therefore, we never see what flows through German intellectual life in this way die away. Or is it not almost wonderful that in 1856 a little book was published by a pastor from Waldeck? He was a pastor in Sachsenberg in Waldeck. In this little book – as I said, the content is not important, but the striving – an attempt is made, in a way that is completely opposed to Hegel, to find something for the human soul, through which this human soul, by awakening the power slumbering in it, can join the whole lofty awakening spiritual world. And this is admirably shown by the simple pastor Rocholl in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck in his little book: 'Contributions to the History of German Theosophy' — a small booklet, but full of real inner spiritual life, of a spiritual life in which one can see that one who has sought it in his solitude finds everywhere the possibility of rising from the lonely inner experience of the soul to broad views of the world that are hidden behind the sensual one and yet always carry this sensual one, so that one has only one side of the world when one looks at this sensual life. One does not know what one should admire first in such a little book, which must certainly make a fantastic impression today – but that is not the point; whether one should admire more the fact that the simple country pastor found his way into the deepest depths of spiritual endeavor, or whether one should admire the foundations of the continuous flow of German intellectual life, which can produce such blossoms even in the simplest person. And if we had time, I could give you hundreds and hundreds of examples from which you would see how, admittedly not in the field of outwardly recognized, but more in the field of forgotten spiritual tones, but nevertheless vividly surviving spiritual tones, are present everywhere in such people who carry forward to our days what can be called a spiritual-scientific striving within the development of German thought. As early as the first edition of my World and Life Views, which appeared more than a year and a half ago under the title of Riddles of Philosophy, I called attention to a little-known thinker, Karl Christian Planck. But what good did it do to call attention to such spirits, at least initially? Such spirits are more tangible as an expression, as a revelation of what is now alive, what is not expressed in the scientific activity in question, but nevertheless supports and sustains this scientific activity in many ways. Such spirits arise precisely from the deepest depths of the German character, of which Karl Christian Planck is one. Planck has written a book entitled 'Truth and shallowness of Darwinism', a very important book. He has also written a book about the knowledge of nature. I will mention only the following from this book, although basically every page is interesting: When people talk about the earth today, they talk, I would say, in a geological sense. The earth is a mineral body to them, and man walks on it as an alien being. For Planck, the Earth, with everything that grows on it and including man, is a great spiritual-soul organism, and man belongs to it. One has simply not understood the Earth if one has not shown how, in the whole organism of the Earth, the physical human being must be present in that his soul is outwardly embodied. The earth is seen as a whole, all its forces, from the most physical to the most spiritual, are grasped as a unity. Planck wants to establish a unified world picture, which is spiritual, to use Goethe's expression. But Planck is aware – in this respect he is one of the most characteristic thinkers of the nineteenth century – of how what he is able to create really does emerge from the very depths of the German national spirit. He expresses this in the following beautiful words in his essay 'Grundlinien einer Wissenschaft der Natur' (Foundations of a Science of Nature), which appeared in 1864: “He is fully aware of the power of deeply rooted prejudices against his writing, stemming from previous views. But just as the work itself, despite all the unfavorable circumstances that arose from the author's overall situation and professional position,” namely, he was a simple high school teacher, not a university professor — “a work of this kind was opposed, but its realization and its way into the public has fought, then he is also certain that what must now first fight for its recognition will appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German views of nature and spirit. What our medieval poetry has already unconsciously and profoundly foreshadowed will finally be fulfilled in our nation in the maturity of the times. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit, which has been afflicted with harm and ridicule (as Wolfram von Eschenbach describes it in his “Parzival”)” - this was written in 1864, long before Wagner's ‘Parsifal’! “Finally, in the strength of its unceasing striving, it attains the highest, it gets to the bottom of the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what poetry has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the mastery of which is attained by its hero, conversely receives its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the lasting knowledge of nature and of spirit itself. Thus speaks he who then gave the summary of his world picture under the title “The Will of a German”, in which an attempt is really made, again at a higher level than was possible for Schelling, to penetrate nature and spirit. In 1912, this “The Will of a German” was published in a new edition. I do not think that many people have studied it. Those who deal with such things professionally had other things to do: the books by Bergson, by that Bergson — his name is still Bergson! who has used the present time not only to revile but also to slander in the truest sense what has emerged from German intellectual life; who has managed to describe the entire current intellectual culture of the Germans as mechanistic. I have said here before: when he wrote that the Germans have descended from the heights on which they stood under Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Schelling and Hegel, and that now they are creating a mechanical culture, he probably believed that the Germans, when they march up with cannons, would declaim Novalis or Goethe's poems to their opponents! But from the fact that he now only sees—or probably does not see—guns and rifles, he makes German culture into a completely mechanistic one. Now, just as the other things I have been saying during this period have been said again and again in the years before the war, and also to members of other nations – so that they must not be understood as having been prompted by the situation of war – I tried to present Bergson's philosophy in the book that was completed at the beginning of the war, the second edition of my “Weltund Lebensanschauungen” (World and Life Views). And in the same book I pointed out how, I might say, one of the most brilliant ideas in Bergson's work, infinitely greater, more incisive and profound — here again we have such a forgotten 'tone of German intellectual life' — had already appeared in 1882 in the little-known Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss. At one point in his books, Bergson draws attention to the fact that when considering the world, one should not start with the mineral kingdom and then the plant and animal kingdoms, and only then include man in them, but rather start with man; how man is the is original and the other entities in the continuous flow, in which he developed while he was the first, has rejected the less perfect, so that the other natural kingdoms have developed out of the human kingdom. In my book Rätseln der Philosophie (Mysteries of Philosophy), I pointed out how the lonely, deep thinker, but also energetic and powerful thinker, Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, in his book Geist und Stoff (Mind and Matter), and basically in fact, even earlier than 1882, this idea in a powerful, courageous way, - the idea that one cannot get along with Darwinism understood in a purely Western sense, but that one has to imagine: if you go back in the world, you first have the human being. The human being is the original, and as the human being develops further, he expels certain entities, first the animals, then the plants, then the minerals. That is the reverse course of development. I cannot go into this in detail today – I have even dealt with this idea several times in lectures from previous years – but I would like to mention today that this spiritual worldview is fully represented in the German spiritual movement of the 1880s in the book by Preuss, 'Geist und Stoff' (Spirit and Matter). I would like to read to you a key passage from my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” so that you can see how a powerful world view, which is part of the whole current that I have characterized for you today, flows into the spiritual life of humanity in weighty words. Preuss says: “It may be time to establish a doctrine of the origin of organic species that is not only based on one-sidedly formulated propositions from descriptive natural science, but is also in full agreement with the other laws of nature, which are at the same time the laws of human thought. A doctrine, at the same time, that is free of any hypotheses and is based only on strict conclusions from scientific observations in the broadest sense; a doctrine that rescues the concept of species according to actual possibility, but at the same time adopts the concept of evolution as proposed by Darwin and seeks to make it fruitful in its realm.The center of this new doctrine is man, the only species on our planet that recurs: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the older observers started with natural objects and then went so astray that they could not find the way to man, which Darwin only managed in the most miserable and thoroughly unsatisfactory way by seeking the progenitor of the Lord of Creation among the animals, while the naturalist should start with himself as a human being, and thus gradually return to humanity through the whole realm of being and thinking! It was not by chance that human nature emerged from the evolution of all earthly things, but by necessity. Man is the goal of all telluric processes, and every other form emerging alongside him has borrowed its traits from his. Man is the first-born being of the whole cosmos... When his germs had emerged, the remaining organic residue no longer had the necessary strength to produce further human germs. What emerged was animal or plant... In 1882, what the human soul can experience spiritually, presented within German intellectual life! Then Bergson comes along and by no means presents the thought in such a powerful, penetrating way, connected with the innermost life of the soul, but, one might say, in a slightly pursed, mincing, more and more indeterminate way. And people are overwhelmed by Bergson and do not want to know about Preuss. And Bergson apparently knows nothing about Preuss. But that is about as bad for someone who writes about worldviews as it would be if he knew about it and did not say anything. But we do not want to examine whether Bergson knew and did not say, or whether he did not know, now that it has been sufficiently proven that Bergson not only borrowed ideas from Schopenhauer and expressed them in his own words, but also took ideas from the entire philosophy of German idealism, for example Schelling and Fichte, and seems to consider himself their creator. It is indeed a special method of characterizing the relationship of one people to another, as Bergson now continually does to his French counterparts, by presenting German science and German knowledge as something particularly mechanical, after he has previously endeavored - which is probably not a very mechanical activity - to describe these German world-view personalities over pages. After a while, one realizes that Bergson could have kept silent altogether if he had not built his world view on the foundations of the German world view personalities, which is basically nothing more than a Cartesian mechanism, the mechanism of the eighteenth century, warmed up by a somewhat romantically understood Schellingianism and Schopenhauerianism. As I said, one must characterize things appropriately; for it must be clear to our minds that when we speak of the relationship of the German character in the overall development of humanity, we do not need to adopt the same method of disparaging other nationalities that is so thoroughly used by our opponents today. The German is in a position to point out the facts, and he will now also gain strength from the difficult trials of the present time to delve into the German soul, where he has not yet succeeded. The forgotten sides of the striving for spiritual science will be remembered again. I may say this again and again, after having endeavored for more than thirty years to emphasize another side of the forgotten striving of German knowledge. From what has emerged entirely from the British essence of knowing directed only at the outside world, we have the so-called Newtonian color theory. And the power of the British essence, not only externally but also internally, spiritually, is so great that this Newtonian color theory has taken hold of all minds that think about such things. Only Goethe, out of that nature which can be won from German nationality, has rebelled against Newton's theory of colours in the physical field. Certainly, Newton's theory of colours is, I might say, in one particular chapter, what de Lamettrie's L'Homme-Machine can be for all shallow superficial people in the world. Only the case with the theory of colours is particularly tragic. For 35 years, as I said, I have been trying to show the full significance of Goethe's Theory of Colours, the whole struggle of the German world-view, as it appears in Goethe with regard to the world of colour, against the mechanistic view rooted in British folklore with Newton. The