The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Roman Boos: Dear attendees! The aim of these lectures was to attempt to show, from the perspective of specialized science, how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science could lead to the fertilization and further development of the individual specialized scientific fields. The visitors will have had the thoroughly consistent impression throughout the whole event that something is not being hatched in a narrow circle, but that from a central point a real spiritual fertilization into the individual subject areas can take place. Even if not everyone was able to recognize this at the very beginning of their efforts, surely everyone who looked, as it were, at the driving forces present here, who looked at the fertilizing forces that radiate out and not on the value of the first formulated formulations, could be convinced that here is something in relation to our spiritual life, which deserves attention and, as far as possible, also cooperation and goodwill from wide circles – especially here in Switzerland. This is so because it is precisely here that a spiritual force is struggling to the light that can actually claim to have a spiritually fertilizing effect on the social community.

There will be an opportunity for discussion following Dr. Steiner's lecture on “Hygiene as a Social Question.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! That the social question is one of the most pressing issues of our time is not doubted in the broadest circles. And wherever there is even a modicum of concern for the issues arising from the development of human history in the present day, wherever there are threatening or unresolved impulses for the future, all of this can be summarized under the heading of the social question. But we must admit that the consideration and treatment of this social question in the present suffers from the fundamental defect that afflicts so much of our intellectual and moral life, and indeed of our whole civilized life, namely, the intellectualism of our time. It suffers from the fact that its problems are so often viewed only from the standpoint of an intellectualistic consideration. The social question is discussed more from the point of view of the right or the left. The intellectualism of these discussions is shown by the fact that they start from certain theories, from the assumption that this or that must be so or so, that this or that must be abolished. In doing so, little consideration is given to the human being himself. One treats people as if there were something general like “the human being”, as if there were not something that is individually developed in a particular way in each person. One does not turn one's attention to the uniqueness and peculiarity of the individual human being. Therefore, our whole consideration of the social question also takes on something abstract, something that today so rarely translates into social feelings, into the attitudes that play between person and person. The defect in our social thinking is most clearly seen when we focus on a specific area, one that is perhaps more suitable than many others for social reflection, for example, the area of hygiene, insofar as hygiene is a public matter that concerns not the individual but the human community.

Of course, we are not lacking in hygienic instructions, treatises and writings on health care as a public matter. But one must ask: how do these instructions, these considerations of hygiene, fit into social life? And here one must say: they are so introduced that individual discussions about proper health care are published as the result of medical, physiological, and scientific knowledge, whereby the trust that one has in a field whose inner essence one is not able to test is supposed to form the basis for the acceptance of such rules. On the basis of authority alone, the broadest sections of the population can accept the rules on hygiene that emerge from the study chambers and examination rooms, the medical laboratories, and are then made public.

If one is convinced, however, that in the course of modern history, in the course of the last four centuries, a yearning for a democratic order in all matters has arisen in humanity, then, even if it seems grotesque to many today, one is confronted with the undemocratic nature of the pure belief in authority that is demanded in the field of hygiene. The undemocratic nature of this blind faith in authority is juxtaposed with the yearning for democracy, as it has often - albeit, one might say, in a very paradoxical way - culminated in the present day.

I know very well that the sentence I have just uttered is perceived by many as paradoxical, because one simply does not combine the way someone receives health care-related information with the democratic demand that the community of emancipated people should judge public affairs that concern every emancipated person, whether directly or through their representatives. Of course it must be said that something like a hygienic view, a hygienic cultivation of public life, cannot be fully realized in a democratic way, because it depends on the judgment of the person seeking knowledge in a particular field. But on the other hand, the question must arise: should we not be striving for a greater democratization in such a field as this, which concerns every single person and thus the human community as closely, as infinitely closely as public health care does? Today, we are certainly told a great deal about the way in which man should live in terms of air and light, in terms of nutrition, in terms of the disposal of waste products produced either by man himself or by his environment, and so on and so forth. But the rules governing these things that are thrown upon humanity are mostly unworkable for the people to whom they are supposed to apply.

Now I do not wish to be misunderstood; I do not wish to be misunderstood as taking a particular stand on anything in this lecture, which is supposed to be dedicated to the topic “Hygiene as a social issue”. I do not wish to deal one-sidedly with what today tends to be treated one-sidedly from the point of view of a party or of a certain scientific conviction. I would like – perhaps you will permit this small apparent departure from the role in the introduction – I would like neither to take any party for the old superstition that devils and demons go around and move in and out of people as diseases, nor would I like to take sides for the modern superstition that the bacilli and bacteria move in and out of people and cause the diseases. Whether one is dealing with a spiritualist, spiritual superstition of old or with a materialistic superstition, that may concern us less today. But I would like to touch on something that permeates our entire education, especially insofar as this education depends on the fundamental scientific beliefs of our time.

Even if it is asserted from many sides today that scientifically materialism, as it asserted itself in the middle and still in the last third of the 19th century, has been overcome, this assertion cannot apply to the one who really sees through the essence of materialism and its opposite , because this materialism has been overcome at most for some people who see that today's scientific facts no longer allow us to declare in a sweeping way that everything that exists is just some mechanical, physical or chemical process taking place in the material world. It is not enough that, forced by the power of facts, some people have come to this conviction. For in the face of this conviction stands the other fact that now, despite this conviction, those who have it - and the others even more so - when it comes to explaining something specifically, to forming an opinion about something specific, then they do include the materialistic direction in their way of thinking. It is also said that atoms and molecules are harmless accounting coins, of which one does not want to claim anything other than that they are thought-things. But the consideration has therefore remained an atomistic, a molecularistic one. We explain the phenomena of the world in terms of the behavior and the mutual relationship of atoms or molecular processes, and it does not matter whether we now imagine that any thought, feeling or other process is only related to the material processes of atoms and molecules, but rather it depends on the direction of our entire state of mind, the direction of our spirit, when it takes as a basis for its explanations only what is thought in terms of atoms, what emerges from the smallest, the contrived smallest. What matters is not whether one has the conviction, literally or mentally, that there is something other than atomistic effects, than material atomic effects, but what matters is whether one has the possibility of making other explanations of the world the guiding principle of one's mind than deriving phenomena from the atomic. It is not what we believe, but how we explain, how we behave in our souls, that matters. And here, at this point, it must be stated with conviction that only genuine spiritual science, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, can help us to overcome the evil that can be characterized in this way, as I have just done.

I would like to prove that this can now be the case in concrete terms. There is hardly anything that confronts us with more confusion than the differences that are often asserted today between the human body and the human soul or the human spirit, between what are physical illnesses and what are so-called mental or spiritual illnesses. It is precisely the appropriate distinction and the appropriate interrelationship of such facts of human life as those of the sick body or the seemingly sick soul that suffer in terms of understanding under the materialistic-atomistic way of thinking. For what, then, is actually the essence of the materialism that has gradually emerged as the newer world view of many people and that has by no means been overcome, but is in fact in its heyday today? What is its essence? The essence of materialism is not that one looks at material processes, that one looks at the material processes that take place in the human body and that one devotedly studies the miracle-working and miracle-working of the human nervous system and the other human organs or the nervous system of animals or the organs of other living beings; it is not that studying these things makes one a materialist, but it is abandoning the spirit in the study of material processes that makes one a materialist, that one looks into the world of matter and sees only matter and material processes.

But this is what spiritual science must assert - today I can only speak about this point in summary - that wherever material processes appear to us externally for the senses, those processes which today's science alone wants to accept as observable and exact, that wherever these material processes are only the external appearance, the external manifestation of spiritual forces and powers at work behind and within them. It is not the hallmark of spiritual science to look at a person and say: Oh, there is the body; this body is a sum of material processes, but within it the person cannot exist alone, he has his immortal soul independently of it ; and the fact that one is now beginning to develop all kinds of abstract theories and views about this immortal soul, which is independent of the body, in a rather mystical way, does not characterize a spiritual worldview at all. One can certainly say: Man has, in addition to his body, which consists of material processes, an immortal soul that is taken to some spiritual realm after death. One is therefore not yet a spiritual scientist in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

One is only a spiritual scientist when one realizes that this material body with its material processes is a creature of the soul, when one understands in detail how the soul, which was there before birth or, let us say, before conception of the human being, works, how this soul forms, how it sculpts the structure, indeed the substantiation of the human body. If we can truly see the direct unity of this body and the soul everywhere, and if we can see how the soul's activity in the body wears out this body as such, how this body partially dies every minute, and how then, in the moment of death, I would say, the radical realization of what what happens to the body every moment through the influence of the soul and spirit, if one sees through this living interplay, this constant working of the soul in the body, in the individual concrete case, if one strives to say: the soul breaks down into very concrete processes, then it passes over into the processes of liver activity, then it passes over into the processes of breathing, then into the processes of heart activity, then into the processes of brain activity – in short, if one is able to present the physical body as the result of a spiritual one when describing the material in the human being, then one is a spiritual scientist. Spiritual science comes to a true appreciation of the material precisely because it does not see only what today's science sees in the individual concrete material process, what the eye ascertains or what is then recorded as the result of external observation in abstract terms. Rather, spiritual science is spiritual science solely because it shows everywhere how the spirit works in the material, how it looks devotedly at the material effects of the spirit.

That is the one thing that matters. On the other hand, it is important that one is thereby saved from all the abstract, chatty talk about a soul independent of the [physical] human being, about which, as far as life between birth and death is concerned, one can only fantasize. For between birth and death, with the exception of sleep, the soul and spirit are so devoted to the bodily effects that they live in them, through them, and present themselves in them. One must come to the point of being able to study the soul and spirit outside of the human life cycle and to accept the human life cycle between birth and death as a result of the soul and spirit. Then one looks at the real, concrete unity of the spiritual-soul with the physical-bodily. Then one does anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, because then one has the prospect that this human being, with all his individual structures, stands before one as a result of the spiritual-soul, also for knowledge. The mystical theosophical view, which puts forward beautiful theories about all kinds of body-free spiritualities, cannot serve the concrete sciences of life, it cannot serve life at all, it can only serve intellectualistic or soul-based lust, which wants to get rid of life, of the outer life, as quickly as possible and then, in order to have an inner satisfaction, to be able to indulge in an inner lust, weaves all kinds of fantasies about the spiritual and soul.

Here in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement, it is a matter of working very seriously, of cultivating a spiritual science that is able to enliven physics, mathematics, chemistry, physiology, biology and anthropology, so that it is not a matter of stating religiously or philosophically on the one hand that the human being an immortal soul, and then to pursue anthropology, biology, physics and chemistry as if one were only dealing with material processes, but rather it is a matter here of applying what can be gained in knowledge about the soul and spirit to the details of life, of looking into the miracle of the body itself. It may well be said, even if it sounds paradoxical to some: there are those who want to be good mystics or good theosophists and want to talk about everything under the sun, how the human being consists of a physical body, etheric body, astral body, I and so on, but they don't even have a clue about what expression of the soul it is when you sneeze, for example. It depends on seeing matter, not as matter, but as the manifestation of the spirit. Then one also receives sound, content-filled views about the spirit, but then one also receives a spiritual science that can be fruitful for the science of life.

But something else is also achieved with this. It achieves the ability to overcome what, in recent times, precisely because of the materialization of scientific knowledge, has driven us into specialization. I certainly do not want to deliver a diatribe against specialization, because I am well aware of its justification. I know that certain things today must be practiced by specialists simply because a specialized technique is needed for them. But the point is that if someone clings to the material, he can never become a specialist and gain a world view that can be applied in life, because material processes are an infinite field. They are an infinite field out in nature, and they are an infinite field within the human being. If you just study the human nervous system based on what is currently known, you can spend a long time on it, at least as much time as specialists are usually willing to spend on their studies. But if one has only what the material processes are in what happens in the nervous system, only what is expressed in the abstract terms that are the subject of science today, then nothing leads one to anything universal that can become the basis of a worldview. The moment you begin to observe spiritually, let us say, the human nervous system, you cannot observe this nervous system without what you find active in it as spirit leading you immediately to what underlies the muscular system, the bone system, the sense of the nervous system as something spiritual, because the spiritual is not something that can be broken down into individual parts like the material. Rather, the spiritual is something that – and this is only the most basic way of characterizing it – spreads out like a limb or an organism. And just as I cannot look at a person by merely looking at his five fingers and otherwise covering him, so too in spiritual science I cannot look at a single detail without what I perceive in this detail as spiritual-soul leading me to a totality. If we are led to such a totality — even if it is perhaps only a specialist in brain or nerve research — then we will be able to get an overall picture of the human being from the observation of this individual link in the human organism; then we will be led into the position to arrive at something truly universal for a world view, and then the peculiar thing is that we can begin to speak of something that can be understood by all people who have common sense and sound understanding.

That is the great difference between how spiritual science can speak about man and how specialized, materialistic science must speak about man. You see, let us take the simple case of how specialized, materialistic science is presented to you in any of the textbooks in use today. If you, as an ordinary person who has not learned much about the nervous system, take a manual about the nervous system in your hand – well, you will probably soon stop reading or, in any case, you will not gain very much that can give you a basis for looking at the human being as a real human being in his value, in his dignity. But if we listen to what spiritual science has to say about the human nervous system, then what leads to the whole human being follows everywhere. It provides such enlightenment about the whole human being that the idea that arises in one's mind presents something of the value, essence and dignity of the human being with whom one is dealing. And this applies even more when we look at the human being not just in terms of one of his or her many parts, but it applies especially when we look at the sick person, this sick person with his or her many deviations from the so-called normal, especially when we are able to look at the whole person, when he or she is under the influence of this or that disease. What nature presents to our soul in the sick person is apt to lead us deep into the world's interconnections, to show us how this person is organized and how, because of his organization, the atmospheric and even extraterrestrial influences can affect this person, how this human organization is connected to these or those substances of nature, which then turn out to be healing agents, and so on.

We are led into broad contexts, and it may be said that if we supplement what can be recognized in this way about the healthy human being with what can be recognized through the sick human being, then a deep insight into the whole context and the deeper meaning of life will open up. But everything that comes to light in this way is the basis for a knowledge of human nature, and can be expressed in such a way that it can be spoken to all people. Of course, we have not yet reached this point, because spiritual science, in the sense in which it is meant here, has only been working for a short time. Therefore, as Dr. Boos said in his introductory words just now, the lectures given here can often only be seen as a beginning. But the tendency of this spiritual science is to work out what is present in the individual sciences in such a way that what every human being should know about the human being can actually be brought to every human being.

And now imagine if spiritual science first has such a transforming effect on science and if spiritual science then succeeds in developing forms of knowledge for the healthy and sick human being that can be made accessible to general human consciousness If this succeeds, how different human beings will be in social life, how differently understanding one person will be confronted with another than today, when everyone passes by the other and has no understanding for the special individuality of this other person. The social question will only be taken out of its intellectualism when it will emerge from the most diverse areas of life based on factual knowledge, when it is based on the concrete experiences of life. This is particularly evident in the field of health care. Just imagine the social impact of fostering an understanding of what is healthy and what is sick in other people; just imagine what it means when health care is taken into the hands of all of humanity with understanding. Of course, the aim is not to cultivate scientific or medical dilettantism – that must be avoided – but imagine, it simply awakens sympathy, not just feeling, but understanding for the healthy and the sick in our fellow human beings, understanding based on an insight into the human being. Imagine the social effect of such a thing, and you will have to say to yourself: There you can see that social reform, the social reconstruction, must arise out of specialized knowledge in the individual fields, not out of general theories, whether they be Marxist, be they Oppenheim theories, be they theories of any kind that look beyond the human being and want to shape the world out of abstract concepts. Salvation cannot come from this, but from the dedicated study of the individual fields. And health care, hygiene, is such a very special field, because it leads us, I would say, closest to everything that our fellow human being experiences in terms of joy through his healthy, normal way of life or in terms of pain and suffering, of restrictions due to what lies within him as more or less sick.

This is something that immediately points us to the special social way in which spiritual science can achieve results in the field of hygiene. For if in such a way the cultivator of the knowledge of humanity, the cultivator of the knowledge of the healthy and the sick human being, is also the one who specializes as a doctor, with such knowledge in human society, then he will be able to create enlightenment within this human society, because he will be understood. And not only will the doctor develop a relationship with the community in which, if they are not a friend or relative, they will send for the doctor when they have a pain or have broken a leg, but the relationship with the doctor will develop in such a way that the doctor is the constant teacher and instructor of prophylactic health care, that in fact a constant intervention of the doctor is available not only to heal the person when the illness goes so far that he notices it, but also to keep people healthy as far as possible. A lively social activity will take place between the physician and all the rest of humanity. But then health itself will radiate from such knowledge, for it is precisely because materialism has extended to the medical view of life that we have truly come up against strange conceptions.

On the one hand, we have physical illnesses. They are studied by finding degenerations of the organs or whatever else is supposed to be physically perceptible or physically imagined within the human body's skin, and attention is drawn to the fact that any damage found can be repaired. In this direction, thoughts now turn quite materialistically to the physical body of the human being in its normal and abnormal states. Alongside this, the so-called soul or spiritual illnesses arise. These soul or spiritual illnesses have now been reduced, on the one hand, to mere brain illnesses or to illnesses of the nervous system because of materialistic thinking, and the foundations for this have also been sought in the other organ systems of the human being. But because they did not develop any kind of conception about the way in which spirit and soul work in the human body, they could not gain any conception of the relationship between mental illnesses, the so-called mental illnesses, and what the human being otherwise is. And so, I would like to say, mental illnesses stand on one side, even today they are grasped by a strange hybrid science, psychoanalysis, which thinks in a materialistic way but does not understand the materialistic at all; they stand there, these mental and soul illnesses, without being able to be brought together in any reasonable way with what actually happens in the human organism.

Spiritual science can now show – and I have drawn attention to this – that what I am saying here is not just a program, but that it is being pursued in detail – precisely on the occasion of the course for physicians that has been taking place here during these weeks. Spiritual science can indeed show in detail how all so-called mental and soul diseases are based on organ disorders, on organ degeneration, organ enlargement, organ reduction in the human organism. Somewhere in the heart, in the liver, in the lungs, something is not right if at the same time or later something occurs that is a so-called mental illness. A spiritual science that penetrates to recognize the spirit in the normal heart in its effectiveness is also capable of - and need not be ashamed of - seeking a cause for the so-called sick mind or soul in the degeneration of the heart, in the failings of the heart.

The main mistake of materialism is not that it denies the spirit - in which case religion could still ensure that the spirit is recognized - the main mistake of materialism is that it does not recognize matter, because it only observes its exterior. This is precisely the defect of materialism, that it gains no insight into matter, for example in the purely psychoanalytic treatment, in the mere observation of something that has taken place in the soul, which psychoanalysis calls islands of the soul, and thus an abstraction. Rather, one must follow how certain impressions of the soul, which a person receives at this or that time in his life and which are normally bound to the normal organism, impinge on defective organs - instead of, for example, on a healthy liver, on a diseased one; such an impingement may perhaps show itself at a completely different time than when the defect has become organically noticeable.

Spiritual science need not shy away from showing how so-called mental or psychological illnesses are always connected with something in the human body. Spiritual science must strictly point out that if one merely studies the soul, the psychological complex, the deviations of the soul from the so-called normal psychological life, one has at most a one-sided diagnosis. Therefore, psychoanalysis can never be anything more than diagnostic; it can never lead to real therapy in this field. For this reason, because therapy for mental illnesses must begin with the physical examination, we must know the ramifications of the spiritual in matter down to the individual parts if we want to know where to start in the material body – which is, however, spiritualized – to cure that which only shows symptoms in abnormal mental conditions. Spiritual science must most decidedly emphasize that the so-called mental and soul diseases must be traced back to the organology of the human being. However, one can only see into the abnormal organology of the human being if one can follow the spirit into the smallest parts of matter.

And the other way around: what appear to be merely soul phenomena or phenomena that act in the soul, let us say what emerges in the temperaments and in the activity of the human temperaments , in the whole way in which a person plays as a small child, how he walks, what he does, all this, which today is only understood in a mental-spiritual sense, also has its physical side. And a failure in relation to some aspects of a child's education can appear later in a very ordinary physical illness. Indeed, in certain cases, when one is dealing with mental illnesses, one is led to look at the physical aspects in order to explore what is important, and in the case of physical illnesses, to look at the spiritual aspects and explore what is important. For that is the essential thing in spiritual science, that it does not speak in abstractions of a nebulous spiritual, as mystics and one-sided theosophists do, but that it follows the spirit into its material effects, that it nowhere grasps the material as as it is grasped by today's external science, but everywhere, in the contemplation of the material, it penetrates to the spirit and can thus also observe where an abnormal soul life must express itself in that an abnormal bodily life is present, even if it is perhaps hidden externally.

In the broadest circles today, people have completely false ideas about seriously anthroposophically oriented spiritual science – perhaps sometimes rightly so, when one hears those who do not truly want to go into what it is actually about, and only talk about abstract theories, that man consists of this and that, and that there are repeated earth lives and so on. These things are, of course, extremely important and very nice. But when it comes to working very seriously in this spiritual-scientific movement, then the individual chapters, the individual areas of this life, must be dealt with. And in the broadest sense, this in turn leads to a socially minded gathering of people. For when one sees how the soul, appearing sick, radiates its impulses into the organism, when one can feel this connection between the organism and the soul that appears to be sick - feel with understanding - and when, on the other hand, one knows how the institutions of life also affect the physical human being's physical health, how the spiritual, which apparently only exists externally in social institutions, has an effect on the physical health of the human being, if one has an overview of all this, then one is involved in human society in a completely different way. You begin to gain a real understanding of people, and you treat others quite differently; you pursue their character quite differently. You know that certain qualities are connected to this or that, you know how to behave towards these qualities, you know how to place people's temperaments in human society in the right way, and especially how to develop them in the right way, especially when you have associated tasks with them.

One social area in particular will need to be intensively influenced in terms of hygiene by a knowledge of human nature gained in this way: the area of education. Without really knowing people very well, it is impossible to appreciate what it means when children sit in school with stooped backs, causing their breathing to become irregular, or when they are not encouraged to speak loudly and distinctly, clearly vocalizing and clearly consonanting. The whole of later life depends essentially on whether the child breathes correctly at school and whether he is encouraged to speak loudly and distinctly and with articulation.

In such matters – I am only giving examples here, as the same could be said for other areas – the specialization of overall hygiene in the school system is evident, and this in particular shows the full social significance of hygiene. It also shows, however, how life demands that we do not further specialize, but that we bring together the specialized into an overall view. We need not only the knowledge that enables a teacher to educate a child in a particular way according to certain pedagogical norms, but we also need the knowledge that enables a teacher to judge what it means when he or that sentence of the child's clearly articulated utterances or when he lets the child, after saying half a sentence, lets out another breath and so on and does not ensure that the air is used up while the sentence is being spoken. Of course, there are many clues and rules about this too, but the right way of mutual recognition and the right application of these things only enter our hearts when we grasp the full significance for human life and for social health, for only then does the matter become a social impulse.

These considerations were the basis for the pedagogical-didactic course I gave to the teachers at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, which was the starting point for the founding of the school. Teachers are needed who can work from the full depth of a humanistic worldview for the education and teaching of children. Everything that has been incorporated into the sentences that have been expressed as a pedagogical-didactic art strives to turn the children who are being educated and taught into people who, later on, by being encouraged to perform the functions of life in the right way as a child, will have lungs and liver and heart and stomach in order because the soul has been worked on in the right way.

This world view will never interpret the old saying, “A healthy soul lives in a healthy body,” in a materialistic way.

A materialistic interpretation would say that if you have a healthy body, if you have made it healthy with all possible physical means, then it will automatically become the bearer of a healthy soul. That is nonsense. It makes sense if you proceed in the following way, that is, if you say to yourself: “There is a healthy body in front of me, which shows me that the power of a healthy soul has built it up, shaped it, and made it healthy.” I recognize from this body that an autonomous healthy soul has worked in it. That is the meaning of the saying. But only in this way can this saying also be the basis for healthy hygiene. In other words, we do not need a school doctor who visits the school once a fortnight, if that, and doesn't know what to do with himself, in addition to teachers who only work from an abstract pedagogical science. No, we need a living connection between medical science and the art of teaching. We need a pedagogical art that educates and teaches children in a hygienically correct way in all its measures. That is what makes hygiene a social issue, because the social issue is essentially an educational issue, and the educational issue is essentially a medical issue, but only a question of that medicine that is spiritually fruitful, of a hygiene that is spiritually fruitful.

These things then point to something else that is extraordinarily significant, especially with regard to the topic of “hygiene as a social question”. Because, my dear attendees, when spiritual science is cultivated and when spiritual science is something concrete for the human being, then he knows that in what he receives in spiritual science there is something that differs from what he receives in mere intellectualism and in the natural science of the present, too, is mere intellectualism. He knows that what he has in mere intellectualism or in the merely intellectualistically developed natural science or in the merely intellectualistically developed history or jurisprudence of today is different from what he has in mere intellectualism. All of today's sciences are intellectualistic; if they claim to be empirical sciences, it is only because they interpret the empirically observed results of experience in an intellectualistic way. What is given in the humanities differs quite essentially from these natural science or other results interpreted in an intellectualistic way. It would even be quite sad if that which lives in our intellectualistic culture were not merely an image, but a real power that has a deeper effect on people. Anything intellectualistic remains only on the surface of the human being. This sentence is meant to be very comprehensive.

Those who pursue spiritual science only intellectually, that is, who only make notes: there is a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, an ego, repeated earthly lives, karma, and so on and who notes these down in the same way as in natural science or in today's social science, is not seriously engaged in spiritual science, for he merely transfers the way of thinking he otherwise has to what confronts him in spiritual science. But the essential thing about spiritual science is that it must be thought in a different way, felt in a different way, and experienced in a very different way than the intellectualistic way. Therefore spiritual science is something that, through its very nature, maintains a living relationship to the healthy and the sick person, albeit in a somewhat different way than one might often dream of. People will surely have become sufficiently convinced of how powerless one is with what one, whether as admonishment or as encouragement, begins in the purely intellectualistic culture in relation to the so-called mentally ill. The mentally ill person claims that voices are speaking to him; you tell him all kinds of things that you find based on your intellectual reason – in vain, because he has all kinds of objections for you. This alone could indicate that we are not dealing with an illness of the conscious or even the subconscious soul life, but with an illness of the organism. Spiritual science teaches us to recognize that one cannot, however, use such methods, which are supposed to be so-called spiritual ones, in which, for example, one resorts to hypnosis and suggestion, to treat so-called mental or soul diseases, but that one must treat them in so-called physical ways, that is, by healing the organs, for which, however, one really needs spiritual knowledge of the human being. Spiritual knowledge knows that it should not actually intervene at all in the field of so-called mental illnesses with mere spiritual or psychological procedures, because the mental illness consists precisely in the fact that the spiritual element of the human being is suppressed, as it is otherwise only in sleep, and is weak in this suppression, but that one must cure the organ so that it in turn takes back the soul and the spirit in a healthy way. On the other hand, that which does not arise from the intellect, from the head, but from the whole human being as a spiritual-scientific result, when it appears as imagination, inspiration, intuition, and when it is taken up by the human being, engages the whole organism. It really engages the physical organization of the human being in a healing way, which is what spiritual science really is.

On the other hand, there is no proof that some spiritual scientists feel ill within spiritual science or show the opposite of what I have just said. There are so many who are not spiritual scientists, but who are intellectualistic collectors of notes on spiritual-scientific results. But to spread spiritual science in its true substance is itself a social hygiene, for it affects the whole human being, it normalizes his organology when it threatens to develop this or that tendency towards deviation into the abnormal after dreams or after another side. This is the tremendous difference between what is given in spiritual science and what occurs in mere intellectual science: that the concepts emerging in the field of intellectualism are much too weak because they are merely pictorial to intervene in the human being, to be able to have a healing effect on him. The concepts of spiritual science, on the other hand, are such that they are drawn from the whole human being. In the formation of spiritual-scientific concepts, it is truly not only the brain that has been involved, but also the lungs and liver and heart and the whole human being. And if one imbues oneself with these spiritual-scientific concepts, if one assimilates them through healthy human understanding, they in turn have a hygienic effect on the whole human being. This is what, starting from spiritual science, can intervene in a directive way in hygiene as a social matter.

But in many other ways too — I can only give a few examples — spiritual science will intervene in a guiding way in the whole of humanity's health life, when this spiritual science really takes root among humanity in its full seriousness. I will point out just one example. The relationship between the awake human being and the sleeping human being is one of the chapters that must be studied again and again through spiritual science. The same applies to the enormous difference that exists between the human organization in waking and in sleeping. How spirit and soul behave when we are awake, when the physical and spiritual and soul aspects of the human being interpenetrate each other, and how they behave when they are temporarily separated from each other, as in sleep – this is carefully studied through spiritual science.

Now I can only give a certain sentence, but it is a very certain result of spiritual science. We see so-called epidemic diseases occur in life, diseases that affect whole crowds of people, which are therefore also a social matter at the same time. Ordinary materialistic science studies them in terms of the human physical organism. It knows nothing of the tremendous significance for epidemics and for the predispositions for epidemic diseases that lies in the abnormal behavior of humans in terms of waking and sleeping. What happens in the human organism during sleep is something that, when it happens in abundance, for example, predisposes to a high degree for so-called epidemic diseases. People who, by sleeping too long, set processes in motion in the human organism that should not be there because sleep should not interrupt waking life for so long are predisposed to epidemic diseases in a completely different way and they also engage with epidemics in a completely different way.

Now you can see for yourself what it means to educate people about the correct distribution of sleep and wakefulness. You cannot do that by means of regulations. At best you can order people not to send their children to school when they have scarlet fever; you cannot give lectures when there is an outbreak of influenza: people do not respond to that - because today man tends towards freedom, I mean, because the sense of authority is not as great as in former times - people do not respond to that. I am not saying that they are not right to do so, I am not saying anything against what happens in this way, but you cannot possibly tell people in the same way: you must sleep seven hours. Nevertheless, it is more important than the other rules that people who need it sleep seven hours, the others who do not need it may sleep much shorter and so on. But such things, which are so intimately connected with the most personal aspects of a person's life, have a social effect in a magnificent way. It actually depends on the most intimate aspects of a person how the social effects occur, whether, for example, a larger or smaller number of people are withdrawn from this or that occupation or not, which may have an effect in a completely different place under certain circumstances. Hygiene really does have a tremendous impact on social life. Quite apart from what one thinks about contagion or non-contagion, this element intervenes in social life during epidemics. You cannot work through external regulations, you can only work if you bring a lay audience into human society, but one that has an understanding of people that stands in contrast to the physician's educational prophylaxis, wherever a lively interaction between the expert physician and the layman can occur to maintain health.

If we take all these things into consideration, we can say: Here we have described one side of hygiene as a social question, which in the most eminent sense depends on our having a free spiritual life, on our actually having a spiritual life in which, within the spiritual realm, those who are engaged in the cultivation of the spiritual life, including its practical aspects such as hygiene, are completely independent of everything else that does not give pure knowledge, that does not cultivate the spiritual life itself. What each individual can do for the good of his fellow human beings must arise entirely from his abilities. There must be no state standards for this, nor must there be any dependence on economic powers. This must be placed in the personal sphere of dependence of the individual human being and must continue to be placed in the understanding trust that others who need the application of his abilities can place in the capable person.

What is needed is a spiritual life that is completely independent of all authority, of the state and of the economy, and that works purely from within its own spiritual forces in an expert manner.

If you think about what hygiene can really achieve, which is closely connected with insightful human knowledge and insightful social behavior, and if you look at the individual branch of hygiene with expert insight , then you will come to the conclusion - and this is precisely what the individual, concrete subject area demands, and it could be demonstrated for other areas as well as for hygiene - that the spirit must be taken into administration by those who are involved in its cultivation. No matter what abstract theories may say against the independent position of intellectual life, the individual concrete subject demands that the administrators of intellectual life are not merely experts who work for the ministries, but that those who are active in intellectual life must also be the administrators of that intellectual life, and indeed the sole administrators of that intellectual life. Then, when social insight arising out of a free spiritual life has created a hygiene that really exists as a social institution, it will be possible to work economically for this hygiene in a completely different way, precisely in an independent economic life, in an economic life that is structured as I have described in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, as it has been repeatedly described in the journals that serve this idea of the threefold social organism, for example in the Swiss “Social Future”, which is published by Dr. Boos.

If the forces for the cultivation of hygiene that lie dormant in the bosom of human society are received by society with understanding, if this is accepted with human understanding by society, if this becomes general order, then everything that can be carried out of this independent economic life, without regard to any dependence on impulses of gain or state impulses, everything that can be worked out of this independent economic life purely, can be carried into economic life, into independent economic life, everything that can work purely out of this independent economic life, without any consideration of any dependence on profit impulses or on state impulses, can be carried into economic life, and that which must be cultivated in the service of genuine, true hygiene. But then, and only then, will it be possible for that high spirit to enter into economic life, which is necessary in order for hygiene to be cultivated in human life. If the mere acquisitiveness of our economic life is dominant, which has an ever-increasing tendency to be incorporated into the unified state, and if the general opinion is that one must produce that which earns the most, then the self-contained impulses of a free spiritual life cultivated in this field of hygiene cannot assert themselves; then this spiritual life becomes dependent on the extra-spiritual, on the state or economic, then the economic becomes master over the spiritual. The economic must not become master over the spiritual. This is best seen when one is to produce what is required by the spirit in economic life, when one is to serve a genuine, true hygiene.

The forces of economic life, of free economic life, will be added in the threefold social organism to the insight that becomes a public matter and to the understanding of the human being that becomes a public matter. And when, on the one hand, people are immersed in a free spiritual life in which a hygiene truly based on objective ground can be cultivated, and when, on the other hand, people develop that high spirit through which everyone in economic life will in turn approach production with understanding – but with such understanding does not arise merely from the sense of acquisition, but from the insights that arise in free spiritual activity - then, once this insightful social understanding of people will be there, then people will be able to come together democratically in parliaments or otherwise, because then the insight into the necessity of hygiene as a social phenomenon will be shaped from the free spiritual life. And what is necessary for the maintenance of hygiene will be shaped by the economic life, which is based on practical and professional considerations, through the high spirit that will be developed in it. Then people, having come of age, will be able to negotiate on the basis of the legal system, on the one hand from their insight and understanding of human nature, and on the other hand from their relations with the economic system that serves hygiene. Then people will be able to negotiate as equals on the basis of state or legal life about the measures that can be taken with regard to hygiene and public health care. Then, of course, it will not be laymen, dilettantes, who will be healing, but the person who has come of age will face the expert as an equal with understanding when the expert tells him this or that. But the layman's understanding of human nature makes it possible for him, in the context of what is cultivated together with the physician in social life, to approach specialized knowledge with understanding in such a way that he can say “yes” in a democratically conceived parliament not merely on the basis of authority but on the basis of a certain understanding. If we take a close look at such a specialized field and see how the three members of the social organism interact, then, my dear audience, we find the full justification of this idea of the threefold social organism. One can only fight this idea of the threefold social organism if one has first grasped it only in the abstract.

Today, I could not give you more than a sketchy indication of what follows from the threefold social order in a specific area, the area of hygiene, if one thinks correctly about it. But if the paths I have only been able to hint at today are pursued further, it will be seen that although those who approach the impulse of the threefold social organism with a few abstract concepts may, to a certain extent, oppose it – as a rule, they present reasons that one has long since accepted as objections oneself. But anyone who approaches the individual areas of life with full inner understanding and the living out of these individual areas with all that they bring into human life - that is what social life is about - anyone who really understands something in a specific area of life, who makes an effort to understand something of true life practice in any field, will be led more and more into the direction indicated by the idea of the threefold social organism.

This idea did not arise out of a reverie, out of abstract idealism; it arose as a social demand of the present and the near future precisely from the concrete, appropriate consideration of the individual areas of life. And again, when one penetrates these individual areas of life with what emerges from the impulse of the threefold social organism, then one finds for all these areas that which, it seems to me, is needed for them today. And I just wanted to give you a few brief indications this evening of how the field in which blind submission to authority is still accepted today, can be enriched by the spiritual science that follows from the threefold social organism. For this reason it may be said here: Through this enrichment, which the field of hygiene can receive from a spiritually expanded medicine, hygiene can become a social, a truly social matter, and it can also be cultivated in the most genuine sense in a highly democratic way as a general matter of the people.

Following his lecture, Rudolf Steiner answers a series of questions submitted in writing.

Dear attendees! With regard to the matters discussed today, it is important to first address the whole spirit of what has been said. It is sometimes difficult to answer questions that are formulated from the present way of thinking and feeling without reformulating them or at least without explaining them properly. This first question, which probably seems terribly simple to you or many of you, so that it could be answered in a few sentences or with one sentence, is:

How do you get rid of sleeping too long?

Well, to answer this question, I would have to give an even longer lecture than the one I have already given, because I would first have to gather the various elements in order to answer this question properly. But perhaps the following can be said: Today, there is an intellectualistic state of mind in almost all people. Those who believe that they judge or live from their feelings, or who believe that they are not intellectualistic because of some other reason, are intellectualistic all the more. Now the basic character of intellectualistic soul life is that our instincts are ruined by it. Man's right instincts are ruined. It is actually the case that if you want to point to instincts that have not been completely ruined, you either have to point to primitive man or even to the animal kingdom.

For you see, on another occasion these days I was able to point to an example that says a great deal. There are birds that, out of their greed, eat insects, for example, cross spiders. But they fall into convulsions, into spasms, from eating these cross spiders, which are poisonous to them; they must die miserably very soon after swallowing the cross spider. But if henbane is nearby, the bird flies to it, sucks out the healing juice and saves its life with it. Now think about how something has developed that in us humans has shrunk to the few reflex instincts we have. For example, when a fly lands on our nose, we make a movement to get rid of it without first pondering the situation. A defensive instinct takes effect on the insult stimulus. In the bird that eats the cross spider, the effect that the cross spider has on its organism is followed by such an instinctive defense that it drives it to do something quite reasonable. We can still find such instincts in people who lived in the dim and distant past, if we understand their history correctly. But in our time, we have different experiences. I have always found it extremely painful when I came to someone who sat down at the lunch table and had a scale next to their plate. A scale, you really do experience something like that – I was otherwise accustomed to knife and fork and similar implements lying next to the plate – a scale, and with that he weighed the piece of meat, because only then did he know how much meat he should eat according to his organism, when he had weighed it. Just imagine how far removed from all real, original instincts a humanity has now become, to which something like this has to be prescribed.

It is therefore important not to stop at intellectualism, but to ascend to spiritual-scientific knowledge. You will now believe that I speak pro domo, even if it is pro domo of this great house, but I do not speak pro domo, but I actually express what I believe to have recognized as truth, quite apart from the fact that I myself represent this truth. One can see that if one penetrates not only into the merely intellectual, but into that which is to be grasped spiritually, and which therefore comes before humanity more in a pictorial sense, one you realize that by grasping such knowledge, which is not accessible to the mere intellect, you are led back to healthy instincts, not in individual cases, but more in the things that lie in the depths of life. He who spends at least some time, even if it be ever so little, on developing the quite different frame of mind that is needed to really understand spiritual science, will be led back to sound instincts in such matters as, for instance, the need for sleep. The animal does not sleep too much in normal living conditions. Primitive man did not sleep too much either. One need only educate oneself to healthy instincts, which are being unlearned in today's so intellectualized culture, so that one can say: A really effective way to get rid of sleeping too long is to be able to absorb spiritual truths without falling asleep in the process. If you fall asleep at once when you hear spiritual truths, then you will indeed not be able to get rid of sleeping too long. But if you succeed in really taking an inner human interest in the spiritual truths you are learning, then this inner human interest is activated in such a way that you can actually find out what bedtime is for your organism.

On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to give intellectualized rules, for example, to say that a person who has this or that about his liver or kidneys, which does not exactly make him ill in the usual sense, but which is there nonetheless, must sleep for such and such a length of time. As a rule, this does not lead to anything special. And artificially inducing sleep is not the same as when the body, out of its need for sleep, only denies the mind entry for as long as it needs to. So one can say: Proper hygiene, which follows directly from spiritual science, will also lead people to measure their sleep in the right way. Therefore, the other question that has been asked here cannot be answered so easily:

How can you know how much sleep you need?

I would like to say that you don't need to know this through discursive thought, it's not necessary at all, but you do need to acquire such instincts, which you acquire not by collecting notes from the humanities, but by the way you understand humanities when you take it in with full participation. Once you have developed this instinct, you can then measure the right amount of sleep for you individually. That is what is usually said about it. As I said, I can only give you a guide to answering this question, not what is perhaps expected. But what is expected is not always the right thing.

Is sleeping with the window open healthy?

It is not always possible to give a general answer to such questions. It is quite possible that for one person sleeping with the window open is very healthy, depending on the particular structure of their respiratory organs, but that for another person, for example, a room that is well ventilated before sleeping but then has the windows closed while they sleep is better. It is actually a matter of gaining an understanding of the relationship between the human being and the extra-human environment, in order to be able to judge in individual cases on the basis of this understanding.

How do you explain the occurrence of mental disorders caused by crimes committed from a spiritual point of view, that is, how can the physical illness that underlies the mental disorders be recognized here?

Well, here it would be necessary to go into the whole criminal and, basically, psychiatric anthropology if the question is to be dealt with exhaustively. I would just like to say the following: Firstly, when considering such things, it is important to assume that there are abnormalities among the organ dispositions of a person who becomes a criminal. You only have to follow the studies of Moriz Benedikt, the first important criminal anthropologist, who was really quite objective in his research in this direction, and you will see how, through pathological examination, the forms of individual human organs can indeed be linked to a disposition to commit crimes. So there is an abnormality inherent in it, although, of course, materialistic thinkers like Moriz Benedikt draw false conclusions from it, because someone who shows such signs in this direction is by no means a born criminal from the outset. The point is that one can work on the existing defects in the organism - these are organ defects, not the already existing mental illness - precisely through education and later through appropriate spiritual means, that is, in a spiritual-mental way, if only the facts are examined in a spiritual-scientific way. So the conclusions that Benedikt draws from the pathological investigations are not correct. One can indeed point to such organ defects, but then one must be clear about the fact that in ordinary human life, those things that are not intellectual but are emotional or affective do have an effect. These have an effect, to be sure, first on the glandular activity or the like, on the secretory activity, but in turn also on the organs. In this regard, I advise you to read, for example, an interesting booklet written by a Danish physician about the mechanics of emotional movements. There are many useful things in it in this regard. And now imagine the bodily disposition that can be traced in every person who comes into question as a criminal, and add to this everything that follows for the caught criminal in terms of emotional upheaval and what as a continuation of these mental shocks now in turn affects the organs, then you have the way to look for the defective organs for what produced a mental illness as a consequence, which can occur when a crime is committed. In this way, one must gain an understanding of such connections.

How does Theosophy relate to Anthroposophy? Is the former Theosophy no longer fully recognized here?

In answer to this I would simply say: Nothing but anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has ever been advocated here, and what is advocated here today has always been advocated here, and if this has been identified with what is advocated on many sides as so-called Theosophy, then that is simply due to a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding will also remain a misunderstanding because anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has, within certain limits, been within the framework of the Theosophical Society for some time; but even within the framework of this Theosophical Society, the representatives of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science at that time advocated nothing other than what I advocate here today. They just watched for a long time, as long as it didn't look too heretical. But when they realized that anthroposophy is something quite different from the abstract mysticism that often claims to be theosophy, they threw out the anthroposophists. This procedure has been adopted from the other side, while what is represented here has never had any other form than the one it has today.

Of course, those who deal with things only superficially or who have gained their knowledge only from those members of the Society who themselves have only dealt with it superficially – for one does not always have to stand outside in order to have a superficial understanding of anthroposophy or to confuse anthroposophy with theosophy, one can also stand inside with it in society - those who only acquire knowledge in the way of such superficially grasped activity come to such confusions. But here that is represented, which I have today characterized for a particular area, and never has anything else been represented here, even if, of course, work is constantly being done and certain things today can be characterized more precisely, more fully, more intensely than they could have been fifteen, ten or five years ago. That is precisely the nature of the work: that one progresses, that one progresses in particular in the formulation of making oneself understood in something as difficult as spiritual science. One really need not concern oneself with those people who, out of ill will, have twisted the fact that what was previously expressed in an imperfect way is later expressed more perfectly, and who derive all kinds of transformations of world views from it. For spiritual science, as it is meant here, is something living and not something dead, and the one who believes that it cannot progress, who wants to nail it down to where it once stood, in a way that often happens, does not believe in the living, but wants to make it into something dead.

Would you please explain how an epidemic like the flu or scarlet fever comes about if not through the transmission of germs. For many diseases, the pathogen has been scientifically identified. What is your position on this?

Well, if I were to discuss this question, which I have indicated that I do not want to take sides on, then I would have to give a whole lecture. However, I would like to draw attention to the following. The person who, through his knowledge, is compelled to point out that for illnesses accompanied by the appearance of bacilli or bacteria, there are deeper causes as primary causes than just the appearance of the bacilli, does not yet claim that the bacilli are not there. It is quite another thing to claim that the bacilli are there and that they appear in the wake of the illness than to look for the primary cause in the bacilli. What needs to be said in this regard has just been developed in detail in this course for physicians, which is now being held. But it takes time. This also applies to certain elements that need to be dealt with first. This cannot be quickly settled in a question and answer session. Nevertheless, I would like to point out the following. The human constitution is not as simple as one often imagines. Man is a many-sided being. In my book 'Riddles of the Soul' I show at the beginning that man is a threefold being, a being that can be called, firstly, the nerve-sense human being, secondly, the rhythmic human being, and thirdly, the metabolic human being. That is what man is. And these three aspects of human nature interact with each other; and if the human being is to be healthy, they must not interact in any other way than that there is a certain degree of separation between the areas. For example, the nerve-sense human being, who is more than what today's physiology imagines, cannot simply transfer his effects on the metabolic human being in a different way than that these effects are mediated by the rhythmic movements of the circulation and breathing processes, which extend to the outermost periphery of the organism. But this interaction can be interrupted in a certain way.

Now, this interaction brings about something very specific. For example, when such questions are asked, you will forgive me for having to answer them appropriately. I will be as discreet as possible, but it is necessary to say some words that have to be heard appropriately. For example, it is quite true that processes take place in the human abdomen that are integrated into the whole organism. If they are integrated into the whole organism, then they work in the right way. If they are either directly increased in the abdomen, so that they become more active there, or if the corresponding processes in the human head or in the human lungs become less intense, then something very peculiar occurs. Then it becomes apparent that the human organism, in order to live normally, must develop processes within itself that are only allowed to develop to a certain extent so that they take up the whole person. If the process is increased, then it localizes itself, and then, for example, a process occurs in the human abdomen whereby what takes place in the human head or in the lungs and what corresponds to certain processes in the abdomen is not properly separated. The processes always correspond in such a way that they run parallel to each other. But as a result, what may only be present in man to a certain extent in order to maintain his vitality, the vitality carried by spirit and soul, is, so to speak, raised above a certain level. Then, I would say, it becomes the atmosphere for all kinds of lower organisms, for all kinds of small organisms, and these small organisms can then develop there. That which is the creative element of the small organisms is always present in the human being, it is only extended throughout the whole organism. When it is concentrated, it provides a breeding ground for small organisms, microbes; they find a home in it. But the reason why they can thrive there is to be found in extremely fine processes in the organism, which then turn out to be the primary ones.

I am not speaking out of antipathy to the germ theory; I fully understand the reasons that people have for believing in germs. Believe me, if I did not have to speak as I am speaking now for factual reasons, I would recognize these reasons, but here it is the realization that necessarily leads to the recognition of something else and that then forces one to say it. [For example, I can say:] I see a certain landscape, there are many extraordinarily beautiful cattle, well cared for. I now ask: Why are these living conditions in the area? They come from the beautiful cattle. I explain the living conditions of this area by explaining that beautiful cattle have moved in from somewhere; they have spread there. I will not do that, but I will examine the primary causes, the diligence and understanding of the people, and that will explain to me why these beautiful cattle are developing on this land. But I would be making a superficial explanation if I just said: It's beautiful here, life is good here because beautiful cattle have moved in.

The same logic basically applies if I find the typhoid bacillus and then declare that one has typhoid fever because the typhoid bacillus has moved in. Much more is needed to explain typhoid fever than simply to refer to the typhoid bacillus. But one is misled in a completely different way if one succumbs to such false logic. Certainly, the primary processes, which provide the typhoid bacillus with the basis for its existence, are in turn the basis for all kinds of other things that are not primary. And it is very easy to either completely confuse or conflate what is secondary with the actual original clinical picture. These are the things that lead to the right point here, or show how what is justified in a certain sense can be shown to have its limits.

Perhaps you can see from the way I have given this answer – although I can only sketch it out and am therefore easily misunderstood – that this is really not about the all-too-popular ranting against the germ theory, but that it is really about examining things very seriously.

Could you give us some examples of how physical organic disorders can cause mental and spiritual suffering?

Well, if it were to be answered in detail, that too would, of course, be taking us much too far today. But I would like to point out just one thing. You see, the development of medical thought in the history of medicine is not as it is presented today, with Hippocrates as the beginning of medicine and Hippocraticism as its further development. As far as we can trace it, we know that Hippocrates was much more the last outpost of an old instinct-based medicine than merely the beginning of today's intellectual medicine. But we find something else as well. You see, in this old instinctive medicine, as long as it was still in force, people did not speak, for example, of a certain kind of mental depression, which is a very abstract way of expressing it, but rather of hypochondria - abdominal cartilaginousness. So they knew that hypochondria is a disorder of the abdomen, a hardening of the abdomen. We cannot say that the ancients were more mystical than we are.

Likewise, it is easy to show how certain chronic lung defects are definitely connected with what could be called a false mystical sense in people. And so we could point out all sorts of things, quite apart from the fact that – again, in line with a correct instinct – the ancients definitely pointed to something organic when it came to the temperaments. They derived the choleric temperament from bile, from white bile, the melancholic from black bile and all that black bile causes in the abdomen. They then derived the sanguine temperament from blood and the phlegmatic temperament from what they called mucus. But then, when they saw degenerations of the temperaments, they were absolutely things that indicated the degenerations of the organic matter concerned. How this was done in instinctive medicine and in instinctive hygiene can certainly be taken up in a strictly scientific way into the state of mind and, from the point of view of our present knowledge, cultivated.

Here is a question that could lead to further misunderstanding: Do you recognize eye diagnosis? Do you accept it as a science?

Now, it is generally true that in the case of an organism, and especially in the case of the complicated human organism, if you look at it in the right way, you can draw conclusions about the whole from all the possible individual parts. And again, the way these individual parts are arranged in the human organism has a great significance. In a sense, what the eye diagnostician examines in the iris is, on the one hand, so very isolated from the rest of the human organism, and on the other hand, it is so peculiarly integrated into the rest of the organism that it is indeed an expressive organ. But precisely with such things, one must not schematize; and the mistake with such things is that one does just that. For example, it is quite true that people of a different mental and physical constitution show different characteristics in their irises than other people. If one wants to apply something like this, one needs such intimate knowledge of what happens in the human organism that, if one has this intimate knowledge, one actually no longer needs to search from a single organ. And if you are instructed to adhere to some intellectualized rules and to do such things schematically, then not much of value will come of it.

What relation do diseases have to the progress of world history, especially the newly emerging diseases?

A chapter of an entire cultural history! Well, I will just note the following. When studying history, one must have a sense for practicing symptomatology, that is, to understand much of what is taken as history today only as a symptom for much that lies much deeper behind it, which is really the spiritual current that only carries these symptoms. And so that which is in the depths of human development does indeed appear symptomatically in these or those diseases of the time. It is interesting to study the relationships between what prevails in the depths of human development and what takes place in the symptoms of this or that disease. One can also conclude from the presence of certain diseases that impulses are at work in historical development that cannot escape a symptomatology of this kind. But the question could then also point to something else that is not insignificant when pursuing the historical development of humanity. This is this: Diseases, whether they occur in individual human beings or take the form of an epidemic in human society, are often also reactions to other degenerations, which may be regarded as less serious from a health point of view, but which must nevertheless be regarded as very serious from a moral or spiritual point of view. What is said here must not be applied to medicine or hygiene – that would be quite wrong. Diseases must be cured. In hygiene, one must work to benefit people. One cannot say, “First I will check whether it is perhaps your karma to have this illness; then I will let you have it, if not, I can cure you.” These views do not apply when it comes to healing. But what does not apply to us humans in our intervention in nature does, therefore, objectively apply in the outside world. And there one must say that, for example, many things that exist as a predisposition to moral excesses are so deeply ingrained in the human organization that reactions occur which then appear in certain illnesses, and that the illness is the suppression of a moral excess.

In the case of the individual, it is not even of such great importance to follow these things, because they should be left to one's individual destiny and one should not interfere in them any more than one interferes with the secrecy of other people's letters - unless one is guided by the view that is so prevalent at the moment: “opened by the authorities under the laws of war”. Just as little as one should interfere with a person's letter secrets, so little should one interfere with his individual karma. But in world history, that is again something else. There it is important because in world history, the individual human being plays only a, I would say statistical role in its laws. It must always be pointed out that statistics provide a good basis for life insurance companies to assess mortality rates, on which their premiums are based. The matter is quite accurate and the calculation is quite correct, it is all quite scientific. But now – one does not have to die at the very moment that has been calculated by the life insurance statistics, nor does one have to live as long as has been calculated. When the individual comes into consideration, other things occur. But when groups of people or even the whole development of humanity comes into consideration, then it may very well be that one is not a superstitious person, but very much a scientific person, when one examines the extent to which symptoms of illness, illnesses that occur are corrective of other excesses, so that one can indeed see a certain reaction of the disease or at least a disease caused by something that, if the disease had not come, would have developed in a completely different form. These are just a few points on how what is touched upon by this question can be considered.

But now our time is so far advanced that we too will now follow the others who have already left in such large numbers.

Roman Boos: Dear attendees, the question of how judgment is formed in the threefold social organism is to be addressed this evening. Dr. Steiner will give the introductory lecture. I would like to ask you now to take an active part in the discussion, and especially those of you who have something to say about the problems that will be presented today, to speak up then. I now ask Dr. Steiner to begin his lecture.

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees! I would like to introduce this evening's discussion with a few remarks about how a social judgment, on which a new social order must be built, can come about. I should say at the outset that it will not be easy to speak about this subject in a popular way. One should actually recognize the impossibility of speaking about this subject in a popular way from the facts that we now live in.

You see, our time is basically in many ways quite opposed to man forming a healthy social judgment. It is true that much is said today about man as a social being, about social conditions and social demands in general. But this talk about social demands is not really based on a deep understanding of what a social being actually is. We need not be surprised at this, because it is only in the present time that we are at the beginning of the time in which humanity is to mature to form a social judgment. In a sense, humanity has not needed to form a social judgment until now. Why? Of course, human beings have always lived in some kind of social circumstances, but basically they have not – not until now – organized these social circumstances out of their social consciousness, out of a real understanding. They have, if I may say so, received them in an ordered way through a kind of instinctive activity. Up to the present form of the state, which, in Europe, is basically no more than three or four hundred years old, people have formed connections more out of their instincts, and it has not actually come to grouping people out of judgment, consideration and understanding. Out of this understanding, out of a truly clear judgment, the threefold social organism wants to tackle the social question. In doing so, it is basically doing something that is still quite unfamiliar to people and that is highly uncomfortable for the vast majority of people today.

