The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is only of recent times that the truths of occultism have been the subject of public lectures. Formerly, these truths were only revealed in secret societies, to those who had passed through certain degrees of initiation and had sworn to obey the laws of the Order through the whole of their life. Today, man is entering upon a very critical period. Occult truths are beginning to be disclosed to the public. In a matter of twenty years or so, a certain number of them will already be common knowledge. Why is this? The reason is that humanity is entering upon a new phase which it is the object of this lecture to explain.

In the Middle Ages, occult truths were known in the Rosicrucian Movement. But whenever they leaked out, they were either misunderstood or distorted. In the eighteenth century they entered upon a phase of much dilletantism and charlatanry and at the beginning of the nineteenth century they were put entirely in the background by the physical sciences. It is only in our day that they are beginning to re-emerge and in the coming centuries they will play an important part in the development of mankind. In order to understand this, we must glance at the centuries preceding the advent of Christianity and follow the progress that has been made.

It does not require any very profound knowledge to realise the difference between a man of pre-Christian times and a man of today. Although his scientific knowledge was far less, man of olden times had deeper feelings and intuitions. He lived more in the world beyond—which he also perceived—than in the world of sense. There were some who entered into direct and actual communication with the astral and spiritual world. In the Middle Ages, when earthly existence was by no means comfortable, man still lived with his head in the heavens. True, the mediaeval cities were somewhat primitive, but they were a far truer representation of man's inner world than the cities of today. Not only the cathedrals but the houses and porches with their symbols reminded men of their faith, their inner feelings, their aspirations, and the home of their soul. Today, we have knowledge of many, many things and the relations among human beings have multiplied ad infinitum. But we live in cities that are like deafening factories in awful Babels, with nothing to remind us of our inner world. Our communion with this inner world is not through contemplation but through books. We have passed from intuition into intellectualism.

To find the origin of the stream of intellectualism we must go back further than the Middle Ages. The epoch of the birth of human intellect, the period when this transformation took place, lies about a thousand years before the Christian era. It is the epoch of Thales, Pythagoras, Buddha. Then for the first time arose philosophy and science, that is to say truth presented to the reason in the form of logic. Before this age, truth presented itself in the form of religion, of revelation received by the teachers and accepted by the masses. In our times, truth passes into the individual intelligence and would fain be proved by argument, would like to have its own wings clipped.

What has happened in the inner nature of man to justify this transition of his consciousness from one plane to another, from the plane of intuition to that of logic? Here we touch upon one of the fundamental laws of history—a law no longer recognised by contemporary thought. It is this: Humanity evolves in a way which enables the different elements and principles of man's being to unfold and develop in successive stages. What are these principles?

To begin with, man has a physical body in common with the mineral kingdom. The whole mineral world is found again in the chemistry of the body. He has an etheric body, which is, properly speaking, the vital principle within him. He has this etheric body in common with the plants. This principle engenders the process of nutrition and the forces of growth and re-production. Man has also an astral body in which feelings and sentiments, the power of enjoyment and of suffering are enkindled. He has the astral body in common with the animals.

Finally, there is a principle in man which cannot be spoken of as a body. It is his innermost essence, distinguishing him from all other entities, mineral, plant and animal. It is the self, the soul, the divine spark. The Hindus spoke of it as Manas; The Rosicrucians as the ‘Inexpressible.’ A body, in effect, is only part and parcel of another body, but the self, the ‘I’ of man exists in and by itself alone—“I am I.” This principle is addressed by others as ‘thou,’ or ‘you;’ it cannot be confused with anything else in the universe. By virtue of this inexpressible, incommunicable self, man rises above all created things of the Earth, above the animals, indeed above all creation. And only through this principle can he commune with the Infinite Self, with God. That is why, at certain definite times, the officiating hierophant in the ancient Hebrew sanctuaries said to the High Priest: Shem-Ham-Phores, which means: What is his name (the name of God)? He-Vo-He, or—in one word—Jev or Joph, meaning God, Nature, Man; or again, the inexpressible ‘I’ of man which is both human and divine.

These principles of man's being were laid down in remote ages of his vast evolutionary cycle—but they only unfold slowly, one by one.

The special mission of the period which began about a thousand years before the Christian era has been to develop the human Ego in the intellectual sense. But above the intellectual plane there is the plane of Spirit. It is the world of Spirit to which man will attain in the centuries to come, and to which he will be wending his way from now onwards. The germs of this future development have been cast into the world by the Christ and by true Christianity.

Before speaking of this world of Spirit, we must understand one of the forces by means of which humanity en masse passed from the astral to the intellectual plane. It was by virtue of a new kind of marriage. In olden times, marriages were made in the bosom of the same tribe or of the same clan—which was only an extension of the family. Sometimes, indeed, brothers and sisters married. Later on, men sought their wives outside the clan, the tribe, the civic community. The beloved became the stranger, the unknown. Love—which in days of yore had been merely a natural and social function—became personal desire, and marriage a matter of free choice. This is indicated in certain Greek myths like that of the rape of Helen and again in the Scandinavian and Germanic myths of Sigurd and Gudrun. Love becomes an adventure, woman a conquest from afar.

This change from patriarchial marriage to free marriage corresponds to the new development of man's intellectual faculties, of the Ego. There is a temporary eclipse of the astral faculties of vision and the power of reading directly in the astral and spiritual world—faculties which are included in ordinary speech under the name of inspiration.

Let us now turn to Christianity. The brotherhood of man and the cult of the One God are certainly features of it but they only represent the external, social aspect, not the inner, spiritual reality. The new, mysterious and transcendental element in Christianity is that it creates divine Love, the power which transforms man from within, the leaven by which the whole world is raised. Christ came to say: ”If you leave not mother, wife and your own body, you cannot be my disciple”

That does not imply the cessation of natural links. Love extends beyond the bounds of family to all human beings and is changed into vivifying, creative, transmuting power.

This Love was the fundamental principle of Rosicrucian thought but it was never understood by the outer world. It is destined to change the very essence of all religion, of all cults, of all science.

The progress of humanity is from unconscious spirituality (pre-Christian), through intellectualism (the present age), to conscious spirituality, where the astral and intellectual faculties unite once more and become dynamic through the power of the Spirit of Love, divine and human. In this sense, Theology will tend to become Theosophy.

What, in effect, is Theology? A knowledge of God imposed from without under the form of dogma, as a kind of supernatural logic. And what is Theosophy? A knowledge of God which blossoms like a flower in the depths of the individual soul. God, having vanished from the world, is reborn in the depths of the human heart.

In the Rosicrucian sense, Christianity is at once the highest development of individual freedom and universal religion. There is a community of free souls. The tyranny of dogma is replaced by the radiance of divine Wisdom, embracing intelligence, love and action.

The science which arises from this cannot be measured by its power of abstract reasoning but by its power to bring souls to flower and fruition. That is the difference between ‘Logia’ and ‘Sophia,’ between science and divine Wisdom, between Theology and Theosophy.

In this sense, Christ is the centre of the esoteric evolution of the West. Certain modern Theologians—above all in Germany—have tried to represent Christ as a simple, naive human being. This is a terrible error. The most sublime consciousness, the most profound Wisdom live in Him, as well as the most divine Love. Without such consciousness, how could He be a supreme manifestation in the life of our whole planetary evolution? What gave Him this power to rise so high above His own time? Whence came transcendental qualities?

I have already emphasized that the human being must be placed at the center of the considerations that will be incumbent upon you in the near future. If this is done to the fullest extent, many things can be put right in the views of the present, which, as I showed again in the last lecture, must inevitably lead to catastrophes. Now it is a matter of saying a few words, by way of example, to illustrate the things that are connected with this assertion: the human being must now be placed at the center of social considerations and social action.

We have a whole range of buzzwords, phrases, and so on among us. What many people assert before their fellow human beings has gradually become almost exclusively a phrase. We live in an age of phrases. And a reality that is guided and directed by phrases must obviously disintegrate into itself. This is connected with the fundamental phenomena of our present-day development.

Let us take something out of the whole sum of what is present in social life, and let us look at it as it is very often discussed today. Today, we hear from some who want to have a say in social matters that it is important, for example, for the proletarian movement to rise up against the unemployed income, against the unemployed acquisition. - Well, of course, there is always something real behind the assertion of such claims. But mostly something quite different from what the people who very often make such an assertion mean. For it must be clear that only by observing social processes, and not through abstractions, can we discover what is actually meant by “unemployed income” or “unemployed acquisition”. People have expressed themselves about these things in the most diverse ways. There are people, even Bismarck was one of them, who expressed themselves differently – they spoke of “productive classes”, but actually meant working classes – but who were of the opinion that, for example, farmers, tradesmen who work with their hands, and representatives of similar occupations were “productive people”, but that, for example, teachers, doctors and the like were not “productive people”. That what emanates from the teacher is not “productive work”.

Perhaps you know that Karl Marx made an economic discovery which has been much discussed, precisely in order to put the “productive work” that people meant into perspective. This discovery of Karl Marx is the well-known “Indian bookkeeper”. He was the person who, somewhere in a small Indian village, where the other people worked with their hands, sowing, harvesting, picking fruit from the trees and the like, was employed to keep records of these things. And Karl Marx decided that all the other people in this village did “productive work,” but that the hapless bookkeeper did “unproductive work,” and that he lived his unproductive life on the “surplus value” that was deducted from the labor income of the others. And from this unfortunate Indian accountant, a great many deductions are made, which have recently become common in a certain field of economic observation.

Of course, the work of a teacher can be integrated into the social process in exactly the same way as the “unproductive labor” that Karl Marx said the unfortunate Indian accountant performed. But let's look at it this way: a teacher is a skilled person, skilled as a fully human person. He teaches and educates very young children, elementary school children. And for the sake of simplicity, let us assume – the theory is not affected by this – that all the children the teacher educates and teaches become cobblers. And through his skill, by developing abilities in his children through teaching, through which they think wisely, wisely engage in life with their profession as cobblers, and through his practical guidance with all kinds of educational means, he makes his children more skillful; and they now become cobblers who, let's say, make as many boots every ten days as others make in fifteen days. Now, what exactly is going on here? Surely, according to genuine Marxist doctrine, all these shoemakers who have been created are engaged in 'productive labor'. If it had not been for the teacher and his skill, if he had been an unskillful teacher, they would have performed the same productive labor in fifteen days instead of ten. Now, if you add up all the shoes that will be made by these children after they have grown up, in the five days that have been saved by having a skilled teacher, you can say: this skilled teacher has basically made all these boots made, and at least in the economic process, in all that belongs to this economic process, that is, in everything that flows out of it for the maintenance of people and so on, in all this, the teacher was the actual producer. His being actually lives on in the boots made in the five days!

The point is that here one can apply a narrow-minded way of looking at such a thing, and then one will come to call only the cobbler's work “productive work”, and “unproductive work”, that is, work that maintains itself from the surplus value, but the teacher's work. But one distorts all reality with such a way of looking at things.

We can take a different approach that does not tend to one side or the other, but rather looks at the whole process of social life. But if we think in economic terms, purely economic terms, then we have to ask: what exactly is it that the teacher draws for his physical maintenance? Is it different in an economic sense, in other words, is it different in an economic sense from any other form of income? Is it different from anything else that, to use a Marxist term, is 'withdrawn' from purely physical work and, I would add, handed over to another person? In economic terms, it is no different at all! The reason for this is as follows.

Let us assume that what is known as “added value” is used for teachers, then it flows productively into the whole economic process in the way I have just characterized it. Let us assume that it is handed over to a financier, a person who is really called a pensioner and who actually does nothing but what is usually called “cutting coupons”. But does the fact that he cuts coupons exhaust the economic process? Of course not, the man eats and drinks and dresses and so on. He cannot live on the “added value” of what is delivered to him. He lives off what other people produce for him. He is merely a switchboard for labor, for the economic process.

And if you look at the matter quite objectively, you can only say the following: such a person, who lives somewhere as a financing pensioner, through whom the economic processes are switched, is in social life roughly the same as the resting point of a scale, of a balance beam. The resting point of a balance beam must also be there. All the other points move; the one point of rest of the balance beam does not move. But it must be there. Because there has to be a switchover. In other words, this issue cannot be decided at the national economic level. At most, one could say that if the number of these points of rest, these pensioners “cutting coupons”, became too large, then the others would have to work substantially more, work longer. But in reality it is nowhere like that, because the number of pensioners in relation to any total population never comes into consideration at all in this way, and because, in the first place, as we have the social process today, hardly anything would come of it if we were to change it from our present circumstances.

So you can't think about the whole thing like that at all. And if you go through the Marxist literature, you will see that precisely because of the compulsion to blame someone for all the ills of social life, as in the so-called unemployed acquisition, you will see that all the conclusions are inconclusive. Because they don't actually mean anything. They would only mean something if the economic process were to change significantly, if the pensioners did not receive their pensions. But that would not be the case at all. So with this way of thinking, you don't get anywhere near the matter.

Rather, it is a matter of focusing attention on the fact that such resting points are necessary for switching, for turnover in economic life. For there is an added value that corresponds exactly to all of Karl Marx's definitions of added value, and which, in all its functions, corresponds to the functions of Marx's added value, insofar as one thinks only economically: that is the tax burden. In terms of its nature and function, the tax is exactly the same as Karl Marx's surplus value. And the various socialist governments have not exactly proved, where they have appeared, that they have become particularly combative against surplus value in the form of tax payments! But it is precisely in such things that the absurdity of theories is revealed.

The absurdity of theories is never revealed by logic, but always by reality. This must be said by someone who strives to judge from this reality in all situations. As long as one remains in the economic sphere, it is impossible to associate any kind of reasonable meaning with the concept of “surplus value”. As long as we remain within the economic sphere, we are concerned with the realization of economic processes. And these can only be realized if there are control points. Whether these are in the hands of the state or of individual rentiers is only a secondary difference, from a purely economic point of view. Therefore, it is necessary to point out that everything associated with such a concept as “unemployed income” or “unemployed acquisition” is not based on economic thinking at all, but merely on resentment: on looking at the person who has such an “unemployed income” and who is basically regarded as someone who is lazy, who does not work. A legal or even moral concept is simply smuggled into economic thinking. That is the fundamental phenomenon of this matter.

In reality, it is something quite different with these things, namely, that our human life process, our civilization process, could not be maintained at all if, for example, what some people are striving for were to be realized, inventing the phrase “the right to the full yield of labor”. For there is no way to speak of a “full labor yield” when you consider that if I become a cobbler and work more skillfully than I would have worked if I had not had a skilled teacher, any possibility of me vindicating the right to the “full labor yield” is eliminated. For from what does it flow? Not even from the totality of the present! The teacher who taught me may have died long ago. The past is linked to the present, and the present in turn flows over into the future. It is absurd to want to overlook such things with narrow-minded concepts, and to see how the individual achievements of a person fit into the whole economic process.

But something else immediately emerges when one says to oneself: Well, in purely economic terms, there can be no question of a person somehow receiving a “full yield of labor,” because one cannot even grasp the concept. One cannot narrow it down, contour it. It does not exist. It is impossible. But something immediately emerges when one looks at reality. In reality, there are such transition points, such people, to whom the proceeds of others who work physically flow to some extent. Now, let us assume that the person to whom it flows is a teacher, then he does a very productive job in the sense that I characterized it earlier. But let us assume that he is not a teacher, but really a coupon-cutter. Let's start with not one coupon cutter, but two. One of them cuts his coupons in the morning, then lights a few cigarettes after breakfast, reads his morning paper, then goes for a walk, then he eats lunch, then he sits down in his rocking chair and rocks a little, then he goes to the club and plays whist or poker and so on, and so he spends his day. Now let's take another fellow who also clippeds his coupons in the morning, but let's say that then he occupied himself with, well, let's say, setting up a scientific institute, who therefore devoted his thoughts to setting up a scientific institute, which would never come into existence if he couldn't cut coupons, because if it were set up by the people who are there to do the work of cutting his coupons, it would certainly never be set up. He arranges it. And in this scientific institute, perhaps after ten years, perhaps after twenty years, an extraordinarily important discovery or invention is made. Through this discovery or invention, productive work is done in a similar way, but perhaps even more extensively, than the teacher was able to do with his children who became shoemakers. Then there is a certain difference between coupon-cutter A and coupon-cutter B – a difference that is extremely important from an economic point of view. And we have to say: the whole process of coupon-cutting was extraordinarily productive in the context of human life.

The question cannot be decided at all in purely economic terms. It can only be decided if there is something else besides economic life, something that, apart from economic life, separate from economic life, causes people, when they draw their sustenance from the community in whatever way, to give back through their own nature what they ; if, therefore, there is a free spiritual life that inspires people not to become financiers, but to apply their spiritual strength in some way, just as they have it, or to apply their physical strength, just as they have it.

When one looks at things as they really are in real life, one is led to the necessity of the threefold social organism. And above all, such insight into life makes us aware that all the stuff that is often put forward in terms of political economy, even by practitioners, is basically unusable, that something else must finally be put into people's heads, namely a holistic view of life. And it is this holistic view of life that ultimately leads to the threefold social order.

We must therefore endeavor to spread such ideas ever further and further. We must not disdain to point out how short-sighted the practical life of the present day is. We must combine these two activities: on the one hand, present the positive side of the threefold order, and on the other hand, be the harshest critics of what so often exists today as spiritual currents. We must get to know these schools of thought and become harsh critics of them. Only by holding up the absurdities that exist today to people as if in a mirror image will we be able to make progress and get through to them. And what we teach people in this way must at the same time be presented in such a way that they feel how we work with real concepts.

You see, a person who produces boots is most certainly a productive person. But in Marxist terms, a person who, say, produces beauty spots is just as productive. Because if you just look at the performance of physical labor, it is just as much physical labor as the other. What matters is to consider the whole process and to get an idea of how what someone does is shaped into the process of social life. People need to get a sense of these things. It cannot be done any other way.

Now, however, we will be obliged to respect the thought habits of today's people. But they must be clear about one thing: if you go out and talk to people for an hour and a quarter about such things as I am putting before you now, they will start to yawn and they will eventually leave the room, glad that it has stopped, because they are longing for a healthy nap. You think that is difficult, much too difficult! For people have completely lost the habit of following thoughts that are borne by reality. The fact that people have only ever followed abstractions, that they have been accustomed to following abstractions since they were schoolchildren, has made humanity lazy in its thinking. Humanity is terribly lazy in its thinking in the present day. And we have to take this into account, but in a useful way.

That is why we incorporate stories into our lectures about what has already been developed from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Maybe we tell people fewer anecdotes! It is very useful for today's lazy humanity to interrupt a difficult lecture with anecdotes from time to time, but we can spend our time better than that. In the meantime, let us tell you about our Waldorf school, about eurythmy, about our college courses, about the coming day, by inserting this in the necessary way into the course of our thoughts. This is something that breaks up the train of thought, which is initially a pleasant change for people - they then need to think less. Because, isn't it true, the essence of the matter can then follow. We can describe for a while how the Waldorf School came about, how it is organized; we can describe how thirty lecturers in Dornach have tried to fertilize the sciences from the perspective of spiritual science in the university courses. When you tell people that science should be fertilized, they don't need to think about how that happens in chemistry, in botany and so on, but they can stick with generally hazy ideas while you talk about it. And then they have time to slip into the thought bed between the thoughts that are put forward. We have again gained the opportunity to talk about some more difficult things in the next five minutes. But the other things are still extremely useful. For example, when we tell people how we created school reports in the Waldorf school, how we tried not to write “almost satisfactory”, “hardly sufficient” - which you can't distinguish at all whether someone has “hardly” or “almost sufficient” - but where we gave each child something like a small biography and a life verse. The people don't need to think much about how difficult it is, that is, they can think about how difficult it is to find a life verse for each child; but if you just say the result, it is painless to accept. So we can tell them what has been practically developed there. And in this way we can also tell people something about the facilities at the Waldorf School, how the building gradually became too small, how we had to build barracks because we didn't have the money to build a proper building. It is useful for people to hear sometimes that we don't have enough money; this can have very pleasant consequences. If we include such things in our reflections, it will be very objective, because it is objective, and will be very justified; but it can also create a pleasant change for the listeners.

Then we can tell about the university courses in Dornach, in Stuttgart. We can weave in that all of this still has to be done today for the most part by the poor Waldorf teachers, that so few people have come together who are really doing something in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Because the fact that Waldorf teachers are overburdened three times over is something that people are quite happy to accept, isn't it. Everyone then imagines that they too are overburdened. Well, and in this way we can, by actually speaking of what is already on the outside, show people something at the same time that they may like to hear again and again in between, but what they should also know, what they also need to know.

And then we also talk to them by name about the Day to Come. We try to give them a picture of how this Day to Come is set up. You can see from the brochures that have been distributed how it is set up. We teach people about the Coming Day with the help of the brochures that have been distributed and we tell them: Of course you will find that this Coming Day does not yet fully correspond to the associations about associations – we will talk about this tomorrow – and that it is still very much based on the present economy. But at the same time we say to people: we know that anyway, but it just shows how necessary it is for this economy to change, because no matter how hard we try, we cannot shape the ideal of an association out of the current economic system.

But it is necessary that you see our movement as a whole in your lectures. You should not be embarrassed, on the one hand, to present the spiritual side, the anthroposophical orientation to the people, but on the other hand, to also go into the practical things of the coming day and present all of this to the people. In your lecture, you do not need to make a direct appeal for money; that – I say it in parentheses – can be done by the other person, who is traveling with you and will approach the people only after the lecture; it is better that way. But although I put it in parentheses, that is how it should be done. As I said, you do not need to do it directly in the lecture, to promote the cause. But you can certainly let it be known that, without any selfish purpose behind it, in order to promote what is actually intended by the threefold order, you need, firstly, money, secondly, money, thirdly, money. And depending on which of you, according to the situation, finds this right, you can emphasize the first word money more strongly and then drop the tone or rise with the second tone. This is something that can somehow contribute to the inner formation of the matter.

I am not telling you this to imply anything more than that you have to be considerate of the way something is said. In a sense, when you walk into a room, you should sense whether you have to speak one way or the other. You can sense that, especially when you are among complete strangers. So you will have to take such things into account. If you want to achieve what is to be achieved now, you will not be able to go before the people with a finished concept, but you will have to adapt completely to the circumstances. You will only be able to do that if you approach the design and delivery of your lectures in the way I characterized yesterday. But we must not forget to keep referring back to what we have already achieved in the establishment of the school system, including practical institutions. After all, it is already the case in the present that people need this. And you would do well, especially when describing the threefolded social organism, to use the establishment of the Waldorf school for illustration, and likewise when describing the other economic life, to exemplify again and again what is intended by the coming day. I would like you to remember that the world must be pointed out very sharply to our various institutions, precisely through your lectures.

And behind all this there must be the awareness that from all corners and ends - as I have already said several times in these lectures - the opposition is there and more is to come, and that we do not have much longer time to bring to bear what we want to bring to bear and what must be brought to bear, but that we must tackle things sharply in the near future.

We must not take as an example – and I say this for those who have been in the anthroposophical movement for a long time – the way the anthroposophical movement as such has developed, because it is developing in such a way that its members are all too little interested in what is actually going on in the world. Now is the time to develop a keen interest in what is going on in the world. And we must be quite explicit and also critical of ourselves with regard to what is currently going on in the world today. Therefore, we must take an interest in these events. We must seek to explain the necessity of our movement on the basis of these events. We must repeatedly emphasize how these events are likely to lead modern civilization into decline. For people must learn to understand that if things continue as they usually do today, the decline of modern civilization will certainly result, and that the countries of Europe would at least have to go through terrible times if a foundation for a new beginning is not laid out of a truly active spiritual life and an actively grasped state and economic life.

We must also take away the phrases that are repeatedly uttered in the following way: Yes, all this may be very nice with the threefold order, but to introduce something like that, it would take not decades but perhaps centuries. - It is an objection that is made frequently. But there is no more absurd objection than this. For what is to arise in humanity, especially in the way of social institutions, depends on what people want and what strength and courage they put into their will. And what can naturally take centuries with carelessness and inertia can take the shortest possible time when active forces are applied. But for this it is necessary that we bring into more and more minds what can come from our spiritual science and be derived from observing our other institutions. Do not forget to point out such things as are to be created here in Stuttgart, for instance in the Medical-Therapeutic Institute. For it is also the case that it is precisely from such institutions that people can best learn to understand the fruitfulness of spiritual science, at least for the time being.

And if one can make such a thing plausible to people, there is also the consideration that it would actually be of no use at all for the further development of humanity if, in addition to the old Catholic religion, , the old Protestant creed, and the Jewish, Turkish creed, and so on, and in addition to many a sectarian creed, now also to establish a world view that would be “the anthroposophical” That would certainly have a meaning for people who meet every week, or twice a week, to indulge in such worldviews. It would have a subjective meaning for these people. But it would have no meaning for the world. For the world, only a worldview and outlook on life that directly engages practical questions has meaning. And that is why we find it all too often now that people are quite willing to be told something about the eternal in human nature, about life after death. One can also speak to a larger number of people without them scratching out one's eyes just because one says it, about repeated lives on earth, about the law of karma and so on. But today it is even more useful and important to teach people that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can contribute something to medicine, for example, to therapy, so that it can be seen how truly for the material world that which one conquers in the spiritual has a certain unique significance. For it is not enough just to rise to the spirit in its abstractness, but it is important to rise in such a way that this is the living spirit, which then has enough strength and power to have an effect on the material.

You should present this thought, this placing of the spirit in material life in the most diverse variations, to people again and again in the eyes of your soul. For the spirit wants to rule matter, not flee from matter. Therefore it is in a certain respect downright nefarious when people like Bruhm, who wrote the little book Theosophy and Anthroposophy, reproach Anthroposophy for wanting to draw into the everyday life what should hover in the heights of heaven, above reality, what should not be drawn down into material reality. One can hardly imagine a greater annoyance for human life than such teachers of the people, who need the lecterns and the universities to teach such stuff to the people. But that is happening today in all, all variants.

And what is particularly on the agenda today is that people say: Yes, anthroposophy may be an attempt to deepen the individual sciences, but anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion, anthroposophy has nothing to do with Christianity. And then people come and want to prove why anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion and Christianity. Then they come up with completely arbitrary concepts that they have of religion and Christianity. And they make it clear that these concepts, which they have of religion and Christianity, must not be challenged!

If only people would at least be truthful! Then one would be able to be a little more lenient with them. If people would come and say: Anthroposophy is now emerging; it speaks from different sources than I have spoken from so far at the theological faculty or in the pulpit. I now only have the choice of either giving up my job, but then I have nothing to eat, that's a fatal thing, or I'd rather stick to my job and reject anthroposophy! One would not exactly take such people very seriously for the cultural life of humanity, but they would speak the truth, just as the Graz law teacher spoke the truth, who proved the freedom of the human will every year before his students by saying: “People have free will!” Because if people had no free will, then they would have no responsibility for their actions. And if they had no responsibility for their actions, then there would be no punishments and no criminal law. But I am a teacher of criminal law. So I would not be teaching criminal law. But now I have to. And because there has to be a me at this university, there has to be a criminal law, so there must also be punishments, and thus there must also be a responsibility of people, and consequently also a free will of people. This is roughly how the Graz law professor taught his students about the freedom of the human will years ago. What he presented was not much different.