chapter 'Goethe versus Newton' will also come into its own when that which lives on in a living, active way, even if not always consciously, comes more and more to the fore and can be seen by anyone who wants to see. And it will come to the fore, precisely as a result of the trials of our time, the most intimate awareness of the German of the depth of his striving for knowledge. It is almost taken for granted, and therefore as easy to grasp as all superficially taken for granted things, when people today say: science is of course international. The moon is also international! Nevertheless, what individuals have to say about the moon is not at all international. When Goethe traveled, he wrote back to his German friends: “After what I have seen of plants and fish near Naples and in Sicily, I would be very tempted, if I were ten years younger, to make a journey to India, not to discover anything new, but to look at what has been discovered in my way.” Of course, science is international. It is not easy to refute the corresponding statements, because they are self-evident, as everything superficial is self-evident. But as I said, it is also international like the moon. But what the individual nations have to say about what is international from the depths, from the roots of their national character, that is what is significant and also what is effective in furthering the development of humanity from the way in which the character of each individual nation relates to what can be recognized internationally. That is what matters. To this day, however, it cannot be said that precisely that which, in the deepest sense, represents the German character has made a significant impression on the path of knowledge in the period that followed. Within the German character itself, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel initially had such a great effect that posterity was stunned and that it initially produced only one or the other, one or the other side, that even un-German materialism was able to gain a foothold within the German spiritual life. But it is particularly instructive to see how that which is primordially German works in other nationalities when it is absorbed into them. And Schelling, for example, is primordially German. Schelling has had a great effect, for example within Russian spiritual life. Within Russian spiritual life, we see how Schelling is received, how his powerful views of nature, but especially of history – the Russian has little sense of the view of nature – are received. But we also see how precisely the essentials, what matters, cannot be understood at all in the east of Europe. Yes, it is particularly interesting – and you can read more about this in my writing “Thoughts During the Time of War” – how this eastern part of Europe in the nineteenth century gradually developed a complete rejection of precisely the intellectual life not only of Central Europe, but even of Western Europe. And one gets an impression of German intellectual life when one sees how this essential, which I have tried to bring out today, this living with the soul in the development of nature and the spirit, cannot be understood in the East, where things are accepted externally. In the course of the nineteenth century, consciousness has swollen terribly in the East, especially among intellectuals – not among the peasants, of course, who know little about war even when they are waging it. The intellectual life of the East is, however, a strange matter. I have already explained it: Slavophilism appears in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the 1830s, precisely fertilized by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel; but it appears in such a way that Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are only taken superficially , quite superficially, so that one has no inkling of how Fichte, Schelling and Hegel — the tools of the will, of the soul, of thinking — actually live objectively together with what outwardly interweaves and lives through the world. And so it could come about that this Russian element, which in terms of its sense of knowledge still lived deeply in medieval feeling, took up Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in such a way that an almost megalomaniacal view of the nineteenth century, which in literary and epistemological terms is really a kind of realization of Peter the Great's Political Testament, whether falsified or not. What did they know about the German world view over there! In one of my recent lectures, I showed how Goethe's “Faust” truly grows out of what we, once again, can allow to affect our souls as a German world view. But we have only to hear Pissarew — who as a Russian spirit is deeply influenced by Goethe — speak about Goethe's Faust, and we shall see how it is impossible not to understand what is most characteristic and most essential to the German national soul. Pissarew says, for example: “The small thoughts and the small feelings had to be made into pearls of creation” - in “Faust he means the small thoughts, the human feelings that only concern people! “Goethe accomplished this feat, and similar feats are still considered the greatest victory of art; but such hocus-pocus is done not only in the sphere of art, but also in all other spheres of human activity." It is an interesting chapter in the history of ideas that in the case of minds such as Ivan Vasilyevich Kireevsky or Khomyakov, for example, precisely that which lives great and significant as inwardness, but as clear inwardness, dark and nebulous sentimentalism, has continued to live in such minds and we could cite a long line right up to the present day, precisely from Russian ideological minds - how in this Russian ideological mind the conviction has generally formed: that which lives to the west of us is an aged culture, a culture that has outlived itself; it is ripe for extinction. The Russian essence is there, that must replace what is in Central Europe and they also meant Western Europe in the nineteenth century, especially England - what is in England. This is not something I have picked out at one point or another, but it is a consistent feature of Russian intellectual life, which characterizes those who matter, who set the tone. In Kireyevsky's work, this intensifies around 1829 to a saying that I will read in a moment, and one will see from such a saying that what is heard today from the East did not just arise today, but that it is deeply rooted in what has gradually accumulated in this East. But before that, I want to cite something else. The whole thing starts with Slavophilism, with a seemingly scientific and theoretical focus on the importance of the Russian people, who must replace an old and decrepit Europe, degenerating into nothing but abstract concepts and cold utilitarian ideas. Yes, as I said, this is something that is found again and again in Russian intellectual life. But where does this Slavophilism actually come from? How did these people in the East become aware of what they later repeated in all its variations: the people in Central and Western Europe have become depraved, are decrepit; they have managed to eliminate all love, all feeling from the heart and to live only in the mind, which leads to war and hatred between the individual peoples. In the Russian Empire, love lives, peace lives, and so does a science that arises from love and peace. Where do these people get it from? From the German Weltanschauung they have it! Herder is basically the first Slavophile. Herder first expressed this, which was justified in his time, which is also justified when one looks at the depth of the national character, which truly has nothing to do with today's war and with all that has led to this war. But one can point out that which has led to the megalomania among the so-called intellectuals: We stand there in the East, everything over there is old, everything is decrepit, all of it must be exterminated, and in its place must come the world view of the East. Let us take to heart the words of Kirejewski. He says in 1829: “The fate of every European state depends on the union of all the others; the fate of Russia depends on Russia alone. But the fate of Russia is decided in its formation: this is the condition and source of all goods. As soon as all these goods will be ours, we will share them with the rest of Europe, and we will repay all our debts to it a hundredfold.” Here we have a leading man, a man repeatedly lionized by the very minds that have more often than not rejected the ongoing development of Russian intellectual life. Here we have it stated: Europe is ripe for destruction, and Russian culture must replace it. Russian culture contains everything that is guaranteed to last. Therefore, we are appropriating everything. And when we have everything, well then we will be benevolent, then we will share with the others in a corresponding manner. That is the literary program, already established in 1829 within Russian humanity by a spirit, in whose immaturity, in whose sentimentality even Fichte, Schelling and Hegel have worked. There is a remarkable conception in the East in general. Let me explain this in conclusion. For example, in 1885 an extraordinary book was published by Sergius Jushakow, an extraordinary book, as I said. Jushakow finds that Russia has a great task. In 1885, he finds this task even more directed towards Asia. Over there in Asia, he believes, live the descendants of the ancient Iranians – to which he also counts the Indians, the Persians – and the ancient Turanians. They have a long cultural life behind them, have brought it to what is evident in them today. In 1885, Yushakov said that Westerners had intervened in this long cultural life, intervening with what they could become from their basic feelings and from their worldview. But Russia must intervene in the right way. A strange Pan-Asiaticism, expressed by Yushakov in a thick book in 1885 as part of his program! He says: “These Asiatic peoples have presented their destiny in a beautiful myth—which is, however, true. There are the Iranian peoples over there who fought against Ahriman, as Jusakhov says, against the evil spirit Ahriman, who causes infertility and drought and immorality, everything that disturbs human culture. They joined forces with the good spirit Ormuzd, the god of light, the spirit that gives everything that promotes people. But after the Asians had received the blessings of Ormuzd within their spiritual life for a while, Ahriman became more powerful. But what did the European peoples of the West bring to the Asians, according to Jushakow? And that is quite interesting. Yushakov argues that the peoples of the West, with their cultural life, which in his view is degenerate and decrepit, have crossed over to Asia to the Indians and the Persians, and have taken from them everything that Ormuzd, the good Ormuzd, has fought for. That is what the peoples of the West were there for. Russia will now cross over to Asia – it is not I who say this, but the Russian Yushakov – because in Russia, rooted in a deep culture, is the alliance between the all-fertility-developing peasant and the all-chivalry-bearing — as I said, it is not I who say it, Yushakov says it — and from the alliance of the peasant and the Cossack, which will move into Asia, something else will arise than what the Western peoples have been able to bring to the Asians. The Western peoples have taken the Ormuzd culture from the Asians; but the Russians, that is, the peasants and the Cossacks, will join forces with poor Asia, which has been enslaved by the Westerners, and will fight with it against Ahriman and will unite completely with it. For what the Asians, under the leadership of Ormuzd, have acquired as a coming together with nature itself, the Russians will not take away from them, but will join with them to fight against Ahriman once more. And in 1885, this man describes in more detail how these Western peoples actually behaved towards the Asian people plagued by Ahriman. He does not describe the Germans, for which he would have had little reason at the time, but he, Yushakov, the Russian, describes the English. And he says of the English that, after all they have been through, they believe that the Asian peoples are only there to clothe themselves in English fabrics, fight among themselves with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels and play with English baubles. And further, in 1885, Yushakov said: “England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland – I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as glorious as it is sad.” It is likely that these sentiments, which were not only expressed by Jushakow in 1885, but also by many others, led to Russia initially not allying itself with the Asians to help them against Ahr Ahriman, but that it first allied itself with the “so brilliant as it is sad state” of England in order to trample the “aged”, “marshy” Europe into the ground. What world history will one day see in this ring closing around Central Europe can be expressed quite simply. One need only mention a few figures. These few figures are extremely instructive because they are reality. One day, history will raise the question, quite apart from the fact that this present struggle is the most difficult, the most significant, the greatest that has occurred in the development of human history, quite apart from the fact that it is merely a matter of the circumstances of the figures: How will it be judged in the future that 777 million people are closing in on 150 million people? 