What has actually happened? The earlier social associations and the present state association have developed from human instincts, and people today simply accept this association, which is still combined with all sorts of national instincts. They grow into this association. Instinctively, they grow into this association and avoid thinking about it – or at least they avoid thinking about it to a certain extent. At most, one thinks about the extent to which one wants to have a say in the affairs of the state, but the framework of the state is accepted. They accept it, even the most radical wing of the socialists; Lenin and Trotsky also accept the state, the state that is put together out of all sorts of things, but instinctively, the state that was ultimately worked on by the old tsars. They accept it and at most wonder how they should shape what they want within this state. The question of whether the state should be left as it is or whether a different structure should be adopted that is based on understanding is not even raised. But you see, this question – how can the instinctive nature of the old social life be transformed into a social life that is born out of the human soul? – is the main question underlying the impulse for the threefold social organism. This question cannot be resolved in any other way than by the emergence of a more thorough knowledge of the human being, more thorough than the knowledge of the human being that has existed in recent centuries and that exists in the present.

One can say that the impulse for the threefold social order arose directly from the question: How should man come to a judgment about how he should live together with other people? It arose from a correct observation of what man must demand in the present. But most people do not seriously want to respond to the demands of the present. They would prefer to take the existing situation and make more or less radical improvements here and there. For example, it is probably easier to talk to an Englishman about anything but the threefold social order, since he usually takes it for granted that the unified state of England is an ideal that must not be challenged. Wherever you touch on the subject, you notice this prejudice. But this is nothing more than the persistence of the old human instincts in relation to social coexistence, and we must get beyond them. We must come to a conscious coexistence. This is highly inconvenient for people today, because they do not really want to come to a judgment out of an inner activity, out of an inner activity. They would basically like, as I said, to have a say in what is already there, but they do not really want to think thoroughly about how to deal with what is there and how to rectify what has been led into the absurd by the last catastrophes. This absolutely new aspect of threefolding is something that people basically do not want to see. They are not willing to make the effort of forming a social judgment.

You see, the question: how does a social judgment come about? - immediately breaks down into three separate questions when approached in the right spiritual-scientific way. And the sources from which the threefold social organism flows are actually based on this, that the question of how to form a social judgment is immediately divided into three separate questions. It is impossible to arrive at a judgment in the same way in the common spiritual life, in the social spiritual life, as in the legal or state life or in the economic life. Recently an essay appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt entitled 'Political Scholasticism'. In it, a very clever gentleman – journalists are usually clever – makes fun of the fact that in contemporary public life, people strive to separate the political from the economic. He would, of course, also make fun of it and call it a scholastic hair-splitting if one wanted to separate public life into the three parts, the spiritual part, the legal or state part and the economic part, because he has a very special reason, a reason that is so very easy for the man of the present time to understand. He says: Yes, in real life the economic, political and intellectual life is nowhere separated; they flow into each other everywhere, so it is scholastic to separate them. Now, my esteemed audience, I think one could also say that one should not perceive the head and the trunk and the limbs of a person separately, because in real life they belong together. Of course, the three limbs of the social organism also belong together, but one cannot get by if one confuses the one with the other – just as little as nature would get by if it grew a foot or a hand on the shoulders instead of a head, if it were to shape the head into a hand. It is a particular characteristic of these clever people of the present day that they have taken the greatest happiness with the most stupid of our time, because the most stupid today appears to be the most intellectually clever of the great multitude.

What matters is that at the moment when humanity is no longer to enter public life instinctively, but more consciously than before, the whole way in which man stands in the spiritual life of culture, how he stands in the life of law and the state, how he stands in the life of economics, is different. It is just as different as the blood circulation is different in the head, in the feet or in the legs, and different in the heart - and yet the three work together in just the right way when they are organized separately in the right way.

And we too, as human beings, have to form our social judgment in various ways in the field of intellectual life, in the field of legal or state life, and in the field of economic life. But we have to find ways to arrive at a truly sound judgment in the three fields. In general, this path - basically there are three paths - is really quite heavily obstructed by the prejudices of the time. Many obstacles must first be removed from the way.

In order to arrive at a sound social judgment in spiritual life, it must be clear that today's man is utterly incapable of even posing the question: What does social mean in spiritual life? What does human coexistence mean in spiritual terms? We still do not have a knowledge of man that, I would not even say, provides answers to such questions, but I would just say that it encourages such questions. This knowledge of man must first be created by spiritual science and made popular among mankind. One must raise the question properly and reasonably: What difference does it make whether I am facing a human being or whether I, as a lonely observer of nature, have only nature facing me, thus gaining knowledge of this nature by directly facing nature as an observer? I enter into a certain reciprocal relationship with nature; I allow nature to make impressions on me; I process these impressions, form inner images about these impressions by entering into a reciprocal relationship with nature; I take something in from outside, process it inwardly. That is basically the simple fact. It looks the same on the outside when I listen to a person, that is, enter into a spiritual relationship with him, find in his words the meaning that he puts into them. The words of the person make an impression on me; I process them inwardly into ideas. I enter into interaction with other people. One might think that whether I interact with nature or with other people is basically the same. But it is not. Anyone who claims that it is the same has not even looked at the matter in the right way. You have to pay attention to these things.

You see, I would now like to give a specific example. There is a fact in German intellectual life without which this German intellectual life is inconceivable. When one describes the intellectual life of a certain area, then one usually describes – depending on what one has reason to do – either the economic conditions of the time when this intellectual life developed, or one describes individual great personalities who, through their ingenious achievements, have fertilized this intellectual life. But now I want to mention a fact of a quite different nature, without which the special character of German intellectual life in the 19th century is inconceivable. I would like to speak of an archetypal phenomenon of social intellectual coexistence: the ten-year intimate relationship between Goethe and Schiller. One cannot say that Goethe gave Schiller something or that Schiller gave Goethe something and that they worked together. That does not capture the fact that I mean, but it is something else. Schiller became something through Goethe that he would never have become alone. Goethe became something through Schiller that he would never have become alone. And if you only have Goethe and only have Schiller and think about their effect on the German people, you do not get what actually happened. Because if you only have Goethe or only have Schiller and consider the effects that emanate from emanating from both, there is not yet what has become, but a third, quite invisible, but of tremendously strong effect, arises from the confluence of the two (It is drawn on the blackboard). You see, that is an archetypal phenomenon of social interaction in the spiritual realm.

What is the actual basis for this? Today's rough science does not study such things, because today's science does not penetrate to the human being at all. Spiritual science will study such things and only through this will it bring light into the social and spiritual life of people. Those of you who have heard something about spiritual science know what I am only briefly hinting at now. Spiritual science shows that the development of the human being is a real, actual fact. It shows that as a person develops, he becomes ever more mature and original, ever bringing forth different and different things from the depths of his being. And if social life suppresses this bringing forth, then that social life is wrong and must be brought into line.

Now, Goethe and Schiller were both individuals and personalities who were socially blessed in the highest sense. When did it happen that one can say that Schiller understood Goethe best, and that Goethe understood Schiller best? They were able to converse with each other best, to exchange their ideas best, and to achieve something together, this invisible something, which in turn had an effect and is one of the most significant facts in German intellectual life. I have tried very hard to determine the year of the most intimate period of their lives together, the time when the ideas of one, I would say, most thoroughly penetrated the ideas of the other. I think it was around 1795 or 1796 (written on the board). 1796, there is really something very special about this collaboration between Goethe and Schiller.

If one now investigates why Schiller of all people understood Goethe best in this year and why Goethe allowed himself to be understood best by Schiller in this year, one comes to this. Schiller was born in 1759; so he was thirty-seven years old in 1796. Goethe was ten years older; so he was forty-seven years old. Now spiritual science shows us that there are various life junctions in human life; they are not usually taken into account today: the change of teeth - the human being becomes something else by surviving the change of teeth, also in the spiritual-soul relationship -, sexual maturity, later transitions - these are less noticeable, but they are still there in the 28th year, again in the 35th and in the 42nd year. If one is really able to observe this inner human life, then one knows that the beginning of the 40s, I would say on average the 42nd year, when the human being develops inwardly, when he undergoes an inner spiritual life, this 42nd year is something very special. Between the 35th year and the 42nd year, what can be called the consciousness soul matures in the human being. And it has become fully mature, this judging consciousness soul, this conscious soul that enters into a relationship with the world entirely from the ego – this consciousness soul becomes mature at that point. Schiller at 37 was five years younger than 42, Goethe at 47 was five years older than 42. Goethe had passed the 42nd year just as much as Schiller was below it.

Schiller was at the same stage in the development of the consciousness soul, Goethe was beyond it; they were at the same distance from it. What does that mean? In relation to the soul, it means a similar contrast. I know that such comparisons are daring, but our language is also coarse, and therefore one can only use daring comparisons when one has important, fundamental facts to cite. For the soul-spiritual, it means a similar contrast as the male and female for the physical-sexual. In relation to physical development, the sexualities are unevenly developed. Out of courtesy to the ladies, and in order not to make the gentlemen arrogant, I will not say which sexuality is a later development and which sexuality is an earlier development, but they are of a different temporal development. It is not the whole human being, the head does not take part in it, so those whose sexuality must be thought of in an earlier stage of development need not feel offended. But it is not so in relation to the soul; there the earlier can come together with the later, then a very special fertilization arises. Then something arises that can only arise through this different kind of combination at different times. This is, of course, a special case; here, in social life, the interplay of soul to soul is formed in a special way. Whenever people influence each other, something arises that can never arise from the mere interaction of human beings and nature. You see, you get a certain idea of what it actually means to let something that comes not from nature but from another human being take effect on you.

This became a very particular problem for me when I immersed myself in Nietzsche, for example. Nietzsche had something that a whole range of people with a similar background to Nietzsche's now also have; it's just that he had it in a particularly radical sense. For example, he looked at philosophers, the ancient Greek philosophers, he looked at Schopenhauer, he looked at Eduard von Hartmann and so on. It can be said that Nietzsche was never really interested in the content of a philosophy. The content of the philosophy, the content of the world view, was actually of no great importance to him; but he was interested in the person. What Thales was thinking as the content of his world view is of no importance to him, but how this person Thales lives his way to his concepts is what interests him. This is what interests him about Heraclitus, not the content of Heraclitus' philosophy. It is precisely that which comes from a human being that has an effect on him, and in this way Nietzsche shows himself to be an especially modern character. But this will become the general constitution of the human soul life. Today people still argue about opinions in many ways. They will have to stop arguing about opinions for the simple reason that everyone must have their own opinion. Just as if you have a tree and photograph it from different sides, it is still the same tree, but the photographs look quite different; so everyone can have their own opinion, depending on - it just depends on the point of view they take. If he is reasonable in today's sense, he no longer argues about opinions, but at most finds some opinions healthy and some unhealthy. He no longer argues about opinions. It would be the same as if someone looked at different photographs and then said: Yes, they are quite different, these are right and those are wrong. At most, one can be interested in how someone arrives at their opinion: whether it is particularly clever or foolish, whether it is low and bears no fruit or whether it is high and beneficial for humanity.

Today it is a matter of really clarifying how people relate to each other in their spiritual and social coexistence, and how one person has something to give to another. This is particularly evident when we see what a growing child must receive from the other person who is his or her teacher. There are quite different forces at work than between Goethe and Schiller, even if they are not placed in such a lofty position, but there are more complicated forces at play. What I am developing here now provides a way to find the path to how one can rise to a truly social judgment in the realm of spiritual life.

You see, I said before that I cannot speak in a particularly popular way today, because if I want to discuss these questions from the point of view of an as yet unknown human science, at least in wider circles, I have to start from that point of view. In my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (The Riddle of the Soul) I have pointed out how the human being is a threefold being: he is a head human being or nervous-sensory human being, a rhythmic human being, and a metabolic human being. The nerve-sense human being encompasses everything that is the senses and what the organs of the head are. The rhythmic human being, the trunk human being, could also be said to encompass what is rhythmic in the human being, what is the movement of the heart, the movement of the lungs, and so on. The third, the metabolic human being, encompasses everything else.

These three aspects are found in human nature; in a sense they are fundamentally different from each other, but it is difficult to pinpoint their actual differences. In the case of the rhythmic person, the following can be emphasized. You will hear more about the rhythmic in the human being later on this evening when Dr. Boos speaks about the formation of social judgment in legal or state life, which will then make up the second part of the introduction. Dr. Boos will speak about what is particularly close to him, about the formation of social judgment in the second link of the social organism, in legal and state life. But now I would like to emphasize the following: the rhythmic activity in man is particularly evident when we consider how man breathes in the outer air, processes it within himself, how he breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbonic acid. Inhalation – exhalation, inhalation – exhalation: this is one of the rhythms that are active in man. It is a relatively easy process to understand: inhalation – exhalation = rhythmic activity.

The other two activities can perhaps only be understood by starting from this rhythmic activity. In a sense, the whole human being is actually predisposed to rhythmic activity. But with ordinary science, we do not recognize the nervous sensory activity, the actual main activity, at all. It cannot be compared with the activity of the lungs and the heart, with rhythmic activity. I can only mention something that may seem paradoxical to those who are less familiar with spiritual science, with anthroposophy, but which will be confirmed by a real science. In the future, what I am saying now will be known to the world as a completely exact scientific fact when the necessary conditions are understood. During inhalation and exhalation, there is a certain equilibrium. This equilibrium that exists could be depicted as a pendulum that goes back and forth. It goes up just as high on one side as on the other. It swings back and forth. There is also an equilibrium between inhalation and exhalation, inhalation and exhalation and so on.

If a person did not live together with other people in a spiritual and soulful way, if a person were lonely and could only observe nature, that is, could only enter into an interrelationship with nature, look at nature and inwardly process it into images, then something very special would happen to that person. As I said, today this seems highly paradoxical to people, but it is nevertheless the case: his head would become too light. By observing nature, we are, after all, engaged in an activity. We are not doing nothing by observing nature; everything in us is engaged in a certain activity. This activity is, so to speak, a sucking activity at the head of man – not at the whole organism, but at the head of man, a sucking activity. And this sucking activity must be balanced, otherwise our head would become too light; we would become unconscious. It is compensated for by the fact that the head, which has become too light, undergoes a metabolism, blood nourishment, and all that is deposited in the head. And so, by observing nature, we continually have a lightening of the head and a subsequent heaviness due to the digestive activity going up into the head.

This balancing must take place. It is a higher rhythmic activity. But this activity would become extremely one-sided if the human being were only in contact with nature. Man would indeed become too light in his head if he were only in contact with nature outside; he would not send enough balancing metabolic activity up into his head from within. He does this to a sufficient extent when he enters into a relationship with his fellow human beings.

That is why you feel a certain pleasure when you enter into a relationship with your fellow human beings, when you exchange thoughts or ideas with them, when they teach you or the like. It is one thing to walk through nature alone and quite another to stand face to face with a person who expresses his ideas to you. When you are confronted with a person who expresses his ideas to you – you should just consider this carefully in self-observation – then you have a certain feeling of well-being. And he who can analyze this feeling of well-being will find a similarity between it and the feeling he has when he digests. It is a great similarity, only one feeling goes to the stomach, the other goes up to the head. You see, that is precisely the peculiarity of materialism: these subtle material processes in the human body remain closed to materialism. The fact that a hidden digestive activity takes place in the head precisely because one is sitting opposite a person with whom one is talking, with whom one is exchanging ideas, is something that people do not notice through today's crude science. Therefore, they cannot answer social questions, questions about the human context, even if they are quite trivial.

For the spiritual scientist, the anthroposophist, it is quite clear why the coffee sisters are so keen to sit together. They don't just sit together because they like coffee, but because they then digest themselves. The digestion goes to the head, and they feel that as a sense of well-being. And when coffee sister sits next to coffee sister, or even, I can't say coffee brother, but skat brother sits next to skat brother at the twilight drink, and so on, the same thing naturally takes place among men. I don't want to offend anyone, but when people sit together like that, yes, they feel the digestive activity going on behind their heads, and that means a certain sense of well-being. What happens there is really necessary for human life. It is really necessary, but it can be used for higher activity than just for the evening drink and for being a coffee nurse. Just as the blood must not stand still in the human being, so must what happens in the head not stand still. A stunted rhythm would occur in the nervous system if we did not have the right kind of spiritual connection with people outside. Our right humanity, that we become right people, depends on our coming into a reasonable connection with other people.

And so one can only form a social judgment when one realizes what is necessary for the human being – just as necessary as being born. When one realizes that the human being must come into a spiritual and soul connection with other human beings, only then can one form a correct social judgment about the way in which the spiritual element of the social organism must be formed. For then one knows that this social life is based on the fact that man must come into a right individual relationship with man, that no abstract state life must intervene there, that nothing must be organized from above, but that everything depends on the fact that the original original in the human being can approach the original in the other human being, that there is real, genuine freedom, direct freedom from individual to individual, be it in the social coexistence of the teacher with his students, be it in social coexistence in general. People wither away when school regulations or regulations about intellectual social life make it impossible for what is in one person to have a fertilizing effect on what is in another. A truly social judgment in the realm of spiritual life can only develop when that which elevates one person above themselves, when that which is more in one person than in another, can have an effect on the other person and when, in turn, that which is more in the other person than in oneself can have an effect on oneself. One can only understand the necessity of freedom in spiritual life when one realizes that this human coexistence can only develop in a spiritual and psychological way if what comes into existence with us through birth and what develops through our abilities can freely influence other people. Therefore, the spiritual element of the social organism must also be administered only within itself. The person who is active in the spiritual life must at the same time be in charge of the administration of the spiritual life. So: self-administration within this spiritual realm. You see, that is what is very special about this spiritual life, which arises from a true understanding of the human being.

Dr. Boos will then describe the legal life in more detail from the same point of view. The legal life proceeds as follows: when humanity, through the demands of the present, is increasingly moving towards a democratic state, so that the mature human being is confronted by another mature human being, we are not yet dealing with what works across from one person to another in the way I have described for the spiritual life, where the digestive activity shoots up into the head. In the sphere of right living, where one fully developed human being is confronted with another, no such changes take place as in the spiritual life, but only interactions between human being and human being. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect I will now omit this middle aspect and move on to economic life, to the third link in the social organism. This economic life is not really understood today in such a way that a real social judgment can be formed from this understanding. What, in fact, can be called economic life? You see, you can clearly define economic life when you think of it in terms of the social organism. If we take any kind of animal, we cannot say that it lives in a social community in the human sense, because the animal finds what it desires in nature itself. It takes what it needs to live from the external nature; what is initially outside in nature passes into the animal, the animal processes it and releases it again – another kind of interaction. You see: here we have something that, I would say, is organized into nature. Such an animal species, so to speak, only continues the life of nature within itself. Nothing is changed in nature. The animal takes in what is in nature for its nourishment – just as it is in nature. We can find a complete opposite to this, and this contrast is present in zoo animals, which receive everything they eat through human intervention. Here, human reason supplies the animal with nourishment, and the human organization first assesses what the animals then receive. As a result, the animals are actually completely torn out of nature. Domestic animals are also completely torn out of nature; they are, so to speak, so changed that they not only absorb natural food substances into their inner being, but that food prepared by human reason is grafted into them. Domestic animals become a means of expression of that which, so to speak, has been processed spiritually, but they themselves do nothing to it. Animals are either such that they take in what is in nature unchanged in their own activity, or, when humans feed them something, they cannot contribute anything to it; they do not help to prepare what is fed to them.

In the middle, between these two extremes, is human economic activity, insofar as it lives in the social organism, at most not when man is at the lower level of a hunting people, when he still takes what is in nature unchanged, if he enjoys it raw, which he actually no longer does today. But the moment human culture begins in this respect, man takes something that he has already prepared himself, where he changes nature. The animal does not do that, and if it is a domestic animal, something foreign is supplied to it. That is actually economic activity: what man does in communion with nature by supplying himself with changed nature. We can say that all economic activity of man actually lies between these two extremes: between what the animal, which is not yet a social being, takes unchanged from nature, and what the domestic animal takes in, which is now fed entirely in the stable, only with what humans prepare for it. And when man works, he is involved with his economic activity between his inner being and nature. And this economic life that we know in the social organism is actually only a systematic summary of what individuals do in the direction that I have characterized.

Let us compare the economic life in a social context with the spiritual life that we have just characterized. The spiritual life is based on the fact that the individual human being, so to speak, has too much. What people possess spiritually, they usually give away very gladly; they are generous in this way and gladly hand it over to others. In contrast to material possessions, people are not as generous in the same sense; they prefer to keep material possessions for themselves. But what they possess spiritually, they are very happy to give away; they are generous in this way. But this is based on a good universal law. Man can indeed go beyond himself in a spiritual sense; and in the way I have just described it, it is beneficial for the other person when man gives him something, even if he in turn does not accept anything from the other. That is to say, when a person enters social life in a spiritual way, I would say that, in his inner being, he has too much judgment, too many ideas; he is compelled to give, he must communicate with others.

In economic life, it is exactly the opposite. But one can only come to this conclusion if one starts from experience, not from some kind of theoretical science. In economic life, one cannot arrive at a judgment in the same way as in the life of the spirit, that is, from person to person. Rather, in economic life one can only come to a judgment when one stands as an individual human being or as a human being placed in some association in relation to another association. Therefore, the impulse for the threefold social order demands the associative: people must associate according to their occupations or according to producers, consumers and so on. In the economic sphere, the association will be confronted with the association. Let us compare this to the individual human being, who, for my sake, has a lot of spirit in his head; he can share this spirit with many people. One person may absorb it better, another worse, but he can communicate this spirit that he has to many people. So there is the possibility that a person can give what he has of spirit to many people. In economic life, it is exactly the other way around.

At first we have no idea about economic life at all. What I said to some of you yesterday is absolutely true: if you want to judge what is right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy in economic life, and you just want to deduce it from the inner being, then you you are just like that character in a Jean Paul novel who wakes up in the middle of the night in a dark room and thinks about what time it is, who wants to find out what time it is in the dark room where he can't see or hear anything. You can't work out what time it is by thinking about it. You can't come to an economic judgment through thinking or through inner development. You can't even come to an economic judgment when you are negotiating with another person. Goethe and Schiller were good at exchanging spiritual and psychological ideas. Two people together cannot come to an economic judgment. One can only come to an economic judgment when one is faced with a group of people who have had experiences, each in his own field, and when one then takes in as judgment what they, as an association, as a group, have worked out. Just as you have to look at your watch if you want to know what time it is, in order to arrive at an economic judgment, you have to take on board the experiences of an association. And one can hear very beautiful things about the duty of one person towards another, about the rights of one person towards another when they are face to face; but one cannot come to an economic judgment when only one person is confronted with another, but one can only come to an economic judgment if one understands what is laid down in associations, in groups of people, in mutual economic intercourse as economic experience. There, the exact opposite of how one lives together socially, spiritually and soulfully must be present. In the spiritual and soul realm, the individual human being must give to others what he develops within himself. In the economic sphere, the individual must absorb the experiences gained by the association. If I want to form an economic judgment, I can only do so if I have asked associations what experiences they have had with this or that article in production, in mutual dealings, and so on. And this is what it comes down to when forming a social judgment in the economic sphere: that such associations make up the economic body of the threefold social organism and that each individual belongs to such associations. In order to arrive at an economic judgment, from which one can in turn act, the economic experiences of the associations must be available. What we are meant to learn scientifically, cognitively, we must acquire in the free spiritual life through individual experiences. What is to inspire us in our economic will must be experienced by the individual through the experiences handed down to him by associations. Only by uniting with people who are economically active can we ourselves arrive at an economic will.

The formation of judgment in the spiritual-mental and economic spheres is radically different. And an economic life cannot flourish alongside a spiritual life if the two spheres receive orders from one and the same place, but only if the spiritual life is such that the individual can freely hand over to another what he has within it. And economic life can flourish only when the associations are such that the economic branches related to one another by production or consumption are united associatively, and thus the economic judgment, which again underlies the economic will, arises. Otherwise, it becomes a muddle, and we end up with the reactionary, liberal or social ideas of modern times, where we never realize how radically different human activities are in the spiritual, economic and, in the middle, legal or state spheres.

Basically, it is so difficult for people today to arrive at a sound judgment in this area because they have been led astray by the traditional creeds from seeing the real structure of the human being in body, soul and spirit. Man is said to be only a duality, only body and soul. As a result, everything is mixed up. Only when we divide the human being into spirit, soul and body, only when we know how the spirit is that which we bring into existence through birth, how the spirit is that which brings forth the potential for development within us, which we must bring into the social sphere, only then will we get an idea of how this spiritual part of the social organism must have a separate existence. When we know how everything that springs from the soul, which is intimately connected with our rhythmic life, is the product of human beings living together in circles of duty, work and love, then we can see what must be present in the democratic state as the legal organization of the threefold organism. And when we realize that we cannot arrive at an economic judgment and therefore cannot engage in economic activity without being integrated into a fabric of associations in the threefold social organism, then we come to see how only that which is a special kind of judgment in the economic field can lead to help in the future.

It is the task of the present to achieve a true understanding of the human being and, on the basis of this true understanding of the human being, to then arrive at an understanding of what today is striving for a true understanding. Man judges quite differently in the social life in the spiritual realm than in the legal realm, and it is quite different again than in the economic realm. Therefore, if these three very differently structured social contexts are to develop in a healthy way in the future, they must also be administered separately and then work together. Just as in the individual organism it is not possible to form anything other than the shape of a head where the head is to be, nor a hand or foot or heart or liver, so the spiritual organism must not be systematized in the same way as the economic organism or the legal organism. But precisely when they are properly organized in the right place, they work together to form a whole, just as the hand and foot and trunk and head of the human being work together to form a whole. The right unity arises precisely from the fact that each is properly organized in its own way.

As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, the idea presented to humanity in the form of the threefold social organism is truly not a frivolous one, but one that has been extracted from a real science. This science must, of course, first be fought for against all the scientific chaos that prevails today. But it is, I might say, not only a wall, it is a thick barrier of prejudices through which one must first fight, first fight with what must underlie the science of man, and then with what emerges from this true science of man as an impulse for a real social reconstruction. One can say: It makes one's heart bleed when one looks today into this chaos of social misconceptions that reigns everywhere, and at the social drowsiness. And one must say: It is indeed not possible for everyone to make a social new order out of what has been taken up by this European humanity as a prejudice from a mistaken science for three to four centuries. It is a terrible thing when people talk about a social order based on a science that can never justify a social judgment because it does not know man. That science, ladies and gentlemen, does not regard man as man, but only as the highest link in the animal series. It does not ask: What is man? - but: What are the animals? It only says: When the animals develop to the highest level, that is precisely the human being. One does not ask what the human being is, but the animals are there, and in the series of animals, the human being is added as the last one, without saying anything different about the human being than what is said about the animal being. Such a science will never create a social reconstruction.

What is so distressing is not that people today are not radical enough to say to themselves: We must first demand real knowledge, real science – but that they are more faithful today to external scientific authority than Catholics ever were in the past to papal authority. At that time, at least some still rebelled against this papal authority. Today, however, everything is subjugated to scientific authority, even radical socialists like Lunacharsky; when it comes to defending the old science against a renewal of science, he crawls under scientific authority because he cannot imagine that science itself needs to be transformed if we want to make progress. These things must be taken very seriously and they must be said. And no matter how many social clubs, liberal communities, development communities, women's mobs or women's clubs people join, nothing will come of it if the matter is not approached radically, if one does not start from the point where one can arrive at a real social judgment: And this is only a social human knowledge that can give what today's science cannot give. And only a real spiritual science can give a renewal of science.

That is what I wanted to say in introduction to this evening. I now ask Dr. Boos to speak about the second part of the social organism, about the life of rights.

Roman Boos speaks about “The formation of judgment in the legal aspect of the social organism.” After that, a discussion will take place.

Roman Boos: Perhaps someone still has a question to ask, or perhaps someone would like to add something? - That does not seem to be the case. I do not know if Dr. Steiner could be asked for a final word. It is very late and I do not know if there are any other questions that Dr. Steiner would like to address.

Rudolf Steiner: Taking into account the lateness of the hour, I would just like to add a few words, because a closing word is customary at a discussion. This evening's two topics, the demand for a social reorganization on the one hand and on the other hand the necessity to penetrate to the sources of spiritual science, because only there can the forces be found to do justice to the demands of the day, these two things must always be emphasized again in all seriousness from this point of view. This has often been said, but it cannot be said too often.

I began by saying today that people have grown instinctively into the present social orders, and in fact the materialists would also instinctively like to remain in them. They do not want to take into account that today is the time to move on to the activity of judgment, that is, to consciousness, and to create a new social world out of consciousness. But we must penetrate to this consciousness if we do not simply want to continue the disastrous policies of recent years, which have taken hold in such a terrible way and are now being continued within European civilizational life and its appendages. I have already pointed out here how a mind like Oswald Spengler's, which is, after all, ingenious on the one hand but sick on the other, can seriously attempt to prove scientifically that the Occident must have arrived at barbarism, at complete and utter decline, at the beginning of the third millennium. One gets the same pain that I spoke of at the end of my introductory words today when one sees how extraordinarily difficult it is to instill in the minds of the present the sense of the seriousness of the times, and how much more difficult it is to instill the sense of the necessity to carry out a real transformation with the knowledge of the present.

My dear audience, do not say that this knowledge of the present is only found in a few scholars or in some contemporary views of people. No, this knowledge is everywhere, only people do not admit it to themselves. What matters is not whether one holds this or that hypothesis, this or that scientific theory, but whether one's whole life of ideas and feelings is moving in a certain direction, which ultimately amounts to this scientific life of the present, which impoverishes and empties the human being. Of course, some people may not be concerned that it is the consequence of contemporary science that the earth originated from a nebula and will end up in some final state of heat in which all life will be destroyed. Perhaps there are even some who say: That may be, but I don't care. — But, my dear audience, that is not the point. Open any chemistry, any physiology, any zoology or any anthropology today, read five lines in it and take these five lines – it says something along those lines. Regardless of whether you open this or that and take this or that, you are in the direction that leads to these views. Of course, today it is convenient when you want to know something about this or that to resort to the usual things and not to think that even something like this needs a thorough transformation. Today it is convenient if you want to learn something about malachite, to go to the encyclopedia, take out the volume with “M”, open “Malachit” and read what is in there. If you accept it uncritically, regardless of what you otherwise think, and if you are not aware that you are living in a serious time of transformation, then you are asleep, then you are not prepared for what is necessary in today's world. Today it is a matter of not just becoming aware of the seriousness at some times when reflecting on the ultimate problems of world view, but today it is a matter of being aware every minute of the day that it is our duty to work on the transformation, because we live in a thoroughly serious time. And just in these days we are again experiencing the tragedy that the most important problems are unfolding, perhaps even more important than during the external years of war, and that people are trying to sleep as much as possible, not even participating with their consciousness in what is actually taking place.

To accept anthroposophy as a confession does not mean merely to advocate this or that in theory, to speak of etheric body and astral body, of reincarnation and karma. To accept anthroposophy means to be connected in one's feelings, with one's whole being, to that which is now taking place in the day and now in the great epoch as the impulse of a significant transformation. And when you look into the sleeping people today, your heart bleeds. Because today it depends on waking up. And again and again I would like to say, and I would like to conclude every discussion with it: try to get to the sources of spiritual knowledge, because with the water that comes from these sources, you splash yourself from a real source of consciousness. This knowledge touches one's own personality in such a way that one, I would say, takes it up from the deepest depths of one's earthly nature and into one's human inner being: wake up and fulfill your tasks in the face of the great demands of the time.

Roman Boos: It will be announced what will be discussed here a week from today. This concludes today's event.

Study evening on “The key points of the social question in the necessities of life today and in the future”

Stuttgart, July 30, 1919

This evening I do not want to anticipate what these study evenings, based on the book 'The Key Points of the Social Question', are actually supposed to be; instead, I will try to give you a kind of introduction to this evening. I would like to use this introduction to give you a sense of the perspective from which this book was written. Above all, it was written from the immediate present, from the conviction that the social question has also taken on a new form through the events of the present, and that it is necessary to talk about the social question today in a completely different way than it was talked about from any side before the world war catastrophe. With this book, an attempt has been made at a time in the development of humanity when the social question is becoming particularly urgent and when every person who is consciously living today, who is not sleepily and sleepily living the life of humanity, should know something about what has to happen in the sense of what is usually called the social question. Perhaps it would be a good idea to look back a little today. I may mention things that you are partly aware of, but we will then put them in a slightly different light. You probably know that what is being said today about the social question has been said for a relatively long time. And today the names Proudhon, Fourier, and Louis Blanc are mentioned as the first to have dealt with the social question in the mid-nineteenth century. You know, of course, that the way in which this social question was treated until the middle of the nineteenth century is called by today's representatives, at least by many of today's representatives of the social question, “the age of social utopias.” It is good to be clear about what is actually meant when one says: In its first stage, the social question arose in such a way that it lived in this age of utopias. But one cannot talk about this matter in the absolute sense, but one can actually only talk about the feelings of the representatives of the social question in the present. They feel the way I am about to describe it. They feel that all social questions that arose in the age of which I want to speak first were in the stage of utopia. And what do people mean when they say that the social question was in the stage of utopia at that time? By this they understand the following: Saint-Simon and Fourier observed that even after the French Revolution there were people in a certain social minority who were in possession of the means of production and other human goods, and that there were a large number, even the majority, of other people who do not have such property and can only work with the means of production by entering the service of those who own the means of production and the land, people who basically have nothing but themselves and their labor. It has been observed that the life of this great mass of humanity is one of oppression, and that it lives in poverty to a large extent in relation to those who are in the minority. And attention has been drawn to the situation of the minority and to the situation of the majority.

Those who, like Saint-Simon and Fourier, and even Proudhon, have written about the social situation of humanity, have started from a certain premise. They started from the premise that it is necessary to point out to people: Look, the great mass lives in misery, in bondage, in economic dependency, this is not a decent existence for the great mass. This must be changed. And then all kinds of means were devised by which this inequality among people could be changed. But there was always one specific prerequisite, and that prerequisite was that one said to oneself: If one knows the reasons for this inequality, if one has enough words of warning, if one has enough moral awareness oneself to strongly pointing out that the vast majority of people live in economic and legal dependence and are poor, this speech will touch the hearts and souls of the minority, the wealthy, the more favored minority. And it will be through this that this minority realizes: it cannot remain so, changes must be made, a different social order must come, a different social order must be brought about. The prerequisite was that people would be willing to act on their innermost spiritual impulses to liberate the masses of humanity. And then they suggested what should be done. And it was believed that if the minority, if the people who are the guiding, leading people, realize that what one wants to do is good, then there will be a general improvement in the situation of humanity.

A great deal of extraordinarily clever things have been said from this side, but all that has been undertaken in this direction is felt today by most representatives of the social question to be utopian. That is to say, today one no longer counts on the fact that one only needs to say: This is how one could set up the world – then the economic and political and legal inequality of people would end. Today, it is of no use appealing to the understanding and insight of those who are favored, who have the privilege, who are in possession of the means of production and the like. If I am to express what has been lost in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, I have to say that faith in the insight and goodwill of people has been lost. Therefore, the representatives of the social question, as I now understand it, say: it is all very well to come up with grandiose plans for how to organize the human world, but nothing comes of it; because no matter how beautiful the plans are, no matter how touching the words of appeal to the hearts and souls of the ruling minorities, nothing will happen. All these are worthless ideas, and worthless ideas, which paint the future, are in reality, to put it popularly, utopias. It is therefore useless, so they say, to imagine anything that should happen in the future, because there will be no one who lets go of his interests, who can be moved in terms of his conscience, in terms of his moral insight and so on. Faith in conscience and moral insight has been lost in the broadest circles, especially among the representatives of the social question. People say to themselves, people do not act according to their insight when they make social arrangements or when they live their social lives, they act according to their interests. And the haves naturally have an interest in keeping their possessions. The socially privileged have an interest in maintaining social privileges. It is therefore an illusion to count on the fact that you just need to say that people should do this or that. They just don't do it because they don't act out of their insight, but out of their interest.

In the broadest sense, it can be said that Karl Marx gradually, but really only gradually, came to accept this view. One can describe a whole series of epochs in the life of Karl Marx. In his youth, Marx was also an idealistic thinker and still thought in terms of the realizability of utopias, in the sense that I have just characterized it. But it was precisely he, and after him his friend Engels, who in the most radical way possible abandoned this calculation of people's insight. And when I characterize something in general that is actually a great story, I can say the following: Karl Marx finally came to the conclusion that the world could not get better in any other way than by calling on those people who have no interest in keeping their goods and privileges. These people cannot be seen at all, they must be left out of the calculation altogether, because they will never deign to respond in any way, no matter how beautifully they are preached to. — On the other hand, there is the great mass of proletarian laborers, and Karl Marx himself came to believe this during the period when what is now called the proletariat was basically only emerging in Central Europe. He saw the proletariat emerging from the different economic conditions in Central Europe. When he then lived in England, it was of course different. But at the time when Karl Marx developed from an idealist into an economic materialist, the modern proletariat was only just emerging in Central Europe.

And now he said to himself: this modern proletariat has completely different interests than the ruling minority, because it consists of people who own nothing but their labor, of people who cannot live in any other way than by putting their labor at the service of the propertied, namely at the service of those who own the means of production. If these workers leave their jobs, they are, and this was particularly true in those days in the most radical sense, thrown out onto the street. They have no other prospect before them than the possibility of serfdom for those who own the means of production. These people have a completely different interest from the others. It is in their interest that the entire previous social order should come to an end, that this social order should be transformed. You don't need to preach to them in order to be seized by their insight, but only by their selfishness, by their interests. You can rely on that. To preach to those on whose insight one should count, nothing comes of it, because people do not act on insight, they act only out of interest. So one cannot appeal to those to whom one should appeal to insight, but to those to whose interest one must appeal. They cannot help but advocate for the newer times out of inner compulsion. That is the egoism that Karl Marx has developed into. Therefore, he no longer believed that the progress of humanity to newer social conditions could come from any other human work than from the work of the proletariat itself. The proletariat can only, according to Karl Marx, strive for a renewal of human social conditions out of interest, out of its own selfish interests. And in so doing, the proletariat will liberate all of humanity, not out of philanthropy, but out of self-interest, because there can be nothing left but what people can achieve, people who are not attached to old goods and have nothing to lose by transforming the old goods.

So one says to oneself: On the one hand, there are the leading, guiding circles, who have certain rights that were granted to them in earlier times or that were enforced by them in earlier times, which they have inherited in their families, and they hold on to them. These leading, guiding circles are in possession of this or that, which they in turn inherit within their circles, their family, and so on. These circles, as the leading, guiding circles, always have something to lose in a transformation. Because, of course, if they lost nothing, no transformation would happen. The point is that those who have nothing should get something, those who have something could only lose. So one could only appeal to reason if this reason would give the possessing, leading class the impulse to want to lose something. They won't go for that. That was Karl Marx's view. So you have to appeal to those who have nothing to lose. That's why the Communist Manifesto ends with the words: Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, but they have everything to gain. Proletarians of all countries, unite!

Now you see, since the publication of the Communist Manifesto, this has become a conviction, so to speak, and today, when certain sentiments that are already influenced by this view are alive precisely in the majority of the proletariat, today one can no longer properly imagine what a tremendous turnaround in socialist thought took place around the mid-nineteenth century. But it would be good if you would take something like The Gospel of a Poor Sinner by Weitling, a journeyman tailor who wrote it not so long before the Communist Manifesto, and compare it with everything that was written after the Manifesto appeared! In this “Gospel of a Poor Sinner,” truly inspired by genuine proletarian sentiment, there is a language that is, one might say, in a certain sense even poetic, glowing language, but it is certainly a language that seeks to appeal to people's good will, to their insight. Weitling is convinced that something can be done with people's good will. And this conviction only disappeared around the middle of the nineteenth century. And the event that caused it to disappear is precisely the publication of the Communist Manifesto. And since that time, since 1848, we can actually trace what we call the social question today. For if we wanted to talk today like Saint-Simon, like Fourier, like Weitling – yes, we would really be preaching to the deaf. Because to a certain extent it is absolutely true that you can't achieve anything on the social issue if you appeal to the insight of the leading and guiding circles who have something. That is quite right. The leading and ruling circles have never admitted this, and they are hardly likely to do so today. They are not even aware that they do it, because unconscious forces in the human soul play an extraordinarily important role here.

You see, in the course of the nineteenth century, our intellectual culture has almost entirely become a cliché. It is a much more important social fact that we live in cliché with regard to intellectual culture, it is a much more important social fact than is usually thought. And so, of course, the members of the leading and ruling circles also talk about all kinds of nice things when it comes to the social question, and they themselves are often convinced that they already have the good will. But in reality they only believe that, it is only their illusion. The moment anything real is attacked in this regard, it immediately comes out that it is an illusion. We will talk about that later. But as I said, we can no longer talk as we did in the age of utopias. That is the real achievement that came through Karl Marx: he showed how humanity today is so enmeshed in illusionism that it is nonsense to count on anything but egoism. It must be counted with one day. Therefore, nothing can be achieved if we want to somehow count on selflessness, on goodwill, on the moral principles of people - I always say: with regard to the social question. And this change, which has led to our having to speak quite differently today than was possible in the first half of the nineteenth century, for example, with regard to the social question, this change has come with the Communist Manifesto. But it did not all come at once. Even after the Communist Manifesto, it was still possible, as you all know – some younger socialists have already forgotten the time – for a very different kind of social thinking, the kind of Ferdinand Lassalle, to capture hearts and souls well into the 1860s. And even after the death of Lassalle, which occurred in 1864, what was Lassallean socialism continued. Lassalle is one of those people who, despite the fact that the other way of thinking had already emerged, still counted on the power of ideas. Lassalle still wanted to reach people as such in their insight, in their social will above all. But this Lassallean tendency gradually diminished, while the Marxist tendency gained the upper hand, which only wanted to take into account the interests of that part of the human population that only had itself and its labor power. But it did not happen so quickly. Such a way of thinking only develops gradually in humanity.

In the 1960s, 1970s and even the 1980s, it was certainly the case that people who belonged to the proletariat, or who were politically or socially dependent even if they were not proletarians, viewed their dependency in moral terms and morally condemned the non-dependent sections of the human population. In their minds, it was the maliciousness of the leading and guiding circles of the human population that they left the great mass of the proletariat in a state of dependency, that they paid them poorly and so on. If I may put it trivially, I can say that in the 1960s and 1970s, and well into the 1980s, a great deal of social indignation was manufactured and, from the point of view of social indignation, spoken. Then, in the mid-1980s, the strange turnaround actually only really occurred. The more leading personalities of the social movement then stopped talking about the social question out of moral indignation in the 1980s. That was the time when the great leaders, who were more or less still glowing with youthful zeal, were those whom you, who are younger, only saw die: Adler, Pernerstorfer, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Auer, Bebel, Singer and so on. It was precisely in the 1880s that these older leaders increasingly stopped preaching this indignant socialism. And now I would like to express it to you as if these leaders of socialism were expressing their innermost convictions when they transitioned from the old indignant socialism to their newer socialist worldview. You will find that what I am about to tell you is not in any of the books on the history of socialism. But anyone who lived through those times knows that if you left people to their own devices, that is how they would have spoken. So let us assume that in the 1880s, leading proponents of socialism were in discussion with others who were still bourgeois in their attitudes, and let us assume that there was a third group: bourgeois who were idealists, who wished everyone well and who would have agreed that everyone should be made happy. Then it could happen that the bourgeois declared that there would always have to be people who are poor and people who are rich and so on, because only that could maintain human society. Then perhaps the voice of one of those who were idealists would be heard, who were indignant that so many people had to live in poverty and dependence. Such a person might say: Yes, it must be achieved that it is made clear to these propertied people, the entrepreneurs, the capitalists, that they must let go of their possessions, that they must make arrangements by which the great masses come into a different position, and the like. Very fine speeches were made on these lines. But then someone who was just becoming interested in socialism and its development at the time raised his voice and said: What are you talking about, you're a child! It's all childishness, all nonsense. The people who are capitalists, who are entrepreneurs, they are all poor wretches who know nothing but what has been drummed into them by generations. If they were to hear that they should do it differently, they wouldn't even be able to do it, because they wouldn't come up with how they should do it. It doesn't even occur to them that something can be done differently. You must not accuse people, you must not morally condemn people, they cannot be morally condemned; the guys have grown into this, these poor darlings, into this whole environment, and that inspires them with the ideas they have. To morally accuse them is to misunderstand the laws of human development, to have illusions. These people can never want the world to take a different form. To speak of them with indignation is pure childishness. It has all become necessary in this way, and it can only become necessary again in another way. You see, you can't do anything with such childish fellows who believe that they can preach to the propertied, to the capitalists, that a new world order should be established, you can't do anything with such childish fellows. A new world order cannot be brought about with them. They only indulge in the belief that one can accuse these poor capitalists of making a different world.

I have to make the matter somewhat clear, so some things are said in sharp contours, but in such a way that you could hear the speeches I am talking about absolutely everywhere. When they were written, they were retouched a bit, written a bit differently, but that was the basis.

Then they continued: “With those guys – they are idealists who imagine the world in terms of an ideology – we can't do anything. We have to rely on those who have nothing, who therefore want something different from those who are connected with capitalist interests. And they will not strive for a change in their circumstances out of some moral principle either, but only out of covetousness, to have more than they have, to have an independent existence. In the 1980s, this way of thinking increasingly came to be seen as the development of humanity, no longer in the sense that the individual is particularly responsible for what he does, but that he does what he has to do out of his economic situation. The capitalist, the entrepreneur, exploits the others in the utmost innocence. The proletarian, on the other hand, will not revolutionize out of a moral principle, but in all innocence out of a human necessity, and will take the means of production, the capital, out of the hands of those who have it. This must take place as an historical necessity.

Now, you see, it was actually only in 1891 at the Erfurt Party Congress that all Lassallianism, which was still based on the insight of the people, was replaced by belief in the so-called “Erfurt Program”, which was intended to make Marxism the official view of the proletariat. Read the programs of the Gotha and Eisenach party conferences, and you will find two demands that are genuinely proletarian demands of the time, still connected to Lassallianism. The first demand was the abolition of the wage relationship, the second demand was the political equality of all people, the abolition of all political privileges. All proletarian demands up to the 1890s, up to the Erfurt Party Congress, which brought about the great turnaround, were based on these two demands. Take a close look at these two demands and compare them with the main demands of the Erfurt Party Congress.

What, then, were the main demands of the Erfurt Party Congress? They were: the transfer of private ownership of the means of production into common ownership, the administration of all production by a kind of large cooperative, into which the existing state must be transformed. If you compare the former program, which was the proletarian program of the 1880s, with what emerged from the Erfurt Party Program and has existed since the 1890s, you will say that the old Gotha and Eisenach programs still contain purely human demands, the demands of socialism: political equality of all people, abolition of the degrading wage relationship. In the early 1890s, the attitude that had emerged during the 1880s was already having an effect. What is more a demand of humanity has been transformed into a purely economic demand. You no longer read about the ideal of abolishing the wage relationship, you only read about economic demands.

Now you see, these things are connected with the gradual development of the idea that one had of externally bringing about a better social condition for humanity. It has often been said by people who still had ideals: what harm does it do to smash everything to smithereens, a different order must be brought about, so a revolution must come. Everything must be smashed to smithereens, the great Kladderadatsch must come, because only a better social order can arise from it, many people still said that in the 1880s, who were good, idealistic socialists. To which the others replied, who were in touch with the times, who had become the leaders, those who, as I said, are now buried, they said: It's all pointless, such sudden revolutions are senseless. The only thing that makes sense is to leave capitalism to its own devices. We see that in the beginning there were only small capitalists, then there were big ones, they joined forces with others, became capitalist groups. Capital has become more and more concentrated. We are in the process of capital becoming more and more concentrated. Then the time will come when there will actually only be a few large capitalist trusts and consortia. Then it will only be necessary for the proletariat, as the non-possessing class, to peacefully transfer the capitalists' property, the means of production, into community property one fine day, through parliamentary channels. This can be done quite well, but we must wait and see. Until then, things must develop. Capitalism, which is an innocent child anyway, it is not its fault that it is exploitative, that is brought about by historical necessity. But it also works in advance, it concentrates capital. They are then nicely together, then they only need to be taken over into the public domain. Nothing of rapid revolution, but slow development!

You see, the secret of the view, the public secret of the view, which underlies this, was discussed beautifully by Engels in the 1890s. He said: Why fast revolutions? What happens slowly under the development of modern capitalism, this massing of capitals, this concentration of capitals, it all works for us. We don't need to establish a common ground first, the capitalists are already doing that. We just need to transfer it into proletarian ownership. Therefore, Engels says, the roles have actually been reversed. We, who represent the proletariat, have no complaints about the way things have developed; it is the others who have complaints. Because the guys who are in the circles of the propertied people today have to say to themselves: We accumulate capital, but we accumulate it for others. You see, the guys actually have to worry about losing their capital. They get hollow cheeks, they get scrawny from these worries about what will become of it. We socialists are doing very well in this development. We will, says Engels, get bulging muscles and full cheeks and look like eternal life. Engels says this in an introduction he wrote in the 1890s, characterizing what is developing, and how one need only wait for the development, which is actually being taken care of by capitalism itself, ism itself, which then leads to what I have presented to you: the transfer of what capitalism has concentrated into the common ownership of those who have had nothing so far. That was also actually the mood with which the twentieth century was entered by the leading circles of the proletariat. And so it was thought, especially since the time when Marxism was no longer taken as it was in the 1890s, but when, as it was said, it had been subjected to revision, when the revisionists appeared, when those who are still alive but are old people, such as Bernstein, for example. Then the revisionists came. They said that the whole development could be advanced somewhat, because if the workers only work until the capitalists have gathered everything together, they will suffer hardship before then, they will have nothing in their old age. So assurances were made and so on. That's all well and good, but above all, they saw to it that the institutions that the leading classes had in political life were also appropriated. As you know, this is how trade union life in particular came about. And within the Socialist Party, there were two strongly divergent directions: the declared trade union party and the actual, as they said at the time, political party. The political party was more down-to-earth, a sudden revolution would be of no use, the development had to take place as I have just described. Therefore, it is important to prepare everything for the one point in time when capitalism is sufficiently concentrated and the proletariat has a majority in parliament. Everything must be pursued through parliamentarism, the acquisition of the majority, so that at the point in time when the means of production are taken over into public ownership, the majority is also there for this transfer. In this group of people, who thought very highly of the political party, at the end of the nineteenth century, not much was thought of the trade union movement. At that time, the latter was committed to establishing a kind of competition between itself and the entrepreneurs in order to obtain wage increases and similar things from the companies from time to time. In short, they set out to imitate the system of mutual negotiations that exists among the leading and managing circles themselves, and to extend it to the relationship between the leading circles and the proletariat. You know, of course, that those who were most accused by the representatives of the actual political socialist system were those who became most bourgeois under the trade union movement. And at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, you could see everywhere among those who were more attuned to the political system a great contempt for those people who had become completely absorbed in trade union life, such as the printers, for example, who had developed a completely different system after union life, again to the extreme.

These were two very strictly separate directions in social life: the trade unionists and those who were more inclined towards the political party, as they said. And within the trade unions, the printers in the printers' association were almost the model boys; the model boys who had earned the full recognition of the bourgeoisie. And I believe that just as there was a certain fear, a certain concern about the political socialist party, so little by little we saw the emergence of such good people as the people in the printers' association, and we were very pleased about that. One said to oneself: They are becoming bourgeois, you can always negotiate with them, it works quite well. When they strike with their wages, then we strike with our prices, which we demand. It works. And, right, it worked for the next few years, and people don't think beyond that. So one was very satisfied with this exemplary development of the trade union movement. Well, if I omit some of the more subtle nuances, one can say that these two directions more or less emerged until the times that were then surprised by the world war catastrophe. But unfortunately people did not learn everything from this world war catastrophe that should have been learned with regard to the social question.

As soon as one considers the conditions in Eastern Europe, in Central Europe, if one disregards the Anglo-American world and also partly the Romance world, if one limits oneself to Central and Eastern Europe, then we can say that history has not really turned out as one would have liked. History has always been defined as follows: capital is concentrated, then the majority is in parliaments, then capital is transferred into the ownership of the community, and so on. The catastrophe of the world wars has ensured that this cannot be expected to happen so smoothly today. Those who expected some kind of revolution have often been portrayed as childish. But basically, what has happened in the last four to five years? Let us keep clearly and distinctly in mind what has happened. You have often heard what happened in the last four or five years: in July 1914, the governments went a little bit mad or went mad in the head and rushed the people into a world war. The people believed that it was a world war, battles took place, although with the modern means of warfare, with the machine means, something completely different was there than in previous wars. There was no possibility of anyone becoming a particularly famous general, because ultimately it only came down to whether one side had a larger quantity of ammunition and other means of warfare, whether one side was better at producing the mechanical means of war than the other, or discovered a gas and the like that the others did not have. First one side won, then the other side discovered something, then the first side again; the whole thing was a terribly mechanical warfare. And all the talk about what happened here and there on the part of people was influenced by the phrase, it was nothing but a phrase. And little by little modern humanity will also realize in Central Europe what was put into it as a phrase when one or the other, who was actually nothing more than a somewhat twisted average soldier, was made a great commander in Central Europe. These things have only become possible under the influence of the phrase.

But what really happened? People did not realize this before the external events: in reality, while people believed that a world war was being waged – which was actually only a mask – a revolution was actually taking place. In reality, the revolution happened in these four to five years. People still do not know this today, they still do not pay attention to the fact that in reality the revolution has taken place. War is the external aspect, the mask; the truth is that the revolution has taken place. And because the revolution has taken place, the society of Central and Eastern Europe is in a completely different condition today, and one cannot start with what people had in mind for earlier situations. Today it is necessary that all the thoughts that were formed earlier be completely reorganized, that one think about things in a completely new way. And that is what has been attempted in the book 'The Essential Points of the Social Question', to calculate quite correctly with the situation in which we have ended up as a result of the very latest events. It is therefore no wonder that people, who cannot keep up fast enough in the socialist parties, encounter misunderstanding after misunderstanding in this book. If people would just take the trouble to examine their own thoughts a little, to examine what they say they want, they would see how they live under the influence of the ideas they formed up to 1914. That is the old habit.