And theologians and other people would also act according to this scheme if they said what was true. They could also still cite the other side of the matter, they would then be equally true, and one would then be more lenient, they could still say: I could perhaps also take on the inconvenience of re-founding religion and Christianity. In the case of university professors, it could then happen that they would then have to migrate from the theological faculties, perhaps if they were in a larger number, to the philosophical faculty. If they are already professors, then it is easier than if they want to get into the university. But even if the life food were to be retained, it would still be difficult. But they do not want to go to the trouble and inconvenience of re-establishing the things. But if they just wanted to say these things, then at least they would be honest. Instead, they put forward all sorts of arguments that do not correspond to reality, but are only decorative, intended to cover up reality. We, however, must not be lenient in any way on these points, but must seek out untruthfulness and mendacity everywhere in these points and ruthlessly expose it before the world.

And we must not fail to point out the sloppiness in the thinking of some people, who simply express it by not taking certain assertions with all their moral depth. Not so long ago, someone heard me publicly characterize the mendacity of Frohnmeyer, who simply described something for Dornach in a lying, tendentious way that looks quite different from the way he described it in a tendentious way. And this person said: Well, Frohnmeyer just believed that it looked like that. - That's not what matters to me, to point out precisely that Frohnmeyer is saying something untrue in this case, but rather that Frohnmeyer shows that he makes assertions about something in Dornach that fly in the face of the truth. Anyone who does this in one respect also does it in other respects. He is a theologian. He lectures at Basel University. Theology draws from sources that are claimed to be sources of truth. Anyone who bears witness in this way, as Frohnmeyer does, who describes the statue of Christ as he has described it, shows that he has no concept of how to research the truth from the sources. If it were not for the fact that it is written in the history books when Napoleon was born and died, he could also tell lies about these things if he had to research them. What matters to me is that such people are described in all their corrupting effect on contemporary history, that it is shown that they do not fit into the situation into which they have been placed by the chaotic conditions of the times. On this point, we must be in no way lenient.

That is one of the formalities of your work in the coming weeks.

by Hella Wiesberger

In order to properly determine the relationship between Rudolf Steiner's epistemological approach to work, as discussed in the documents presented in this volume, and his overall impact, it is necessary to consider not only the external history of this branch of his work, but also, first of all, his conception of the meaning and significance of the cultic as such.

According to the insights of anthroposophy, in ancient times humanity lived in the instinctive, clairvoyant awareness that all life in the world and in humanity is brought about, shaped and sustained by the creative forces of a divine spiritual world. This awareness grew weaker and weaker over time until it was completely lost in modern times as a result of intellectual thinking that was focused solely on the physical laws of the world. This was necessary because only in this way could the human being become independent of the creative spirituality of the universe in terms of consciousness and thus acquire a sense of freedom. The task of human development now consists in using the free intellect, which is not determined by world spirituality, to gain a new awareness of the connection with world spirituality.

This realization was what led to one of Rudolf Steiner's fundamental concerns: to pave a path for modern intellectual thinking to spiritual knowledge that was appropriate for it. This is how the first anthroposophical guiding principle begins: “Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge that seeks to lead the spiritual in man to the spiritual in the universe.”¹ The concrete means for walking this path are to be found in the complete works, paradigmatically in the fundamental works «The Philosophy of Freedom» and «How to Know Higher Worlds >».

While it was natural for ancient cultures to cultivate in their external life, through symbols and cultic acts, that which could be inwardly experienced from cosmic spirituality, and thereby to shape their social life, the fading of the consciousness of being existentially connected to the divine-spiritual world also meant that the sense of the cultic had to be lost. And so, for modern abstract thinking, which has become the dominant intellectual force in the course of the 20th century, the traditional cultic forms can only be regarded as incomprehensible relics of past times. Existing cultic needs do not come from the intellect, but from other layers of the human soul.

This raises the question of what reasons could have moved Rudolf Steiner, as a thoroughly modern thinker, to cultivate cultic forms in his Esoteric School and later to convey them to other contexts as well. To answer this question fully, the whole wide and deep range of his spiritual scientific representations of the nature and task of the cultic for the development of the human being, humanity and the earth would have to be shown. Since this is not possible here, only a few aspects essential to the present publication can be pointed out.

Understanding cults arises from spiritual vision.

We need harmony between knowledge, art, religion and morality for our complicated social life, which threatens to spread chaos across the earth.²

Rudolf Steiner's fundamental concept of the cultic is rooted in his spiritual vision, trained with modern means of knowledge, to which the spiritual world content reveals itself as “the source and principle of all being” ³ and whose nature evokes an equally cognitive, artistic-feeling and religious-worshipping experience. As long as humanity lived in an instinctive clairvoyance, cultures were sustained by such a unified scientific, artistic and religiously attuned spiritual vision: “What man recognized, he formed into matter; he made his wisdom into creative art. And in that the mystery student, in his liveliness, perceived what he learned as the Divine-Spiritual that permeates the world, he offered his act of worship to it, so to speak, the sacred art re-created for cult.“ ⁴

Human progress demanded that this unified experience be broken down into the three independent currents of religion, art and science. In the further course of development, the three have become more and more distant from each other and lost all connection to their common origin. This has led to cultural and social life becoming increasingly chaotic. In order for orienting, rising forces to become effective again, the three “age-old sacred ideals” – the religious, the artistic and the cognitive ideal – must be reshaped from a modern spiritual-cognitive perspective. Rudolf Steiner regarded this as the most important concern of anthroposophy, and he emphasized it in particular on important occasions in the anthroposophical movement, for example at the opening of the first event at the Goetheanum building.⁵

In the spirit of the words spoken on this occasion: “When nature begins to reveal her manifest secrets to him through spiritual vision, so that he must express them in ideas and shape them artistically, the innermost part of his soul is moved to worship what he has seen and captured in form with a religious sense. For him, religion becomes the consequence of science and art,” ⁶From the very beginning, he had been driven to shape the results of his spiritual vision not only according to science but also according to art: towards a pictorial quality that contains spiritual realities. For “images underlie everything around us; those who have spoken of spiritual sources have meant these images” (Berlin, July 6, 1915). Because it seemed necessary to him, especially with regard to social life, to shape the essence of the spiritual not only scientifically but also visually, everything that characterizes anthroposophy as a worldview should also be present in the image through its representative, the Goetheanum building (Dornach, January 23, 1920). After the fire on New Year's Eve 1922 destroyed this pictorial expression of the view, he expressed what he had wanted to present to the world with the Goetheanum in a somewhat succinct formula:

“The Goetheanum was felt to be a physical sign of the formation that the three main interests of humanity are striving for in the depths of the human soul. These main interests are the religious-moral, the artistic and the cognitive interest.” ⁷

The formulation of the cognitive and artistic interest is clear. But what about its religious interest? If this is not as clearly perceptible, this is partly due to the characterization of religion as the “mood” of the human soul for the spiritual that lies beyond the sensual (Mannheim, January 5, 1911), and partly due to the often-stated belief that the religious and moral essence of anthroposophy cannot could not be confessional in the sense of forming a religion, that spiritual scientific endeavors should not be a “substitute” for religious practice and religious life, that one should not make spiritual science “into a religion”, although it could be “to the highest degree” a “support” and “underpinning” of religious life (Berlin, February 20, 1917). Anthroposophy as a science of the supersensible and the Anthroposophical Society as its community carrier should not be tied to a particular religious confession, since Anthroposophy is by nature interreligious. Even its most central insight, the realization of the importance of the Christ-spirit for the development of humanity and the Earth, is not based on that of the Christian denominations, but on the science of initiation from which all religions once emerged. In this sense, he once characterized it as a “fundamental nerve” of spiritual scientific research tasks to work out the supersensible truth content common to all religions and thereby “bring mutual understanding to the individual religious currents emerging from the initiations religious movements over the earth“ (Berlin, April 23, 1912).⁸ From this it follows logically that, from the point of view of anthroposophy, practical religious observance within a confession must be a private matter for the individual. This has been expressed in the statutes of the Society from the very beginning.⁹

The ideal of the sacralization of one's whole life

Sacramentality is an expression of the fact that human action is aglow with holiness.⁹

What was done only on the church altar must take hold of the whole world.¹⁰

The ability to experience how spiritual beings are manifested in a cultic, sensory way had to fade away because it is a law of development that forces must be lost in order to be conquered anew at a different level. To this end, every development must proceed in a seven-fold rhythm: from the first to the fourth stage it is evolutionary, but from the fifth to the seventh stage it is involutionary, that is, retrogressive. This means that the third, second and first stages must be relived as the fifth, sixth and seventh, but now with what has been gained as new up to the fourth stage. For humanity on earth, the new thing to be attained consists in the special or 'I-ness', which in the phase of evolution develops physically out of birth and death and in the phase of involution is to spiritualize into freedom and love. The latter, however, requires sacrificing the egoism that was necessary for the development of specialness and the sense of freedom.

This fundamental law of micro-macrocosmic development is referred to many times in the complete works. It is expressed particularly vividly, because it is presented in diagrams and meditation, in the following notes:

Handwritten entry in a notebook from 1903 (archive number 427)

Stepping, you move through the power of thought on the floods of specialness and follow seven guiding forces under the truth: desire pulls you down, the guiding forces placing you in the power of disbelief; spirit pulls you up, raising the seven to the sounding sun.

1. In the special being, discover the law: for the law wove the first of the seven into the material.
2. In movement, discover life: for the second of the seven poured life into matter.
3. In desire, discover the person: for the person was imprinted by the third of the seven in the material.
4. In the thought, recognize yourself: for the I gave the fourth of the seven its self.
5. In your desire, discover renunciation: for through renunciation, the fifth of the seven sacrificed itself so that you may be yourself.
6. In your movement, discover blessed calm: for the sixth of the seven sacrificed blessed calm so that you may live moving as yourself.
7. In thy particularity discover thy eternal law: for as eternal law the seventh of the Seven has created thy self in particularity, and as eternal law will lead it out of particularity.

The power of regression was born in humanity when the Christ, the world spirit effecting the cosmic-human evolutionary-involutional process, historically appeared and through the great sacrifice at Golgotha became the leading spirit of the earth:

“... That man can develop back again to an awareness of his spiritual relationship [to the cosmos] is due to the Mystery of Golgotha. But that which one owes to the Mystery of Golgotha must be sought out of one's own free inner motivation. Christianity presupposes freedom.” (Dornach, February 11, 1920)

Now that this retrogression of consciousness has set in from our age, it is necessary that the Christian element of freedom should also be incorporated into the nature of the cult, into sacramentalism. This means that, increasingly, it is no longer the case that one person must make the sacrifice for all others, but that each person must experience, together with all others, becoming equal to the Christ, who descended to earth as a being of the sun (Dornach, December 23, 1922). For spiritual science, freedom and individualism in religion and in sacramentalism do not mean that every person should have their own religion. This would only lead to the complete fragmentation of humanity into separate individuals but that through the assimilation of spiritual-scientific knowledge, a time will come, “however far off it may be,” in which humanity will be increasingly seized by the realization of the inner world of truth. And through this, “in spite of all individuality, in spite of everyone finding the truth individually within themselves, there will be agreement”; while maintaining complete freedom and individuality, people will then join together in free connections (Berlin, June 1, 1908).

In this sense, it was repeatedly pointed out that what had previously been performed only on the church altar must take hold of the whole world, that all human activities should become an expression of the supersensible. Especially since the First World War, it has been emphasized more and more strongly how important it is for the whole of social life to find its way back into harmonious coexistence with the universe, since otherwise humanity is doomed to “develop more and more disharmony in social coexistence and to sow more and more war material across the world”. One will not come back to ascending cultural forces as long as one serves only human egoism, especially in science and technology, alongside a separate religion, as long as one does research and experiments at the laboratory and experimental table without the reverent awareness of the “great law of the world”. “The laboratory table must become an altar“ is a formula that one encounters again and again.¹¹

The fact that there is still a long way to go and that tolerance should therefore be exercised, both by those who have to continue to maintain the old forms and by those who should strive for the future, is clear from the following statements:

"Of course, just as it is true that a completely new era is dawning in relation to the spiritual life, it is also true that the path to the Christ, which was the right one for many centuries, will remain so for many centuries to come. Things are gradually merging. But what was right before will gradually change into something else as people mature for it.” (Karlsruhe, October 13, 1911)

"Just as the one who, because he believes that he has so deeply grasped the spirit of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ, within himself that he can immediately, one might say, ‘dialogue’ with this Christ, must look with understanding at those who need the positive statutes of a confession, who need the Christ-servant who again and again gives them consolation with the words: Your sins are forgiven. On the other hand, those who can see that there are people who are already dealing with themselves should be tolerant. This may all be an ideal in earthly existence, but at least the anthroposophist may look up to such an ideal.” (Norrköping, July 16, 1914)

But the importance of cults was not only emphasized for the individual, but also for the development of the whole of humanity and the Earth. In lectures given at the time when the religious renewal movement “The Christian Community” was founded and in which it was said that the mysteries are contained in the cults and that they will only reveal themselves in their full significance in the future , “the mysteries of the coming age,” it was explained that a time would come when the earth would no longer be; everything that today fills the material of the natural kingdoms and human bodies will have been atomized in the universe. All processes brought about by mechanical technology will also be a thing of the past. But through the fact that, through “right” acts of worship that arise out of a “right grasp of the spiritual world,” elemental spiritual beings that have to do with the further development of the earth can be called into these declining natural and cultural processes, the earth will arise anew out of its destruction (Dornach, September 29, 1922).

Another reason for the saying that the mysteries of the future lie in the cultic, which shines deeply into the overall development of humanity and the cosmos, arises from the spiritual-scientific research result that the divine-spiritual of the cosmos will reveal a different nature in the future than it has done so far through free humanity, which has become self-responsible out of I-consciousness: “Not the same entity that was once there as Cosmos will shine through humanity. In passing through humanity, the spiritual-divine will experience a being that it did not reveal before.“ ¹² For this new mode of revelation of the cosmic spiritual being will only be able to emerge in the future, since the essence of a genuine cult is that “it is the image of what is taking place in the spiritual world” (Dornach, June 27, 1924).

The prerequisite for all this is the spiritualization of thinking. Only on this basis will it be possible to gradually sacralize all life activities. Then, out of the knowledge of spiritual realities, the old ceremonies will also change, because where there are realities, symbols are no longer needed (Karlsruhe, October 13, 1911, and Workers' Lecture Dornach, September 11, 1923).

The change of ceremonies here refers to the Christian sacraments, which, in the traditional Christian view, contain the meaning of Christianity, but whose origin is to be found in the ancient mysteries. It was only in the 16th century, with the translation of the Bible as declared to be the only authentic one by the Council of Trent in 1546, the Vulgate, that the Latin “sacramentum” replaced the Greek “mysterion”. However, the term “sacrament” has been used in ecclesiastical language since the time of the church father Tertullian in the 2nd century. With regard to the number, meaning and effect, the view was, however, fluctuating until the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1439 set the number at seven (baptism, communion, penance, confirmation, marriage , ordination, extreme unction) and proclaimed as dogma that the sacraments are acts instituted by Christ, consisting of a visible element (materia) and ritual words (forma), through which the sanctifying grace is conferred.

If, on the other hand, the Protestant Church recognizes only two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, this, according to Rudolf Steiner's presentation in the lecture Stuttgart, October 2, 1921, is due to the fact that at the time of the Reformation there was already no sense of the inner numerical constitution of the world. For the concept of the seven sacraments originally arose from the ancient insight that the overall development of the human being is brought about by processes of evolution and involution. The seven sacraments were therefore intended to add the corresponding counter-values to the seven stages through which the human being passes in life, including the social, and in which he or she develops values that are partly evolutionary and partly involutionary. The seven stages in human life are: birth, strength (maturity), nourishment, procreation, recovery, speech, transformation. They are characterized as follows. The involution inherent in the birth forces is the dying process that begins with the birth process; it should be sanctified by the sacrament of baptism. The entire maturation process, including sexual maturation, should be sanctified by the sacrament of confirmation. The process referred to as “nourishment” refers to the embodiment of the spiritual-soul in the physical-bodily, that is to say, the right rhythm must be established between the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily so that the soul-spiritual does not sink down into the animalistic, but also does not lose itself in a spirituality foreign to the world. The involution inherent in this process of evolution should be hallowed by the sacrament of Holy Communion. Linked with this rhythmic process of vibration between the soul-spiritual and the physical-corporal is the possibility, through the faculty of memory, of being able to swing back again and again in time. For complete development, it is necessary to remember previous experiences on earth. The involution inherent in the memory capacity evolving from the human being should be sanctified by the sacrament of penance, which includes examination of conscience, repentance and the resolution to correct the mistakes made and to accept appropriate retribution imposed by oneself or by the priest, so that the process of remembrance is Christianized and at the same time elevated to the moral level. These four processes exhaust the evolutionary processes that have taken place since the birth of man. The act of remembering already represents a strong internalization; evolution is already approaching involution. A natural involutionary process is death. The corresponding sacrament is extreme unction. Just as the physical body was stimulated by the corresponding natural processes of life, so now the soul-spiritual life is to be stimulated by the sacrament of extreme unction, which in the old knowledge of nature was seen as a process of ensoulment. “Expressed in rhythm, at death the physical body is to disappear again, while the soul-spiritual life is to take form.” This is what is called “transubstantiation”.

Since the individual life of a human being comes to an end with death, the two remaining stages and sacraments relate to something that is no longer individual in nature. On the one hand, there is the interrelationship between the human being and the heavenly-spiritual, which unconsciously exists in every human being. If this were not the case, one could never find one's way back. But there is an involutionary process hidden deep within the human being, “even more hidden than that which takes place within the human being when he passes through death with his organism,” a process that does not come to consciousness at all in the course of the individual's life. The evolutionary process corresponding to this involutionary process would have been seen in the sacrament of priestly ordination, which corresponds to what is called “speech”.

The seventh, he said, was the image of the spiritual and mental in the physical and bodily, as expressed in man and woman: “One should say that a certain boundary marks the descent into earthly life. Woman does not reach this boundary completely, but man crosses it. This is actually the physical-bodily contrast.” Because both carry a certain imperfection within them, there is a natural state of tension between them. ‘If the sacramental evolutionary value is sought, we have it in the sacrament of marriage.’

This fundamental idea of Christian esotericism in relation to sacramentalism – that man enters life as an imperfect being, develops partly evolutive and partly involutive values, and that in order to make him a fully developing being, the countervalues are to be added to them in a sacramental way – has no longer been understood since one began – “of course, again rightly” – to discuss the sacramental. Today, however, we urgently need to arrive at involutional values.

Spiritual thinking as spiritual communion, as the beginning of a cosmic cult appropriate for humanity in the present day.

That all that is our relationship to the world first recognizes itself as cosmic cultus in the human being is the first beginning of what must happen if anthroposophy is to fulfill its mission in the world.¹³

When Rudolf Steiner speaks of the spiritualization of the forms of the sacraments, this is in turn conditioned by the law of development in that the sacrament of communion contains the involutionary counterpart to the incorporation of the soul and spirit into the physical body. Since the last stage of the process of incarnation was the binding of thinking to the physical brain, the reverse development, the re-spiritualization, must also begin with this physical thinking, this intellectuality.

Already in his first book publication, in the writing “Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung” (1886), he started at this point by explained how pure, that is, unadulterated thinking unites with world spirituality. This is also referred to a year later with the sacramental term “communion”, when it is stated:

"He who grants thought its ability to perceive beyond the sense perception must also, of necessity, grant it objects that lie beyond mere sensory reality. But the objects of thought are those. By seizing the idea, thought fuses with the source of the world's existence; that which operates externally enters into the mind of man; he becomes one with objective reality at its highest potency. The realization of the idea in reality is man's true communion. Thinking has the same significance for ideas as the eye has for light and the ear for sound. It is an organ of perception.“ ¹⁴

Since the content of anthroposophy is nothing other than what can be researched in this way from the world of ideal, spiritual reality and what is, by its very nature, of a moral and religious character, it goes without saying that even in its early days was proclaimed that through their teachings it should be effected to sanctify and sacralize all of life, even into its most mundane activities, and that therein even lies one of the deeper reasons for their appearance (Berlin, July 8, 1904). It also becomes clear why it is said in the lectures on 'The Spiritual Communion of Humanity', which are so important for the context under consideration here, that the spiritual communion to be experienced in spiritual thinking is the 'first beginning' of what must happen if anthroposophy is to fulfil 'its mission in the world' (Dornach, December 31, 1922).

How this can become a reality through the spiritual communion performed in the symbol of the Lord's Supper is characterized in the lecture Kassel, 7 July 1909: Humanity is only at the beginning of Christian development. Its future lies in the fact that the earth is recognized as the body of Christ. For through the Mystery of Golgotha, a new center of light was created in the Earth; it was filled with new life down to its atoms. That is why Christ, at the Last Supper, when He broke the bread that comes from the grain of the Earth, could say, “This is my body,” and by giving the juice of the vine, which comes from the sap of plants, He could say, “This is my blood!” The literal translation continues: “Because he has become the soul of the earth, he was able to say to that which is solid: This is my flesh - and to the sap: This is my blood! Just as you say of your flesh: This is my flesh - and of your blood: This is my blood! And those people who are able to grasp the true meaning of these words of Christ, they visualize and attract the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine, and the Christ-Spirit within them. And they unite with the Christ-Spirit. Thus the symbol of the Lord's Supper becomes a reality.

However, it continues: “Without the thought of the Christ in the human heart, no power of attraction can be developed to the Christ-Spirit at the Lord's Supper. But through this form of thought such attraction is developed. And so for all those who need the outer symbol to perform a spiritual act, namely the union with Christ, Holy Communion will be the way, the way to the point where their inner strength is so strong, where they are so filled with Christ that they can unite with Christ without the outer physical mediation. The preliminary school for mystical union with Christ is the sacrament – the preliminary school. We must understand these things in this way. And just as everything develops from the physical to the spiritual under the Christian influence, so under the influence of Christ, those things that were there first as a bridge must first develop: the sacrament must develop from the physical to the spiritual in order to lead to real union with Christ. One can only speak of these things in the most general terms, for only when they are taken up in their full sacred dignity will they be understood in the right sense."

In the same sense, it is said in the lecture Karlsruhe, October 13, 1911, that when man, through becoming acquainted with the knowledge of the higher worlds, through concentration and meditation exercises in scinem, is able to penetrate completely with the element of spirit, the meditative thoughts living in him 'will be exactly the same, only from within, as the sign of the Lord's Supper - the consecrated bread - was from without'. In his memoir, 'My Life-long Encounter with Rudolf Steiner', Friedrich Rittelmeyer reports that when he asked, 'Is it not also possible to receive the body and blood of Christ without bread and wine, just in meditation?' he received the answer, 'That is possible. From the back of the tongue, it is the same.

In the lecture Dornach, December 31, 1922, it is indicated that spiritual knowledge can be further deepened by uniting with the world spirit, with the words that spiritual knowledge is “the beginning of a cosmic cultus appropriate for humanity today,” which “can then grow.” In other contexts, it is pointed out that this requires a certain sacrifice, through which one can go beyond the general experience of spiritual communion to truly concrete cosmic knowledge. What has to be sacrificed in this process is referred to by the technical term “sacrifice of the intellect”. This is not to be understood as renouncing thinking as such, but rather as renouncing egoism, the will of one's own mind in thinking, which consists in arbitrarily connecting thoughts. Two lectures from 1904 and two lectures from 1923 and 1924 contain explanations of this.

The two lectures from 1904 have only survived in an inadequate transcript and therefore remain unpublished to this day. Therefore, the relevant text is quoted here verbatim. The lecture of June 1, 1904 states that certain prerequisites are needed to be able to read the Akasha Chronicle, to explore cosmic evolution, one of which consists in

“that one makes one's own thoughts available to that principle, that power and those entities which, in the theosophical language, we call the Masters.”¹⁶ Ultimately, the Master must give us the necessary instructions to be able to read the Akashic Records. It is written in symbols and signs, not in words of any language that exists or has existed. As long as one only uses the power that man habitually uses when thinking – and every man, who has not expressly learned to do so, uses this power – one cannot read in the Akasha Chronicle.

If you ask yourself, “Who is thinking?” you will have to say to yourself, “I am thinking.” You connect object and predicate when you form a sentence. As long as it is you yourself who connects the individual concepts, you are not able to read in the Akasha Chronicle. You are unable to read because you connect your thoughts with your own ego. But you have to eliminate your ego. You must renounce all your own sense. You must merely present the ideas in order to have the connection of the individual ideas established by forces outside of you, by the spirit.

So to read in the Akasha Chronicle, it is necessary to renounce not thinking, but to renounce connecting the individual thoughts on your own initiative. Then the Master can come and teach you to let the spirit from outside join your thoughts into what the universal world spirit is able to show you about what has taken place in history. Then you no longer judge the facts, but the universal world spirit itself speaks to you. And you provide it with your thought material.

Now I must say something that may perhaps give rise to some prejudice. I must say what is necessary today in preparation for eliminating the ego in order to be able to read in the Akasha Chronicle. You know how it is today a thing held in contempt, what the monks in the Middle Ages cultivated. They cultivated the “sacrifice of the intellect.” The monk did not think as today's researcher thinks. The monk had a certain sacred science, sacred theology. One did not have to decide on the content. Therefore, it was said that in the Middle Ages the theologian had to use his reason to explain and defend the given revelations.¹⁷ That was, however one may judge it today, a strict schooling in the sacrifice of the intellect to a given content. Whether this is something admirable or reprehensible in modern terms is not our concern.

This sacrifice of the intellect, which the medieval monk made, led to the elimination of judgment based on the personal ego; it led him to learn how to place the intellect at the service of something higher. In the process of reincarnation, the fruits of that sacrifice come to fruition and make him a genius of insight. When higher insight comes, he can apply his abilities to the facts that can be read in the Akashic Records.” (Berlin, June 1, 1904)

In the lecture held a few weeks later, it says:

”... The further one advances on the path of knowledge, the more one must cultivate devotion; one becomes ever more and more devoted. From this devotion flows the strength for the highest realizations. He who can refrain from connecting his thoughts attains to the reading of the writing in the Akasha-Chronicle. But one thing is necessary: the personal ego must be eliminated to such an extent that it makes no claim to connecting the thoughts itself.