777 million people in the so-called Entente are closing in on 150 million people and are not even expecting the decision to come from military valor, but from starvation. That is probably the better part of valor according to the views of 777 million people! There is no need to be envious about the soil in which a spiritual life developed as we have described it, because the figures speak for themselves. The 777 million people live on 68 million square kilometers, compared to 6 million square kilometers on which 150 million people live. History will one day take note of the fact that 777 million people live on 68 million square kilometers, ring-shaped against 150 million people on 6 million square kilometers. The German only needs to let this fact speak in this as well as in other areas, which prevents one from falling into one-sided national shouting and ranting and hate-filled speech, into which Germany's enemies fall. I do not want to talk now about those areas that do not belong here and that will be decided by weapons. But we see all too clearly how, today, what one wants to cherish and carry as German culture is really enclosed, lifted up above the battlefield of weapons, enclosed by hatred and slander, by real slander , not only hatred; how our sad time of trial is used to vilify and condemn precisely that which has to be placed in world history, in the overall development of mankind, in this way. For what is it, actually, that confronts us in this German intellectual life with all its conscious and forgotten tones? It is great because it is the second great flowering of insight and the second great flowering of art in the history of humanity. The first great flowering of art was Greek culture. At the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, the development of Germany produced a flowering of which even a mind like Renan said, when, after absorbing everything else, he became acquainted with the development of Germany in Goethe and Herder: “I felt as if I were entering a temple, and from that moment everything that I had previously considered worthy of the divinity seemed to me no more than withered and yellowed paper flowers.” What German intellectual life has achieved, says Renan, comparing it with the other, is like differential calculus compared to elementary mathematics. Nevertheless, on the same page on which he wrote these words to David Friedrich Strauß, Renan points to that current in France which, in the event of the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, called for a “destructive struggle against the Germanic race”. This letter was written in 1870. This German intellectual life has been recognized time and again. But today it must be misunderstood. For how else could the words be found that are spoken in the ring that surrounds us! If we look across, not with Yushakov's eyes, but with unbiased eyes, to Asia, we see a human culture that has grown old, that also strove for knowledge, but that strove for knowledge according to an old, pre-Christian way. There, the ego is sought to be subdued in order to merge into the universe, into Brahman or Atman, with the extinction of the ego. This is no longer possible. Now that the greatest impulse in human history, the Christ impulse, has become established in human history, the ego itself must be elevated, strengthened, not subdued as in Oriental spiritual life, but on the contrary, strengthened in order to connect as an ego with the spiritual-divine in the world, which pulsates and weaves and lives through the world. That is the significant thing, how this is again shining forth in the German spiritual striving. And this, which is unique and which must be incorporated as one of the most essential tones in the overall development of humanity, is what is coming to life in the 6 million square kilometers, compared to the 68 million square kilometers. This fact must be obscured from those who, as I said, do not fight with weapons, but who fight with words and slander this Central European spiritual life. They must cover this fact with fog. They must not see it. But we must admit it to ourselves, we must try to explain to ourselves how it is possible that these people can be so blinded as to fail to recognize the very depth of this connection of one's own soul with the spiritual life outside in the world. Boutroux, who traveled around here in Germany for a short time before the war and even spoke at universities about the spiritual brotherhood of Germany and France, now tells his French audience how the Germans want to grasp everything inwardly. He even makes a joke: if a Frenchman wants to get to know a lion or a hyena, he goes to the menagerie. If an Englishman wants to get to know a lion or a hyena, he goes on a world tour and studies all the things related to the lion or the hyena on the spot. The German neither goes to the menagerie nor on a journey, but withdraws into his room, goes into his inner self, and from that inner self he creates the lion or the hyena. That is how he conceives of inwardness. It is a joke. One must even say that it is perhaps a good joke. The French have always made good jokes. It's just a shame that this joke is by Heinrich Heine, and Boutroux has only repeated it. But now, when you see how these people want to cloud their minds, you come up with a few things. You wonder: How do these people, according to their nationality, seek to delude themselves about what German nature actually is? For the Russians, it must always be a new mission. I have also described this in my booklet: “Thoughts during the time of war”. They must be given the opportunity to replace Western European culture, Central European culture, because it is the destiny of the Russian people – so they say in the East, anyway – to replace the abstract, purely intellectual culture built on war with a Russian culture built on the heart, on peace, on the soul. That is the mission. The English – one would not want to do them an injustice, truly, one would like to remain completely objective, because it really does not befit the Germans to speak in a one-sided way based solely on national feelings. That should not happen at all; but when one hears, as in the very latest times in England, declaiming that the Germans live by the word: “might is right,” then one must still remind them that there is a philosophy by Thomas Hobbes, an English philosophy, in which it is first proved in all its breadth that law has no meaning if it does not arise from power. Power is the source of law. That is the whole meaning of Hobbes's doctrine. After it has been said from an authorized position - there is also an unauthorized authorized position, but it is still an authorized position in the outside world - that the Germans live by the rule “might makes right”, that they have have come far by acting according to the principle “might is right,” I do not believe that one is being subjective when one objects that this is precisely an English principle that has become deeply ingrained in the Englishman. Yes, one can well say: they need a new lie. And that will hardly be anything other than a terminus technicus. The French – what are they deluding themselves with? They are the ones we would least like to wrong. And so let us take the word of one of their own poets, Edmond Rostand. The cock, the crowing cock, plays a major role in Edmond Rostand's play. He crows when the sun rises in the morning. Gradually, he begins to imagine that the sun could not rise if it were not for him crowing, causing the sun to rise. One has become accustomed – and that is probably also Rostand's idea – to the fact that nothing can happen in the world without France. One has only to recall the age of Louis XIV and all that was French until Lessing, Goethe, Schiller and others emancipated themselves from it, and one can already imagine how the conceit arises: Ah, the sun cannot rise if I do not crow for it. Now, one needs a new conceit. Italy – I heard a not insignificant Italian politician say before the war: Yes, our people have basically reached a point, so relaxed, so rotten, that we need a refresher, we need something to invigorate us. A new sensation, then! This is expressed in the fact that the Italians, in order to dull their senses, have invented something particularly new and unprecedented: a new saint, namely, Sacro Egoismo, Holy Egoism. How often has it been invoked before Italy was driven into the war, holy egoism! So, a new saint, and his hierophant: Gabriele d'Annunzio. Today, no one can yet gauge how this new saint, Sacro Egoismo and its hierophant, its high priest, Gabriele d'Annunzio, will live on in history! On the other hand, we can remain within the German spirit and consider what is truly interwoven with this German spirit and what was unanimously felt by the Germans of Austria and Germany, on this side and on the other side of the Erz Mountains, as the German people's – not in the Russian sense of mission, but in the very ordinary sense – world-historical mission. And here I may well conclude with the words to which I have already drawn attention when, speaking of the commonality of Austrian intellectual culture with German, I also spoke of Robert Hamerling. In 1862, when he wrote his “Germanenzug”, the future of the German people lay before Robert Hamerling, the German poet of Austria, which he wanted to express by having the genius of the German people express it, when the Germanic people move over from Asia as the forerunners of the Germans. They settle on the border between Asia and Europe. Robert Hamerling describes the scene beautifully: the setting sun, the rising moon. The Teutons are encamped. Only one man is awake, the blond youth Teut. A genius appears to him. This genius speaks to Teut, in whom Robert Hamerling seeks to capture the representative of the later Germans. Beautifully he expresses:
And what once lived over there in Asia, what the Germans brought with them from Asia like ancestral heritage, it stands before Robert Hamerling's soul. It stands before his soul, what was there like a looking into the world in such a way that the ego is subdued, the corporeality is subdued, in order to see what the world is living through and weaving through, but what must emerge in a new form in the post-Christian era, in the form that it speaks out of the fully conscious ego, out of the fully conscious soul. This connection with the ancient times in the striving of the German people for the spirit, how beautifully Robert Hamerling expresses it:
Thus the German-Austrian poet connects the distant past with the immediate present. And indeed, it has emerged from this beautiful striving of the German soul, which we have tried to characterize today, that all knowledge, all striving wanted to be what one can call: a sacrificial service before the Divine-Spiritual. Even science, even the recognition of the spiritual, should have the effect of a sacrificial service, should work in such a way that Jakob Böhme could say: When one searches spiritually, it is so that one must bring it to go its way:
Hamerling expresses this by having the German Genius say to Teut:
The affinity of the German soul with God is so beautifully expressed here. This shows us how deeply rooted true spiritual striving is in the German national character. But this also clearly gives rise to the thought in our soul, the powerful thought, that one can ally oneself with this German national spirit, for in that which it has brought forth in spiritual achievements - one current guides the other - this German national spirit is at work. It finds expression in the great, immortal deeds that are being accomplished in the present. In conclusion, let me summarize in the four lines of the German-Austrian Robert Hamerling what emerges as German faith, German love, German hope of the past, present and future, when the German unites with what is the deepest essence of his people. Let me summarize what is there as a force – as a force that has confidence that, where such seeds are, blossoms and fruits must develop powerfully in the German national character despite all enemies, in the German national character – let me summarize what is there as a force in his soul, in the words of the German-Austrian poet Robert Hamerling:
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| 259. The Fateful Year of 1923: The International Delegates' Assembly
21 Jul 1923, Dornach |
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| The eurythmic revival of the spiritual content of Shakespeare's plays (e.g. A Midsummer Night's Dream, of which some scenes were performed that day) is the greatest thing that has been done for this English genius since Schlegel and Tieck. |
| 259. The Fateful Year of 1923: The International Delegates' Assembly
21 Jul 1923, Dornach |