These ideas that were held until 1914 have become so engrained in people's minds that they cannot be shaken off now. And what is the consequence? The consequence is that, although a new approach is needed today, although the revolution has taken place in Eastern and Central Europe, although we now need to build up not according to old ideas but according to new ideas, people nevertheless preach the old ideas. And what are the parties today, including the socialist parties? The socialist parties are also those who continue to preach this or that socialist gospel in the old way, as they preached until July 1914; for there is no difference in these party programs from the earlier ones, except at most the difference that comes from outside. For those who know the issues, there is terribly little that is new, indeed nothing at all that is new, said in the individual party groupings. The old party ideas are being trotted out again. Of course, there is a slight difference: if you have a copper kettle and tap it, it makes one sound; if you tap a wooden barrel in exactly the same way, it makes a different sound. But the tapping can be exactly the same. It is the fact that it sounds different that depends on what you tap. That is how it is when people come up with their party programs today; what is contained in these old party programs is actually the old party storekeeper. It just sounds a little different today because the social conditions are different, just as it would with a copper kettle and a wooden barrel. When the Independent Socialist Party or the Majority Socialists or the Communists speak, they speak the old party phrases, and it sounds different because there is a copper kettle and a wooden barrel. In reality, many have learned absolutely nothing. But what matters is that one learns something, that one is aware of this terrible world war, as it is called, but which is actually a world revolution.

And here one can truly say: in the broad masses, people are prepared to hear something new. But with the broad masses it is like this: they listen to what the leaders say. There is a good understanding, a good, healthy human understanding in the broad, uneducated masses, and one could actually always count on understanding when one presents something timely, something correct, in the best sense of the word timely. This is partly due to the fact that the masses are uneducated. But as soon as people enter the kind of education that has been available for the last three to four centuries, this godly quality of being unspoiled ceases to exist. If you look at what today's bourgeois school education is, from elementary school up to university – and it will be at its worst if the socialist unified school is founded now, because then everything that has been done wrong by the bourgeois elementary school will be present to the greatest extent – what is taught in schools distorts minds and alienates them from life. And you have to get out of all that stuff, you really have to stand on your own two feet in the spiritual life if you want to get out of this education. But you see, it is through this education that the great and small proletarian leaders have become. They had to acquire it through this education; this education is in our schools and in popular writings, it is everywhere. And then you start to get a dried-up brain, no longer accessible to facts. Instead, you stop at party programs and opinions that you have grafted and hammered into yourself. Then even the world revolution can come, you always whistle the old programs at it.

You see, this is essentially what the book “The Essentials of the Social Question” and the lectures intended in many respects. For once, real account was taken of what the proletariat absolutely needs today, what is necessary in the present situation. This was understood at the beginning, but then it was not understood by those who are the leaders of the proletariat in the various party groupings. That is, I do not want to be too unjust, and I do not want to press the truth; I do not want to claim, for example, that these leaders do not understand this book; because I cannot assume that they have read it, that they know it. I would not claim something correct if I said: they cannot understand the book. But they cannot bring themselves to understand that something else should be necessary than what they have been thinking for decades. Their brains have become too dry and too rigid for that. And so they stop at what they have thought for a long time and find that what is the opposite of all utopia is that utopia. For you see, the book fully anticipates that today one can no longer operate in utopia in the sense of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon and so on; but also that one can never again take the standpoint: development will happen by itself. For what Marx and Engels saw, what developed, and from which they drew their conclusions, cannot be drawn from today, because the world war has swept it away in its true form, it is no longer there. Anyone who says the same thing today as Marx and Engels says something that Marx would never have said, because he has become afraid of his followers: As far as I am concerned, I am not a Marxist. — And today he would say: At that time the facts were still different; I drew my conclusions from facts that had not yet been modified and changed as much as the world war has changed everything.

But you see, those people who cannot learn from events, who today are of an attitude as the old Catholics were towards their bishops and popes, they cannot even imagine that something like that must also be further developed in the sense of the facts, as Marxism is. Therefore, the facts are taking place, and people are still whistling and hissing the same things that they whistled and hissed before the world war. The bourgeois do it, but so do the socialists. The broadest circles do it. The bourgeoisie do it, of course, quite sleepily, with completely sleepy souls; the others do it in such a way that they are indeed in the thick of it and see the collapse, but they do not want to reckon with the facts that it reveals. We simply have to have something new among people today. And that is why it is necessary to understand something that is not utopian, but that actually takes the facts into account. If those who are so concerned with the facts call it a cross-current, then one could actually be quite satisfied. Because if people go straight ahead with what they are doing, if they call it a straight line, then, in order to do something sensible, you have to shoot in a cross-current to take the sensible thing in a different direction.

But you see, those who do see the rational should delve into what is presented here. And these evenings can be used for that.

What has been derived from the facts has long been tried in practice, and so we have been meeting for weeks – I do not need to repeat all these things, you can still ask questions or discuss the pros and cons after this lecture – to get what we call the works council up and running. We have tried to create this council out of the facts that are currently necessary, to create it in such a way that it comes from the economic sphere, and not from the political sphere, which cannot provide the basis for economic life. For if we look the facts in the eye today, we have to stand firmly on the ground that is represented here as that of the threefold social organism. And anyone who does not want this threefold structure today is acting against the historical necessity of human development. Today, as I have often explained, the spiritual life must be placed on its own, the economic life on its own, and the legal or political life must be administered democratically. And in the economic life, the first step towards a truly social organization is to be taken with works councils. But how can this be done? Only by first asking the question: Well, there is the impulse of the threefold social organism, which is new compared to all previous party mummies; is there anything else? Today, fools claim that ideas are just buzzing through the air. If you listen to the discussions, they bring up all sorts of negative things, but they don't bring up anything that could be compared to the threefold order of the social organism. What comes from the socialist side is all wishy-washy. As was said in a newly founded magazine in a review of the threefold order, ideas are just hanging in the air. The point is, first of all, to raise this question and be clear about it: is there nothing else? Then one adheres to the threefold social order until one can refute it in an objective way, so that one can put something objectively equivalent alongside.

The old party programs can no longer be discussed; the world war has discussed them. Those who really understand know that these old party mummies have been refuted by the world war catastrophe. But then, if one cannot answer this question by putting something else alongside it, then one can honestly say to oneself, if one wants to go further: So let us work in the sense of the threefold order of the social organism. Let us be honest: the old party contexts have lost their meaning. We must work in terms of threefolding. When I spoke in Mannheim the day before yesterday, a gentleman came forward at the end and said: What Steiner said is nice, but it is not what we want. We do not want a new party in addition to all the old parties. The people who want that should join the old parties and work within them. I could only say in response: I have been following political life very closely for a long time, when the gentleman who spoke was far from being born. And although I have become acquainted with everything that has somehow functioned as a social force throughout my life, I have never been able to work within any party or be a member of one, and it does not occur to me, now at the end of my sixth decade, to somehow become a party person. I do not want to have anything to do with any party, not even one I founded myself. No one need fear that a new party will be founded by me, because I have learned that every party becomes foolish after some time through the necessities of nature, precisely because I have never got involved with any party. And I have learned to regret the people who do not see through this. Therefore, no one need fear that a new party will be added to the old ones. That is why a new party has not been founded either, but the Federation for the Threefold Social Organism has come together to represent the ideas of the threefold organism – the non-utopian but realistic nature of which is, after all, understood by a number of people. But those people who understand this should also honestly and sincerely profess it.

For this must not happen either: there is a play in which a cock crows in the morning, and every time the cock crows, the sun rises. Now, the cock cannot see the connection at once, so it believes that when it crows, the sun follows its call, coming because it has crowed, it has caused the sun to rise. If someone in a non-social life, like this cockerel crowing on the dung heap and wanting to make the sun rise, finally succumbs to such a delusion, it does not matter. But if, under certain circumstances, the idea of the works councils, which are truly economic on the basis of the threefold social order, were to flourish here and those people who cultivate it because the impulse of the threefold organism has brought this idea into fl but then wanted to deny the origin and believe because it was said that the works councils would come, that would be the same error, and a very disastrous one. But that must not happen. What is happening in this direction, what has been tackled here, must not be detached; it must remain in the context of the correctly understood impulse of the threefold social order.

Those who want to realize the works council in the sense of this impulse can never allow themselves to be drawn into the one-sided idea that only the works council would be founded and that there would always be crowing about “works councils, works councils”. That is not enough. It only makes sense if, at the same time, one strives for everything that is to be achieved through the impulse of the tripartite social organism. That is what matters. Because if you really want to understand what is in this book, then you have to take the point of view that can be learned from the facts that the last four to five years have offered. If you see through these facts, they will have the same effect on you as if you had lived through centuries, and the party programs will have the same effect on you as if their supporters had slept for centuries. Today this must be clearly and unreservedly faced.

What I have told you now, I could just as easily have written as a preface to this book. But in the last few months we have seen how rigid and unfruitful the party programs currently are. But it would be useful if that were the preface to this book. Much of what is not in it, I have told you today, because you have, it seems to me, decided to come together here to study the serious social issues of the present day in a proper way, taking up where this book leaves off. But before doing so, it must be clearly understood that we cannot continue in the old style of party programs and party patterns, but that we must decide to approach the facts realistically today and put an end to everything that does not take into account these new facts. Only in this way will you grasp in the right way what is to be achieved with this impulse of the threefold social organism. And you will grasp it in the right way when you find that every sentence is designed to be put into action, to be transformed into immediate reality. And most of those who say they do not understand it or that it is utopian and the like, they simply lack the courage to think so strongly today that their thoughts can intervene in reality. Those who always crow: “dictatorship of the proletariat, conquest of power, socialism,” they usually think little of it. Therefore, reality cannot be intervened with these word templates. But then they come and say that something is being offered that is utopian. A utopia only comes into being in the minds of people who understand nothing about it. Therefore, one should make clear to these people, in a somewhat modified form, what Goethe once said with reference to something else, laughing at the physiologist Haller, who was an ossified naturalist.

Haller had coined the phrase:

No creative spirit
No creative spirit can penetrate.
Happy the man to whom she
The outer shell!

Goethe resisted this, saying:

Into the heart of nature.
Oh, you philistines!
No created spirit can penetrate
---
Happy the man to whom she The outer shell!
I have heard this repeated for sixty years;
I curse it, but furtively,
---
Nature has neither core
nor shell,
All at once it is everything.
Just test yourself most of all
Whether you are the kernel or the shell.

To those who speak of the threefold social organism as a utopia, one would also like to say: Examine yourself most of all to see whether what haunts your brain is utopia or reality. You will find that all the crowers mostly have utopias in them and that is why the reality in their own heads also becomes a utopia or an ideology, or whatever they call it. That is why it is so difficult to get through with reality today, because people have blocked their access to reality so much.

But we have to realize that we have to work seriously, otherwise we will not be able to translate our will into action. And it is essential that we translate our will into action. And if we had to say goodbye to everything because we recognize it as an error, then, in order to be able to move from will to action, we would have to turn to the truth, which we want to see through as such. Because nothing else can lead from volition to action but the ruthless, courageous pursuit of truth. This should actually be written as a motto, as a motto, in front of the studies of this evening.

I wanted to give you a preface to these study evenings tonight. I hope that this preface will not deter you from attending these study evenings so that, before it is too late, thoughts that contain the seeds of action can be fruitfully introduced into the world. The book “The Essentials of the Social Question” is written in a special way in two directions. Firstly, it is written in such a way that it is actually based entirely on reality. This is something that some people do not consider when reading the book. I can also understand that it is not fully considered today. I have already spoken here in this circle, but not everyone who was there today was present, about how people really think today. I referred in particular to the example of the professor of economics, Lujo Brentano, who delivered it so nicely in the previous issue of the “Yellow Sheet”. — I will briefly repeat it because I want to tie something to it. This luminary of today's economics at the university – he is, so to speak, the first – has developed the concept of the entrepreneur and has tried to characterize the features of the entrepreneur based on his enlightened thinking. Well, I don't need to list the first and second features; as a third feature, he states that the entrepreneur is the one who puts his means of production at his own risk and expense in the service of the social order. Now he has this concept of the entrepreneur, and he applies it. He comes to the strange conclusion that the proletarian worker of today is actually also an entrepreneur, because he corresponds to this concept of the entrepreneur in terms of the first, second and third characteristics. This is because the worker has his own labor power as a means of production, and he has control over it. In relation to this, he turns to the social process at his own risk and expense. Thus this luminary of political economy very aptly incorporates the concept of the proletarian laborer into his concept of the entrepreneur. You see, that is precisely how people who form concepts think, who have no sense at all when it comes to demanding that concepts should be truly applicable to reality. But however little you may be inclined to accept this today, it is safe to say that well over ninety percent of everything that is taught or printed today operates with such concepts. If you want to apply them to reality, it is just as impossible as with Lujo Brentano's concept of the entrepreneur. This is the case in science, in social science, everywhere. That is why people have forgotten how to understand anything that works with realistic concepts.

Take the basis of the threefold social order. No, you can't lay these foundations in the most diverse ways, because life needs many foundations. But one thing is clear: in modern times, what might be called the impulse of democracy has emerged. Democracy must consist of every person who has come of age being able to establish their legal relationship, directly or indirectly, with every other person who has come of age in democratic parliaments. But if we honestly and sincerely want to bring this democracy into the world, then we cannot manage spiritual matters in the sense of this democracy, because then every person who has come of age would have to decide on matters they do not understand. Spiritual matters must be regulated on the basis of understanding. This means that they must be left to their own devices. They cannot be administered at all in a democratic parliament, but must have their own administration, which cannot be democratic, but must be based on the matter itself. The same applies to economic life. Here, too, economic experience and inner life must be the basis for administration. Therefore, economic life, on the one hand, and spiritual life, on the other, must be excluded from the democratic parliament. Thus arises the threefolded social organism.

In Tübingen, as I have already mentioned, there is Professor Heck, who said that there is absolutely no need to admit that there is something degrading for the proletarian in the normal wage relationship, where one is paid for one's work, because Caruso is also in a wage relationship and there is no difference in principle. Caruso sings and gets paid, and the ordinary proletarian works and also gets paid; and he, as a professor, also gets paid when he lectures. The only difference between Caruso and the proletarian is that Caruso gets thirty to forty thousand marks for one evening and the proletarian gets a little less. But that is not a fundamental difference, only a difference in the amount of the wage. And so, this witty professor says, there is absolutely no reason to feel that the wage is degrading. He does not feel that way either. — That is just by the way. But now this clever professor has also written a long article against the threefold social order. He starts from the premise that if we organize in three, then we will end up with three parliaments. And now he shows that this does not work with three parliaments. Because he says: In the economic parliament, the small craftsman will not understand the points of view of the big industrialist and so on. — There the good professor has formed his ideas about the threefold order, and he attacks these ideas, which I find much more stupid than Professor Heck finds them — I would also criticize them to the ground —, but he has made them himself. The point is not to have three parliaments running alongside each other, but to take out what does not belong in any parliament. He makes three parliaments and says: That does not work. — So one lives in unrealistic terms and judges the rest accordingly.

Now, almost the only thing that has been introduced into political economy, into economics, are unreal concepts. But you see, I couldn't write a whole library listing all the economic terms at a time when time is of the essence. Therefore, of course, this book contains a multitude of terms that need to be discussed appropriately. For example, I need only draw attention to the following:

In a time that we have outgrown, social conditions arose basically only through conquest. Some territory was occupied by one people or race; another people burst in and conquered the area. Those races or peoples who were there earlier were pushed down to do the work. The conquering people took possession of the land, and that is how a certain relationship between conquerors and conquered arose. The conquerors had possession of the land because they were conquerors. Thus they were the economically strong, the conquered were the economically weak. This is how what became a legal relationship developed. Therefore, in almost all older epochs in historical development, legal relationships based on conquest were established, that is to say, privileges and rights of disadvantage. Now the times came when conquests could not be made freely. You can study the difference in free and bound conquest. If you look, for example, at the early Middle Ages, how certain peoples, the Goths, had pushed over to the south, but into fully occupied areas, they were led to do different things in terms of the social order than when the Franks moved to the west and did not find fully occupied areas there. This resulted in different conqueror rights. In more recent times, not only the rights arising from conquests and dependent on land and soil have been in force; the rights of people who had property have been added to these, and who, through economic power, were now able to appropriate the means of production. To what is meant by land law in the modern sense was added the ownership of the means of production, that is, the private ownership of capital. This then gave rise to legal relationships based on economic relationships. You see, the legal relationships arose entirely from the economic relationships.

Now people come along and want to have the concepts of economic power, of the economic significance of land, they want to have the concepts of operating resources, of means of production, of capitals, and so on. Yes, but they have no real insight into the way things work. They take the superficial facts and do not realize what is actually behind the land rights, behind the power relations in relation to the means of production. All these things are, of course, taken into account in my book. That is the right way of thinking. When the word “rights” is used, it is used out of an awareness of how rights have developed over the centuries; when the word “capital” is used, it is used out of an awareness of how capital has come about. Care is taken to avoid using a term that is not fully understood in terms of its origin. That is why these terms are used differently than in the usual textbooks today. But something else is also taken into account.

Let us take a specific fact. It is true that Protestantism arose at some point. In history books, it is often told that Tetzel went around Central Europe and that people were outraged by the sale of indulgences and the like. But that was not the only reason; that is only the surface view. The main thing behind it was the fact that there was a banking house in Genoa, on behalf of which, not on behalf of the Pope, this seller of indulgences went around in Germany, because this banking house had granted the Pope a loan for his other needs. The whole story was a capitalist enterprise. In this example of a capitalist undertaking of the sale of indulgences, where even spiritual things were traded, you can study, or rather, when you start to study, you gradually come to the conclusion that ultimately all capital power goes back to the superiority of the spiritual. And so it is. Study how capital actually came to its power, and you will find the superiority of the spiritual everywhere. It is true that the clever and resourceful have more power than those who are not clever or resourceful. And in this way, much of the accumulation of capital comes about justifiably, but also unjustifiably. This must be taken into account when considering the concept of capital. From such real studies one comes to understand that capital is based on the development of spiritual power, and that to the land rights, to the rights of the conquerors, from another side has been added the power of the old theocratic spirit. Much of what was then transferred to modern capitalism originated from the old church. There is a secret connection between modern capitalist power and the power of the old church. And all this has become mixed up in the modern power state. In it you find the remnants of the old theocracy, the remnants of the old conquests. And finally the modern conquests were added, and the most modern conquest is now supposed to be the conquest of the state by socialism. But in reality it must not be done that way. Something new must be created that completely does away with these old concepts and impulses. Therefore, it will be important that in these studies we also deal with the concepts that underlie them. Today, anyone who wants to talk about social issues must give us a precise explanation of what is right, what is power, and what is actually a good, a good in the form of goods and the like. It is in this area that the greatest mistakes are made. I will point out one mistake, for example. If you do not pay attention to it, you will misunderstand much of my book.

Today, there is a widespread belief that goods are stored labor, that capital is also stored labor. — You may say that it is harmless to have such concepts. It is not harmless, because such concepts poison all social thinking. — What exactly is the situation with labor, labor as the expenditure of labor power? Yes, it is the case that there is a big difference between, for example, wearing out my physical muscle strength by doing sports and chopping wood. When I do sports, I wear out my physical muscle strength, and I can get just as tired and need to replace my muscle strength as someone who chops wood. I can apply the same amount of work to sports as to chopping wood. The difference is not that it has to be replaced; labor power must naturally be replaced, but the difference is that the one labor power is used only for me, in the selfish sense, the other in the social sense for society. It is the social function that distinguishes these things. If I say that something is stored-up labor, I do not take into account that labor actually ceases to be in something the moment work is no longer done. I cannot say that capital is stored-up labor, but rather that labor is only there as long as it is being performed.

But in our present social order, capital retains the power to summon labor again at any time. The disastrous thing is not in what Marx means, that capital is accumulated labor, but in the institution that capital gives the power to summon new labor, not accumulated labor, but new labor always again into its service. Much depends on this. Much depends on this, that clear concepts based on reality are developed. And this book of mine is based on such concepts, which are now fully embedded in reality. It does not rely on such concepts, which were quite useful for the education of the proletariat. Today, when we are supposed to build something, these concepts no longer make sense.

You see, when I say: capital is accumulated labor - that is good for the education of the proletariat. It got the feelings it was supposed to get. It didn't matter that the concept was fundamentally wrong. You can educate with fundamentally wrong concepts. But you can only build something with the right concepts. Therefore, we need correct concepts in all areas of the economy today and cannot continue to work with false concepts. I am not saying this out of frivolity, that you can also educate with false concepts, but rather out of general educational principles. When you tell fairy tales to children, you do not want to build something with the ideas that you develop. In education, something else comes into consideration than in the construction of physical reality. There one must work with real concepts. Something like: “Capital is stored labor,” that is not a concept. Capital is power and gives power to put newly emerging labor into its service. That is a real concept with factual logic. One must work with true concepts in these areas. That is attempted with these things. Therefore, I believe that much of what is not in there in terms of definitions of the terms, in terms of characterization of the terms, must be worked out. And anyone who can then contribute to the work of understanding what is needed to understand the way of thinking, the basis of this book, will make a very good contribution to these study evenings.

So it is particularly important that what — well, it wouldn't be true to say that you would have to write an encyclopedia if you wanted to clarify all the terms — but what is now “capital” can be done on such a study evening. Because without a clear understanding today of what capital actually is, what a commodity is, what labor is, what law is—without these concepts we will make no headway. And these concepts are completely confused in the broadest circles; above all, they must be set straight.

Perhaps the lectures which I have been able to give here during this week and last week, proves from a certain point of view that it is justified to say that the situation of current humanity is deeply influenced by the developments which social thinking and social will have been adapting in the course of more recent times up to the present. More perhaps than most people suspect, the social impulse will penetrate directly into the life of single people—this penetration will happen more and more. It will become the determining factor towards the powers of the most individual behaviour. People are hardly able to understand their position within the human community which heaves and pulses with social impulses under examination, how its origins actually developed out of two different human shifts in the course of recent times—into social thinking and social willing. As a result, the continuation of these origins works into the present, works in such a way that it actually gives a social form to our current life.

I have mentioned in my lectures that solutions are not to be found towards understanding such things by doing what one usually does, by taking history as a straight line and regarding it as cause and effect in order to always reach a conclusion by what had gone just before. I have tried to draw attention to this: the historical life of humanity in its essence or foundations in relation to certain crises in the course of events, or rather better said: of the presence of crises during the course of events—are similar to what happens in the life of individual people. In the life of individual human beings there is no straight line of development; results arrive without a leap out of what went before. It is necessary to take the comfortable but often misunderstood conception that nature makes no leaps in a corresponding way by observing time and again how in the course of an individual life, crises appear, like the crisis in the sixth or seventh year of life with the change of teeth, how these crises arrive out of elementary organic foundations, just as it similarly rises to puberty. Whoever has knowledge of the course of human life can show how such critical changes also appear later in life even if they are not taken in as decisive a way by superficial observation as the first two. To observe such critical changes in the course of life is necessary in order to really understand the history of life. As much as current humanity is averse to such observation and listening, just as necessary is it right now to promote the social understanding of life and to point out such things with radical intensity. One of the last big changes—this I explored in the previous lectures—in the course of evolution of mankind we can point out as having taken place at the turn of the 15th, 16th Centuries. Only if one does not enter deeply enough into the historical course of things will one not know how radically different everything is which happens in the human soul as demands, as desires demanding certain satisfaction; how that changes in relation to what had arrived before that moment.

Now at the same time, as if followed by this elementary change in the later times of man's evolution, something appears which can be expressed as follows: the social impulse lived within the human soul in earlier times; this social impulse led to the structure of the social impulse. In earlier times, this social impulse was experienced instinctively. People lived together socially, ordered their affairs socially within their community. At that time, in the place of instinctive thinking and willing, a change started to take place towards a more conscious social impulse. This conscious impulse came to the fore gradually and slowly but it distinguished itself by shifting modern humanity radically away from the situation of medieval and ancient humanity. Here we see immediately how with the taking up of the social impulse out of the instinctive and into the conscious life, clearly two streams are created, indicating two diverging movements of social thinking and willing.

The one stream is clear in those people who can still up to today be called the foremost, leading social class of humanity. The other stream appeared somewhat later but is clearly distinguishable from the former, which we today describe as the Proletarian world. The leading intellectual bourgeois circles with all their interests as modern time came along, are linked to all that was created as the newer state which had gradually developed out of the structures of medieval community life. These bourgeois leading circles are through their interests linked to what we have placed under the three members I have explored as the social organism, describable as the actual constitutional state, as actually politically constituted, whether instinctive or consciously based regarding the relationships of one person to another. As with ancient traditions and also with a certain reference to newer scientific relationships, the leading bourgeois circles linked their interests more or less to what many people held as the only social form, namely the state. As a result of them moving consciously from the old instinctive social life to the modern consciousness, they thought as a result of anything related to the state were to be in terms of the constitutional state. As modern economic life became ever more complicated which through the expansion of the human horizon of activities became ever more complicated right over the world, so the leading circles tried to establish it in the structure of the state. They wanted to make the state ever more into the economist. This endeavour took on a certain course and we see that within certain circles single economic sectors were gradually drawn into the state structure. I pointed out such economic sectors last time. The essential aspect from this view is that social thinking earned quite a particular form as a result, in these circles, because of it wanting to conquer the state's interests: the encroaching complicated economic life.

The social impulse developed in quite a different way in the Proletarians. Now with the awakening in newer times the modern Proletarians didn't involve themselves as much within the real state territory. Due to a lack of time I can't enter into this further through deeper examination—but in their relationship, they stood quite removed from the interests of the leading circles and their representation in the state's structure. Still, the Proletarians were driven into the structure of the economic life in the most radical way. Their entire thinking and feeling unfolded in such a way that it was like a mirror image of what was being experienced in the economic life. Thus, the social impulse of the Proletarians became determined by the social structure of the economy of humanity, the economic life, just like the social impulse of the leading bourgeois and intellectual circles became determined by impulses of the constitutional state, by the impulses of the actual political structures. With both streams, they developed more and more in such a way that even these days there appears what I referred to in my lecture the day before yesterday, a gap, an abyss between the specific configuration of social thinking and feeling of leading bourgeois and Proletarian circles. I consider this to be the most tragic arrangement of mankind's situation in present times, the existence of this abyss which makes it so difficult for an understanding, to find a mutual understanding between both the two mentioned social classes. So it must come about as we will see: how prepared both the classes are in their struggle for existence in confrontation. The essential fact in this fight, which has partly already happened, is partly still being prepared, and that which can make sense, even still today only grasp community life superficially, will take on gigantic forms which are essential in order for, on the one side the bourgeois leading circles want the economy to become gradually captured by the state, co-capturing the state economy in such an extraordinary way which is the productivity and labour of the Proletarians themselves, and on the other side that the Proletarians want to conquer from the state the element where their interests are experienced in an isolated economic life.

That is the essential basic principle of this struggle which plays with so much meaning into the current situation of humanity. Over and beyond all that, as is often the case in awareness, it has been forgotten to pay attention calmly—I would like to call it, to what has been pushed down into the subconscious which lies behind the two impulses I've mentioned—to what is actually hidden. What wants to work on the surface of human lives since the critical change in the 15th Century entered later mankind, while what sweeps and drifts and pulsates in human life frequently only takes place in disguise in the consciousness: this striving towards an affirmation of the human personality appears which had not been known in earlier times. Assertion of the human personality, experiencing human nature within, actually makes up the nerve of the social question and dresses itself only according to the various relationships already determined by the given forms. So it could happen that this struggle towards the achievement of the complete assertion of all individuals, can become a struggle for all people—a struggle having become one of differing mutual interests, a struggle of the classes, a struggle which throws its forces in a disastrous way into the present.

Because this indicates something hidden and masked in the newer development of humanity it has resulted in focus not being directed, or better said, that people up to now have not learnt to direct their focus on what matters. During the time when the social impulse worked instinctively, people could allow the social organism to form itself instinctively. Because the social impulse has entered consciousness, even if in masked form, it is necessary right there, necessary as the most important thing in relation to the social problem of the more newer times, that social understanding, an understanding for the expression of the social organism in each individual enters, but that this understanding brings no learned aspect with it but brings an experience which lives in feelings and expresses itself in individuals as this or that necessity to situate themselves in the human community. For this reason, it is so necessary to do what I'm trying to accomplish in these lectures: to turn our focus on to the totality of striving in newer humanity which can only now penetrate the surface in a particular relationship, to focus on really making the social organism into a living form, a form which will allow humanity in their current situation to understand it in a lively way, not just in theory. For this reason, I point out that the health of the social organism depends on not making a chaotic jumble but that the three members are as follows: spiritual life in the widest sense, legal- or political life which means state life in a narrower sense and lastly, the economic life. Only in this way can those within the three members experience their necessary liberation, so that one of the three forms are not engulfed by one of the others but that they unfold freely beside one another and already in a certain independence as I have depicted from different viewpoints, now work together side by side. Up to now certain preconditions directed actual tendencies of human evolution against this independence. By differentiating what had been interwoven previously has now become the most needed current question in relation to the social nature of current humanity.

By exploring certain sides of human thinking, you can feel what I mean, that even in the light of consciousness the social impulse starts according to spiritual presuppositions respectively and they think in this or that way about the relationships between the life of the state and that of the economy. So we see the so-called social or national economics—whatever you want to call it, it is the same thing—formed out of ways of thinking, habits of thinking. It is not my purpose to present the social thinking of the newer time. I only want to draw your attention to one thing—actually I would like to shed light on several things which must be addressed in these lectures. Among these various ways of thinking, ways of presenting the interweaving of economic with state- and spiritual life, there appears also in this newer time what was designated in the 18th Century as the so-called physiocratic national economic ideas. Earlier thinking had the intention of organizing economic life out of the state organism and this formed itself as by necessity in opposition against the physiocratic thinking. It was developing in such a way that there was a need to change economic life not being tyrannized by the state in a narrow sense, that economic life be responsible for its own natural laws, wanting it to be left to what it would fall into if humanity freely, simply out of his own interests guide the economic life. Experts had various revealing things to say which can be somewhat echoed. These people asked: What kind of system of laws should actually go into this form of political state which will regulate economic life? Either the laws are to be the same as those which economic life gives when it is left to freely play with the forces, or it will let others impose on it. If it is the first case, when it is the same, then it is not necessary, the others are not needed and economic life develops its own laws, particularly state laws do not need involvement in economic life. If, however, the state laws work against the economic life then it restricts it, it impairs it and can do damage to itself.

I would like to say that what is expressed in these two opposing statements still haunts many people's thoughts. It haunts them because modern humanity, even though they consider themselves very practical and have a sense for what is real, are still terribly consumed by a certain sense for abstraction, for theoretical one sidedness. Should one try to prove in how many people today what appears as practical life is none other than an actualized one-sidedness, realized one sided theory, then one will touch on some riddles of life and be able to find partial solutions. What sounds the most plausible, most independent for me is to say: Either state laws take on the same direction as the economic ones then they are not necessary, or you contradict them and by so doing, damage the economy. One thinks about these opposites only when one considers the social organism as something which allows itself to be regulated according to concepts, laws, principles and programs, when one does not face up to the social organism being something which has to have life, which must live through its own being. Whatever has come through its own content of life, through its own thriving and sprouting impulses of life, has in real life an opposition to it. The social organism, in order to be a reality, must have oppositions within itself.

For this reason it is necessary to express something which probably many theoretically orientated souls in current times will see as absurd: the state-, pure legal-, and pure political-life needs to be limited in a certain way, in its laws it needs to counteract the economic life in order for the community life of humanity not to be only an economic, not only a legal life situation but an economic, legal and spiritual one, so that it can unfold as we have seen in the example of the human organism. I will once again use this example—I don't want to play the game of analogy between physiology and sociology—the processes of the digestive system is in a certain way independent of those in the rhythmic system, breathing and heart system, both are limited and mutually restrained in their vital processes. So it is necessary that the placing beside one another within the real social organism is the economic life on the one side and in a narrower sense the state life on the other side, which must be joined by the relatively independent spiritual life, as I have illustrated last time from another point of view.

From the following we see what it's really all about. Economic life has quite different inner forces than the legal life, which have to work together if the totality of life is to prosper and this is different again with spiritual life. You could, if you wanted to bring something more or less concretely lively into abstract forms, even if from a one-sided view in order to make it understandable, say the following: in economic life, as in the production of goods, circulation and consumerism, it all comes down to a corresponding creation of value. This creation of value is accomplished essentially by value building itself if the social organism is to be healthy, under the influences and impulses, that the consumption for which the economic organism takes responsibility—call it market or something else—has it ready for consumption so that the consumer of the goods benefits as far as possible. Goods must be offered for consumption if the social organism is healthy, in such a way that it is completely used in an expedient way, that it lasts for as long as it is useful, or for as quickly as it can be consumed while it is useful, that in any case its entire content depends on consumption.

If human labour would be so totally engaged in economic life—and this economic life can only develop in the healthy way under the historical points of goods-price development according to the corresponding consumption—so what the Proletarians with Marxist viewpoints had hoped for, would be fulfilled, human labour being considered as goods. In this way human labour becomes tainted with the characteristics of goods in the social organism, because it is being considered in its ability to be fully utilised for its worth.

The economic member of the social organism also has, when looked at more closely, the tendency to use people and should the economic member of the social organism only follow its own rules, then human labour would be used up. Because the leading bourgeois circles do not take this into account, they have contributed to the situation that within economic life and the position of the Proletariat in economic life, the very nerve of the modern social question has developed, indicating that the life of the modern Proletariat shows, particularly for himself, he chose to undress his labour of the character of goods. As it is sometimes masked in the social question and much of it living unconsciously in the Proletariat, it is the important element which the Proletarian soul strives for, the liberation of human labour from the character of goods.

This can never happen if the economic processes follow their own laws and when the totality of state life is only made into a single economy as is the ideal of many modern socialists. This can also not happen when in a one-sided way the state out of itself is made into an economist. A healthy relationship can only come about if the economic organism can be allowed to unfold its relative processes by itself, when, as it happens in natural organic life as well, a system is allowed to gradually develop fully out of its own latent forces, is allowed to unfold in relative independence. Whatever arises out of this unfolding and is being limited, becomes changed by an adjacent relatively independent system, just like it happens in a natural organism having developed its system fully, which also only expresses its harm as these losses are continuously being paralyzed by the adjacent system. All organic processes are based on this. On this the healing of the social organism must also be based.

It really doesn't matter to me how the economic organism is defined, how one thinks about it. For me it matters that these two branches need to be side by side and that they each develop independently even with the predisposition of developing damage within, so that the other system adjacent to it develops and paralyzes that which arise as damage in the other system. That is the nature of what is alive; that is also what the nature of a living social organism need to be. Only when the economic body manages itself on its own terms and the legal and political bodies manage themselves, whether along their own terms which result from the regulation or the legal relationships between people; when these organisms regulate themselves independently because they are working side by side and on each other, then a healthy social life will be formed. The social question will not be solved through theories, not solved by laws but it will be solved through there being in actual life the forces, one kind being the economic, beside the others, the stately, the political, working directly in their own existence, that they both work adjacent to one another and develop in one another, but by developing in such a way that each one maintains its independence.

This has been missed, out of a certain historical necessity. What has happened has of course been necessary. No criticism but a formulation of relationships is to be presented here. This needs to be taken as essential today if human progress is to orientate itself now and towards the future. It is a given that for the sake of the recovery of the social organism, economic life will become an associate, and becomes divided in such a way that the cooperative societies, trade unions and so on are formed by stripping off what had been inherited from the prejudice of how a constitutional state should be formed. What still existed in state life within these associations has to be stripped off. They must become purely economic serving entities which are based on the relationship of the human being in the economic life, whether it is for the foundation of economic life, or whether it is for the necessity of adding value to raw materials, or to bring goods into circulation, the relationship of consumerism in the right relation to production and trade and so on. The complexity of human life makes it necessary today for the entire system of associations and coalitions which are created on the foundations of the economic life, to be formed through human beings; such associations and coalitions which essentially exist on the understanding of the exploitation of the foundations and the directing of goods towards appropriate consumption. Even the complexity demands the creation of an entire system of associations in this sphere. However, these associations would be designed out of the connection of people with economic powers themselves. The result could be something which again and again enters into real life which is the tendency of the economic life to use individuals.

Beside the economic life the political life must stand, which in contrast to the economic life, is founded on associations which must be based more on democracy because the state life encompasses relationships between people. It encompasses everything in which all people are equally interested in. As the economic life is based on the economic value of goods, so state life has to be based essentially on public law; based on law or with law as its foundation, which determines the relationships of one person to another. In a lively exchange in the economic life a restriction and limitation would have to take place. Approaches to this are available but a penetrating social insight must take place. Whatever is to be created must prioritise the protection of the human being from the economic orientation of consumption, also in relation to his labour being consumed.

Just as the creation of prices and values are the essentials within the economic body, so the arrangement of actual laws, of practical public laws regulating relations of one person to another, are essential in life of the political state. Can it not be said even today that in relation to the experience of public law, no particular clarity has been reached? Many questions can be raised to those who should know these things, who should have done research about these things which are actually to be understood under the essence of laws, laws which always appear in practical form. One only comes to an understanding of the difficulties when one looks for instance at the example of such questions raised in the doctoral dissertation of my friend who has passed away, Ludwig Laistner in his “The Right to Punish,” This in itself can become a question which considers the actual right of the human community in relation to punishment.

One can try all kinds of ways to come closer to the impulse of the law. Particularly in our time when so much is being discussed from the most various sides about the law, it is obvious that to come ever closer, is to essentially search for the being of Law. If you try and find what lies behind such real Law, ownership is also based on law; the relationship of ownership being a piece of land or anything exclusive to one person, for his use with the exclusion of others—you find it is the subject of the actual political member of the social body and so you find nothing other than that it finally comes back to power. Others discover it actually goes back to an original human experience. One arrives far too easily at empty forms if you try to tackle it. Without me getting entangled—and this could involve hours of time—in a complete substantiation, I would still like to say that the law bases a certain relationship of people to something, to a thing, a cause or something similar, or a collection of causes, with the exclusion of other people. What is its basis then actually, if one can develop the feeling that someone or other or a nation has the right to something they lay their eyes on? Still, when one takes the pains, you come to say nothing other than legal rights are based on public life enabling an evolution for the activity of something or its causes or collection of causes which most probably do more for general humanity than any other. The moment one has the experience that someone has a relationship to something, or to someone else, where the need to general humanity is obvious, one can apply the relevant law for it. This will also be essential which will bring about the decisive factor through human experience when the big legal questions of international life now steps into the real world. One would fully award rights over a certain territory, to those who have the intention that in the sense of wellbeing of general humanity this nation in particular will be the best at making the territory the most productive.

So one comes to the impulse which can weave and flow through the democratic common wealth which must orientate the exchanges of one person to another, be it in workers' insurance or be it in other insurance, instituted to give protection against damaging economic life; in all of this human life lies as the foundation of law which I've just been speaking about. An understanding, but not an understanding for some or other general abstract definition of law, but an understanding for the effectiveness of the law, in every single real case, needs to enter to make it a healthy social life for humanity. This legal life, this life of the political state in a narrower sense, of the second member of a healthy social organism, that it will also be; the real crossing point, I would say, of the modern social question only, would not be through some realization of theories, principles and programs, but through direct life, created in the world, namely the point which I have referred to as the demand of the modern Proletarians: disrobing the power of human labour from being dressed up as goods.

To that end it is necessary for people to also really understand, I could say, understand out of the very foundation, what is involved in the share of human labour in general life, in the structure of the community. Again, it will involve hours to take this into consideration if I would attempt establishing one basic social law for human labour: intuitively and instinctively, I believe, every person can do it if life is penetrated fairly and comprehended regarding what I now want to express.

In my Newspaper called “Lucifer Gnosis” I tried to point out this fundamental social law in my contribution about the social question, which was published already at the beginning of the century. However, people were sermonizing about many things on this subject and even today, it falls to deaf ears, unfortunately. This law implies that no one, in as far as he or she belongs to the social body, the social organism, actually works for himself or herself. Just think, insofar as a person belongs to the social organism, he does not work for himself. Each act of work which a person performs can never fall back on him, also not in his actual yield, because it can only be performed for others. What other people produce must be good for us. It is not merely an ethical form of altruism which lives in these things, but a simple social law. We can't do it any other way, just as we can't redirect our blood, so the circulation of the human manipulation will work in such a way that our activity towards everyone and all the activities of others are to our benefit; our own work never reverts back on us.

However paradoxical it sounds, when you examine the real circulatory process in human labour within the social organism you will find the following: it originates in people and benefits others. What one side receives out of the labour is the result of the labour of the other side. As I said, as paradoxical it might sound, it is true. One person can just as little live from his own labour in the social organism as one can eat oneself to get nourishment.

Even though basically this law is easy to understand, you could argue: ‘When I am a tailor and among the clothes I make for others, I also make myself a garment, then surely I'm directing my labour back on to myself!’—That is only an illusion as it is always a deception to believe that the result of labour falls back on oneself. By me making a skirt, pants or equivalent, I don't in truth work for myself but put myself into the position to work for others. This is the pure function human labour has in a social law within the social organism. Whoever dispels this law, works against the social organism. One works against the social organism when one implements the idea which has come about in the more recent history that the proletarian worker must live from the proceeds of his labour. That holds no truth, it is hidden through social relation means an achieved untruth, which penetrates and damages economic life. This can only be regulated in the economic life when the economic life has developed independently beside the relatively independent political-, narrower state life, which all the time snatches from the economic life, the possibility to link human labour back to itself. Within the legal system this is processed in the right social understanding where human labour retains the function it must get according to the truthful course of life in the social organism. The economic organism always has the tendency to use up the force of human labour. Judicial life must always refer to the natural altruistic position of labour and it is always, ever and again necessary, that through new concrete democratic legalization, what the economic life wants to accomplish in error, is to once again tear human labour out of the fangs of economic life on the way to public law. Just as the digestive system and the breathing-circulatory systems must work together, and the circulation of the blood absorb what the digestive system has absorbed, so there must be cooperation, a mutual interaction of what is taking place in the economic life and in the legal life, otherwise neither the one nor the other will thrive. The mere legal state, when it wants to become economic, paralyzes the economic life; the economic organism, when it wants to conquer the state, kills the system of public laws.

This is what I wanted to add to what had been said in previous lectures towards the foundation of the Threefoldness of the social organism. Because the bourgeois leading circles have had their gaze hypnotized by the state, it has become something like a god to them. Focus is not being orientated towards the necessary differentiation of the social organism into three members. So it has come about in our newer times that the state has absorbed political life and in a narrower sense spiritual life. Just like the circulation of goods depends on price and wealth creation, like life within the political social organism depends on the legal life, so everything which is the spiritual life comes out of the direct content of the produce. Just think how enormous the difference is between economic life and spiritual life. In economic life, everything depends on goods being brought to a goal orientated use. Anything generated out of the spirit, be it in the sphere of education, schooling, be it in the sphere of art, or in some or other spiritual sphere, placing spiritual creativity in relation to its usefulness is quite an absurdity. It can't be done. What is brought about spiritually can't be placed on the same line as the circulation of the economic process. This has resulted in the absorption of the school system by the state, the university system and whatever similar by the state, which in the modern development is becoming a limiting factor, even in the real sense it is becoming a limiting factor. People need to become aware once again of making spiritual life free, unharnessed. I have already pointed out that something else needs to be added to the spiritual member of the social organism even though it appears as a paradox, and that is the actual practice of private and criminal judgement. As extraordinary as it sounds, there are tendencies in modern life also which are not judged in the correct way. What is increasingly taken into account in court through misguided psychology is the tendency towards, not an acknowledged, but need for acknowledgement of the principle of incorporating private and criminal processes in the spiritual member which exists relatively independently, and relates relatively independently to all in life which develops as the closer political life, which was developed out of pubic rights legislation. Certainly in future it will happen in a healthy social organism that a criminal for instance will look for results in the second, political member. If it however is looked for then he would be brought to trial by a judge who he will confront in an individual human relationship.

Regarding this question perhaps only those can judge from history, those like me, who is speaking to you now, who during years and years of observing a region where it has become really difficult to actually govern, and where one could still, I may say, want to be ruled through constraint according to a uniform state: in a region such as Austria. Here one can see what happened if across purely language boundaries a free jurisdiction should have been there; when despite the language barriers of those bohemians living in a German region near neighbouring Czech or Bohemian residents with bohemian judges over there, the bohemian residents could turn and choose their judges from the German region. You can see how beneficial this principle could work which unfortunately was only in the beginning of the aspirations in various school associations. Here is something, I might say, like a difficult nightmare still today, for those who have participated in Austrian life, which presses on the soul that this egg of Columbus has not been found: the free choice of a judge and the lively cooperation of the plaintiffs, of the judges and of the defendants, instead of judges presented out of the centralised political state, who can only be authoritative, not for the jurisdiction but for the visiting and delivering of the criminal or then for the delivery of the judgement.

As paradoxical it might sound today, the relationship of people to their judge in connection with criminal and private law must be incorporated in the independent spiritual member. Already two days ago I made you aware how it doesn't depend on an outer management as to the choice of persons in the spiritual branch of the state. If you look into modern relationships then you will see this as well, that the innermost life of science, art and everything spiritual is above all becoming dependent on what they should not becoming dependent on if the spiritual member is to develop relative independence beside the other members. It still appears like a paradox today when I say in conclusion that each of these areas must have a certain sovereignty, its own system of representation, its own legislation, developed out of its relationships, developed out of relationships of associations in economic areas, and so have its management, its legislation as independent. In a democratic way, there will develop out of the whole of mankind a particular social sphere for the actual political state in which the relationship of one person to another is regulated, as will be the relationship to economy and the relationship to spiritual life; without these two being interfered with by the state laws and as a result the spiritual life's active forces will give the layout for the management of spiritual life as well. To an even higher degree, the spiritual life can be emancipated from modern life, to a higher degree than it had been in olden times when the only spiritual life, which applied to many people, came out of religious life, out of schools and universities.

Certainly the intervention of the modern state was necessary to rebuke the antiquated forms of religion and obsolete management which suited them no longer. Out of modern life itself an independent spiritual life is to be developed. This is exactly why a spiritual scientific direction, the very foundation of this, needs to be taken into consideration on this basis because it is known that the entire actual productive spiritual life also lives in, for instance, technical participation, technically experienced ideas which can only develop with healthy human impulses, when it is developed out of the vital, autonomous spirit, independent from both the other members of the social organism. The human spirit will only acquire impact of productivity in the right way if spiritual life is relatively autonomous. Brooding, theorizing, inventing thoughts, for my sake as well, can also be experienced as it takes a certain direction in more modern technology and science, observable in their admirable methods, but the real productive idea, which is so productive that true human progress and at the same time real human healing is served, these ideas can only be born within a self-supporting, self-determining spiritual life.

As much as people are still alienated from what I'm actually implying which must be understood in order to place the social question on a healthy basis, some people have responded to what I've explained by saying: ‘Yes, this is only a more modern meaning of the renewal of the old platonic idea of dividing the social body into three classes: the rulers/guardians, the fighters/auxiliaries and the producers/labourers/educational state.’ No, this is no renewal of old platonic ideas but is in a specific relationship as the extreme opposite, if it comes down to it—because between the platonic thoughts considered great in Greece and also later times, and the thoughts of today towards a healing of the Social organism, lies the big, critical historic incision of the fifteenth Century. At the time of Plato, the divisions of the social organism was one of the division of classes. The structure which I'm talking about here was not a division of people but was formed by members of the social organism; this social organism was so structured that in some cases one person could belong to all three divisions of members, it was not damaging to move from one to the other, not even when, as in modern parliaments it often happens, the same person is accounted for as a farmer and at the same time belong to a party of the state. Today it is still possible through some or other association inaugurating an advocacy group, that an economic protection of interest can be passed through into law. Last time I mentioned such an example where an entire state's life of law was penetrated by such a protection of interests. This becomes excluded. However, my presentation of the threefold healthy social organism, excludes people from the social organism. People just become independent through it; they are stripped of the character of being slaves of the organism, where not classes of people, layers of people exist as members but that the social organism finds its own divisions. This points at the same time to these thoughts which form the basis of it, which should be taken from true reality, distanced from everything which I indicated as fanatical the day before yesterday.

This fanaticism appears in the most varied parties. It is even present in bourgeois circles on the side of social democracy. This fanaticism gets a hold on people if they don't gradually get an inkling of what the social organism as such can actually aim for, when it is healthy. Again and again, the social thinking suffers under the influence of the feeling, the idea, as if the social order can be aimed for directly through some or other program in order to bring good fortune or satisfaction to humanity, or something of this sort. This cannot be sought for directly. What can be aimed for directly is a social organism capable of life, one which has vital forces of life within itself. Situated in such an organism, living in such an organism can out of quite different foundations bring happiness to people. That has other foundations. However, these foundations need to be freed from being restrained. They can only be freed if the social organism is based on life giving forces. Just like a really viable organism can be of help to develop the soul, so in a comparative way can a viable social organism develop happy, satisfied human beings who are willing to work and have an understanding about work. This is what a healthy social organism is all about.

An observation of what we have experienced during a catastrophic time, one might say, can also be considered from an international viewpoint and corroborated out of a larger historic viewpoint, how these ideas I have been exploring as three members, are really necessary for the present-day form of life for humanity and also a form of life for humanity in the foreseeable future. One could say that before this terrible catastrophe, called a war, which broke out over humanity, there was a culmination of the thorough tossing and complete turmoil of the three members which should have reached a differentiation. Precisely due to these three members not being able to reach relative independence beside one another, the result has been much penetrating into what in reality must be calculated as the point of origin and the causes of these tragedies of war. Only a few details need to be pointed out. The focus of humanity has been entirely directed toward the idea that the war has its point of origin in the relation of the Austrian state with the Balkan, namely the Serbian relationship. Whoever was initiated into the Austrian relationships of the last decades know how to judge the economic connections taking place between Austria and the south-eastern Europe, and how these were being convoluted in an unnatural way in the relationships which were to have developed independently with the purely political. As a result of this amalgamation suddenly the political relationship could for itself decide about something which was deeply rooted in economic relations and as a result actualize a falsehood and explode.

How different these things could have been—I can only indicate a few things in my lecture today, in conclusion—if the relationships of such neighbouring states could have been representing the Threefoldness, when across the border the relationship could have been purely politically, democratically based and separated from the other members, just as the form of government is as usual. When however, the corrected, harmonized independently economic and spiritual factors work on the other side of the border, then the system of the state, the so-called state, would be propagated through interests in harmony and amalgamation, where the one is always correcting the other, where no one single side by itself can circumvent an explosion. Healthy relationships across borders would develop in international relationship of nations through Threefoldness.

And then again, how global mankind turned their eyes on what was happening in Germany at least outwardly, at the declaration of war. Whoever is initiated in this area knows how the disaster happened. Often it has been said that during July and August, in those fatal days, politics, beside the actual warfare, alongside the army, had failed. Politics and armies are there where they both work, running simultaneously. They are not divisible anyhow. They could only unfold in a healthy way, if they worked within one of the state formed three-fold social organisms. Otherwise politics would necessarily, at least in one member, take on a uniformed characteristic. At a given moment it would either culminate into the military or non-military. What has to be uniform through its very nature, even when it has been amalgamated through human error with other systems, it cannot do externally so that the one goes over to correcting the other. During these terrifying fearful conditions which grew out of Berlin during the last days of July and the first days of August, the process of coagulation into one single system took place, a system which should have been split up. They all became concentrated and responsible to one system which no single system for the healing of mankind had ever dared take on. Actual relationships would then clearly teach us if these things are investigated without prejudice and bias. Oh, how much nonsense is being said in relation to politics and the army! So much nonsense has been uttered in the last four and a half years! I only want to say one thing: if within an inseparable member of the social organism the dormant policies and strategy could only work, then never, when the strategy is led to depend on itself, will the policies influence this strategy in a healthy way. There has been a tendency to time and again refer to the clause of (Major General Carl von) Clausewitz (1780-1831): "War is a mere continuation of politics by other means," (Die Kriegführung sei die Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln).

I don't want to offer criticism about this statement in as far as it relates to the entire war analysis. However, just like men have, again and again—and women have done so as well—referred to this saying, it has just about as much sense as if one would say: “Divorce is the continuation of marriage through other means.”

This kind of nonsense springs from unnatural thinking, which multiply and penetrate in an unnatural way into real relationships. When things are for once considered without prejudice then it will be apparent how differently things could have gone. Understandably what has happened is historically necessary and what must be said should be a valid impulse for the future, but hypothetically one could still say that everything could have happened differently if the structure of the international European relationships could have been under the influence of the social Threefoldness. One could then say: what has happened came through the relations of alliance. However, alliance relationships could never have entered under the influence of a Threefoldness. Such alliance training which these were and which led to the catastrophes of the last four and a half years, would be ended if people orientated themselves in the sense of the Threefoldness of a healthy social organism.

What I am opening up here has been thoroughly thought through with real meaning, it is brought out of thoughts from reality. I have also always said that if I had involved myself during these fearful years, an authoritative position corresponding to that time would have been to point out the Threefoldness: The only reality is that things change from one day to the next and understandably relationships could have changed regarding these things which need to be talked about. I say to people: ‘What is presented here is no program, it is not an ideal; it corresponds to observations which want to be realized in Central and Eastern Europe, above all in Europe. You have the choice to either apply good sense today or to go and encounter revolutions and cataclysms.’

They have started already and will show themselves in other ways. Today however I might repeat a consideration which can be said on this occasion. I have always said: ‘Whoever is a Utopian, a theorist, who does not think from the basis of reality, but out of abstract claims or party impulses, is interested in what a program or something similar can offer, and that this is actually executed according to specific details.’ These things do not matter in what I am presenting—I have mentioned this before. It could be said—and still is said today—that the formulation of what I am representing will leave no single stone standing on another. The important thing is not that some or other conjecture is realised but that reality is tackled at some point. If this is done it will be discovered that through tackling it, the way forward will become clear. It could become clear by carrying it out and then all formulations need to be adjusted. This is not important if one is no Utopian, no fanatic, to execute something word for word, but to start it at a certain point. At such a point as to where it must start I want to point out still today, before it becomes too late, before human instincts are so far unleashed that an understanding among people, perhaps decades from now, would not be possible any more.

In closing today, I still want to mention something—although in a narrower sense it doesn't belong to this lecture—I also think that if anyone feels within his soul that he is somehow connected to the social question, he has the task to not only speak up about it but need to apply all means to allow his understanding to be brought to his contemporaries. This is what we can do first: promoting mutual social understanding. Much has been corrupted, spoiled in the most varied areas throughout the world due to fragmented, mashed thinking, as I have characterised, resulting in disabling the right idea to come forward at the right time. As a result, I must greet the possibility with a certain satisfaction that out of the difficult relationships of the present it has become possible to accomplish practical results of ideas suggested here, in a relatively short time. Those individualities who have in a certain way, I could call it, been ignited regarding the social question with a view based on reality, have allowed themselves to work towards an understanding of these things, at least in these areas where today misfortune can be the biggest teacher. Anyway, I might regard it as particularly lucky that here within the Swiss region, where there is still relatively speaking the opportunity for peaceful objectivity, that precisely due to this possibility of peaceful objectivity a deeper understanding can enter as well and point out the necessity for the mutual social understanding of humanity indicated in these four lectures, and calling for action. After all, within the pain and suffering which come along during the course of events and in destiny which various members of humanity can experience these days, it can give a certain satisfaction that misfortune actually has taught some people a thing or two. So it could happen—if you allow me to bring this, as it is always meaningful not to remain abstract but be actual when relating to the social question—I have incorporated an appeal in my detailed presentation here in short sentences, a call which is actually dedicated towards processes in the whole world but which has found entry into the hearts of those who have been severely tested in Germany and German-Austria by tragedy and educated by tragedy. I have in this appeal tried to present how the founding of the German Reich took place at a time when the developmental possibilities of a newer humanity in such a reestablishment wanted to, in the most imminent sense, enter into the new social task.