It is not at all easy to understand this, because man claims the right to connect the predicate with the subject. But as long as he does this, it is impossible for him to really study occult history. When he allows thoughts to arise in selflessness, but also in awareness and clarity, an event occurs which, from a certain point of view, every occultist knows, namely the event that the ideas, the thoughts, which he previously formed into sentences and insights from his personal point of view, are now formed by the spiritual world itself, so that it is not he who judges, but is judged in him. It is then the case that he has sacrificed himself so that a higher self speaks spiritually through his ideas. This is - understood occultly - what was called in the Middle Ages the “sacrifice of the intellect”. It means giving up my own opinion, my own conviction. As long as I myself associate my thoughts, and do not make my thoughts available to higher powers, which then, as it were, write on the tablet of the intellect, I cannot study occult history.” (Berlin, July 25, 1904)

In the two lectures Penmaenmawr, August 31, 1923, and Prague, April 5, 1924, the term “victim of the intellect” occurs again, in connection with the research result of a lost epic-dramatic poetry from the first four Christian centuries. This poetry was created by the mystery teachers of that time because they foresaw that in the future people would develop their intellect more and more, which would indeed bring them freedom but also take away their clairvoyance, a grave crisis must overtake them because they will no longer be able to comprehend the regions from which the actual deeper foundations of the development of the earth and of humanity and the cosmic significance of Christianity can be understood. This foresight had caused the mystery teachers great concern as to whether humanity would really be able to mature for that which came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha. And so they clothed the teaching that the sacrifice of the intellect is needed to understand the Christ in his cosmic significance cosmic significance in a “mystery drama”.¹⁸ In this lost epic drama, In a moving way, it is said to have depicted how a young hero acquired the clairvoyance for the cosmic significance of Christianity through his willingness to make the sacrifice of the intellect. And with this poetry - it is said to have been the greatest that the New Testament produced - those mystery teachers wanted to put before humanity, like a kind of testament, the challenge to make the “Sacrificium intellectus”. For if the connection with that which has entered into humanity through the mystery of Golgotha is to be found, then this Sacrificium should basically be practiced by all who strive for spiritual life, for erudition: “Every man who is taught and wants to become wise should have a cultic attitude, an attitude of sacrifice.” (Penmaenmawr, August 31, 1923, and Prague, April 5, 1924). For “sacrifice is the law of the spiritual world” (Berlin, February 16, 1905); “Sacrifice must be, without sacrifice there is no becoming, no progress,” it says in notes from an instruction session in Basel on June 1, 1914.

Artistically formulated, the “sacrifice of the intellect” is found in the third mystery drama, “The Guardian of the Threshold”. In a moment of spiritual drama, the spiritual student Maria, supported by her spiritual teacher Benediktus, who characteristically appears in this picture, set in the spiritual realm, makes a vow before Lucifer, the representative of the egoistic forces, to always keep her love for self away from all knowledge in the future:

Never again will I
let myself be found by that bliss
Which people feel when thoughts mature.
I will prepare my heart for the service of sacrifice,
That my spirit may always think, and, thinking,
to offer the fruits of knowledge to the gods.
Then knowledge becomes my sacred duty.

From the lectures from 1904, it is clear that the sacrifice that the spiritual disciple Maria vows to make is equivalent to what is characterized there as the “sacrifice of the intellect”.

In addition to the references to the spiritualization of the sacrament of communion in spiritualized thinking, there are also references to the spiritualization of the sacrament of baptism. In contrast to spiritual communion as an individual event within the human being, this points to the spiritualization of external work. The beginnings of this could already be made today in education and teaching, if each human child is seen from the point of view that it brings the power of the Christ-spirit into the world in its own personal way.¹⁹ In another context, we find the remark: “That which was formerly performed in the mysteries as the symbolum of the sacrament of baptism should today be introduced into external events, into external deeds. Spiritualization of human work, sacralization in external action, that is the true baptism.^{20In notes from an esoteric lecture, Hamburg, November 28, 1910.}

The Forms of Worship Created for Various Communities

Cult unites the people who come together in it.²¹

The question of how ritual can build community was discussed in detail in 1923, when a fundamental reorganization of the Anthroposophical Society had become necessary due to various subsidiary movements that had emerged since the end of the First World War and the fire at the Goetheanum. The problem of “community building” had become particularly pressing at that time, on the one hand due to the youth streaming into the Society, most of whom came from the youth movement (the “Wandervogel” movement) that was struggling with the ideal of community at the time, and on the other hand due to the religious renewal movement “The Community of Christ”, which was founded in the fall of 1922, shortly before the building burnt down. This movement had formed after young theologians, mostly still students, approached Rudolf Steiner around 1920/21 with the question of whether he could advise and help them in their need for a spiritual renewal of the religious profession. His answer was that he himself had spiritual science to offer and could not in any way found a religion; however, if they, together with a group of 30 to 40 like-minded people, carried out their plans, it would mean something very great for humanity.²² For he was convinced that for those people who want to seek the path to the spiritual through religious practice, the renewal of Christian religious life is a deep necessity. And so he provided the most energetic support for this young movement, admittedly not as its founder, but, as he said, as a “private individual”. He gave lectures on the foundations of “what a future theology needs” and, above all, he gave “a valid and spiritually powerful, spiritually fulfilling cultus”, because a recovery of religious life must come about through healthy community building, which in turn is only possible through a cultus (Dornach, December 31, 1922, and March 3, 1923).

After the establishment of the “Christian Community” in the Anthroposophical Society had created a certain uncertainty regarding the relationship between the two movements, he felt compelled to address the issue of community building and worship. Starting from the question of whether the community formed by the “Christian Community” is the only one possible in the present, or whether another possibility could be found within the Anthroposophical Society, he presented the two poles of community formation made possible by worship. While the well-known pole in religious worship lies in the fact that through word and action, entities of the supersensible worlds are brought down to the physical plane, the other pole is a “reverse” cultus, which can arise when one rises up to the supersensible worlds in anthroposophical working groups through a common effort of knowledge. When a group of people come together to experience what can be revealed from the supersensible world through anthroposophy, “then this experience in a group of people is something different from the lonely experience”. If this is experienced in the right spirit, it means a process of awakening in the other person's soul and a rising to spiritual community: “If this consciousness is present and such groups arise in the Anthroposophical Society, then in this, if I may may say, at the other pole of the cultus, there is something community-building in the most eminent sense present” and from this, this ‘specifically anthroposophical community-building’ could arise (Dornach, March 3, 1923).

This form of cultic experience, which is possible without external ceremony, obviously lies in the line of the cosmic cult that can be experienced through spiritual knowledge. Nevertheless, if he had been able to work for a longer period of time, Rudolf Steiner would also have created a cult that could be performed externally, so to speak, as an effective aid on the difficult path to the cosmic cult to be sought in the purely spiritual. For the experience of cosmic cult as a spiritual-mystical union of the human spirit with world spirituality should always be striven for, but, at least today, it can certainly only rarely be truly experienced. Rudolf Steiner once hinted at this when he said: “I recall that a great mystic of the Alexandrian school confessed in his old age that he had only experienced that great moment a few times in his life, when the soul feels ripe to immerse itself so that the spirit of the infinite awakens and that mystical moment occurs when the God in the breast is experienced by the human being himself. These are moments at midday, when the sun of life is at its highest, when something like this can be experienced, and for those who always want to be ready with their abstract ideas, who say: once you have the right thoughts, they must lead you to the highest - for them such midday hours of life, which must be seen as a grace of earthly life, are not time when they would willingly travel. ²⁴ For such abstract minds, the moment must always be there to solve the riddles of the world. (Heidelberg, January 21, 1909).

That Rudolf Steiner considered the possibility of creating a new form of anthroposophical worship in 1923, the year of the reorganization of the Anthroposophical Society, is clear from two of his statements in the spring of 1923. One of these was made in the context of describing the “reverse” cult as a specifically anthroposophical form of community building. In this context, he added the following remark to the statement that many people come to the Anthroposophical Society and not only seek anthroposophical knowledge in abstracto, but also, out of the urge of our consciousness soul age, corresponding community formations: “One could now say: the Anthroposophical Society could also cultivate a cult. Of course it could; but that belongs to a different sphere now” (Dornach, March 3, 1923). The other statement was the answer to a question posed in a personal conversation about a cult for the anthroposophical movement. The questioner, Rene Maikowski, recorded this conversation as follows and made it available for reproduction:

However, this new form of the anthroposophical cult of knowledge was never realized. After Steiner's death, Marie Steiner tried to create a kind of substitute by giving the celebrations held at the Goetheanum, especially the annual festivals, an artistic-cultic character.

In retrospect, it is clear that the needs of various walks of life, as expressed to Rudolf Steiner, have given rise to a wealth of ritual texts.

The first to be written were the texts for the rituals of the interreligious cult of knowledge, as it had been practised within the Esoteric School from 1906 until the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914.

Shortly before or immediately after the end of the war (end of 1918), he had been asked to redesign church rituals. This request came from a Swiss anthroposophical friend, Hugo Schuster, who had been so deeply moved by Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of Christ that it had led him to become a priest. And after he had been ordained within the Old Catholic Church in the summer of 1918 – in which the rituals were already being read in German – he received a ritual for burials and, in the spring of 1919, a new translation of the “Mass”.²⁵

Other friends of anthroposophy who were or had been priests also received ritual texts upon request. Pastor Wilhelm Ruhtenberg, who had become a teacher at the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart, founded in 1919, received a baptismal and a marriage ritual in 1921. The following account of how this came about was handed down:

"As early as 1921, Pastor Ruhtenberg was often asked by anthroposophical friends to marry them and baptize their children. He then asked Rudolf Steiner for a baptismal ritual. After he had received it, he no longer felt that the black robe with the white bib was appropriate and asked for a new robe. Rudolf Steiner drew what he wanted and indicated the colors. According to Ruhtenberg's report, the marriage ritual was as follows: “Once a bridegroom came to me and said that Dr. Steiner, whom he had asked to perform the wedding, had sent him to me. I didn't want to let the man go away empty-handed, so I married him. But after that I went to Dr. Steiner and said to him: “Doctor, if you send me someone to marry, then please give me a ritual for it.” A few weeks later, as I was sitting with my class in the eurythmy lesson, the door opened; Dr. Steiner came up to me, handed me some sheets of paper and said: “Here is the marriage ritual for you.” I sat down immediately to immerse myself in the ritual with burning curiosity. After the lesson, in the office, I asked about the garment for this act. I still had the sketch of the baptismal garment with me, and Dr. Steiner wrote the colors for the marriage ceremony next to it; the shape of the garment remained the same.” ²⁶

Before that, another teacher, Johannes Geyer, who had also been a pastor, had received a baptismal ritual for the baptism of a child for whom he had been asked by an anthroposophical friend.

Rituals were also designed for the free Christian religious education at the Waldorf School after Rudolf Steiner was asked whether a religious celebration could be arranged for the students of the free religious education on Sundays. The answer was that this would have to be a cult. So the first ritual, the “Sunday Act,” was created before New Year's Day 1920. In response to further questions, he developed the three other rituals: the “Christmas Ritual” during the Christmas season of 1920; the “Youth Ritual” in 1921, standing for church confirmation; and the “Sacrifice Ritual” in spring 1923 for the two upper classes, standing for the sacrifice of the Mass.

The “sacrifice ceremony” came about after Rudolf Steiner was told in a meeting with the religion teachers on December 9, 1922 that a student in the upper classes had asked if they could receive a Sunday act that would take them further than the youth celebration. He had taken this suggestion particularly thoughtfully and described it as having far-reaching significance; he wanted to consider it further. He did not want to include a mass in the activities associated with free religious education, but “something similar to a mass” could be done. A few months later, in March 1923, the text of the ceremony was handed over and on Palm Sunday, March 25, 1923, the “sacrificial ceremony” could be held for the first time for the teachers and the students of the eleventh grade.²⁷

However, he never returned to the request expressed at the teachers' conference on November 16, 1921 for a special Sunday event just for the teachers.

When the work of the “Christian Community”, founded in the fall of 1922, raised the question of whether free religious education and the “acts” were still justified, Rudolf Steiner spoke unequivocally to the effect that both types of religious education, the free Christian and the “Christian Community”, had their own character, their own goals and full justification for the future. If some parents wished their children to participate in both types of instruction, he also allowed this, provided it did not become a health burden. (At that time, religious education for the Christian Community was not taught in schools, but in their own rooms). The unchanging basic attitude of the greatest possible tolerance in religious matters is also evident from the way he characterized the difference in the objectives of the two types of religious education: “The inner meaning of our youth celebration is that the human being is placed in humanity in a very general way, not in a particular religious community; but the ‘Christengemeinschaft’ places him in a particular religious community.” But - and he emphasized this several times - “there can't really be a discrepancy between the two in terms of content”.²⁸ And when the “Christian Community”, to which the “Youth Celebration” ritual had also been made available for their area of responsibility (confirmation), asked him whether this ritual might not require some changes for their sacramental context he developed in a “spirited” way that it was precisely “instructive” to know that the same ritual was used “as the expression of different life contexts”.²⁹

He expressed similar views regarding the “sacrifice ceremony”. Maria Lehrs-Röschl reports, as quoted above, how, after the first performance of this act, teacher colleagues requested that the ceremony be repeated for the teachers alone. Since the people performing the act were inclined to the opinion that the act should only take place for students with the participation of teachers and parents, she was asked to ask Rudolf Steiner about it: “I asked him in a way that already showed that I thought it was unacceptable to consider the sacrifice ceremony differently than for students. But Rudolf Steiner looked at me with wide-open eyes (I knew this gesture as his expression of surprised, slightly disapproving astonishment) and said: “Why not? This act can be performed anywhere there are people who desire it!”

For the purposes of the “Christian Community”, the missing rituals were gradually created, in addition to the completely redesigned “Human Consecration” Mass and the rituals handed over to it that had been created earlier. The last ritual to be created was that for the appointment of the Chief Executive. It was created shortly before Rudolf Steiner's death.

The abundance of rituals that came into being in this way is all the more astonishing given that Rudolf Steiner himself once said that it is difficult to design a ritual: “You can see from the fact that for a long time everything ritual-like has been limited to taking over the traditional that it is difficult to design a ritual. ... All cultic forms that exist today are actually very old, only slightly transformed in one way or another.” (Stuttgart, June 14, 1921).

It follows that anyone who undertakes to shape cults, if they are to become a true reflection of processes in the spiritual world, must have a sovereign relationship with the spiritual world. However, they must also have artistic creativity at their disposal. For cult forms as reflections of spiritual processes are by no means to be equated with photographs, but are independent creations based on physical means. A supplementary explanation for this seems to be given in the following statement: “As man rises to the next level of existence, images arise for him, but we no longer apply them in the same way as our thoughts, so that we ask: how do these images correspond to reality? but things show themselves in images consisting of colors and shapes; and through imagination, man himself must unravel the entities that show themselves to him in such symbolic form.” (Berlin, October 26, 1908). This is illustrated in concrete terms by the example of the cult of the dead, and the comment concludes: “It could be even more complicated, but in its simplicity, as it is now, what is to be conquered through it can already be conquered for humanity.” (Dornach, June 27, 1924). The term “conquer” again suggests how difficult it must be to shape ritual.

He once justified simplicity – a striking feature of all his rituals – by saying that a complicated cult would not satisfy people today and that it would therefore have to be made “extremely simple” (Stuttgart, June 14, 1921). But it is precisely this simplicity that in turn testifies to a strong artistic ability to create. Now art and cultus are also closely related in their origin, since they both originated in the same spiritual region: “With the evolution of humanity, the rite, a living image of the spiritual world, develops into the spheres of artistic production. For art likewise emerges from the astral world - and the rite becomes beauty.” (Paris, June 6, 1906). An incident related by Emil Bock is of interest in this context: “When I received the Children's Burial Ritual from him in the spring of 1923, he himself beamed with delight at this special kind of creativity, which was at the same time the highest art of receiving. On that day, during a conference, he approached me twice with the words, “Isn't the text beautiful!” ²⁹

Another characteristic arises from the esoteric principle of continuity, one of his most important leitmotifs:

“The future rests on the past / the past endures the future / to the vigorous presence”.³⁰

Wherever possible, he linked the newly explored to the traditional old for the sake of the continuous progress of development. This was also the case with his ritual designs. The necessity of taking into account the stream of the past is formulated as follows: “In order to maintain the continuity of human development, it is still necessary today to take up ritual and symbolism, as it were” (Dornach, December 20, 1918). In this, something is something is preserved that can and will be resurrected once we have found the way to bring the power that emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha into all human activity (Dornach, September 29, 1922). And the words point to the future trend that is only now beginning to reveal itself in the present: “In our time it is only possible to arrive at symbols if one delves lovingly into the secrets of the world; and only out of anthroposophy can a cult or a symbolism arise today.” (Stuttgart, June 14, 1921). In the same sense, it is said in a lecture on various cults that today, in a cult, what can be perceived through modern spiritual scientific schooling in the laws of world spirituality must be brought in, and that one can “at most stand at the beginning again” with the construction of such a cult (Dornach, September 11, 1923, lecture for the workers on the Goetheanumbau).

The connection between elements of the past and the future in the formation of the “Human Consecration Ritual” for the “Christian Community” was once pointed out as follows: “This cult takes full account of the historical development of humanity, and therefore carries in many its details and also in much of what occurs in its totality, a continuation of the historical; but it also bears everywhere the impact of that which can only now reveal itself to the supersensible consciousness from the spiritual world. (Dornach, March 3, 1923).³² He expressed himself similarly regarding the translation of the mass text for Pastor Schuster, who had had asked him to “bring some of the viable Catholic rituals not in the strange translation in which one often enjoys it today, but to bring it into a form that was actually originally in it”; and then, although it was only a translation, it actually became “something new” from it. In the same context, he also said of the funeral ritual: “Of course one had to tie in with the usual funeral rituals. But by not translating the usual ritual lexicographically, but rather correctly, something different emerged.” (Stuttgart, June 14, 1921)

The following saying also points to a characteristic of rituals: “Only one cult at a time can be legitimately brought down from the spiritual world.” ³³ The question of how the various cult forms correspond to this one possible cult can be answered to the effect that the cults given for different walks of life – the cult of knowledge of the esoteric school, acts for the free religious education of the Waldorf school, ecclesiastical cult for the “Christian Community” – must be essentially the same in the depths with this “one” cult for the various walks of life. This seems to be confirmed by another statement handed down by Emil Bock, according to which the “sacrifice ceremony” was an attempt to give the “Act of Consecration of Man” of the “Christian Community” something corresponding to it, insofar as it could be performed by lay people, that is, by those not ordained as priests. Maria Lehrs-Röschl comments on this: “What arose again and again in the development of Christianity as a longing and striving for lay priesthood - albeit also repeatedly persecuted and ultimately made to disappear - has here [with the sacrifice celebration] experienced a new germination through Rudolf Steiner.” From all this it can be seen that for Rudolf Steiner there was no contradiction between esoteric cult of knowledge, free religious cult and church cult. On the one hand, because, as everywhere, the freedom of the individual was his highest commandment in religious matters and only that which makes “absolute religious freedom” possible (Zurich, October 9, 1918) is considered true Christianity. On the other hand, because only by extending the cultic into all branches of life can the path to the high ideal of sacralizing the whole of life be followed. The necessary prerequisite for this, however, is that spiritual thoughts and feelings “equally permeate and spiritualize the inner being with just as much consecration as in the best sense of inner Christian development, the sacrament spiritualizes and Christifies the human soul.” If this becomes possible, and according to Rudolf Steiner it will become possible, then we will have advanced another step in our development and “real proof will be provided” that Christianity is greater than its outer form (Karlsruhe, October 13, 1911).

• 1. See “Anthroposophical ic Leading Thoughts», GA 26
• 2. Ilkley, August 5, 1923
• 3. “The world of ideas is the source and principle of all being,” beginning of “Credo. The Individual and the Universe», printed in «Words of Truth», CW 40.
• 4. Berlin, 5 March 1922
• 5. Dornach, September 26, 1920
• 6. Autoreferat der Ansprache vom 26. September 1920 zur Eröffnung des ersten Hochschulkurses am Goetheanum, geschrieben für die «Waldorf-Nachrichten», IH. Vol. March 1921.
• 7. In a draft for an article about the burnt-down Goetheanum.
• 8. This was already one of the goals of the Theosophical Society. (Point 2 of the three principles reads: “to lead man to a higher knowledge by research into the kernel of truth of religions, sciences and world-views of all times and peoples.”)
• 9. Right from the start, the statutes of the Theosophical and then also of the Anthroposophical Society state that membership is not tied to a religious confession.
• 9. Cologne, December 27, 1907
• 10. Dornach, November 27, 1916
• 11. Heidenheim, April 29, 1918. See also ”The Spiritual Leadership of the Human Being and Mankind” (1911) GA 15; Dornach, November 27, 1916; Zurich, October 9, 1918; Dornach, December 30, 1922.
• 12. See ‘Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts’ (essay ”The Future of Humanity and the Activity of Michael), GA 26.
• 13. Dornach, December 31, 1922
• 14. See ‘Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften’, edited and commented by Rudolf Steiner, preface to volume II, S.IV (1887), GA 1.
• 16. About the Masters, see the volume ” History and the Content of the First Section of the Esoteric School 1904 to 1914», GA 264.
• 17. On the two types of truth - the truths of knowledge and the truths of revelation - in modern spiritual science, see the lecture Liestal, October 16, 1 916 in “Philosophy and Anthroposophy”, GA 35, as well as the study by Hans Erhard Lauer “Erkenntnis und Offenbarung in der Anthroposophie”, Basel 1958.
• 18. The term “mystery drama” was noted by Rudolf Steiner in his notebook for the lecture Prague, April 5, 1924. Notebook archive number 336.
• 19. Dornach, November 27, 1916.
• 21. Dornach, 3 March 1923.
• 22. Emil Bock in «Wir erlebten Rudolf Steiner. Erinnerungen seiner Schüler», herausgegeben von M.]. Krück von Porturzyn, 1. Auflage Stuttgart 1956.
• 24. Refers to a saying of the will-o'-the-wisps in Goethe's “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” which was the subject of this lecture.
• 25. Schuster, Hugo (1876-1925)
  Swiss. As a young merchant in St. Gallen in 1903/04, he took an active part in the development of anthroposophical work in Switzerland, e.g. in the founding of branches in St. Gallen, Bern and Basel. He felt drawn to the priesthood by Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of Christ. He was ordained as a priest of the Old Catholic Church in 1918 and took up his first post in Basel. At the beginning of 1919, he received the burial ritual from Rudolf Steiner. Although Rudolf Steiner had often spoken words of remembrance at the funerals of members of the Anthroposophical Society, he had never performed a ritual, because, as Marie Steiner once put it, he wanted to practice the profession of priest no more than he wanted to practice that of a doctor. But when a member of the Society took on the role of a priest, a collaboration arose. On the occasion of such a death, Pastor Schuster performed the funeral ritual given by Rudolf Steiner for the first time on January 14, 1919 in Arlesheim, and Rudolf Steiner spoke the words of remembrance afterwards. From a handwritten telegram transcript of Rudolf Steiner in the archive of the Rudolf Steiner estate administration, it can be seen that when a member died in May 1920, he asked Pastor Schuster himself if he could perform the funeral ceremony. There is also evidence of such a jointly conducted ceremony in October 1920. According to a letter written by Marie Steiner, Rudolf Steiner spoke at the funerals and cremations of members “when the relatives asked him to. In the beginning, there were only a few isolated cases. Since they gradually became more numerous and the cult was given to the priests who had turned to him (the Christian Community), he wished the matter to be handled in this way, since he did not want to practice the profession of a priest any more than he did that of a doctor.” Since Schuster had to give up his job as a result of illness as early as 1921, the funeral ritual passed to the Christian Community. Rudolf Steiner had conferred the ritual of the Mass upon him in 1919. On April 20, 1919, immediately before leaving for Stuttgart, where the next day a meeting of the signatories of the Appeal to the German People and the Cultural World marked the beginning of the people's movement for a threefold social organism, Rudolf Steiner sent Schuster the first parts - the gospel and offertory of the mass. The accompanying letter reads: “Dornach, April 20, 1919. My dear Reverend Schuster! Please find enclosed everything from the Mass that is ready to be handed over. But I also want to take the matter with me on the journey, and it is my opinion that now that my book (“The Key Points of the Social Question...”) is finished, everything will soon be in your hands. Please do not be angry that you are receiving so little for the time being; the matter is progressing. Sincerely, Rudolf Steiner.” The other parts followed a little later. The exact date is not known.
• 26. From the biographical sketch “Wilhelm Ruhtenberg” in “Der Lehrerkreis um Rudolf Steiner in der ersten Waldorfschule”, Stuttgart 1977, p. 210f.
• 27. Maria Lehrs-Röschl in “On religious education. Rudolf Steiner's words for Waldorf teachers, Stuttgart 1985.
• 28. See “Conferences with the teachers of the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart 1919 to 1924”, Volume 1 (Introduction by Erich Gabert), GA 300, 5. 41.
• 29. In response to the question that was asked again later, he then made the desired changes. Emil Bock handed them down to the priests of the “Christian Community.
• 29. Emil Bock in “We experienced Rudolf Steiner. Memories of his students”, edited by M.J.Krück von Porturzyn, 1st edition Stuttgart 1956.
• 30. From “Twelve Moods” in “Truth Sayings”, GA 40.
• 32. This reference to historical development obviously refers to the four parts of the Christian mass sacrifice - gospel, sacrifice, consecration, communion - which “represent the path of the initiate from the old pagan mysteries” (Dornach, January 11, 1919; Munich, November 4, 1906).
• 33. Carl Unger, “On the Question of the Relationship between the Christian Community and the Anthroposophical Society” in “Schriften II”, Stuttgart 1964.

It must be answered, not to meet a human “need to know” but to meet man's universal need to become fully human. And in just what way one can strive for an answer, in what way the ignorabimus can be overcome to fulfil the demands of human evolution—this shall be the theme of our course of lectures as it proceeds.

To those who demand of a cycle of lectures with a title such as ours that nothing be introduced that might interfere with the objective presentation of ideas, I would like, since today I shall have to mention certain personalities, to say the following. The moment one begins to represent the results of human judgment in their relationship to life, to full human existence, it becomes inevitable that one indicate the personalities with whom the judgments originated. Even in a scientific presentation, one must remain within the sphere in which the judgment arises, within the realm of human struggling and striving toward such a judgment. And especially since the question we want above all to answer is: what can be gleaned from modern scientific theories that can become a vital social thinking able to transform thought into impulses for life?—then one must realize that the series of considerations one undertakes is no longer confined to the study and the lecture halls but Stands rather within the living evolution of humanity.