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Mr. Albert Steffen welcomed Dr. Steiner and the members of the Anthroposophical Society present on behalf of the Congress Bureau. He first thanked Dr. Steiner for the cycle he had begun the previous evening on the topic “Three Perspectives of Anthroposophy,” which would give the soul to the events of these days. He thanked the delegates from the Anthroposophical Societies of America, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, England, Finland, France, Holland, Italy, Norway, Austria, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Czecho-Slovakia, etc. for attending. From the most diverse places on earth, people are thinking in a unified way of Dornach, the center of the Anthroposophical Society. Despite individual and national differences, people feel united in one spirit in this place. Here one feels like a citizen of the world. This fact alone is worthy of note in view of the fragmentation of humanity today. International travel generally unites people across the face of the earth, but only on the outside. Technology can just as easily serve negative forces by being misused as a means of destruction. It must ruin civilization if it is not inspired. What idea, what worldview, what aspiration is capable of inspiring it? If we look towards the south, we find the Catholic Church. Its mighty will seeks to unite all mankind, but at the expense of the freedom of the individual. Dogmas forbid to explore the spiritual world from the point of view of the I. As a result, Catholicism remains at the level of the Middle Ages. It does not go along with the impulse of the consciousness soul. This impulse is coming to fruition in the West. Shakespeare's dramas (the conflicts of Hamlet, Lear, etc.) are the expression of the modern soul. Slowly, the consciousness of the spiritual world fades. Humor and morality prevail in writers such as Swift, Dickens, Bernard Shaw. But their cultural criticism no longer has the power to stop the disintegration of intellectual life. Decline is particularly evident in Central Europe today. Only the fulfillment of the Faustian striving to conquer the supernatural could prevent it. But the leading thinkers in Germany are surrendering to a skeptical way of thinking, like Spengler, to a depressive art, like Hauptmann, and the people are blindly following. In the East, we see the spiritual breaking in overwhelmingly, but in an unhealthy way. The Russian who is touched by the supernatural wants to be overly good or overly evil. He acquires infantile or hysterical traits, as the novel characters of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky show. Thus, whether we look to the south, west, north or east, we find forces that are regressive, hardening, demoralizing and wounding, forces of crucifixion. Today, only one spiritual current brings resurrection forces: anthroposophy. It counters dogmas with a religious renewal based on a philosophy of freedom. It revives consciousness by expanding it through the spiritual world. The eurythmic revival of the spiritual content of Shakespeare's plays (e.g. A Midsummer Night's Dream, of which some scenes were performed that day) is the greatest thing that has been done for this English genius since Schlegel and Tieck. It purifies the Faustian striving for a spiritual science that will heal not only the soul but also the body. One thinks here of the successes of the remedies that have emerged from our clinical-therapeutic institutes. Finally, it is creating a new art. What powerful poetic impulses have emerged from it: Dr. Steiner's mystery plays, the architecture, sculpture and painting of the Goetheanum, among others. Anthroposophy brings renewal to every field because it carries the forces that come from the spiritual realm, where developmental forces prevail. It is a being that is not subject to death. But it has no house in which it can fully express itself. After the old Goetheanum burnt down, we came together to discuss the construction of the new one. The old Goetheanum was built entirely from sacrificial donations. So far, we have little more than the insurance money to rebuild the new one. There is certainly no blessing in this. We have to create a counterweight to this money, which comes from reluctant taxpayers. We have to develop even more of a spirit of sacrifice and community than we did for the first building. We have to join together as a society in the strongest possible way. We have to stand up for the greatest thing in the world. Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth reported on the results of the preliminary meeting of the country delegates the previous afternoon. He mentioned that at a general assembly of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland on June 10, 1923, the following resolution had been unanimously adopted: "The Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland expresses the wish in today's meeting: Dr. Steiner may take the reconstruction of the Goetheanum in Dornach into his own hands. It grants him, as the leading artistic director, full authority to carry out the construction in every respect, both in terms of the use of the funds earmarked for this purpose and the selection of the personalities involved, at his own discretion and arrangement, without any interference on the part of the members. A report of this decision, which had been sent to the foreign branches, had met with enthusiastic approval everywhere, and since the current conference had been suggested by English friends, the opportunity had now been given to discuss how to raise the funds. The most effective plan was probably Dr. Wegman's, that 1000 francs be contributed for each member over a period of 12-15 months. A weekly saving of 20 francs, for example, would yield such a sum over the course of a year. This was much more easily achieved than one might think. Usually only those who had not yet begun collecting were sceptical. Those who have already actively sought support for the rebuilding effort have often had surprisingly positive experiences. For example, out of 37 members visited in Dornach, 35 members each subscribed 1,000 francs, payable in 15 months, and mostly members who are not wealthy. Similar reports would be forthcoming from outside the area as soon as truly enthusiastic and committed activity was developed. A fine example was given by a lady, as Dr. Steiner said the day before, who explained that there were 25 members in her branch who were workers and therefore could not give a full 1000 francs each, but that she herself wanted to subscribe 1000 francs for each member of her branch, thus giving a total of 25,000 francs herself. Another suggestion from Mr. Pyle was that in each country there might be members who could give 15,000 francs, others 10,000 and 5,000 francs, so that in this way, through such gradations, 1,000 francs could be contributed to the new Goetheanum in each country. A third proposal, which came from our English friends and was supported by Mr. Kaufmann, Miss Groves and Miss Melland, suggested the writing of a brochure in which everything that has been achieved from anthroposophical sources in art, science, therapy, education, etc. is compiled in a way that is suitable for the outside world. Someone had asked whether the Society should approach individuals outside it in its efforts to promote the new Goetheanum. This question should be decided only on the basis of each individual's sense of tact. Dr. Wachsmuth referred to a novel that had made a strong impression on him in this regard. It describes two young people who know that there are countless associations of people with idealistic goals of various political and confessional colors, but not yet an association of all those people who seek nothing but a constant living relationship with the spiritual world and desire nothing more than to fight chivalrously for the realization of the laws of the spiritual world on the physical plane. In the light of this realization, these young people formed a league which they called the “Knights of the Spirit”. The federation was soon supported by people from all countries with means, warned of dangers and protected, provided with news, because an infinite number who did not yet want to join this federation publicly, nevertheless wished that these knights of the spirit would be enabled to realize on earth that which is to be realized out of the spiritual world. As an Anthroposophist, one has an opportunity, as nowhere else, to acquire such knowledge of human nature that, if one is a true knight of the spirit oneself, one will also recognize in the outside world those who are or will become knights of the spirit. One can approach such people and give them the opportunity to help rebuild the Goetheanum. For one does a person a kindness when one allows him to help establish a place of learning from which the constructive spiritual forces of humanity can flow. It is self-evident that by the end of 1923 there should no longer be a single member of the Anthroposophical Society who had not done his or her part to rebuild it. Dr. Wegman's plan to raise 1000 francs for each member has the advantage of appealing to each individual, so that everyone feels responsible and does not expect all success from others or even from an undefined outside world. In the preliminary discussion, it was suggested that the various countries should set themselves the goal of raising the following contributions, taking into account their number of members, etc.: England... ..... 300,000 Swiss francs America. ....... 200,000 Honolulu....... 200,000 Switzerland... 400,000 Netherlands... 300,000 Italy. ............. 100,000 France...... 50,000 Austria...... 50,000 Czechoslovakia.. 100,000 Denmark...... 100,000 Scandinavia..... 100,000 Remaining countries....... 100,000 (Belgium, Poland, Finland, New Zealand, etc.) Initially about 2,000,000 Swiss francs. All these various proposals are now open for discussion. Dr. Wachsmuth asked the delegates to always keep two images in mind during their deliberations: the new Goetheanum should be built for all people of the earth who are knights of the spirit; and we should go out into the world and work for the decisive moment when Dr. Steiner will give the signal for the workers on the hill of Dornach to flock together to build the new structure. Mr. George Kaufmann, London, then put forward the idea of producing a brochure that would present the essentials of the various anthroposophical fields of work in a concise and artistic way to facilitate the work in the outside world. Baroness Rosenkrantz, London, suggested that for those members for whom financial assistance is difficult, a way should be created to use the work of their hands for the benefit of the Goetheanum, i.e. to make practical articles for daily use, which would still have to be determined, free of charge, the sale of which would then have to be organized jointly; and to contribute the net proceeds of this free work to the reconstruction fund. A small beginning in this regard has already been made by her. Dr. Peipers, Stuttgart, recalled the great sacrifices made by German members in the early days to build the old Goetheanum. Despite the sad circumstances and almost insurmountable difficulties in Germany, it is the great longing of the German friends to contribute significantly to the reconstruction as well. Although the executive council of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany has deliberately not asked for donations to be collected, given the current situation, contributions, money and jewelry, have been sent to Stuttgart from all sides, testifying to a touching willingness to make sacrifices. — This report will also discuss how these contributions are used. Dr. Praussnitz, Jena, supported Baroness Rosenkrantz's proposal to provide voluntary work, especially during the holiday season, and to use the proceeds for the benefit of the Goetheanum. Dr. Steiner emphasized that we had to come to a concrete result during these important days. To discuss the writing of a brochure, for example, was too abstract and general. One had to be able to state exactly who would write it. Such a writing was something very personal, had to arise out of the artistic ability of a single individuality. So there was no point in discussing it in a meeting. Besides, there is already so much suitable material available to make a convincing impact on the outside world that members should first work more than before with what is already available. For example, we have the weekly journal 'Das Goetheanum'. It is edited by a personality who, as was said recently from another side, writes the best German, Albert Steffen. This journal reports constantly on significant world issues from an anthroposophical point of view, but it has more subscribers among outsiders than among members. This shows the old mistake of members always wanting to create something new, but not using what is already there productively. Dr. Steiner then corrected some false views regarding the use of German contributions. Everything collected in Germany must, of course, be consumed in Germany, in accordance with the laws there. He emphasized this expressly. Although the German friends would certainly also be willing to make great financial sacrifices, the current world situation does not allow it. The help from Germany must consist of a moral sacrifice. On the other hand, our friends in other countries must not delay too long in securing the means for reconstruction. At the end of this meeting, we must at least know what sum can be initially counted on, so that we can begin reconstruction with this sum. For example, a building could be constructed, a kind of memorial to the former Goetheanum, with a sum of 1 to 2 million francs. This would then be something like a better barn in the carpentry workshop, only made of concrete. But one could also build something more beautiful, which would then perhaps require 4-5 million francs or more. The important thing is to determine the exact sum that one wants to secure for the reconstruction, so that one can plan accordingly. Above all, however, we must not forget that the reconstruction will present the members with new and difficult tasks, and that new efforts will be needed to overcome resistance and to provide effective moral support for external anthroposophical work on the physical plane. A moral fund must be created. If it were only a matter of spreading the anthroposophical truths, the goodwill of the members to spread these truths through positive work would suffice. But since the anthroposophical movement has brought into being a whole series of practical enterprises that have to contend with the resistance of the outside world, e.g. schools, clinics, laboratories, economic enterprises, etc. run in the anthroposophical sense, so the anthroposophists need to be more vigilant in order to beat back the enormous amount of lies and slander that is being directed against us from the opposing side. Dr. Steiner compared our situation to that of people in a besieged fortress. Often the gates of the fortress are opened from within through the negligence of members in their thinking and actions. Only the utmost vigilance on the part of the members will help us through the difficult times that will come with the reconstruction of the Goetheanum. Mr. Steffen reminded those present of the enormous amount of material available in the works of Dr. Steiner for the members to advance themselves daily and also to convince the whole world, but also to promote the reconstruction of the Goetheanum. Mr. de Haan expressed confidence that the energetic among us will raise all the funds needed for the construction. In the afternoon, a special meeting of the country delegates took place again. |
| 262. Correspondence with Marie Steiner 1901–1925: 58a. Letter from Marie von Sivers to Edouard Schuré
26 May 1907, |