Small things were presented in a comprehensive way; yet just what this empire should have done, to place corresponding content into its frames from the developmental forces of modern humanity and steer towards this Threefoldness, this they could not see. The result has been that the rest of the world turned towards Central Europe. How could the rest of the world understand the entitlement of this particular empire's establishment if this establishment did not create what undoubtedly pointed out its right within the international process of humanity?

Therefore I have believed that a right program, if I may call it that—but you know from the foregoing: this is no program but the reality—therefore I have believed that formulation may be done in the appeal to humanity for a task which could arise from the Europeans who are confronted with the necessity for renewal. After all one can be satisfied that up to yesterday afternoon this appeal had already been supported by more signatures in Germany than the one-time appeal of the ninety-nine intellectuals with unhappy memories, that over a hundred signatures for this appeal in Germany and up to yesterday over seventy signatures out of German-Austria has been made available for this appeal. I mention this because I want to speak from the basis of reality and as a result draw attention to what I believe is needed in the further process of social development, by it not standing alone when it comes down to making it valid for the mutual relationships of one person to another.

So we must first work on the way to a real social solution. This is the next step. Today humanity stands for once in relation to a large part of the civilized world confronting the necessity to look the social problem in the eye. To do so would mean solving a problem—let me say this to you in conclusion—that it is uncomfortable in the highest levels of thinking. Many people will still admit that for a transformation of the institutions, a transformation of the social structure is necessary. Didn't the entire spirit of the lectures, which I allow myself to present, hasn't the whole spirit been one of pointing out that something else is necessary? If Proletarian Marxist educated leaders repeatedly stress that the words of Marxism are the truth: The philosophers interpreted the world and declared: ‘It comes down to thoughts not only explaining the world but transforming it.’ Thus, it happens in today's critical demands of time that not only a half measure but perhaps not even a quarter is done. What is necessary is that thoughts are not only directed to some or other transformation of institutions, or social structures but that it is necessary for thoughts themselves to change. Only out of reformed thoughts will a healthy social organism be able to develop. Institutions hardly please people; to re-think is even less pleasing—but necessary. Unless a person accepts this, it will not be possible to orientate him- or herself, and then they can't cooperate towards the healing of the social organism.

For a long time, the most important considerations and decisions have knocked at the door of the social question. Now it has entered into the house of humanity. It can't be thrown out again because in a certain sense humanity's evolution comes up against an enchantress. It not only works on humanity's outer structure but makes humanity face the need to either re-think or to add tragedy to the already present tragedies, which multiply.

With this, necessities become clear, what needs to be realised if it will not be too late in the relationship that instincts, as I've mentioned, takes on form in order that the understanding between the various classes would no longer be possible. Only then do we approach a healing of the social organism when renewal, what we are waiting for, when health, for which we hope, are not based on old thinking, but that when we make the bold and powerful decision towards the progress of mankind by orientating our forces towards new thinking; because only out of new thoughts will the possibility of life blossom for new generations. This is how you must think the social question has come about, that it has grown out of the conditions of modern life. It will be false to think one can believe in somehow finding a current solution. Socialism isn't a solution or an attempt at a solution, no, modern life and the life of mankind into the future has brought about the social question. It will always be there. In a living, social organism solutions will always be needed. In this a part, a piece of the life of future humanity will have to exist, that in each generation these questions need to be solved out of new forms; this social question which, once it has come up, admonishes and upsets the entire structure of human thoughts and feelings. If we turn to it with our whole heart, with our entire soul, then it will turn to us, not however for our salvation but for our harm.

Dear attendees,

In my lecture the day before yesterday, I tried to show the path into the supersensible world that can be taken by modern humanity and which, from our present-day consciousness and stage of human development, we ourselves demand as a requirement, even if we have so far only sensed this inner soul fact rather than consciously followed it. A challenge to go into the supersensible world by other paths than those we have been accustomed to understand until now.

Not so much because I believe that the direct experience of the content, especially in the form of the supersensible world view that I spoke of the day before yesterday, must also underlie the thoughts and impulses of the reorganization of our external public, namely social life, but because I am convinced that in order to penetrate the supersensible from the point of view of today's man, such a transformation of the entire soul life is necessary, as it must take place, in order to solve the great problems, [in order] to solve the social problems of the present, because, simply, as I believe, thinking, feeling must be trained in such thoughts and ideas about the supersensible, as they have been mentioned, I preceded the lecture here last Saturday with today's lecture. Because, my dear attendees, I do believe that a way out of the confusion and chaos of the present social structure is only possible if we look with full awareness and without fear at the radical transformation that we are currently undergoing with regard to our public life. I do not believe that anyone who sees the World War catastrophe as a mere event that interrupts the course of human development, so to speak, and that can subsequently continue in the same way, I do not believe that anyone who views this war catastrophe in this way is inclined to muster the thoughts and feelings that are necessary today for someone who wants to participate in what is necessary to build. It seems to me that only those who, in this world-catastrophe, can truly recognize the collapse of an old spiritual and world view, and who at the same time can recognize the new demands that have not yet taken on a definite form from which one can expect the necessary for the future, but which already announce at least parts of what we have to strive for. But those who are still steeped in the old way of thinking, who have become accustomed to the old social spirit in their thoughts, who are rooted in the old institutions with their habits of life, still cannot bring themselves to really accept that a fundamental transformation is necessary. And still those who come forward with their new demands, honestly and sincerely, cannot bring themselves to look at the reality of life as thoroughly as is necessary to strip these demands of the character of the factions, of the character of abstract programs, and to think them out, to feel them out of the immediate reality of life. Only when humanity has come to see the terrible abyss that has opened up between two sections of the population today will it be on a par with intellectual life and its demands. In fact, we are living in such a transitional period today that we must bring all the details, all the individual characteristics of a downfall before our soul; that on the other hand we must carefully examine everything that asserts itself in a more or less vague way as new demands.

And so, my dear audience, our gaze is not initially turned to what I spoke about last Saturday when we look at the phenomena of the time. Rather, our gaze is directed to that link in life that is, so to speak, opposed to the actual spiritual current of humanity, but from which all the new demands of the present time arise, and where the collapse of all habits of thought and life becomes apparent; our gaze is turned, if we want to understand the actual character of the time, to economic life. And within this economic life, I think it is quite clear that two views of humanity, two ways of feeling humanity, are asserting themselves, between which there is an abyss, and which today can understand each other less than such currents of humanity have ever understood each other within the development of humanity. There is no inclination to look everywhere for what is really characteristic. Above all, there is no inclination to look at the economic life of the present in such a way as to recognize in it forces other than the purely economic ones, which assert themselves both in the collapse and in the new ascent that is to be hoped for. But a comprehensive view must not shy away from drawing attention to these other forces. Therefore, today I will need to speak not only about economic life, but also about everything else that is part of economic life and which must undergo the same renewal and transformation as economic life itself. I will therefore have to speak to you today about the fundamental challenge of our time as a threefold one. I will have to speak of the social question as a spiritual or cultural question, I will have to speak of the social question as a legal or state question; I will have to speak of the social question as an economic question.

But has not this economic life developed in recent times in such a way that we can say: it basically floods everything, and we have become completely dependent with regard to external public life, also with regard to intellectual life and with regard to legal life, completely dependent on the shaping of our economic life.

Let us first look at what we can call the spiritual culture of the present day. This spiritual culture of the present day has received much praise. Time and again, and rightly so from a certain point of view, it has been emphasized how far humanity has come in terms of the development of spiritual life and spiritual culture. Again and again, people have pointed out how magical our intellectual culture must appear to someone who lived a millennium ago and surveys the human intellectual life of that time. Again and again, people have emphasized how, with the help of human resources, thought can now travel at lightning speed across the whole earth. And again and again, the way in which the boundaries that used to be drawn between the individual cultural areas have been overcome in modern times has been emphasized – and much more of the same.

But little consideration has been given to something that is connected, intimately connected, with the basic character of our newer intellectual life. It is connected with this fundamental character of our newer spiritual life that only a small minority of people can participate in this actual spiritual culture. This spiritual culture is such that only this small minority can find their way into what emerges in the most diverse fields of newer spiritual life when it is about the actual spiritual development of this culture, through their thinking habits and their entire way of feeling. We have a rich literary life, a rich artistic life. We have the most diverse world views. We have a developed ethic and so on, and so on. But all this encompasses human impulses, human ideas, human feelings that arise from the particular soul-orientation of a few. And these few must conquer this spiritual life in that the great mass of people simply cannot participate in it. Anyone who takes a broad view of what is actually happening in our culture today knows full well that, on many sides, there is a good will to use all kinds of folk art events, adult education centers and the like to communicate to the great majority what is spiritually conquered by a minority. However good the intentions in this area may be, they do not lead to the goal that they should actually achieve; basically, they only lead to a cultural lie. For, ladies and gentlemen, the nature of intellectual life is such that one can only participate in any form of it if this intellectual life flows from the most original human perceptions and experiences of life. But now our humanity is divided into a small minority, whose habits of life give rise to today's intellectual life, and the great mass, which is devoted only to manual labor, to the external economic life, and within this external economic life develops habits of life, the inner soul condition, and can find no real inner access to what the soul of a minority calls its spiritual life. Today, however much goodwill we may have, we communicate what we produce in the way of science and art through popular events for the masses. We are under a great illusion if we believe that this mass of people can truly absorb into their souls that which a minority is able to regard as its spiritual property. My dear audience, one must actually speak from life experience about this. And so, with reference to what I have just mentioned, please allow me to make a seemingly personal remark, but one that is meant to be symptomatic of what I am discussing here. For many years I was a teacher at a workers' education school. My students were all members of the proletariat. During that time, I tried to present within this workers' educational school what I could directly present from person to person, what I could express in the fields of history and natural science, so that what I expressed was always different from what was presented only last Saturday here in other fields as generally human. And I was actually always well understood, in that I reshaped history in a general human sense, in that I reshaped knowledge of nature in a general human sense. But, as a result of a certain contemporary fashion among the students and the school management, there was also a need for me to lead the students through galleries and the like, for example. And there it turned out that I actually felt like someone who was speaking to people about something, as if I were a complete stranger to them. If I expressed what I took directly from the soul of the people in the school lesson, we understood each other. If I spoke to the people about what the minority had produced as their culture, as their intellectual life, then the message was actually a lie, because people did not find access to what came from completely different psychological backgrounds through their habits of thought, through their feelings. In the ruling circles, people's thoughts were not directed towards such facts and phenomena. Hence the gulf, the abyss between the spiritual culture of the minority and the soul life, the life of the proletarian, who was completely caught up in the economic cycle. What did those who belonged to the minority know, basically, in the last three to four centuries, but especially in the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century, of what was going on in the souls of the broad masses of the proletariat? He directed these broad masses to work, to work that was created entirely in the direction of the minority culture. But he did not seek access to people, he did not seek access to hearts and souls. This was especially noticeable when he was sought, as happened in the case cited by me.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is approximately what can be said from the spiritual side with regard to the characteristics of one stage of human development. And if you then take a closer look at this spiritual life, this cultural life of the minority, then you have to say that this cultural life, because it is the life of a minority, is alien to the whole of contemporary human life. Despite all our arrogance, we live in an abstract culture; a culture that does not penetrate into the reality of human life. Therefore, it is not surprising that this culture produces a thought life that is actually unrealistic. A thought life that is out of touch with the whole person has the peculiarity that it can also submerge into reality. And if you will allow me to make another personal comment, again only meant as a symptom, it is the following:

In January 1914, I was obliged to summarize, deliberately at the time in Vienna before a small gathering, because a larger one would probably have laughed at me at the time, I was obliged to summarize what had formed in me as an idea, which I was telling, about the whole [course] of this modern cultural life and its way of thinking, what I had to form as an idea about the direction in which this cultural life is heading. And I had to summarize these insights, I believe I may call them that, at that time – that is, in the early spring of 1914 – about what is brought into the world of men through the contradictions in this intellectual life. I had to summarize it by saying: Our social conditions, right up to the highest levels, give the impression of a social disease, a social cancer, to anyone who observes them impartially, and this must express itself in a terrible way throughout the civilized world in the near future.

That was the opinion of an “impractical idealist” back then, as they say today; the opinion of someone who wants to decide something about reality from their own point of view. Today, we can be reminded of such a view of reality when we consider how, on the other hand, those who had emerged from the intellectual culture of the minority with its unrealistic sense of reality thought at the time about what was to come. Let us recall that in January 1914, a directing statesman summarized his views, despite the responsibility that weighed on him, in the words he said at the time to a parliamentary body: “We live in a general relaxation of political conditions,” he said, “which gives us hope of maintaining peace in Europe in the near future.” And he added: We are on the most friendly terms with the Russian government, which, thanks to the efforts of the cabinets, is not getting involved in the lies of the press pack. And we certainly think – the statesman in question spoke as a statesman of Central Europe – we certainly think to continue our friendly relations with Poland. And he adds, so at that time: negotiations are in progress with England that promise the very best for European peace. They have not yet been concluded, but they will bring about desirable conditions.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the train of thought of a person who is well-informed about the present and who lived at the time of the terrible world catastrophe that followed, which killed thousands and thousands of people in Europe and left three times as many maimed. The lesson to be learned from this global catastrophe is that, to the very depths of the soul, the culture of the minority has lost its sense of, its instinct for realities. These things are to be taken more seriously than ever. And they will only be taken seriously if we do not want to ignore the fact that the ideas that emerged from this unrealistic basis were simply not suited to bringing fruitful ideas into our economic life. People still do not want to admit this today. But this is the most important fact of economic life in modern times: the ruling circles have lost the comprehensive ideas of this economic life, and therefore, for a long period of time, this economic life has run its course throughout the entire civilized world as if it were running mechanically by itself. And the catastrophe of the world wars is nothing more than the result of allowing the economy to be driven into its own contradictions and destruction. This was due to the fact that within modern spiritual culture these thoughts were not taken from reality and therefore could not master and control this reality. Thus the leading and ruling circles pursued an economic policy which, by maintaining old institutions, actually destroyed life. But they never took the trouble to organize this economic life on a human basis. But within this economic life there arose something from the hearts and souls of those who, through their work, were merely harnessed to this economic life. And by looking at this, we come to the other side of the abyss; to the side where those stand who could not participate in the indicated way in the spiritual culture of the minority, who, since the advent of modern technology and modern capitalism, have been completely harnessed with all their humanity to this technology, to this capitalism that is emptying of meaning.

Now I would like to say: everything that I have characterized as a minority spiritual culture, as a certain attitude towards the broad masses of working proletarians, and as an attitude towards the mechanical course of economic life, which is noticeable on the one hand, has found its echo on the other. And this echo develops slowly, little by little. Only then will one do justice to the present time if one sees in this world catastrophe the leading of the spiritual and economic life ad absurdum, which I have just described. But now, from the other side, for more than half a century, there has been the sound of what once ended in the words, the world-shattering words: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” And the catastrophe of the world wars has brought about the era in which everything that has since taken hold in the hearts and souls of the broadest circles of the proletariat under the influence of that from which that call arose has been realized. It has brought all this about and summarized it in a new way.

Therefore, the present is even more permeated with the necessity of pointing out with understanding what stands like an echo on the other side of the abyss. There we see that the proletarian masses look at the intellectual culture of the minority, which was to be given to them through all kinds of popular events and everything that is connected with the minority's intellectual life and habits, and there we see that the proletarian masses look at all this because they could not participate in it; and they found it understandable when their ingenious leader, who is just as great in his truths as he is great in his fallacies, when Karl Marx gave them the word, which characterized their relationship to the life of the minority in a way that could be misunderstood, generally misunderstood, but all the more understandable to the hearts of the masses, in the words “surplus value” and “labor performance”. And more or less clearly, large masses of proletarians were seized by the awareness, one might say, not to understand everywhere, but to feel: What we have as a relationship between what elevates religiously, what satisfies artistically, what warms as a worldview for the minorities, that is, we create the basis for this intellectual culture of the minorities by generating the capital base through the added value, through what is taken from what we have produced, from the proceeds of our products, beyond what is only compensation for our labor. And we must not judge the present time merely from the external standpoint of political economy; we shall not do justice to it; we must also judge it from the standpoint of the mass psychology of humanity. Here it is not a matter of whether one can discuss a word like surplus value more or less accurately, but rather how such a word works in the masses; how it arouses feelings, what hopes it inspires. These hopes are entirely in line with what I have just characterized. And more and more closely and more and more accurately did these proletarian masses see what their share is in that which lives as a spiritual culture, and what as a spiritual culture also guides legal and economic life. And that is why they also understood a second word, which was coined for them from the same source; they understood the word about the labor power of man, which can be bought as a commodity on the labor market, just as other commodities can be bought and sold. It may be that intellectually they did not grasp what was meant by this, but they felt it. By being made aware of this word, and hearing it from sources that were more or less clear or obscure, they sensed their way back to ancient times, when slavery still prevailed and when the whole human being could be bought and sold on the labor market like a thing or an animal. And they looked to the somewhat later period of serfdom, when fewer, but still enough human strength and labor were harnessed in bondage. And they sensed something of that personality consciousness that has gripped the hearts and souls in the development of humanity, as I explained the day before yesterday, since the middle of the fifteenth century. And they sensed: The time is past when something like a commodity, like a thing, can be sold by man. And they felt: the leading, guiding circles have failed to see the moment when the labor force must be stripped of the character of the commodity. And in one way or another, more or less clear or unclear, this demand “stripping the labor force of the character of the commodity” arises. Such was the answer to the lack of understanding shown by the leading, leading circles for the great masses of the proletariat.

And another point was also made, which must be taken into account if, in as naive a way as Woodrow Wilson does, one treats the social question of the present day only as a production question. It is certainly a production question, but the fact that it has only become a production question is precisely the fault and the neglect of the leading and guiding circles. What has developed in humanity over the last three to four centuries, ladies and gentlemen, is not only the newer economic life with its expanded technology and its capitalism. It is also a very specific direction of intellectual life. This spiritual life is not only the spiritual life of the minority, as I have characterized it, but a very specific direction of the spiritual life has moved into humanity.

When we look back to earlier times, there was also a religious, artistic spiritual life; a spiritual life that is now more or less regarded as a fantasy life. We do not want to talk about that now. But it was a spiritual life that provided people with a living world view, with an inner momentum; it placed people in the development of humanity and in the social order in such a way that each person could, in some way, find the answer from this spiritual life, how they are connected as spirit, as soul, with the spirit, with the soul of the world. He received the answer to the question: Do I have a dignified existence in the whole world? This possibility ceased under the influence of what came from modern science to meet man. This newer scientific attitude and orientation has ultimately lost all connection with the foundations of existence; it is directed only at the exterior of existence. In the end, one no longer had the feeling: a super-sensible element shines into your thoughts, into your ideas – but one had the feeling: the thoughts, the ideas are only thoughts, only ideas. One did not admit this to oneself; one retained the gesture of the old religious, the old artistic and other world-view feeling; but what one shaped anew was formed in such a way that it could not fulfill man as a whole. The proletarian, who had been snatched from the social situation in which he had formerly lived, to the machine, into soul-destroying capitalism, the proletarian, he truly could not believe in what had been revealed to the leading, guiding circles as the content of this spiritual life. They still spoke in the old formulas, which speak of a divine world order, a moral world order, expressing itself in the historical becoming of humanity. The proletarian was trapped in the mere economic order, in capitalism, which orients and guides this mere economic order. He felt nothing but: what is developing in the newer intellectual life is mere phrase, mere ideology; only the economic life has truth; only the economic order has truth! And so the view resounded again and again, especially in the leading thinking people of the proletariat: everything spiritual, everything artistic, everything religious, everything scientific, everything legal, everything moral is something that rises like a smoke from the only real, from the economic basis of existence, which is the only reality.

Yes, with such a view it is possible to think, it is possible to know – what is usually called knowing – but it is not possible to live with such a view, because the soul becomes desolate with it, because the soul is finally withdrawn from everything that can answer the question: Do I live a dignified human existence? The soul is driven to a mere brutal belief in the external product and its effectiveness. This ideology, it did not educate the proletariat! This disbelief in the spirit, the proletariat did not educate it. All this is the last legacy that the proletariat has inherited from the leading, guiding circles. It has inherited it in good faith, believing that it must be the newer worldview. And everything that has become soul-destroying in the hearts and minds of the proletarians comes from this side. And so we see what it looks like on the other side of the abyss. And we become aware that the proletariat, when it looks at the intellectual life that the modern age has brought forth, has finally said: In the end, it is only the smoke and sound of what is rising from the economic life, the actual basis of human life, the life of the leading, guiding circles. We want nothing to do with that!

And the other consciousness arose in the proletarian: these leading, guiding circles have separated themselves from us by taking possession of the old structure of economic life and shaping the life of the minority from it. But they have left us to be a second-class class, and our relationship to them is not that of man to man; our relationship to them is actually that of a disadvantaged class to a privileged class. And it is a cliché when they speak of the divine, the moral world order, of the ideas that live in history, of the spiritual powers, because all this comes from the economic order. And from a different economic order must come that which satisfies us as they are satisfied by their spiritual and other culture, their culture of life in the minority! What is called “historical materialism” arose out of these feelings.

From the threefold path, the proletariat has learned how a gulf has arisen between itself and the leading, guiding circles, in the way of the spiritual life in the way I have mentioned. But then, as this intellectual life developed and the minority had to draw in the broad masses of the proletariat for its work, something else arose. What is called the newer human formation had to be more or less carried into the broad masses. What was the result of this? Yes, a special fact emerges. The fact that when one quality of the soul develops, another develops at the same time. One of these was the one that developed through the intellectuality of the proletariat, in that democratic education, education of the people, was carried into the proletariat. But as this quality developed, something else developed as a general human world consciousness. There has been much talk about this consciousness today. For those who look at the things of this world impartially, this consciousness today is an elementary emanation of the human being itself. Just as one cannot really discuss color with someone who does not have a healthy eye, one cannot discuss what is a universal human right with a human soul that has not awakened. But it was possible to discuss these universal human rights with the proletarian soul, which was increasingly awakening from patriarchal conditions. And a clear awareness arose of the right that man has by being human. From this consciousness the proletarian looked at what the ruling and leading circles had taken over from the state and made it into a living right. And he found not this human right, but the right of favored classes and the disadvantage of other classes. That was what ate deeper and deeper into the souls of the proletarians. And that was the cause of the second ordeal, the legal process, and the third was what necessarily resulted from the proletarian being completely harnessed into economic life and capitalism; that he could not, like the others, find the [leisure] and rest from work, could not find human development through education to participate in what beautifies the life of the minority. That was what he felt, while he had to say to himself: I am only harnessed into economic life; I am basically only a wheel in economic life. The whole of human life is for me a running off of this economic life. I am harnessed like a machine into this economic life.

That is the third ordeal that the proletariat went through. This threefold suffering of the proletariat, if properly followed and compared with what lives on the other side of the abyss in the way I have characterized, leads to seeking that which must first be striven for from our present-day consciousness, again in a threefold way: in the life of the spirit, in the life of right or state, and in the life of the economy. And that in relation to these three ways of life, something must be striven for from the consciousness of modern humanity, is evident in three fundamental demands of modern times, which have been clearly expressed, but which have nevertheless remained more or less generalities and have not been fully incorporated into our modern life.

Over the past few centuries, the call for liberalism has been rising more and more in human consciousness. Today a word that is no longer held in high regard. Likewise, the call for democracy is rising. And thirdly, the call for socialism is becoming ever clearer and clearer. From this or that side, one could not resist the one or other impulse expressed in these three; but one nevertheless tried to remain in the old conditions and to let what is announced in these three expressions flow into the old conditions, to press it into them. They simply took the old unified state and tried to shape it in a liberal, democratic and social way. Today we live in an age in which it must be recognized that the error lies in living under the suggestion of this unified state and believing that what is expressed in liberalism, democracy and socialism can be pressed into this unified state.

Let us take democracy, which has emerged as an impulse as the middle way in modern humanity. Does not the call for democracy express everything that I have just characterized as emerging from the human sense of right and wrong? Does not the call for democracy express the impulse for something that makes every human being equal to every other human being in the world? Is there not something in it that says that every mature human being has a say in everything that simply affects the position of the human being in the world? Once this has been thought out, the necessity for the development of a democratic state order arises. Democratic state orders are developed in which every person of legal age deals more or less directly with every other person of legal age through representation, and in which each person is to be equal to the other. In the course of modern development, it was impossible to resist what lives in humanity as such an impulse of democracy. And they tried to permeate what they took over historically as the old states with this democratic element in the modern parliaments. They did not realize that two elements of life do not fit into this democratic element, especially if it is to be understood honestly and sincerely. As true as it is that every mature human being must decide on everything in which each person is equal to the other, and as true as it is that this must be experienced and regulated from the standpoint of democratic parliamentarism , it is just as true that the moment this democratic element is allowed to decide on the one hand over economic life and on the other hand over intellectual life, it leads to impossibilities.

Let us first consider economic life. Economic life is based on the fact that the individual human being works his way into the economic knowledge of the individual profession and branch of production in the course of his life. Only someone who is not just theoretically, but through having experienced it, is inside a profession or branch of production, only such a person can decide what is necessary in that profession or branch of production. Only those who have grown together with any profession through which this or that is produced can be trusted in this economic life. In short, any branch of production in economic life, harnessed to democracy, becomes an impossibility, because then the one who does not understand it and does not understand it or who is involved in one economic sector, decides by majority, he decides over those who are involved in completely different sectors, of which he understands nothing. We have seen how terribly this lack of understanding of the relationship between democracy and economic life has manifested itself in those states that have proven to be least mature, above all, in the sub... [gap in the transcript]. But anyone who has lived there for half their life, three decades of life, and has been involved in Austrian political life, knows where the damage lies, which has ultimately led to the fact that such terrible horrors have befallen Austria, that Austria has collapsed so terribly in this world war catastrophe. Because, you see, when people in this patriarchal-clerical Austria in the 1860s worked to get out of the old conditions, to at least take the modern call for liberalism and democracy into account by means of a people's representation – how was this people's representation shaped? They were formed in such a way that four electoral curiae were created: large estates, cities and markets, chambers of commerce and industry, rural communities; all economic curiae. The representatives were people who had to represent the economic interests of individual groups. These people now formed the Austrian parliament. What did they actually do there? What did they strive for? Nothing other than the mere transformation of economic interests into human-legal conditions, into state conditions, into security conditions. The state's mutual human relationships should arise from what was decided in the interest of individual economic circles. It was believed that only economic interests needed to be transformed in order to create legal interests. Anyone who has been able to follow the development of Austria knows that in this construction of state life out of mere economic conditions, the damage that must necessarily lead to ruin has arisen. And as with this example, so could be substantiated by numerous examples for other states, that it is impossible to forge together that which emerged as a democratic demand in modern times with that which has been shaped in economic life.

The same question arises with regard to intellectual life and intellectual culture as a whole. It is impossible for decisions to be made on a democratic basis about what is actually at stake in intellectual culture. In the case of intellectual culture, it is essential that everything that arises, let us say, from unknown sources as human, individual abilities and talents, be developed according to purely spiritual principles; according to those principles that look impartially at what can develop spiritually and individually in the human being, right down to the physical working capacity. But in modern times, the entire care for this development of the individual human abilities has been relegated to the state. This has come about through quite understandable historical facts. In more recent times, when it became necessary to wrest the state side of the church's educational system from certain underground sources, it was justified to hand over certain branches, namely the public branches, the branches of education and instruction, to the state, to which one had to adhere, as the spiritual life. Time and again, it turned out that this spiritual life became a mere copy of the state; that ultimately, in what people produced spiritually, it was not what lives that springs from the direct nature of the human being, what the spiritual produces in the human being, but that what emerged in the spiritual life was what corresponded to the interests and needs of the state. No wonder that eventually – and the world war catastrophe showed this terribly – no wonder that this intellectual life remained free in a few individual branches, in art or the like; that the rest of the intellectual life became nothing but a copy, a reflection of the utilitarian demands and interests of modern states. And as the modern states have become more and more economic entities due to the increasing complexity of economic life, intellectual life was ultimately only an expression of economic life.

The proletariat saw what recent times have done to intellectual life. The proletariat saw this and believed that this was the absolute truth, that intellectual life always only emerges from economic life. That is the great error of the modern proletariat, to take an appearance for something absolute. That is the great error of Marxism, that it does not look at the fact that precisely through the development of the last three to four centuries, on the way I have indicated, the spiritual life has been absorbed by the state, which has increasingly become an economic body, and that we are under the effect of this fact today; but it is not right to say: Let us change the economic life, then a different intellectual life and a different legal life will come. Rather, it is necessary today to say: the spiritual life must be made free again; the spiritual life must be torn away from the state order; the spiritual life must be placed on its own ground. In the future, only that which emerges from the spiritual foundations of the human being may be expressed in the spiritual life. The spiritual life must not be a mere mirror image of the state or economic life.

On the basis of these documents, what first emerged in my appeal “To the German People and to the Cultural World” and then in my book “The Key Points of the Social Questions in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future” has now been developed and is represented by the Federation for Social Threefolding in its various branches. What this book seeks to do is to dispel the suggestion that the social organism must be a unified state, which, on the one hand, is completely submerged by economic life and, on the other, absorbs spiritual life.

No, what is necessary for the future is to place economic life on its factual and professional basis, to lift this economic life out of the democratic parliament. Only then will it be possible to socialize this economic life when this economic life is placed on its own ground in such a way that those people who are of the same profession, of the same profession as manual laborers, as intellectual workers, join together in associations; when those people who comprise certain consumer and production circles join together in other associations. When such economic communities arise, linked together by federal foundations, then negotiations will be conducted from profession to profession, from consumerism or rather linked together with production branches to other branches. Then it will no longer be possible for a parliament based on democratic principles to decide on economic interests with a majority of people who decide only out of self-interest or ignorance. Then, from profession to profession, from branch of production to branch of production, the interests of economic life will be served by free economic behavior. Then nothing else will occur within this economic life than that which will lead to the fair regulation of the mutual prices of commodities. Then nothing else will assert itself in this economic life but the production, circulation, and consumption of commodities. Above all, everything that must be administered on a democratic basis must be eliminated, above all human labor and capital. Where does human labor lead us? Today, human labor is at the center of economic life. I have pointed out that the proletariat is aware that the wage relationship in economic life is treated like other commodities. The commodity labor power is bought through wages. Labor power must be removed from economic life in terms of its dimensions, in terms of its nature, and then only the mutual value of the commodity will be contained in the prices of the goods. Then the price of the goods will not contain what is contained in the wage situation today. Then, in the field of economic life, decisions will only be made about the price of the goods, which is separate from the human being. Then, in the field of legal or state life, political life, security life, decisions will be made about the extent, type and time of human work. The regulation of human work will be a legal relationship. The regulation of human labor will not be such that the economic coercive relationship has an influence on it. Rather, only that which is decided on the basis of democracy will have an influence on the determination of the human labor force, where every person who has come of age decides on what is due to every person who has come of age. The regulation of the human labor force belongs in the democratic legal order. If this human labor is regulated by democracy, then the worker enters the economic body as a person who freely disposes of his labor and does not conclude an employment contract, which can never contain justice, but a contract for services with those who, as spiritual leaders, are involved in this service. Then the contract is simply concluded on the basis of the earnings and the services provided. Then the regulation of labor is completely separated from economic life.

In the light of their prejudices, this seems completely incredible to people today, to the extent that even a thinker like [Rathenau] believes that such a detachment of the labor force from the economic cycle is not possible. It is possible precisely because what depends on natural conditions is not included in the economic cycle; what the soil yields and what climatic conditions determine must be accepted in economic life. What raw materials are in the soil and how they can be extracted must be accepted as given. This cannot be decided according to so-called economic cycles. In the same way, in the future, it will no longer be permissible to decide, on the basis of economic conditions, what the worker receives. This will be decided by mature people on democratic ground. With this decision, the worker will enter into the economic cycle and conclude a contract in which his labor provides a basic condition, like the natural conditions themselves. The economic process will be constrained on the one hand by natural conditions and on the other by legal conditions. This is what the broad masses of humanity unconsciously demand. One need only understand this unconscious demand; one need only raise it into consciousness and formulate it; then one will perceive with clarity what is so terribly confusing in life today, which manifests itself as social ambiguity. What this path, the threefold social order, is pointing to, is a real path to clarity about the abstract demands that are being raised today. If someone says: Abolish the wage relationship! —, then one can say that for a long time. As long as one does not show a way to overcome this wage relationship, it remains an abstract demand that only has a disturbing effect, that only arouses the elementary instincts of human nature, but that leads to nothing. The moment one realizes that, with regard to public institutions, economic life must be completely separated from legal life, that labor law, as a prerequisite for economic life, must be developed on the basis of democratic legal life, one can show an economic path that can be taken every day from any starting point. For it is impossible to follow such a path tomorrow if one only has the good will to do so. And the same applies to the capital conditions that are currently wedged into economic life.

Oh, people have actually already completely forgotten what the origin of capitalism actually is. The origin of capitalism is diverse. For example, it is based on the fact that in older times land was conquered and thus passed into private ownership, and those over whom the conquests extended came into dependency, into ownershiplessness. It is based on the fact that from what resulted from the conquests as property, the possibility was offered to bring the power conditions of modern times, the means of production, into the private, selfish possession of the individual. In view of what has just been mentioned, the proletariat in turn formulates a demand: the abolition of capital. In its naivety, it does not realize that the words “abolition of capital” actually say nothing, even if they are repeated over and over again. They express what they feel is fair, but they do not take into account that these modern conditions are such, in their economic and other configurations, that one must work with capital in modern social life. Even if you transform the whole modern state into a large cooperative, as some socialists want, nothing else but capital could work in it either, only instead of today's private owners, the [bureaucratic] official would take their place. And those who today, as proletarians, raise this demand would very soon notice how they are much worse off under these newer conditions than under the present ones. Here, by thinking out of reality, one must think quite differently about the conditions of capital. One must also be clear about the fact that it is ultimately the fundamentals of human abilities that lead the individual to have a certain superiority over others. The fact that the individual has acquired a certain superiority makes it possible to collect the means of production and the means of production that made him the leader and that enabled him to transfer to others what he achieved as the leader. Those who think this through carefully, who judge it according to reality, judge it impartially, know, my dear attendees, that all capital is based on the ability of the individual human being, and that this individual ability of the human being must not be eliminated. If you replace the individual, capable person who manages the production processes with the abstract generality, it will only lead to the dismantling or depletion of economic life, not to its reconstruction. But that does not mean that the old institutions should live on, that, as is currently happening, what is capital or the means of production should always be transferred again in the sense of the old order. Rather, it can be replaced by the old order, by which, little by little, those people come into possession of capital in the form of money capital and rent, who no longer have anything to do with production, with the application of individual abilities in the management of economic life, come into possession of capital. What must be opposed to the old economic order is directed against this. It must also be quite possible in the new economic order that capital is concentrated through the abilities of the individual human being, but that only as long as this individual human being, who has brought together these capitals, that is, means of production, remains the head, or in any case remains in a context with these means of production, as his individual abilities can be connected with it. Then, in the ways I have indicated in my book The Core of the Social Question, the capital, or the sum of the means of production, passes through legal transfer to those who in turn have the best individual abilities. This introduces what I call the circulation of capital in the social organism. This circulation of capital, or of property, has always been admitted on spiritual ground, at least in principle, to a certain extent. If today one expects of people that what they admit on spiritual ground should also occur in the field of material possessions, then they certainly make astonished faces. What I produce spiritually remains spiritually mine and the property of my heirs only for a certain time; then it passes into the public domain, in which everyone who has the individual ability to do so can administer it. Similarly, in the future, what is acquired as material property must be transferred to the person who can best manage and administer it through individual abilities. Then there will be harmony between the physically and spiritually working. Then capital, which always originates from individual abilities, will not be able to pass over to those who do not justify ownership through individual abilities. Rather, individual abilities will always remain connected with the management of the means of production. Then the person who has work to do under such management will say to himself: My work thrives best when the circulation of capital takes place in this way, that a sum of means of production always passes to the one who has the best abilities; for he manages my work best.

It is certainly not the case that the impulse for the threefold social order should be accused of false idealism. Those who say that it will take other people to carry it out do not take into account that this impulse for the threefold social order is based on the people we have at present. The manual laborer has an egoistic interest in always having the best leader at hand. But this can only be achieved if the means of production are circulated in this way. But this requires, ladies and gentlemen, that we break with the principle that the means of production are a commodity like those goods that are consumed directly by human needs. A means of production, that is, one in which capital is invested, may only be able to claim capital as long as it costs something until it is finished. The locomotive may only be considered capital until it is finished. Then it ceases to have an external commodity value. Then it only passes to the one who knows how to manage it best in the interest of the whole through transfer or through legal relationships. Land will be... [gap in transcript] from the very beginning.

Today, people still oppose such things out of prejudice, which is rooted not only in habitual ways of thinking but also in the habits of life associated with old institutions. But those who cannot bring themselves to realize that the terrible catastrophe of the world wars calls upon us to think not in terms of a small reckoning, but in terms of a great reckoning, will only contribute to further decline and to destruction, but never to escape from destruction. Thus we see that simply economic life, in which only the production, circulation and consumption of goods may occur, must be separated from the regulation of labor, from the administration of capital. And what must occur in our entire life through this detour that I have just described? That capital, that is, the means of production, must always be administered by the person who has the individual abilities to do so. What must come about is the detachment of the spiritual life from our economic and legal life. This spiritual life must be placed on its own ground. So that in the future, no longer will some experts, merely harnessed into state bureaucracy and torn out of the spiritual life, participate in the administration, but that this spiritual life will be organized from factual foundations entirely by itself, through its self-administration. In the future, the life of the social organism must be shaped in such a way that the spiritual life is administered by those who are at the same time somehow directly involved in the production of this spiritual life. If we look at this spiritual life in particular, on the basis of education and teaching, then only those people who participate in education, from the lowest elementary school teacher to the highest university teacher, must be part of the spiritual organism. In the future, anyone who teaches in any field will only have to teach so much that they still have time left over from this teaching to help administer. That is to say, the production of the spirit and the administration of spiritual life will be carried out in one combined activity. No state school system, no connection between intellectual life and economic life; completely self-contained, so that the lowest elementary school merely aims to artistically acquire knowledge of man or anthropology in the broadest sense, so that from the age of six to fourteen, the child is taught in such a way that this teaching leads solely to the development of the strengths that the child needs in life. This will automatically lead to a unified school, not one that is dictated by the state. Everything that is built up will arise from general human needs. For example, at the secondary schools, the design will be such that at certain school levels, teaching is geared to the fact that the person who has received the teaching is suitable for entering into this or that state system. The opposite must happen: that the school levels are designed according to pedagogical-didactic, spiritual principles, and people will have achieved this or that at 17, at 19 years of age, and the state will have to ask itself: how do I use people who have been educated according to spiritual principles? The state will have to adapt to the spiritual life. The universities will have to have autonomy; they will be the administrators in the highest sense of the spiritual teaching and education system itself.

I can only sketch out all this. It should only be expressed that in this field of spiritual life, a struggle of spiritual efficiency with spiritual efficiency must really take place. Furthermore, that which can be called comprehensive liberalism must be allowed to develop.

In the sphere of state life, in the sphere where decisions are made about the transfer of capital, about the administration of labor law, that which has emerged as democratic impulses will come to fruition.

In the economic sphere, what serves the circulation of goods and human abilities will give full rein to the socialization that has emerged in recent times; the individual spheres of economic life will be linked according to objective principles, where only goods and their production are administered, not people. Then it will be possible to produce in the economic life out of associations, which get to know the needs of the people in a liberal way, not through statistics or other connections, but which get to know them in a liberal way. It will be possible to produce in such a way that the abstract demands of the proletariat are transformed into more concrete demands, into a real path. The proletariat has emphasized that in the future production should not be for profit, but for consumption. But consumption is only possible if the associations of the socially organized economic cycle really create such connections between producers and consumers that production is not based on the randomness of supply and demand on markets, but on a careful, understanding, and appropriate study of needs. It will be necessary to understand and, above all, follow the laws of economics quite differently than they are followed in today's random relationship between supply and demand. We will have to know that at the moment when too many workers are employed in a branch of production, production in that branch of production is too cheap. Human labor is being wasted. Workers must be directed through negotiations and contracts to other branches of production. If too little is produced somewhere, the article will become too expensive; then other workers will have to be directed into that branch of production.

In short, in the future there must be in socialist, capitalist economic life what is now being established through the efforts of the Federation for Threefolding as the institution of the free [works councils], to which the traffic councils, the economic councils, this whole system, will later be joined. But this is not a political system, because the political must be based on democracy. This system of councils, rooted in economic life, which is only concerned with the proper administration of economic life, is the system that will emerge to the surface of modern life, not through the arbitrary demands of individuals, but through the legitimate demands of the times. The institute of the advisers will be such a body, which does not rule by bureaucratic or democratic coercive laws, but which rules by negotiations from person to person, from council to council, from economic association to economic association. If the labor force is distributed across individual branches of production in such a way that every commodity, every good that people need, is produced in such a quantity as is needed for it. Then such prices arise, then in economic life there is that which can form the basis for fair prices to prevail in economic life, whereas, since we have wages in economic life, which, as a commodity, corresponds to the labor force, you can increase wages, ... [gap in the transcript] the prices of goods also increase because no just legal relationship can be established as long as something is included in economic life that does not belong in it, namely human labor, which belongs in legal life.

Thus we see, my dear attendees, that in the future what has had such a suggestive effect on people must be structured as a unified state, in the three-part social organism, in the independent spiritual life, administered according to its own requirements; in the democratic state or political life, in which it is decided, directly and indirectly, by each mature person, what concerns him as an equal to every other person. This also includes property and working conditions. In the future, economic life, in which only appropriate administration by economic associations and bodies takes place, will be the third independent element. These three areas will get along with each other. It is well known, for example, that members of the intellectual professions have concerns and cannot live because the state does not pay them enough. It will become clear in the future that, just as the proletariat must be paid as teachers, only that the path must be different. The spiritual corporations will belong to the economic body in the same way as they belong to the economic body as consumers, and the appropriate relationship will have to be established. This regulation will only be one reason why the individual elements of legal, economic and spiritual life will come together harmoniously, precisely because each one can really work in its own field of expertise.

And there is no need to be afraid of how international relations will judge these things. What I have presented here first arose from a consideration of the international conditions that led to our terrible war catastrophe. Anyone who has studied the development of modern humanity over the decades that preceded this catastrophe knows, for example, how the Balkan issues arose from the interweaving of the three areas of intellectual or cultural life, political or legal life and economic life down there in south-eastern Europe, insofar as they affected the relationship between the Balkans and Austria; that they then led to the outbreak of the world war from this side. First of all, there was the general cultural question of the cultural and intellectual conflict between the Slavs and the Germans. To what extent there was a legal question when the old conservative Turkish element was replaced by the Young Turkish element, the Turkish-Bulgarian question, for example, the history of the Sanjak railway, if you study it, you can see that there were economic interests from Austria to the Balkans. If these circumstances could have been organized out of their own foundations, something else would have emerged than this tangle of circumstances. It was this tangle that brought about such international conflicts. You can also study the problem of the Baghdad Railway. There, too, you will see how the cultures of the nations involved are constantly intermingled with the political, legal and economic aspects. And again and again we see how the economic becomes more powerful than the cultural, and thus again and again another state is on top, for example with the problem of the Baghdad Railway, and so on. It is precisely in international relations that this interweaving of the three areas, which on the ground of each social organism must become three links, plays a terrible role. The only hope for the development of humanity in the future lies in the threefold social organism, in an independent spiritual life with its own administration, in a democratic legal life, in an independent economic life that administers itself from within through its own nature in associations and corporations, in cooperatives. And anyone who studies what is hidden in this terrible, horrific war catastrophe and in what has now emerged from it, need only look to the East and they will find that behind these conditions, which prevailed in the East and which today lead to such terrible exploitation out of misunderstood social impulses, live the great spiritual impulses of the Russian and other Eastern peoples. These spiritual impulses are smouldering beneath the surface today, and they must first work their way up again from what has been superimposed by prejudices of civilization and what lurks as a threatening social spectre from the East towards Central Europe. To prevent this from happening in Central Europe, efforts should be made to ensure that in Central Europe, what is being confused in the East is not confused, but that in Central Europe, intellectual life, state or legal life, economic life are separated.

And let us look to the West. These Western states have essentially brought it about that economic life is developed. They permeate the world economy; they expand private competition to the great imperialistic conditions. That which prevails there one-sidedly as economic life corrupts state and spiritual life. Here in Central Europe, these three areas must be separated. If we have not yet grasped this through the lessons of the terrible catastrophe of the war, we will grasp it out of the necessity into which the threefold unnatural foundations of modern development have brought us, since the time I mentioned the day before yesterday, around the middle of the fifteenth century, began. People longed for a spiritual life, but a new spiritual life did not arise. The spiritual life was not placed on the own ground of the modern spiritually producing personalities. Only the Reformation and the Renaissance, a renewal of the old, came up. Today we live in a great, important time. Today we must not be content with a renaissance of an old spiritual life; today we must appeal to a completely new spiritual life. But this cannot flourish in the shadow of economic life, in the shadow of a state order. It can only flourish if it is free to stand on its own.

Let us look to the East; there we can see how it was initially intellectual life that had an effect, with economic and legal interests only hiding behind it. At first, it was the case that the Banat peoples were to be liberated from Russia. This was based on genuine popular instincts. Confounded with this was what should not be confounded with it.

And then the French Revolution, one sees the same thing happening there. This French Revolution was a different kind of Renaissance. People thirsted for human rights. Rights only came into humanity, a renaissance of state life, to which we also devoted ourselves in Central Europe in the nineteenth century.

But a new legal life is demanded of man as such. In the sphere of the legal life, we have no need of a renaissance, of Roman or other legal conceptions. We need a thorough separation of the legal life from the intellectual and economic life, from which no relationship of power, either spiritual or physical, of one man over another, may arise. Only that which places all mature men on an equal footing may arise from the democratic state. From all this an economic life has developed, in relation to which it is believed that it is sovereign. In Eastern Europe, it is intended to regulate legal-political life and spiritual life from mere economic life. In this way it will be possible to achieve a mere administration of goods, but only such an administration of goods which, instead of founding a new human right, breaks down the old rights and cannot replace them with anything; which, instead of founding a new spiritual life, lets the old spiritual life fade away and finally seep away, and transforms everything into the mechanism of an economic life. Only when they have overcome the old order, which was rightly called the service of throne and altar, will people see whether they have achieved something better. But this service to the throne and the altar must not merely give way to service to the office and the machine in the mechanized economy; rather, the future must bring us an independent economic life in which the individual corporations and associations and cooperatives join together fraternally in genuine socialization. But this can only be built up if it is supported by a democratic state in which man finds his rights as an equal alongside other equals. And economic life, which otherwise would dry up and become rigid, can be stimulated when there is a free spiritual life constantly producing forces and sending them into life, which do not produce a reality-strange world of ideas and science, a reality-strange spiritual culture, but which produce a spiritual culture that can be applied to all areas of life. We have imitated the Renaissance in its love of all things Greek, but the Renaissance created a spiritual life for itself. We need a spiritual life that is suitable only for our present time. And, however strange it may sound, the more spiritual, the more practical this spiritual life will be; and the more we will be able to really intervene in state and economic life. Only it will be the spirit that can fertilize capital; that calls upon labor, the same service for the same service for all. Not as it is today, where production is merely for the market. Only then will we understand what it actually meant when, in the course of the nineteenth century, very clever people reflected on the great motto of the end of the eighteenth century: liberty, equality, fraternity, and said – truly not out of prejudice – that liberty must contradict equality, and that ultimately, everything that lives in liberty and equality is incompatible with fraternity. It turned out that there are contradictions between what one perceives as freedom, as equality and as fraternity, that is, between the three great, public ideals of humanity. How is it possible that three ideals can stand, as if born out of the innermost, most honest striving of the human heart and soul, and yet contradict each other? The reason for this, ladies and gentlemen, is that these three ideals have so far been established from the point of view of the unitary state. As long as we believe that these three ideals, liberty, equality, fraternity, must live in the unitary state, we will find contradictions in them. The future must understand that this unitary state must not bundle together three areas of life that must be administered from different bases. The future must understand that this unitary state, as a social organism, must be divided into three areas, and that in the future the spirit must prevail in freedom. That man must live as the owner of his human rights in democratic equality. That work for the needs of the people must be done in associations, in cooperatives, in short, through brotherhoods on a large scale, out of economic brotherhood. Only when we are no longer under the influence of the unitary state will we be able to hear the call of the future clearly enough.

If we have so far been somewhat shy in Central Europe about directing our thoughts, our feelings, our habits of life to the three spheres of life in their true form – since Versailles, since we have been living under the prospect of much adversity and misery still We will perhaps find our way back to those forces of our Central European culture from which emerged in earlier times what we call German idealism, which can also live in areas other than the artistic and intellectual fields. It is a mere prejudice to believe that practical men are those who, coming from ancient times, had too short thoughts for economic life, so that this economic life of modern times is sailing towards destruction. Those who are ridiculed today as impractical idealists will be seen in the future as true practical men. For public affairs, people will turn to those who have developed these forces, to the forces that Lessing, Goethe and Schiller have brought forth in us. But then one will work out of these healthy forces of Central Europe into the development of the future of humanity in such a way that the threefold social organism will stand on its three healthy foundations, which can be characterized by the fact that in the future the spirit must live in freedom, in free development; that everything that makes each person equal to every other person must live in democratic equality; that legal life must live in the sun of this democratic equality; that economic life, regulated associatively and managed factually in a federative way, must live under the principle of fraternity. Only then will the future of humanity flourish in Central Europe. This Central Europe should radiate something that can be a model for East and West. It should radiate from Central Europe what will benefit humanity in the future. So what should happen will have to happen from this Central Europe, and we will have to say of this event:

Freedom for the mind,

Equality for the law,

Brotherhood for economic life!

Discussion [not reported]

Closing words

Dear attendees,
I must say that I have the greatest respect for the first speaker in this discussion in terms of his very beautiful social will, but that I nevertheless – since I have something to say about what he presented today – I must find it disturbing that he, too, has brought up something that I consider a very unfortunate sign of our time. Please do not be offended, esteemed attendees, if I express this openly and honestly, even to a valued discussion partner. I had to discuss what Dr. Einstein said, let's say, in the 1880s, for example with [Adler and Pernerstorfer] or similar people. These things, which Dr. Einstein has again brought up today, are, so to speak, only the typical phrases of what has developed as a social-democratic party order for more than half a century in the civilized world, but especially in Central Europe. We know this very well. And precisely when one knows it very well, perhaps even knows it somewhat differently than Dr. Einstein, then in the present time one is faced with an enormous problem, to which I have, as best as possible in the brevity of a lecture that was already too long, pointed out something.

What is presented as a social-democratic program was suitable – I said in the lecture that when it comes to such things, which are, so to speak, great cultural-educational means, it does not matter so much whether one can discuss them, whether one can prove or disprove them, but rather how they work in terms of education. And in what was the Social Democratic program, what, in a sense, Dr. Einstein listed in his summary, that is such an educational tool. And I am familiar with all the various currents, the individual perceptions and thoughts that have found their way into the hearts and souls of the proletarians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in this way. Above all, however, we must not forget how this program has led to the establishment, within our modern economic and political life, of the notion, let us say, of the self-development of this economic and political life. It was so easily imagined: that which emerged as capitalism became private capitalism, it will concentrate more and more into large capital holdings, and then the transformation of capitalist society into a socialist one will happen by itself.

Today, we still see talk of positive impulses, of germinal thoughts leading to action, and this self-development is held up to us. It is intimately connected with what Dr. Einstein regards as the correct socialist program. But the whole situation with regard to what has just been mentioned has become somewhat different for the truly unbiased observer of current world events due to the world war catastrophe. Today we are not dealing with a self-perpetuating economic or political development; we are dealing with the fact that old cultural currents - as I expressed it in the lecture - have led themselves into self-dissolution. Today we are not dealing with some program, but with the fact that people are faced with a collapsing economic order and have to rebuild it.

Today we are faced with the proletarian human being with his subjective demands and subjective impulses. It is therefore necessary not to get stuck in general phrases, such as “socialization of the means of production”, but to show: how can we make the means of production function in a truly progressive way? And for me, the problem was to apply all these abstractions, including what Dr. Einstein said, to a concrete reality and to always ask: what can be done without dismantling, but by what is there, further develop it; not by ruining the cultural development, but by developing it in such a way that the legitimate demands, which I have also enumerated today in my lecture, can be satisfied for the broad masses. That was the task: not to stand still with the old socialist party programs, which are still floating around today like mummies of party officials, but to move forward in the spirit of the lessons that this world war catastrophe has taught us. That is what it is about, that the abstract, the non-realistic of social democracy must again be transformed into that which is conceived in terms of the three-part social organism that is being implemented today. It is a strange thing when some speaker appears who describes ideology and the fact that ideology has entered into the hearts and souls of people as desolate for the soul, when a speaker who sees in ideology a harmful legacy of the proletariat on the part of the former ruling circles, then a speaker who says: This speaker only wants a new ideology. That means falling back into old dogmatics; it means not wanting to go along with what honestly endeavors to bring the old into a truly contemporary form. That today it is being said again that the old remedy at the beginning, if not at the end, is a transfer of the means of production into the ownership of the totality, on the other hand, it must always be objected: What is this totality? I have explained to you in concrete terms how this transfer to the service of the whole comes about through the circulation of the means of production. It is an empty concept that never contains a germ of action if one only talks about transferring the means of production to the service of the whole. Because how this whole can function with the means of production is what matters. This is something that anyone who does not remain mired in the old dogmas will recognize. They will not want to impose a new ideology here; rather, they will see how an attempt is being made here to finally implement honest and well-intentioned abstractions in realistic thoughts and realistic social will.