Behind everything with which I commenced yesterday, the modern striving for a mathematical-mechanical world view and the dissolution of that world view, behind that which came to a climax in 1872 in the famous speech by the physiologist, du Bois-Reymond, concerning the limits of natural science, there stands something even more important. It is something that begins to impress itself upon us the moment we want to begin to speak in a living way about the limits of natural science.

A personality of extraordinary philosophical stature still looks over to us with a certain vitality out of the first half of the nineteenth century: Hegel. Only in the last few years has Hegel begun to be mentioned in the lecture halls and in the philosophical literature with somewhat more respect than in the recent past. In the last third of the nineteenth century the academic world attacked Hegel outright, yet one could demonstrate irrefutably that Eduard von Hartmann had been quite right in claiming that during the 1880s only two university lecturers in all of Germany had actually read him. The academics opposed Hegel but not on philosophical grounds, for as a philosopher they hardly knew him. Yet they knew him in a different way, in a way in which we still know him today. Few know Hegel as he is contained, or perhaps better said, as his world view is contained, in the many volumes that sit in the libraries. Those who know Hegel in this original form so peculiar to him are few indeed. Yet in certain modified forms he has become in a sense the most popular philosopher the world has ever known. Anyone who participates in a workers' meeting today or, even better, anyone who had participated in one during the last few decades and had heard what was discussed there; anyone with any sense for the source of the mode of thinking that had entered into these workers' meetings, who really knew the development of modern thought, could see that this mode of thinking had originated with Hegel and flowed through certain channels out into the broadest masses. And whoever investigated the literature and philosophy of Eastern Europe in this regard would find that the Hegelian mode of thinking had permeated to the farthest reaches of Russian cultural life. One thus could say that, anonymously, as it were, Hegel has become within the last few decades perhaps one of the most influential philosophers in human history. On the other hand, however, when one perceives what has come to be recognized by the broadest spectrum of humanity as Hegelianism, one is reminded of the portrait of a rather ugly man that a kind artist painted in such a way as to please the man's family. As one of the younger sons, who had previously paid little attention to the portrait, grew older and really observed it for the first time, he said: “But father, how you have changed!” And when one sees what has become of Hegel one might well say: “Dear philosopher, how you have changed!” To be sure, something extraordinary has happened regarding this Hegelian world view.

Hardly had Hegel himself departed when his school fell apart. And one could see how this Hegelian school appropriated precisely the form of one of our new parliaments. There was a left wing and a right wing, an extreme left and an extreme right, an ultra-radical wing and an ultra-conservative wing. There were men with radical scientific and social views, who felt themselves to be Hegel's true spiritual heirs, and on the other side there were devout, positive theologians who wanted just as much to base their extreme theological conservatism on Hegel. There was a center for Hegelian studies headed by the amiable philosopher, Karl Rosenkranz, and each of these personalities, every one of them, insisted that he was Hegel's true heir.

What is this remarkable phenomenon in the evolution of human knowledge? What happened was that a philosopher once sought to raise humanity into the highest realms of thought. Even if one is opposed to Hegel, it cannot be denied that he dared attempt to call forth the world within the soul in the purest thought-forms. Hegel raised humanity into ethereal heights of thinking, but strangely enough, humanity then fell right back down out of those heights. It drew on the one hand certain materialistic and on the other hand certain positive theological conclusions from Hegel's thought. And even if one considers the Hegelian center headed by the amiable Rosenkranz, even there one cannot find Hegel's philosophy as Hegel himself had conceived it. In Hegel's philosophy one finds a grand attempt to pursue the scientific method right up into the highest heights. Afterward, however, when his followers sought to work through Hegel's thoughts themselves, they found that one could arrive thereby at the most contrary points of view.

Now, one can argue about world views in the study, one can argue within the academies, and one can even argue in the academic literature, so long as worthless gossip and Barren cliques do not result. These offspring of Hegelian philosophy, however, cannot be carried out of the lecture halls and the study into life as social impulses. One can argue conceptually about contrary world views, but within life itself these contrary world views do not fight so peaceably. One must use just such a paradoxical expression in describing such a phenomenon. And thus there stands before us in the first half of the nineteenth century an alarming factor in the evolution of human cognition, something that has proved itself to be socially useless in the highest degree. With this in mind we must then raise the question: how can we find a mode of thinking that can be useful in social life? In two phenomena above all we notice the uselessness of Hegelianism for social life.

One of those who studied Hegel most intensively, who brought Hegel fully to life within himself, was Karl Marx. And what is it that we find in Marx? A remarkable Hegelianism indeed! Hegel up upon the highest peak of the conceptual world—Hegel upon the highest peak of Idealism—and the faithful student, Karl Marx, immediately transforming the whole into its direct opposite, using what he believed to be Hegel's method to carry Hegel's truths to their logical conclusions. And thereby arises historical materialism, which is to be for the masses the one world view that can enter into social life. We thus are confronted in the first half of the nineteenth century with the great Idealist, Hegel, who lived only in the Spirit, only in his ideas, and in the second half of the nineteenth century with his student, Karl Marx, who contemplated and recognized the reality of matter alone, who saw in everything ideal only ideology. If one but takes up into one's feeling this turnabout of conceptions of world and life in the course of the nineteenth century, one feels with all one's soul the need to achieve an understanding of nature that will serve as a basis for judgments that are socially viable.

Now, if we turn on the other hand to consider something that is not so obviously descended from Hegel but can be traced back to Hegel nonetheless, we find still within the first half of the nineteenth century, but carrying over into the second half, the “philosopher of the ego,” Max Stirner. While Karl Marx occupies one of the two poles of human experience mentioned yesterday, the pole of matter upon which he bares all his considerations, Stirner, the philosopher of the ego, proceeds from the opposite pole, that of consciousness. And just as the modern world view, gravitating toward the pole of matter, becomes unable to discover consciousness within that element (as we saw yesterday in the example of du Bois-Reymond), a person who gravitates to the opposite pole of consciousness will not be able to find the material world. And so it is with Max Stirner. For Max Stirner, no material universe with natural laws actually exists. Stirner sees the world as populated solely by human egos, by human consciousnesses that want only to indulge themselves to the full. “I have built my thing on nothing”—that is one of Max Stirner's maxims. And on these grounds Stirner opposes even the notion of Providence. He says for example: certain moralists demand that we should not perform any deed out of egoism, but rather that we should perform it because it is pleasing to God. In acting, we should look to God, to that which pleases Him, that which He commands. Why, thinks Max Stirner, should I, who have built only upon the foundation of ego-consciousness, have to admit that God is after all the greater egoist Who can demand of man and the world that all should be performed as it suits Him? I will not surrender my own egoism for the sake of a greater egoism. I will do what pleases me. What do I care for a God when I have myself?

One thus becomes entangled and confused within a consciousness out of which one can no longer find the way. Yesterday I remarked how on the one hand we can arrive at clear ideas by awakening in the experience of ideas when we descend into our consciousness. These dreamlike ideas manifest themselves like drives from which we cannot then escape. One would say that Karl Marx achieved clear ideas—if anything his ideas are too clear. That was the secret of his success. Despite their complexity, Marx's ideas are so clear that, if properly garnished, they remain comprehensible to the widest circles. Here clarity has been the means to popularity. And until it realizes that within such a clarity humanity is lost, humanity, as long as it seeks logical consequences, will not let go of these clear ideas.

If one is inclined by temperament to the other extreme, to the pole of consciousness, one passes over onto Stirner's side of the scale. Then one despises this clarity: one feels that, applied to social thinking, this clarity makes man into a cog in a social order modeled on mathematics or mechanics—but into that only, into a mere cog. And if one does not feel oneself cut out for just that, then the will that is active in the depths of human consciousness revolts. Then one comes radically to oppose all clarity. One mocks all clarity, as Stirner did. One says to oneself: what do I care about anything else? What do I care even about nature? I shall project my own ego out of myself and see what happens. We shall see that the appearance of such extremes in the nineteenth century is in the highest degree characteristic of the whole of recent human evolution, for these extremes are the distant thunder that preceded the storm of social chaos we are now experiencing. One must understand this connection if one wants at all to speak about cognition today.

Yesterday we arrived at an indication of what happens when we begin to correlate our consciousness to an external natural world of the senses. Our consciousness awakens to clear concepts but loses itself. It loses itself to the extent that one can only posit empty concepts such as “matter,” concepts that then become enigmatic. Only by thus losing ourselves, however, can we achieve the clear conceptual thinking we need to become fully human. In a certain sense we must first lose ourselves in order to find ourselves again out of ourselves. Yet now the time has come when we should learn something from these phenomena. And what can one learn from these phenomena? One can learn that, although clarity of conceptual thinking and perspicuity of mental representation can be won by man in his interaction with the world of sense, this clarity of conceptual thinking becomes useless the moment we strive scientifically for something more than a mere empiricism. It becomes useless the moment we try to proceed toward the kind of phenomenalism that Goethe the scientist cultivated, the moment we want something more than natural science, namely Goetheanism.

What does this imply? In establishing a correlation between our inner life and the external physical world of the senses we can use the concepts we form in interaction with nature in such a way that we try not to remain within the natural phenomena but to think on beyond them. We are doing this if we do more than simply say: within the spectrum there appears the color yellow next to the color green, and on the other side the blues. We are doing this if we do not simply interrelate the phenomena with the help of our concepts but seek instead, as it were, to pierce the veil of the senses and construct something more behind it with the aid of our concepts. We are doing this if we say: out of the clear concepts I have achieved I shall construct atoms, molecules—all the movements of matter that are supposed to ex-ist behind natural phenomena. Thereby something extraordinary happens. What happens is that when I as a human being confront the world of nature [see illustration], I use my concepts not only to create for myself a conceptual order within the realm of the senses but also to break through the boundary of sense and construct behind it atoms and the like I cannot bring my lucid thinking to a halt within the realm of the senses. I take my lesson from inert matter, which continues to roll on even when the propulsive force has ceased. My knowledge reaches the world of sense, and I remain inert. I have a certain inertia, and I roll with my concepts on beyond the realm of the senses to construct there a world the existence of which I can begin to doubt when I notice that my thinking has only been borne along by inertia.

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It is interesting to note that a great proportion of the philosophy that does not remain within phenomena is actually nothing other than just such an inert rolling-on beyond what really exists within the world. One simply cannot come to a halt. One wants to think ever farther and farther beyond and construct atoms and molecules—under certain circumstances other things as well that philosophers have assembled there. No wonder, then, that this web one has woven in a world created by the inertia of thinking must eventually unravel itself again.

Goethe rebelled against this law of inertia. He did not want to roll onward thus with his thinking but rather to come strictly to a halt at this limit [see illustration: heavy line] and to apply concepts within the realm of the senses. He thus would say to himself: within the spectrum appear to me yellow, blue, red, indigo, violet. If, however, I permeate these appearances of color with my world of concepts while remaining within the phenomena, then the phenomena order themselves of their own accord, and the phenomenon of the spectrum teaches me that when the darker colors or anything dark is placed behind the lighter colors or anything light, there appear the colors which lie toward the blue end of the spectrum. And conversely, if I place light behind dark, there appear the colors which lie toward the red end of the spectrum.

What was it that Goethe was actually seeking to do? Goethe wanted to find simple phenomena within the complex but above all such phenomena as allowed him to remain within this limit [see illustration], by means of which he did not roll on into a realm that one reaches only through a certain mental inertia. Goethe wanted to adhere to a strict phenomenalism. If we remain within phenomena and if we strive with our thinking to come to a halt there rather than allow ourselves to be carried onward by inertia, the old question arises in a new way. What meaning does the phenomenal world have when I consider it thus? What is the meaning of the mechanics and mathematics, of the number, weight, measure, or temporal relation that I import into this world? What is the meaning of this?

You know, perhaps, that the modern world conception has sought to characterize the phenomena of tone, color, warmth, etc. as only subjective, whereas it characterizes the so-called primary qualities, the qualities of weight, space, and time, as something not subjective but objective and inherent in things. This conception can be traced back principally to the English philosopher, John Locke, and it has to a considerable extent determined the philosophical basis of modern scientific thought. But the real question is: what place within our systematic science of nature as a whole do mathematics, do mechanics—these webs we weave within ourselves, or so it seems at first—what place do these occupy? We shall have to return to this question to consider the specific form it takes in Kantianism. Yet without going into the whole history of this development one can nonetheless emphasize our instinctive conviction that measuring or counting or weighing external objects is essentially different from ascribing to them any other qualities.

It certainly cannot be denied that light, tones, colors, and sensations of taste are related to us differently from that which we could represent as subject to mathematical-mechanical laws. For it really is a remarkable fact,a fact worthy of our consideration: you know that honey tastes sweet, but to a man with jaundice it tastes bitter—so we can say that we stand in a curious relationship to the qualities within this realm—while on the other hand we could hardly maintain that any normal man would see a triangle as a triangle, but a man with jaundice would see it as a square! Certain differentiations thus do exist, and one must be cognizant of them; on the other hand, one must not draw absurd conclusions from them. And to this very day philosophical thinking has failed in the most extraordinary way to come to grips with this most fundamental epistemological question. We thus see how a contemporary philosopher, Koppelmann, overtrumps even Kant by saying, for example—you can read this on page 33 of his Philosophical Inquiries [Weltanschauungsfragen]: everything that relates to space and time we must first construct within by means of the understanding, whereas we are able to assimilate colors and tastes directly. We construct the icosahedron, the dodecahedron, etc.: we are able to construct the standard regular solids only because of the organization of our understanding. No wonder, then, claims Koppelmann, that we find in the world only those regular solids we can construct with our understanding. One thus can find Koppelmann saying almost literally that it is impossible for a geologist to come to a geometer with a crystal bounded by seven equilateral triangles precisely because—so Koppelmann claims—such a crystal would have a form that simply would not fit into our heads. That is out-Kanting Kant. And thus he would say that in the realm of the thing-in-itself crystals could exist that are bounded by seven regular triangles, but they cannot enter our head, and thus we pass them by; they do not exist for us.

Such thinkers forget but one thing: they forget—and it is just this that we want to indicate in the course of these lectures with all the forceful proofs we can muster—that the natural order governing the construction of our head also governs the construction of the regular polyhedrons, and it is for just this reason that our head constructs no other polyhedrons than those that actually confront us in the external world. For that, you see, is one of the basic differences between the so-called subjective qualities of tone, color, warmth, as well as the different qualities of touch, and that which confronts us in the mechanical-mathematical view of the world. That is the basic difference: tone and color leave us outside of ourselves; we must first take them in; we must first perceive them. As human beings we stand outside tone, color, warmth, etc. This is not entirely the case as regards warmth—I shall discuss that tomorrow—but to a certain extent this is true even of warmth. These qualities leave us initially outside ourselves, and we must perceive them. In formal, spatial, and temporal relationships and regarding weight this is not the case. We perceive objects in space but stand ourselves within the same space and the same lawfulness as the objects external to us. We stand within time just as do the external objects. Our physical existence begins and ends at a definite point in time. We stand within space and time in such a way that these things permeate us without our first perceiving them. The other things we must first perceive. Regarding weight, well, ladies and gentlemen, you will readily admit that this has little to do with perception, which is somewhat open to arbitrariness: otherwise many people who attain an undesired corpulence would be able to avoid this by perception alone, merely by having the faculty of perception. No, ladies and gentlemen, regarding weight we are bound up with the world entirely objectively, and the organization by means of which we stand within color, tone, warmth, etc. is powerless against that objectivity.

So now we must above all pose the question: how is it that we arrive at any mathematical-mechanical judgment? How do we arrive at a science of mathematics, at a science of mechanics? How is it, then, that this mathematics, this mechanics, is applicable to the external world of nature, and how is it that there is a difference between the mathematical-mechanical qualities of external objects and those that confront us as the so-called subjective qualities of sensation, tone, color, warmth, etc.?

At the one extreme, then, we are confronted with this fundamental question. Tomorrow we shall discuss another such question. Then we shall have two starting-points from which we can proceed to investigate the nature of science. Thence we shall proceed to the other extreme to investigate the formation of social judgments.

Do not think that I wish to take the floor this evening for the purpose of speaking of an understanding between the various classes of the present population, in the same way that the ruling classes, the hitherto ruling classes in particular, so often speak of reconciliation and understanding. I would like to speak to you this evening about a quite different kind of understanding, about the understanding that is being challenged by the social facts that are speaking loudly today and by the great historical forces that are currently entering the course of human development. I would like to speak of what seems to me to be demanded of the proletarian movement in particular, of these historical forces that are today, one might say, revolutionizing the world.

To speak of a different understanding is forbidden by almost the whole of modern life, the life that certain people call modern civilization. What voices have we heard within this modern civilization over the last few decades! Let us remember how the hitherto ruling classes have perceived this modern civilization, one might say, right up to the terrible catastrophe of war which has come as a horror to mankind in recent years. How often has it been said how far we humans have come in creating, in producing! How we have brought it about that thought can be sent far across the earth in a short time, how connections have been created between the most distant countries, how spiritual life in all its forms has gained a tremendous expansion. Well, I could go on singing the praises of modern civilization for a long time, not the way I want to sing them, but the way they have been sung by this ruling class. But let us now look at things from the other side. How was this modern civilization, to which so many songs of praise have been sung, actually possible? It was only possible because it was, so to speak, undermined by those who, from the innermost essence of their humanity, could not agree with what the bearers of this modern civilization were doing. And so, alongside all this, which one could also call a kind of luxury culture, one could hear the voices coming from the other side, which essentially always ended with the words: It can't go on like this! As wonderful as your civilization may be for you, it is impossible for it to go on any other way than for the vast majority of the earth's population to have no direct share in it. They have to feel excluded from this civilization, they have to watch from the outside, so to speak, but on the other hand they have to work hard for this civilization!

Has anyone on the other side shown any understanding in recent decades for the reasons and background from which such a call has emerged? You can't say that. In general, certain people today speak a very strange language. Over the last few days, I have witnessed some of what has taken place here in Bern at the League of Nations Conference. You could hear all kinds of beautiful speeches, that is, speeches that the gentlemen thought were very beautiful. But anyone who is able to look a little deeper into what is being expressed in the world-changing deeds that are going through Europe today could hear, above all, in what was said there, that the most important question of the present, the question that is of ever-increasing concern to a large part of humanity, was being talked and thought past. The actual nerve of the social question was talked and thought past! This conference showed extraordinarily little understanding for this question, and one was reminded of something else, namely the weeks of the spring and early summer of 1914, when one could hear many a strange speech from the hitherto ruling circles and their leaders. One could cite many similar speeches, such as the one made by a leading statesman in a Central European country to a parliament in 1914, in which he said: “Thanks to the energetic efforts of the European cabinets, we can hope that peace among the great powers of Europe will be secured for the foreseeable future. - This was still being said, with all possible modifications, in May and June 1914.

And then? Then came what killed millions of people, what crippled millions of people. So well foreseen was that which also asserted itself alongside that to which one sang such hymns of praise as modern civilization!

I myself, if I may make this personal remark, had to speak differently from these statesmen at the time. Before a meeting in Vienna in the spring of 1914, I had to say: Anyone who looks at the life of contemporary European humanity sees in it something like a creeping cancer that must break out. - Well, we can leave it to the judgment of mankind today as to who was a better prophet: the one who spoke of a cancerous disease that broke out so terribly in the so-called world war, or those who thought that, thanks to the efforts of the cabinets, a longer peace was in prospect. Just as in those days these gentlemen talked past what was gathering as a black cloud in the political sky of Europe, so today certain people talk past what is most important: the social powers and forces entering the life of the nations of the earth. Since things are like this, there is really very little prospect of bringing about an understanding through reason, so to speak. But an understanding on the other side, as I have already said, can be sought. And this understanding seems to me to arise if we take the following starting point.

Until our time, the proletarian population was basically in a completely different situation than it will be from now on. Anyone who has not only thought about the proletarian movement from a certain theoretical point of view, but who has experienced this proletarian movement in such a way that he has lived with it, knows that what the modern proletariat experienced was the great, penetrating criticism of what the institutions and maxims of the hitherto leading circles have done for centuries, for three to four centuries. What the modern proletarian experienced was the living, world-historical critique of everything they believed they had to impose on humanity. And basically, what was going on within the proletariat was a great, powerful critique. While the hitherto leading circles lingered within their bourgeois culture, to which they sang such hymns of praise, while they could hear in their lecture halls that which served their state, while they heard in their theaters the illusory world of their affairs, while they did many other things, what they perceived as such a salutary modern civilization, the proletarian masses came together in the hours they could spare from the heavy, arduous work of the day to reflect on the serious questions of human development, the serious questions of world history. After all, modern technical development and the capitalist development connected with it had taken the modern proletarian away from all other human contexts, which, for example, the old craft had provided, had placed him next to the machine, harnessed into the capitalist world order and thus excluded from the immediate feeling of what the leading, leading circles were doing. Then the proletarian's spiritual gaze turned to the general and, from a certain point of view, the highest interest of humanity. And in the proletarian assemblies that was driven which then always had to sound out again in the cry: It can't go on like this!

But what developed there was also a powerful, magnificent criticism of the previous policy, the previous economic management of the leading circles. This has now entered a new stage. And to really follow this entry into a new stage with attention seems to me to be one of the most necessary social tasks today.

How has the modern proletarian felt about the social order that has developed over the last three to four centuries, since the time when modern capitalism and modern technology entered the development of mankind? How did the modern proletarian feel about all this, which he had to look at as if he were standing on his feet, which he, as far as he could use it, wanted to absorb with his intimate share, so that he would also have something for his soul? The old leading circles spoke to him of various powers and forces at work in the historical development of mankind; they spoke to him of all kinds of moral world orders and the like. But he, the modern proletarian, who looked up to what these ruling classes were doing, felt little of the power, of the inner originality of such moral world orders; He felt that the actions, the thoughts, the feelings of the leading, governing circles are essentially shaped by the way they can live by virtue of their economic forms, their economic order, through which they are able to establish their civilization as a kind of superstructure on the misery, on the oppression of larger masses of humanity who had to work for them.

And so there arose in the modern proletariat what was the truth in relation to the reality of these newer thoughts about the development of mankind. The modern proletarian felt a truth about what the others fantasized about in a certain lying way; they spoke of a moral, of a divine world order, through which people are brought into mutual social relations on earth. The proletarian felt this to be a profound lie. And he felt that the truth in all this is that people live as they can by exploiting economic life for their own convenience, for their own benefit. And so the materialistic conception of history arose - and one must now say, as the proper inheritance of what was bourgeois science - the conception which did not admit that the actually effective forces in the historical development of mankind were anything other than economic forces. And that became the belief that everything that is human religion, human science, human spirituality, rises above the economic forces like a kind of “superstructure”, and that below it the economic forces reign as the only reality on which at most the superstructure acts back. The modern proletariat was right in the face of what the bourgeois world order has made of social life - a mere economy.

The second thing that emanated from Karl Marx's power of thought and spread into the proletarian assemblies, into the proletarian souls, is not the intellectual question, as I have just characterized it in the materialist view of history, but the legal question. This culminates in the one word that you all know, but which had an electrifying effect within the modern proletarian movements, which evoked understanding in the innermost feelings of the modern proletarian souls when it was presented to these proletarian souls by Marx and his successors: it is the word of surplus value. And behind much of what has been said around this word of surplus value, what the modern proletarian actually feels to be his most important human question, lies the question which is more or less consciously or unconsciously, more or less merely felt or posed with the intellect, but which is deeply felt. What sense does my work actually have within the modern social order? And it must be said that Karl Marx's various answers are brilliant. - But today we live in a time in which we must go further than even Marx went, especially if we understand Marx in the right way, not in the direction of the opportunist politicians, but in a completely different direction, as we shall see in a moment.

When the modern proletarian raised the question of the meaning of his labor and this became for him the question of his position within modern society, of his human dignity, he was repeatedly confronted with the problem that his labor was, as it were, absorbed by the capitalist economic process. He experienced that his labor had become something that it could only appear to be, namely: a commodity. The modern proletarian, who can only acquire his labor power anew as his only “possession”, experienced that he must also carry his labor power to the market, must have his labor power treated according to the rules of supply and demand, as otherwise objective commodities separated from man are treated on the commodity market.

Now the peculiarity of human life is that things can occur in this human life which are real, but which are not truths, which are lies of life. And one such lie is that human labor can ever become a commodity. For human labor power can never enter into any comparisons, any price comparisons with commodities. It is something fundamentally different from commodities. It is therefore a lie if that which can never become a commodity is nevertheless made into a commodity. Even if this is not expressed in such a clear manner, it is nevertheless something that is perceived as, I would say, the center of the proletarian question of modern times. Because human labor power has become a commodity, the legal relationship that should exist between the entrepreneur and the worker over work has become a purchasing relationship. And modern bourgeois national economists do indeed talk as if it were possible within economic life to exchange commodity for commodity on the one hand, and commodity for labor on the other.

The fact that a so-called labor contract exists in the modern sense of the word does not change the matter; for a legal contract can only be concluded about the relationship between entrepreneur and worker in the sense that we shall see later. Human labor could only be liberated from its commodity character - and it must be liberated - if the only contract possible between the employee and the employer were not the contract for the work performed, but the contract for the distribution of the jointly produced goods or services in a way that serves the healthy organism in the right sense. This is the demand that lies behind the Marxist theory of surplus value. At the same time, this is the way in which one must go beyond the merely Marxist conception. And the question must be asked: How does the wage relationship end? How does a commodity distribution contract take the place of the labor contract?

But with this we have indicated the second thing that repeatedly ran through the soul of the modern proletarian and which was hurled at the leading circles as a powerful criticism.

And the third, that was the conviction that everything that takes place in modern life and which has led to these conditions into which we have now got, does not consist in a harmony, not in a work of modern men arising from a common purpose, but in a struggle between groups of men in which one of them has the advantage at first; that is the class struggle of the modern proletariat with the leading classes.

Truly, these three points: the materialist conception of history, the theory of surplus-value and labor-power, and the theory of class struggle have been studied with more contemporary force than anything that has been written within bourgeois society in recent times. For it was recognized that what human development has come to in the last centuries is merely a result of economic forms. All other interpretations are basically a great lie of humanity.

And so the whole intellectual life, as it had become a kind of cultural luxury for the ruling class, became an “ideology” for the modern proletariat, a word that was heard again and again. It became a mere fabric of thoughts and feelings and sentiments, which were expressed as smoke emanating from the true reality of economic life.