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| On July 1, we expect to be back in Berlin, where I have to continue setting up and have another wall broken through. Then we dream of making ourselves invisible from July 15 to September 1. This is absolutely necessary so that Mr. |
| 262. Correspondence with Marie Steiner 1901–1925: 58a. Letter from Marie von Sivers to Edouard Schuré
26 May 1907, |
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58aMarie von Sivers to Edouard Schuré Translation from the French Munich, May 26, 1907 This is the first day that I have had a few quiet hours in my room; soon people will be streaming in, but I am trying to give you, if not a report, at least some fragmentary messages. My long silence before the congress was most painful to me. I didn't dare to ask you to come, because if the performance [of the Eleusinian Mysteries] had failed, you would have experienced embarrassing moments and undertaken a long journey with all its hardships, only to receive unpleasant impressions. And then, right up until the last moment, we really didn't know if we would make it. The obstacles were very great. You have to bear in mind that the actors came from different cities and were only able to come together very late. One of two ladies whom we regarded as our stars and who promised great things in the roles of Persephone and Hecate had to leave to care for a sister-in-law in Brussels who had suddenly gone mad; the other became mentally ill herself, and for a week we had her here without being able to send her to her mother, from whom she inherited the disease and from whom she was tormented throughout her life. Finally, she had to be taken to an institution; it was truly a catastrophe. So the chances of the performance succeeding had become very slim. After much hesitation, we decided to try a very poor young girl [Alice Sprengel], who has an extremely difficult life and seems quite hopeless in moments of despondency because she lacks energy. She then sits down, puts her hands in her lap and says, “I can't do it to myself.” Fortunately, she could “offer” herself the role of Persephone. That had been the question. Then you could see the spark that had previously lain dormant in her ignite, and she became happier every day. The initially very weak voice, which always slid down into her chest, grew stronger every day; but it wasn't until the last week that we could be sure that she would be understood. Even now, this young girl is completely transfigured and she still has the airs and graces of a princess. These days will have been the most beautiful of her life. Overall, the rehearsals were a source of delight and harmony for many. We always had quite a number of listeners who couldn't get enough and who liked the play so much that they would have liked to hear it every day. The Nymphs and the Shadows were very eager, but gave us a lot to do. All these people had never acted. Except for Triptolem, who is a professional actor but a member of the company, and me, who appeared in amateur theaters in my day, none of our people had ever seen the limelight. Enthusiasm took the place of everything. Metanira was disappointing. The one [H.v.Vacano] who was supposed to play this role had to take on the role of Hecate, and the new actress, a very clever lady, showed no understanding of the stage at all. The role of Triptolemus had initially been entrusted to a young man who was very keen to act, quite pleasant, looking like an ephebe, but so bleak in his gestures and in his speech so incapable of any kind of upturn that for a while we thought we would have to give up because of him, until the actor who was originally supposed to play Pluto came and replaced him with good success. Dionysus was a delightful young girl, half Italian, half Polish, who appeared last and initially spoke with an accent that made us jump. She was nice, but extremely clumsy, and the final apotheosis was in danger of falling through because of her. So we had to work with her intensively every day and teach her the essence of German pronunciation. As a result, after I had already exhausted my voice with a cough and constant speaking during rehearsals, it became so bad during the last week that I was completely hoarse and feared that I would not be able to speak at the performance, especially since I had no opportunity to take care of myself and withdraw from all my other obligations. Apart from my duties as secretary of the German Section and of the Congress Bureau, we had to organize, just for this performance, two painting studios (for the scenery), a tailor's studio (even the costumes were all made by our members according to Mr. Steiner's instructions), and finally two further studios where our painters worked on the decoration of the hall (the Temple of the Future) according to Mr. Steiner's drawings. There was a flurry of activity like an anthill – feverish haste everywhere, because we only plunged into the big expenses when we were really sure – more or less – that we could perform. May 28 Mr. Stavenhagen 26 (who, by the way, is not Dutch) had only finished his music three days before the performance and did not get around to the planned final chorus at all. The music was beautiful, though; I don't know what the foreigners thought of it, but the Germans thought it was “like the harmony of the spheres.” And the acting company also thought it was very beautiful: dignified, strong and ethereal – thoroughly religious. I believe that it was beneficial for the poetry not to be mixed with music. The beautiful preludes created a mood of religious contemplation; then the word alone prevailed and the idea could emerge all the more clearly. | The Germans were really enthusiastic - they did not make any banal compliments - they were deeply moved by the drama itself and urgently asked us for a repeat performance; however, this was not possible. The foreigners will certainly have been more critical and cool, but as you yourself suspected, a large number of them came with hostile feelings, determined to resist the progressive spirit, to treat with irony what exceeds their understanding, and to reject everything they consider unorthodox. But it was strange to observe how, nevertheless, the resistance gradually diminished, and how many finally left the hall moved. The Blechs 27 and Mr. Pascal 28 will certainly never give up their reserved attitude, but Pascal is at the end of his tether and the Blechs are extraordinarily narrow-minded; I also think it has made a strange impression on them that we emphasize the importance of your work so strongly, while they, with their English education, have probably missed it. Their feelings are therefore very mixed. You were right to recognize Mr. Steiner's hand in the translation. I don't know why Mr. Sauerwein 29 Told you that it was from me. Incidentally, I don't know Mr. Sauerwein, I've never seen him. Mr. Steiner spoke to me of him as a theosophist whom he met in Vienna, that he was at the congress on the day of the performance and is acquainted with you. As he was going to Paris, he asked him to give you our regards. Perhaps Mr. Sauerwein saw the two works that I translated on the book table and concluded that I was also the translator of the “Sacred Drama”. I did the prose translation and only here, over the last month, did Mr. Steiner start the work of putting it into rhythms. With what difficulties! He was constantly interrupted, constantly being called upon. He would leave, come back for five minutes, continue his poetic work and then leave again, called by someone else. He worked in all arts and crafts, directing everyone: painters, sculptors, musicians, carpenters, upholsterers, actors, seamstresses, theater workers, electricians... If he had had the material and the workers at his disposal, he would have achieved something fabulous in a short time: the temple of the future. As it was, he could only sketch out ideas, but they will have a fertilizing effect. With all this work, even the final scenes of the drama could only be completed at a moment that seemed highly critical to me. I had faith that they would make it, but I didn't want to rely on it; it would have been foolhardy. It would have pleased and frightened me at the same time if you had written that you were coming, but I didn't dare encourage you to do so. One doesn't want to challenge the protective spirits, but only cautiously request their help. What has amazed me most is that I have found my voice again for the performance – as calm and confident as if it had never been tormented by coughing and exhausted by tiredness. Cassel-Wilhelmshöhe, Burgfeldstr. 2, Villa Elsa, 17/6 07 Dear Sir, I am ashamed by your last two letters and regret deeply not having sent you the sheets written in Munich, which I believed I would still be able to supplement in full detail. But every day brought something unexpected. Around two hundred people remained for the cycle in Munich, who gave us a rousing reception. It was very difficult to leave. During the last days, we still had ten people waiting to be received at nine o'clock in the evening. If, as in this case, we take the morning train, we pack our bags between two and six o'clock in the morning without going to bed. Mr. Steiner then went directly from the train to a public lecture in Leipzig, followed by another the next day. I remained dead on my chaise longue for a day. In Berlin, a very exhausting job awaited me, which forced me to store all my papers in cupboards and be on my feet all day. Our apartment had become much too small for everything that had to take place there. Even before Munich, I had the pleasure of having walls knocked down, walls papered, etc. Now I had to do the moving, for which the five days in Berlin were quite insufficient, especially since we were constantly besieged by people, the suppliers didn't deliver on time, and the workers were also on strike. On the morning of June 15, we had to take the train to Kassel, where a two-week cycle is now taking place. It is peaceful here. We have been well accommodated in the beautiful park of Wilhelmshöhe. My mother and sister are with us. I can finally resume my correspondence, which has been terribly neglected in all its parts. Many Theosophists have followed us here, but there is none of the feverish haste that normally characterizes our lives. I should not speak to you of these things, for it seems to me that it must leave you quite out of breath, and it certainly seems to you to contradict the seclusion that is good for the mystic. But Mr. Steiner is always calm and focused, even in the midst of the most nerve-wracking rush. And I undoubtedly have to go through this school. On July 1, we expect to be back in Berlin, where I have to continue setting up and have another wall broken through. Then we dream of making ourselves invisible from July 15 to September 1. This is absolutely necessary so that Mr. Steiner can make some progress with his literary work again, and it is also essential to get some rest from the business. I am very glad that Mr. Steiner also feels this way, because I don't think one could continue in this way without interruption. If we want to be alone, we have to leave Germany and not tell anyone where we are going. I have already managed to get this answer accepted to urgent questions: “We are going into hiding.” Then one sighs: “If only it won't be too long, the hiding.” I would be delighted if we could visit you, whether before or after this “recess”. You will see that there is no question of us expecting any greater interest in our congress from you. We know that your interest and sympathy are honestly present, while so many others came full of prejudices and negative feelings. Your spirit was very much among us, strong and dominant, and the feeling of togetherness and agreement with you was complete. You have become a trusted and respected master to all our faithful. There was heartfelt regret that you were not there, and a resolution was adopted expressing the warm thanks of the assembly for your agreeing to perform the Mystery Play. So many said, “It was simply superhuman.” The same resolution was adopted with regard to Mr. Stavenhagen, whose music was excellent, of a thoroughly religious character and highly inspiring for the performers (who heard it for the first time on the day of the performance). With a Wagnerian score 30 the drama itself would have faded into the background; so the word could unfold. 18 [June] I don't have your address for Mont-Dore, so I hope that they will forward my letter to you. Please forgive my long silence; it was a fate that now weighs heavily on me. And let me repeat that it never occurred to me to reproach you for not being at the congress. But every day I regretted not being able to write to you. I cannot reproach myself, however, for being too timid and hesitant before the performance, because the dress rehearsal would undoubtedly have filled you with horror. The lighting technicians did everything wrong, but they too said calmly: “Tomorrow we have the doctor among us,” and then everything went well for them too. Let us hope that it will not be impossible to repeat this experiment. And a thousand thanks for giving us the happiness of being able to perform such a magnificent work. Let us hope to see you again soon and wish you a speedy recovery. Mille saluts de M. Steiner & Mme Schuré et à vous. J'y joigne les miens Mr. Sivers
|
| 32. Collected Essays on Literature 1884-1902: Idols and Confessions
21 Jan 1899, |
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| The nights torment me with their heavy, exciting dreams. The ring on my hand starts to pinch me. I look at my child, it grabs my hand: Mama stays with Johanne. |
| 32. Collected Essays on Literature 1884-1902: Idols and Confessions
21 Jan 1899, |