I see in those who do not want to develop under the impression of our difficult, distressing and painful times, but who only want to remain with the old dogmas, I see in them - without wanting to offend anyone personally, least of all Dr. Einstein, of course - a terribly conservative mind. And I am glad that at least there are people today, especially in the proletariat, who go beyond these conservative leaders and demand that we look beyond the heads of the leaders for what can finally lead to the goals. If, like Du Bois-Reymond, you proclaim your 'ignorabimus' in the face of the limitations of nature, proclaiming an ignorabimus against this threefold social organism; or if you say, 'We cannot wait', then you are actually saying that you are substituting a nothing for that which, of course, cannot be exhaustively characterized in a short lecture. But today it is necessary not to get stuck in empty abstractions, not to just keep talking: because the pressure gauge is at 95, we need the revolution. But what is the revolution, after all, if we don't think about what we actually want to achieve through a revolution? If people only ever talk about conquering the machines, then the question must be asked: What do they do with these machines when they have them? That is the question. We have often had the example in the development of mankind that people who had machines did not know what to do with them. Should the demand for machines be sought from the vague abstractions, and then it be experienced that one does not know what to do with them?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have had to explain this to you, especially in connection with a point of view that I appreciate, like that of the person who spoke about it in the usual way. I have been accustomed to this since the 1980s, and what I have learned from it for myself has been incorporated into what I advocate today as the threefold social order.

To those who have objected that we cannot wait, I would simply refer them to my book “Key Points of the Social Question”, in which I explain in detail how what I have outlined today can be put into practice. then he will no longer say that we have to wait so and so many years, but he will say: we can bring about development in such a direction, as envisaged by the threefold social order, from today to tomorrow, from every point of spiritual, economic and political life. We just have to move in that direction, and the rest will follow. But we need courage for that. It takes less courage to keep talking about how the revolution must come, that the dictatorship of the proletariat must be striven for, and so on, than to really get to work on the details. Because this courage includes overcoming old habits of thinking.

My dear audience, when you go into more detail about what the threefold social order is, you will no longer say: practical work should be done and not lectures given forever! Practical work has been indicated piece by piece in the very will of the threefold social order.

And when it is said: we need other people, yes, then one does not know what relationship exists between the social in which the human being lives and between what the human being does. You see, the other day a magazine that also calls itself a social one wrote that socialization should not be rushed because people are not yet mature today. When I hear or read something like that, I always think that those who talk like that are not mature themselves. Because if we had those people who were now fully mature in this sense, then we would no longer need socialization, then people would truly live freely and equally and fraternally. Then we would not have the whole social question. The issue at hand is something else. I would like to mention a fact that occurred in a certain area. During the so-called war economy, it was necessary to employ merchants in the bureaucracy, for example, because they were specialists. The merchants still differed considerably from the bureaucrats when they were outside. But a strange fact occurred: after a few months, these merchants were more bureaucratic than the bureaucrats. Thus the environment had rubbed off on them. This will happen if you do not give each individual link in the social organism the character I have mentioned today. Then a social minority will be created in which people who used to be quite different can develop further in the sense of human ennoblement. I would like to know how one could think of social ideals if one were always to move in the circle: We need other people to achieve other conditions. If we keep going round in circles, we will never be able to achieve other conditions. The point is to create the conditions under which people can develop ethically and spiritually! This is another feature of threefolding: it does not go round in circles but goes straight for the facts; it aims to intervene directly in reality.

If someone says that I should have said this ten to fifteen years ago, when it would have been new, then I would reply that it is no different today than it was ten years ago. But how do you know that what I am saying today, perhaps less clearly formulated, I did not say ten to fifteen years ago? I would like to tell you something about that. I have already mentioned that I was a teacher for many years at the Workers' Education School founded by Liebknecht. There I tried in particular to show people how the materialistically oriented teaching only abstracts from the historical development of the last three to four centuries. At that time – that is, at the beginning of the present century – I had a fairly large number of students. When I had few students, the party bigwigs paid little attention to what I said to the people. When the number of students grew and grew, these party bigwigs became unpleasantly aware of what was being taught in a central workers' education school. As a result, a large number of students were called together one day and some party leaders were sent to the people. I said at the time: You want to be a party of the future, you want to establish future conditions. I would now like to know where freedom of teaching is to prevail today if you always want to suppress it, if you want to teach party dogmatism here. One of these leaders stood up and said, in contradiction to his entire group of hundreds of students: We cannot tolerate freedom of teaching; we know of no freedom in this area, we only know reasonable constraint. That is the [experience] I had at the time. It showed me that one must continue to work first, but that one must wait until one can meet with understanding. That is why I must also refuse today when it is said: You don't need a new party! You certainly don't need one. I really don't know where it could be inferred from the lecture that I want a new party. I have spent my whole life studying the various social conditions in all circles and all walks of life. But I have never been involved in parties. And I am glad of that. And do you think that now, at the end of my sixth decade, I would like to put myself in the shoes of a party, after saying what the parties have actually achieved and where they have brought our political life? I appeal to the intellect and reason of each individual and not to parties; I always have to say that when I am told that what I am saying is difficult to understand. I know it is taken from reality. And that which is taken from reality requires a certain instinct for its realizability. This certain instinct for realizability cannot be absorbed from abstract party-line opinions. But we should also learn from the past. Unfortunately, we have experienced it enough in Central Europe that people have accepted what they have been ordered to accept from any side, for more than four and a half years. We have experienced it: if only from the great headquarters or from somewhere else the opinions that one truly could not understand well with one's own reason, if one could repeat them, then one saw them. You didn't ask yourself: should this be understood or not? You took orders to understand. Now it is a matter of understanding something that you are not ordered to understand, but to understand out of the freedom of the human soul. And only this appeal to the direct freedom of the human soul leads us forward. I am not thinking of a party, but I am thinking of all those people who today, out of necessity and misery, want to save themselves – a reasonable judgment of common sense: they will not flock to a party. But perhaps they will be the bearers of what we need for the future, what we must strive for if we want to emerge from confusion and chaos.

A powerful movement is developing out of the catastrophe of the world war, a movement borne by proletarian demands, and which speaks to people today through significant facts, through facts that have already seized a large part of Europe, through facts that undoubtedly have to be overcome by certain new social institutions of humanity. The question may arise, especially when one considers the initial course of these loudly speaking facts: Is there already a reasonably sufficient social will emerging somewhere, a social will that arises from a deeper understanding of our current historical world situation? For it seems that it depends on such social will.

Therefore, it filled me with great satisfaction that today, at the invitation of local students, I was able to express the relationship between the proletarian demands and the necessary social will from a certain point of view, which I, wanting to serve the present, have explained in my soon-to-be-published work: “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Present and Future Life

That we are dealing with a profound world-historical phenomenon in the movement mentioned, seems to follow from the fact that what is happening today shows something like a realization of that program that went around the world seventy years ago and is known as the Marxist Communist Manifesto. Whether one understands what is expressed by these two milestones of our more recent historical development, by the statements of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and by what is now sweeping across Europe, whether one understands it in one way or another, according to one's circumstances, one's views on life, that is of little importance today. What is important is that we are faced with loud facts, facts that must be taken into account. And we will have to take a stand on what may arise in the coming years, in the coming decades, precisely from that transformation of scientific and ideological thinking that will become necessary, like many other things, under the influence of this loudly spoken fact of the present.

That is why I am particularly keen to address this question to students who want to be supporters of what can develop out of our current scientific and ideological thinking into thinking, into recognizing the future.

Just as what is usually referred to as the social question appears today, so it can be said that it initially arises in two significant demands. Both demands, as they arise, actually point to phenomena in our economic life. One can say: the first demand culminates in the rejection of the management of the economic life of the civilized world, which has emerged in the course of modern times through private capital. And secondly, it can be said that a new attitude to human labor in social life is demanded by the proletariat.

Now, even if it is initially these two significant economic phenomena in which the social movement is playing out today, it is not yet said that only economic impulses can provide what is necessary to overcome the social question today and in the near future. However, the way in which the life of civilized humanity has developed in recent times shows how human energies and all human endeavor have been primarily absorbed by what has resulted from economic development. And so it is not surprising that the most significant thinker of the proletarian world – for that is what it still is today – Karl Marx, directed his attention above all to economic life.

We may devote a few minutes of our attention to him, Karl Marx, not because I believe that the modern proletarian demands have arisen from what the proletariat has learned from Karl Marx, but because that which has slowly emerged in the innermost feelings, in the basic impulses of the soul life of the modern proletariat over the course of the more recent centuries, then quickly over the course of the 19th century, because that has found the most intense expression to date in the views of Karl Marx, because he is the interpreter of that which, more or more or less consciously lives in millions of people today.

Now, precisely because in the last seventy years those impulses that Karl Marx prophetically expressed in the first half of the 19th century and then later have matured more and more in the souls of these millions of people, precisely for this reason his view seems so plausible to the leading personalities of the proletarian masses. It appeared to him, Karl Marx, that what must happen in modern times is emerging – this is well known in the broadest circles from the development that economic life has taken in recent centuries, through the development of modern technology and industry, and through the management of these industrial and technical operations, activities by private capital. To him, the whole process of human development appeared to be such that, in the course of historical epochs, economic forms always replace each other. The economic form that has developed on the basis of capitalist ideas in modern times thinks itself, as Karl Marx sees it, pressing towards its own dissolution; so that this economic order, which has more and more need to proletarianize large masses of humanity, will call this proletariat against itself, because the forms of economic life that have emerged must find their resolution through the productive forces that are formed within these economic forms. The productive forces are constantly changing. The economic forms strive to remain conservative. Eventually the point is reached when the productive forces are no longer able to fit into the old economic forms.

Marx believes he sees such a point in time approaching, having recognized how the proletariat will tear apart the economic order in which this proletariat itself has been harnessed, with its productive forces.

What is characteristic here is that Karl Marx sees in economic development itself, so to speak, the driving forces that will bring the proletariat forward to those points which will then bring about a new economic order, but for him this means a new world order.

Now, of course, the transformation of everything that makes up the scope of state life and the transformation of everything that makes up intellectual life is also connected with what Karl Marx imagines the transformation of modern economic life to be. Karl Marx thinks about the development of humanity entirely in the sense of modern scientific thinking. He has completely abandoned the view of older socialist thinkers, who at the time believed that the most important thing is the human will, which intervenes in the structure of human social life. Karl Marx believes that people basically have to want what is determined for them by the necessity of the economic order. And from the economic order itself, from the way in which people produce, from the way in which people manage their economic affairs, the state orders are formed, as are the law, morality and so on. And today, knowing what goes on in the minds of proletarian people, we can say that this view is widespread. Man is harnessed to economic life, and economic life, the way he feeds himself, how he can lead the rest of his life, determines how he is satisfied with the legal order, which legal order can form at all. Economic life also determines how he thinks, how he feels, what he produces in art and what he produces in science.

This is how it has become for broad circles; in the broadest leading circles of the proletariat, in particular, what is considered intellectual life is regarded as an ideology. This word ideology is heard again and again and again when the proletarian wants to describe precisely what he regards as intellectual life. On the one hand.

On the other hand, the proletarian turns his attention to state life. But in this state life he finds what he calls – again according to the approach of Karl Marx – the all-dominant class struggles. And finally he turns his attention to economic life, which is closest to him because he is directly involved in it. And because he finds his whole life completely absorbed by this economic life, he develops what he calls the “Marxist conception of history”. He develops this out of his conviction that basically the whole historical development of mankind consists of economic struggles, is shaped by forms of economic life, and that everything else depends on this material life. And this, in turn, is connected with his perception of the culture of the leading and guiding circles, into which he cannot penetrate with his soul, and which often seems to him to be a kind of luxury culture, even in its scientific rigor, and which he perceives as an ideology.

Today we stand at a turning point in European culture, where we must ask deeper questions than have been asked in socialist and non-socialist circles for the last seventy years. We must ask deeper questions such as: What is actually the basis of this view of the proletariat, this view that all intellectual life is an ideology, that all state life is a class struggle, that all real history is only a result of material development? It was precisely the thinking of modern humanity that was led into materialism in its most diverse forms, into which Karl Marx was also led with his ideas, with all his impulses.

Now one can ask: Why is it precisely the direction of ideas of these important, these incisive thinkers that has been steered in the direction of looking solely at economic life as the decisive factor for all human development? How then has the thinking of the modern proletarian himself been pushed onto the same path?

Anyone who studies the development of modern times not according to conventional history, but according to what a deeper historical view can already provide today, will indeed find a very, very strange phenomenon that can bring him close to the solution of the question just raised.

One could say that economic life in modern times has taken a course that can be understood if one tries to understand it in the same way as one understands scientific facts. It cannot be said of this economic life that it has not been subject to a certain scientific necessity, as it has developed; one cannot even say, when one examines things properly, that this economic life as such could be different. But then, if one wanted to stop at that, one would come to an extraordinarily pessimistic view of life.

But other questions arise. I would say that people's gaze and energies were restricted, as if hypnotized, to economic life.

Other areas of life have developed in a way that must be viewed very differently today from mere economic development. It was part of the whole way of looking at things in modern times to regard the economy, so to speak, as the source of the other two main branches of human life: political and intellectual life.

One might say that, influenced by natural science prejudices, it became clear to Karl Marx and his followers that economic life contains the causes. Out of these causes, the shaping of state or legal life develops, as does intellectual life. But is that so? This is the big question. Today we have already reached the turning point where it is necessary to recognize that this whole fundamental view is radically wrong, that it is impossible to understand the other two branches of human life as arising from economic life, just as it is impossible to understand state or legal life as arising from economic life, and it is impossible to understand intellectual life as arising from economic life.

This is precisely the peculiarity of modern times, that in its world and life view, this newer time has had nothing that would have made it possible for it to go beyond this prejudice that economic life underlies all other human life.

Three sides of a deeper, more fundamentally human nature present themselves as spiritual life, legal life and economic life. They stand side by side. This is what we must begin to understand. We must do away with the error, resulting only from natural science and from natural-scientific prejudices, that the economic order is the basis for the other two spheres of life, for the sphere of law and for the sphere of the spirit.

Anyone who wants to understand this must, above all, focus on one thing. Look at the way in which modern thinking, the modern way of looking at the world, has developed. This thinking, this way of looking at the world, is more connected with scientific knowledge than one might think. If I were of the opinion that practical life, the outer practice of life, were somehow dependent on theories, on views, on concepts and ideas, as can be imagined from a one-sided philosophy, then I would not make the remark I just made. But that is not how I view the historical process. What is expressed in the whole sphere of life, shaping this life, impelling this life, seems to me to be expressed more or less only symptomatically in the way of thinking of a time; so that I would never want to deduce practical life from the way of thinking, but I would like to assert that the way of thinking , the way of looking at things, is a clear symptomatic expression of what is going on in the depths of the human soul and ultimately shapes the outer, including the practical and economic, life.

What could be called scientific thinking has been incorporated into this way of thinking in all walks of life. But what is the sole focus of scientific thinking? There are still many prejudices regarding this question today, and I believe that those who live in this way of thinking today will be very surprised at the changes in today's way of thinking that they will grow into. What is today considered to be axiomatic, absolutely valid, will most certainly be challenged; it will most certainly undergo significant, powerful metamorphoses. What do rationally thinking natural scientists think today in a broad area? How do they think in a particular area? They think: We do not really understand life or the soul today; basically, we only understand everything that is inanimate in the order of time, well, let us say, what is dead. But it is seen as an ideal that something like the understanding of the living will also develop from the ever-increasing understanding of the dead.

But one must realize that the whole way of looking at things, as we have developed it in the last three to four centuries, as it is the nerve of scientific thinking, that this whole way of looking at things is only suitable for understanding the dead. The reason why natural science has become so great is precisely because this way of thinking is suitable for grasping the dead, all the dead that is embedded in plants, animals, humans, in all living things. Through natural science we understand only the dead that is present in everything.

This way of thinking, which has made natural science so great, ruins and corrupts everything that is social thinking and must be the basis of the social will, for the simple reason that the social will must be directed towards the viable social organism. But if we do not even understand the living forces in nature, how can this thinking be suitable for bringing about the viability of the social organism in any way? It is connected with the innermost structure of modern thinking that man must admit his helplessness, his awkwardness, in relation to social life. Above all, a metamorphosis of the innermost human outlook, of the innermost human thinking, must take place so that man no longer faces things so helplessly and awkwardly.

Those who today look without prejudice at all that that is asserting itself here or there as something socially new, actually has the feeling that in another area what Goethe so dramatically embodied as medieval superstition in the second part of “Faust” in his homunculus scene is coming to life. In the Middle Ages, people believed that the human organism itself could be created by combining dead substances and dead forces according to a human intellect, which itself actually only rules over the dead.

We have moved away from this as a superstition; but it is as if a human superstition wanted to be transplanted from one area to another. And what is often asserted today as a social view seems to us to be a homunculus theory, as if one had no concepts of what should take shape as a living social organism, as if one only wanted to put this social organism together in the way that the medieval alchemist wanted to put the homunculus together from what one had penetrated with the scientific way of thinking, which only deals with the dead. Above all, this is what must be overcome.

Alongside the economic development of humanity, there is the development of the state, which, among other things, consists primarily in the development of the law, and there is the spiritual life. As I said, economic development can be understood in scientific terms. But can the other two branches of human life also be understood in scientific terms? Can it be the legal life? Can it be the spiritual life? This question can be answered by taking a brief look at the development of these two branches of life in modern times. When, three to four centuries ago, at the same time as the technical and capitalist development, the newer world view also emerged, the whole thinking of the circles that were the leaders was such that it pushed to include more and more of the spiritual life in the life of the state, on the one hand, and the economic life, on the other.

The spiritual life has, in fact, already been incorporated into the life of the state to a high degree. One can see the actual progress of the newer development of humanity in the fact that the branches of spiritual life, which used to be more or less independent, have been harnessed into the state legal order. How proud one is of this, to mention just one example, that one has managed to squeeze the entire school system into the state legal system.

It did not happen so quickly with economic life; but it was still seen as a significant step forward that the major transport institutions, the post office, the telegraph and railways; and in accordance with the interests of the ruling and leading circles, they have increasingly forced more and more of economic life into state life.

Because the gaze has been hypnotized on this economic life in modern times, and because the proletariat is primarily involved in this economic life , the ideal arose for the proletariat to take over the state for itself in the same way as the leading circles took over the state in their interest in the past, and to use the state, as it has developed out of all possible old forms, as a framework to squeeze the entire economic life like a huge cooperative into this modern state.

One can show how more and more of the modern proletarian question has also developed under this economic hypnotism. One only has to look back to the 1880s, to the 1870s of the 19th century! What was the situation in the classes of social democracy in Germany, what was the ideal of this social democracy?

Well, the two main points of this social-democratic ideal were, until well into the 1890s, firstly: the abolition of all social and political inequality; secondly: the abolition of the actual wage relationship, of wage labor. These were two demands that emerged, I would say, from a general consciousness of humanity. These two demands are not yet fully imbued with the nuance that is oriented only towards economic life. In the 1890s, these two ideals, which I have just mentioned, are replaced by two essentially different ones: firstly, the transformation of all private ownership of the means of production into common ownership; secondly, the transformation of commodity production into socialist production, guided and led by and for society. The social-democratic demands have been completely reduced to a purely economic program.

Thus, I would say, in its present economic program, social democracy shows itself to be the ultimate executor of what the bourgeois world view has developed over the last few centuries.

Only those who realize that the demands of the proletariat are nothing more than the logical consequence of the bourgeois world order and the bourgeois economic order that has been developed to date can see what is at stake in the right way.

But it went even further.

What I just characterized as the newer world view, which is completely permeated by the impulses of science, is also what

But it went even further.

What I have just characterized to you as the newer world view, which is completely permeated by the impulses of science, is also what has repeatedly formed within bourgeois circles over the last few centuries as the underlying world and life view. Where did the leading spirits of the proletarians get what they think today, what they have brought into everything that is their social will? They have it from the heritage of the bourgeois scientific way of thinking.

It may well be said that up to now the acceptance of the bourgeois scientific orientation was the last great trust that proletarian circles placed in this bourgeoisie, basically up to today. For they have adopted the bourgeois world outlook. And with this bourgeois world outlook they were put to the machines, were harnessed into the desolate life, into the life of capitalism that was becoming desolate for them, were torn away from all those occupations that answer the question: What am I actually in the world? Next to the machine, with its soullessness, and within the capitalist order, in which one is a wheel, the question is not answered: What am I actually as a human being within human development?

Above all, the proletarian demanded to receive the answer to this question from science, from a scientific orientation. The images of the newer world view became quite different for the proletarian than for the bourgeoisie. The member of the bourgeoisie still stands within an economic and social order that basically contains tradition and the teachings of the past everywhere. No matter how convinced he may be of what has emerged under the sole influence of the scientific way of thinking in modern times, it does not conquer the whole person in him; he has religious, spiritual, artistic or other impulses from somewhere else that stand alongside this modern scientific orientation. For the proletarian, this modern scientific orientation is the one that should answer the question: What am I as a human being?

Oh, if one has looked into the souls of numerous proletarians, into those souls that have retained their human feeling and their longing for human dignity, then one knows how they long to have the question answered from the modern scientific orientation side: What do I mean in the world as a human being? - Then what is already present in the expression 'ideology' presents itself to these souls: a spiritual life that does not guarantee man his connection with the spiritual world, a spiritual life that is supposed to consist only of unreal ideas, only of an ideology; it cannot sustain the souls. The individual may not know this, but the effect of it is in the soul! What desolates the souls is that the proletariat has adopted a way of thinking and a world view from the bourgeoisie and the ruling circles that cannot fulfill man, that the proletarian, who has been torn away from the old orders of life, cannot believe, cannot be connected with the old traditions to which the others still cling, and that this scientific way of thinking, which is only what the dead can grasp, cannot give him any answers to the question of the highest things, for which he nevertheless feels more or less unconsciously yearning, for the life of his own soul within the world order. This is basically in every proletarian soul; no matter how badly what comes from it may express itself, it rests at the bottom of the proletarian soul. And even what is visible in the excesses of today's social movement is only visible because that spiritual poverty exists, which has come about under the influence of what has just been described.

Let us take a look at how the ways of life have developed in recent times, ways of life to which man also owes something alongside the scientific order that brought the proletarian the aforementioned, how have these developed? Certainly, the belief in the state, as it has emerged in the course of modern times, is firmly anchored in the minds of many people who are absolutely unwilling to change their minds. This is the belief in the state, which would best take everything under its wing, including the economy and intellectual life! Because this belief is so deeply rooted, so little is learned from the facts. Do not the last four and a half years speak all too clearly of what the states and their missions have achieved over a large part of the world? The time will come when it will be seen that what has been experienced as the most terrible world catastrophe is a consequence of the structure of the entire organization of modern states. And if we examine how it came about that the states, through their own actions, were driven into this world catastrophe, we must ask: How have the states tried to and been able to cope with this combination of the three spheres of life: the spiritual, the state or legal life and the economic life? As states, they were driven into the world war! And anyone who observes the starting points of this world war in particular will see strong arguments against the existence, the composition and the inner structure of the states that have emerged in the last three to four centuries of human development.

But another thing that emerges is how spiritual life actually developed during the very period in which it was most claimed by all that belongs to the state, in the time when one was so proud of extending the power of the state over everything spiritual more and more.

This is basically a chapter of modern historical development that can only be drawn with strong pessimistic strokes! Let us take a look at this intellectual life of the last three to four centuries: many songs of praise have been sung to it. But the characteristic features have basically been little emphasized. The voices of our time will be obliged to say something different about this intellectual life of the last three to four centuries than was said in the songs of praise that were sung to it. Let me emphasize a characteristic feature of this intellectual life.

If we really want to see with an open mind, do we not see how great and significant people have emerged over the last three to four centuries? Even if they have not worked in the field that was directly necessary for the life that one was leading, have the most outstanding minds had some kind of impact? We should have no illusions about this.

Let us turn our attention to a very, very important personality of modern times: to Goethe. Do people really know Goethe? On the contrary! We basically know nothing about this Goethe! Has that which lives as a gigantic, great, powerful spiritual life in this Goethe somehow entered into the souls of men? No, nowhere! In Germany itself, after Goethe had been more or less a favorite of distinguished circles, a “Goethe Society” was founded in the 1880s. Is this “Goethe Society” a matter for the nation, as Goethe's intellectual heritage should make it necessary? No, esteemed attendees! Someone who himself worked within this “Goethe Society” for a long time, but was always in opposition, especially with the leading circles of this Goethe Society, is allowed to tell you: This “Goethe Society” is a pedantic, scholarly elaboration of that which has something to do with this Goethe on the outside, but not on the inside! The spiritual life of modern times, not only in Goethe but in all the other greats, has not been absorbed into general human life. It is a spiritual life that, to a certain extent, modern humanity has been unable to accept. When it has accepted it, it has done so only by absorbing this or that sensation, by informing itself about this or that, by making this or that acceptable, so to speak. For example, when the Goethe Society experimented with its leadership for a long time, they finally ended up making a former Prussian finance minister, who never had any kind of inner relationship to Goethe, the chairman of the Goethe Society! This is only one of the characteristic phenomena; it could be multiplied not only tenfold, but a hundredfold, a thousandfold, a millionfold, if one were to enter into this modern spiritual life. This spiritual life is characterized precisely by the fact that the broadest circles of humanity have not been able to absorb the significant achievements, that these significant achievements have had to live in the most tragic way, as parasites on the development of humanity. In a deeper sense than is usually believed, this is part of the development of social consciousness and of social life in general in modern times. And if we do not want to see in such phenomena of spiritual life something significant for modern social development, we will never find the transition to real, meaningful social will.

In a sense, this newer spiritual life has become a sterile theory. Why? Those who know what the conditions of a real spiritual life are know that if it is to flourish, the spiritual life must never be harnessed to the power of any external force. Natural science, which is directed only towards the dead, and all those branches of the spirit that have approached natural science under the compulsion of newer conditions, they could be harnessed into the structures of the states. But those branches of spiritual life that are based on the most individual abilities of human beings, that were to develop the momentum in the human being to the soul's will, were driven out of these state structures. That is why our newer spiritual life lacks the momentum that the old religious ideas had, because in the broadest circles people are not in a position, are unable, to take in that which runs counter to the development of humanity, and which unfortunately, in a tragic way, must live like parasites.

An explanation will be found for these phenomena. It lies in the fact that in recent times a particular progress has been seen in the intermingling of spiritual life with state life. Until it is realized that a radical change is needed in this respect, social recovery cannot come from this quarter. Intellectual life, school life, and all the other branches of spiritual life must form a special, independent link in the healthy social organism; they must be detached from the structure of the state, which should only really be responsible for the legal life, for the actual political life.

One could point to many phenomena if one wanted to discuss how not only the administration of science, the administration of intellectual life, has become dependent on state power and constraints, but also how the content of science itself has become dependent, how the inner workings of science have become dependent. Hence it appears how unsuitable the natural scientist is when it comes to social thinking and social will. A characteristic example of this is the following: Oscar Hertwig, an important naturalist in the biological field, could recently be cited as an unprejudiced mind who, in his excellent book 'The Development of Organisms - a Refutation of Darwin's Theory of Chance', has achieved something unspeakably important for the development of modern scientific thought. The same Oscar Hertwig made the unfortunate attempt to express his scientific way of thinking in a small booklet for social and legal and state life. One cannot imagine a more nonsensical, unhealthy concoction than this childish little book about social, legal and other similar questions, questions of science in modern times, alongside Oscar Hertwig's great work in the field of natural science! This is a perfect example of how, under the nationalization of intellectual life, a way of thinking has developed that simply cannot penetrate into what lies within social demands.

In general, this intellectual activity has become strangely dependent on something else; so that, after all, scholars like the historian Heinrich Friedjung are really no rarity at all. I am not speaking out of animosity towards Heinrich Friedjung; he was a dear friend of mine in my youth, but today the times are so serious that only objective interests come into consideration. That Heinrich Friedjung, the historian, who, as they say, has written an epoch-making work about modern Austria, he has applied the historical document method, the method of examining historical documents; he has put himself at the disposal of the Austrian Foreign Minister, Baron Ährenthal, with his story; he proved, or so he believes, according to the true historical method, that certain anti-Austrian machinations must have originated with seven conspirators. It came to a court case. Heinrich Friedjung was able to point out that he is not an historian to be taken lightly, that the University of Heidelberg gave him an honorary doctorate. In spite of the fact that Friedjung had proved, using strict historical methods, that the documents with which Baron Ährenthal wanted to condemn the Serbs were genuine, the court had to acknowledge that they were crude forgeries.

At that time, the historical method itself was condemned. Unfortunately, we live in a time when such things are not taken seriously enough, and above all, not deeply enough. Despite the seriousness with which it is pursued, intellectual life in general runs parallel to the rest of life as a secondary current. For me, the way in which the deepest intellectual life can be taken today has always been characterized by what I would like to call the count with the two trouser pockets. I experienced this count with the two trouser pockets, a witty man, I experienced him during one of my visits to the Nietzsche Archive. He was a familiar figure at the Nietzsche Archive. He had two trouser pockets, from one of which he pulled out a Bible for me at the time when we were just leaving the Nietzsche Archive; a complete Bible in pearl print; he was able to put it in his trouser pocket. He said: “You see, I always carry this with me.” But I have another one; and he took out the “Zarathustra”, also published in pearl print, from the other trouser pocket for me to see. So the count had carried with him, or at least wanted to carry with him, the two most important books for him! I would like to say that this is a purely symbolic expression of some of the modern man's affairs, to stand by spiritual things at all. The count with the two trouser pockets was quite symbolic: one pocket was filled with the Bible, the other with Nietzsche's “Zarathustra”. So we see how the newer spiritual life has become sterile and barren, despite all the praise.

Thus we see that political life, as it has developed in modern times until today, has, as it were, reduced itself to absurdity through the world catastrophe. Should we not ask ourselves whether it is not precisely in the interweaving of the three most important branches of life, the life of the legal, spiritual and economic order, that we find the cause of our being driven into the world catastrophe, and which prevents us from coming to terms with the social facts of today?

Anyone who studies the way in which these three branches of human life have gradually been absorbed into the life of the state, cannot but recognize that the recovery of the social organism lies in the re-dissolution, in the re-separation with regard to the three limbs mentioned. We shall not arrive at a living, vital social organism, in the sense of a real human organism, merely by considering the conditions of the spirit life, on the one hand, and the conditions of the legal or political life in the State, on the other. But then one will also realize that these three branches of life have completely different foundations, that they develop best when each of these branches of life is strictly left to its own devices.

In more recent times, this could not be understood only because people's gaze was hypnotized and directed only towards economic life. And so, above all, the human being was seen as harnessed with his labor, if he was a proletarian, into economic life. In this economic life, in the economic cycle, only that which is a commodity or a service similar to a commodity should actually move. The modern proletarian also feels this. This is expressed in his demands, even if he formulates it differently in what he literally says. He feels that it contradicts his human dignity that he is harnessed into the economic process like the commodity itself. Just as commodities have their mutually determinable price, so within this pricing, there is also a price for human labor. On the one hand, the most striking thing about Karl Marx's teaching was that he expressed the deepest feelings of the proletariat with regard to labor, drawing people's attention to the fact that Just as goods are bought and sold on the commodities market according to supply and demand, so your labor power is bought and sold on the labor market. In this respect, we must become even more radical than Karl Marx himself if the social organism is to be cured. We must be clear about the fact that human labor power is something that cannot be compared with any other commodity, and therefore cannot have a price like any other commodity. This is felt by the person who has to take his labor to the market. He feels that we have now arrived at the point in human development where the third must follow, in addition to the two other things that have fallen away in the course of human development. The old slavery has fallen away within human life, where the whole person could be bought and sold; property has fallen away, where less of the person could be bought and sold; the third, which the capitalist economic order has still preserved, must also fall away, the fact that human labor can be bought and sold on the labor market. For when a person sells his labor, he must go along with his labor. By having to go along himself, he still sells himself, so to speak. That is what is felt: we have arrived at the point in human development where nothing more may be bought and sold by man, where only that which, separate from man, can have an objective value for itself, may remain in economic life. That is to say, in the future, economic life and the economic cycle must be limited to the production, circulation and consumption of commodities.

What was human in economic life, and what is still partly human in it today, namely human labor, must be excluded. It cannot be released from economic life in any other way than by being administered independently in a healthy social organism, when labor becomes a legal rather than an economic matter, that is, when the legal state, the political state, develops alongside the economic organism. In economic life, fraternity will prevail, that fraternity which is, as it were, fraternity on a large scale, where an associative life arises from professional communities, from the regulation of production according to consumption, and so on. In the political state, which in turn will develop quite independently, like a sovereign state alongside another state, alongside economic life, democratic equality of all people will prevail. All institutions will have to be such that what makes all people equal among themselves, what concerns all people, is given full expression. Above all, it will be necessary to determine what relates to labor law, among many other things. But labor law is the first issue for the social movement in the present. Quite apart from the economic sphere, equality will prevail among people in the independent state under the rule of law, whether they work spiritually or physically; labor law will be regulated there.

What will happen as a result? The result will be that economic life, as a self-contained area, borders on the natural order on the one hand and on the legal system on the other. Economic life is dependent on the natural order. Whether the fields are fertile in any given year or not, what forces are actually present underground, much in economic life depends on this. One can bring about a different natural condition through technical means, or one can preserve the natural condition through different economic conditions, but a limit is set with regard to what is present through these natural conditions. This is expressed in the formation of prices in the economy and in all economic institutions. It would never occur to anyone to somehow make nature dependent on economic institutions. Just as independent as nature itself, just as independent as the germs of the grain fruits come from below, which are independent of economic life, the labor laws regulated within the legal system must be just as independent. The worker enters the economic cycle with rights that are formed outside of this economic cycle, just as the forces of nature lie outside of the economic cycle. All pricing, everything that develops in economic life, develops on the basis of labor law that has arisen outside of economic life. Labor law sets prices, but the price of human labor is not determined by the economic cycle.

That can only be determined by the healthy relationship between the physical worker and the spiritual leader. Then the laborer will no longer need to conclude today's illusory contract for his labor; then he will be able to conclude the only possible contract that refers to the corresponding division of what is produced jointly by the physical laborer and the spiritual leader. Nothing can be achieved in this area except through the strict separation of state and economic life.

On the other hand, however, an independent and free spiritual life is just as necessary. That which can develop in the state is only healthy if the state regulates only that which applies equally to all people. The spiritual life is simply stifled if it is to be formed on the same basis as the rights and political life. The spiritual life must develop out of the self-sufficient provision and administration of the individual abilities of human beings. This will then be a spiritual life that is emancipated from the life of the state, which in turn the human soul will be able to sustain. This will not be an ideology, this will not be a spiritual life that only provides abstract concepts; this will be a spiritual life that will fully prove its own reality, that will sustain man with his soul, that will place man back into a spiritual order. This is what the modern proletarian still rejects. In the depths of his soul he longs for such a spiritual life, because he feels that otherwise the soul is desolate.

This call for a free organization of spiritual life is a terribly serious matter. The reason it is so serious is that all human instincts, everything that has developed according to the current views of modern times, according to habits of thought, runs counter to this recovery of the social organism. That is why we should like to speak about this demand for a free spiritual life, a free spiritual life that is independent, to those who represent the youth of today. If science and worldview, spiritual life in general, are to be sustainable in the future, then we need a spiritual life that is something other than that which can be placed on the basis of the state. They should feel that it will be different when the teacher at the lowest level knows that what he has to do is administered by those who only administer within a self-contained spiritual organism, when a teacher knows that he is not dependent on any state regulations. When the state no longer has an educational role to a large extent, when those who want to become theologians, lawyers, doctors and so on are no longer dependent on the state, and when it is felt that what is needed, the needs of the spiritual life itself will develop, that it will be needed precisely for what the spirit needs for humanity, then a spiritual life will develop that can have an effect on the other branches of human life.

If we have just discussed what form the proletarian demands for the abolition of the wage relationship must actually take, we can now point out what the true form of the capital question is.

Many people today talk about the spirit, about that spirit that has become a shadow, an ideology, under the development of the last few centuries. From this spirit nothing can be drawn that will sustain the soul. This spirit, this intellectual life, has largely become something that has no impact on, and cannot be realized in, practical life. That is why Karl Marx found nothing in the economic life that still guaranteed him any realities. He said: “In practice, man must experience that his thinking really has a meaning, that the truth of his thinking can really develop.” But this practice was found only in economic life. The spiritual life must be able to give itself the practice of life from foundations that are realities. That is what makes these matters so tremendously serious. But then this spiritual life will not have those abstractions which are our great social, inwardly social evil today; then this spiritual life will take shape as something very concrete.

Oh, let us look at this spiritual life again from a certain point of view. We see how, within this spiritual life, ethical demands have been constructed. We see how, within this spiritual life, ethics of feeling, ethics of neighbourly love, ethics of the divine or moral world order have been founded on certain philosophical bases. What do these ethics speak of? They speak a great deal about the necessary love of one's neighbour, about human goodwill, about brotherhood. But their concepts and ideas remain at an abstract, shadowy level and do not penetrate down into the immediate reality of everyday life. Our intellectual life has become philistine – that is the word, even if it expresses something that does not appear so radical to man. It has become untrue. It moves on abstract heights and cannot descend into the immediate practical reality of everyday life. But it must immerse itself in it. It must become anti-philistine. When it immerses itself in the most mundane needs of everyday life, when the spirit proves itself by being able to intervene in the most immediate, I would say most mundane, actions of man, only then will the power of the spirit be able to show itself in social life. But then it will become clear that the question of capitalism will be resolved at the same time as the question of spiritual life. Certainly, in abstract terms, there is much to be said for the idea that private capital has delivered modern human life to decay and economic war and that a change must occur. At first, one knows nothing else but to say: So private property must end. One can be as honest as anyone can be with this demand, but one can still have the view, precisely from a deeper knowledge of social impulses, that nothing special will be achieved by converting private property into common property. On the contrary, the desolate capitalism would be replaced by the no less desolate bureaucracy. The throne and altar would be replaced by the factory and office. Now, whether the conditions would be better is still open to doubt.

The real issue is that what is actually meant, what actually lives in the subconscious of the proletarians, should actually come about: that capital, which is present in the administration of capital through the connection with individual human abilities, should in a certain way intervene in the economic process. It is precisely not the egoism of the individual, but the general public that is to be served. For it is in this area that the proletarian perceives an enormously significant economic principle, which has perhaps never been emphasized by modern economists precisely because it is so truly borrowed from life, because it is so truly significant. In the ethical and moral spheres, altruism and egoism are regarded as opposites; altruism is beautiful, egoism is extremely ugly. People do not consider the following: as soon as one looks into ordinary economic life, into that social organism in which, in the modern sense, the old primitive economy has been replaced by an economy based on the division of labor, the fact is that the more the division of labor has progressed, the less the individual can work for himself, at least in economic terms.

I am stating an economic principle that I have been trying to make popular since 1904; but humanity does not want to understand this economic principle. Whether one likes it or not, in a social organism in which there is a division of labor - and this is the case with every social organism in the modern civilized world - one cannot work and act selfishly in economic terms. Everything that the individual works must benefit the whole. And everything that belongs to the individual comes to him from social capital. After the replacement of the natural economy by money, and the further division of labor that came about through money, it has become a fundamental economic principle that in a social organism in which there is a division of labor, man cannot work for himself, but only for others.

In fact, in a social organism you cannot work for yourself any more than you can eat yourself. You will say: If someone is a tailor and he makes a suit for himself, then he is working for himself. It is not true if this happens in a social organism in which there is a division of labor; because the relationship that he thereby establishes between the skirt and himself by making this skirt for himself in a social organism with a division of labor is quite different from that in a primitive economy. It is certainly not possible in these brief discussions to present you with full and valid evidence today, but such evidence can be provided, and I will refer to these things in my book on “The Crucial Points of the Social Question”. It can be shown that when a tailor sews a coat today, he sews it for the purpose of serving his fellow man, so that he can work for other people. The tailor no longer has to make the coat just for himself; it is no longer made for selfish purposes, it is a means of production. This change in character has come about simply because the tailor lives in a social organism based on the principle of the division of labor.

This economic altruism is the active force behind everything that happens. If you sin against it, that is, if you place that superstructure over this self-realizing substructure, through which you selfishly acquire the fruits that actually flow to the general public in the true social process, then you place what I would call a real lie into the world. The egoism of today's economic system is nothing more than a sum of real lies, of sins against what actually happens beneath the surface, and what is beneath the law of social, economic altruism.

And it is the reaction of the human proletarian soul, which feels that in the modern social organism, which is based on the division of labor, economically, it is the reaction to the unhealthy, hypocritical egoism that lives itself out in the fight against capitalism.

What is today simply social ignorance in the broadest circles of the leading classes of humanity must give way to social understanding. Then social understanding will also advocate that what happens through capital must become a cycle, that care must be taken to ensure that the steward of capital is always the one who justifies this stewardship through his individual abilities. The moment he no longer justifies this administration through his individual abilities, ways and means must be found to ensure that the capital flows to someone else who, through his individual abilities, can in turn manage this capital profitably for the human community.

This is what will be found through the free cultivation of individual human abilities in the spiritual organism: that the circulation of capital will work. Today, something exists that is similar to what I mean here, but only for the most shabby property that the modern economy has, for the very shabbiest, namely for intellectual property. Intellectual property is said to come from the social order; even if it is based on individual abilities, a spiritual achievement cannot come from mere individuality of the human being. We always owe it to social impulses. We are obliged to give it back to the social impulses. It is therefore fair that what someone produces intellectually should become common intellectual property after his death. In a similar way, although the time periods must be different, material property is only justified for the individual person as long as he can claim the right of disposal over it through his individual ability. That which may remain with an individual as long as his individual abilities are active must find the means and ways, through the indirect administration of the spiritual organization, to reach other personalities who are again placed in the service of the general public. A cycle in the ownership of the means of production will take the place of today's private ownership. That will be the great solution of the capital question. We are only getting started in this area, as can be seen from the fact that people are now talking about the socialization of the means of production. This socialization of the means of production would only lead to a bureaucratic order, which in turn would give rise to the same tyranny from the ranks of those making demands today, never to one that can truly represent the healthy social organism. This healthy social organism must be established by circulating capital among the spiritually capable. The circulation of capital means that over time that which must be managed capitalistically can actually be managed for the common good.

I can only hint at this. It will be further developed in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Present and Future Life”.

But you can see from this that not only intellectual life itself is sought in its more intellectual branches when it is placed on its own, but also that what is dependent in economic life on the spiritual capacities, the spiritual abilities of people, that this would take the right path for the recovery of the future by making the spiritual organism independent. Above all, it is this that will not only produce shadowy thinking, shadowy spiritual life, luxury spiritual life, but a spiritual life that becomes aware of the spirit in that this spirit can penetrate everywhere into material life.

This is something that comes to mind when one looks into the very foundation of humanity basis of humanity, as it is developed by man today, at the present time; the old catchwords regarding whether spirit or matter is justified should be pointed out today.

I am speaking to you from the point of view of a spiritual science, but a spiritual science for which the old dispute between spirit and matter has become nonsense. For it is a third thing that is at issue, of which spirit and matter are the outer expressions. When we enter into this third realm, where neither spirit nor matter is seen, but the primal living spirituality of the world itself, then we arrive at that which no longer presents one link of the whole of human life as the cause, but expresses all three links: economic life, legal or political life and spiritual life as the three revelations of a primal depth. Then we shall overcome the great error that has become a practical error in life today, namely, that we want to base everything on economic life. Then that will come about which is not an abstract unity incorporated in the organism of the State, but then economic life, legal or state life, spiritual life will develop out of their own vitality. And as they develop, they will grow together into one unity.

I am not thinking of some kind of revival of the old estates: the estate of teachers, the estate of farmers, the estate of the armed. All class-like thinking is overcome by the fact that the social organism itself is divided into its three limbs. But man stands in these three limbs as the unifying element. Man is placed in any occupation, in any grouping, for my sake. He stands in a living relationship with the other members. Out of free trust, he sends his children to the schools of the spiritual organization. In economic life, everyone is involved in it anyway; in the life of the state and of the law, the fact that this state life has to administer, above all, that before which all people are equal.

Weak souls and thinkers, they tend to imagine, based on what I have just said, that basically the unity of state life would be endangered by it. Indeed, what has most endangered the unity of state life in the last few centuries? Precisely the fact that an abstract unity has been sought, precisely that these three members of the social organism, which should develop independently, have been chaotically mixed up and fused. I have shown you how intellectual life would flourish under this unity. But economic life, despite the existence of the state, has developed in such a way that today it is fiercely opposed in numerous areas of the civilized world to what state life is.

A recovery will only occur when one works one's way up from the usual way of thinking in this area to the lively view of the healthy social organism. And this can only consist of the following: the economic organism, the legal or political organism and the spiritual organism, structured alongside one another, like sovereign states that only attend to their common affairs through their delegates. Many still dispute this today. But he who, like the one speaking to you, will soon have reached his sixth decade of life and throughout his entire conscious life has always kept an eye on the development of the proletarian movement, but not in such a way that he only thought about the proletariat, but rather that he always learned to think with the proletariat through the vicissitudes of his life, knows how many prejudices are still piling up today against what the times demand, against what basically lies in the subconscious of the proletarian soul: the threefold social order. I am not one of those who, even though I have seen how decade after decade prejudices pile up against this, in my opinion, unique contribution to the health of the social organism, I am not one of those who I am not one of those who stand frightened when events take on a frightening form for some, even today. I am not one of those who, at the twilight of their days, would say: how much, how much has been gone through in vain! No, I am one of those, and I would like to mention this only as a personal comment at the end, so that you also understand the whole tenor of my talk this evening, I am one of those who would not say when they look back on their lives: if you could be young again, would you want to live through life again? - I would never say: no - but I would always say: yes!

Because of this positive outlook on life, I feel distant from some of those who have lived through this life with me up to my age and who, as unfortunately has to be said for the present time, have not been able to come to terms with what the loud facts of the present are able to cope with; but I have the faith that those to whom I feel close, feel close, even when I am three times their age, that those who are young today and to whom I am mainly addressing my speech today, that they will be the ones who will grow into a time in which there will be a lot of suffering, a lot of pain, a lot of tragedy to go through, but in which there will also be the opportunity to rethink and relearn very intensely. Therefore, I am not afraid that there will be many in this circle who will call what I have discussed today a utopia.

Something quite different could be called a utopia today, and it was also recently Basel as utopian by Kurt Eisner, who only recently met a tragic end, who said in his lecture: the world with its economic management and other social order in which we live, the most daring utopian two thousand years ago could not have imagined. Reality today is the strongest utopia. No wonder that when one speaks of a reality that is demanded by the human soul, that is demanded by human reason, when one speaks of such a reality, it seems like a utopia.

But those who are young today will grow out of today's real utopia into real realities. Strong power, strong courage and a certain good will for spirituality, the three will compose the true social will. And from this synthesis of true social life with proletarian demands, what must come about for the recovery of our conditions will develop.

That today's youth may find that path of the spirit to knowledge, which today from the social horizon, is what I presuppose, and it is what has filled me with great satisfaction and great love in response to the request that came to me from students in particular. If we find vitality, courage to face life and strong spirituality in those who look ahead to an afterlife, and a social will that is composed of these, then, despite all that is pressing and devastating today, the development of humanity will continue. Then we can hope for this again.

But today we can already hope for something that will prove that human life is always worth living if it is based on freedom of spirit, on the equality of all people before that which can truly establish human dignity can truly be established, and on an economic life that is equal in its brotherhood, in its brotherly work, to the freedom of spiritual life, to the equality of the democratic order of state life.

Discussion

Rudolf Steiner: I will take the liberty of responding to individual respond to the remarks of the honorable speakers.

First of all, I would like to point out that I understand that the things I said about the social order, the social organism, cannot, I would like to say, lead to conviction in the twinkling of an eye. In this lecture, which has been long enough as it is, I only wanted to provide some suggestions that can be pursued in some way.

I know how extraordinarily well established what the first esteemed speaker said in reference to private property, in reference to the demand for socialization of the means of production, has become. I would like to draw your attention to just one thing: it is not true that people today have usually accepted the idea, or are usually of the opinion, that external facts are extremely solid; but much more solid within us are our habits of thought. And what we have long become accustomed to in our thinking, above all as a human society, not only over decades but even over centuries, cannot leave us indifferent. Therefore, it will not be easily noticed that in all that is taking the form of the transition from private property to common property today, there is actually something in it that is quite justified as a demand, but which cannot so directly become the object of social will, because something ultimate is not overcome in the process, which is overcome when you really, in the deepest seriousness, go into what I have presented today. What all socialists today have not overcome in their thinking habits, and thus also not in the impulses of their will, is the concept of property. One would like to abolish private property; but because one has become so accustomed to the concept of property, one cannot get beyond the concept of property. Property must be; so, since it cannot be private property, one demands common property, social property, nationalization, and so on.

If you just think about what I have said today, the old concept of property disappears altogether. The objects that are owned today – capital, the means of production – will circulate. That is, there is a living organism there. The person who has the most ability to manage certain means of production will always be the one to do so. That this is not utopian, some may be convinced of when they read what I have put forward in my book on the social question, which will be published in a few days and which is not yet exhaustive. But it is precisely a matter of breaking out of certain habits of thought that are all too much alive in everything that people do today. This is what I meant when I pointed out that the means of production can only be found in connection with a human being for as long as that human being's ability justifies it. You see, today, under the influence of the scientific way of thinking, all the social and historical sciences, among other fields of study, are also influenced by the natural sciences; we even have a national economy within such sciences. One thing in particular is not noticed. And in this circle, perhaps, this one in particular may be discussed. People today suffer all too much from an illness that Marx very correctly called “mors immortalis”, the undying death. In life, everything is in motion; only the abstractions that man makes in his mind are actually something fixed. That is what remains. And so, in the period in which the capacity for comprehension has developed in relation to the earlier capacity for intuition, especially since the mid-15th century, in this newer age, which is fundamentally different from all earlier ones, people have often become the victims of concepts. If we look at our most elementary sciences, we see real errors in the methodological, in the theoretical [. . .]. It does not lead to any useful, living social impulses, but rather develops into a hopeless way of thinking in the social sphere. That is why it is difficult to understand the vitalization of concepts that is being sought in my presentations today. One would like to hold on to something that upholds the old concept of ownership. One must go beyond the concept of ownership altogether! And the first speaker in the discussion, if he thinks through what I have stated today to its conclusion, will see that in the demand for nationalization or socialization and so on of the means of production, there lies nothing else than the demand to bring that which is produced by the means of production to the benefit of the community. But perhaps – the current experiments show this precisely where they are conducted, but I do not want to discuss these current experiments at all – perhaps to a certain extent this will be achieved through such experiments. It will be achieved when the means of production really do circulate, when not the totality, which is only an abstraction and can only execute something based on some majority decision, when not the totality owns the means of production, but when the means of production can circulate freely, as, for example, intellectual property intellectual property thirty years after a person's death is something that is freely circulating, but something that is of course then administered by the intellectual organism.

What is to be achieved by demanding the socialization of the means of production will still be able to encroach upon the freedom of the individual without any fallow laying of human individual abilities. This will be achieved precisely in the way I have spoken of today.

My aim – now truly, I may say, after thirty-five years in the field of the social question – is to think things through to the end everywhere, not to seek theories everywhere but to seek out what is possible in life, based on direct experience.

If you think through what I have presented today, you will see that at every point in today's social order, we can simply continue in the direction I have indicated. Therefore, what I have stated is the opposite of any utopia: it is something immediately practical. Whether you start in Russia, where things have progressed to the point of certain destruction, or here in Switzerland, where the old order still stands, and continues to some extent today, you can achieve what I am calling for from a wide range of very specific institutions: the separation of spiritual, economic and legal life. One has only to turn back the machine, which has been running in the wrong direction in recent times, and in the last decades. What should be the result if the relationship of the individual to the individual is regulated in the one link of the social organism, in the constitutional state? A monopoly cannot arise, because, as I will also show in my book, what a person draws as a director can be determined from the outset, while what arises from the social situation must either be put into the business or, to balance it out, must go to the general public, that is, to someone else, who then administers it if he has the ability to do so. All the harm that results from the present position of private property will thus be eliminated. This is what should be noted about my arguments: that what is really achieved is what others want to achieve, but want to achieve with inadequate means. This is what I would like to say in particular with reference to the first honored speaker.

Of course, he did make a very valid point. You see, he described people who today talk about the individual state as an organism in the sense that an organism is in science. In doing so, he refers to a false way of thinking. The truth is that if one wants to make comparisons, one must make them correctly; then the individual state can at most be a cell, the entire organism can be the earth as an economic entity. This is what, I would say, detracts from this truth when people think of what is spatially limited as a whole. This way of thinking would immediately cease if one were to see that this organization, which we call the state, if it cannot be the case with real organisms [.. .], can certainly be the case with cells that come together. So, without going into this gimmick in great detail, I would just like to say something that is true: that the whole earth has already become a kind of unified work today. But this is based on a different sense than the one I have discussed. And as I said, I have not dealt with the relevant issues theoretically, but from the perspective of direct experience.

Of course, the second speaker must be agreed when he says that love for one's fellow human beings must become the fundamental idea of humanity. I would just like to draw attention to one thing in such matters. I will put myself in the position of this second speaker. I always find it more fruitful to talk to someone than to go directly to the points that can be put forward as opposing arguments. You see, as the honorable speaker said, people have been talking about love for two thousand years. Nevertheless, despite all this talk of love for one's neighbor, I ask you to consider the last four to five years! So perhaps it is not just a matter of talking about love for one's neighbor, but rather of how one talks about this love for one's neighbor, whether one talks about it in the abstract or whether one looks in concrete terms at how this love for one's neighbor can be put into practice. And here I would like to take the position of the honorable speaker. You see, one of the most significant and beautiful sayings of the Gospels, of Christ Jesus, is: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” That is more or less how it would be translated correctly. It is time to recognize that in the truest Christian sense, this is a true saying. We do not have to look for Christ only in the Gospels, we do not have to look only for the Christ who was, as it were, buried in the Gospels, we have to look for the Christ who is alive, who walks among us. We have to listen to what the Christ proclaims anew every day. I believe that one hears the Christ correctly when one is able, in each new era, to hear what the Christ says for each era in a new way from the place where the signs of the time appear. And I believe that today he speaks to us through the ages in such a way that we must not stand still, not even with the words, as was preached in the past, such as charity, but that we must progress to new forms, also in our outlook on life, as we clearly progress to new forms of life itself. That is what I would like to consider.

Not long ago, I heard a speaker in Bern, a Catholic priest, who spoke very effectively. The man spoke very similarly to our second speaker. He also said that love for one's neighbor must prevail; above all, Jesus Christ must lead the modern social movement. - I would like to say: nothing could be more self-evident than this. But then this gentleman made further statements - in Bern, I think - yes, he said what he said very effectively, but I myself remembered that I had read these statements in my schoolbook as long as forty-five years ago - they remain words. The gentleman used the same words. I had to think: Nevertheless, between the writing in my schoolbook and what the Lord said today lies the terrible catastrophe of the world war! So it will be necessary today, after all, to rethink, to approach things differently than they were approached before. Are we not to learn anything? Should we continue in the same old rut, always repeating, as our ancestors said, “love for one's fellow creatures,” when in spite of their preaching love for one's fellow creatures these terrible days have come about? It is not a matter of preaching love for one's fellow creatures! I have often said in the most diverse circles: If there is a stove in the room and I speak, as is now customary in the bourgeois world view, of all kinds of ethical demands, of which love of neighbor is one, then I would have to say: The stove has the duty to warm the room. But even if I try to say, Dear stove, it is your duty as a stove to warm the room, it is your sacred duty – and I repeat this over and over again, the room will just stay cold! But I can save myself the speech if I put wood in and light it. Then I am doing something concrete, and it will get warm in the room. Sometimes people talk about the way in which associations should form in economic life, how, as I said, fraternity should prevail on a large scale and come about in concrete life; when they talk about how the social organism should be structured, then they are talking about something concrete. That already includes everything, including what charity wants to be! But mere talk of love of neighbor is not enough either, at least not in our complicated circumstances. And when it is said, “Jesus Christ should be our leader,” then of course He should be our leader. But it is not talk that counts, but what one does. That is what matters, not merely saying, “Lord, Lord,” for He is Lord anyway! but on actually following him.