But one does not understand the matter if one only understands it in this way. One only understands the matter correctly if one knows that in the face of this desolating ideology, this soul-killing ideology, which is essentially a legacy of the thinking of the hitherto ruling class, in the modern proletarian soul, which had time to think about human dignity and about truly becoming a human being on the machine and in the enclosure of the capitalist economic process, a real longing for a true spiritual life, not for a spiritual luxury, not for abundance, awoke. One can still often hear in bourgeois circles today how the modern proletarian question, viewed from this or that side, is actually a bread-and-butter question. Certainly, it is a bread-and-butter question; but there is really no need to talk about the fact that it is a bread-and-butter question in an assembly where proletarian understanding prevails. For it is not a question of thinking in the same way as a bourgeois sociologist and pedagogue, for instance, who now travels about a great deal in many regions, and who, among other things, recently coined the words: You only have to really know modern poverty once, then you will already come to the longing for a humanization of human society. - Behind such words there is usually nothing more than the question: How can one continue in the delusion of the old life of the ruling circles and how can one in the best way let chunks fall off for those who should not participate in this life of the ruling class? How can labor be dealt with while maintaining the existing social order? - It is not a question of bread. If it is a question of bread, then it is above all a question of how bread is fought for, out of which soul motives.

This has to do with much deeper historical forces than those who often talk about history from this perspective even suspect. And today the three questions which I have just characterized have reached a new stage in that there is much in them which one is not yet able to express clearly, but which can be heard by those who have an ear for the workings of historical forces, for the sounds which herald the great world-historical upheavals. Today the proletarian movement is no longer a mere criticism, today it is that which is called upon by the world-historical powers themselves to take action, to raise the great question: What must be done? - And here it seems to me that what I characterized earlier must be transformed somewhat, transformed in such a way that, in contrast to the purely material life as it has developed up to now, another life should develop that allows the oppressed part of humanity to have an existence that is truly humane in soul as well. That is the first question, the question of spiritual life: How can we transform the luxury ideology, the affluent spiritual life, into that which, from the innermost nature of man, man must really experience for an existence worthy of man?

The other thing that has developed, apart from this spiritual life, is precisely that which has turned the proletarian's human labor power into a commodity in the field of legal life. This could only develop because in the social order that emerged under capitalism and modern technology, law became a prerogative in many respects. How can the prerogative be replaced by law, within whose order the human labor power of the proletarian is stripped of the character of a mere commodity?

And the third question is: how can what has developed as class struggle continue to develop in other forms? The proletarian has felt very well that what must happen in life can only develop in this mutual struggle. But he perceives the struggles that have taken place in the course of modern history as those that must be overcome. And so the question of the necessity of class struggles will now, at the present stage of development, be transformed into the question: How do we overcome class struggles? - The question of surplus value, which has moved into the realm of privileges within the social order as it has developed over the last few centuries, this question of surplus value gives rise to the other question: How to find in human society, in the true sense of the word, a state of law satisfactory to all men?

With regard to the first question, the spiritual side of the social question, one only has to see how deep the abyss is between the hitherto ruling classes and those on the other side who are striving for a new world and social order. And here it must be said that what fills the modern proletarian with spiritual life has basically been inherited from the bourgeois class, which has been able to cultivate science, art and so on. - But this spiritual life had a different effect within the proletariat, for the proletarian was in a different position in relation to what he had inherited in the way of science and the like than in relation to what arose as modern spiritual life among those who were bourgeois, the leading circles. One could be a very convinced follower of modern intellectual life, one could consider oneself very enlightened, but one stood as a member of the ruling class within such a social order, which was not at all organized according to this modern intellectual life. One could be a natural scientist like Vogt, a scientific popularizer like Büchner, one could believe oneself to be completely enlightened - that was perhaps good for the head, for the intellectual conviction; but it was not suitable for understanding the position of man in real life. For the way these people stood in life could only be justified by the fact that the social order derived from quite different powers, from religious, from outdated moral world views, or at any rate from other powers than those which had presented themselves as scientifically certified powers to these ruling, leading classes. Therefore, that which is the modern scientific spirit and to which the proletarian simply brought himself from the culture of modern times had a completely different effect on the proletarian soul.

I may recall a small scene that illustrates this particularly well, this different effect of modern spiritual life on the proletarian, who was compelled to grasp this modern spiritual life not just for the head, but for the whole person, for his entire position within humanity.

Many years ago, I once stood on the same podium in Spandau with Rosa Luxemburg, who has now come to such a tragic end. At that time she spoke about science and the workers, and as a teacher at the workers' education school I had a few things to add to her words on the same subject. This topic, “Science and the workers”, gave her the opportunity to express precisely that which is so characteristic of the intellectual life of the modern proletariat. She said: “The sentiments - despite the conviction of the head - the sentiments of the modern leading class of humanity are still rooted in views as if man came from angelic beings who were originally good; and from this origin, in terms of feeling and sentiment, these ruling classes justify the differences in rank and class that have emerged in the course of development. But the modern proletarian is driven in a quite different way to take bourgeois science seriously. He must take seriously when he is taught how man was not originally an angelic being, but climbed about on trees like an animal and behaved most indecently. Looking back to this origin of man in the sense of the modern world view does not justify differences in life, class and status in the same way that others believe it to be justified, it justifies a completely different idea of the equality of all people.

You see, that's the difference! The proletarian was compelled to take what the others took as a head conviction, which did not go very deep, no matter how enlightened they were, he was compelled to take it up with his whole person, to take the matter with the bitterest seriousness of life. As a result, however, it wove itself into his soul in a completely different way. One must simply become attentive to such things, then one will already recognize in what sense the modern social question is above all a question of spiritual life and strives for the development of a spiritual life that satisfies all people.

Then, if you look into the causes of everything that I have only been able to describe today, I would like to say, in a stammering manner, because if you really wanted to describe it in detail, it would require too much elaboration, if you research the causes and then ask yourself: what development must be striven for? - then we can say the following: today it is really not a question of whether materialistic culture is the real foundation of spiritual life, but of how we can arrive at a spiritual life that can truly satisfy the human soul, the soul of all human beings. Today it can no longer be about a critical interpretation of what surplus value is, what human labor power represents itself as within the capitalist world order, but today the question arises: How can human labor power be freed from the character of a commodity and how can we ensure that “surplus value” does not remain a prerogative but becomes a right? And if there must be struggles within the human social order, can they be class struggles, can they be the struggles that have gradually emerged over the course of recent centuries?

Today we are at a stage of development where criticism alone is no longer decisive, but where the question is decisive: What is to be done? - For those who look at the foundations of life, the answer is, I would say, very radical. It may look less radical to some than it is, but it is a radical answer. Because proletarian thinking is in many respects only the legacy of bourgeois thinking, because proletarian habits of thought are the legacy of bourgeois habits of thought, the first questions to be considered are: How can the damage caused by capitalism be eliminated? How can the oppressive nature of the commodification of human labor power be eliminated? How can the class struggle be overcome in a humane way?

These questions must be asked from a much deeper perspective today. And great demands are made today by the historical facts themselves on the habits of thought, on the thoughts of the proletarian. For it is up to him to be equal to the times, to ask himself: How can we get beyond the unhealthy foundations of today's material historical life? How can we get beyond the devastation that the cycle of surplus-value production has wreaked on life, on legal life? How do we get beyond the devastation of modern class struggles? The three most important modern social questions are transformed from the negative into the positive.

If we look at the causes of current living conditions, we find that there is actually a tendency to continue what the bourgeois world order has brought about. Many people are asking themselves today: How can we overcome capitalism? How can we overcome private ownership of the means of production? - And they then come to the ancient order of human social institutions, that of the cooperative and the like, that is, they come to regard a common ownership of the means of production as an ideal.

This is understandable, and truly, it is not out of any bourgeois prejudice that these things should be discussed here, but solely from the point of view of: Is it possible to achieve what the modern proletarian wants in the way that some socialist thinkers believe they can achieve it today? Is it possible, by resorting to the framework of the old state and inserting into this old state what is the economic order, only in a different form, to bring about a redemption from the oppression brought about by the past?

Let us look at the modern state. It came into being because at a time - in the 16th and 17th centuries - when modern technology and modern capitalism were also developing, the leading circles, who then had to call the proletariat more and more to the machine, found that their interests were best satisfied within the framework of the state. And so they began to allow economic life to run into the state in those branches where it was convenient for them. And especially when modern achievements came along, large parts of economic life, such as the postal, telegraph and railroad systems, were taken over into the economy of the state, which had been handed down from time immemorial. At that time, intellectual life was also incorporated into the modern state structure!

And more and more this fusion of economic life, the legal life of the state and intellectual life took place. This fusion not only led to all the unnatural conditions associated with the oppressive conditions of modern times, but this fusion also ultimately led to the devastating effects of the world war catastrophe.

Those who think today from the historical facts will not ask: What should the states do? - on the contrary, they may be forced to ask: What should states refrain from doing? - For what they do and thereby bring about, we have indeed experienced in the killing of ten million people and in what crippled eighteen million people.

And so perhaps the question does come to mind: What should states refrain from doing? - This is what I can only hint at here, but what can truly be asked from the deep foundations of a true social science. If you look at certain political and social conditions as they have, I would say, typically developed, but also as they have typically led to their well-deserved end, then you need only look at Austria, for example, which in the 1960s turned towards a common constitutional system in the Austrian Reichsrat.

What had emerged at that time - I spent three decades of my life in Austria, got to know the conditions thoroughly, got to know what developed as constitutional life in the Austrian state at that time - truly fitted the mishmash of different nations like a glove. And for anyone who can really follow historical facts, it is clear that it was precisely what was founded in Austrian constitutional life at that time, what became Austria's policy in the sixties and seventies, that contributed to the end to which the present years have led.

Why? Well, at that time an Austrian Imperial Council was founded. Initially, the purely economic curia, the curia of the large landowners, the curia of the markets, the cities and industrial towns, the curia of the rural communities were elected to this Austrian Imperial Council. They had to represent their economic interests in the state parliament. And they made rights, they made laws out of their economic life. Only rights that were a transformation of economic interests were created. With regard to the law, however, we are not dealing with the same thing that we are dealing with on the ground of economic life. On the ground of economic life one has to do with human needs, with the production of goods, the circulation of goods, the consumption of goods. In the field of legal life, however, one has to do with that which, apart from all other interests, concerns man, in so far as he is purely only man, in so far as he as man is equal to all other men. Judgment must be based on quite different grounds when the question is asked: What is right? - than: What must be done in order to introduce any product into the cycle of economic life? - The unnatural coupling of the economic curia with legal life is what is eating away at the so-called Austrian state as a cancer.

These things could be illustrated by many examples throughout the modern states. It is not a question of merely studying these things, but of finding the right point of view from which one can gain an insight into true reality, into that which lives and weaves, not into that which people imagine to be the right thing politically or economically.

And again, look at the German Reichstag, of blessed memory, at this democratic parliament with equal voting rights, in which there could be a representation of interests like the Farmers' Union, but in which there could also be a representation of a mere spiritual community, like the Center! There we see something welded, melted into purely political life that belongs only to intellectual life. And to what unnatural conditions has this led! Again, one could cite many examples in addition to this one. If one wants to get to know the life of modern mankind, one must be able to approach it radically from this point of view. One must really have the courage to look such things in the face, then one will come to something that modern people do not yet want to admit, I would even like to say that people of all parties do not want to admit it. But what alone can be the impulse for a recovery of our social organism is the recognition that from now on there can no longer be a welding together, a coupling together of the three areas of life - spiritual life, legal life and economic life - but that each of these areas has its own laws of life, that each of these areas must therefore also give itself its social formation from its own sources.

In economic life only the interests of commodity production, commodity consumption and commodity circulation can prevail. The fundamental laws of this economic life must be decisive for administration and legislation. In the field of legal life that must prevail which springs directly from the human consciousness of law, that in which all men are really equal as men. In the field of spiritual life, that which can flow from the natural human endowment in full free initiative must prevail.

Modern Social Democracy has made inroads - I would like to say, from a completely different point of view, but that cannot affect us here today - in a single area, in that it has the proposition in its views: Religion must be a private matter. - The proposition must be extended to all branches of spiritual life. All spiritual life must be a private matter in relation to the rule of law and to the cycle of economic life. That spiritual life alone which is directed to its own powers, that spiritual life alone which always proves its reality out of its own impulse, that will not be a spiritual luxury, that will not be a spiritual abundance, that will be a spiritual life which must be longed for by all men in the same way. In looking at medieval spiritual life, for example science in relation to religion and theology, the following sentence has often been uttered: Philosophy, the wisdom of the world, is trailing behind theology. - Well, it was also believed that this had changed in more recent times. It has changed, but how has it changed? The secular sciences have become the servants of secular powers, of states, of economic cycles. And they really haven't gotten any better as a result. And why have they not become better? When one sees that there is basically a unified current, a unified force, from the highest branches of spiritual life down to the utilization of man's individual abilities, as they are carried by capital and capitalism, then one sees to the bottom of the question that arises here. Anyone who does not separate the functions and activities of capital in the modern social order from the rest of spiritual life is not looking at the bottom of the matter. Working on the basis of capital is only possible in a society in which there is a healthy, emancipated intellectual life, from which the development of such abilities based on capital can also grow.

What has happened in more recent times need not always be as grotesque as it once was when a modern, very important researcher, a physiologist, wanted to characterize what the Berlin Academy of Sciences, that is, the learned gentlemen of this Berlin Academy of Sciences, actually were: he called them, these learned gentlemen, “the scientific protection force of the Hohenzollerns”. You see, things had changed. Science was no longer the servant of theology; but whether it had risen to a higher dignity by becoming the servant of the state is another matter.

I would have to speak a great deal if I wanted to offer you the well-founded, well-reasoned truth in all its parts that only the reversal of that movement which has occurred in recent times, namely the liberation of spiritual life in all branches from state life, can lead to the recovery of our social organism. How differently will the lowest teacher feel if, in all that he has to represent, he knows himself to be dependent only on administration and legislation, which is built on the basis of spiritual life itself, than if he has to carry out the maxims, the impulses of political life! The teaching profession was once supposed to develop. It is precisely in this area that the servant class has developed. And this servant state in this field truly corresponds to what has developed in the field of economic life. In antiquity it was called the “nourishing state”. The exploitative and exploited classes have developed in more recent times. However, the two went hand in hand. One is not possible without the other.

All that which relates to the personal relationship between man and man - and this personal relationship from man to man also relates to what employees and employers agree with each other - all this can only be administered by that part of the social organism which is organized independently on the basis of spiritual life. Everything connected with rights, and with rights above all the labor relationship, must remain the domain of the political, the constitutional state. But that which is connected with commodity production, commodity circulation and consumption must become a separate member of the social order, in which only the laws of life of this organism are active.

Thus, by entering into the foundations of these things, one arrives at the radical view, which for some will prove uncomfortable, that for the health of our social relations three independent social organizations must develop side by side, which will work together in the right way precisely because they do not have a uniform centralization, but are centralized in themselves: a parliament which administers spiritual affairs, an administration which serves only these spiritual affairs; a parliament and an administration of the constitutional state, the political state in the narrower sense; a parliament and an independent administration of the economic cycle for itself; like sovereign states side by side, so to speak. Through their coexistence, they will be able to realize what the modern proletarian soul wants, but which cannot be achieved by a mere centralist nationalization of the social order.

Just take economic life for example. Today it is attached on the one hand to the natural foundations. One can also improve these natural bases by improving the soil and the like, then the working conditions can become more favorable by improving the working bases; but there is a limit beyond which one cannot go. Such a limit must also be reached on the other side. Just as economic life is attached to nature, which is outside, so on the other side must stand the rule of law. From this constitutional state, rights and laws are determined in such a way that they are separate from economic life. Just as the judge has to judge separately from his family or human relations when he judges according to the law, just as he allows his human will to function from a different source than in everyday life, so, even if it is the same people - for it will be the same people who rule through all three areas of social organization - when they judge from the modern constitutional state, they will judge according to quite different principles. For example, to cite just one, the measure of work that a person can perform, the time in which a person can work, will result precisely from the human demands of life. All this must be independent of the price formation that prevails in economic life. And just as, on the one hand, nature imposes pricing on economic life, so, on the other hand, free, independent humanity must always first decide on labor out of a sense of justice. And from the political state, which stands outside economic life, labor must be placed within economic life. Then labor is price-forming; then the character of a commodity will not be imposed on labor, then labor participates in the formation of the price, is not dependent on the price formation of the commodity. Just as nature acts on economic life from without, so must law, which is embodied in human labor, act from without.

It may be - for this may be objected - that the prosperity of a social organism becomes in a certain way dependent upon it, when labor first asserts its right; but this dependence is a healthy dependence, and it will lead to a healthy improvement in the same way as, for example, the improvement of the soil by technical means, when it is necessary or expedient or proves possible. But labor will never be able to set prices in the same way that it must set prices in accordance with human dignity if economic life is placed within the framework of the modern state as in a large cooperative. Economic life must be removed and left to its own devices. Legal life, political life, security life must be taken out and placed on its own. People have to speak from the most democratic basis about that which affects all people. Then this will have the right effect on economic life and what must come from it. This will never be able to happen from a cooperative or state institution of any kind. We will see that, if things remain the same as the present oppressors have developed from other, historical foundations, the new oppressors will also develop in the same way if real democratic foundations are not created outside of economic life.

Just as the legal life of the state must stand outside economic life, so must the entire intellectual life from the lowest school up to the university. Then that which develops out of this spiritual life will be able to be a real spiritual administration of the other two branches of life. Then it will be possible for that which is formed as profit in economic life to be genuinely supplied to the community from which it is taken. Then it will be possible for something similar to take place for the material goods, as today only for the beautiful spiritual goods. For the spiritual goods of modern society are actually the most precious of all. It is so: with regard to this spiritual good, it is true that what is produced is given to the general public at least thirty years after death, becomes free property, can be administered by everyone. People today truly do not put up with this with regard to material goods

Possession in social life is not what these or those social economists so often dream of in a strange way; it can only be understood in this way for social life: Possession is the exclusive right of disposal over a thing; possession in the productive sense, in the sense of land, is a right. And this right can only be made into a right, instead of a privilege, which corresponds to the legal consciousness of all men, if the formation of judgement takes place on a ground where only the right is determined, if it becomes possible that that which has resulted as profit can be transferred through the rule of law into the disposal of the spiritual organization, so that the spiritual organization has to find the right individual abilities for that which is no longer used for production, that is, for human service, but becomes mere profit. In this way it will become possible to bring ever new individual abilities to mankind.

But in order that there may really be a power which leads in the right way, not into bureaucratism, but into the free administration of the individual mental faculties of men, that which must be taken as property from one side, it is necessary that the constitutional state should supervise property, that is, the right of property, and that it should not itself become the owner, but that it should be able to hand over free property to that intellectual circle from which it can best be administered. From this you can see that from such backgrounds one arrives today at radical views which will surprise even you; but for my part I am convinced that the facts of world history demand such things of men today. I am convinced that what the modern proletarian wants cannot be achieved in any other way than by extending his hand to the separation of powers. That is the only possible “foreign policy” today. And strangely enough, each individual territory can carry it out for itself. If Germany were to take up this idea for itself today, as I recently expressed in an “Appeal to the Germans and the Cultural World”, which has attracted many signatures, if the Germans were to take up this tripartite division today, then perhaps they could negotiate with the others in a different way than they can today, when they stand there as a unified state that has been completely overcome, completely overcome precisely by its former centralization, and is basically incapable of doing anything.

I do not mean to take sides, but only to say that what I am saying can become the basis not only of all domestic policy, but also of true foreign policy, for the reason that each individual country, each individual people can carry it out for itself alone. Today, if one considers the enormously telling facts, one is led to the conviction that it is no longer merely a matter of changing some of the conditions according to the old ideas, but that it is necessary to base them on new ideas, new facts. In recent years we have heard quite often that there have never been such terrible events as those of the last four and a half years as long as mankind has had a history. You can hear that more often today. But what should be the echo to this assertion is not heard so often today, namely: Never before have people had such a need to rethink, to relearn as they do today, when the social question points to what most needs to be relearned, points to what is most talked and thought past.

Today it is clear that it is the people who have to act. You don't have to come up with ready-made programs! What I have developed here is not a program, is not a social theory. What I have developed here is a realistic theory of humanity. I do not imagine that I can draw up a program for all the conditions that are to arise; the individual cannot do that on his own. For just as individuals cannot form language, which is a social phenomenon, on their own, but just as language is formed in the coexistence of people, all social life must develop in the coexistence of people.

For this, however, people must first be in the right relationship to one another. [The same person can be in the economic parliament, in the democratic parliament, in the spiritual parliament at the same time; he will only have to see how he always has to find the judgment from the objectivity of the circumstances from the different sources.

How people will administer legal, economic and spiritual life when they are properly related to each other, what people will say about the social, that is what one should fathom; not put forward an abstract, theoretical program about what is right in all cases! To bring people into such a relationship that they work together in the right way - one might think - is something the modern proletariat in particular would understand, and this for the simple reason that the modern proletariat has seen how the various interests, the legal, the economic and the spiritual interests work against each other. In this way they are brought into such mutual action that they produce, out of their own forces, a humane existence for each, a viable organism for the whole. Even if it is radical, I believe that nothing else is needed than good will and insight to translate this social program, which is not a program in the common sense - it has to be called that because there are no other words - into life. However, this will make the social question appear to be what it really is. There are certain people who believe that the social question that has arisen will be solved if we do this or that, [...] no, the social question has arisen because people have reached a certain stage of development. And now it is there and will always be there and will always have to be solved anew. And if people are not prepared to accept ever new solutions, the forces will ultimately lead to such disharmonies that they must increasingly lead to revolutionary upheavals of the social order. Revolutions must be defeated step by step on a small scale; then they will not occur on a large scale. But if one does not defeat that which enters into life day by day as legitimate revolutionary forces, then one need not be surprised if that which one does not want to be aware of discharges itself in great upheavals. Rather, in a certain sense, this must be seen as something understandable.

So I believe that it is precisely in the proletariat that an understanding could develop for a truly far-reaching overview of the social question as it arises in this tripartite organization of the social organism. And I am convinced that if some understanding develops, the proletarian will only then realize how he is the true modern man in the true sense of the word. He, who has been torn out of the old legalities, placed next to the barren machine, harnessed into the soulless economic process, has the opportunity to think about what is worthy of man, about what makes human life truly worthy of man, alongside this killing and destroying of man; he has the opportunity to think about it from the fundamental bases and to consider man as a pure human being. That is why one can also believe that if what is hidden in the modern proletarian class consciousness, what lies behind it, develops out of it: the consciousness of human dignity - “an existence worthy of man must be granted to all men” - then with the solution of the proletarian question, with the liberation of the proletariat, the solution of a great world-historical question of humanity will take place. Then the proletarian will not only redeem himself, then the proletarian will become the redeemer of all humanity in humanity. Then, with proletarian liberation, the whole of humanity, that which is worth liberating in this humanity, can be liberated at the same time.

My dear friends! In view of the increasingly strong attacks that have been occurring recently, it will probably be necessary for our dear friends not to speak unclearly to the outside world about certain points of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. I will, of course, not limit myself to just telling you about this or that attack again, but I will try, starting from two examples, to also mention some more important things in connection with what is being brought to our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from the outside world.

First of all, we have the latest attack by the Jesuit priest Otto Zimmermann. Believe me when I say that it is truly not something I particularly enjoy having to talk about these things, but it has to be done. It has to be done because it is necessary to call certain things that are part of our lives today by their right name. To do this, it must first be pointed out that the Jesuit priest Otto Zimmermann used the decree of the so-called Congregation of the Holy Office of July 18, 1919 to state that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science also falls under this decree and must be judged in the same way as any kind of theosophy. The question put to the Congregation and answered by this decree was this: “Can teachings that are today called theosophical be reconciled with Catholic doctrine? And is it therefore permissible to join theosophical societies, to participate in their meetings and to read their books, magazines, newspapers and writings (libros, ephemerides, diaria, scripta)?” The answer of the Holy Congregation was: ‘Negative in omnibus’ - no in all points.

Now you know from the quotation I gave you from a Stuttgart speech by a canon whose name has momentarily escaped me that the Catholic priests' side asserts that one should only inform oneself about what is contained in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from the writings of opponents, because the Pope has forbidden reading my own writings. From this you can see that from this side, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is treated absolutely the same as everything else that is called 'theosophical' from this side.

Now it is necessary to point out first of all how it stands in these circles, which refer to such a decree, with the truth. One need only highlight a few passages from the article in which the Jesuit priest Otto Zimmermann speaks of the Church's condemnation of Theosophy and Anthroposophy to see the spirit in which these official representatives of the Catholic priesthood – for a Jesuit priest is an official representative – speak today. I need only read the following sentence, for example:

Until 1913, the German section of the Theosophical Society at our headquarters in Adyar, India, was our top priority. Weakened by the defection of its General Secretary, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, who took most of the members with him, it has recovered to some extent over the years and now has about 25 lodges, about a fifth of which are “dormant.” It publishes Theosophische Streben in Düsseldorf as its organ for Germany and Austria. Recently, people close to Steiner, who had named his theosophy “Anthroposophy” after the defection, complained that he was becoming sterile, had no new “visions” and always presented the same things; he would probably soon throw himself on something new.

Now, my dear friends, the question arises as to what a Jesuit priest would base such things on. You can guess the sources, roughly speaking. The main source probably lies in the pamphlet by Max Seiling, who, at the end of his pamphlet, announced his return to the one true Catholic Church. But the existence of such sources should certainly not allow a truthful person to formulate his words in such a way as to say that “his surroundings” say this. Because so far I have not been able to discover that it is precisely my surroundings that say such things. So one must say: such things are untrue, and when a representative of the Catholic Church says them, he is simply saying untruths.

In the last few reflections, I spoke very clearly about the importance of taking truth seriously. Those who are so strict about the truth in such matters may well be asked what is actually meant when they later say in their explanations:

In the light of pure reason, modern theosophy is a contemptible mysticism, actually condemned by all serious science, but in the light of faith it is an almost unsurpassable conglomeration of Hindu, Buddhist, Kabbalistic, Gnostic and related errors.

If you keep this in mind and realize that the man applies exactly what he says here to anthroposophy, then you have to say that the man is disregarding the truth with the most culpable carelessness.

Now, my dear friends, you just have to realize what that means, especially for a Catholic priest, for a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. In these matters, too, one must be completely serious. You see, among the things that this Jesuit priest Otto Zimmermann criticizes about anthroposophy, which he considers to be a theosophical doctrine, is that it denies the church as the infallible teacher and guardian of the traditional faith. So you see that it is thoroughly Roman Catholic to regard the Roman Catholic Church as the infallible teacher and guardian of the true faith. Now it must be clear that the Roman Catholic Church is not – as in the Protestant creed – dealing only with ordinary teachers as pastors and the like, but that the Catholic Church is dealing with priests ordained by it, who therefore, when they speak, always speak with the mandate and commission of this Catholic Church. So if an objective untruth is asserted by such a man, then this is an objective untruth that must certainly be attributed to the Catholic Church as well. That is to say, the Catholic Church as such speaks untruthfully through this man, according to its own principles.