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Stuttgart 1898, Fromanns Verlag One of the most interesting developments in the intellectual evolution of recent decades has undoubtedly been the change in our appreciation of “ideals”. Unconditional veneration has given way to doubt. Today we perceive this veneration as prejudice and ask about the conditions in the human organization that cause us to turn our feelings to a field that in reality corresponds to nothing. Even the highest of ideals, the concept of God, has become questionable to us. In her novel “In the Struggle for God”, which touches on the deepest tasks of contemporary culture, Lou Andreas-Salome& said: “The highest of human creativity is that it is able to create beyond itself, looking upwards.” The education of past centuries has worked hard to prevent the realization that the world of ideals is a creation of man. This world was to have an untouchable existence alongside and above natural reality, and the spiritual struggles were presented as humanity's striving to find harmony between ideal and reality. Indeed, if a conflict between these two realms arose, the ideal was always given the right of way and reality was expected to become more and more like it. Schiller, for example, felt the greatest happiness in fleeing from common reality into the lofty, pure realm of ideals. This has now changed. Reality has proven itself the victor in our consciousness. We only understand the ideal insofar as we can find its roots in the pure and natural. If such roots cannot be found, then the ideal appears to us as a lie or as an idol that the human spirit invents because it has a tendency to seek satisfaction in the illusory sphere that it cannot find in direct life. Truth is more important to us today than anything else. We want to reveal it without reservation, even if it means destroying goods that have been considered sacred to mankind for centuries. Women are making a major contribution to this revelation in our time. They have had to turn their minds away from the true nature of life for the longest time and have attached their feelings to goods that reveal themselves as a sham when viewed impartially. Two books that have just been published are proof that women have revelations to make to us from the depths of their being: Rosa Mayreder's “Idole” (Berlin 1899) and Adele Gerhard's “Beichte” (Berlin 1899). Anyone who delves into these two books will feel, above all, that important things are being said here, because the courage exists to express, without reservation, what is going on at the bottom of the female soul. And the second thing we feel is the insight we gain from these works into the lives of noble women who lead a hard, honest and energetic struggle in life. Rosa Mayreder told us about this struggle in her earlier collections of short stories, “Aus meiner Jugend” and “Übergänge”. The only way to describe what is expressed here is to say that the heroic confronts us in the special way that it must take on in the highly-intelligent woman of the present day. In the “Idols” the essence of love is revealed, with the clarity of the psychologist and with the sincerity of the bold seeker of truth. Rosa Mayreder has the gift of seeing the world in terms of its greatness. Her writing is like a psychological discovery. We follow everything she says with open ears, because we soon realize that only she can tell us what she says. Adele Gerhard is of a different nature. She has no great revelations to make. Anyone who has looked around in life will have experienced countless times what she is talking about. But we have probably never looked at these things with the same degree of attention as this woman does. We are less interested in what she sees, but in how she looks at it. Much more interesting than these little stories that we have encountered everywhere, in contrast to which - we cannot deny it - we suffer from a certain blasé attitude, is the author's attitude towards things. We imagine we see the author's eyes, which look at the world very differently from our own. A free soul who finds it difficult to be free stands before us. For Rosa Mayreder, telling the truth seems to be a form of salvation, for Adele Gerhard a form of martyrdom. I would like to suggest how the psychology of the modern woman's soul is revealed in the two books in a second article. IIRosa Mayreder's “Idols” are the product of the sentiment expressed in the old saying: “Man's most excellent study is man.” The value of this book lies in the fact that it presents the inner life of woman from the point of view from which the philosopher would most like to view the whole world. This point of view has often been expressed in the words: “from the point of view of the eternal”. But it would be better to say: “from the point of view of the meaningful”. Rosa Mayreder's own life is the source of deep riddles for her. And the answers she seeks open up perspectives into the abysses of human nature. On every page it becomes clear that this is a woman who has used a significant amount of strength to come to terms with her own experiences. But who also possesses this strength. As a result, the work exudes a peculiar ethical atmosphere that bears witness to the seriousness and dignity of life. The secret that lies in the sexual relationship is at the center. It is the relationship that becomes so puzzling to those who reflect on the relationship between individuality and the whole. What is it in the opposite sex that draws us to it, in order to seek in it the completion of our own being? Rosa Mayreder presents the attraction to the opposite sex in all its power; but at the same time she shows the element that intervenes between the souls of man and woman. At bottom, individuality cannot go beyond itself. There is something that opposes the assimilation of the alien soul. It is the image of the other that comes to life in our own being. What happens when the cool, sober observer of the world compares his idea of a man loved by a woman with the image that presents itself in the female psyche itself as the reason for her love? This love awakens in one man, and it does not stir in countless others. That cool observer knows nothing of the cause of this love. And he cannot know anything about it. For what the woman loves is not an object of cool observation; it is a being that is born out of her love, it is not the strange man, it is the idol, the image of this man. Gisa loves Dr. Lamaris. “When this man entered, yes, the moment I saw him for the first time, he seemed so strangely familiar to me, so familiar, as if I had known him for a long time. And after he had spoken to me for a few minutes, polite, meaningless words, like any young man addresses to any young girl, I suddenly got the impression that I was having a great time, that the whole company, which was standing and sitting around rather leathery, was animated as never before. And how different the real Dr. Lamaris was from the idol Gisas! What a contrast there was between the two natures in all the moments in which they met! The “idea” of a radiant inner life often returned later, but never in his presence. It could not tolerate contact with reality. Reality stared at him with hurtful impressions that “burrowed into my soul like pinpricks.” Gisa's entire world of perception is rooted in the view that the right person relates to the world in a way that corresponds to the most fundamental inclinations of his or her nature. The doctor, on the other hand, views all relationships from a different perspective. A girl should be pious because it is the best way for her to adapt to life. Gisa says: “You are religious or irreligious because of an inner state; but not because you should or shouldn't. So what does it mean to say that a girl should be pious?” The doctor, however, says: “It means that it is not beneficial for a female psyche to do without the aids that religion provides.” “So religion from the point of view of soul diet, of psychic hygiene?” the girl replies. This point of view is hateful to her. “It makes everything flat and philistine!” Lamaris knows only one thing: ”Nevertheless, civilized humanity will have to learn, if it is not to fall into complete ruin, to look at life exclusively from this point of view; it will have to re-evaluate all emotions from this point of view. Love too, and love in the first place. For since it is love that usually decides the fate of future generations, it happens all too often that the union of two people based on a love affair is something positively outrageous. It is a sentimental aberration to present love as the most desirable basis for marriage. The illusory character of this affection makes those who are affected by it completely incapable of making their choice according to rational reasons, namely in the sense of racial improvement.” One sees a second idol. The woman, whose sexual instincts have become spiritualized into a love fantasy, places her fantasy image between herself and the man she seeks. The man with the culture of reason places an abstract cultural idea in the same place. The rest of the story shows that Lamaris also has a deep affection for Gisa. However, he does not follow this inclination. This is because he comes from a family that includes mentally deranged members, and he himself has a profession that particularly demands his intellect. The spirit that lives in his organism must not be allowed to unite with that of a girl who also strives for spiritualization. That is why he marries a healthy girl with little education. It is precisely his principle that “men who live strongly at the expense of the brain should marry women from spared social classes – for the sake of the offspring.” The best way to see how this idol relates to his real emotional life is to see that his wife bears a striking resemblance to Gisa. His mind sought Gisa; his intellect determines his life. The magic of Rosa Mayreder's book lies in the way the poet knows how to place human experiences in the great context of the world. Her artistic intuition always leads her to see a detail within a whole in a way that allows us to perceive the depths of life. The truly noble soul must be recognized in this. This is how I would like to justify saying that Rosa Mayreder sees things with greatness. The way she captures the problem of love seems to me to be different from that of other poets. Usually, we are presented with the external manifestations of love; Rosa Mayreder goes to the essence of love, one might say to its “thing in itself”. The enlightenment she has given herself about her own heart has sharpened her view of humanity as such. In the history of the development of the mind, one will no longer be able to ignore the form that this artist has given to human experiences. IIIAdele Gerhard's tasks are different. The four sketches “Beichte”, “Gönnt mir goldene Tageshelle”,1 “Ebbe” and “Der Ring an meinem Finger” show that her interest is not in the colorfulness of life, but in the contours. These short novellas seem like [charcoal drawings]. And the intellectual conscience of the woman gave birth to them. The tragedy of female love is expressed in them. It arises from the contradiction between the situation in which women find themselves by virtue of their nature and the demands that life experiences awaken in them. Love draws women to men; they become attached. They impose duties on them that undermine their individuality. The woman described in the last story is the most significant from this point of view. “I am constantly looking for a way out, but I can't find it. The nights torment me with their heavy, exciting dreams. The ring on my hand starts to pinch me. I look at my child, it grabs my hand: Mama stays with Johanne. I kiss it. But I am also here, something inside me calls urgently, and I want my right - my right, which you call wrong.” Women who had to enter into a relationship as much as they had to long for it after they had experienced it are portrayed here. The author is a woman who recognizes the profession of woman as a way of life and who constantly feels the barriers that limit this profession. Here, nature seems to be hostile to man as a demon. The poignant nature of this thought arises from the fact that there is no way to resolve the contradiction that has been identified. Has nature assigned the role of eternal martyr to women? I see that in these novellas this contradiction appears as terrible and tragic as possible; but I do not see any indication that would allow us to hope for a solution. Schopenhauer's philosophy, applied to the consciousness of women, is brought to life in this little book. Rosa Mayreder seeks to reveal the essence of love; Adele Gerhard portrays the catastrophes of the love idol. The fact that both books appeared at almost the same time is characteristic of the culture of the time. The “Idols” seem like an explanation of “Confession”. Is it any wonder that the “idea of a radiant inner life” cannot tolerate contact with reality and that the “hurtful impressions” of this reality bore into the soul “like pinpricks”? Dr. Lamaris finds: “For since it is love that usually decides the fate of future generations, it happens all too often that the union of two people based on a love affair is something downright outrageous.” Adele Gerhard starts from the point of view that such principled views appear shallow and philistine to women before they are married, because they are completely dominated by their idols. After marriage, reality pushes the idol back in two ways. The idol, to which the female personality has become completely lost, is destroyed, and the right of one's own individuality asserts itself again; and the prospect of the next generation, which before could only be a matter of the mind, then, when this generation enters life, becomes a matter of the heart. The duties towards one's offspring are now not only demanded by reason, but felt by the heart. And women are faced with the necessity of sacrificing their individuality to a foreign entity once again. Laura Marholm has claimed that the women's issue is essentially a men's issue. She claims that women are naturally drawn to men in order to fulfill their essence. Rosa Mayreder shows that this search is influenced by an idol, thereby putting the “men's issue” in its place. Adele Gerhard speaks of the tragedy that the idol of love leads to; and with that it would be clear that men are an unsatisfactory solution to the women's issue.