When it is said here that the great spheres of life must form a unity, and it is difficult to imagine how these three spheres of life can be separated, then I would like to point out that it is necessary to take this step forward in the field of social thinking, which unfortunately science for its part has not

In my penultimate book, “Riddles of the Soul”, I pointed out how, by using everything that modern science could already use, I was able to find out in the course of thirty years of spiritual research how the human organism is a threefold being , how the human organism really breaks down into the nerve-sense organism, which is centered in itself, and which also naturally stands in a relationship with the outside world through the sense organs; how, as the second, stands beside it the so-called rhythmic organism, the respiratory-heart organism, and as the third, the metabolic organism. All the activities of the human organism are contained in these three members, which are centered in themselves, and work together to form the most powerful unity precisely because each member has its center in itself, and it is precisely through being centered that the living unity comes about. One should not think in a scientific way in this field; I do not want to play with analogies like Schäffle or Meray, that is far from my mind; but I would like to point out that healthy thinking with reference to the social organism has difficulty in making this threefold division. With regard to the social organism, we must not only make this threefold division in theory, but also implement it in reality. I cannot understand why it should be difficult to imagine that a spiritual organization administers itself, to a certain extent sovereignly within itself; the constitutional state, in turn, sovereignly within itself; and the economic state, sovereignly within itself. The higher unity comes about only through living interaction; whereas if one imposes unity from the outset, whether it be unity directed towards economic life, or unity in legal life, as in this old constitutional state, or spiritual life, as in the old theocratic institutions, these three elements interfere with each other; whereas they not disturb each other when they work together in the living unity, when one is truly centered in oneself; only must the centering be done in the right way.

Recently, a listener in Basel replied to me that he could not imagine what it was like either, there must be justice in all three links, for example. Yes, of course, right and justice must be present in all three members, just as air, in its materiality, must be present in all three members of the human organism; but that is why it must be processed by the respiratory and cardiac systems, and specially prepared in one member. In this way it is particularly effective for the other members. The fact that one limb produces and develops in the right way that which is necessary for the others brings about just the right unity. The living organization is based on this. This is what man will have to go into; for that is what matters.

This is what I have to say in response to the objections that have been raised regarding these divisions. What matters is that what can be achieved through this organization is precisely what lies unconsciously in the proletarian demands, but what can only be realized through conscious social will. And of these different possibilities I wanted to speak to you today, as far as possible in this short time.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! This evening I will not be anticipating what is actually supposed to be taking place here as study evenings based on the book 'The Core Points of the Social Question'. Instead, I will try to give you a kind of introduction to these evenings. I would like to evoke in you through this introduction a sense of the perspective from which this book was written. Above all, it was written from the immediate present, from the conviction that the social question has also taken on a new form through the events of the present and that it is necessary to talk about the social question today in a completely different way than it was talked about from any side before the world war catastrophe. With this book, it has been attempted, so to speak, at this point in human development, in which the social question is becoming particularly urgent and in which actually every person who consciously lives today, who does not sleepily and sleepily live the life of humanity, should know something about what has to happen in the sense of what is usually called the social question. It may be helpful to look back a little today. I may mention things that are partly known to you.

You probably know that the issues raised today on the social question have been raised for a relatively long time. And today, the names Proudhon, Fourier, and Louis Blanc are mentioned as the first to have addressed the social question in the mid-19th century. You are also aware that the way in which the social question was treated until the middle of the 19th century is referred to by today's representatives, at least by many of today's representatives of the social question, as “the age of social utopias”. It is good to be clear about what is actually meant when one says: in its first stage, the social question arose in an “age of utopias”. But one cannot talk about this matter in the absolute sense, but one can actually only talk about the feelings of the representatives of the social question in the present. They feel the way I am about to describe it. They feel that all social questions that arose in the age of which I want to speak first were in the stage of utopia. And what do people understand by saying that the social question was then in the stage of utopia? They understand by this – and this was already noticed at the time; Saint-Simon and Fourier noticed it well – that there are, even after the French Revolution, people of a certain social minority who are in possession of the means of production and also of other human goods, and that there are a large number of other people – in fact, the majority – who are not in possession of such things. These people can only work on the means of production by entering the service of those who own the means of production and also the land. They have basically nothing but themselves and their labor. It has been observed that the life of this large mass of humanity is one of hardship, and that it lives largely in poverty in contrast to those who are in the minority; and attention has been drawn to the situation of the minority and the situation of the majority.

Those who have written about the social situation of humanity, such as Saint-Simon and Fourier, as well as Proudhon, have started from a certain premise. They have started from the premise that it is necessary to point out to people: Look, the great mass lives in misery, in bondage, in economic dependence; this is not a humane existence for the great mass. That must be changed. And then all kinds of means were devised by which this inequality among people could be changed. But there was always a certain prerequisite, and that prerequisite was that one said to oneself: If one knows the reasons for this inequality and if one has enough words of warning, if one has enough moral awareness to point out that the great majority of people live in economic and legal dependence and are poor, then this speech will touch the hearts and souls of the minority, the wealthy, the more favored minority. And if this minority realizes that things cannot remain as they are, that changes must be made, that a different social order must come, then a different social order will be brought about. So the prerequisite was that people would deign to do something to liberate the great mass of humanity out of their innermost soul urge. And then they suggested what should be done. And it was believed that if the minority, if the people who are the guiding, leading people, realize that what is wanted to be done is good, then a general improvement in the situation of humanity will occur.

A great deal of extraordinarily clever things have been said from this side, but all that has been undertaken in this direction is felt today by most representatives of the social question to be utopian. That is, one no longer counts on the fact that one only needs to say: This is how the world should be organized, then the economic and political and legal inequality of people would end. Today, it is of no use appealing to the understanding and insight of those who are favored, who have the privilege, who are in possession of the means of production and the like. If I am to express what was lost in the course of the second half of the 19th century, I have to say that faith in the insight and goodwill of people was lost. Therefore, the representatives of the social question, whom I now mean, say to themselves: it is all very well to think up beautiful plans for how to set up the human world, but nothing comes of it; because no matter how beautiful the plans are preached, no matter how touching the words of appeal to the hearts and souls of the ruling minorities, nothing will happen. All these are worthless ideas, and worthless ideas, which paint the future, are in reality, to put it popularly, utopias. It is therefore useless, so they say, to imagine anything that should happen in the future, because there will be no one who lets go of his interests, who can be moved in terms of his conscience, in terms of his moral insight, and so on. Faith in conscience and moral insight has been lost in the broadest circles, especially among the representatives of the social question. People say to themselves, people do not act according to their insight when they make social arrangements or when they lead their social lives, they act according to their interest. And the haves naturally have an interest in keeping their possessions. The socially privileged have an interest in maintaining social privileges. Therefore, it is an illusion to count on the fact that one only needs to say that people should do this or that. They just don't do it because they don't act out of their insight, but out of their interest.

In the broadest sense, it can be said that Karl Marx gradually – but really only gradually – came to accept this view. One can describe a whole series of epochs in the life of Karl Marx. In his youth, Marx was also an idealistic thinker and still thought in terms of the realizability of utopias, in the sense that I have just characterized it. But it was precisely he, and after him his friend Engels, who in the most radical way possible abandoned this calculation of people's insight. And when I characterize in general what is actually a great story, I can say the following: Karl Marx ultimately came to the conviction that the world could not get better in any other way than by calling on those people who do not have an interest in their goods and privileges being preserved. As for those who have an interest in keeping their goods, these cannot be looked at at all, they must be left out of the reckoning altogether, because they would never deign to enter into it, no matter how beautifully it is preached. On the other hand, there is the great mass of proletarian laborers, [who have no goods to lose]. Karl Marx himself became convinced of this during the period when what is today called the proletariat was basically only emerging in Central Europe; he saw the proletariat emerging in Central Europe out of different economic conditions. When he later lived in England, it was somewhat different. But at the time when Karl Marx was developing from an idealist into an economic materialist, it was still the case that the modern proletariat was only emerging in Central Europe. And now he said to himself: this modern proletariat has completely different interests than the leading minority, because it consists of people who possess nothing but their labor, of people who cannot live in any other way than by placing their labor in the service of the propertied, namely in the service of those who own the means of production. If these workers leave their jobs, then they are thrown out on the street – this was particularly true in the most radical way for the time. They have no other prospect before them than the possibility of serfdom for those who own the means of production. These people have a completely different interest from the propertied classes. They have an interest in the entire previous social order being abolished, in this social order being transformed. They do not need to be preached to in such a way that their understanding is seized, but only in such a way that their selfishness, their interest, is seized. You can rely on that. To preach to those whose understanding one should count on, nothing comes of it, because people do not act out of understanding, they only act according to interests. So, one cannot appeal to those who should be appealed to for understanding, but one must appeal to the interests of those who cannot but advocate for the newer times out of inner compulsion. That is the egotism to which Karl Marx has developed. Therefore, he no longer believed that the progress of humanity to newer social conditions could come from any other human work than from the work of the proletariat itself. The proletariat could only, according to Karl Marx, strive for a renewal of human social conditions from its interests, from its own selfish interests. And in so doing, the proletariat will also liberate all of the rest of humanity, not out of philanthropy but out of selfish interest, because there can be nothing left but what people can achieve, people who are not attached to old goods and have nothing to lose from old goods in a transformation.

So one says to oneself: On the one hand, there are the leading, guiding circles, they have certain rights that were granted to them in earlier times or that were enforced by them in earlier times, that have been inherited in their families, they hold on to them. These leading, guiding circles are in possession of this or that, which they in turn pass on within their circles, their family and so on. These circles always have something to lose in a transformation, because of course, if they lost nothing, no transformation would happen. The point is that those who have nothing should get something, so those who have something can only lose. So one could only appeal to reason if this reason would give the propertied, leading class the impulse to want to lose something. They will not go for that. That was Karl Marx's view. So you have to appeal to those who have nothing to lose. That is why the “Communist Manifesto” ends with the words: “Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, but they have everything to gain. Proletarians of all countries, unite!”

Now you see, since the publication of the Communist Manifesto, this has become a conviction, so to speak. And today, when certain sentiments, which are already influenced by this view, are alive precisely in the majority of the proletariat, today one can no longer properly imagine what a tremendous turnaround in socialist thought took place around the mid-19th century. But it would be good if you would take something like The Gospel of a Poor Sinner by Weitling, a journeyman tailor who wrote it not so long before the Communist Manifesto, and compare it with all the things written after the Communist Manifesto appeared. In this “gospel of a poor sinner” that is truly inspired by genuine proletarian sentiment, there is a language that is, one might say, in a certain sense even poetic, glowing language, but it is definitely a language that seeks to appeal to people's good will, to their insight. That is Weitling's conviction, that you can do something with people's good will. And this conviction only disappeared around the middle of the 19th century. And the event that caused it to disappear is precisely the publication of the Communist Manifesto. And since that time, since 1848, we can actually follow what we call the social question today. Because if we wanted to talk today like Saint-Simon, like Fourier, like Weitling – yes, we would really be preaching to the deaf today. For to a certain extent it is absolutely true that one cannot achieve anything in the social question by appealing to the insight of the leading and guiding circles, who have something. That is quite right. The leading and guiding circles have never admitted this, and they are hardly likely to admit it today either – they don't even know if they do, because unconscious forces in the human soul play an extraordinarily important role there.

You see, in the course of the 19th century, our intellectual culture has almost entirely become a cliché. And the fact that we live with clichés when it comes to intellectual culture is a much more important social fact than is usually thought. And so, of course, the members of the leading and ruling circles also talk about all kinds of nice things when it comes to the social question, and they themselves are often convinced that they already have the good will. But in reality they only believe that; it is only their illusion. The moment something real is tackled in this regard, it immediately becomes clear that it is an illusion. We will talk about this later. But as I said, today we can no longer talk as we did in the age of utopias. The real achievement that came through Karl Marx is that he showed how humanity today is so enmeshed in illusionism that it is nonsense to count on anything but egoism. It must be reckoned with one day; therefore, nothing can be achieved if one wants to somehow count on selflessness, on goodwill, on people's moral principles - I always say “in relation to the social question”. And this change, which has led to the fact that today we have to speak quite differently than it was possible to speak in the first half of the 19th century with regard to the social question, this change has come with the Communist Manifesto. But it did not all come at once. Even after the Communist Manifesto, it was still possible, as you all know – some younger socialists have already forgotten the time – that this very different kind of social thinking, the kind of Ferdinand Lassalle, took hold of hearts and souls well into the 1860s. And even after the death of Lassalle, which occurred in 1864, what was Lassallean socialism continued. Lassalle is one of those people who, despite the fact that the other way of thinking had already emerged, still counted on the power of ideas. Lassalle still wanted to reach people as such in their insight, in their social will above all. But this Lassallean tendency gradually diminished, and the other tendency, the Marxist tendency, which only wanted to take into account the interests of that part of the human population that only had itself and its labor power, gained the upper hand. But it did not happen so quickly. Such a way of thinking only developed gradually in humanity.

In the 1960s, 1970s and even the 1980s, it was quite common for people who belonged to the proletariat or who were politically or socially dependent – even if they were not exactly proletarians – to judge their dependency morally, so to speak, and to morally condemn the non-dependent circles of the human population. In their minds, it was the maliciousness of the leading and guiding circles of the human population that they kept the great mass of the proletariat in dependency, that they paid them poorly and so on. If I may put it trivially, I can say that in the 1960s, 1970s, and well into the 1980s, a lot of social indignation was manufactured and, from the point of view of social indignation, spoken. Then, in the mid-1980s, the strange turnaround actually only really occurred. The more leading personalities of the social movement then stopped talking about the social question out of moral indignation altogether in the 1980s. That was the time when those social leaders who were younger and more or less still glowing with youthful zeal, whom you, who are younger, only saw dying: Adler, Pernerstorfer, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Auer, Bebel, Singer and so on. It was precisely during that period in the 1880s that these older leaders increasingly stopped preaching this indignation socialism. I would put it this way: these leaders of socialism expressed their innermost conviction when they transferred the old indignation socialism into their newer socialist worldview. You will find what I am telling you now is not in any book about the history of socialism. But anyone who lived through those times knows that when people were left to their own devices, this is how they spoke.

Let us assume that in the 1980s, leading representatives of socialism met for a discussion with those who were bourgeois in their attitudes, and let us assume that there was a third group present: bourgeois who were idealists and wished all people well, who would have agreed to make all people happy. Then it could have happened that the bourgeois declared that there must always be people who are poor and those who are rich, and so on, because only that could maintain human society. Then perhaps the voice of one of those who were idealists would have been raised, who were indignant that so many people had to live in poverty and dependence. Such a person might then have said: Yes, it must be achieved that it is made clear to these wealthy people, the entrepreneurs, the capitalists, that they must let go of their possessions, that they must make arrangements through which the great masses come into a different situation, and the like. Very nice speeches could be made on the basis of these words. But then someone would have raised his voice who was just finding his way into socialism at the time and said: What are you talking about, you are a child; that is all childishness, all nonsense! The people who are capitalists, who are entrepreneurs, they are all poor wretches who know nothing but what they have been taught by generations. If they also hear that they should do it differently, they couldn't even do it, because it wouldn't occur to them how they should do it. It doesn't even occur to them that something can be done differently. You must not accuse people, you must not morally condemn people, they cannot be morally condemned; those guys have grown into this, these poor souls, into this whole milieu, and that inspires them with the ideas they have. To morally accuse them means to understand nothing of the laws of human development, means to indulge in illusions. These people could never want the world to take on a different form. To speak of them with indignation is pure childishness. All this has become necessary, and again, it can only become necessary through necessity. You see, you can't do anything with such childish fellows who believe that they can preach to the propertied, to the capitalists, that a new world order should be established; you can't establish a new world order with them; they only indulge in the belief that you can accuse these poor capitalists of wanting to make a different world. I have to make the matter clear, so some things are said in sharp contours, but in such a way that you could hear the speeches I am talking about absolutely everywhere. When they were written, they were retouched a bit, written a bit differently, but that was the basis. Then they continued: With these guys - they are idealists, they imagine the world in terms of an ideology - there is no starting point. We have to rely on those who have nothing, who therefore want something different out of their interests than those who are connected to capitalist interests. And they will not strive for a change of their circumstances for some moral principle, but only out of greed, to have more than they have had so far, to have an independent existence.

In the 1980s, this way of thinking increasingly came to be seen as the development of humanity, no longer in the sense that the individual is particularly responsible for what he does, but that he does what he has to do out of his economic situation. The capitalist, the entrepreneur, exploits the others in the highest innocence. The proletarian, on the other hand, will not revolutionize out of a moral principle, but in all innocence out of human necessity, and will take the means of production, the capital, out of the hands of those who have it. This must happen as an historical necessity.

Well, you see, it was actually only in 1891 at the Erfurt Party Congress that all Lassallianism, which was still based on the insight that people could be educated, was abandoned in favor of belief in the so-called “Erfurt Program”, which was intended to make Marxism the official view of the proletariat. Read the programs of the Gotha and Eisenach party conferences, and you will find two demands that are genuinely proletarian demands of the time, still connected with Lassallianism. The first demand was: the abolition of the wage relationship; the second demand was: the political equality of all people, the abolition of all political privileges. All proletarian demands up to the 1890s, up to the Erfurt Party Congress, which brought about the great turnaround, were based on these two demands. Take a close look at these two demands and compare them with the main demands of the Erfurt Party Congress. What, then, are the main demands of the Erfurt Party Congress? They are: the transfer of private ownership of the means of production into common ownership; the administration of all production, of all manufacture, by a kind of large cooperative, into which the existing state must transform itself. Compare the former program, which was the proletarian program of the 1880s, with what emerged from the Erfurt Party Program and has existed since the 1890s. You will see that in the old Gotha and Eisenach programs, the demands of socialism are still purely human demands: political equality for all people, the abolition of the degrading wage relationship. At the beginning of the 1990s, what I have characterized to you as the attitude that emerged during the 1980s was already taking effect. What was still more of a human demand has been transformed into a purely economic demand. You no longer read about the ideal of abolishing the wage relationship, you only read about economic demands.

Now, you see, these things are connected with the gradual development of the idea that one had about the external creation of a better social condition for humanity. It has also often been said by such people, who still had ideals: Oh, what harm can it do to smash everything, a different order must be brought about; so, a revolution must come, everything must be smashed, the great Kladderadatsch must come, because only from that can a better social order arise. - That was still said by many people in the 1880s who were good, idealistic socialists. To which the others replied, who were in touch with the times, who had become the leaders, those who, as I said, are now buried – they said: There is no sense in any of this, such sudden revolutions are senseless. The only thing that makes sense is that we leave capitalism to its own devices. We see that in the beginning there were only small capitalists, then there were big ones; they joined forces with others and became capitalist groups. Capital has become more and more concentrated. We are in the process of capital becoming more and more concentrated. Then the time will come when there will actually only be a few large capitalist trusts and consortia. Then it will only be necessary for the proletariat, as the non-possessing class, to peacefully transfer the capitalist property, the means of production, into community property one fine day, through parliamentary channels. This can be done quite well, but we must wait and see. Until then, things have to develop. Capitalism, which is actually an innocent child, can't help it that it is exploitative – that is brought about by historical necessity. But it also prepares the way, because it concentrates capital; it is then nicely together, then it just needs to be taken over by the community. Nothing of rapid revolution, but slow development.

You see, the secret of the view, the public secret of the view, which is based on this, was nicely explained by Engels in the 1890s. He said: What is the point of quick revolutions? What is happening slowly under the development of modern capitalism, this massing of capitals, this concentration of capitals, it all works for us. We don't even need to create a commonality, the capitalists are already doing that. We just need to transfer it into proletarian ownership. Therefore, Engels says, the roles have actually been reversed. We, who represent the proletariat, have no complaints about the development; the others have complaints. Because the guys who are in the circles of the propertied people today have to say to themselves: We accumulate capital, but we accumulate it for others. See, the guys actually have to worry about losing their capital; they get hollow cheeks, they get scrawny from these worries about what will become of it. We, as socialists, thrive in this development. We get, says Engels, bulging muscles and full cheeks and look like eternal life. – That's what Engels says in an introduction he wrote in the 1890s, characterizing what is developing, and how one need only wait for the development, which is actually taken care of by capitalism itself. This development then leads to the transfer of what capitalism has concentrated into the common ownership of those who have had nothing so far. That was actually the mood with which the 20th century was entered by the leading circles of the proletariat.

And so they thought, especially since the time when Marxism was no longer taken as it was in the 1990s, but when it was subjected to a revision, as it was said, in the time when the revisionists appeared, so those who are still alive today, but are old people, such as Bernstein. So the revisionists came. They said that the whole development could be promoted a little, because if the workers only work until the capitalists have gathered everything together, they will still suffer hardship before then, namely in old age they have nothing. Then assurances were made and so on; and above all, it was seen that what the leading classes had as institutions in political life was also appropriated. As you know, the trade union movement also emerged at that time. And within the Socialist Party, there were two strongly divergent directions: the declared trade union party and the actual, as it was then called, political party. The political party was more down-to-earth, a sudden revolution would be of no use, the development had to take place as I have just described it. Therefore, it was a matter of preparing everything for the one point in time when capitalism is sufficiently concentrated and the proletariat has a majority in parliament. Everything had to be driven forward along the path of parliamentarism, of acquiring a majority, so that at the point in time when the means of production were to be taken over into public ownership, the majority would also be there for this transfer. In particular, this group of people, who thought highly of the political party, did not think much of the trade union movement at the end of the 19th century. At that time, the trade unions were advocating the establishment of a kind of organized competition between themselves and the entrepreneurs, in order to repeatedly extract wage increases and similar things from the companies from time to time. In short, they set themselves up to imitate the system of mutual negotiations that existed among the ruling circles themselves, and to extend it to the relationship between the ruling circles and the proletariat. You know, of course, that those who were particularly criticized by the representatives of the actual political socialist system were those who became most bourgeois under the trade union movement. And at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, you could see everywhere among those who were more attuned to the political system a great contempt for those people who had become completely absorbed in trade union life, especially, for example, the printers, who in turn had developed a completely different system of trade union life to the extreme.

These were two very strictly separate directions in social life: the trade unionists and those who were more inclined towards the political party. And within the trade unions, the printers in the printers' association were almost the model boys; they were the model boys who had also earned the full recognition of bourgeois circles. And I believe that just as there was a certain fear, a certain concern about the political Socialist Party, so little by little one saw with great satisfaction that good people like the people in the printers' union came to the fore. People said of them: They are becoming bourgeois, you can always negotiate with them, it's going quite well. When they raise their wages, we raise the prices we charge. That works. And it did work for the next few years, and people didn't think any further ahead. So they were very satisfied with this exemplary development of the trade unions. Well, if I omit some of the more subtle nuances, one can say that these two directions more or less emerged until the times that were then surprised by the world war catastrophe. But unfortunately people did not learn everything from this world war catastrophe that should have been learned with regard to the social question.

Not true, as soon as you look at the situation in Eastern Europe, in Central Europe, if you disregard the Anglo-American world and to some extent the Romance world, if you limit yourself to Central and Eastern Europe, you can say that nothing much has come of this history, which has always been defined as follows: the concentration of capital, and, if you have a majority in parliament, then the capital will pass into the ownership of the community, and so on. The catastrophe of the world war has ensured that this cannot be expected to happen so smoothly today. Those who expected some kind of revolution have often been portrayed as childish, but basically, what has happened in the last four to five years? Let us keep clearly and distinctly in mind what has happened. You have often heard what has happened in the last four to five years: In July 1914, the governments went a little bit “crazy” - or went crazy - and rushed the people into the world war. People believed that there was a world war, battles took place - but with the modern means of war, with the machine means, something completely different was there than in previous wars. There was no longer any possibility that someone would become a particularly famous general, because ultimately it only came down to whether one side had a greater quantity of ammunition and other means of warfare, whether one side was better at producing the mechanical means of war than the other or had discovered a gas and the like that the others did not have. First one side won, then the other side discovered something, then the first side again; the whole thing was a terribly mechanical warfare. And everything that has been said about what has happened here and there on the part of people, that was under the influence of the phrase, it was entirely a phrase. And little by little modern humanity will realize, even in Central Europe, what was put into it as a phrase when one or the other, who was actually nothing more than a somewhat twisted average soldier, was made a great commander in Central Europe. These things have only become possible under the influence of the phrase. Well, that was just the case.

But what really happened? People did not notice this because of external events. While people believed that a world war had been waged – which was actually only a mask – a revolution actually took place. In reality, a revolution happened in these four to five years. People just don't know that today, they still don't pay attention to it. The war is the outside, the mask; the truth is that the revolution has taken place. And because the revolution has taken place, the society of Central and Eastern Europe is in a completely different condition today, and one cannot start with what people had in mind for earlier situations. Today it is necessary that all the thoughts that were formed earlier be completely reorganized, that one think about things in a completely new way. And that is what has been attempted with the book “The Crux of the Social Question”: to correctly calculate the situation we have ended up in as a result of the most recent events. It is no wonder, then, that the people in the socialist parties, who cannot keep up fast enough, have shown this book a misunderstanding after misunderstanding. If people would only take the trouble to examine their own thoughts – to examine a little that which they say they want – they would see how much they live under the influence of the ideas they had until 1914. That is the old habit.

These ideas that we had until 1914 have become so engrained in our environment that they will not come out again. And what is the result? The result is that although a new approach is needed today, although the revolution has taken place in Eastern and Central Europe, although we now need to build up, not according to old ideas but according to new ones, despite all this, people are preaching the old ideas. And what are the parties today, including the socialist parties? The socialist parties are those who continue to preach this or that socialist gospel in the old way, as they preached until July 1914, because there is no difference in these party programs from the earlier ones – at most the difference that comes from outside. For those who know the issues, there is terribly little that is new, nothing at all that is new, in the individual party groups. The old shopworn ideas are still being peddled today. Well, there is a slight difference: if you have a copper kettle and tap it, it makes one sound; if you tap a wooden barrel in exactly the same way, it makes a different sound; but the tapping can be exactly the same. It depends on what you are tapping whether it sounds different. And so it is today, when people talk about their party programs. What is contained in these old party programs is actually the old party storekeeper; just because there are different social conditions now, it sounds a little different today, just as it sounds different with a copper kettle or with a wooden barrel. When the Independent Socialists or the Majority Socialists or the Communists speak, they speak the old party phrases, and it sounds different because it is not a copper kettle but a wooden barrel. In truth, many sides have learned nothing, nothing, nothing. But what matters is that one learns something, that one is told something by this terrible world war, as it is called, but which was actually a world revolution.

And here one can really say: In the broad masses, people are prepared to hear something new. But with the broad masses it is like this: they listen to what the leaders say. There is a good understanding, a good, healthy common sense in the broad, uneducated masses, and one could actually always count on understanding when one presents something truly contemporary, something that can be called contemporary in the best sense of the word. This is partly due to the fact that the masses are uneducated. But as soon as people enter into the kind of education that has been available for the past three to four centuries, this quality of being unspoiled ceases. If you look at what today's bourgeois school education is, from elementary school up to university – and it will be at its worst if the socialist unified school is founded now, because everything that has been done wrong by the bourgeois elementary school will be present to the greatest extent – you can see that what is taught in schools distorts minds and alienates them from life. We have to get out of all this stuff, we really have to stand on our own two feet in the spiritual life if we want to get out of this education. But you see, it is through this education that the great and small proletarian leaders have become so. They had to acquire this education; this education is in our schools and in popular writings, it is everywhere. And then you start to get a dried-up brain and are no longer open to facts, but to party programs and opinions that you have grafted and hammered into yourself, you stick with them. Then even the world revolution can come, you still whistle the old programs at it.

You see, this is essentially what this book, “The Key Points of the Social Question,” and the lectures in many directions have been intended to achieve. For once, the proletariat was really reckoned with in terms of what it absolutely needs today, what is necessary given the current situation. This was understood at the beginning [in the proletariat], but then it was not understood by those who are the leaders of the proletariat in the various party groupings. That is, I do not want to be too unjust, and I do not want to press the truth; I do not want to claim, for example, that these leaders do not understand this book, because I cannot assume that they have read it, that they know it. I would not be stating something that is true if I said that they cannot understand the book. But they cannot bring themselves to understand that something different should be necessary than what they have been thinking for decades. Their brains have become too dry and too rigid for that. And so they remain with what they have thought for a long time and find that what is the opposite of all utopia is a utopia. Because, you see, the book 'The Core Points' fully recognizes that today one can no longer operate in utopia in the sense of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon and so on, but also that one can never again take the standpoint: development will happen by itself. For what Marx and Engels saw, what developed [in their time], from which they drew their conclusions, cannot be drawn from today, because the world war has swept that away, it is no longer there in its true form. Anyone who says the same thing today as Marx and Engels says something that Marx would never have said. He was afraid of his followers, because he said: As for me, I am not a Marxist. — And today he would say: At that time the facts were still different; at that time I drew my conclusions from facts that had not yet been modified and changed as much as the world war has changed everything since then.

But you see, those people who cannot learn from events, who today are of an attitude as the old Catholics were towards their bishops and popes, they cannot even imagine that something like Marxism must also be further developed in the sense of facts. They still see the old facts before them, and that is why people still whistle and hiss the same things that they whistled and hissed before the world war. That is how the socialists do it, but the conservatives do it too. The broadest circles do it that way. The conservatives, of course, do it very drowsily, with completely sleepy souls. The others do it in such a way that they are indeed in the thick of it and see the collapse, but they do not want to reckon with the facts that it reveals. Today, we simply have to bring something new to the people. And therefore it is necessary to understand something [like threefolding] that is not utopian but that takes the facts into account. If those on the other side call what takes the facts into account obstruction, then one could actually be quite satisfied. For if people call what they are pushing forward a straight line, then, in order to pursue something reasonable, one has to shoot into the way in order to bring the unreasonable into another, reasonable direction. But you see, those who do see the reasonable after all should delve into what is being presented here. And these evenings can be used for that.

What has been derived from the facts has long been tried to be put into practice. And so we have been meeting for weeks - I do not need to repeat all these things, you can still ask questions or discuss the pros and cons after this lecture - we have been meeting for weeks to get what we call the works council up and running. We have tried to create this council out of the facts that are currently necessary, to really create it in such a way that it comes from the mere economic life, that it does not come from political life, which cannot provide the basis for economic life. For if we look the facts in the face today, we must stand firmly on the ground of the threefold social organism. And anyone who does not want this threefold structure today is acting contrary to the historical necessity of human development. Today it must be as I have often explained: that spiritual life is taken care of, that economic life is taken care of, that legal or political life is administered democratically. And in economic life, the first step towards a truly social organization is to be taken with the works councils. But how can this be done? Only by first asking the question: Now that the impulse of the threefold social organism exists, it is new compared to all previous party mummies; is there anything else new? Today, fools claim that ideas are just buzzing through the air. If you listen to the discussions, they bring up all sorts of negative things, but they don't bring up anything that could be put alongside the threefold order of the social organism. It is all wishy-washy when people on the socialist side claim that ideas are just floating around in the air — as was said in a newly founded magazine in a review of the threefold order.

The first thing to do is to raise the question and be clear about it: is there nothing else? Then one should stick to the threefold social order until it can be refuted in an objective way, until one can objectively put something equivalent alongside it. One can no longer discuss the old party programs; the world war has discussed them; anyone who really understands knows that these old party mummies have been refuted by the world war catastrophe. But if one cannot answer this question by putting something factually equivalent alongside it, and if one wants to go further, then one can honestly say to oneself: So let us work in the sense of the threefold social order. Let us honestly say to ourselves: the old party contexts have lost their significance; we must work in the sense of the threefold social order.

When I spoke in Mannheim the day before yesterday, a gentleman came forward at the end and said: What Steiner said is nice, but it is not what we want; we do not want another new party in addition to all the old parties. The people who want something like that should join the old parties and work within them. I could only say: I have been following political life very closely for a long time, when the gentleman who spoke was far from being born. And although I have become familiar with everything that has somehow functioned as a social force through my life, I have never been able to work within any party or be part of one, and it does not occur to me, now at the end of my sixth decade of life, to somehow become a party person: I want nothing to do with any party, even one founded by myself. So I want nothing to do with a party founded by myself either; no one need fear that a new party will be founded by me. For I have learned that every party, through the necessities of nature, becomes foolish after some time, precisely because I have never got involved with any party. And I have learned to pity those who do not see this. Therefore no one need fear that a new party will be added to the old ones. That is why we have not founded a new party either, but the Federation for the Threefold Social Organism has come together to represent the ideas of the threefold organism, whose non-utopian character, whose real character is seen by a number of people. But those people who understand this should also honestly and sincerely admit it.

And this must not be allowed to happen either: there is a play in which a cock crows in the morning, and every time the cock crows, the sun rises. Now, the cock cannot see the connection, so it believes that when it crows, the sun follows its call, comes because it has crowed, and that it has caused the sun to rise. If someone in a non-social life indulges in such a delusion, like this cockerel crowing on the dung heap and wanting to make the sun rise, it does not matter. But if, under certain circumstances, the idea of a truly economic works council were to flourish on the soil of the threefold organism and those people who cultivate it were to deny the origin, namely that the impulse the impulse of threefolding has brought this idea into being, and if these people believe that because one crows, the works councils will come, then that would be the same error, and a very disastrous error. But that must not happen. What is happening in this direction [of the works councils], what has been tackled here, must not be detached; it must remain in connection with the correctly understood impulse of the threefold social order. And those who want to realize the works council in the sense of this impulse can never allow themselves to be drawn into the one-sided establishment of the works council alone, with the constant crowing of “works councils, works councils”. That is not enough. It only makes sense if, at the same time, one strives for everything that is to be achieved through the impulse of the tripartite social organism. That is what matters. Because if you really want to understand what is written in the “Key Points”, then you have to take the point of view that can be learned from the facts that the last four to five years have presented. If you look at these facts, they will seem as if you had lived through centuries, and the party programs will seem as if their supporters had slept for centuries. Today, this must be clearly and unreservedly faced.

What I have told you now, I could just as easily have written as a preface to this book. But in the last few months we have seen how rigid and unfruitful the party programs currently are. It would be useful, though, if that were the preface to this book. I have told you today much of what is not in it, because you have, it seems to me, decided to meet here to study the serious social issues of the present in a proper way, building on this book. But before doing so, it must be made clear that one cannot simply carry on in the old style of party programs and party patterns, but that one must decide to take a realistic approach to the facts today and put an end to everything that does not take into account these new facts. Only in this way will you grasp in the right way what is to be achieved with this impulse of the threefold social organism. And you will grasp it in the right way if you find that every sentence in this book is capable of becoming an act, of being transformed into immediate reality. And most of those who say they do not understand it or that it is utopian and the like, they simply lack the courage to think so strongly today that their thoughts can intervene in reality. Those who always crow about “dictatorship of the proletariat,” “seizing power,” “socialism,” they usually think very little about it. Therefore, these word templates cannot be used to intervene in reality. But then they come along and say that [with the “key points”] only something utopian is being offered. A utopia only comes into being in the minds of people who understand nothing about it.

Therefore, one should make clear to these people what Goethe once said, with reference to something else, in a somewhat modified form, laughing at the physiologist Haller, who was an ossified naturalist. Haller had coined the word:

No creative spirit
penetrates into the depths of nature.
Happy he to whom she
presents only the outer shell.

Goethe objected to this and said:

“Into the depths of nature”
Oh, you philistine!
“No creative spirit can penetrate.“
...
“Happy he who sees
Only the outer shell!”
I have heard this repeated for sixty years,
I curse it, but furtively.
Nature has neither core
nor shell,
All at once it is everything.
You alone are the supreme test, whether you are core or shell!

To those who speak of the threefold social organism as a utopia, one would also like to say: You alone are the supreme test, whether what is haunting your brain is utopia or reality. There you will find that all the crows mostly have utopias in them and therefore the reality in their own heads also becomes a utopia or an ideology or whatever they call it. That is why it is so difficult to get through with reality today, because people have obstructed themselves so much that they cannot access reality.

But we must realize that we have to work seriously, otherwise we will not be able to translate our will into action; and that is what it comes down to, to translate our will into action. And if we had to abandon everything because we recognize it as an error, then, in order to move from intention to action, we would have to turn to the truth, which we want to see through as truth, because nothing else can lead from intention to action but the ruthless, courageous pursuit of truth. This should actually be written as a motto, as a motto, in front of the studies of these evenings. I wanted to give you a preface to these study evenings tonight. I hope that this preface will not deter you from cultivating these studies in such a way that, before it is too late, thoughts that carry the seeds of action can be fruitfully placed in the world.

There will be an opportunity for discussion.

Rudolf Steiner: The book “The Key Points of the Social Question” is written in a special way in two directions. Firstly, it is written in such a way that it actually comes entirely from reality. This is something that some people do not consider when reading the book. I can also understand that this is not fully appreciated today. I have already spoken here in this circle – but not all those who are here today were present – about how people really think today. I referred in particular to the example of the professor of political economy, Lujo Brentano, who presented it so nicely in the previous issue of the “Gelbes Blatt”; I will briefly repeat it because I want to take something up from it. This luminary of today's economics at the university – he is, so to speak, the first – developed the concept of the entrepreneur and tried to characterize the features of the entrepreneur based on his enlightened thinking. I do not need to list the first and second features; as a third, he states that the entrepreneur is the one who puts his means of production at the service of the social order at his own risk and expense. Now he has this concept of the entrepreneur, and he applies it. He comes to the strange conclusion that the proletarian worker of today is actually also an entrepreneur, because he corresponds to this concept of the entrepreneur in terms of the first, second and third characteristics. For the worker has his own labor power as a means of production; he has control over it, and in relation to it he turns to the social process at his own risk and expense. Thus this luminary of political economy very aptly incorporates the concept of the proletarian laborer into his concept of the entrepreneur. You see, that is precisely how people think who make concepts that have no meaning at all; they have no meaning when concepts are required that are actually to be applicable to reality. But however little you may be willing to accept, it is safe to say that well over ninety percent of everything taught or printed today operates with such concepts. If you want to apply them to reality, it is just as ineffective as Lujo Brentano's concept of the entrepreneur. This is the case in science, in social science, everywhere. That is why people have forgotten how to understand anything that works with realistic concepts.

Take the basis of the threefold social order. No, you can't lay these foundations in the most diverse ways, because life needs many foundations. But one thing is clear: in more recent times, what might be called the impulse of democracy has emerged. Democracy must consist of every person who has come of age being able to determine their legal relationship in democratic parliaments – directly or indirectly with every other person who has come of age. But if we honestly and sincerely want to bring this democracy into the world, then we cannot manage spiritual matters in the sense of this democracy, because then every person who has come of age would have to decide on matters they do not understand. Spiritual matters must be regulated on the basis of an understanding of the matter at hand. This means that they must be placed in their own right and cannot be administered in a democratic parliament at all. They must have their own administration, which cannot be democratic but must be based on the matter at hand. The same applies to economic life; here, too, economic experience and the inner life of economic life must be the basis for administering the matter. Therefore, economic life on the one hand and intellectual life on the other must be excluded from the democratic parliament. From this, the threefold social organism arises.

There is a professor Heck in Tübingen, who – as I have already mentioned – has said that there is absolutely no need to admit that there is something degrading for the proletarian in the ordinary wage relationship, where one is paid for one's work, because Caruso is also in a wage relationship. The difference would be no difference in principle: Caruso sings and receives his salary, and the ordinary proletarian works and also receives his salary; and he, as a professor, also receives his salary when he lectures. The only difference between Caruso and the proletarian is that Caruso gets thirty to forty thousand marks for one evening and the proletarian a little less. But that is not a fundamental difference, only a difference in the amount of the remuneration. And so, says this witty professor, there is absolutely no reason to feel that the remuneration is degrading; he does not feel that way either. That is just by the way. But now this clever professor has also written a long article against the threefold social order. He starts from the premise that if we organize in three, we will end up with three parliaments. And now he shows that this does not work with three parliaments, because he says: in the economic parliament, the small craftsman will not understand the points of view of the big industrialist, and so on. The good professor has formed his ideas about the threefold order, and he attacks these ideas – which I find much more foolish than Professor Heck does; I would also criticize them to no end – but he has made them himself. The point is not to have three parliaments standing side by side, but to extract what does not belong in any parliament. He simply makes three parliaments and says: That's not possible. — So you live in unrealistic terms and judge the rest by them.

Now, in economics, in political economy, almost only those terms have been introduced that are unreal. But you see, I could not write a whole library now, when time is pressing, in which all economic terms are listed. Therefore, of course, a lot of terms can be found in the “key points” that need to be discussed properly. For example, I need only draw attention to the following:

It is true that in times gone by, social conditions arose basically only through conquest. Some territory was occupied by one people or race; another people burst in and conquered the area. Those races or peoples who were there earlier were pushed down to do the work. The conquering people took possession of the land, and that is how a certain relationship between conquerors and conquered arose. The conquerors had possession of the land because they were conquerors. Thus they were the economically strong, the conquered were the economically weak, and a legal relationship developed. Therefore, in almost all older epochs in historical development, legal relationships based on conquest were established, that is, privileges and disadvantageous rights. Now the times came when it was no longer possible to conquer freely. You can study the difference between free and bound conquest by looking at the early Middle Ages, for example. You can study how certain peoples, the Goths, pushed down to the south, but into fully occupied areas; there they were led to do different things in terms of the social order than the Franks, who moved to the west and did not find fully occupied areas there. This resulted in different rights of conquest. In more recent times, not only the rights that arose from conquests and were dependent on land and soil, but also the rights of those people who derived their privileges from property and who, through economic power, were now able to appropriate the means of production. Thus, in addition to what land law is in the modern sense, ownership of the means of production was added, that is, private ownership of capital. This then resulted in legal relationships arising from economic relationships. You see, these legal relationships arose entirely from the economic relationships.

Now people come and want to have concepts of economic power, of the economic significance of land, they want to have concepts of the means of production, the means of production, the capitals and so on. Yes, but they have no real deeper insight into the way things are. So they take the superficial facts and do not realize what is actually behind the land rights, behind the power relations with regard to the means of production. Of course, all these things are taken into account in my book. There is correct thinking; when speaking of rights, it is spoken from the consciousness of how the right has developed over the centuries; when speaking of capital, it is spoken from the consciousness of how capital has come into being. Care is taken to avoid using a concept that is not fully understood in terms of its origin; that is why these concepts appear differently than in the usual textbooks of today.

But something else has been taken into account as well. Take a certain fact, don't we, the fact of how Protestantism came into being. In the history books, it is often told that Tetzel went around Central Europe and that people were outraged by the sale of indulgences and the like. But that was not the only reason; that is only the superficial view. The main thing behind it was the fact that there was a banking house in Genoa that commissioned this indulgence peddler to travel around Germany – not on behalf of the Pope, but on behalf of this banking house, which had granted the Pope loans for his other needs. The whole story was a capitalist enterprise. From this example of the sale of indulgences as a capitalist enterprise, where even spiritual goods were sold, you can study – or rather, when you begin to study, you gradually come to it – that ultimately all capital power goes back to the superiority of the spiritual. Study how capital actually came to its power and you will find the superiority of the spiritual everywhere. And so it really is. The clever and resourceful have more power than those who are not clever or resourceful. And in this way, much of what is accumulated capital comes into being, justifiably or unjustifiably. This must be taken into account when considering the concept of capital. In such real studies, one comes to realize that capital is based on the development of spiritual power and that to the land rights, to the rights of the conquerors, from another side, the power of the old theocratic spirit has been added. Much of what was then transferred to modern capitalism originated from the old church. There is a secret connection between modern capitalist power and the power of the old church. And all of this has become entangled in the modern power state. Within it, you will find the remnants of the old theocracy and the old conquests. And finally, the modern conquests were added, and the most modern conquest is now supposed to be the conquest of the state by socialism. But in reality, it must not be done that way. Something new must be created that completely does away with these old concepts and impulses. Therefore, it will be important for us to also deal with the underlying concepts in our studies. Today, anyone who wants to talk about social issues must provide precise information about what is right, what is power, and what is actually a [economic] good, a good in the form of commodities and the like. It is in this area that the greatest mistakes are made. I will point out one example; if you are not aware of it, you will misunderstand much of my book.

Today, there is a widespread belief that goods are stored labor, that capital is also stored labor. You may say that it is harmless to have such concepts. It is not harmless, because such concepts poison all social thinking. Do you see how it actually is with labor – labor as the expenditure of labor power? Yes, it is a fact that there is a big difference between, for example, wearing out my physical muscle strength by doing sports and chopping wood. When I do sports, I wear out my physical muscle strength; I can get just as tired and need to replace my muscle strength as someone who chops wood. I can apply the same amount of work to sports as to chopping wood. The difference is not that the labor has to be replaced – of course it has to be replaced – but the difference is that one labor is used only for me, in the selfish sense, and the other is used in the social sense for society. It is the social function that distinguishes these things. If I say that something is stored-up labor, I do not take into account that labor actually ceases to be in something the moment work is no longer done. I cannot say that capital is stored-up labor, but rather I must say that labor is only there as long as it is being performed. But in our present social order, capital retains the power to call labor back at any time. The disastrous thing, as Marx means it, is not that capital is stored-up labor, but rather the institution that capital gives the power to repeatedly put new labor—not stored-up labor—but new labor into its service. Much depends on this, and much more will depend on it, that clear concepts grounded in reality are arrived at for these things. And it is from such concepts, which are now fully grounded in reality, that this book of mine starts. It does not use concepts that were useful for the education of the proletariat. But today, when we are supposed to build something, these concepts no longer make sense.

You see, when I say: capital is accumulated labor – that is good for the education of the proletariat; it was given the feelings it should have. It did not matter that the concept was fundamentally wrong – you can educate with fundamentally wrong concepts. But you can only build something with the right concepts. Therefore, today we need correct concepts in all areas of the economy and cannot continue to work with false concepts. I am not saying this out of frivolity, that you can also educate with false concepts, but rather out of general educational principles. You see, when you tell fairy tales to children, you do not want to build with the things that you develop there; in education, something else comes into consideration than in building in physical reality. There you have to work with real concepts. A concept such as “capital is stored labor” is not a concept. Capital is power and gives power to put newly emerging labor into its service. That is a real concept with a logical connection to the facts. In these areas, one must work with true concepts. That is what was attempted in the Kernpunkte. Therefore, I believe that much of what is not included in the definitions of the terms, in the characteristics of the terms, must be worked out. And anyone who can contribute to this work, which is needed to understand the way of thinking, the basis of this book, will make a very good contribution to these study evenings. So that is what matters, my dear attendees, that is what matters most.

Yes, it would be like writing an encyclopedia if you wanted to clarify all the terms, but what “capital” is can now be done in a single evening of study. Without having clearly understood today: what is capital? What is a commodity? What is labor? What is law? Without these concepts, one cannot make any headway. And these concepts are completely confused in the broadest circles; above all, they must be clarified. One almost despairs today when talking to people about the social order; they cannot keep up because they have not learned to master reality. This is what should be addressed in particular.

In these serious times, we can look at what people who have considered the gravity of the situation think is necessary. We can see what new institutions they imagine are needed, what changes in our untenable conditions are necessary. If we do this, we will see people with the goodwill to dedicate themselves to new institutions, to cooperate in changing what seems to need change in one way or another. If we accept the responsibility for our all-too-obvious social circumstances, then we cannot get around the fact that, although there is so much goodwill and there are so many wonderful ideas, they collapse immediately or, in any event, are not carried out to the extent so necessary today.

Spiritual science seeks, through anthroposophical understanding, to open the path to supersensible knowledge for modern humanity. It has tried for decades to address the conspicuous problems of modern civilization, namely the flagging goodwill and the loss of the wonderful ideas that live in this goodwill. The spiritual science I have presented here for years has attempted to point out exactly what is so necessary in the present, and what so many modern people welcome with such great sympathy or reject with such great antipathy. It tries to point out, on the one hand, what has made conventional science so great, and, on the other hand, as we will discuss today, what this science lacks the means to understand, namely, human will and human feeling.

We live in a time when it is no longer possible for people simply to yield to their instinctive will impulses. The necessity to increasingly transform the old instinctive life into a fully conscious life is especially characteristic of our time, yet so many prejudices arise today when it comes to admitting this. That people must increasingly change the old instinctive motives of human nature into conscious motives is a historical fact, the most important historical fact. It is this fact that has led to the present crisis.

To this end, scientific advances over the last three or four centuries have done much for modern civilization. But today, anyone who contemplates the institutions that arise out of the most vital contemporary needs must come to feel the insufficiencies of modern times that come from the modern scientific orientation and way of thinking. Just now in this city a limited attempt is being made to solve a social problem, a social problem that is more important than most people want to believe. Perhaps this evening we can point out the difficulties of solving such a specific problem.

Through the insight into anthroposophical spiritual science that he has often demonstrated throughout the years, our friend Emil Molt has succeeded in founding the Free Waldorf School upon social thinking appropriate to our times. This school is intended for children of the workers at the WaldorfAstoria factory and for a few others who will shortly be included. The imprint of modern society is visible in the manner of the school’s creation and in its connection with an industrial firm. This school must take into account the most practical needs of the people who entrust it with the education of their children. We could say that it is symbolic that this school was created in connection, in direct connection, with the industrialism that gives rise to the most important social questions of our time.

In founding the school, the faculty (for whom I held an introductory seminar lasting several weeks) considered the social pedagogical tasks relevant to modern culture. More than we are aware, our picture of modern civilization (as I already mentioned) results from the way our imagination has developed out of our understanding of physical nature. As I have emphasized for decades, spiritual science fully recognizes the value and meaning of the modern scientific way of thinking; in fact, spiritual science values conventional science more highly than that science values itself. Nevertheless, because conventional science so colors our picture of modern civilization, spiritual science must go beyond it. I have also emphasized that the means used by spiritual science to come to its understanding of the world differ from those of conventional science. I have repeatedly explained how we can really enter into the supersensible world through the path of spiritual science, how, through the development of inner capacities that otherwise only sleep in human nature, the way opens for us to see into the spiritual world in which we live. We can see into the spiritual world just as we can recognize the laws of the physical world through our senses, through reason, through associated events. I have explained how we, by awakening dormant capabilities, can look into the spiritual world that always surrounds us, but is unknown to us because the necessary sense organs remain undeveloped in ordinary life.

Today I want to discuss the capacities that spiritual science uses to see into the supersensible world—healthy, quite normal capacities of human nature. Those who want a deeper insight into how spiritual science works need not concern themselves with the accusations of our critics that it is based upon the use of unwholesome powers. It is quite simple to show the source of Anthroposophy and its path to the supersensible world.

If you look at my book How 7o Know Higher Worlds, you will see that I describe those stages of supersensible knowledge that people can attain through the development of certain capacities sleeping within them: 1) the Imaginative stage of knowledge, 2) the stage of Inspiration and 3) the stage of true Intuition. Now, where does spiritual science find the forces involved in such things as Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition? We can show that certain capacities forming the basis of human nature are at work during childhood. Later in life, when people have reached their normal size, when growth is complete, in a sense these forces lie unused. This spring I discussed the various stages of child development.¹ I remarked that during the first period of life, people are primarily imitative beings. They instinctively learn everything that people around them do, and they imitate this in their movements, sounds, speech, even in their thoughts. This imitative behavior continues until approximately the change of teeth, until approximately seven years of age. Then those who can more exactly observe human nature begin to see another activity. They can observe the need in human nature, beginning at six or seven years of age and continuing until sexual maturity, to rely upon people with experience, upon those adults in whom children can devotedly believe. During this period, children need to act under the influence of honored authorities. The self-reliance that is based in people’s confidence in their power of judgment, the self-reliance that enables them to involve themselves in all sorts of things in life, first appears with sexual maturity at the age of fourteen and continues to develop until the age of twenty or twenty-one.

These are three quite distinct periods of human youth. Only people who have lost healthy judgment due to all kinds of prejudices can overlook what develops in the child, what causes physical development until the age of seven when bodily development is relatively complete—the form continues to grow but the general structure is complete. Only such people can overlook how those forces that act formatively until seven years of age subsequently work more inwardly, particularly as inner growth. They act as living forces, making children stronger until fourteen years of age. They work between the ages of fourteen and twenty to strengthen those organs directed toward the environment, those organs that are capable of immersing themselves in their surroundings. In this time those inner spiritual forces act upon the human physical body. Inner spiritual forces act in quite differing ways upon the human body until seven, then fourteen, then twenty-one years of age. Forces that for an unprejudiced observer are quite clearly inner spiritual forces work on human organs to master them and develop them further.

These forces really exist. The forces that in a certain sense cause the crystallization of the second set of teeth out of human nature, a meaningful conclusion to the stage of human development ending at age seven, really exist. The forces that work mysteriously on that part of human beings that is connected with growth and the unfolding of human nature until age fourteen really exist. These forces are real; they are active. But after the completion of physical development (around the age of twenty), where are these inner spiritual forces that have acted upon our physical form? They still exist; they are still there. These inner forces fall asleep, just as the forces we use in our everyday life, our everyday work from waking to sleeping, fall asleep and become dormant while we sleep. The forces of human nature that blazed during childhood and youth, the forces that fired the developmental changes that transform children into adults, and everything connected with these changes, fall asleep around the age of twenty. Those who look at the whole human being know that at the very moment when human beings reach this point, the forces that acted in the child, in the youth, step back into the innermost part of human nature. These forces go to sleep.

We can awaken the forces that have brought forth the processes normally observed between the ages of fourteen and twenty, through which we slowly gain an understanding of our surroundings, through which those organs develop that can form only after puberty. These organs are not one-sidedly oriented toward sexual love, but are formed such that we can deepen our love of all humanity. This loving absorption in all humanity gives us true understanding of the world. The forces we use until the age of twenty-one for growing and forming the inner organs become inflexible, just critical intellect. A certain inner spiritual force stops working formatively. It becomes an imaginary inner force, a power of the soul, no longer so strong as it was earlier when it had to guide human formation. If we can find it sleeping in human nature, this power that once was a formative force but after the age of twenty no longer is, if we develop it so it exists with the same strength as before, then, acting now through love, it becomes Imaginative power. People attain a capacity to see the world not only through abstract concepts, but in pictures that are alive, just as dreams are alive, and that represent reality just as our abstract concepts do. The same force that previously acted upon the healthy developing human to form the capacity to love, can enable us to see such pictures of the world and to reach the first stage of supersensible knowledge. We can awaken this human capacity and plunge it deeper into our surroundings than normal thinking and normal sensing can go.