Yes, this is one of those things in today's intellectual life that must be taken extremely seriously and with great gravity. For you must consider, my dear friends, that the Catholic Church – even if she has recently suffered great losses due to the overthrow of certain thrones – has an extraordinarily great influence over many people through the practice of auricular confession influence over a great number of people, and that she can actually exercise this influence by simply, if she wills it, withholding absolution from those who do not obey such decrees as the one mentioned. She does, then, have a spiritual means of exerting influence, and this must be taken into account today in a very essential way. The fact that a spiritual power with such means at its disposal has its organs proclaim untruth must be thoroughly and deeply reckoned with.

You see, and this should at least be theoretically clear to those who have penetrated to the core of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, that the main damage of our time comes from people's tendency towards untruth. This widespread tendency of people to tell lies is what actually underlies all the difficulties of our time. When untruth is now officially spread from a certain quarter, which administers the spiritual life of many people, it means an extraordinary amount among the forces of our time. And when untruth appears in such a coarse and brazen way, it is necessary to take such an occurrence absolutely seriously. For just consider that this church, by banning writings, ensures that its flock cannot come to the truth from their own information, and consider that these sheep have the obligation to follow their shepherds in all matters of faith , that these sheep are obliged to believe the untruths spread by their shepherds, that these sheep do not even have the possibility to somehow ascertain that they are being told untruths.

Why am I telling you all this? I must say it for the reason that salvation for the recovery of our time can only be expected if a thorough, truthful assessment of what comes from this side and is to be expected, moves into a sufficiently large number of people today with all the necessary intensity. And from this intensive sense of reality should come the seriousness that permeates the judgment of our time. Much of what is alive in our time has been infected by the same dishonesty, even though it is not Catholic. You see, it is not possible to simply take a comfortable point of view, not wanting to inconvenience oneself by making a correct judgment about these things. Nor is it possible to take the view that not all Catholic priests will be like Father Zimmermann, because what comes from the Catholic side in opposition to anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is precisely of the same kind, and a man like Father Zimmermann is a true spokesman for what comes from that side.

Let us take just one point from all that this Father has written and to which he now refers again. This Father has raised the accusation of pantheism in a large series of articles against anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. There are two issues here. Firstly, my continued opposition to pantheism. Secondly, the possibility of also accusing numerous doctors of the church, whom the Catholic Church recognizes as legitimate doctors of the church, of pantheism for the same reasons that Father Zimmermann accuses anthroposophy of being pantheistic. Well, you can even use these reasons to portray the apostle Paul as a pantheist. But what use would it be for those who believe Father Zimmermann to somehow point out that he is telling an untruth? It would be of no use, because the writings that prove it have been banned by the Pope.

The second is the accusation that the description of the figure of Christ is that of a fantastic sun spirit from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. And on this point, my dear friends, Father Zimmermann really does not know, but some of his fellow monks certainly know very well where the truth lies. And these people also know very well why it is carefully avoided to tell the Catholic lay community that it should also be one of the inner teachings of the Catholic Church to see Christ as a sun spirit. What is presented from this side is that there is truth in this characteristic of Christ that is given by anthroposophy. These people know this, but their aim is to conceal the truth, to prevent it from reaching people for reasons that are clear from many of the things I have said over the years. That is why they are particularly opposed to those who want to serve the spread of this truth, which they themselves want to conceal. And then, when they want to achieve this purpose, they do not let themselves be hindered by other things that are also true and that they spread in the light of their untruthfulness. For example, everyone who knows my books, who has heard and examined even a few of my public lectures, knows that I never fail to emphasize that the Christ-Spirit is essentially different from the spirits of other so-called religious founders. Everyone can know that I regard the Christ-Spirit as that which, through its passage through the Mystery of Golgotha, has given meaning to the whole development of the earth.

Anyone who is familiar with my books and who has heard and examined my lectures knows that I expressly emphasize that it would never occur to me to speak of the equivalence of all religious systems, and I have repeatedly used a very simple parable to condemn this view of the abstract equality of the various religious systems. I pointed out that there is indeed theosophical sectarianism that claims that all the various religious systems are actually based on the same wisdom. I said that only someone who gets stuck in the abstract could claim such a non-sense. Such a non-sense can only be claimed by someone who makes his or her characterization at a certain abstract level, without going into the specifics of the individual phenomena. Someone who speaks of the same core of wisdom in all religious systems seems to me, with his characterization of religious systems, like someone who names pepper, salt, paprika, mustard and so on as ingredients and then expresses that pepper, salt, paprika, mustard and sugar are of the same essence, namely that they are ingredients. But what matters is not that we find such characteristics, which are arrived at by abstraction, in various concrete things and phenomena, but rather what the individual concrete phenomena and facts have to do with life. And here I would ask whether anyone is doing the right thing who, because the quality of being an ingredient is present in all things – salt, sugar, pepper and so on – now puts salt in their coffee instead of sugar because the same essence, the quality of being an ingredient, is present in both. You only need to be abstract enough to very easily find similarity across a certain series of phenomena. But that is not what matters in life. What matters in life is to immerse oneself in the things of the world. And then it becomes clear, in the face of the content of pre-Christian religious beliefs and the content of the Mystery of Golgotha, that these pre-Christian beliefs are preparations that have undergone a great synthesis in the Mystery of Golgotha. And it also shows that since the Mystery of Golgotha, nothing new can arise as a religion within humanity. Only insights and worldviews can arise that lead to a deeper understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha than those that were already there.

Such a deepening in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha is also represented by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. But after the Mystery of Golgotha, new religious foundations should no longer occur, for the simple reason that what has led to the founding of religions within humanity has had its preparation before the Mystery of Golgotha, and has found its conclusion in the Mystery of Golgotha, so that then new, different approaches, which are other than religious ones, can still come into humanity. But after that which has come into humanity through the religious impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha, after that marks a conclusion in the developmental history of humanity, a better understanding of this conclusion can come about, but nothing new can be founded as a religion. This impact of the Mystery of Golgotha is for the whole organism of humanity something like, let us say, the coming of puberty for the individual human natural organism. A human being cannot become sexually mature twice. He can further develop what he grows into through sexual maturity, but he cannot become sexually mature a second time. Such things become quite clear when one really pursues anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. But when it comes to these things, untruth is told and at the same time care is taken to ensure that those on whom one counts when spreading untruth cannot recognize the truth. It is not enough, my dear friends, to look through your fingers and let five be straight, but it is necessary to be quite clear about the absolute impossibility that anything beneficial for humanity can come from such sources.

I am trying to characterize these things from a certain general point of view, from the point of view of how the spread of untruth from such a source must work in the development of humanity. But one must ask oneself how it comes about that again and again, even in people who want to be anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientists, the desire arises to say this or that: so-and-so, who is within such churches, did not speak so badly about anthroposophically oriented spiritual science after all. Such things come about precisely because one always wants to make a convenient compromise with the one with whom one should not make a compromise, in the interest of human truthfulness. It almost seems to me as if I am talking superfluously – and yet I know that it is not superfluous – by characterizing the Roman Catholic Church from this point of view.

Now, my dear friends, in the same issue - “Stimmen der Zeit” from November 1919 - in which these, one must say, objective untruths are found, and at the same time the announcement that it is forbidden for orthodox Catholics to inform themselves about the truth, in the same issue there is also an article about the threefold social order by another Jesuit priest. Now, anyone who is familiar with Jesuit literature is actually accustomed to having a certain respect for this literature in the parts in which it refers to various investigations into this or that philosophical basis of human worldviews, to having a certain respect for the keen insight that is acquired through the training that people who belong to such orders must undergo. But when one reads an article like this one about the threefold social organism, one can gain the impression that these people, who until recently showed real acumen in many fields, have also lost this acumen to the corrupt elements of today's immediate present. For what can be said about a logic when, for example, it is said that I demand the independence of intellectual life and would claim:

To put it simply: the root of social disaster lies in the fact that the proletariat has lost faith.

Now, my dear friends, in my writing “The Key Points of the Social Question” it is clearly explained that a significant reason for the loss of a real spiritual life for the proletariat lies in the fact that the previous bearers of this spiritual life were not able to develop the proper vital thrust within this spiritual life. I do not claim that people who have lost their faith should be condemned if they are proletarians, but I do claim that precisely the leading, guiding circles, and these still include the part of humanity, the Roman Catholic Church – that these leading circles have gradually developed the spiritual life in such a way that it can no longer provide spiritual sustenance for the souls of broad masses of people in the present age. And it is also a fine piece of logic, for example, when it is said: Yes, Steiner wants intellectual life to become independent, but what the point of independent intellectual life is can be seen from the spread of the art of cinema in the present day. Now, my dear friends, anyone who takes the spirit of my “Key Points of the Social Question” into account will see that I am talking about the lack of freedom in today's intellectual life.

So a man like this other Jesuit priest – his name is Constantin Noppel – manages to write that I am calling for a free intellectual life, but then cites the excesses of the current unfree intellectual life as an example of what would happen under a free intellectual life. These are indeed logical defects. And such logical errors surprise me, especially in a man who has gone through Jesuit schooling; for it is understandable that a soul that has gone through Jesuit schooling should speak objectively untruthfully for political reasons, as is the case with Father Zimmermann, can be understood; but how such logical contortions can come from this side is something that can only be understood in the context of the general intellectual corruption of our day.

Such involvement of intellectual corruption is also evident in other things. In my “Key Points of the Social Question” I try to show that the unjustified interference, say, of economic interests in the legal sphere can only be overcome by making the legal sphere independent. Father Constantin Noppel now finds: Yes, even if the legal life will be independent, then there will also be alliances of farmers, workers' representatives, business alliances, and so on in the legal parliaments. If he had been able to read, he would have been able to deduce from my “key points” that they can indeed be included, but that they could not do anything there that would serve their interests as a farmers' federation, as a workers' organization or as employers' associations, because everything that serves these interests is done precisely within the independent economic sphere. Nevertheless, a Jesuit priest finds it possible to say:

Precisely because the rights, labor laws, fundamental rights and so on are established there, the right-wing parliament will be the place for a farmers' alliance, for a one-sided labor party, entrepreneurs' party and so on.

Yes, my dear friends, such logic is exactly the same as the logic of some good-for-nothing to whom you say: So that you cannot run out into the street today and scratch and beat up other boys, I am locking you up today; what will you do then? – Then he says: I'll still beat them up and scratch them. Isn't it, the logic that underlies this Jesuit priest is really exactly the same. He continues, for example:

Either those with a financial interest in this legislation do not participate, and then Steiner does not indicate any means by which the sovereign economy can be forced to accept the provisions imposed by those who are not experts. Or, alternatively, those with a financial interest work together on the legislation, in which case they will always do so as interested parties, and in the best case we will be as far as we are today.

Isn't it true that one can talk about anything with such people, and they will just say: things will remain the same anyway. One can say that an article like the one written by Otto Zimmermann is full of venom and bile, and this abundance of venom and bile is particularly striking; but an article like the one about the threefold social order, while not actually full of venom and bile, is strangely full of stupidity. I could even imagine people saying: Well, Constantin Noppel is not so bad after all, because he treats the threefold social order quite objectively, and after all, a person cannot be held responsible for his stupidity. But that would be the convenient way of judging, which is doing so much harm today.

But now I would like to take this opportunity to point out once again something that is fundamental to the idea of the threefold social order. This Jesuit priest concludes his article with the words:

But he...

— by that he means me —

... is essentially satisfied with this and hopes against all experience that the now happily separated, previously hostile brothers will now find their way to peaceful community work by themselves. Even assuming that the threefold social order could be implemented in practice, Steiner does break down the social organism into three parts, but he does not solve the social question. He fails in the synthesis.

What is important here – and this is fundamental – is that there is a difference between the idea of the threefold social order and all other programmatic ideas. All other programmatic ideas assume that they are, at least to a certain extent, attempts to solve the social problem. Most of those who draw up such social programs actually have the opinion in the background: today the world is still bad, but if it is ready in eight days to implement everything that such a program man draws up, then it will be good, then the social question will be more or less solved.

You see, the idea of the threefold social order does not start from such views, but this idea of the threefold social order first of all states that among the many different currents that have been present in human life for so many years, there is also the social question in the modern sense of the word. If we mix everything up again, we can of course say that the social question has always existed. But the social question, as we have to understand it today from our world and living conditions, is no older than seven to eight decades. This social question is there, and it has been brought into this human life by the living conditions at the present stage of human development. And it must always be solved anew, that is, people must live in a social organism, out of whose structure they will behave in such a way that their lives find a lasting solution to the social question. So the appeal is made to all people, not just to their own cleverness, but to all people. But it is shown under what conditions people should live in the social organism if they are to really contribute to solving the social question. What is being aimed at through the idea of the threefold social organism is something so fundamentally different from all that has appeared as programmatic ideas so far that it is really a huge nonsense for someone to say: “Steiner breaks down the social organism into three parts, but he does not solve the social question.” For it is clear from every line of the “Kernpunkte” and from other things I have written in this field that I am not concerned with wanting to give a solution to the social question as an individual, but rather with wanting to point out how people should be structured in the social organism so that the solution to the social question can come from the cooperation and thinking and feeling together of humanity structured in the social organism. It is therefore a capital mistake when anyone asserts that I do not solve the social question, because I have never claimed that I, as an individual, solve the social question. I merely point out the organization of social life by which the solution of the social question can be approached.

From all these things, it will be clear to you how difficult it is today, with the striving for truth born out of the fundamental conditions of the time, to really get away with the ill will of humanity and the folly of humanity. What can be more contemptible than when someone like Father Zimmermann is demonstrably peddling objective untruths? And nowadays, such peddlers of objective untruths can protect themselves from the appropriate measures by his own people by forbidding these people to inform themselves about the truth. And Father Zimmermann can write for his laymen:

In the light of pure reason, modern theosophy is a contemptible mysticism that is actually condemned by all serious science.

And the Catholic laity have to believe this objective untruth because it is forbidden to educate oneself about the truth. One can hardly imagine anything more corrupt. I just want to point this out with regard to ill will. It is difficult to argue against the stupidity that is the other factor. With regard to the social question, the great mistake people make is to believe that it can be solved by an individual or a party with a program. The social question can only be solved in a lasting and continuous way by organizing human coexistence in a certain way. This is precisely what the idea of the threefold social organism fundamentally points to, and what can be formulated as follows: This idea of the threefold social organism says that one individual cannot solve the social question. And then stupidity comes along and says: “... but he does not solve the social question”.

You see, my dear friends, it is indeed necessary not to close our eyes to these things, and I can assure you that what I said last time is something I am absolutely serious about. It is not my inclination to say these things, especially in relation to the Catholic Church. But I am not saying them as some attacker, but I say them as the attacked. I would, if these attacks had not come, truly limit myself to presenting the truth to the people in a positive way. But when the attacks come from such a spirit, there is no other way than to characterize these attacks in the appropriate way. What has been said by individual members of the Catholic priesthood is, of course, correct; it may even be one of the few correct things that has been said by the Catholic Church with regard to Anthroposophy. Here and there it has been said: Well, as long as this Anthroposophy leads an obscure existence, we will not trouble ourselves about it; but the moment it spreads, that is the moment we will destroy it!

On the one hand, the intense struggle against Anthroposophy that is currently taking place could be seen as a testament to its spread. In a sense, this is also the case. But on the other hand, the will to destroy, which exists on the side that is characterized today, must not be underestimated, because from this side one will destroy what one can destroy. And the steadfastness of a spiritual movement for the outer physical life between birth and death depends on the honest strength of its adherents. I ask you to bear this last word in mind. The honest strength of those who profess it, and also the expert strength of those who profess it, is something to which one must appeal again and again, because, of course, it is of no importance to the powers in the spiritual worlds themselves how many people on earth profess a cause. But the earth needs truth, and to spread the truth on earth, the strength of its professing is necessary.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is under attack from many sides today. My dear friends, I would be happy to deal with these attacks if they were of such a nature that they dealt with objective facts. Why shouldn't one engage in an objective polemic with objective opponents? But take such attacks as the one that came from the individual Dessoir, take what is coming from an entire church community through its representatives here – you will find the same type of unobjective attack and the same type of inner, spiritual corruption everywhere.

On Saturday at 7:30 p.m., we will then have less unpleasant things to talk about.

Quite a number of lectures have now been given by me on the changes that must necessarily take place in our whole civilization. First and foremost, what was said in this connection was expressed in such a way as to appeal to the will of men. We now live in a cycle of humanity's evolution in which people have to discover inner activity in order to contribute their share towards the necessary change. For human soul substance will have to stream into external life, into the objectivity of external life, and human beings themselves will have to bring about what should appear. In the present cycle of human development it is no longer possible to wait passively for divine powers, far removed from man, to step in and to do something for human evolution, without the participation of man himself.

The essential thing is to be in a position to understand such things by observing the individual phenomena of social life and the life of nature, but today, certain phenomena of social life shall be our topic. I would like to start with a quite definite fact. Let us suppose that someone announces himself; he may, for example, send his business card with the name “Edmund Miller” printed on it. Yet, on seeing this card with the name “Edmund Miller,” it would be foolish to assume that a miller was coming, a man who grinds corn. For the person announcing himself by this name may be a contractor, or a professor, or a court advisor, and so on. It would not be justified in such a case to deduce anything from the name “Miller.” Initially, it would perhaps be better to form no thoughts whatever, but just to wait and see what kind of a person conceals himself behind the name. Or, through certain other circumstances, we may already know something about the actual person, the real living entity concealed behind this name, “Miller.”

It is clear to us in this case that it would be quite wrong to infer from his name anything about the character of the approaching individual. If a person named “Smith” announces himself we would not think that he is a smith. This shows that in regard to those words we consider proper names, we feel the need to discover, by means of something that is not inferred from the name, what or whom we are dealing with.

Well, in this respect, even proper names have undergone a certain history. A person bearing the name Smith today no longer has anything to do with a real smith; a person called Miller has nothing to do with a miller. Yet these names originally arose at a time when name-giving such as is customary today did not exist, when people in a village would remark, “The smith said,—the miller said this or did that,”—or, “I saw the miller,”—and referred to the actual smith or miller. One who has lived in villages knows that people frequently do not refer to each other by proper names but say instead that they saw the smith, or the mason, or somebody else. Therefore, the name itself originally caused people to infer from the words what lay behind them.

All words, the whole language, will undergo the same development in the-course of evolution from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean epoch that proper names have undergone, a development which in their case we can clearly survey. Nevertheless, human beings today are still almost completely caught up in the whole of language; we basically acquire all our knowledge out of language. In actual fact, the general attitude towards nearly the whole compass of language is to infer the things from their words. Now, it is convenient to do so, but human evolution follows a different course, and in regard to such things we must have the same attitude that we adopt in regard to natural phenomena. They contain objective necessity. Objective necessity also exists where the causality of nature holds sway in the sphere of life, something that is experienced by many people with abstract superficiality. It happens frequently—I have often pointed this out—that people will say, “I never intended to do or say this; I meant it quite differently; I had this or that intention with regard to this matter.” But regardless of how pronounced the child's intention is not to get burned, when it reaches into fire, it will burn itself. Concerning the things of life, intentions that do not delve into life are not decisive; at most, only those intentions that do delve into life, or, certainly, facts, and the relationships of these facts that follow natural laws, are decisive.

People must become used to this way of thinking; based on spiritual science, this is, above all, necessary in the most eminent sense. And one must also get used to the thought: “As pleasant as it might be if one could just take words as they are, it is nevertheless a fact that the objective course and laws of human evolution point in a different direction.” They indicate that man's whole conception, his whole soul life, is becoming emancipated from words. Words are gradually becoming mere gestures that simply indicate the being or thing in question, no longer designating and explaining anything fully. If spiritual-scientific descriptions are to be taken seriously, for example, then something must come about for which people are often annoyed with me, namely, that one can no longer use words in the manner that words and sentences are customarily used at present. For if one sets forth spiritual-scientific facts, one is above all presenting facts of the future; something is represented that in future time will have to become the possession of mankind. In a certain sense, one has to anticipate something that is supposed to occur in the future. What is to happen in the future must be received into one's will. Therefore, one is obliged to give spiritual-scientific descriptions in such a way that even the words point like gestures to the essential reality lying behind them. Since our ideal today concerning the reconstruction of the social order will have to be born out of spiritual science, as I explained yesterday, it is necessary that, particularly in matters of social reconstruction, we speak from the above-mentioned viewpoint. This is precisely what people did not at all wish to comprehend, for instance, in my book, Towards Social Renewal. They absolutely wanted matters presented to them in the old style, matters that cannot be described in the old style since they are part of the future. And basically, what one is being faced with here can best be made evident by the fact that almost all the questions that, up to now, have been connected by one side or another to the expositions in Towards Social Renewal always proceed totally out of the old manner of thinking. No attempt is made to find one's way into the transformed new way of thinking.

Thus we may say that, particularly in the descriptions of social relationships of the future, it must become evident that we have to develop an emancipated soul life that no longer clings merely to words. One who follows my descriptions in the various fields of spiritual science, including the recent ones into the field of social life, will find that I am always at pains to describe a matter from many different sides. As a rule, I use two sentences instead of one, because the first sentence indicates the matter from one side, the other one from the other side. This is then supposed to call forth a desire in the listener or reader to approach the matter by transcending the words and sentences, as it were. This is what must be mentioned in reference to human soul life as far as the transformation of the meaning of human language is concerned. This is an important matter. It is important for the reason that the greatest part of what occurs today in regard to confusion of one's manner of thinking and conceptions comes about for no other reason than the fact that the objective laws and impulses of human evolution already demand that we free ourselves from language. Because of their easy-going habits of thinking, however, human beings do not wish to give up clinging to language. When such a phenomenon is clearly understood, it leads to a deeper insight into the whole course of human development. Indeed, from this transformation of our language or languages, we can actually build a bridge to profound spiritual facts. Naturally, this is more the case in one language than in another. But this is then a matter of the specific treatment of a language, of the meaning of words in a language in the individualized differentiated regions of human civilization, as I have pointed out.

We now live in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of human civilization and are approaching the sixth condition of development. These evolutionary conditions are not of such a nature that a clear line could be drawn between one and the other epochs; instead, one epoch, bearing its own peculiarities, passes over into the next; and long before it arises, the future one casts its shadows—one could also say its lights—into the present. One must take hold of these lights if one wishes to participate in the evolution of humanity with one's soul.

Let us try and connect what might be termed the “suprahistorical” fact, namely, that we are supposed to work our way towards the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, with another fact known to all of us. It is this: With his spirit-soul entity, the human being descends out of a spiritual world to earthly incarnation through birth or conception. On earth, he then experiences the life between birth and death; then, he passes through the gate of death, and in so doing bears his soul-spiritual being once again into that environment of life which is definitely of a spiritual and soul nature.

Now we must clearly understand—and the significance of this for the art of education, for example, has also been outlined here recently—that we bring down from the spiritual world, at least in the form of effects, what we have experienced in this spiritual world. When we move in ordinary life from one locality to another, we take with us not only our clothes but also our soul-spiritual belongings. In like manner, one brings along into this world through conception and birth the consequences and effects of what has been undergone in the spiritual world. In the period that mankind has presently lived through, concerning which we know that it began around the middle of the fifteenth century A.D., man, through his spirit-soul entity, brought along forces of the soul life devoid of images, forces containing no pictures. It is for this reason that, above all, the intellectual life has arisen and has flourished. During this period, prior to descending through conception and birth into physical existence, the human being was endowed in a sense with something lacking in capacities, lacking in images. This explains the slight inclination mankind had for developing original creations of fantasy since the middle of the fifteenth century. Human fantasy is, in truth, only a terrestrial reflection of super-earthly imagination. The Renaissance does not contradict this, for just the fact that one had to resort to a “renaissance,” not a “naissance,” clearly shows that original forces of imagination were not present, only a fantasy that required fructification from earlier periods. In short, the fact is that the human soul was permeated in a certain sense with forces that are devoid of images.

Now begins the age—and in many respects, this is the real reason for the stormy character of our times—in which the souls who descend through conception and birth into earthly life bring along for themselves images from the spiritual world. When pictures are brought along out of spiritual existence into physical life, and if salvation is to arise for the human being and his social life, they must under all circumstances be united with the astral body, whereas the element lacking images only unites with the ego. It is predominantly the unfolding of the ego which has blossomed in humanity since the fifteenth century.

Now, however, the time is beginning when man has to feel: Within me there live pictures from my prenatal existence; during my earthly life, I have to make them come alive. I cannot accomplish this merely with my ego; I must work deeper into myself, and this must reach as far as my astral body.

Now, it is generally true that humanity resists the images indwelling in the astral body, images experienced prior to conception. In a way, human beings repel what is supposed to find its way out of the depths of their being into the astral body. The dry, prosaic attitude of the present time is one of its fundamental characteristics, and there are many broadly based movements that oppose an education whose concern it would be that the forces arising from the soul and trying to make themselves felt in the astral body will actually assert themselves. There are insipid, dry people who would really like to exclude any education by means of fairy tales, legends and anything illuminated by imagination. In our Waldorf School system, we have made it our priority that the lessons and instruction of the children entering primary education will proceed from pictorial descriptions, from the life-filled presentation of images, from elements taken from legends and fairy tales. Even what the children are initially supposed to learn about the nature and processes of the animal kingdom, the plant and the mineral kingdoms, is not supposed to be expressed in a dry, matter-of-fact manner; it is supposed to be clothed in imaginative, legendary, fairy tale-like elements. For what is seated deep within the child's soul are the imaginations that have been received in the spiritual world. They seek to come to the surface. The teacher or the educator adopts the right attitude towards the child if he confronts the child with pictures. By placing images before the child's soul, there flash up from its soul those images, or, strictly speaking, those forces of pictorialized representation which have been received before birth or, let us say, prior to conception.

If these forces are suppressed, if the dry, prosaic person guides the education of the child today, he confronts the child from earliest childhood with something that is actually not at all related to the child, namely, the letters of the alphabet. For our present letters have nothing to do anymore with the letters of earlier pictorial scripts. They are really something that is alien to the child; a letter should first be drawn out of a picture, as we try to do it in the Waldorf School. The child is confronted today with something devoid of a pictorial element; the young person, on the other hand, possesses forces in his body—naturally, I am referring to the soul when I am now speaking of “body,” for after all, we also speak of the “astral body”—forces seated in his body that will burst out elsewhere if they are not brought to the surface in pictorial representation. What will be the result of modern mistaken education? These forces do not become lost; they spread out, gain existential ground, and invade the thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will after all. And what kind of people will come into being from that? They will be rebels, revolutionaries, dissatisfied people; people who do not know what they want, because they want something that one cannot know. This is because they want something that is incompatible with any possible social order; something that they only picture to themselves, that should have entered their fantasy but did not; instead, it entered into their agitated social activities.