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| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Portal of Initiation: Scene 4
Translated by Harry Collison |
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| ) Strader: Why quake the depths, and why resound the heights When hope's young dreams surge upward in the soul? (Lightning and thunder.) Spirit: To human dreamers words of hope like these Sound proud indeed; but in the depths of earth The vain illusions of mistaken thought Awake such thunderous echoes evermore. |
| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Portal of Initiation: Scene 4
Translated by Harry Collison |
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A landscape which seeks to express the world of souls by its characteristic peculiarities. Enter Lucifer and Ahriman. Johannes is seen at the right of the stage in deep meditation. What follows is experienced by him in meditation. Lucifer: Ahriman: Lucifer: Ahriman: Johannes (to himself in meditation): (Enter the Spirit of the Elements with Capesius and Strader, whom he has brought to the earth's surface from the earth's depths. They are conceived as souls looking out upon the earth's surface. The Spirit of the Elements is aged and stands erect upon a sphere. Capesius and Strader are in astral garb; the former, though the older man of the two in years, here appears the younger. He wears blue robes of various shades, Strader wears brown and yellow.) Spirit: Capesius: Spirit: Capesius: Strader: Spirit: Strader: Spirit: Strader: Spirit: Strader: Spirit: Strader: Spirit: Capesius: Spirit: Capesius: Spirit: Capesius: Strader: Capesius: Strader: (The Other Maria, also in soul form, emerges from the rocks, covered with precious stones.) But see I What wondrous being's this? It seems The Other Maria: Strader: Capesius: The Other Maria: Capesius: The Other Maria: Capesius: The Other Maria: Capesius: The Other Maria: Strader: The Other Maria: Capesius: Johannes (speaking, as it were, from his meditation. Here and in the following scene he sits aside and takes no part in the action): |
| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Soul's Probation: Scene 8
Translated by Harry Collison |
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| Simon: My lord, in very truth these words of thine Arouse an echo in my deepest soul. Indeed my nature is not prone to dreams; Yet when I walk alone through wood and field A picture often riseth in my soul Which with my will I can no more control Than any object which mine eye beholds. |
| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Soul's Probation: Scene 8
Translated by Harry Collison |
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The same. The First Preceptor; Joseph Keane then the Grand Master with Simon; later the First and the Second Master of Ceremonies. Joseph Keane is there first; the Preceptor approaches him. First Preceptor: Keane: First Preceptor: Keane: First Preceptor (moved): Keane: First Preceptor (with faltering movements): Keane: First Preceptor: Keane: (The Preceptor loses control over himself.) But now I know—am sure ... First Preceptor: Keane: First Preceptor: Keane: (Exit.) First Preceptor: (Exit.) Grand Master: Simon: Grand Master: Simon: Grand Master: (Exeunt.) First Master of Ceremonies: Second Master of Ceremonies: First Master of Ceremonies: Second Master of Ceremonies: The curtain falls, while the two Masters of Ceremonies are still in the hall |
| 16. A Road to Self-Knowledge: Fourth Meditation
Translated by Mabel Cotterell |
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| He may, for instance, feel a great dislike to all supersensible truths. He may consider them as day dreams, or imaginary fancies. He does so only because in those depths of his soul of which he is ignorant he has a secret fear of these truths. |
| 16. A Road to Self-Knowledge: Fourth Meditation
Translated by Mabel Cotterell |
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In which the Attempt is made to form a Conception of the Guardian of the Threshold [ 1 ] When the soul has attained the faculty of making observations whilst remaining outside the physical body, certain difficulties may arise with regard to its emotional life. It may find itself compelled to take up quite a different position towards itself from that to which it was formerly accustomed. The soul was accustomed to regard the physical world as outside itself, while it considered all inner experience as its own particular possession. To supersensible surroundings, however, it cannot take up the same position as to the outer world. As soon as the soul perceives the supersensible world around it, it must merge with it to a certain extent: it cannot consider itself as separate from these surroundings as it does from the outer world. Through this fact all that can be designated as our own inner world in relation to the supersensible surroundings assumes a certain character which is not easily reconcilable with the idea of inward privacy. We can no longer say, “I think, ” “ I feel, ” or “I have my thoughts and fashion them as I like.” But we must say instead, “ Something thinks in me, something makes emotions flash forth in me, something forms thoughts and compels them to come forward in an absolutely definite way and make their presence felt in my consciousness.” [ 2 ] Now this feeling may contain something exceedingly depressing when the manner in which the supersensible experience presents itself is such as to convey the certainty that we are actually experiencing a reality and are not losing ourselves in imaginary fancies or illusions. Such as it is it may indicate that the supersensible surrounding world wants to feel, and to think for itself, but that it is hindered in the realisation of its intention. At the same time we get a feeling that that which here wants to enter the soul is the true reality and the only one that can give an explanation of all we have hitherto experienced as real. This feeling also gives the impression that the supersensible reality shows itself as something which in value infinitely transcends the reality hitherto known to the soul. This feeling is therefore depressing, because it makes us feel that we are actually forced to will the next step which has to be taken. It lies in the very nature of that which we have become through our own inner experience to take this step. If we do not take it we must feel this to be a denial of our own being, or even self-annihilation. And yet we may also have the feeling that we cannot take it, or if we attempt it as far as we can, it must remain imperfect [ 3 ] All this develops into the idea: Such as the soul now is, a task lies before it, which it cannot master, because such as it now is, it is rejected by its supersensible surroundings, for the supersensible world does not wish to have it within its realm. And so the soul arrives at a feeling of being in contradiction to the supersensible world; and has to say to itself: “I am not such as to make it possible for me to mingle with that world, and yet only there can I learn the true reality and my relation to it; for I have separated myself from the recognition of Truth.” This feeling means an experience which will make more and more clear and decisive the exact value of our own soul. We feel ourselves and our whole life to be steeped in an error. And yet this error is distinct from other errors. The others are thought; but this is a living experience. An error that is only thought may be removed when the wrong thought is replaced by the right one. But the error that has been experienced has become part of the life of our soul itself; we ourselves are the error, we cannot simply correct it, for, think as we will, it is there, it is part of reality, and that, too, our own reality. Such an experience is a crushing one for the “self.” We feel our inmost being painfully rejected by all that we desire. This pain, which is felt at a certain stage in the pilgrimage of the soul, is far beyond anything which can be felt as pain in the physical world. And therefore it may surpass everything which we have hitherto become able to master in the life of our soul. It may have the effect of stunning us. The soul stands before the anxious question: Whence shall I gather strength to carry the burden laid upon me? And the soul must find that strength within its own life. It consists in something that may be characterised as inner courage, inner fearlessness. [ 4 ] In order now to be able to proceed further in the pilgrimage of the soul, we must have developed so far that the strength which enables us to bear our experiences will well up from within us and produce this inner courage and inner fearlessness in a degree never required for life in the physical body. Such strength is only produced by true self-knowledge. In fact it is only at this stage of development that we realise how little we have hitherto really known of ourselves. We have surrendered ourselves to our inner experiences without observing them as one observes a part of the outer world. Through the steps that have led to the faculty of extra-physical experience, however, we obtain a special means of self-knowledge. We learn in a certain sense to contemplate ourselves from a standpoint which can only be found when we are outside the physical body. And the depressing feeling mentioned before is itself the very beginning of true self-knowledge. To realise oneself as being in error in one's relations to the outer world is a sign that one is realising the true nature of one's own soul. [ 5 ] It is in the nature of the human soul to feel such enlightenment regarding itself as painful. It is only when we feel this pain that we learn how strong is the natural desire to feel ourselves, just as we are - to be human beings of importance and value. It may seem an ugly fact that this is so; but we have to face this ugliness of our own self without prejudice. We did not notice it before, just because we never consciously penetrated deeply enough into our own being. Only when we do so do we perceive how dearly we love that in ourselves which must be felt as ugly. The power of self-love shows itself in all its enormity. And at the same time we see how little inclination we have to lay aside this self-love. Even when it is only a question of those qualities of the soul which are concerned with our ordinary life and relations to other people, the difficulties turn out to be quite great enough. We learn, for instance, by means of true self-knowledge, that though we have hitherto believed that we felt kindly towards some one, nevertheless we are cherishing in the depths of our soul secret envy or hatred or some such feeling towards that person. We realise that these feelings, which have not as yet risen to the surface, will some day certainly crave for expression. And we see how very superficial it would be to say to ourselves: “Now that you have learned how it stands with you, root out your envy or hatred.” For we discover that armed merely with such a thought we shall certainly feel exceedingly weak, when some day the craving to show our envy or to satisfy our hatred breaks forth as if with elemental power. Such special kinds of self-knowledge manifest themselves in different people according to the special constitution of their souls. They appear when experience outside the body begins, for then our self-knowledge becomes a true one, and is no longer troubled by any desire to find ourselves modeled in some such way as we should like to be. [ 6 ] Such special self-knowledge is painful and depressing to the soul, but if we want to attain to the faculty of experience outside the body, it cannot be avoided, for it is necessarily called forth by the special position which we must take up with regard to our own soul. For the very strongest powers of the soul are required, even if it is only a question of an ordinary human being obtaining self-knowledge in a general way. We are observing ourselves from a standpoint outside our previous inner life. We have to say to ourselves: “I have contemplated and judged the things and occurrences of the world according to my human nature. I must now try to imagine that I cannot contemplate and judge them in that way. But then I should not be what I am. I should have no inner experiences. I should be a mere nothing.” And not only a man in the midst of ordinary everyday life, who only very rarely even thinks about the world or life, would have to address himself in this way. Any man of science, or any philosopher, would have to do so. For even philosophy is only observation and judgment of the world according to individual qualities and conditions of the human soul-life. Now such a judgment cannot mingle with supersensible surroundings. It is rejected by them. And therewith everything we have been up to that moment is rejected. We look back upon our whole soul, upon our ego itself, as upon something which has to be laid aside, when we want to enter the supersensible world. The soul, however, cannot but consider this ego as its real being until it enters the supersensible worlds. The soul must consider it as the true human being, and must say to itself: “Through this my ego I have to form ideas of the world. I must not lose this ego of mine if I do not want to give myself up as a being altogether.' There is in the soul the strongest inclination to guard the ego at all points in order not to lose one's foothold absolutely. What the soul thus feels of necessity to be right in ordinary life, it must no longer feel when it enters supersensible surroundings. It has there to cross a threshold, where it must leave behind not only this or that precious possession, but that very being which it has hitherto believed itself to be. The soul must be able to say to itself: “That which until now has seemed to me to be my surest truth, I must now, on the other side of the threshold of the supersensible world, be able to consider as my deepest error.” [ 7 ] Before such a demand the soul may well recoil. The feeling may be so strong that the necessary steps would seem a surrender of its own being, and an acknowledgment of its own nothingness, so that it admits more or less completely on the threshold its own powerlessness to fulfil the demands put before it. This acknowledgment may take all possible forms. It may appear merely as an instinct and seem to the pupil who thinks and acts upon it as something quite different from what it really is. He may, for instance, feel a great dislike to all supersensible truths. He may consider them as day dreams, or imaginary fancies. He does so only because in those depths of his soul of which he is ignorant he has a secret fear of these truths. He feels that he can only live with that which is admitted by his senses and his intellectual judgment. He therefore avoids arriving at the threshold of the supersensible world, and he veils the fact of his avoidance of it by saying: “ That which is supposed to lie behind that threshold is not tenable by reason or by science.” The fact is simply that he loves reason and science such as he knows them, because they are bound up with his ego. This is a very, frequent form of self-love and cannot as such be brought into the supersensible world. [ 8 ] It may also happen that there is not only this instinctive halt before the threshold. The pupil may consciously proceed to the threshold and then turn back, because he fears that which lies before him. He will then not easily be able to blot out from the ordinary life of his soul the effect of thus approaching it. The effect will be that weakness will spread over the whole of his soul's life. [ 9 ] What ought to take place is this, that the pupil on entering the supersensible world should make himself able to renounce that which in ordinary life he considers as the deepest truth and to adapt himself to a different way of feeling and judging things. But at the same time he must keep in mind that when he again confronts the physical world, he must make use of the ways of feeling, and judging that are suitable for this physical world. He must not only learn to live in two different worlds, but also to live in each in quite a different way, and he must not allow his sound judgment, which he needs for ordinary life in the world of reason and of the senses, to be encroached upon by the fact that he is obliged to make use of another kind of discernment while in another world. [ 10 ] To take up such a position is difficult for human nature, and the capacity for doing so is only acquired through continued energetic and patient strengthening of our soul-life. Any one who goes through the experiences of the threshold realises that it is a boon to the ordinary life of the soul not to be led so far. The feelings that awaken are such that one cannot but think that this boon proceeds from some powerful entity, who protects man from the danger of undergoing the dread of self-annihilation at the threshold. Behind the outer world of ordinary life there is another. Before the threshold of this world a stern guardian is standing, who prevents man from knowing what the laws of the supersensible world are. For all doubts and all uncertainty concerning that world are, after all, easier to bear than the sight of that which one must leave behind when we want to cross the threshold. [ 11 ] The pupil remains protected against the experience described, as long as he does not step forward to the very threshold. The fact that he receives descriptions of such experiences from those who have trodden or crossed this threshold does not change the fact of his being protected. On the contrary, such communications may be of good service to him when he approaches the threshold. In this case as in many others, a thing is done better if one has an idea of it beforehand. But as regards the self-knowledge which must be gained by a traveler in the supersensible world nothing is changed by such preliminary knowledge. It is therefore not in harmony with the facts, when many clairvoyants, or those acquainted with the nature of clairvoyance, assert that these things should not be mentioned at all to people who are not on the point of resolving to enter into the supersensible world. We are now living in a time when people must become more and more acquainted with the nature of the supersensible world, if the life of their soul is to become equal to the demands of ordinary life upon it. The spread of supersensible knowledge, including the knowledge of the guardian of the threshold, is one of the tasks of the moment and of the immediate future. |