Then we can go further, since the forces that cause the important formative changes from approximately seven years of age, from the change of teeth, until sexual maturity, are also sleeping in us. These forces sleep deeper under the surface of normal soul life than the forces I just characterized as Imaginative. When we reawaken these idle formative capacities, when we call these spiritual powers out of their sleep, they become the forces of Inspiration. These teach us that Imaginative pictures are filled with spiritual content, that these pictures, which appear to be dreams but really are not, reflect a spiritual reality that exists in our surroundings, outside ourselves.

We can go even deeper, into the strongest forces sleeping in human nature, those that have worked upon human formation from birth until the change of teeth. These formative forces that were active in the first years of life have withdrawn themselves most deeply from external life. If we bring them forth again in later life and imbue them with Imagination and Inspiration, we will then have the Intuitive powers of supersensible knowledge. These are the powers that enable us to delve into the reality of the spiritual world in the same way that we can delve into the physical world through the senses and the will usually associated with the body.

In three stages, through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, we gain access to the supersensible world. These powers do not employ anything abnormal, but actually are the most normal of all things, namely the forces of healthy human development from birth until the early twenties. These forces then lie fallow, but we can bring them forth again. When they are no longer occupied with forming us, we can use them to open up the spiritual world.

I have now given you some idea of the source of those forces that open the way for spiritual science to enter the supersensible world. Those who seriously wish to follow this path will know how to differentiate what it can properly give from what simple conventional science, simple scientific understanding, can offer.

Why do I continually emphasize modern scientific understanding? It would not be so necessary to emphasize this scientific understanding and the attitude that derives from it, if modern popular thinking, including social thinking and social policies, were not so completely patterned after it. To be sure, we have here something that many people seldom consider. However, we must consider it if we wish to find something that will really lead to healing our ailing social conditions. We must be clear that scientific thinking so completely permeates all human thinking that when people begin to consider something else, they automatically revert to the modern scientific attitude and manner of thinking.

What is, in fact, the social political thinking of the second half of the nineteenth century right up to the present? What is it that fundamentally, even now, is presented to us as socialist theory? It is a social thinking patterned after mechanistic scientific thinking. Why does this social thinking appear to be so unfruitful, as I have often described it in these lectures? Because this social thinking, take for example the Marxist English Socialist thinking, is infested through and through with a conventional scientific attitude, an attitude that when used in this area simply cannot accomplish anything.

Now look at the most important characteristic of what I have referred to today as supersensible understanding in the sense of spiritual science. The most important characteristic is that this supersensible understanding uses those forces closely connected with what is human. What forces more closely connected with human nature could we possibly use than those that form human nature itself? How could we possibly use anything more human to achieve an ideal, to achieve anything we want to accomplish? How could we use forces for cognition more human than those that we can bring out of hiding the moment they are no longer needed to form human nature? There is a way of understanding in contrast to the modern scientific attitude and socio-political way of thinking, a life of abstract concepts connected only with the structure and function of the human head. This way of understanding is through those forces that people still retain after their formation is complete at the age of twenty or so. This way of understanding uses forces allowed to sleep, but which are more real because they work on human formation. What we can obtain from scientific concepts and happily use in the social sciences, and wish to use in social pedagogical tasks—these concepts and ideas, in fact, everything that we can obtain in this way for our souls, are only a reflection of reality in comparison to the content of supersensible knowledge. Every concept we can gain when our reason combines sense impressions and observations, everything that we know from our will impulses—all this is actually only a shadow, a reflection, in contrast to what is so tightly enmeshed with human growth and activity and existence as the forces that form us. Thus, the abstract character (the character of being “independent of human nature”) arises out of the scientific way of thinking that does not require people to use their will. We are proud of obtaining such knowledge that we can refer to as scientific and can call “objective.”

Concerning knowledge, spiritual science does not attempt to throw what is human out, but rather to draw it into the world. It attempts to come to its knowledge through just those forces that form people. We can observe that scientific concepts, and socio-political concepts patterned after the same methods, satisfy human intellectual curiosity. They satisfy the intellect, but clearly do not have the power to enliven, to infuse, to ignite human will. Were this scientific viewpoint and its onesidedness to become increasingly stronger and continually more dominant, in the end human willpower would completely atrophy. Nowadays we must motivate human willpower, atrophying under the influence of the scientific mentality, with something that can ignite it. This ability to stimulate willpower arises from people themselves because it can be drawn out of human nature as spiritual scientific knowledge.

This is what spiritual science wants to do, and what spiritual science, as we mean it here, can do. It wants to effect an understanding that is not simply there for the intellect alone, but flows into the feeling and the will.

Today, particularly in education, people repeatedly insist that we should not teach children knowledge simply for the sake of knowledge, that we should also teach them to be capable, to be able to work; we should develop the will. Here we have one of those points where the goodwill of our contemporaries becomes evident. Certainly much goodwill exists when people today say that we should not simply have “knowledge schools,” but schools that develop a capacity to work, schools that develop capabilities. But goodwill alone does not suffice. We need the capacity to illuminate this goodwill, to brighten it with true insight. We do not achieve this insight, however, by simply saying that we should create “schools of capabilities” instead of “schools of knowledge.” The core of this insight is that now we must move more and more from the instinctive to the conscious. It is necessary not only to affect the will instinctively, not only that the teacher instinctively affect the pupil. The important thing is that concepts, ideas and imagination be allowed to flow from the teacher to the child. However, these must be concepts that are not simply concepts in thought, but concepts that can stimulate the will, that can satisfy the whole person. We are not concerned that people often stress that only the will should be developed, or only the feeling. No, what we are concerned with is that we gain the possibility of working to obtain such an insight, such concepts that have the power in themselves to go into the will, to develop the inner fire of the will. This is what we need today to heal the present mentality, to properly use the will in the second social pedagogical area.

The first social pedagogical area is what the recently founded Waldorf School is intended to serve, namely that area encompassing the elementary grades.² Elementary education should prepare people for true social thinking today and in the near future. We shall see how much this is a question of spiritual science, a question of the path into supersensible worlds.

The other aspect of the social pedagogical question is to prepare people to learn from life. We do not fare well in life if we view it as a rigid and foreign object. We can place ourselves correctly in life only when every moment, every day, every week, every year becomes a source of learning for our further development. Regardless of how far we go in our schooling, we will have accomplished the most if, through this schooling, we have learned how to learn from life. If we find the proper way to place ourselves in relationship to everyone we meet, then they will become for us a source of further development through everything they are and through everything they consciously and unconsciously give us. In everything that we do, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, we experience ourselves such that everything we experience in our surroundings becomes a source of continuing further development. Life is a school for every healthy person.

However, neither of these social pedagogical realms, learning in school or learning from life, can meet the needs of society now and in the near future if they are not strengthened by what spiritual science can provide.

Today, people think we should educate children as “individuals.” We also find other fundamental thoughts represented in modern education. With one exception, I do not wish to go into the details of modern pedagogy. However, I do wish to mention that this pedagogy contains certain standards that are made clear to those who teach. The teachers are to educate according to these standards. Much goodwill lives in these standards also. People have done an exceptional amount of well-meant thinking in forming this pedagogy. However, what is necessary now and in the near future is a /iving pedagogy. What we need is a living pedagogy, derived from supersensible human understanding, that replaces an abstract pedagogy that sets up standards for teaching children.

This supersensible perception of human beings does not at all ignore sense-perceptible understanding—it takes it fully into account. The sense-perceptible view of human beings, with all its understanding of anatomy, physiology, and so forth, treats people as an abstraction. Supersensible perception adds the spirit-soul element, while at the same time taking sense-perceptible knowledge fully into account. It observes the whole person, with emphasis upon the development of the whole person. It can, therefore, concentrate upon the developing whole person at the time when the parents entrust him or her to the elementary school at about the age of seven. What developed in the child as a result of imitation requires the support of authority during this life-forming period. Only when we are able to look at people in such a way, can we see what truly lives in them. In that we observe such a change, we can see what is unfolding in people. If you notice in the right way, with sensitivity, what wants to develop in people at six or seven years of age, and if you have not become a teacher, but are a teacher, then an awareness for this most wonderful riddle awakens through the innermost living forces without the necessity of pedagogical standards—the developing person continuously offers him- or herself to your soul’s eye.

Here lies something that a true social pedagogical reformation, which must be the basis of a modern unified elementary school, must really take into account. Here we must say that it is essentially unimportant whether new teachers have really learned what is often taught as pedagogy, as special methods. What is important for future teachers is that, through their training, they have become capable of looking into the developing person. What is important is that they have acquired the skills that they can acquire through a thorough, real understanding of human beings. What is important is that they have become capable in the presence of each child and in each moment to newly form and re-form the educational task.

For the true teacher, pedagogy must be something living, something new at each moment. Everything that teachers carry in their souls as memories robs them of their originality. New insights into the nature of developing humans that allow the pedagogy to change and be alive in those people who teach must replace pedagogical norms. We could even say that the best pedagogy (stated radically) is one that the teacher continually forgets and that is continually reignited each time the teacher is in the presence of the children and sees in them the living powers of developing human nature. When an allencompassing interest in the secrets of the world, in the enigma of the world and in world views accompanies such an attitude, then within the teachers will live what enables them to give that part of themselves that should enter the being of the children.

How can the teacher’s inner nature become so alive in the way I have just described it? Certainly no longer through a way of thinking derived from science, but only when the teacher’s will is ignited through a science drawn from forces connected with human nature. The teachers who have absorbed what spiritual science knows about the supersensible nature of human beings, who have inwardly enlivened this, who in a living fashion carry within themselves a science founded upon those forces through which the child is to be educated—such teachers can make this knowledge into a living inner fire for teaching. The basis of such a pedagogical art is supersensible knowledge, that is, the same forces that from day to day, from week to week, from year to year bring about the growth and development of the child.

Think about it for a moment. Consider how close the sources of pedagogical art are to what grows in the child when supersensible knowledge controls and directs what the teacher brings to the child! We should not search for new abstract ideas nor clever new rules in what we refer to as social pedagogical effectiveness. What we should search for is that the living should replace the dead, the concrete should replace the abstract.

To demand such things today is much more necessary than people often imagine. It is remarkable that people cannot imagine that there is supersensible knowledge that acts upon sensible knowledge, that acts upon life and teaching, upon know-how and capabilities. Already people have begun to misunderstand the core of the Waldorf School, and thus they slander, often unconsciously, what we intend with the Waldorf School. People think the Waldorf School must be some kind of parochial school because those who stand at its cradle begin with spiritual science. They think that it is a school that teaches Anthroposophy to the children. They do not have any idea how deeply stuck they are in old ideas when they assume this, whether it be with a positive or negative attitude. We have absolutely no need to assert Anthroposophy, to assert it as a point of view by developing anthroposophical concepts and seeing to it that children learn these as they previously learned religion. That is not at all our task. We will continue with what we have already stated, namely that the Protestant and Catholic religion teachers shall teach the Protestant and Catholic religions. We will not set any obstacles in the way of the desire to give this religious instruction. We will keep our promises in this regard. We do not seek in any way to bring any new philosophical opinions into the school. We seek something else. Our viewpoint will result from spiritual science because it comes from human nature. We will pay attention to the way it develops human know-how, human capabilities, the way it directly flows into the human will. Our task lies in our pedagogical activities: how we act in a school, how we teach, how we plan the lesson and its goals, which teaching methods to use, how knowledge and philosophy affect the skill and capability of the teacher. These are our tasks.

For this reason, we will have to correct much that (out of goodwill, but without the necessary insight) people consider to be the goals and content of modern educational activity. For instance, people often say that we should emphasize visual aids.³ Yes, certainly, within boundaries, it is good to use illustrative material, that is, to teach children about things that we show them directly. But, we must not allow these materials to lead to a slide into the banality and triviality of superficial consideration. People always want to stoop to the level of the child, and then all kinds of trivialities result, like those we find when we read visual aid guides. We concerned ourselves with such things while forming the Waldorf School. There we could see how trivial the so-called visual aids are that are derived completely out of the materialistic attitude of our time. We could see how forced instruction is when the teacher stoops to the child’s level of understanding, when the teacher is not to teach the child anything other than what the child can easily comprehend.

Now, if you only teach children what they can understand, then you neglect what can be the most beautiful thing in human life. If you always want to stoop to the level of what the children can already comprehend, then you do not know what it means later in life, perhaps at the age of thirty or thirty-five, to look back upon what you were taught in school. You do not understand what it means to have been taught something that you did not fully comprehend because you were not yet mature enough. But it comes up again. Now you notice that you are more mature, because you now understand it. Such a re-living of what has been taught forms the real connection between the time in school and the whole rest of life. It is immensely valuable to hear much in school that we cannot fully comprehend until we re-experience it later in life. We rob the children of this possibility when, with banal instruction, we stoop to the level of the child’s understanding.

What then is the task of the teacher who wants to bring the children something they can absorb, but perhaps will understand only after many decades? Teachers must have the necessary inner life forces so that through their personality, through what they put into the teaching, they can give the children something they cannot yet fully understand. A relationship exists between the teacher and the children through which the teacher can bring things to the children. Things can be brought to the children through the way in which they live in the teacher, because the children feel the desire to experience the world that is aglow within the teacher. That is why the children can grasp them. It is tremendously important that the teachers become leaders in this way, that through the fire that lives in them, they become a wellspring for what the children will carry in their own lives. Compare this with how the banal instruction children receive dims with time.

There are many other examples to show that pedagogy must be something living, something stirred up in the teachers out of an understanding of human beings obtained through human capacities. More than anyone else, the teacher needs an understanding of humanity based upon a supersensible view of human beings. If, in teaching, we would use what comes from a supersensible world view and understanding of humanity, we could immediately remove all abstractions so that the teaching would come from the practical.

There are people today who think that they are practical, who think that they stand in practical life, but it is their “practicality,” which is really only routine, that caused the terrible misery and misfortune that resulted in the war, and in which we still find ourselves today. Instead of obtaining an insight into what supersensible knowledge could achieve for education, these people say supersensible knowledge has nothing to do with the true practicalities of life. They have conjured up these miserable times because they have always said this, because, in reproachable carelessness, they have thrown out the true supersensible content of practical life. We have scarcely caught our breath, and now these people want to continue this stupid practice by kicking to death every truly earnest desire for improvement. If those people who absolutely do not want to see what is necessary for our time are again victorious, then in a short time we will again have the same misery that started in 1914. Those people who wish to crush everything supersensible in the activities they so slander, which are in reality so practical, are exactly those people who have led us into this misery. That is what we need to see clearly today.

I would not have spoken these serious words had not the terrible croakings of doom again arisen where we want to create something quite practical, like the Waldorf School. We should have learned something from the terrible events of the last four to five years, and we should progress. We must keep a sharp eye on those who do not want to progress, who want to begin again where they left off in 1914. We need not worry that they will keep a sharp eye on us—that they will do for sure. But, we must also keep a sharp eye on them. All people must unite who have a sense that something must happen today that, on the one hand, really originates out of the true spirit, and, on the other hand, is capable of affecting serious practical life.

For such very practical reasons, what is often an empty slogan, particularly concerning pedagogical questions, must for once be handled with objective seriousness. We must take into account, for instance (we paid particular attention to such things in the seminar for the Waldorf School faculty), that around nine years of age something important ends and something new begins with children. Until the age of nine, children are strongly entwined with their surroundings. The imitative principle is still enmeshed in the authoritative principle. The possibility of developing the feeling of self first begins at the age of nine, so that, for instance, scientific facts, nature studies of the plant and animal world, can be brought to the child. At the same time, the stage between seven and nine years of age is such that we do well not to bring the children anything that is taught out of convention, that is not basic and does not obviously flow out of human nature.

We must gradually lead children into reading and writing. Anyone can see that the letters we have today are something conventional. (With Egyptian hieroglyphics, it was different.) That means we must teach writing starting from drawing. At first we do not pay any attention to the shapes of the letters, but draw forms. We must begin basic drawing and painting, along with music, in the lowest grades. We must derive the whole education from the child’s artistic capabilities. The children’s artistic capabilities touch their entire being. They touch the child’s will and feeling, and then, through will and feeling, the intellect. We then go on. We continue with drawing and painting to motivate the will through artistic instruction. We go on to writing and develop letters out of the drawn forms. Only then comes reading—it is even more intellectual than writing. We develop reading out of writing. I am giving these details so you can see that spiritual science is not off in the clouds but enters into all details of practical instruction. A living understanding of humanity, which must replace an abstract pedagogy, leads into all the details, into the ways in which we teach mathematics, writing, and languages.

So much for the special area of instructional pedagogy.

The social aspect of pedagogy encompasses all of practical living. After we have finished school, we go out into “real life,” but our conventional education creates a gulf between us and life. Thus we see that there is something instinctive in the great questions of humanity. Although these questions address the needs of life, there is no insight for solving them.

I would like to take note of another question that has concerned modern civilization for some time, the so-called feminist question, namely, what forms the gulf between men and women. People are correct in trying to close this gap, but they cannot close it when they do not really understand what is common between men and women. If they only pay attention to what they can learn about human beings in the physical world and from the modern scientific way of thinking, the difference between men and women remains extreme. We will first bridge the abyss between men and women when we bring the differences in perception and ways of working in the world into balance. We will attain this balance through what we can arrive at through the knowledge, will and feeling that exist in the forces that form the basis of human nature. What men do not have, but women do, gives men a certain inclination; and what women do not have, but men do, gives women a certain inclination. During the time when people are physically female, they are spiritually male, and during the time they are physically male, they are spiritually female. If what can come into our society from spiritual science would permeate our culture, then the ground would be prepared for such things as the so-called feminist question. We can apply this to numerous questions, but I only want to remark about one other.

People cry out for organization. It is obvious that they cry out for it since the complicated relationships of modern social life require organization. I have said much in my lectures about the nature of such structure. However, people think that we need only to organize things according to current scientific principles, according to modern socio-political thinking, without spiritual science. Lenin and Trotsky organize, Lunatscharsky organizes according to these principles. They have placed economic life into a mechanistic form, and they want to do the same with spiritual life. Neither the stories of various people who judge out of their impressions, nor what journalists and other people who have recently been in Russia tell, is important. What we can use are Lenin’s writings. They show anyone with insight what to expect: the organizational death of everything that is a true source of humanity, of what lies in the individual human being and in human nature. No greater foe of true human progress exists than what is now happening in the East.

Why is this? Because they absolutely ignore what can come from spiritual development, namely true social pedagogical life forces. We must organize, but we must be conscious that although we want to organize, people must live in this organization. People must live in this organization and have the opportunity to teach what the inner source of human nature is, what is hidden after people have grown, what we can again bring out of the sleeping powers of their human nature. Not everyone needs to be a clairvoyant and experience what can be experienced through the awakened powers of human nature, but everyone can be interested in what humanity can achieve through these living human forces.

When people take interest in such things, then a new capability awakens in them. This is a capability we can best characterize when we bring to mind an area where people already have somewhat weakened sensibilities. This capability can be likened to what a language is to all the people connected by it. To discover the spirit living in the language, those who speak one language must first understand the genius, the wonderful artistic structure of the language, even though they already speak it. They need to understand the spirit emanating from the language that permeates the people and forms the language into a unified whole. In that we learn to speak, we absorb, not consciously, but instinctively and unconsciously, with every word and with every connotation, something that reveals to us the genius of the language in a mysterious way. Social life is something that lives in many instincts. Language has always been one of the most wonderful social instruments. Only, in modern times, as we go from East to West, language has become increasingly abstract. People feel less and less what the sounds of the language say to the heart and to the head, and particularly the connections that the language forms to speak to the heart and to the head. People feel less and less the mysterious way in which the genius of the language makes impressions upon them.

Many other things that touch people as does the genius of language will become effective if a general human development becomes more widespread through the activity of the elementary school—acting not as a parochial school, but through rationally formed instruction. Then when people meet one another, they can unite through speech. Every conversation, every relationship to another person, becomes a source for the further development of our soul. What we do in the world that affects other people becomes a source of our own further development. We can first develop the elements of communication between people if we meet other people with those feelings aroused in us. We can develop this communication if we do not follow abstract modern science, but take up the living fire within us. This living fire can come to us from a science that is connected to what in human nature allows people to grow until twenty years of age, and from then on can lead to a development of supersensible knowledge.

Even though I have described the three forms of the social organism since spring, the spiritual sphere, the rights-political sphere and the economic sphere, I must emphasize that these are three external forms. Inside these three external forms will live the intimate inner connections forged from one human soul to another. People will recognize each other more clearly than they do today. If, in place of antisocial desires, those social motives that are the basis of true social life are present, then the modern scientific way of thinking can at last become fully useful for humanity. Through this scientific way of thinking we will be able to properly master the external lifeless nature that appears as technology and other things. The ethical, moral forces that can be kindled by the spiritual will derived from spiritual science will take care that the results of technology are useful to human beings. An inner structure that carries people and forms human life will come into the external forms of the social organism. Without this inner structure we cannot develop a fruitful external social form.

That is what I wanted to mention to you today, that spiritual science as we think of it here is not in any way abstract, is not something floating in the clouds, is not, as some people claim, metaphysical. It is something that streams directly into human will and makes people more adept and more capable of living. This remains unrecognized by those who refuse to see the present need for our spiritual science. They will also refuse to see that something like the Waldorf School has been formed, not arbitrarily, but out of truly practical life.

Can we expect much from those people setting the tone today? This spring and summer I repeatedly mentioned in my social lectures (I only mention this as characteristic of much of the modern intellectual attitude) that among the issues of the working class is that, in the future, work must not be a commodity. In a neighboring city I spoke about the “commodity character” of work. I think that people need only the tiniest bit of common sense to understand the general intent in the words “commodity character.” This morning I received a newspaper published in that neighboring city. The lead editorial closes with the sentence, “I am confused by the sentence that ‘work must be freed from its true character’”⁴ Yes, that's possible today. Today it is possible for people who are unable to understand something so clearly related to modern culture as “commodity character” to make judgments about such things. Someone like this could not in an entire life have possibly heard of the “commodity character of human work.” How do such people live in the present time? When it is possible to become so out of touch with reality, it is no wonder that we cannot get together in modern social life.

This is not only possible for people such as the writer of this editorial, it is also possible for those people who think they know everything about practical life. It is possible for people who, at every opportunity, look down upon what appears to them to be idealistic. They do not speak about real life any differently than people who see a U-shaped piece of iron and are told it is a magnet. “No,” they answer, “this is used to shoe horses.” These modern people who wish to shut supersensible knowledge out of practical life are like the person who sees a horseshoe-shaped magnet only as a horseshoe. They do not think anything can be true that does not directly meet their limited powers of understanding.

Today there are many more people than we think who hinder social progress. There are many people who do not want to understand that we cannot simply say that the last four or five years have brought something terrible to the people of Europe—something more terrible than ever before existed in historical times. To this we must add that now things must occur out of a depth of thought that people have never before reached in the course of what we call history. We have come to a time in which people think completely abstractly. Most abstract are the political opinions and programs that existed at the beginning of the twentieth century and that grew out of a modern scientific education. People do not want to understand how abstract, how foreign are the means they wish to use to come to grips with life. People think that they are practical. For example, people see today that in world trade money runs through their fingers, that the German mark is worth less day by day. And from day to day we do exactly those things that, of course, cause the value of the mark to fall. “Practical” people have again taken the helm. So long as people do not see that truly practical life does not lie where they, in 1914, looked for it, but in the understanding of the ideals of life, so long will nothing get better. People today are not modest enough to admit that things will get better only if they come to a deepening in their insight. Goodwill will not do it alone, that is the cancer of our times. It will be necessary that people see more and more what the true basis of spiritual cognition is. Spiritual cognition, because it is based upon the development of the same powers that work in the formation of healthy human beings, can place them in social pedagogical life. What we need today is spirituality—not a naive spirituality, not a spirituality lost in the clouds, not a metaphysical spirituality, but true spirituality that affects practical life, true spirituality that can master the problems of life. We also need practical insight into life; we need to be in life, but in such a way that our view of life kindles a desire to bring this spirituality into life.

From a spiritual-scientific point of view, people must understand one thing, otherwise no progress will be possible in our unfortunate times. The axiom must be:

Seek the truly practical material life, but seek it such that it does not numb you to the Spirit working in it.

Seek the Spirit, but seek it not in supersensible lust, out of supersensible egotism; seek it because you want to become selfless in practical life, selfless in the material world.

Turn to the old maxim: Never Spirit without matter, never matter without Spirit!

Do this so that you can say, “We want to perform all material deeds in the light of the Spirit, and we want to seek the light of the Spirit in such a way that it develops warmth within us for our practical deeds.”

Spirit brought by us to matter,
Matter wrought by us to its revelation
Driving the Spirit out;
Matter receiving from us Spirit revealed,
Spirit forged by us back into matter—
These create that Living Being,
Bringing humanity to true progress,
Progress only longed-for
By the best desires in the depths of human souls.

• 1. Translators’ note: Lectures of 5/11/19, 5/18/19, 6/1/19, contained in A Social Basis for Primary and Secondary Education (GA 192), Waldorf Institute, Adelphi University, New York, 1975.
• 2. Translators’ note: In the Germany of 1919, many children finished formal schooling with the eighth grade and then entered an apprenticeship.
• 3. Translators’ note: The reader should be aware that the “visual aids” and “illustrative materials” meant here are to be understood as actual materials in the classroom, as distinct from a verbal or written description of the object of discussion. Prior to this time illustrative material was rarely used in the classroom, and it was a somewhat controversial innovation in 1919.
• 4. Translator’s note: Steiner used the German word Warencharakter (commodity character); the editor understood him to say wahren Charakter (true character). Their pronunciation is nearly identical.

Dear attendees! In the past, almost every year I have been able to give a lecture in this city in the field that I have recently taken to calling spiritual science. Since our friends have also requested such a reflection in these fateful times, it shall be given this evening. But you will understand that in our present time, when all our feelings, our emotions and our thoughts are focused on the great events, on those events that claim so many hopes, so much confidence, on the events that undoubtedly most significant events are now unfolding, events that are also causing so much pain and suffering. You will understand that at this time, such a reflection, especially if it is to be based on the spiritual scientific worldview, must also be made in view of the fateful events of our time. But it cannot be my task to add yet another of the numerous reflections that are being set forth today in lectures on the things that are so powerfully moving our time. Rather, it must be my task to say, from the point of view of spiritual science, from which I have always spoken here, what can be said in brief about our time from precisely this point of view.

It has been emphasized many times that the present struggle, the present mighty struggle, in which, in fact, apart from smaller tribal and linguistic differences, 35 different peoples of the earth are at war with each other; it has been said often that this mighty struggle is caused above all by the present-day commercial, economic, social and political antagonisms, and that it is of primary importance to look clearly and energetically at reality and the values in question and not to obscure these considerations with metaphysical speculations. From the standpoint of spiritual science, one can only agree with such a view and never oppose it.

But spiritual science also wants to stand on the standpoint of reality. This is one way in which this evening's meditation will differ from those that are so often practiced, in that it takes into account the realistic admonition of our contemporaries, while also considering that this mighty struggle is, after all, part of the whole course of human development, in which, above all, great impulses are at work that can only be achieved through spiritual contemplation. One could also say: At that time, when the Germanic tribes of Central Europe threatened the southern empires, the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Middle Ages, only the Roman spheres of interest with their social and political intentions were confronted with what was to come from Central Europe. Of course, at the time, one could justifiably speak in this way. But if we look at things today, and judge from a higher point of view, as we must today, because the world has advanced, we would see that if these struggles had not taken place back then, the reorganization of Europe through these struggles, which were initially caused by the Roman spheres of interest, of course, took place in a certain way —, then the whole Western development up to our time would have taken on a different face. That is one thing.

The other thing, however, is that anyone who follows the intellectual development of nations, the intellectual development in history, must really come to the conclusion, without indulging in any fantasies, without speculating, that what is now being fought out between thirty-five nations of the earth is, in fact, certainly the most significant thing imaginable for the present. It is not words that will fight it out, nor thoughts and human philosophies, but the bravery of the armies. But behind all this, one can see another struggle, a struggle of spiritual forces, a struggle of world views. And without going into what has often been said, I should perhaps emphasize that history will one day regard it as the most absurd of claims that Central Europe somehow provided the immediate cause of this world war. It will be seen more and more clearly, especially when viewed from a higher perspective, that Central Europe and particularly the German people are involved in a purely defensive struggle. But if we look at this defensive struggle, then from a certain point of view we can see how this struggle is one part of a great, mighty defensive struggle that German intellectual life, intellectual impulses, have already had to fight out in part, and in part have to fight out with ever-increasing strength, against that which is also a kind of intellectual encirclement of Central European intellectual life. What I mean by this, I would like to characterize it with a symptom that may not seem very meaningful to you. But one could cite many things and one would always find the same thing.

What we in many respects count among the greatest and most significant things that the spiritual life of modern times has taken up, is called the “idea of development,” the “worldview of development.” And no one tires of emphasizing how significant it was for the whole development of the spiritual life of humanity that people learned to see how not the individual entities of the world around us stand side by side, but that they have developed apart; how one can trace a developmental series from the lowest creatures up to humans.

The one who, out of the deepest impulses of the supporting forces of the German spirit, spoke of such a development in a deeply inward sense is none other than Goethe. And it may be said that, since Goethe, German culture has had a wonderful, to use a Goethean expression: a spiritual doctrine of development. This spiritual doctrine of development has not been taken up into the general world view, nor into the European world view. In contrast, it takes five to six decades for the general consciousness of modern cultural humanity to accept the doctrine of development - but in what form - in the form of Darwinism.

When something like this is said, it still seems to have a chauvinistic coloring for many today. But future times will see it in all the power that is inherent in it. Darwinism has given the idea of development a materialistic [utilitarian] slant; and in this slant, which has been forced upon it, the idea of development has been incorporated into modern cultural ideas by an entirely English thinker. And the deeper German developmental idea is definitely faced with the necessity of defending itself. In the future, the world will realize that it is not necessary to say that Darwinism is something wrong, something incorrect, but that it will be necessary to take the deeper foundations, the more vigorous knowledge from the sources of German intellectual life for the developmental idea as well. In other words, it will be necessary to forge weapons that can defend the spiritual goods of Central Europe against the attacks that are being waged in countless fields, as in the field just mentioned, against this Central European intellectual life. And just as it is not important, when one is in the midst of a struggle between nations such as that which exists today, to wage war with these or those words, so to speak, between individual nations, whether words of hatred or sympathy, but rather, as is much more natural, to take the position that one has to defend what one recognizes as one's fatherland, as one defend one's family without disparaging anything else, so in the field of spiritual struggles, which, as everything shows, we will face in the near future in a tremendous way, it is important to be fully imbued with what the forces of this Central European, especially German, intellectual life are. In these forces there will be weapons that will be needed in the future. I cannot go into more detail, but I would like to suggest that the current struggle of external weapons will only be the beginning of what is to come in terms of spiritual struggles, and that the ill-intentioned, malicious, defamatory views that are hurled at German culture from all sides already show us the beginning.

If we now want to talk about these things from the point of view of spiritual science, it is of course incumbent upon us to at least characterize this point of view of spiritual science with a few words. Even though today, as in other lectures that I have also given in this city, I cannot go into the details of this spiritual science, which is to enter the development of time and the world as something new, and even though I will not be able to say anything conclusive in favor of spiritual science, I would still like to indicate with a few words, with a few points of view, what spiritual science wants.

Spiritual science wants to be a real science of the spirit. Above all, it wants to show how the human soul life, that which we call our innermost human nature, is connected with the real and true spirit that flows and weaves through nature and humanity. And just as natural science renewed the world view of humanity a few centuries ago, so spiritual science today wants to enter into the spiritual development of humanity in a very similar way, albeit from a different point of view.

I would like to draw attention to the following: if you were to say to someone who knows nothing about chemistry, who has never heard of chemistry and only knows water – of course, we can only imagine such a person hypothetically – that in this water, which is liquid and extinguishes fire, extinguishes fire, there is a gas in it that can be separated out, that is hydrogen; this hydrogen burns, it is not liquid but gaseous, so the person who has never heard of chemistry may consider this to be a highly fantastic idea. Natural science has made this into a very ordinary, even trivial, idea today. There was certainly a time when those who claimed such things were thought of as fantasists.

Today, on the other hand, anyone who knows nothing of spiritual science is considered a fantasist who says: When we have the human body with its soul before us, it presents itself in such a way that we cannot recognize the essence of what is directly connected to it while this essence is inside the body itself. One must separate it by the spiritual-scientific method, the spiritual-soul from the physical-bodily, as one separates hydrogen from water by chemical methods, if one wants to recognize it. This spiritual-scientific method does not take place in an external laboratory, but in the intimate processes of the human soul itself.

But there are spiritual scientific methods by which man can truly become a spiritual scientist, by which he can come to separate his spiritual soul from the physical body so that it is outside, as hydrogen is outside of water. But then the spiritual researcher lives in this spiritual-soul realm. He learns to recognize the characteristics and nature of this spiritual-soul realm, that which goes through birth and death in man, that which passes through the gate of death into a spiritual world and then, after death, world with a higher consciousness, with a consciousness that the spiritual researcher learns to recognize when he applies the spiritual scientific method to his soul, just as the chemist learns the properties of water when he applies the chemical methods. A time will come when people will speak of these things as they speak today of the Copernican world view, which was also once regarded as fantasy, or of similar things.

Just as today the spiritual researcher has to present to humanity the truth that there is a spiritual core in us that passes through the gate of death to return to repeated lives on earth, to repeated and repeated lives on earth, so one day this will be a truth, as the idea of development in external natural science is considered true today. If today what the spiritual researcher has to say is quite naturally regarded as a dream, as a fantasy, from many sides, then those who have immersed themselves in these things may point out how, at a certain time, Copernicanism, which is generally recognized today, was regarded as contradicting the five senses. And so it is today. What spiritual science has to say about repeated lives on earth, about the independence of the soul, and so on, is said to contradict the five senses. And if you take a materialistic point of view, you say: the life of the soul is enclosed between birth and death.

One must compare such a view with another view that still existed in the Middle Ages: that the blue firmament arches over us, which is a conclusion, a boundary, a spatial boundary. Modern science shows us that this boundary is only formed by our ability to see, that space extends into an infinite world, that we are embedded in infinite space on the earth. When modern science dawned, the blue firmament was broken through and recognized as something that is evoked by human vision. Through spiritual science it will be recognized that the boundaries that seek to enclose life between birth and death are like the blue firmament in relation to space. Through spiritual science, people will learn to look beyond this temporal firmament, which is set by birth and death, and they will find human life embedded in a line of development from which it emerges again and again.

Between earthly lives lie realms of development of a purely spiritual nature. And so, by learning to experience himself in this way, the spiritual researcher has something to proclaim in spiritual science: in the spiritual and soul realm, the human being feels, not through philosophical speculation but through experience, a connection with the real spiritual world, which surrounds the physical, from which the spiritual-soul is released - spiritual science speaks of an experience of the spiritual world, a spiritual world in which spiritual beings are, as physical beings are around us here.

It is perhaps still somewhat unpopular today if one is obliged to present these basic concepts of spiritual science in this way. But we live in a time in which humanity is living in a time of transformation of all thinking. Just as a Copernicus or a Galilei had to be anticipated in the dawn of modern natural science, so one can see something in spiritual science that lies, as it were, in the bosom of our time.

If we now follow German spiritual life and really immerse ourselves in it, then from the point of view of spiritual science we will have to gain a very definite view of German spiritual life, of that which has constantly revealed itself in it. I cannot go into details now, only with regard to the last times of German spiritual life. Thus, I said, the peculiarity of spiritual science is that the spiritual researcher, through his special spiritual-scientific method, learns to experience himself in the spiritual-soul that has been freed from the physical body and now knows itself, not in time but in eternity.

Let us see, by visualizing this spiritual view, how the most German of philosophers, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, I would say, lived out his belief in immortality and his belief in the soul. Fichte, like his contemporaries, was not yet able to have a real spiritual science. But how he drew from the spiritual life and knew this life in connection with the life of his national spirit is shown in the speeches he addressed to his people in one of Germany's most difficult times. But I don't want to talk about that today, but rather about how Fichte expressed himself, for example, where he wanted to give a “directions for a blessed life” philosophically, about his doctrine of immortality and soul. There he says:

I cannot admit that one seeks the main thing in the immortal human life only after death. That which is most important to me is that we become aware in this life of the body within us of that which passes through the gate of death and then goes into a spiritual world and lives on in it. For this invisible element living in us, I want to live through this earthly life.

This is not yet spiritual science, but it is the germ of spiritual science. And this germ of spiritual science can be found wherever we look at the fruits of German intellectual life. Everywhere we find the urge, the longing, not to satisfy ourselves with the abstractions of thought, with the external spirit of science, from which the science of the senses or the combination of the sensual is born. The German does not seek only for concepts and ideas, but also for their connection with the living spirit. The German feels moved when he can realize that science is not an external absorption of knowledge, but that it is the true life of knowledge, which he strives for so that the soul communes with the spirit that pervades and permeates the world. In the real connection with what spiritually permeates and permeates the world, the German wants to see the ideal of his knowledge, that he does not just want to absorb ideas, not just concepts, a science that is like an image of something external. He wants to have something in his soul that flows like a spiritual lifeblood in him, like the God himself who lives in him. And this is expressed more intensely and powerfully in a creation that no nation in the world has; which may not stand at the pinnacle of world creation in an artistic sense, but in the way it expresses itself, in that the German does not strive for a merely external visual connection with the spirit, but for a confrontation, spiritual eye in spiritual eye, with the spirit. You know that by this creation I mean the Goethean “Faust” poetry.

Do we not see in Faust how his consciousness turns away from all that is mere external knowledge, what is mere derivation from something external? Do we not see how he strives for the source of life, the manifestation of the spirit; how he strives to confront this spirit eye to eye? How he turns away from the external and strives to experience supersensible worlds? The German can never be satisfied with something he has achieved as knowledge. This is best seen by looking at the following: the beginning of Goethe's “Faust” has become almost trivial. It reflects the mood of Goethe in the 1770s. We see how Faust wants to get out of a knowledge that is not connected to the living spiritual world. When we grasp its full depth, we are shaken when Faust speaks the words:

Alas, I have now studied philosophy,
jurisprudence and medicine,
and unfortunately also theology
thoroughly, with great endeavor.
There I stand, poor fool,
and am as wise as before!

Now let us see how this German intellectual life unfolds. Let us see how Goethe, in the 1770s, longs for the appearance of the earth spirit, for the sources of intellectual life, for higher self-knowledge, which is achieved by the soul immersing itself in the living spiritual of the transcendental world.

Then we see how greatly the German philosophers strove in this respect after Goethe's time. We see that, after Goethe wrote his “Faust”, German thought, German poetry and German music all seek to look at things from the deepest sources. We see the emergence of thinkers such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel; we see them connecting with Goethe; we see how they create something from a knowledge that is supposed to be more original than all that has gone before, that is also supposed to come from the very depths of the human soul; we see that they are creating a philosophy; and when we consider that Hegel created a “natural right” and that Schelling published a medical journal, that all these minds were searching for a renewal of science, despairing at Faust! They also sought to renew theology, for they all wanted to be theologians. We see how all this greatness, which has not yet been properly appreciated, springs from the fundamental forces of the German spirit, and we can perhaps say: Goethe could have stood there, after he had seen all this pass him by, and could have said: What I felt in despair back then in the 1770s has been brilliantly brought forth by the German spirit from the sources of life! And let us assume that Goethe had grown even older than he did; let us assume – and I believe that no one would dispute this hypothesis – that Goethe had begun in 1840 [or let us assume that he had been even younger ], to write “Faust” again after all that had happened in the meantime in German intellectual life, can we believe that the beginning of “Faust” around 1840 would have sounded like this:

Now, thank God, I have studied philosophy,
law and medicine, with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel
and, thank God, theology as well
with great zeal and assiduity,
and here I am, a wise man,
as wise as one can be.

Do you think the beginning of “Faust” would have sounded like that? Certainly not. It would have sounded exactly the same as in 1772. Exactly the same!

But what does that tell us? It testifies that it is in the essence of this quintessentially German, Goethean idea of Faust to regard everything that has already been achieved not as something that can satisfy the individual, but that a striving is rooted in this German spiritual life, where it is manifested precisely in its representatives, that every individual, in turn, has to go through, in every age, an eternal becoming, never being complete. This is the case because German intellectual life can only describe the grasping of the spiritual as a true one if the spirit is experienced. But it can never be experienced if one wants to grasp it in an established way. To experience the spirit, one must always approach the spirit in a renewed way. But this is a typically German trait, and at the same time it is what can be called the “supporting force of the German spirit”.

Not concepts, not ideas, not something acquired in reason is what the German strives for, but what is to be striven for is that which can be grasped again at any time in original power. Not the spirit in a coffin, but the ever-living spirit is striven for. So that we may say: Admittedly, we do not see an archetypally German striving in the older times in the same way that we see spiritual science today. But we see the seeds; in what lives in the best, we see the same striving for direct experience of the connection with the spirit. This is always being witnessed anew. That means: a real life of the spirit is presupposed, in which the individual stands. That means: the supporting power of the spirit lives in him in such a way that they hold secret dialogue, that he is touched by what the German spirit wants from him. And this we see continuing to have an effect even where German intellectual life has been pushed back on itself by attacks from left and right, from above and below; we see the original German being carried by the real spirit continuing to have an effect. I would like to mention just one of the many phenomena that could be cited from the second half of the nineteenth century.

One of the most important representatives of the German spirit in the second half of the nineteenth century, who has not yet been fully recognized today, is Herman Grimm, the son of one, the nephew of the other of the Brothers Grimm, the great researchers of myths and legends, the researcher of the German language. Herman Grimm is first known as a German cultural historian, as an art historian. If you now delve into Herman Grimm's art history, you come across something peculiar. There is nothing in Herman Grimm's writings of what could be called pedantic erudition, of external systematics, but there is something that originally springs from the spiritual. The most important thing that one can gain from the works of Herman Grimm must be read between the lines, it must be sensed from what is said. Why? Because in Herman Grimm lives the sustaining power of the German spirit, which is brought to life by him, and through which he lets himself be whispered in each individual case through an inspiration as to what he has to say about an artistic phenomenon. So that one cannot but feel the affinity between the one who writes and the one who inspires him, one feels like a living conversation of the German national spirit with the one who speaks to us through his books in terms of art history. This Herman Grimm, he prepared himself in a peculiar way for his art historical profession. In his youth, he wrote novellas and also a significant novel. The recognition of these things also belongs to the living German intellectual heritage. For it is not because of their German nature that they have been forgotten, but because attacks have been made on German intellectual property from outside.

I will briefly outline one of Herman Grimm's novellas. We will see shortly what the purpose of this is. The novella is called “The Songstress”. We are presented with a very beautiful characterization of a woman. We see a man in the woman's surroundings. The man is deeply in love with the woman; the woman cloaks herself more in a nobly flirtatious being. He suffers terribly. Herman Grimm wrote a so-called first-person novella with this novella. What he writes is as if the story were being told by a person who lives next door to the couple and experiences everything that happens. And so, in the novella, the author – but in reality, of course, his friend – describes the events that transpire. The singer's coquettish behavior finally drives the lover completely mad. He distances himself from her. He cannot bear the situation. Later, his friend meets him again and sees that he has completely fallen apart. He takes him into his house and sees that this person has come to the edge of the grave because of his love. He sees that he is on the verge of suicide at any moment. So he takes him into his house. But he sees that it is necessary to get the singer over there. He fetches her. And lo and behold, as he approaches the house with the singer, who is to come as the unfortunate man's last hope, so to speak, they hear a shot. The unhappy lover has shot himself, he is dead. The content of the novella is wonderfully beautiful in its characteristics; but that is not what matters to me now. What matters to me is what happens to the singer now that she has found only the dead, suicidal lover. The singer stays in the friend's house for some time. She explains to her friend that she cannot remain in this house, that she is experiencing terrible things in this house. The friend to whom she relates her experiences does not believe this, of course; he is a rationalist. He thinks as rationalists of the present day think. So she asks him to watch with her for one night. And there he is convinced of what is happening to this woman as a result of the death of her lover. He sees for himself how the woman straightens up. He sees a figure enter through the door; that is, he only recognizes it from the words, he does not see the figure, but through what the woman sees, he is convinced that this is indeed a subjective but true experience, that the woman is really in contact with the dead, that this is a matter of the working out of destiny, which throws its rays over death.

Not because I want to use a work of fiction to prove spiritual science, but because the spiritual scientist has to say: Herman Grimm describes like a spiritual science expert, Herman Grimm wants to describe that a person's destiny is not only understood between birth and death. This novella is wonderfully moving, deeply moving, because it describes a person's life beyond death.

Now this is not a temporary phenomenon in writing. In his great cultural-historical novel, Herman Grimm again describes a female character who also has to experience the death of her lover. He describes how real the death is, how the death of the hero occurs, how the spiritual figure rises out of the physical figure. Now Herman Grimm describes how - appropriately - this figure enters into the spiritual world and how a connection remains between the dead and what rises out of the physical body of the heroine. I describe these things because they show how, in German literature, where one is confronted with representatives of the Germanic spirit, the supporting power of the German spirit works in such a way that the novellist, the novelist, too, can do so if he wants to rise into the world of real, supersensible reality. We are shown how the best minds do not stop at outward, visible reality, but how they follow the human soul into the spiritual world. These representatives of the German character did not yet have spiritual science, but their souls were so directed that they sensed the supporting power of the German spirit, which wants to lead the German character to the experience of the spiritual. Therefore, one can have the strongest confidence in the development of spiritual science when one looks at what is there as a germ for this spiritual science in German idealism, in the German longing, not for the abstract but to the living spirit that lives in the supersensible world, just as the mineral world, the plant world, and the animal world live in the sensory world around us. This testifies to the fact that to be German means to be connected in a very specific way as an individual human being with a totality of spiritual life. And in this respect, German experience is not only easily misunderstood, but is attacked and will be attacked again and again. It is not easy for German experience, which is more profound than anything that has developed around it, to take up the weapons with which German intellectual life, which has been pushed into a corner, will have to defend itself over the course of millennia against the hostile forces that come from all sides through the conditions of life.

What then springs from these original German spiritual impulses? They can perhaps be best characterized by pointing to an older time. This German spiritual life did not first appear with this character in modern times, but already in the Middle Ages. If we go back to the mystic Angelus Silesius, he has left many sayings. One particularly meaningful saying is where he says: “Not I as a human soul experience death, in the depths of my human soul dwells God, and God experiences death in me.” The depth of such a saying is not immediately apparent. It proves the primal German thinking and feeling and sensing, which experiences in itself a being with the world spirit that permeates and interweaves everything. Let us only think of the words of Faust:

[Ehrlicher Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir alles,
Warum ich bat. Du hast mir nicht umsonst
Dein Angesicht im Feuer zugewendet.
Gabst mir die herrliche Natur zum Königreich,
Kraft, sie zu fühlen, zu genießen. Nicht
You only allow cold, astonished visitors,
Allow me to look into their deep chests,
As into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm in the forest roars and creaks, The giant spruce topples, crushing neighboring branches, And neighboring trunks, sweeping down, And the hill thunders hollowly with its fall;Then you lead me to the safe cave, show Then myself, and my own chest secret, deep wonders open up.)

That is what the German has always sought in his best representatives. That is what he has sought: to truly find in his soul, to find in his deepest inner being the living spirit, to live together with this living spirit. So that Angelus Silesius, in all his peculiarity, already expounds great ideas of immortality when he speaks of the experience of death. For God can only be felt as alive. But he who experiences God in this way within himself knows that he is immortal. For God must be immortal, therefore death can only be an appearance. From this feeling of the German soul, even the grasp of the immortal life for this German soul emerges. But that is what has given this German soul this certainty, this firm footing in its development. That is what has always brought this German soul, of all national souls, closest to what we today call spiritual science. I would like to bring this home to your souls from a certain point of view.

Let us compare this German spiritual life with Eastern spiritual life, not in its lower regions, but let us go up to the highest regions of Russian spiritual life. Let us try to visualize one of Russia's most outstanding minds, Soloviev. Soloviev, who really took everything that was in Russian intellectual life into his soul and gave it back as a world view – not just as what is called a “philosophical world view”, but in such a way that one feels the Russian life vibrating – gave something that lived in this deep soul. I can only refer here to his works, only a small part of which have been translated, I cannot go into all of them. But I would like to point out that this philosopher, who retained his faith throughout his life – the faith that lives in many Russians, that Western European life, and Central European life as well, is a dying life, the renewal of which can only come from Russia. He lives according to this error. But this error gives his philosophy its special character. And again and again, in rousing speeches, Solowjow assures his people of the creative and sustaining forces within them. Then came the end of his life. Solowjow ended his life by increasingly arriving at a meager worldview, which I will characterize by comparing it to what lives in a similar field in the German worldview.

Let us see what lives in the German world view: it is the certainty that the human soul can live together with the spirit of the world, that it can hold its dialogue with the spirit of the world. We have seen this in the representative figure of Faust. Solowjow does not speak of the certainty of spiritual experience in the way that a human soul speaks out of the Germanic nature. Rather, he speaks thus: Yes, the Russian people have a great mission, but it is fulfilled by a divine being from the other world, who, through grace, takes hold of the Russian people and gives them their mission. God must work in the Russian people. And the Russians are waiting for the miracle, for a god, a kind of manifestation of the light of Christ, to appear and call the Russian people to their task.

In Central European spiritual culture, people know that they can experience their soul, they can experience God in their soul. Soloviev is waiting for that which pushes and drives and urges him from outside; he is waiting for the miracle. But now, in the year of Solowjow's death, the remarkable thing is that Solowjow appeared before the Petersburg public with a speech that must have been wonderfully moving, because something deeply emotional spoke from his words, which so convinced the audience that this power of persuasion passed over to people like a magic breath. He said: “Everything that has ever been believed about humanity being able to find something within itself that would redeem it, that would lead it to a divine state, is a vain deception and illusion. All that is deception, what believes that humanity will ever find the strength within itself to experience the divine through what it is now. No, Solowjow emphasizes, everything that humanity has of strength now, everything that it has of seemingly highest culture, that must perish. “The whole world lies in ruins” - such are his words - for there is nothing in present-day humanity that could lead this humanity to a spiritual goal. Only when everything has perished will the God who redeems souls step in from outside the dissolved earth, the perished earth. We cannot find anything in our souls that points us to something we could seek ourselves.

And he also describes in detail what he expects. As in a powerful vision, he sees the Asian peoples approaching, he sees them waging war on Europe, he sees how, in the twentieth, twenty-first century, Christianity will have declined to such an extent that only one-tenth of those who are on earth will still be Christians, while the whole world will be flooded with a harsh, materialistic worldview, which is pouring over the world, because “the whole world is in a state of decay.” He who listened to what the greatest philosophical mind of the Russian people spoke out of a deep faith shortly before his death, just weeks before his death, might ask: What could have inspired the one who has passed away to say: My soul, through its own power, has lost all eternity.

Let us instead consider the will and testament of a German. There are still people today who scoff at Lessing's momentous will and testament, 'The Education of the Human Race', in which he describes how development continues through all times, how souls keep coming back. For Lessing was the first to incorporate the doctrine of repeated earthly lives into German spiritual life. People often say: Well, yes, Lessing was a great man, but when he wrote this 'Education of the Human Race', he was already an old man. Well, people always arrange what they want to acknowledge as they want. But Lessing did not weaken, rather he had ascended to a deep sense of this direct communion, this speaking of the human soul with the living spirit, which pours out its sustaining strength over the soul of the individual, so that the individual soul can live with it in the sustaining strength of the German spirit. Lessing said something like the following as the closing words of his will: Is it not clear to my soul, from what it experiences within itself, that it must keep coming back to a new life on earth in order to keep learning new things and developing ever higher? That would take a lot of time, well, isn't eternity mine? - That is what Lessing extracts from the depths of the human soul itself, that is what he lays down in his testament. This is a spiritual culture that comes to different words than the one that says: We will never find the strength from the human soul itself.

From such a juxtaposition of different moods, one will understand that in the East, the Russian spiritual mood is asserting itself, which stands without understanding in relation to what is taking place in Central Europe, and which does not overlook everything that is emerging here as a living spiritual life, but always speaks of the decaying culture of the West. Thus, the so-called intellectuals justify, from a spiritual point of view, what they had always intended to do against the West, including politically. The terrible war in which we are engaged was caused as much by the moods of the East as by external interests. But these moods will not disappear with this war. In order to bring German intellectual life to bear, it will be necessary to forge weapons from the spirit, from which the greatest minds of Central Europe have taken their weapons, for this confrontation with the spirit must always be renewed.

And how, by a completely natural process, the enemies of this German intellectual life must be encircled – we can see this if we take a look at how German intellectual life is understood, the German intellectual life that I was able to sketch out in a charcoal drawing, the subject of much discussion. In defense of and in an effort to understand this German intellectual life, I would like to call to mind a Western spirit that truly belongs to the best [Western spirits] of the nineteenth century, an American who wrote in English, Emerson. He is truly not someone to invoke when one wants to describe the contrast between the West and German intellectual life based on prejudice. Emerson portrays the English people as the first world people; but strangely, he places the Germans higher. Despite Emerson's description of the English as the first world people, he says:

The English do not appreciate the depth of German intellectual life.
The German thinks for Europe.

But now I would like to mention something else that is very characteristic from the point of view on which I have based this reflection today. Emerson wrote two wonderful essays, one about Shakespeare and one about Goethe. Unfortunately, people today only read with half a mind, but it could be interesting if a number of people really did what I am about to suggest. It would be interesting to get involved in the essays that Emerson wrote and that bear the title “Representatives of the Human Race,” reading the two essays, one about “Shakespeare, or the Poet,” the other about “Goethe, or the Writer.” You will not believe that I am so brutal, or, one could also say, so “barbaric”, that I want to denigrate Shakespeare in any way, or that I do not revere him to the highest degree as one of the greatest poets of humanity. That is what he is, for Emerson too. And Emerson states that if you want to characterize the poet, you have to name Shakespeare as the representative poet. By comparison, you have to call Goethe the representative writer. Now, one should not just read what is there, but one should feel from the words what passed through the whole soul of the presenter when he gave the characteristics. Emerson tries to present Shakespeare as the representative of the poet in general, based on the characteristics of the English national soul, and then Goethe as the representative of the writer in general. And Emerson seeks to draw out the traits that one must consider if one wants to truly characterize Shakespeare inwardly. And with Emerson it is the case that when he is confronted with an appearance, he characterizes the one appearance with all the power of the word, as if there were nothing else, he immerses himself in the individual appearance. In Shakespeare, when he discusses Shakespeare, in Goethe, when he discusses Goethe. [It is a special gift.] And what is it that he seeks to express when he contemplates Shakespeare, Shakespeare the poet, [whom he regards as the most exquisite poet and this as the most exquisite of the English, and this as the most exquisite of the peoples]? He feels compelled to say, while characterizing Shakespeare: An original mind is not, as is usually thought, one that creates everything out of itself, but one that works as Shakespeare did, who goes everywhere and takes the intellectual property he can find. And now he shows how the whole of England thought like Shakespeare, how he was only the echo of his people. On the other hand, he tries to show how Shakespeare used French and Italian sources, how he gathered everything together to become Shakespeare, how he became the great man by organizing the great intellectual goods from other worlds and other peoples. That is what Emerson comes to through Shakespeare. And I would like to read you a few characteristic words:

Great men are distinguished more by their comprehensive minds [and] by the height of the vantage point from which they look down than by their originality. If we demand that originality which, like a spider, draws its own web from its own entrails, which itself finds the clay, forms stones from it and erects the house, then great men are by no means original. The essence of truly valuable originality does not lie in dissimilarity to others.