Therefore, we can say that people who, in an occult sense, do not have honest intentions in regard to their fellowmen, do not have the courage to admit to themselves: “If the world is in a state of revolt today, it is really heaven that is revolting.” It means the heaven that is held back in the souls of men, which then comes to the fore, not in its own form, but in its opposite—in strife and bloodshed instead of imaginations. No wonder that the individuals who destroy the social fabric actually have the feeling that they are doing good. For what do they sense in themselves? They feel heaven within themselves; only it assumes the form of a caricature in their soul.

This is how serious the truths are that we must comprehend today! To acknowledge the truths that matter today should be no child's play; such acknowledgment should be pervaded by the greatest earnestness. In general, it is no light task today to describe such things, for, in the first place, people do not care for them; secondly, they cling to words. Indeed, one who states that heaven is revolting in human souls is naturally taken literally by his words; people do not notice how he is trying to show that additional facts must be known, whereby the word “heaven” is related to something more than they are in the habit of connecting with the term. This is the same as not thinking of a miller who grinds corn when a “Mr. Miller” announces himself. The emancipation from language is definitely required in individual concrete cases if, in the sense that the laws of human evolution demand it, we wish truly to make progress.

Here, we see how something that comes from the life before birth pushes into the social life. One who is familiar with these relationships knows that he has to recognize something that is actually heavenly in what appears on earth in a caricature. This is in regard to the social questions, but there is something else in addition.

During the age of intellectualism, which has developed predominantly since the middle of the fifteenth century, human beings have obtained very little from their life of sleep in the form of imaginations for their waking life. Even those who have somewhat more lively dreams tend to interpret them quite rationally and intellectually. In this direction, theosophists, for example, are rational and intellectual. I could not begin to describe in a small volume, only in a big one, how many people have come to me in the course of time and wished to have rational explanations for their dreams! What is important here is that even those imaginations that express themselves in dreams point to a deeper spiritual life. I have often said that the outward appearance of the dream does not matter at all; that has already emancipated itself from the actual content. The content which we receive and then interpret in words of a language, from which, in turn, we actually have to emancipate ourselves as well, is not the true course of the dream; it really has very little to do with the true course of the dream. The dream's content is represented in its dramatic sequence, in the way one image follows another, the way complications arise and are resolved; one can experience the same spiritual content in a number of different ways as a dream. One person comes and describes how he climbed a mountain; he ascended quite easily up to a certain point, then, he suddenly stood before an abyss and could not proceed. Another person relates that he was walking along a path; everything around him filled him with joy. Suddenly, when he reached a certain point in the road, a man with a #8224 came up 'to him and killed him. Here we have two completely different dream images. Yet the process concealed behind them may be exactly the same. It can express itself in one instance in the climb up the mountain and the feeling of confronting an abyss; in another instance, it can be expressed in a cheerful walk down a path until one confronts a person who intends to kill one. The content of the images is not important; it is the dramatic sequence of experiencing something that offers resistance. It is the dynamics behind the images that matters. The course taken by the forces can envelop itself in any number of images, indeed in hundreds of pictures!

We can only understand the spiritual world when we know that what appears in the physical world in the form of dreams, or what clothes itself in images from the spiritual world in such a manner that it resembles the physical world, is only an image. As long as one has the inclination, however, to interpret the images in a rationalistic, purely intellectual way, so long does one also occupy an intellectual standpoint in regard to the dream life of sleep. What matters here is that we understand this dream life of sleep as the expression of a deeper spiritual life. Then only do we comprehend it imaginatively; then we grasp the pictures as something that stands in place of the content.

Then we shall not turn against something that is beginning for the human being today, namely, making inner soul demands out of sleep in a manner similar to the demands made by the imaginations prior to birth or conception. For today we are beginning to sleep differently from the way sleep was experienced in the regular life of the intellectual age since the middle of the fifteenth century. Man brought along into the waking state little inclination for faculties that wish to experience, rather than interpret, the images.

We have now reached the point in human evolution where, out of sleep as well, we draw imaginations that seek to indwell not only our ego, where rationality reigns supreme, but also our astral body. If we work against this, we once more reject something that is trying to rise into consciousness out of the depths of the human soul; we also work against the whole course of mankind's evolution, and what matters here is that we do not oppose humanity's development but work in harmony with it. We do this in the first place by permeating our culture once again with as many elements as possible connected in some way with the spiritual world. Naturally, in regard to external life, it is important for us to imbue ourselves with what is grasped from the spiritual world; hence, that we also imbue ourselves with a true spiritual insight, to fill ourselves with something that in this physical world cannot be comprehended in terms of the physical world. The whole past epoch of human life was actually opposed to this. Consider a case that I have already mentioned a number of times.

It is true that Christianity confronts human beings in such a way that they can only grasp its essence, especially the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha, if they come round to a comprehension of something super-sensible. For one must envisage that Christ, a being Who formerly had not been connected with earth evolution, united with the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, and that super-sensible events took place. One must conceive of the fact that in regard to the event of Golgotha, even birth and conception differed from the way they take place in ordinary human circumstances. In short, the demand is made by Christology to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in a super-sensible sense.

There is an interesting passage in a book written by a modern naturalist⁹⁴ where fulminations are uttered against the Immaculate Conception, where it is said that it is an impertinent insult to human reason to claim that an immaculate conception can occur.

Well, a modern rationalist, a purely intellectual person, can't help feeling this way. In a certain sense, what is intended out of the spiritual life is indeed an impertinent mockery of human reason. But the point is that we now live in an age where we must gradually begin to bring into waking life what has been spiritually experienced between falling asleep and waking in such a manner that our astral body can be impregnated and permeated with a pictorial element—not merely our ego, which is the seat of rationality, of intellectualism.

It is interesting that even the theology of the nineteenth century developed in such a way that it opposed Christology with rationalism, with pure intellectualism. Increasingly, modern theology felt called upon altogether to deny Christ as such, and to describe the humble man from Nazareth, the mere Jesus, as a human personality somewhat more outstanding than other human beings. One did not wish to make the effort to comprehend something super-sensible. What is to confront the human being supersensibly, what is to awaken him to the super-sensible realm, this one tried to grasp with concepts gained here in the sensory world.

A Protestant theologian,⁹⁵ with whom I once discussed this matter, told me after we had talked about it for some time, “Yes, we modern theologians should really not call ourselves Christians any longer, for we no longer have Christ. If the name ‘Jesuit’ had not been appropriated already, we should really claim it for ourselves.” This is not something that I am saying; it is something that a Protestant theologian of the modern school said to me as a confession of his own soul.

One who has insight into the whole character of our time, however, will understand that we must advance to a comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha. Just because it is the central manifestation of our human evolution, it will tear us away from the earthly manner of thinking, and will draw us with might and main to understand something that is incomprehensible based an the earthly sense domain. Whoever wishes in everything to remain caught in the earthly sensory sphere would say, “The Immaculate Conception is an impertinent insult against human reason.”

One who understands the task of present-day man will say: I must accustom myself to such ideas. In that case, I must emancipate myself from the customary use of words today. When somebody by the name of Smith or Miller announces himself, I must not assume that he is coming with a hammer in hand or overalls powdered with flour. I must expect something quite different from what I might deduce from the words. Thus, I have to become used to emancipating myself from what was ingrained into the words by the merely physical life of the senses.

Today, the Mystery of Golgotha is in fact the first test for us to see whether we are willing to go along with the comprehension of something that extends beyond the physical-sensory sphere. We, therefore, can no longer content ourselves with a merely traditional, historical description of Christianity, we need instead a creative understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Out of spiritual science, we need inner strength of soul which, in a new way, approaches the Mystery of Golgotha and is in a position to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha as a supersensory fact. Then, having positioned the Mystery of Golgotha into the central point of human thinking and feeling, we must make a new beginning especially in regard to education, and prepare the child in such a way that it does not suppress, does not have to suppress, the imaginations that seek to arise from the depths of the soul. We must meet the imaginations halfway by making pictures of our conceptions.

This is the deeper reason why, in the last issue of Soziale Zukunft (Social Future),⁹⁶ which is a magazine dealing with education, I described education and instruction as an art in the most eminent sense. In the field of pedagogy, teachers and educators must actually proceed in the way an artist does—indeed, they must proceed in a style surpassing that of an artist. It does not do to impose abstract principles in an abstract pedagogical sense. What matters is that one penetrates the being of man, and, through this comprehension of man's nature, arrives at the point of reading from the inner human being what one has to do in each case. An artist who is creating something cannot go by abstract rules. The purpose of aesthetics is not that of establishing rules for the artists. An artist cannot even go by what he has created yesterday when he creates something today. At every moment he must endeavor to be creative and original. This is how the teacher must be, in a still higher sense. One must not say based on a certain attitude of mind: "Well, if we are looking for teachers like that, we have to wait another three to four hundred years." The only reason that we do not have such teachers as yet is because we say things like this. We can have them the very moment that we have the strong power of faith in it; but it is the strong, not the passive, power of faith that is needed here. Therefore, what is important here is that when we return from sleep, upon awakening, we truly experience in the astral body and imprint into the etheric body what the astral body experiences from the moment of falling asleep until waking up. It can only take place through pictorializing the whole cultural life.

This pictorialization of the whole life of culture, this pictorialization that is demanded by the laws of humanity's evolution, will come into being when the whole spiritual life is left to the decision of those who participate in the spiritual life; when no instructions, no school regulations are laid down by a government which by its very nature stands outside the spiritual life. It is important here that the state does not hand down pedagogical regulations, school curriculums, and such like in an abstract manner. What matters is that one has human beings in an emancipated spiritual life who act out of their own free personality, and that one accomplishes with them what one can or wishes to accomplish with them.

The fact that the human being is presently beginning to bring along through conception and birth something that differs from what he brought with him since the middle of the fifteenth century, and the fact that he also brings something different with him out of sleep, both these facts demand that careful attention be given such matters, and that one really permeates oneself with the knowledge of such decisive facts. But from where can this knowledge be gained, if not from spiritual science? The external culture, today's science, certainly does not deal in any way with these matters. It ignores them; indeed, its present methods compel it to do so. I feel obliged to say that the present situation becomes most poignant when one observes the frequent and strange discrepancy between the inner requirements of humanity's evolution and the way in which people meet them. In recent times, the need has arisen to reckon with what flows into the human being from the spiritual world. Those who were intellectual, who did not reckon with what flows out of the spiritual world, made hypotheses about atoms, molecules, and the like. It was thought that bodies possessing volume point back to an atomistic formation, and so on. Out of the root causes of mankind's evolution, the need arose to grasp spiritual facts. And this instinct to grasp the spiritual expressed itself also in something, for example, like the Theosophical Society. One of its heroes is a certain Mr. Leadbeater who wrote an occult chemistry. What did he do in this book? He did something quite horrible, for he pictures the spiritual world in an atomistic sense; meaning, the materialistic manner of thinking is carried into the spiritual world.

I have recently mentioned this whole grotesque thing. Something very clever came about in the Theosophical Society. Someone wished to prove that here is one life; there is the next one (see drawing below). Now, it is so, isn't it, that something has to pass from the preceding life to the later one. One sees the body fall into decay. A proper materialist says that the body disintegrates and it is all over with man. A theosophist, however, wants another earth life to come; so, something must pass from one life to the other! The proper materialist says that all atoms unite with the earth. The theosophist also does not think in any other way than materialistically, but at the same time he tries to think “theosophically.” He wants something to pass from the first to the next life. So he says: “Of course, the atoms become one with the earth; one atom, however, remains and it passes through the whole period of existence between death and a new birth. There it appears again. This is the permanent atom.” One atom! Oh, the theosophists were especially proud then, when they discovered this “permanent” atom! They had no inkling that in this way they were carrying materialism into the spiritual world conception! Materialism induced them to believe that something—they never said what it was—of the many atoms that sink down into the ground is saved; and this fortunate, saved, permanent atom then reappears in the next incarnation. Much has been written about this permanent atom. It is nothing more than an example of the fact that something was borne into spiritual science that people could not rise above, namely, materialism. It permeates, by the way, the whole description of man, in the way it is frequently presented in the literature of the Theosophical Society. As I have often pointed out, they present the physical body as dense, the etheric body as thinner, the astral body as still thinner. Then come degrees of thinness, where even thinking and conceptions become quite thin. Yet, one is still dealing with something substantial, like mist; hence, although Buddhi and Atma are mists, they are still tangible as mists. One does not have the will power truly to discard materialism even in one's conceptual life; to pass from concepts of matter to concepts of the spirit.

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All these things prove how closely human beings are tied to the old ways of thinking. Out of such considerations, anybody who honestly wishes to acknowledge spiritual science should take up the inner challenge to test himself as to how far he has freed himself from the old materialistic concepts; or, when he turns to something spiritual, to what extent he imagines this spiritual manner in materialistic pictures, not being aware of the fact that they are just pictures.

It is always a matter of being conscious of this. For if, say, I were to draw a picture of one of you on the blackboard, the picture could mean a lot to me, if the person in question were no longer present. But if I were then to imagine that the person in the picture would shake my hand, or would speak to me, in other words, that he would be the actual person, then I would be suffering from illusions! Therefore, one may naturally sensualize the spiritual in pictures, but one must always be aware of the fact that they are nothing but pictures.

In the case of words, too, people must realize more and more clearly that language is on the way to turning the word into a gesture, and that we should go no further than to allow the word to indicate something to us that no longer is contained in the word. All words will have to take the same direction that proper names have taken.

For philosophers, I have something even better to say. Philosophers of recent times have set up any number of theories. When I say, “The child is small,” they have a concept of “small;” they have a concept of “child.” The “is,” however, the copula of the two—what does it mean? Oh, much has been written about this copula even in the philosophical sense, not just from the grammatical or philological standpoint. Everything that has been written about it suffers from the fact that this verb, “is,” no longer has the meaning of which people speak. It has already emancipated itself from its meaning and the soul content has become a different one. Thus, people in fact philosophize about something that no longer lives in the soul in an alive sense.

This is just an incidental philosophical remark which perhaps doesn't have much significance, but it is supposed to draw your attention to the fact that something that is not noticed by the outer world is by no means noticed immediately by the philosophers. Nevertheless, it is often true that the philosophers are the last to notice the things that really occur in the world, and many of our philosophical systems lag considerably behind what exists outside of themselves!

By proceeding principally from the example of language, however, I have tried to show you quite concretely how present-day human development presents itself. What actually takes place in regard to human development can really only be seen by looking at super-sensible facts. Anthropology can no longer discover what actually takes place, only anthroposophy. This is the reason why anthroposophical cultural thinking must lie at the foundation of everything that constitutes work for the progress of mankind.

• 94 . Ernest Haeckel: Anthropogenie oder Entwicklungsgeschichte des Menschen, Leipzig, 1891, p. 871.
• 95 . Max Christlieb: 1862–1916.
• 96 . In “Soziale Zukunft,” #5–7, Dornach, 1920.

Duty

Enq. Why, then, the need for re-births, since all alike fail to secure a permanent peace?

Theo. Because the final goal cannot be reached in any way but through life experiences, and because the bulk of these consist in pain and suffering. It is only through the latter that we can learn. Joys and pleasures teach us nothing; they are evanescent, and can only bring in the long run satiety. Moreover, our constant failure to find any permanent satisfaction in life which would meet the wants of our higher nature, shows us plainly that those wants can be met only on their own plane, to wit — the spiritual.

Enq. Is the natural result of this a desire to quit life by one means or another?

Theo. If you mean by such desire "suicide," then I say, most decidedly not. Such a result can never be a "natural" one, but is ever due to a morbid brain disease, or to most decided and strong materialistic views. It is the worst of crimes and dire in its results. But if by desire, you mean simply aspiration to reach spiritual existence, not a wish to quit the earth, then I would call it a very natural desire indeed. Otherwise voluntary death would be an abandonment of our present post and of the duties incumbent on us, as well as an attempt to shirk Karmic responsibilities, and thus involve the creation of new Karma.

Enq. But if actions on the material plane are unsatisfying, why should duties, which are such actions, be imperative?

Theo. First of all, because our philosophy teaches us that the object of doing our duties to all men and to ourselves the last, is not the attainment of personal happiness, but of the happiness of others; the fulfilment of right for the sake of right, not for what it may bring us. Happiness, or rather contentment, may indeed follow the performance of duty, but is not and must not be the motive for it.

Enq. What do you understand precisely by "duty" in Theosophy? It cannot be the Christian duties preached by Jesus and his Apostles, since you recognise neither?

Theo. You are once more mistaken. What you call "Christian duties" were inculcated by every great moral and religious Reformer ages before the Christian era. All that was great, generous, heroic, was, in days of old, not only talked about and preached from pulpits as in our own time, but acted upon sometimes by whole nations. The history of the Buddhist reform is full of the most noble and most heroically unselfish acts. "Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another; love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous; not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing; but contrariwise, blessing" was practically carried out by the followers of Buddha, several centuries before Peter. The Ethics of Christianity are grand, no doubt; but as undeniably they are not new, and have originated as "Pagan" duties.

Enq. And how would you define these duties, or "duty," in general, as you understand the term?

Theo. Duty is that which is due to Humanity, to our fellow-men, neighbours, family, and especially that which we owe to all those who are poorer and more helpless than we are ourselves. This is a debt which, if left unpaid during life, leaves us spiritually insolvent and moral bankrupts in our next incarnation. Theosophy is the quintessence of duty.

Enq. So is Christianity when rightly understood and carried out.

Theo. No doubt it is; but then, were it not a lip-religion in practice, Theosophy would have little to do amidst Christians. Unfortunately it is but such lip-ethics. Those who practise their duty towards all, and for duty's own sake, are few; and fewer still are those who perform that duty, remaining content with the satisfaction of their own secret consciousness. It is —

". . . . . . the public voice
Of praise that honours virtue and rewards it,"

which is ever uppermost in the minds of the "world renowned" philanthropists. Modern ethics are beautiful to read about and hear discussed; but what are words unless converted into actions? Finally: if you ask me how we understand Theosophical duty practically and in view of Karma, I may answer you that our duty is to drink without a murmur to the last drop, whatever contents the cup of life may have in store for us, to pluck the roses of life only for the fragrance they may shed on others, and to be ourselves content but with the thorns, if that fragrance cannot be enjoyed without depriving some one else of it.

Enq. All this is very vague. What do you do more than Christians do?

Theo. It is not what we members of the Theosophical Society do — though some of us try our best — but how much farther Theosophy leads to good than modern Christianity does. I say — action, enforced action, instead of mere intention and talk. A man may be what he likes, the most worldly, selfish and hard-hearted of men, even a deep-dyed rascal, and it will not prevent him from calling himself a Christian, or others from so regarding him. But no Theosophist has the right to this name, unless he is thoroughly imbued with the correctness of Carlyle's truism: "The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest" — and unless he sets and models his daily life upon this truth. The profession of a truth is not yet the enactment of it; and the more beautiful and grand it sounds, the more loudly virtue or duty is talked about instead of being acted upon, the more forcibly it will always remind one of the Dead Sea fruit. Cant is the most loathsome of all vices; and cant is the most prominent feature of the greatest Protestant country of this century — England.

Enq. What do you consider as due to humanity at large?

Theo. Full recognition of equal rights and privileges for all, and without distinction of race, colour, social position, or birth.

Enq. When would you consider such due not given?

Theo. When there is the slightest invasion of another's right — be that other a man or a nation; when there is any failure to show him the same justice, kindness, consideration or mercy which we desire for ourselves. The whole present system of politics is built on the oblivion of such rights, and the most fierce assertion of national selfishness. The French say: "Like master, like man"; they ought to add, "Like national policy, like citizen."

Enq. Do you take any part in politics?

Theo. As a Society, we carefully avoid them, for the reasons given below. To seek to achieve political reforms before we have effected a reform in human nature, is like putting new wine into old bottles. Make men feel and recognise in their innermost hearts what is their real, true duty to all men, and every old abuse of power, every iniquitous law in the national policy, based on human, social or political selfishness, will disappear of itself. Foolish is the gardener who seeks to weed his flower-bed of poisonous plants by cutting them off from the surface of the soil, instead of tearing them out by the roots. No lasting political reform can be ever achieved with the same selfish men at the head of affairs as of old.

The Relations of The T. S. To Political Reforms

Enq. The Theosophical Society is not, then, a political organization?

Theo. Certainly not. It is international in the highest sense in that its members comprise men and women of all races, creeds, and forms of thought, who work together for one object, the improvement of humanity; but as a society it takes absolutely no part in any national or party politics.

Enq. Why is this?

Theo. Just for the reasons I have mentioned. Moreover, political action must necessarily vary with the circumstances of the time and with the idiosyncracies of individuals. While from the very nature of their position as Theosophists the members of the T. S. are agreed on the principles of Theosophy, or they would not belong to the society at all, it does not thereby follow that they agree on every other subject. As a society they can only act together in matters which are common to all — that is, in Theosophy itself; as individuals, each is left perfectly free to follow out his or her particular line of political thought and action, so long as this does not conflict with Theosophical principles or hurt the Theosophical Society.

Enq. But surely the T. S. does not stand altogether aloof from the social questions which are now so fast coming to the front?

Theo. The very principles of the T. S. are a proof that it does not — or, rather, that most of its members do not — so stand aloof. If humanity can only be developed mentally and spiritually by the enforcement, first of all, of the soundest and most scientific physiological laws, it is the bounden duty of all who strive for this development to do their utmost to see that those laws shall be generally carried out. All Theosophists are only too sadly aware that, in Occidental countries especially, the social condition of large masses of the people renders it impossible for either their bodies or their spirits to be properly trained, so that the development of both is thereby arrested. As this training and development is one of the express objects of Theosophy, the T. S. is in thorough sympathy and harmony with all true efforts in this direction.

Enq. But what do you mean by "true efforts"? Each social reformer has his own panacea, and each believes his to be the one and only thing which can improve and save humanity?

Theo. Perfectly true, and this is the real reason why so little satisfactory social work is accomplished. In most of these panaceas there is no really guiding principle, and there is certainly no one principle which connects them all. Valuable time and energy are thus wasted; for men, instead of co-operating, strive one against the other, often, it is to be feared, for the sake of fame and reward rather than for the great cause which they profess to have at heart, and which should be supreme in their lives.

Enq. How, then, should Theosophical principles be applied so that social co-operation may be promoted and true efforts for social amelioration be carried on?

Theo. Let me briefly remind you what these principles are — universal Unity and Causation; Human Solidarity; the Law of Karma; Re-incarnation. These are the four links of the golden chain which should bind humanity into one family, one universal Brotherhood.

Enq. How?

Theo. In the present state of society, especially in so-called civilized countries, we are continually brought face to face with the fact that large numbers of people are suffering from misery, poverty and disease. Their physical condition is wretched, and their mental and spiritual faculties are often almost dormant. On the other hand, many persons at the opposite end of the social scale are leading lives of careless indifference, material luxury, and selfish indulgence. Neither of these forms of existence is mere chance. Both are the effects of the conditions which surround those who are subject to them, and the neglect of social duty on the one side is most closely connected with the stunted and arrested development on the other. In sociology, as in all branches of true science, the law of universal causation holds good. But this causation necessarily implies, as its logical outcome, that human solidarity on which Theosophy so strongly insists. If the action of one reacts on the lives of all, and this is the true scientific idea, then it is only by all men becoming brothers and all women sisters, and by all practising in their daily lives true brotherhood and true sisterhood, that the real human solidarity, which lies at the root of the elevation of the race, can ever be attained. It is this action and interaction, this true brotherhood and sisterhood, in which each shall live for all and all for each, which is one of the fundamental Theosophical principles that every Theosophist should be bound, not only to teach, but to carry out in his or her individual life.

Enq. All this is very well as a general principle, but how would you apply it in a concrete way?

Theo. Look for a moment at what you would call the concrete facts of human society. Contrast the lives not only of the masses of the people, but of many of those who are called the middle and upper classes, with what they might be under healthier and nobler conditions, where justice, kindness, and love were paramount, instead of the selfishness, indifference, and brutality which now too often seem to reign supreme. All good and evil things in humanity have their roots in human character, and this character is, and has been, conditioned by the endless chain of cause and effect. But this conditioning applies to the future as well as to the present and the past. Selfishness, indifference, and brutality can never be the normal state of the race — to believe so would be to despair of humanity — and that no Theosophist can do. Progress can be attained, and only attained, by the development of the nobler qualities. Now, true evolution teaches us that by altering the surroundings of the organism we can alter and improve the organism; and in the strictest sense this is true with regard to man. Every Theosophist, therefore, is bound to do his utmost to help on, by all the means in his power, every wise and well-considered social effort which has for its object the amelioration of the condition of the poor. Such efforts should be made with a view to their ultimate social emancipation, or the development of the sense of duty in those who now so often neglect it in nearly every relation of life.

Enq. Agreed. But who is to decide whether social efforts are wise or unwise?

Theo. No one person and no society can lay down a hard-and-fast rule in this respect. Much must necessarily be left to the individual judgment. One general test may, however, be given. Will the proposed action tend to promote that true brotherhood which it is the aim of Theosophy to bring about? No real Theosophist will have much difficulty in applying such a test; once he is satisfied of this, his duty will lie in the direction of forming public opinion. And this can be attained only by inculcating those higher and nobler conceptions of public and private duties which lie at the root of all spiritual and material improvement. In every conceivable case he himself must be a centre of spiritual action, and from him and his own daily individual life must radiate those higher spiritual forces which alone can regenerate his fellow-men.

Enq. But why should he do this? Are not he and all, as you teach, conditioned by their Karma, and must not Karma necessarily work itself out on certain lines?

Theo. It is this very law of Karma which gives strength to all that I have said. The individual cannot separate himself from the race, nor the race from the individual. The law of Karma applies equally to all, although all are not equally developed. In helping on the development of others, the Theosophist believes that he is not only helping them to fulfil their Karma, but that he is also, in the strictest sense, fulfilling his own. It is the development of humanity, of which both he and they are integral parts, that he has always in view, and he knows that any failure on his part to respond to the highest within him retards not only himself but all, in their progressive march. By his actions, he can make it either more difficult or more easy for humanity to attain the next higher plane of being.

Enq. How does this bear on the fourth of the principles you mentioned, viz., Re-incarnation?

Theo. The connection is most intimate. If our present lives depend upon the development of certain principles which are a growth from the germs left by a previous existence, the law holds good as regards the future. Once grasp the idea that universal causation is not merely present, but past, present and future, and every action on our present plane falls naturally and easily into its true place, and is seen in its true relation to ourselves and to others. Every mean and selfish action sends us backward and not forward, while every noble thought and every unselfish deed are steppingstones to the higher and more glorious planes of being. If this life were all, then in many respects it would indeed be poor and mean; but regarded as a preparation for the next sphere of existence, it may be used as the golden gate through which we may pass, not selfishly and alone, but in company with our fellows, to the palaces which lie beyond.

On Self-Sacrifice

Enq. Is equal justice to all and love to every creature the highest standard of Theosophy?

Theo. No; there is an even far higher one.

Enq. What can it be?