| 1. Goethean Science: Goethe's Way of Knowledge
Translated by William Lindemann |
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| One cannot set oneself any definite task in life of which one would be capable. One dreams oneself into indefinite unclear ideals and then complains about the fact that one does not achieve something of which one hardly has a dim, let alone a clear, picture. |
| 1. Goethean Science: Goethe's Way of Knowledge
Translated by William Lindemann |
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[ 1 ] In June 1794, Johann Gottlieb Fichte sent the first sections of his Theory of Science 45 to Goethe. The latter wrote back to the philosopher on June 24: “As far as I am concerned, I will owe you the greatest thanks if you finally reconcile me with the philosophers, with whom I can never do without and with whom I have never been able to unite myself.” What the poet is here seeking from Fichte is what he sought earlier from Spinoza and later from Schelling and Hegel: a philosophical world view that would be in accordance with his way of thinking. None of the philosophical directions with which he became acquainted, however, brought the poet complete satisfaction. [ 2 ] This fact makes our task considerably more difficult. We want to draw nearer to Goethe from the philosophical side. If he himself had designated one standpoint of knowledge as his own, then we could refer to it. But this is not the case. And so the task devolves on us to recognize the philosophical core of all we have from the poet and to sketch a picture of it. We consider the right way to accomplish this task to be a direction in thinking that is gained upon the foundations of German idealistic philosophy. This philosophy sought, in fact, in its own way to satisfy the same highest human needs to which Goethe and Schiller devoted their lives. It came forth from the same contemporary stream. It therefore also stands much nearer to Goethe than do those views that to a large degree govern the sciences today. What Goethe expressed in poetic form and what he presented scientifically can be regarded as the consequence of a view that can be formed out of that philosophy. They could definitely never be the consequence of such scientific directions as our present-day ones. We are very far removed today from that way of thinking which lay in Goethe's nature. [ 3 ] It is indeed true that we must acknowledge progress in all areas of culture. But that this progress is one into the depths of things can hardly be asserted. For the content of an epoch, however, only progress into the depths of things is decisive, after all. But our epoch might best be characterized by the statement: It rejects, as unattainable for man, any progress at all into the depths of things. We have become faint-hearted in all areas, especially in that of thinking and willing. With respect to thinking: one observes endlessly, stores up the observations, and lacks the courage to develop them into a scientific, whole view of reality. One accuses German idealistic philosophy of being unscientific, however, because it did have this courage. Today one wants only to look with one's senses, not think. One has lost all trust in thinking. One does not consider it able to penetrate into the mysteries of the world and of life; one altogether renounces any solution to the great riddle questions of existence. The only thing one considers possible is: to bring what experience tells us, into a system. But in doing so one forgets that with this view one is approaching a standpoint considered to have been overcome long ago. The rejection of all thinking and the insistence upon sense experience is, grasped more deeply, nothing more, after all, than the blind faith in revelation of the religions. The latter rests, after all, only upon the fact that the church provides finished truths that one has to believe. Thinking may struggle to penetrate into the deeper meaning of these truths; but thinking is deprived of the ability to test the truth itself, to penetrate by its own power into the depths of the world. And the science of experience, what does it ask of thinking? That it listen to what the facts say, and interpret, order, etc., what is heard. It also denies to thinking the ability to penetrate independently into the core of the world. On the one hand, theology demands the blind subjection of thinking to the statements of the church; on the other, science demands blind subjection to the statements of sense observation. Here as there, independent thinking that penetrates into the depths counts as nothing. The science of experience forgets only one thing. Thousands and thousands of people have looked at a sense-perceptible fact and passed it by without noting anything striking about it. Then someone came along who looked at it and became aware of an important law about it. How? This can only stem from the fact that the discoverer knew how to look differently than his predecessors. He saw the fact with different eyes than his fellow men. In looking, he had a definite thought as to how one must bring the fact into relationship with other facts, what is significant for it and what is not. And so, thinking, he set the matter in order and saw more than the others. He saw with the eyes of the spirit. All scientific discoveries rest on the fact that the observer knows how to observe in a way governed by the right thought. Thinking must naturally guide observation. It cannot do so if the researcher has lost his belief in thinking, if he does not know what to make of thinking's significance. The science of experience wanders helplessly about in the world of phenomena; the sense world becomes a confusing manifoldness for it, because it does not have enough energy in thinking to penetrate into the center. [ 4 ] One speaks today of limits to knowledge because one does not know where the goal of thinking lies. One has no clear view of what one wants to attain and doubts that one will attain it. If someone came today and pointed out clearly to us the solution to the riddle of the world, we would gain nothing from it, because we would not know what to make of this solution. [ 5 ] And it is exactly the same with willing and acting. One cannot set oneself any definite task in life of which one would be capable. One dreams oneself into indefinite unclear ideals and then complains about the fact that one does not achieve something of which one hardly has a dim, let alone a clear, picture. Just ask one of the pessimists of our day what he actually wants and what it is he despairs of attaining. He does not know. Problematical natures are they all, incapable of meeting any situation and yet satisfied with none. Do not misunderstand me. I do not wish to extol that superficial optimism which, satisfied with the trivial enjoyments of life, demands nothing higher and therefore never suffers want. I do not wish to condemn individuals who painfully feel the deep tragedy that lies in the fact that we are dependent on conditions that have a laming effect on everything we do and that we strive in vain to change. But we should not forget that pain is the woof and happiness the warp. Think of the mother, how her joy in the well-being of her children is increased if it has been achieved by earlier cares, suffering, and effort. Every right-minded person would in fact have to refuse a happiness that some external power might offer him, because he cannot after all experience something as happiness that is just handed him as an unearned gift. If some creator or other had undertaken the creation of man with the thought in mind of bestowing happiness upon his likeness at the same time, as an inheritance, then he would have done better to leave him uncreated. The fact that what man creates is always ruthlessly destroyed again raises his stature; for he must always build and create anew; and it is in activity that our happiness lies; it lies in what we ourselves accomplish. It is the same with bestowed happiness as with revealed truth. Only this is worthy of man: that he seek truth himself, that neither experience nor revelation lead him. When that has been thoroughly recognized once and for all, then the religions based on revelation will be finished. The human being will then no longer want God to reveal Himself or bestow blessings upon him. He will want to know through his own thinking and to establish his happiness through his own strength. Whether some higher power or other guides our fate to the good or to the bad, this does not concern us at all; we ourselves must determine the path we have to travel. The loftiest idea of God is still the one which assumes that God, after His creation of the human being, withdrew completely from the world and gave man completely over to himself. [ 6 ] Whoever acknowledges to thinking its ability to perceive beyond the grasp of the senses must necessarily acknowledge that it also has objects that lie beyond merely sense-perceptible reality. The objects of thinking, however, are ideas. Inasmuch as thinking takes possession of the idea, thinking fuses with the primal ground of world existence; what is at work outside enters into the spirit of man: he becomes one with objective reality in its highest potency. Becoming aware of the idea within reality is the true communion of man. [ 7 ] Thinking has the same significance with respect to ideas as the eye has with respect to light, the ear to tone. It is an organ of apprehension. [ 8 ] This view is in a position to unite two things that are regarded today as completely incompatible: the empirical method, and idealism as a scientific world view. It is believed that to accept the former means necessarily to reject the latter. This is absolutely not true. To be sure, if one considers the senses to be the only organs of apprehension for objective reality, then one must arrive at the above view. For, the senses offer us only such relationships of things as can be traced back to mechanical laws. And the mechanistic world view would thus be given as the only true form of any such world view. In this, one is making the mistake of simply overlooking the other component parts of reality which are just as objective but which cannot be traced back to mechanical laws. What is objectively given by no means coincides with what is sense-perceptibly given, as the mechanistic world conception believes. What is sense-perceptibly given is only half of the given. The other half of the given is ideas, which are also objects of experience—of a higher experience, to be sure, whose organ is thinking. Ideas are also accessible to the inductive method. [ 9 ] Today's science of sense experience follows the altogether correct method of holding fast to the given; but it adds the inadmissible assertion that this method can provide only facts of a sense-perceptible nature. Instead of limiting itself to the question of how we arrive at our views, this science determines from the start what we can see. The only satisfactory way to grasp reality is the empirical method with idealistic results. That is idealism, but not of the kind that pursues some nebulous, dreamed-up unity of things, but rather of a kind that seeks the concrete ideal content of reality in a way that is just as much in accordance with experience as is the search of modern hyper-exact science for the factual content. [ 10 ] By approaching Goethe with these views, we believe we are entering into his essential nature. We hold fast to idealism and develop it, not on the basis of Hegel's dialectic method, but rather upon a clarified higher empiricism. [ 11 ] This kind of empiricism also underlies the philosophy of Eduard v. Hartmann. Eduard v. Hartmann seeks the ideal unity in nature, as this does positively yield itself to a thinking that has real content. He rejects the merely mechanistic view of nature and the hyper-Darwinism that is stuck on externals. In science, he is the founder of a concrete monism. In history and aesthetics, he seeks concrete ideas, and does all this according to empirical inductive methods. [ 12 ] Hartmann's philosophy differs from mine only on the question of pessimism and through the metaphysical orientation of his system toward the “unconscious.” We will consider the latter point further on in the book. But with respect to pessimism, let the following be said: What Hartmann cites as grounds for pessimism—i.e., for the view that nothing in the world can fully satisfy us, that pain always outweighs pleasure—that is precisely what I would designate as the good fortune of mankind. What he brings forward is for me only proof that it is futile to strive for happiness. We must, in fact, entirely give up any such striving and seek our destiny purely in selflessly fulfilling those ideal tasks that our reason prescribes for us. What else does this mean than that we should seek our happiness only in doing, in unflagging activity? [ 13 ] Only the active person, indeed only the selflessly active person who seeks no recompense for his activity, fulfills his destiny. It is foolish to want to be recompensed for one's activity; there is no true recompense. Here Hartmann ought to build further. He ought to show what, with such presuppositions, can be the only mainspring of all our actions. This can, when the prospect of a goal one is striving for falls away, only be the selfless devotion to the object to which one is dedicating one's activity; this can only be love. Only an action out of love can be a moral one. In science, the idea, and in our action, love, must be our guiding star. And this brings us back to Goethe. “The main thing for the active person is that he do what is right; he should not worry about whether the right occurs.” “Our whole feat consists in giving up our existence in order to exist” (Aphorisms in Prose). [ 14 ] I have not arrived at my world view only through the study of Goethe or even of Hegelianism, for example. I took my start from the mechanistic-naturalistic conception of the world, but recognized that, with intensive thinking, one cannot remain there. Proceeding strictly according to natural-scientific methods, I found in objective idealism the only satisfying world view. My epistemology 46 shows the way by which a kind of thinking that understands itself and is not self-contradictory arrives at this world view. I then found that this objective idealism, in its basic features, permeates the Goethean world view. Thus the elaborating of my views does, to be sure, for years now run parallel with my study of Goethe; and I have never found any conflict in principle between my basic views and the Goethean scientific activity. I consider my task fulfilled if I have been at least partially successful in, firstly, developing my standpoint in such a way that it can also become alive in other people, and secondly, bringing about the conviction that this standpoint really is the Goethean one.
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