Thus Emerson characterizes Shakespeare in such a way as to show: I must show why Shakespeare is so unoriginal. “The essence of truly valuable originality does not lie in dissimilarity to others.”

And one saying, to which particularly much value must be attached in Emerson's characteristics of Shakespeare, is the following, which is not said by me, but Emerson speaks thus about Shakespeare:

It has become a kind of practical rule among writers that once someone has shown themselves capable of creating something original, they may then also discreetly steal the works of others.

So Emerson, when characterizing one of the greatest minds of the world order, needs nothing less than to excuse Shakespeare for being original, even by stealing from others and combining what has been stolen. You have to look a little deeper into what the impulses of human development are when you are standing in such a momentous world period as today.

And then we turn the page, especially in the beautiful translation by Herman Grimm, which he made of Emerson's essays on Shakespeare and Goethe. Let us now turn to Goethe. Again, Emerson delves into Goethe, absorbed in the essence of Goethe, as if nothing else existed. And what comes to Emerson's mind now to characterize Goethe as the representative of writing? He comes up with the following words: All of nature, every stone, everything that is and will be strives to be expressed. The whole world strives for expression. And favored human souls, whom other souls cannot emulate, who therefore stand alone, they find the words to express, in wrestling with the world spirit, what is wrestling with the world spirit.

With Shakespeare, Emerson describes how he [makes references everywhere].

With Goethe, he describes how Goethe himself is connected to the world spirit, which works in the individual realms of nature. Compare the one with the other. About Goethe, Emerson says:

In my eyes, the writer stands as a man whose position was foreseen in the construction of the world.

In direct contrast to the beginning of the world, he brings Goethe. Shakespeare he believes he has to excuse. And further he says of Goethe:

The position he took, he owes nothing, but he entered the world from his birth as a free, [supervising] genius.

About Shakespeare, he says:

It is easy to see that all the best that has ever been written and done in the world was not the work of one man, but the product of a vast, collaborative effort in which a thousand like one, all driven by a single impulse, lent a hand.

Shakespeare is explained entirely out of the environment, out of the world that surrounds him. Regarding Goethe, Emerson says:

He is all eye and instinctively turns to where the truth lies. Say something, and he will immediately know whether it is true or false. It is hateful to him to repeat the old wives' tales, even if they have had the good faith of humanity for a thousand years, and to be made a fool of by them. No one else needs to strain their eyes for him to show them whether something is true or a lie.

I believe, my dear audience, that one can feel something deep and meaningful by comparing Emerson's essay on Shakespeare with his essay on Goethe; one will feel everywhere that this American had a certain right to say: “The English [do not appreciate the depth of German intellectual life. The German thinks for Europe.] He tried to fathom it, but in fathoming it, he sensed something of what I wanted to characterize today as the living forces of the German spirit, which penetrate into every single soul; not that power that flows from the commonality of human beings, but from the direct intercourse of the individual soul with the spirit. And one can feel how Emerson is imbued with this sustaining power of the German spirit when, at the end of his meditation on Goethe, he speaks words that must be taken with feeling, not just with the mind. At the end of his meditation on Shakespeare, Emerson says:

It must be admitted that these were only imperfect histories of imperfect men. The world is still waiting for the poet-priest, the reconciler, who, unlike Shakespeare, does not play, who, unlike the body-burial Swedenborg, does not search in graves, but who will see and speak and act with equal enthusiasm. For knowledge will give splendor to sunshine; justice is more beautiful than secret preference, and love is compatible with all-embracing wisdom.

What feelings does Shakespeare inspire in Emerson? The feeling that we must wait for the coming of the one who will bring reconciliation.

What does the contemplation of Goethe inspire in him? He says at the end of the contemplation:

The secret of genius is not to tolerate a lie, to make everything we are aware of a truth; in the sophistication of modern life, in art and science, in [the] books and in people, to awaken faith , certainty and trust, and to honor each truth, as we begin and as we end, as we go along and as we go forward, by not only knowing it but by making it a rule of action.

Thus, it was not only Goethe but also Shakespeare who inspired Emerson not to wait for anyone. And the words I have just read are preceded by the following:

We too must write sacred writings to reunite heaven and earth.

We would say today: We have to immerse ourselves in spiritual science, in what human science can be. But Emerson does not grasp the depth of German intellectual life, and is fundamentally hostile to it.

This, however, is precisely why German intellectual life will be in a kind of defensive position for a long time to come. For it experiences strange things even with those of whom it is said that they are trying to penetrate into this German intellectual life. I would also like to give you a sample of this.

Those who are reasonably familiar with the intellectual life of the recent past may have been surprised that such high hopes were placed in some German minds before this war taught people, let's say, about someone like Romain Rolland, a different lesson. The people who admired him represent, to a certain extent, a break in the intellectual life of the present. Those who admired him could not really understand how he could speak so contemptuously of the Germans after the outbreak of the war. One has indeed been able to read strange articles in Germany about Romain Rolland. I will only refer to one work by Romain Rolland, “Jean-Christophe”. In this novel, Romain Rolland portrays a German, but you will see in a moment how. Even this description of Jean-Christophe is to be said: it is given by a person who has never been touched by the real inner strength of the spiritual life. What is Jean-Christophe in the two-volume novel? It is a German musician and how he develops in his Germanness. Romain Rolland wants to describe that. And he really does describe something, yes, you can't say otherwise, than a chaotic mixture of the destinies of various Germans such as Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Wagner, Gustav Mahler and so on. All of this is mixed up in the most impossible way, and that gives the completely impossible character of Jean-Christophe, who has been so much admired, but who shows himself to be nothing more than the result of an artist's inability to face reality, which not only records external nature but also penetrates into the depths of existence, and can see the impossibility of mixing up such chaos.

I am well aware that there may be many people who will interpret what I am about to say about Romain Rolland as “barbaric”. But I believe that I can take on what these people defend from their apparent aesthetic high ground when it comes to judging the particular aesthetic and artistic nature of people like Romain Rolland. [It has nothing to do with what Schiller said to Goethe. “People say that there is something immoral in Wilhelm Meister. No, the characters are as they have to be.”] For with Romain Rolland, you never know what the author says and what his characters say. Therefore, what his characters say can be seen as the attitude of Romain Rolland himself. This attitude comes across to us wherever he talks about Germanness. For example, he describes the father of Jean-Christoph.

I will now only quote a few significant things that we can say are a Frenchman's recent judgment of the German character. And I will cite evidence because there were people who said: This novel is the first great act since 1870 that will bring about the reconciliation of Germans and French. No political act is as important for this reconciliation as Romain Rolland's novel, so people said. Well, anyone who reads the novel will agree with me if I disagree. You can't say that Romain Rolland didn't want to say what his characters say, you just have to look at it from an artistic point of view. Because what we are hearing from this Romain Rolland, this “reconciler between Germanness and Frenchness”, has recently been presented to us in the most defamatory way as German “barbarism” from the West. So it is said of the father:

He was a fine speaker, well built, if a little heavy, and the type of what is considered classical beauty in Germany: a broad, expressionless forehead, strong regular features and a curly beard: a Jupiter from the banks of the Rhine.

Then he characterizes a number of chamber musicians, whom he considers typical of German chamber music, in the following way:

They played neither very accurately nor very in time; but they never went off the rails and faithfully followed the indicated expressive markings. They possessed that musical ease that requires little, and that perfection in mediocrity that is abundant in the race that is called the most musical in the world.

Romain Rolland characterizes Uncle Theodor, the stepson of Jean-Christophe's grandfather, as follows:

He was a partner in a large trading house that had business connections with Africa and the Far East. He was a typical example of the new type of German, who mockingly spurn the old idealism of the race and, drunk with victory, practice a cult that proves that they are not accustomed to living under that sign. But since it is impossible to suddenly change the centuries-old nature of a people, the suppressed idealism kept resurfacing in language, behavior, moral views, and Goethe quotes on the occasion of the slightest domestic events; and so, through the bizarre effort to reconcile the honorable principles of the old German bourgeoisie with the cynicism of these new shop-keepers, a strange mixture of conscientiousness and self-interest, a mixture that has a rather nauseating smell of hypocrisy, which amounts to making a symbol of all that is right, of all justice and truth, out of German strength, greed and the pursuit of personal interest.

That is Romain Rolland's description of certain Germans. We have heard it again through Romain Rolland. But then we are told about Jean-Christophe himself:

He lacked that compliant Germanic idealism that refuses to see and does not see what it would find embarrassing to discover, for fear of destroying the comfortable serenity of its judgment and the comfort of its life.

Of course, Romain Rolland sees German idealism, but he wants to show it in the light that, in his opinion, is the true light. He wants to characterize this German idealism somewhat, and there he says about this German idealism – since Romain Rolland is a good musician, his friends claim that he understands German music particularly well, he may refer to it –; Romain Rolland seeks to characterize German idealism as what the Germans delude themselves about as a blue haze that the Germans fear to see and therefore idealize. He sees in it something with which the Germans mask all kinds of things so as not to see reality. Then he says:

The Germans are not idealists for the reason that they falsify feelings.

– he speaks, I beg to be heard, he speaks as if it were a characteristic of Schumann and Wagner – that is not the problematic thing in music, that idealism fakes feelings, but that feelings are fake, that is shown in Schumann. The German feels fake. These are Romain Rolland's own words:

But it was precisely his example that led Christof to the realization that the worst falsity of German art did not lie where artists wanted to express feelings that they did not feel, but rather where they expressed feelings that they felt but that were false in themselves. Music is a relentless mirror of the soul. The more naive and trusting a German musician is, the more he reveals the weaknesses of the German soul, its insecure foundation, its [soft] sensitivity, its lack of candor, its somewhat devious idealism, its inability to see itself, to dare to look itself in the face.

He wants to get to the very heart of this German idealism. That is why he refers to Mrs. von Stael, who once characterized the Germans, as Romain Rolland reports. She said:

They are well-behaved. They use philosophical reason to explain the most unphilosophical thing in the world: respect for power and the habituation to fear that transforms respect into admiration.

Romain Rolland refers to these words of Mrs. von Stael.

Christof found this feeling in the greatest and the smallest [in Germany]

— he says. And then, to say something quite characteristic of the Germans, he adds:

from Wilhelm Tell, the deliberate, small-minded bourgeois with the muscles of a porter, who, as the free Jew Börne says, “to reconcile honor and fear, walks with downcast eyes before the post of ‘dear Lord’ Gessler, so that he can invoke the fact that he who disobeyed who did not see the hat,” up to the portly, seventy-year-old Professor Weiße, one of the most respected scholars in the city, who, when a lieutenant passed him, hastily gave way to him on the footpath and went down to the road.

[He hated the brutal militarism that he felt weighing on him, all those sabers clanking on the pavement, those pyramids of rifles and cannons set up in front of the barracks, ready to fire with their muzzles pointed towards the city.

We are hearing all of this again now. The novel already contains the same words that we are hearing again now, with the only difference being that later on, the French no longer thought that the muzzles were only pointed at their own German cities, but sensed that they could be pointed elsewhere.

But it cannot be said that Romain Rolland is entirely unjust towards the Germans, whom he characterizes in this way. He does find that these Germans have nothing of the true esthete. In music, he grants them some talent. He calls thinking “clear but cloudy,” and so on. But in the opinion of this Frenchman, who is considered one of the best minds in France today, the Germans do not have much of a sense of beauty. He describes a German girl: “The nose [gap in the text] up one side, down the other.” That, according to him, is the typical German girl. I also ask you to consider the following words:

The Germans are fortunate in their tolerance when it comes to physical imperfections: they manage not to see them; they can even come to embellish them with benevolent imagination, finding unexpected relationships between the [face] they want to see and the most magnificent examples of human beauty.

This refers to the face with the nose that I just described. It would not have taken too much persuasion to get old Euler to declare that [his] granddaughter had the nose of Juno Ludovisi.

But it cannot be said that Romain Rolland is or wants to be completely unjust. He also praises where he wants to praise and recognizes in the German character what he believes he can acknowledge. For example, after he has shown how this Jean-Christophe, who is such a talented fellow that he cannot stand it in the German world, that he strives outwards, because such a genius cannot flourish in the German world. After showing this, he finally invites him to be a guest of a professor, whom he wants to depict as a typical German. And what unfolds in the presence of this German professor is where Romain Rolland does praise the Germans, finding something praiseworthy in them. You see, the professor takes great pains to have his housekeeper prepare the best meal possible. And she, so convinced that she has achieved great art, leaves the door ajar to see how the gentlemen are enjoying their meal.

It was an exhibition of unforgettable, honest, unadulterated German cuisine, with the aromas of all the herbs, the thick sauces, the nourishing soups, the exemplary meat dishes, the monumental carp, the sauerkraut, the geese, the homemade cakes, the aniseed and caraway breads.

You can see that he also has something good to say about the Germans! And he particularly benefits from the meal that has now been taken and a real German, a singing German, is to be described. He describes him in such a way that you can see; he is actually wondering why this particular specimen can sing, and even sing well. He says that the German actually has no idea how to sing:

They are seized by the power of the song, and the song works through them as through an instrument. The spirit of the songs takes hold of them, and they obey it. For the soul of the German must do so. This soul obeys the song as the soldier obeys the general.

The so-called German militarism has grown deep into the soul of those who speak of it today with voluptuous expressions. He now describes a real singer by saying: He was a fat man who always sweated when walking, but especially when he made sounds. - He describes his nature, his figure. Then he says: He looked like a Bavarian, a particular variety of German. He says that there are many of these Bavarians, because they have “the secret of this human race, which came about through a system of pasta-eating similar to how poultry is fattened.”

He wants to find out what the people who are actually able to practice this German art of singing, which he also admires, look like.

Now, it is no wonder that this mixture of Beethoven, Strauss, Wagner and Mahler, who has the peculiarity of not having a spark of any of the four in his soul, cannot endure this artificial construct in Germany. He must get out of Germanness! It is said that although he did not know it, he is driven by German confusion to “Golden Paris”.

But instinctively his eyes looked towards the Latin South. And first of all to France. To France, the eternal [refuge] from German confusion.

Now it is described how the one who has to leave Germanness has to find his way in Latin culture. There he becomes a great mystic. I hope you will excuse me from pursuing the further paths. But we would find many a characteristic there of what must be called the misunderstanding of that which sustains and carries the individual German from the supporting power of the living spirit, with which the German essence feels connected.

Therefore, it may be said that it must be clear to all those who believe that humanity's future lies in the strong and vigorous representation of intellectual life through a world culture how the German spirit has not yet completed its mission in the world, but how this German spirit has laid the seeds from which it can be seen that they must continue to flourish ever more abundantly.

And that appears to us as the fundamental strength of the German spirit, that we know: we can only hope for the blossoms and fruits of the future. We stand confidently in the midst of it, in the living experience of the German spirit. This must also give us the strength for the necessary defense, for the defense of German intellectual life as well, which, as perhaps few today already suspect, is in a fundamental struggle, just as much as the external life of the immediate present.

It would be out of place to present a reflection that was only meant as a consolation. Who needed weak consolation or who needed words of strength or the like, when a nation that knows how to defend its goods with such strength has shown and has already held out for almost a year with strength and courage and a willingness to make sacrifices?

But we must be aware that the German spirit must be on guard just as much as external German life had to be on guard. And when we look more deeply into this spiritual life of the German, we find something of which we can say: This is the core and the root of Germanness: its yearning for the living spirit, its living together with the living spirit.

Those who revile the Germans today and say: We do not mean this German spirit when we revile them, must be told: You seem to us like someone who says: I know there is a person with strong hands, but when he uses these hands, we do not like it!

The French philosopher Bergson said in a Christmas speech that the German mind today shows that it can no longer grasp the living, it can only grasp the mechanistic. Today, only cannons stand against the French; only mechanisms are seen coming from Germany, and armies.

There is not much logic in what he says, as logic is generally missing today when the world situation is discussed so beautifully. You would have to ask this philosopher Bergson whether he expected the French soldiers to be confronted with recitations of Schiller's poems or with Novalis' works.

But a glance, which I could only hint at with weak words – a glance into the essence and life, into the roots of the German spirit, shows us that, looking at this spirit, we can say:

It has not only not completed; it shows that it is taking its ascending path to a fully blossoming and fruitful spiritual life. And anyone who can trust in inner strength can have the utmost confidence in what the German spirit is willing to accomplish. And anyone who has such an insight into the inner effectiveness of the German spirit also knows what great and powerful things must be defended with external weapons today; he knows that the soul of the German nation still has much, much more to bear.

Therefore, let me express what I wanted to express to you today in a few words, and what I ask you to take more from what underlies my words as feelings and emotions. Finally, let me summarize it in a few words that are based on my feelings, which should be words of confidence for the soul, from what can be known about the sustaining power of the German spirit, in the past and into the future. I would like to say: If you follow through in your thoughts what I have only been able to sketch with a few lines of charcoal, you will increasingly come to the feeling that I would like to express at the end with the words:

The German spirit has not fulfilled
What it should bring to the world.
It lives hopefully in worries about the future,
It hopes for future deeds full of life; —
In the depths of its being, it feels powerfully
Hidden things that must still mature. —
How can a wish for his end arise in the power of the enemy without understanding, so long as life reveals itself to him, which holds him in the roots of his being?

Handwritten summary of contents for the censors.

During the war, public events were subject to the supervision of the censorship authorities. For this purpose, Rudoif Steiner wrote the following table of contents for his lecture scheduled for June 16, 1915 in Düsseldorf (NZ 1564-1566).

Contents of the lecture to be given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in Düsseldorf. The lecture has already been given in Berlin, Leipzig and in a similar form in Munich.

The lecture begins with the introduction of personalities who, in fateful times within the development of German culture, placed the security, the confidence, the true invincibility of the German being before the soul of the people by evoking the soul's deep permeation with the effective power of the ruling spirit. For them, this “spirit” was not a “concept” or an “idea,” as it is for the naturalistically thinking consciousness; for them, the spirit was a real being with which the soul maintains contact in its deepest interior, from which it draws spiritual life-force, just as the body draws physical life-force from the air through the lungs.

Thus Fichte stood in the midst of his people when they had to work their way up to freedom, supported only by their own strength, by showing how the German people, in contrast to the Romance peoples, already prove through their language that they are connected in their very essence to the innermost roots of the vital impulse of spiritual existence. The German does not feel spiritual life as something that is only recognized in the individual human soul, but as something that reigns over this individual soul as an independent being and that carries the individual soul.

From this consciousness, a creation within German culture has emerged that is only possible within the German people: Goethe's “Faust”. Faust strives out of dead knowledge towards an inner living contact with the essence of the spirit. In Faust, the most ancient German consciousness of nature and the world comes to life again in a newer way. One does not need to deny the great significance of Shakespeare; but one must still say that in Faust, everything human rises to a nobler height than in Hamlet. Consider how, when confronted with the truly spiritual, the latter can only fall back on doubt and uncertainty, on the hopeless question, “To be or not to be?” By contrast, when confronted with the power of evil, of material things, Faust asserts the inner certainty of victory of his connection with the spirit: “In thy nothing I hope to find the All.”

Those who belong to the nations that today do not want to revile German deeds enough, must have come to the same conclusion that Ernest Renan expressed in 1870, when they sensed the nature of this in the development of German culture. 70, that Germany has added something to the development of humanity in terms of “depth and extent” that “for those who have experienced it, it is as if they only know elementary mathematics compared to those who are proficient in differential calculus”.

This connection of the German soul with the sustaining power of the world-ruling spirit has, in minds like Herder's, evoked the consciousness of the world-significant task of German culture, of the fact that this culture has a contribution to make to the overall education of the human race, insofar as this illuminates the lofty goal of working “until everything has happened, until the genius of enlightenment has traversed the earth.”

This consciousness warmed Lessing's soul as he wrote his incomparable testament to the “education of the human race,” which elevated all contemplation of history to an experience of the eternal spiritual activity of the world through the human soul.

And this consciousness lives on to the present day in the most exquisite minds of the German people. It will now be shown how this fundamental strength of the German spirit has led to a deep world view and outlook on life in individual personalities of the nineteenth century. Herman Grimm's genuine German character is characterized; lesser-known personalities are also mentioned to show what particular German character is in thinking, feeling and experiencing.

Finally, it is suggested how, in the present day, the consciousness that comes from the sources, in which the German essence is intimately connected with the power of the spirit, may live in the German mind, and how this consciousness may trust in its power within the world of enemies, in the face of which it has to assert itself in our fateful days.

It is beyond doubt that the War and all its terrible accompaniments have given the social question a new aspect for men to-day. True, this change is not recognized by a sufficient number of people in the way one could wish; but it is there and will become more and more significant.

The members of the classes hitherto accustomed to lead and rule will find them­selves compelled by force of circumstances, in dealing with the social question, to abandon limited ideas and measures which deal with it piecemeal. They will be forced to turn their thoughts and direct their will to the social problem as the most important in the life of mankind, both to-day and in the immediate future. While they will only understand their times by adopting a wholly new conception of their problem in all their thinking, feeling and willing, on the other hand it will be necessary for the masses, the proletariat, to achieve an essentially different attitude to it.

For more than fifty years the mass of the people have been acquiring social and socialist ideas. Unless we have gone through the last ten years with our eyes shut we must have noticed what changes have come about inside the ranks of the proletariat with regard to the social question. We saw what form it took at the moment of the outbreak of the appalling catastrophe we know as the World War. Then came the end of that fearful disaster. The proletariat found itself in a new position, no longer confined by a social order dominated, at least in Central and Eastern Europe, by the old ruling powers. It was itself called upon, to a considerable extent, to set its hand to building a new form of social organization. And just in face of this fact, wholly new in history, we experienced some­thing extraordinarily tragic.

The ideas to which for years the proletariat had devoted itself with its heart's blood proved inadequate when realization became possible, and at this point occurred a great historical opposition, even a conflict. The facts of world-history taking place about us might have become the great instructors of mankind. They showed that the hitherto ruling classes had, during the last three or four hundred years, developed no ideas which can, or could, be any guide for all that was forcing its way out in the economic and other social facts of human experience. The remarkable thing was that those who had power to act in the world of affairs had arrived at the state of letting them take their own course. Their thoughts and ideas had become so restricted that they could not stretch them to include the facts, which had grown above their heads, out of reach. This had been evident for some time, especially in the economic life, in which protection and similar ideas had been superseded by competition for a free market as the only motive for regulation; in which ideas were active, not moulding the economic life solely with regard to production, distribution and consumption of goods, but unfailingly leading to continual crises owing to the hazard of the "free market." He who will is able to see that since the social impetus of these ungovernable facts had spread over the great imperial states, the affairs of these states had acquired their movement, susceptible to control neither by thought nor by any efforts towards adjustment.

Man should consider such things to-day, should be able to keep before his spiritual eye to-day's necessity of looking more deeply into human activities and of grasping such a thing as the "Social Question " with more intensity of purpose than is customary. It is, after all, obvious that ideas have become inadequate for the developing facts, yet men will not see it. Three or four hundred years of routine in business and public affairs have accustomed them to account it practical life and to regard anyone who sees a little further and can judge of things through longer vision, as Utopian or unpractical. I give you an illustration of this; for to-day, when the destiny of the individual is so closely bound up with the destiny of mankind, only examples drawn from personal experience and honestly meant can be sufficient illustration of the impulse and motives to be found in public life—therefore I may be pardoned if I give you one of my own. It is not intended in a personal sense. In the spring of 1914, in a series of lectures I gave in Vienna on spiritual-scientific subjects, I was forced, months before the outbreak of the so­ called World War, in the presence of a small audience (a bigger one might have laughed me to scorn) to sum up what seemed to me the view we ought to hold about the social development of the present conditions. I then said that for anyone looking with open eyes at what was going on in the public life of the civilized world, it appeared as infected by a social tumour, a malignant social illness or cancer; and this illness within our economic and. social life must express itself in a terrific disaster.

Now how was one regarded who, in the early spring of 1914, spoke of an imminent catastrophe, from his observation of events going on under the surface? He was "an unpractical idealist," not to say a fool. What I was then obliged to say was a great contrast to what at that time, and indeed even later, the so-called practical men were giving out—those men who were not practical at all, only revolutionists who scorned anyone who tried to comprehend the history of the time from some knowledge of its underlying idea. What did these "practical" men say? One such person, a Foreign Minister of one of the Central Euro­pean States, announced to the enlightened representatives of the people that the general relaxation of tension in the political situation was making pleasing progress, so that they could be assured of peaceful conditions - in Europe in the near future. He added that the relations with St. Petersburg were the most friendly possible. Thanks to the Government's efforts the Russian Cabinet took no heed of the publications of the Press, and our relations with St. Petersburg would continue friendly, as before. Negotiations with England were expected to be concluded in the near future on such a basis as to produce the best possible relationships. What a difference between "practical outlook " and "gloomy theory”!

Many more examples might be given to illustrate the view of, or rather the insight into, the facts at the beginning of the period which held such terrible things for humanity. It is very instructive to let the facts speak: these practical men spoke of peace and the next months brought a peace in which the civilized world occupied itself for several years in killing, at a low estimate, ten to twelve million men and crippling three times as many. I am not saying this to re-new a sensation: it must be mentioned because we can see by this how inadequate men's thoughts have become, that they are no longer far-reaching enough to master facts. We shall only see these events in the right light when we recognize in facts the strongest indication that for the healing of our social conditions what we need is not a small change in this or that arrangement, but a vast alteration in thinking and learning: not a trivial but a tremendous settling up with the old which is too foul and decayed, to be allowed to mingle with what the future may bring.

We might say the same thing about the life of rights or the economic life in detail as about the wider institutions of mankind. Every­where men's words betray that their thoughts are inadequate to master facts. We may say that the former leading and dominant class has the practical experience but lacks the effective ideas necessary to the practice of life. Opposed to these circles stands the great mass of the proletariat which has educated itself in a rigorous school of Marxian thought for half a century. It is not enough to-day merely. to look round on the proletariat to find out how they are thinking. It is comparatively extraordinarily easy to refute logically what the masses and their leaders think about economic institutions. That does not much matter: what does matter is the historical fact that in their heart and soul lies a sort of precipitate, formed out of the intensely active thoughts which have been converted into a "proletarian theory." This theory, which might, after the break-down of the old order have proved itself much more effective than it has in actual practice, shows a peculiarity which is quite comprehensible. For as a result of the way in which the social evolution of mankind has moved under the influence of the capitalist order and modern technical science during the last three to four hundred years—especially during the nineteenth century—the masses have been more and more closely confined within the economic system, so confined that each man was restricted to one small, limited piece of work. This strictly limited piece of work was fundamentally all he saw of the reality of the increasingly extending economic life.

What wonder that the workman experienced, in the effect on body and soul, that under the influence of technical science and private capital, developed by the new life of economics, he could not see the mainsprings which moved it. He might be the "worker" in this life, but his social position prevented him from looking rightly into its ordering, into the way in which it was controlled. It is quite comprehensible that as a result of such facts something grew up of which the fruits are before us; certain subconscious impulses and demands of the masses became a far-reaching socialist theory, really fundamentally alien to econo­mic and other social facts, since the proletariat could gain no insight into the actual driving forces behind the facts and simply had to accept the one-sided ideas derived from Marx. So we find that in the course of years, various things have eaten into the feelings of the masses which may in reality be ever so deeply justified but which, all the same, miss the facts. I should like to, give as an example the enormous effect of one slogan, amongst others poured out over the proletariat by its leaders. "In future no production for the sake of producing—production only, for consumption." Certainly a remark to the purpose, with the merit (rare in slogans) of being absolutely true; but becoming an unreal abstraction, elusive, when carried to its logical conclusion with practical sense and real insight into economic conditions. The chief thing in practice is "how things are made"—there is no meaning in the clamour" produce only for consumption" from a practical point of view. It calls up in the soul the idea of how beautiful the economic life could be if profit were ignored and consumption only were of consequence! But there is no indication whatever in this phrase as to how the structure of the economic life could be arranged so as to give effect to what is expressed in these words. Many other catchwords (of which we shall touch on some) have the same defect. They often have their origin in deep truths yet, when adopted as party slogans of the proletariat, have become abstractions, just Utopian pointers to an indefinite future. If we would be honest with the proletariat, we must say that this unfortunate proletariat which is raising its just claims lives as in a cloud of views which are theory, it is true, but remote from the facts of life, because they have no contact with the facts and are placed in an isolation from whence they can survey only a single corner of life.

That is the conflict to which I would draw your attention—on the one side the attitude of the ruling classes who have power over the facts, but no idea how to use it to control them: on the other, the proletariat with its acquired, abstract ideas which have no correspondence with the facts.

If we try to describe the genesis of all this in a few words, taking note of active forces and impulses, more essentially important than anything that has occurred hitherto in the course of human history, we can only rightly estimate expressions like "the lack of ideas in the practice of our leaders " and "the un­practical theory of the proletariat" if we have a feeling of the torrent pouring in the present-day development of humanity with such vigour and mutually destructive force. The existence of such a contrast between the attitude of soul of the dominant classes and that of the proletariat leads, and has led, to a deep cleavage between the thinking, feeling, willing and actions of the former and all the longings, wishes and impulses of the latter. We do not even understand adequately what is the demand of our age, of which we hear the first faint tone from the proletariat. We may understand the form of the words when they mention the theory of surplus-value, i.e., the theory that we should produce only for consumption, or that of transformation of private ownership into common property; but what are they in reality as expression of their wishes and ideas? Can they be regarded merely as a subject for logical criticism by the leaders of the well-to-do? It is hard to find a more naïve response than that of a director of some company who hears the "surplus value” theory from his work-people and answers that the surplus, made up of banknotes, etc., is so small that, divided among them, there would be no share for each worth having. I repeat, it is hopelessly naïve to deal in this way with the theory of "surplus value." The "calculation " of the directors is obvious and incontrovertible, but that is not the real point. To try to refute what are the actual words of the proletarian theory is just like having a thermometer in a room to indicate the temperature and applying a flame to the tube because it registers too low a temperature to please us. By this temporary expedient of tampering with the thermometer we do not occupy our­selves with the root-cause of the trouble. To take proletarian theory to-day and try to refute it is simple-minded, for such theories are nothing really but to use a classroom word—"indices" of something lying much deeper. Just as a thermometer indicates the temperature of a room, but does not produce it, so proletarian theories are a sort of instrument by which we can recognize the forces active in the social question from this aspect, now and in the immediate future. In this we are much too easy-going. The question has been regarded as purely economic because it first meets us in the economic sphere, based on the demands of the proletariat, hitherto entangled in economic life during the epoch of private capitalism and technical science: we have not seen lying behind the theories all that is betokened by them concerning capital, labour and goods. The workman experiences the whole sphere of human life in the economic field; therefore the social question appears to him entirely in an economic perspective.

Anybody who has the opportunity to acquire wider views is bound to see how clearly three spheres of life are to be distinguished, in which three fundamental aspects of the social question present themselves. To have learnt through his life's destiny not only to think about the masses or have feelings concerning them, but to think and feel with them, will have taught him to observe what is seething in the soul-depths of their best members, even in the phrases which run through all socialist theories - as their keywords. What are these?

First we have the phrase "surplus value," of which I have already spoken. Association as man to man with the proletariat is enough to show how deeply this phrase has sunk into their hearts. It is this sinking-in that matters, not the verification of any theory. Anyone who, like myself, has worked in Berlin at the ‘Workers' School founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht, while decisive events were taking place within the social movements of the new era, will know more about this question that I have, touched upon, through practical life, than perhaps some captain of industry does, especially if the latter should be—how shall I phrase it inoffensively—a revolution-profiteer, a superficial chatterer about revolution, even as we had war-profiteers. "Surplus value" was generally taken to mean something of this sort: the proletariat works productively and produces goods of some kind: the capitalist puts them on the market and gives the worker just sufficient wage to keep him alive, in order that he may continue to produce. Anything over and above this is "surplus value." As Walter Rathenau says—although in social questions he falls into great errors—it is true that this surplus value, divided, would not improve the condition of the masses at all; but through processes of calculation which float in space we do not arrive at the facts; we must deal with this surplus value correctly as to its social significance. Can it have as little, real existence as Rathenau, for instance, “accurately" reckons? In that case there would be in Berlin no theatres, no high schools, no public school, nothing of what we call cultural life, the life dealing with the human spirit; since that, for the most part, is really con­tained in the "surplus value." It does not really matter how this value is forced to the surf ace as "goods" or "cash in circulation": it is in this catchword itself that we find expressed the whole relation of our modern cultural life to the wide masses of the people who cannot directly participate in it.

Anyone who has taught for years amongst the workers and has taken the trouble to teach directly out of our common human feelings, speaking as man to man, will know what a spiritual education must be like if it is to be universally human and, further, how the form of education will differ from our present one, which has grown up during the last three or four hundred years under the influence of an economic order based on private capital and technical organization. If I may once again speak personally, to illustrate the general fact—I was well aware when I spoke to the workers, in lecturing or teaching, that in their souls kindred strings were sounding and that they were receiving a knowledge which they could absorb. But a time came when the proletariat had to follow the fashion and share in "education"—that education which was, from a spiritual point of view, the outcome of the dominant culture. They had to be taken to the museums and shown what had developed out of the experience of the ruling middle classes. Then if men were honest they must have known (if not, they invented all sorts of phrases about "popular education " and the like) that there was no bridge between the spiritual culture and education of the ruling classes and the spiritual needs and longings of the proletariat. Art, science, religion can only be understood if they issue from circles with which one has some common social ground, so that one can share their social feelings and attitude: not where there is an abyss between those who are supposed to enjoy culture, and those who can actually enjoy it. Here there was a vast cultural lie, and nowadays no benevolent mask must be spread over these things, but they must be brought into clear daylight. The lie consisted in setting up "People’s High Schools" or “Educational Schools" in which an education was to be shared by the masses without any possible bridge over which it could pass to them. The proletariat stood on one side of the abyss, looked over it at the art, science, religion, ethics, which had been produced by the leading classes, did not understand them, and took them to be something which only concerned those classes, a sort of luxury. There they saw the practical application of the "surplus value" which they had talked about, but they actually felt quite different from what was spoken in this "thermometer" language about surplus value. They felt: here is a spiritual life created by what we produce, by our labour, from which, however, we are excluded!

This is the way in which we must approach the question of the surplus-value, not theoretically, but as it really and vitally exists in life. Then, too, we can see the essential problem of the social question taken as a whole—its spiritual side. We can see that, side by side with the rise of the new technical science and new capitalist economics, arose an intellectual life only capable of living within the souls of men who were divided by a deep golf from the great masses to whose ,education they gave inadequate attention and from which they held aloof. The tragedy of it! The ruling classes discuss these problems in well-warmed, mirrored rooms, speaking of their brotherly love for all men, our duty to love all men, or of the Christian virtues, while a fire warms them which is fed with coals from the mines into which children of nine, eleven, thirteen years of age are sent down. In the middle of the nineteenth century this was literally so (things have improved since then, not, through any merit of the ruling classes but through the demands of the proletariat); these children went down before sunrise and only came up again after sunset, so that they actually never saw the sun the whole week through.

We are assumed to be agitating nowadays if we talk like this. Not at all! We have to say these things to show how the cultural life of the last few hundred years is separated from the real life of men. People have talked in abstractions about morality, virtue, religion, while their real practical life was in no way touched by the talk of brotherliness, love of one's neighbour, Christianity and so forth. Here, then, confronts us, as a distinct aspect of the social question, the spiritual problem. We stand before the whole sweep of the spiritual life especially as it relates to men of the present age and the immediate future in the realm of teaching and education. As a result of the way in which the territories of dukes or princes have been formed into single state-economics, the intellectual life in its wider form has been absorbed by the State organization. It is to-day a source of pride. that education has torn itself away, as regards science, as regards intellectual life generally, from its medieval association with religion and theology. Proudly it is asserted and repeated: "In the Middle Ages the intellectual and scientific life were in leading-strings to religion and theology." Of course we do not want to have these times back; we must move forward, not backward. We are living in different times: we must not simply point in pride to the way in which intellectual life was train-bearer to the Church in the Middle Ages. Something different is demanded. Let us take an example not so very far away.

A very distinguished scientist, for whom I have great respect (I do not mention these things in order to disparage people)—the Secretary of the Berlin Academy of Sciences—was speaking of the relation of this Academy to the State. He said, in a well-considered speech, that the members of this Academy regarded it as one of their highest distinctions to be "the scientific bodyguard of the Hohenzollerns." That is only one example of what might be repeated a thousand fold, bringing to our lips the question: "What nowadays has taken the place of the Church which formerly used intellectual life as its train-bearer?” Nor were things so bad in the recent past as they must become, if such State regulations were to be made as would favour the growth of that appalling State-regulation of teaching which has arisen in Eastern Europe and which has conclusively proved that it would bring about the death of all culture. We must look not only into the past, but above all into the future and assert that the time has come when intellectual and spiritual life must exist as a self-dependent part of the social organism and must be under its own control.

When a thing like this is mentioned, we are met by all sorts of prejudices, and we are reckoned mad if we cannot appreciate the enormous blessings to be found in State-control of education. But healthy conditions will never be found until education and everything connected with instruction, including , the teachers from the lowest form to the highest grade in the public schools, passes from the control of the State into its own control. That is one of the great objectives we must specially aim at to-day.

The men who first showed me any friendliness when it came actually to fitting the idea of the threefold organization into the present age are those to whom we owe the first really free Einheitsschule in Stuttgart. In connection with the Waldorf-Astoria Factory, we are establishing the first model Einheitsschule, based on the science of pedagogy and teaching which has its origin in the true and real knowledge of the growing human being. Social class and rank make no real difference to him between the seventh and fifteenth years—all human beings are at the same stage. But to be able to teach and educate him means learning first to understand him. As it fell to me to give the preliminary course to the teachers working at the school, there came under my notice certain things which are nowadays taken as a matter of course. The serious significance of such an acceptation is not realized. It has only developed fully in the last decades. Since these things are the subject of practical life-work and must form its experience, I may remark, on such an occasion as this, that my comments on them arise from no irresponsible youthful mind, I speak as one who has already reached the sixties. I can remember how in days gone by the syllabus was short: the subject of teaching was presented by means of lectures, books and the experiences of men who had living ideas of education, who were creative spiritually. But to-day we have no short syllabus; instead, we have thick books which not only direct us to take one subject in one year, another in another, but tell us how to teach it. What should be the subject of free instruction is to be—indeed is—a matter of regulations. Unless we have a clear, adequate feeling of how unsocial all this is, we shall not be ready to collaborate in the real healing of mankind. Therefore, in the establishment of a spiritual, intellectual life which is free and independent of the State lies the first, central problem of the social question. This is the first of the three self-dependent members of the threefold organism which we have to set up. If we represent these facts, pointing out how healthy it may be to have no authority within the spiritual part of the social organism save that of those who take some active part in it, then the teaching of the future will be seen to have little kinship with that of the present-day unitary State. The whole of life will resemble a model republic. Teaching will be created out of the spirit, to satisfy the demands of education, not given according to the claims of regulations. We shall not merely enquire what standard shall be set in the socialized State for a pupil of thirteen or seventeen, but what lies deeply in man himself, which we can draw out of him in such a way that when these forces, liberated from the depths of his being, are at his disposal, he will not be weak-willed or crushed, as so many men are to-day, but will be equal to his destiny and able to direct his forces with determination to the tasks of his life. This points us to the first member of the threefold social order.

To give utterance to such thoughts as these brings questions, objections, like the one I had to meet in a South German city. I was answered in the discussion at the end of a lecture by a secondary school teacher, some­what in this wise: "We Germans shall be a poor nation in the future, and here is a man who wants to make the spiritual and intellectual life independent: a poor people cannot pay for that, there will be no money, there­fore we shall have to draw on the national exchequer and pay for education out of the taxes. What becomes of independence then? How can we refuse the right of the State to inspect, when the State is the source of income? " I could only reply that it seemed strange to me for the teacher to believe that what was drawn from the Treasury as taxes grew there somehow or other, and would not in future come out of the pockets of the "poor nation." What strikes me most is the lack of thought everywhere. We need to develop a real practical thinking which sees into the facts of life. That will give us practical suggestions which can be carried out.

Further, just as on the one hand the spiritual life, in education, etc., must become independent, so on the other hand must the economic life. Now, two demands, rather remarkably, have lately arisen from the depths of human nature, the one for Democracy, the other for Socialism. They contradict one another. Before the War the two contradictory impulses were thrust into each other's company and a party was even founded with the title "Social Democratic." You might as well talk of "wooden iron." They are contradictory, yet both are noble and honest demands of our times. Since then, the catastrophe of the War has passed over us, with all its con­sequences, and now there is a new form for the social demands and a "democratic Parliament " is rejected. When such a theoretical demand, entirely unaccompanied by know­ledge of the facts, with its catchwords of an abstract kind, like " the seizure of political power " or " the dictatorship of the proletariat " and the like, is pushed forward, this originates in the depths of socialist feeling, but it shows that people have come to realize the contradiction between that attitude and the democratic one. In future, we shall have to take into account the realities of life, not be content with catchwords: we shall realize that a socialist is quite right when he feels there is something repellent about democracy. And the democrat is right when he finds "the dictatorship of the proletariat " an alarming prospect. What are the real facts in this sphere?

We must observe the economic life in its connection with the State in the same way as we did the life of the mind and spirit. A common idea of modern times, especially amongst people who consider themselves advanced thinkers, is that the State should more and more participate in industry. Post office, railways, should be under State control, and its authority should be even more widely extended. This is a very comprehensive sub­ject to touch upon in a few words; and since I must limit myself to a short lecture, I must risk being charged with superficiality in making these remarks, which are, however, really to the point, and can be supported by countless instances from modern history. They are far from being superficial. This idea of the "advanced" thinkers will reveal itself in its true form if we take socialism seriously. Moreover, we can ascertain that true form if we so regard a remark made by Friedrich Engels in one of his most brilliant moments, in his book The Development of Socialism from Utopianism to Science. There he says "If we survey the State, in its present development, we find that it includes management of branches of production and control of the distribution of goods; but, inasmuch as it has undertaken economic management, at the same time it controls men." The State laid down the laws according to which men who stand within the economic life must act whether within or outside of their economic activities. In future this must become different.

Engels was quite right. It was his opinion that within the sphere of economic production itself there should be no more control of men: control should be limited to the production and distribution of goods. A right view, but only half or one-quarter of the truth: because the laws effective within the economic sphere have hitherto coincided with the life of the State, and if the State is removed as controller and manager of economics, the economic sphere must have a place of its own, not one from which men shall be ruled from a centre, but where they will rule themselves democratically.

That means that these two impulses, democracy and socialism, point to the fact that by the side of the independent spiritual member of the social organism there must be two other separate spheres, covering what remains of the function of the former type of State. These two spheres are the control of economic life and the domain of public rights, this latter including everything on which a man is entitled to give judgment when he is of age. What is the meaning of the demand for democracy? It means that, as a matter of history, humanity is becoming capable of deciding, in the sphere of the free State and public rights, everything in which all men are equal, every question on which any man who is of age can pronounce, whether directly through a referendum, or indirectly by representation. In future, therefore, we must have an independent sphere of rights, which will take the place of the old State built up of power and might. We can never have a proper State based on law and right, unless the sphere of law is limited to those matters on which every adult human being is capable of judgment. There has been a good deal of talk on this subject among the workers, though, once again, we can only take their words as a social thermometer. There is a remark of Karl Marx which has sunk deeply into their feelings: "It is an existence unworthy of a human being when a worker must sell his labour-­power in the market, as if it were a commodity: we pay for a commodity at its market price and we pay for labour-power by means of wages which are the price of this commodity, labour-power."

This is a remark which has been significant in the development of modern humanity, not so much through its actual content as through the electrical effect it has had on the proletariat, an effect of which the ruling classes can hardly form any idea. What is at the bottom of it all? In the economic circuit, i.e., in the production, distribution and consumption of goods, which alone belong to this circuit, the regulation of labour, according to amount, time and character, etc., has been placed. We shall never have a healthy condition of things in this sphere until the character, amount and time of human work has been taken out of the economic circuit, whether the work be physical or intellectual. The actual regulation of labour-power does not belong to the economic life, in which the economically stronger can impose the type of work upon the economically weaker. The regulation of work as between man and man, what one man does for another, should belong to the sphere of law and right, where each adult human being is on a level with every other. How much work one human being has to do for another ought never to be decided on economic grounds, but solely on principles which will develop in the State of the future, the State of Rights as opposed to the present State of Might.

Here again we meet with a mass of prejudices. It is a commonplace nowadays to maintain that so long as the economic order is settled by the conditions of a free market, so long will it be natural for labour to depend on production and the price of commodities. But if we imagine that things must always go on as they do now, we are shutting our eyes to the different demands which are growing up as history unrolls. In future we shall see, for instance, how foolish it would be for men in control of some industry to meet and, examining their accounts for a certain year, to say: "We produced so much last year. This year, to equal that total we shall need so many days of rain, so many of sunshine, etc." We cannot dictate to Nature to accommodate herself to our prices; prices must be subject to Nature-conditions. On the one side economic life is bounded by natural conditions, on the other by the State of Law or Rights, through which, as we have seen, labour has to be regulated. Hours of work must be settled on purely democratic grounds and prices will follow them, regulated according to natural conditions, as is the case in agriculture. We have not to consider alteration in a few minor details of the system: we must change our whole way of thinking and learning. The unrest created at present in our industrial life will never disappear until labour-power is judged on an independent democratic basis, when one adult human being stands over against his fellow as equal and can, as free man, bring his work into the independent economic life, in which agreements about production will be made, not about work. This must be understood.

I can but touch on these things in the short time at my disposal. I would gladly give a whole course of lectures to deal with them, but that is impossible. I must just indicate what form this third member, the economic life, must take in the threefold social organism of the future.

In this economic sphere there must not be, as in the past, control of capital, of land, of means of production (which incidently is control of capital) and of labour: we may only admit control of the production, distribution and consumption of goods. And how is the essential fact of an economic life which is to be based only on knowledge of facts and on practical ability—this "settling of prices"—to be achieved? It must not be decided by the chances of a free market as has been the case hitherto in both national-economy and world- economy. By means of the Associations which will come into being to suit the circumstances existing between the various branches of production and consumption—Associations which will be composed of men whose position is justified by their knowledge of facts and practical ability—we shall obtain organically and rationally what is nowadays attained through crises in the chances of a free market. In the future, when a decision as to the kind and character, of human labour has to be made in the Rights State, it will happen in the economic life that a man will receive in return for his product enough exchange-values to supply his needs until he can produce another such product. To give a rough superficial example, I might explain that, supposing I produce a pair of boots, I must be able, through the mutually-fixed values, to get as much goods in exchange for my boots as I shall require for my needs until I have made another pair. There will have to be arrangements within the society for supplying the needs of widows, orphans, the sick, of education, etc., but the actual regulation of prices in this way—and that alone will be the task of the economic organization—will depend on the formation of Corporations (whether elected, or nominated from the Associations formed among the various branches of production combined with the Associations of consumers) whose business it will be to get at true prices in real life.

This can only be achieved if the whole economic life (not planned after a Möllendorff scheme, but in a living fashion) is so ordered that, for instance, notice is taken of actual conditions. Say that some particular article shows a tendency to become too expensive: that means that it is too scarce. Workmen must be diverted to that branch of production, through some form of agreement, in order to produce more of it. If some article is too cheap, factories must close down and the workers be transferred to other factories. “It is all very difficult," people reply when we mention this sort of thing to-day: but they should realize that to reject it as difficult, and to prefer to play about with minor improvements in social conditions, means to preserve present conditions as they are. What I have said shows you that, as a result of the Associations created simply out of the economic life, economic life can be made self-dependent, controlled only by the economic forces them­selves instead of being under the aegis of the State: and in such a way that within this self-dependent control the initiative of the individual will be maintained as much as possible. This cannot be done by a planned economy, by the establishment of a common organization of the means of production, but only by the Associations belonging to such free branches of production and their agreement with the consumers' Associations.

It would be a terrible mistake to push to extremes the State control which has hitherto been under the direction of the ruling classes, and extend "Corporations" over the whole life of the State, using the framework of the State for the purpose, a procedure which could but undermine all connection between such a planned economy and the economic forces outside it. The Associations, on the other hand, as part of the Threefold Organization, would aim particularly at maintaining the free initiative of those engaged in industry and at keeping open everything which unites a closed economic circuit with other economic circuits without.

Many things would look very different—for example, something I can only indicate by an analogy. Socialist doctrine demands "the abolition of private property " and "trans­formation of private possessions into communal, property "—mere unmeaning words, which can signify nothing to a man with practical knowledge of affairs. Yet they might have a meaning—which I can describe to you in pictorial fashion. We are very proud nowadays, for instance, of our philosophers, and in one way they do think fairly accurately, that is, where intellectual or spiritual work is concerned. In the material sphere they do not manage to think in the same healthy way. In the matter of intellectual possessions it is realized that what is produced in that realm by anyone is his own work, he has to be present. Nobody talks of its being produced by some common economy or corporate industry. Everything here must be left to the individual, for we get the best result when he is present with his faculties and talents at the work, not when he is cut off from it; but from a social aspect we think that thirty years or less after his death the spiritual product should no longer be the property of his heirs, but of any person who can best make it accessible to the community. That seems natural to us, because we do not value spiritual product as anything peculiar. But we make no effort, in the case of material property, to treat it in the same way, and see that it should only remain private as long as a man is in contact with it with all his faculties. When this is no longer the case it should pass over—not to the community (which has no real being) bringing fearful corruption in its train, but to the man who could in his turn by use of his faculties put it to the best use for the community.

It is easy enough to see clearly if we think impartially. We have undertaken to found a school for Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum, at Dornach, near Basel, in Switzerland. This has been its title ever since the world became "Woodrow-Wilsonized" and it became necessary for Germany's spiritual life-treasure to be boldly displayed before the world. A very different thing, this, from ordinary Chauvinism—a Goetheanum in a foreign country as the representative of German spiritual life. Fur­ther, it is being built, and it will be controlled, by those who have the capacities to call it into being; but to whom will it belong when these people are no longer among the living? It will not pass by inheritance to anyone, but to those who can control it best in the service of humanity. Actually it belongs to nobody. Social thought in economics will bring into being the things which are necessary for health in the future. I have dealt more fully with the circulation of private property in my Three­ fold Commonwealth, where I have shown how the social organism must be divided into three members, separate but co-operating as such:

(a) The spiritual organization with control of itself on the basis of a free spiritual life.

(b) The organisation of the State with political rights and with democratic control based on the judgment of every grown-up person.

 (c) An economic life placed under the control only of individuals, who have shown themselves expert and competent, and their Associations and Corporations.

All this seems so new that once when I was talking of it in Germany, someone objected that, I was dividing the State (which must be a unity) into three parts. I could only ask in reply whether I should be dividing a horse into parts if I said it must stand on its four legs? Or is a horse a unity only if it stands on one leg? Just as little can one expect that the social life should be an abstract unity, if such a unity could exist at all. We must not in the future allow ourselves to be hypnotized by the abstract idea of the "unitary State"; we must see that it must be divided into three members on which it can be supported—into a free spiritual sphere controlling itself, an organization of rights with democratic legislation, and an economic organization with expert and competent economic control.

One-half of a great truth was uttered more than a hundred years ago in Western Europe, in the words: "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," three ideals which were capable of being graven deep into the hearts and souls of men: but it was not fools or madmen who maintained in the nineteenth century that these ideals were really contradictory, that where absolute equality rules, neither freedom nor fraternity can exist. These objections were sound, but only because they were made at a time when men were obsessed by the idea of the so-called "unitary State." Directly we free ourselves from the hypnotism of this idea and can understand the necessity for the three­fold social organism we shall speak otherwise.

I hope you will allow me in closing, to sum up in a comparison what I fain would discuss at greater, length. I have only been able to give an outline sketch of what I meant: I know I have but hinted at what needs a comprehensive description to be understood; but in conclusion I should like to point out what a hypnotic effect the "unitary State " idea has had on men, and how they have let the unitary State be dominated by the three great ideals of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." We shall have to change that idea. At present people look on the Unitary State as a sort of divinity. In this, their attitude is like Faust's attitude towards the sixteen-year-old Gretchen. It is like the lessons which Faust gave to the child Gretchen, suited to her years, but usually regarded by philosophers as something highly philosophical. There Faust says, "The All­-enfolding, the All-upholding, folds and up­holds he not thee, me, Himself? " (Faust, Part I, Scene XVI) This is almost the same view as of the Unitary State. Men are hypnotized by it as by an idol of unity and cannot see that this unitary picture must become threefold for the health of mankind in the future. Many a manufacturer would be only too glad to speak to his work-people about the State as Faust speaks to Gretchen: "The all-enfolding, all-upholding State, does it not enfold and uphold you, myself, itself? "—only he would have to clap his hand over his mouth lest he should say "myself " too loudly! The necessity of the threefold ordering must be realized, especially amongst the workers, but that will only be when their eyes are opened to the need. In future it will not be the cry of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," with all the contradictions involved in these ideals. They will hold sway, but the independent spiritual life will be the domain of "Liberty " for there it is justified. "Equality" will be the rule in the democratic State, where all grown men will be equal in rights; finally, "Fraternity " will hold dominion in the economic life, independently controlled, supporting and sustaining every one. Thus applied to the three divisions of the social organism the three ideals no longer contradict each other.

And now, though we look in agony at what has happened at Versailles, seeing in it the starting-point of much misery, poverty and pain, yet we can still hope. Things external can be taken from us, yet if we have the vigour to reach back over the years in which we were false to our own past to the Goetheanism of the period at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe and others were active in other spheres: if we have the vigour to reach back in our time of need, in the strength of our own inner being, to the great glories of Central Europe, then, in spite of the stress of our times, will peal forth from Central Europe the complement to the half­truth of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity " which rang out a hundred years ago, the other half—perhaps in external dependence, but certainly in inner freedom and independence.

Liberty in the Life of the Spirit.
Equality in the democratic Life of Rights.
Fraternity in the Economic Life.

In these words we can sum tap what men must think and say and feel if they are to comprehend the Social Question in its entirety. May it be received and grasped by many, many minds, so that what is only a question to-day may be the practice of tomorrow.