Theo. The giving to others more than to oneself — self-sacrifice. Such was the standard and abounding measure which marked so pre-eminently the greatest Teachers and Masters of Humanity — e. g., Gautama Buddha in History, and Jesus of Nazareth as in the Gospels. This trait alone was enough to secure to them the perpetual reverence and gratitude of the generations of men that come after them. We say, however, that self-sacrifice has to be performed with discrimination; and such a self-abandonment, if made without justice, or blindly, regardless of subsequent results, may often prove not only made in vain, but harmful. One of the fundamental rules of Theosophy is, justice to oneself — viewed as a unit of collective humanity, not as a personal self-justice, not more but not less than to others; unless, indeed, by the sacrifice of the one self we can benefit the many.

Enq. Could you make your idea clearer by giving an instance?

Theo. There are many instances to illustrate it in history. Self-sacrifice for practical good to save many, or several people, Theosophy holds as far higher than self-abnegation for a sectarian idea, such as that of "saving the heathen from damnation," for instance. In our opinion, Father Damien, the young man of thirty who offered his whole life in sacrifice for the benefit and alleviation of the sufferings of the lepers at Molokai, and who went to live for eighteen years alone with them, to finally catch the loathsome disease and die, has not died in vain. He has given relief and relative happiness to thousands of miserable wretches. He has brought to them consolation, mental and physical. He threw a streak of light into the black and dreary night of an existence, the hopelessness of which is unparalleled in the records of human suffering. He was a true Theosophist, and his memory will live for ever in our annals. In our sight this poor Belgian priest stands immeasurably higher than — for instance — all those sincere but vain-glorious fools, the Missionaries who have sacrificed their lives in the South Sea Islands or China. What good have they done? They went in one case to those who are not yet ripe for any truth; and in the other to a nation whose systems of religious philosophy are as grand as any, if only the men who have them would live up to the standard of Confucius and their other sages. And they died victims of irresponsible cannibals and savages, and of popular fanaticism and hatred. Whereas, by going to the slums of Whitechapel or some other such locality of those that stagnate right under the blazing sun of our civilization, full of Christian savages and mental leprosy, they might have done real good, and preserved their lives for a better and worthier cause.

Enq. But the Christians do not think so?

Theo. Of course not, because they act on an erroneous belief. They think that by baptising the body of an irresponsible savage they save his soul from damnation. One church forgets her martyrs, the other beatifies and raises statues to such men as Labro, who sacrificed his body for forty years only to benefit the vermin which it bred. Had we the means to do so, we would raise a statue to Father Damien, the true, practical saint, and perpetuate his memory for ever as a living exemplar of Theosophical heroism and of Buddha- and Christ-like mercy and self-sacrifice.

Enq. Then you regard self-sacrifice as a duty?

Theo. We do; and explain it by showing that altruism is an integral part of self-development. But we have to discriminate. A man has no right to starve himself to death that another man may have food, unless the life of that man is obviously more useful to the many than is his own life. But it is his duty to sacrifice his own comfort, and to work for others if they are unable to work for themselves. It is his duty to give all that which is wholly his own and can benefit no one but himself if he selfishly keeps it from others. Theosophy teaches self-abnegation, but does not teach rash and useless self-sacrifice, nor does it justify fanaticism.

Enq. But how are we to reach such an elevated status?

Theo. By the enlightened application of our precepts to practice. By the use of our higher reason, spiritual intuition and moral sense, and by following the dictates of what we call "the still small voice" of our conscience, which is that of our EGO, and which speaks louder in us than the earthquakes and the thunders of Jehovah, wherein "the Lord is not."

Enq. If such are our duties to humanity at large, what do you understand by our duties to our immediate surroundings?

Theo. Just the same, plus those that arise from special obligations with regard to family ties.

Enq. Then it is not true, as it is said, that no sooner does a man enter into the Theosophical Society than he begins to be gradually severed from his wife, children, and family duties?

Theo. It is a groundless calumny, like so many others. The first of the Theosophical duties is to do one's duty by all men, and especially by those to whom one's specific responsibilities are due, because one has either voluntarily undertaken them, such as marriage ties, or because one's destiny has allied one to them; I mean those we owe to parents or next of kin.

Enq. And what may be the duty of a Theosophist to himself?

Theo. To control and conquer, through the Higher, the lower self. To purify himself inwardly and morally; to fear no one, and nought, save the tribunal of his own conscience. Never to do a thing by halves; i. e., if he thinks it the right thing to do, let him do it openly and boldly, and if wrong, never touch it at all. It is the duty of a Theosophist to lighten his burden by thinking of the wise aphorism of Epictetus, who says: "Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflection the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power, and consequently should not be any part of your concern."

Enq. But suppose a member of your Society should plead inability to practise altruism by other people, on the ground that "charity begins at home"; urging that he is too busy, or too poor, to benefit mankind or even any of its units — what are your rules in such a case?

Theo. No man has a right to say that he can do nothing for others, on any pretext whatever. "By doing the proper duty in the proper place, a man may make the world his debtor," says an English writer. A cup of cold water given in time to a thirsty wayfarer is a nobler duty and more worth, than a dozen of dinners given away, out of season, to men who can afford to pay for them. No man who has not got it in him will ever become a Theosophist; but he may remain a member of our Society all the same. We have no rules by which we could force any man to become a practical Theosophist, if he does not desire to be one.

Enq. Then why does he enter the Society at all?

Theo. That is best known to him who does so. For, here again, we have no right to pre-judge a person, not even if the voice of a whole community should be against him, and I may tell you why. In our day, vox populi (so far as regards the voice of the educated, at any rate) is no longer vox dei, but ever that of prejudice, of selfish motives, and often simply that of unpopularity. Our duty is to sow seeds broadcast for the future, and see they are good; not to stop to enquire why we should do so, and how and wherefore we are obliged to lose our time, since those who will reap the harvest in days to come will never be ourselves.

On Charity

Enq. How do you Theosophists regard the Christian duty of charity?

Theo. What charity do you mean? Charity of mind, or practical charity in the physical plane?

Enq. I mean practical charity, as your idea of Universal brotherhood would include, of course, charity of mind.

Theo. Then you have in your mind the practical carrying out of the commandments given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount?

Enq. Precisely so.

Theo. Then why call them "Christian"? Because, although your Saviour preached and practised them, the last thing the Christians of to-day think of is to carry them out in their lives.

Enq. And yet many are those who pass their lives in dispensing charity?

Theo. Yes, out of the surplus of their great fortunes. But point out to me that Christian, among the most philanthropic, who would give to the shivering and starving thief, who would steal his coat, his cloak also; or offer his right cheek to him who smote him on the left, and never think of resenting it?

Enq. Ah, but you must remember that these precepts have not to be taken literally. Times and circumstances have changed since Christ's day. Moreover, He spoke in Parables.

Theo. Then why don't your Churches teach that the doctrine of damnation and hell-fire is to be understood as a parable too? Why do some of your most popular preachers, while virtually allowing these "parables" to be understood as you take them, insist on the literal meaning of the fires of Hell and the physical tortures of an "Asbestos-like" soul? If one is a "parable," then the other is. If Hell-fire is a literal truth, then Christ's commandments in the Sermon on the Mount have to be obeyed to the very letter. And I tell you that many who do not believe in the Divinity of Christ — like Count Leo Tolstoi and more than one Theosophist — do carry out these noble, because universal, precepts literally; and many more good men and women would do so, were they not more than certain that such a walk in life would very probably land them in a lunatic asylum — so Christian are your laws!

Enq. But surely every one knows that millions and millions are spent annually on private and public charities?

Theo. Oh, yes; half of which sticks to the hands it passes through before getting to the needy; while a good portion or remainder gets into the hands of professional beggars, those who are too lazy to work, thus doing no good whatever to those who are really in misery and suffering. Haven't you heard that the first result of the great outflow of charity towards the East-end of London was to raise the rents in Whitechapel by some 20 per cent.?

Enq. What would you do, then?

Theo. Act individually and not collectively; follow the Northern Buddhist precepts: "Never put food into the mouth of the hungry by the hand of another"; "Never let the shadow of thy neighbour (a third person) come between thyself and the object of thy bounty"; "Never give to the Sun time to dry a tear before thou hast wiped it." Again "Never give money to the needy, or food to the priest, who begs at thy door, through thy servants, lest thy money should diminish gratitude, and thy food turn to gall."

Enq. But how can this be applied practically?

Theo. The Theosophical ideas of charity mean personal exertion for others; personal mercy and kindness; personal interest in the welfare of those who suffer; personal sympathy, forethought and assistance in their troubles or needs. We Theosophists do not believe in giving money (N. B., if we had it) through other people's hands or organizations. We believe in giving to the money a thousandfold greater power and effectiveness by our personal contact and sympathy with those who need it. We believe in relieving the starvation of the soul, as much if not more than the emptiness of the stomach; for gratitude does more good to the man who feels it, than to him for whom it is felt. Where's the gratitude which your "millions of pounds" should have called forth, or the good feelings provoked by them? Is it shown in the hatred of the East-End poor for the rich? in the growth of the party of anarchy and disorder? or by those thousands of unfortunate working girls, victims to the "sweating" system, driven daily to eke out a living by going on the streets? Do your helpless old men and women thank you for the workhouses; or your poor for the poisonously unhealthy dwellings in which they are allowed to breed new generations of diseased, scrofulous and rickety children, only to put money into the pockets of the insatiable Shylocks who own houses? Therefore it is that every sovereign of all those "millions," contributed by good and would-be charitable people, falls like a burning curse instead of a blessing on the poor whom it should relieve. We call this generating national Karma, and terrible will be its results on the day of reckoning.

Theosophy For The Masses

Enq. And you think that Theosophy would, by stepping in, help to remove these evils, under the practical and adverse conditions of our modern life?

Theo. Had we more money, and had not most of the Theosophists to work for their daily bread, I firmly believe we could.

Enq. How? Do you expect that your doctrines could ever take hold of the uneducated masses, when they are so abstruse and difficult that well-educated people can hardly understand them?

Theo. You forget one thing, which is that your much-boasted modern education is precisely that which makes it difficult for you to understand Theosophy. Your mind is so full of intellectual subtleties and preconceptions that your natural intuition and perception of the truth cannot act. It does not require metaphysics or education to make a man understand the broad truths of Karma and Reincarnation. Look at the millions of poor and uneducated Buddhists and Hindoos, to whom Karma and re-incarnation are solid realities, simply because their minds have never been cramped and distorted by being forced into an unnatural groove. They have never had the innate human sense of justice perverted in them by being told to believe that their sins would be forgiven because another man had been put to death for their sakes. And the Buddhists, note well, live up to their beliefs without a murmur against Karma, or what they regard as a just punishment; whereas the Christian populace neither lives up to its moral ideal, nor accepts its lot contentedly. Hence murmuring, and dissatisfaction, and the intensity of the struggle for existence in Western lands.

Enq. But this contentedness, which you praise so much, would do away with all motive for exertion and bring progress to a stand-still.

Theo. And we, Theosophists, say that your vaunted progress and civilization are no better than a host of will-o'-the-wisps, flickering over a marsh which exhales a poisonous and deadly miasma. This, because we see selfishness, crime, immorality, and all the evils imaginable, pouncing upon unfortunate mankind from this Pandora's box which you call an age of progress, and increasing pari passu with the growth of your material civilization. At such a price, better the inertia and inactivity of Buddhist countries, which have arisen only as a consequence of ages of political slavery.

Enq. Then is all this metaphysics and mysticism with which you occupy yourself so much, of no importance?

Theo. To the masses, who need only practical guidance and support, they are not of much consequence; but for the educated, the natural leaders of the masses, those whose modes of thought and action will sooner or later be adopted by those masses, they are of the greatest importance. It is only by means of the philosophy that an intelligent and educated man can avoid the intellectual suicide of believing on blind faith; and it is only by assimilating the strict continuity and logical coherence of the Eastern, if not esoteric, doctrines, that he can realize their truth. Conviction breeds enthusiasm, and "Enthusiasm," says Bulwer Lytton, "is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it"; while Emerson most truly remarks that "every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm." And what is more calculated to produce such a feeling than a philosophy so grand, so consistent, so logical, and so all-embracing as our Eastern Doctrines?

Enq. And yet its enemies are very numerous, and every day Theosophy acquires new opponents.

Theo. And this is precisely that which proves its intrinsic excellence and value. People hate only the things they fear, and no one goes out of his way to overthrow that which neither threatens nor rises beyond mediocrity.

Enq. Do you hope to impart this enthusiasm, one day, to the masses?

Theo. Why not? since history tells us that the masses adopted Buddhism with enthusiasm, while, as said before, the practical effect upon them of this philosophy of ethics is still shown by the smallness of the percentage of crime amongst Buddhist populations as compared with every other religion. The chief point is, to uproot that most fertile source of all crime and immorality — the belief that it is possible for them to escape the consequences of their own actions. Once teach them that greatest of all laws, Karma and Re-incarnation, and besides feeling in themselves the true dignity of human nature, they will turn from evil and eschew it as they would a physical danger.

How Members Can Help the Society

Enq. How do you expect the Fellows of your Society to help in the work?

Theo. First by studying and comprehending the theosophical doctrines, so that they may teach others, especially the young people. Secondly, by taking every opportunity of talking to others and explaining to them what Theosophy is, and what it is not; by removing misconceptions and spreading an interest in the subject. Thirdly, by assisting in circulating our literature, by buying books when they have the means, by lending and giving them and by inducing their friends to do so. Fourthly, by defending the Society from the unjust aspersions cast upon it, by every legitimate device in their power. Fifth, and most important of all, by the example of their own lives.

Enq. But all this literature, to the spread of which you attach so much importance, does not seem to me of much practical use in helping mankind. This is not practical charity.

Theo. We think otherwise. We hold that a good book which gives people food for thought, which strengthens and clears their minds, and enables them to grasp truths which they have dimly felt but could not formulate — we hold that such a book does a real, substantial good. As to what you call practical deeds of charity, to benefit the bodies of our fellow-men, we do what little we can; but, as I have already told you, most of us are poor, whilst the Society itself has not even the money to pay a staff of workers. All of us who toil for it, give our labour gratis, and in most cases money as well. The few who have the means of doing what are usually called charitable actions, follow the Buddhist precepts and do their work themselves, not by proxy or by subscribing publicly to charitable funds. What the Theosophist has to do above all is to forget his personality.

What a Theosophist Ought Not to Do

Enq. Have you any prohibitory laws or clauses for Theosophists in your Society?

Theo. Many, but, alas! none of them are enforced. They express the ideal of our organization, — but the practical application of such things we are compelled to leave to the discretion of the Fellows themselves. Unfortunately, the state of men's minds in the present century is such that, unless we allow these clauses to remain, so to speak, obsolete, no man or woman would dare to risk joining the Theosophical Society. This is precisely why I feel forced to lay such a stress on the difference between true Theosophy and its hard-struggling and well-intentioned, but still unworthy vehicle, the Theosophical Society.

Enq. May I be told what are these perilous reefs in the open sea of Theosophy?

Theo. Well may you call them reefs, as more than one otherwise sincere and well-meaning F.T.S. has had his Theosophical canoe shattered into splinters on them! And yet to avoid certain things seems the easiest thing in the world to do. For instance, here is a series of such negatives, screening positive Theosophical duties: —

No Theosophist should be silent when he hears evil reports or slanders spread about the Society, or innocent persons, whether they be his colleagues or outsiders.

Enq. But suppose what one hears is the truth, or may be true without one knowing it?

Theo. Then you must demand good proofs of the assertion, and hear both sides impartially before you permit the accusation to go uncontradicted. You have no right to believe in evil, until you get undeniable proof of the correctness of the statement.

Enq. And what should you do then?

Theo. Pity and forbearance, charity and long-suffering, ought to be always there to prompt us to excuse our sinning brethren, and to pass the gentlest sentence possible upon those who err. A Theosophist ought never to forget what is due to the shortcomings and infirmities of human nature.

Enq. Ought he to forgive entirely in such cases?

Theo. In every case, especially he who is sinned against.

Enq. But if by so doing, he risks to injure, or allow others to be injured? What ought he to do then?

Theo. His duty; that which his conscience and higher nature suggests to him; but only after mature deliberation. Justice consists in doing no injury to any living being; but justice commands us also never to allow injury to be done to the many, or even to one innocent person, by allowing the guilty one to go unchecked.

Enq. What are the other negative clauses?

Theo. No Theosophist ought to be contented with an idle or frivolous life, doing no real good to himself and still less to others. He should work for the benefit of the few who need his help if he is unable to toil for Humanity, and thus work for the advancement of the Theosophical cause.

Enq. This demands an exceptional nature, and would come rather hard upon some persons.

Theo. Then they had better remain outside the T. S. instead of sailing under false colours. No one is asked to give more than he can afford, whether in devotion, time, work or money.

Enq. What comes next?

Theo. No working member should set too great value on his personal progress or proficiency in Theosophic studies; but must be prepared rather to do as much altruistic work as lies in his power. He should not leave the whole of the heavy burden and responsibility of the Theosophical movement on the shoulders of the few devoted workers. Each member ought to feel it his duty to take what share he can in the common work, and help it by every means in his power.

Enq. This is but just. What comes next?

Theo. No Theosophist should place his personal vanity, or feelings, above those of his Society as a body. He who sacrifices the latter, or other people's reputations on the altar of his personal vanity, worldly benefit, or pride, ought not to be allowed to remain a member. One cancerous limb diseases the whole body.

Enq. Is it the duty of every member to teach others and preach Theosophy?

Theo. It is indeed. No fellow has a right to remain idle, on the excuse that he knows too little to teach. For he may always be sure that he will find others who know still less than himself. And also it is not until a man begins to try to teach others, that he discovers his own ignorance and tries to remove it. But this is a minor clause.

Enq. What do you consider, then, to be the chief of these negative Theosophical duties?

Theo. To be ever prepared to recognize and confess one's faults. To rather sin through exaggerated praise than through too little appreciation of one's neighbour's efforts. Never to backbite or slander another person. Always to say openly and direct to his face anything you have against him. Never to make yourself the echo of anything you may hear against another, nor harbour revenge against those who happen to injure you.

Enq. But it is often dangerous to tell people the truth to their faces. Don't you think so? I know one of your members who was bitterly offended, left the Society, and became its greatest enemy, only because he was told some unpleasant truths to his face, and was blamed for them.

Theo. Of such we have had many. No member, whether prominent or insignificant, has ever left us without becoming our bitter enemy.

Enq. How do you account for it?

Theo. It is simply this. Having been, in most cases, intensely devoted to the Society at first, and having lavished upon it the most exaggerated praises, the only possible excuse such a backslider can make for his subsequent behaviour and past short-sightedness, is to pose as an innocent and deceived victim, thus casting the blame from his own shoulders on to those of the Society in general, and its leaders especially. Such persons remind one of the old fable about the man with a distorted face, who broke his looking-glass on the ground that it reflected his countenance crookedly.

Enq. But what makes these people turn against the Society?

Theo. Wounded vanity in some form or other, almost in every case. Generally, because their dicta and advice are not taken as final and authoritative; or else, because they are of those who would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. Because, in short, they cannot bear to stand second to anybody in anything. So, for instance, one member — a true "Sir Oracle" — criticized, and almost defamed every member in the T. S. to outsiders as much as to Theosophists, under the pretext that they were all untheosophical, blaming them precisely for what he was himself doing all the time. Finally, he left the Society, giving as his reason a profound conviction that we were all (the Founders especially) — FRAUDS! Another one, after intriguing in every possible way to be placed at the head of a large Section of the Society, finding that the members would not have him, turned against the Founders of the T. S., and became their bitterest enemy, denouncing one of them whenever he could, simply because the latter could not, and would not, force him upon the Members. This was simply a case of an outrageous wounded vanity. Still another wanted to, and virtually did, practise black-magic — i.e., undue personal psychological influence on certain Fellows, while pretending devotion and every Theosophical virtue. When this was put a stop to, the Member broke with Theosophy, and now slanders and lies against the same hapless leaders in the most virulent manner, endeavouring to break up the society by blackening the reputation of those whom that worthy "Fellow" was unable to deceive.

Enq. What would you do with such characters?

Theo. Leave them to their Karma. Because one person does evil that is no reason for others to do so.

Enq. But, to return to slander, where is the line of demarcation between backbiting and just criticism to be drawn? Is it not one's duty to warn one's friends and neighbours against those whom one knows to be dangerous associates?

Theo. If by allowing them to go on unchecked other persons may be thereby injured, it is certainly our duty to obviate the danger by warning them privately. But true or false, no accusation against another person should ever be spread abroad. If true, and the fault hurts no one but the sinner, then leave him to his Karma. If false, then you will have avoided adding to the injustice in the world. Therefore, keep silent about such things with every one not directly concerned. But if your discretion and silence are likely to hurt or endanger others, then I add: Speak the truth at all costs, and say, with Annesly, "Consult duty, not events." There are cases when one is forced to exclaim, "Perish discretion, rather than allow it to interfere with duty."

Enq. Methinks, if you carry out these maxims, you are likely to reap a nice crop of troubles!

Theo. And so we do. We have to admit that we are now open to the same taunt as the early Christians were. "See, how these Theosophists love one another!" may now be said of us without a shadow of injustice.

Enq. Admitting yourself that there is at least as much, if not more, backbiting, slandering, and quarrelling in the T. S. as in the Christian Churches, let alone Scientific Societies — What kind of Brotherhood is this? I may ask.

Theo. A very poor specimen, indeed, as at present, and, until carefully sifted and reorganized, no better than all others. Remember, however, that human nature is the same in the Theosophical Society as out of it. Its members are no saints: they are at best sinners trying to do better, and liable to fall back owing to personal weakness. Add to this that our "Brotherhood" is no "recognised" or established body, and stands, so to speak, outside of the pale of jurisdiction. Besides which, it is in a chaotic condition, and as unjustly unpopular as is no other body. What wonder, then, that those members who fail to carry out its ideal should turn, after leaving the Society, for sympathetic protection to our enemies, and pour all their gall and bitterness into their too willing ears! Knowing that they will find support, sympathy, and ready credence for every accusation, however absurd, that it may please them to launch against the Theosophical Society, they hasten to do so, and vent their wrath on the innocent looking-glass, which reflected too faithfully their faces. People never forgive those whom they have wronged. The sense of kindness received, and repaid by them with ingratitude, drives them into a madness of self-justification before the world and their own consciences. The former is but too ready to believe in anything said against a society it hates. The latter — but I will say no more, fearing I have already said too much.

Enq. Your position does not seem to me a very enviable one.

Theo. It is not. But don't you think that there must be something very noble, very exalted, very true, behind the Society and its philosophy, when the leaders and the founders of the movement still continue to work for it with all their strength? They sacrifice to it all comfort, all worldly prosperity, and success, even to their good name and reputation — aye, even to their honour — to receive in return incessant and ceaseless obloquy, relentless persecution, untiring slander, constant ingratitude, and misunderstanding of their best efforts, blows, and buffets from all sides — when by simply dropping their work they would find themselves immediately released from every responsibility, shielded from every further attack.

Enq. I confess, such a perseverance seems to me very astounding, and I wondered why you did all this.

Theo. Believe me for no self-gratification; only in the hope of training a few individuals to carry on our work for humanity by its original programme when the Founders are dead and gone. They have already found a few such noble and devoted souls to replace them. The coming generations, thanks to these few, will find the path to peace a little less thorny, and the way a little widened, and thus all this suffering will have produced good results, and their self-sacrifice will not have been in vain. At present, the main, fundamental object of the Society is to sow germs in the hearts of men, which may in time sprout, and under more propitious circumstances lead to a healthy reform, conducive of more happiness to the masses than they have hitherto enjoyed.

Today I shall add to what has been said over the past few days, both, before and after Christmas, about the Being of Christ. Our angle of approach to the question of Christ will be to relate it in a brief sketch chiefly to the world-wide social question. Mankind has at the present time an urgent need to reach a global understanding. Yet whatever sphere of life we turn to, we find precious little of any such understanding. The need for an understanding is there. What is not there is any talent on the part of human beings to come to such an understanding. We see how attempts are made to consult one another about important aspects of life. We see congresses taking place everywhere. With regard to the matters being discussed at these congresses, what is to be found in the depths of human souls is quite different from the words which are exchanged there. In the words exchanged at these congresses there are appearances which are deceptive. These appearances are supposed to give the impression that individual human beings everywhere desire to come to terms with one another, or something similar. But such coming to terms cannot be achieved anywhere, because it is not actually individual human beings who are speaking with one another but members of various nations. Only the external appearance makes it seem as though individuals were speaking with one another. What is actually speaking through each one are the very varied beings of the different nations. And since it is in the very nature of human beings these days to notice only the verbal content of words and not the source of the words—not the soil in which they are rooted—since human beings fail to discern these fundamental aspects of life, it is simply not noticed that it is the folk daemons who are speaking with one another, rather than human being with human being.

We would be hard put to it to find clearer proof of the fact that Christianity is today not realized in the world. Christianity is not realized, for fully to understand Christ means: to find man as man within oneself. Christ is no folk god, no god of any race. Christ is not the god of any group of human beings. He is the god of the individual, in so far as the individual is a member of the human race as a whole. Only when we can understand the Christ-being, through all the means available to us, as the God of mankind, only then will Christ come to have what will certainly be the greatest possible social significance for the globe as a whole.

We have to understand very clearly that there are things which hold sway in the depths of the soul, things which do not find their way into those words that remain stuck in empty phrases as a result of the differences between the folk daemons. Out of the situation in which people are content to reside at present, it is not possible to bring about what can actually only be brought about today out of the profound depths of man's being. Today what is needed is profundity, a willingness to enter into the profound depths of man's being, if forces of advance, forces of fruitful progress are to enter into earth evolution. What can be heard today in every corner of the earth does not to any extent even touch the surface of all that is rooted in the human being. What ought now to enter into mankind is the quest for what is most profoundly rooted in the being of man.

Let us now show in a few simple outlines the main differences that exist in people's attitudes to what could lead to a recognition and an understanding of the question of Christ. I have often drawn the distinction for you between people of the West, people of the East, and people of the middle region between West and East. This distinction can be viewed from very varied standpoints. Justice can only be done to it if it is considered without any kind of prejudice and with the utmost impartiality, if we refrain from looking with sympathy or antipathy at one or other of these divisions, perhaps because we happen to belong to one or the other of them ourselves. Today all the people of the world must work together in order to bring forth true unity in Christ. It can certainly be said that in the most varied parts of the world, in the very depths of mankind, the impulse exists towards finding this unity. But the search must take us into the profound depths.

Turning first to what appears now in the civilizations of the West, we discover that the essential element in these western civilizations finds an expression in the type of spirituality which is valid today. This special spirituality of today has the characteristic of taking the form of abstractness; it celebrates its greatest triumphs in ideas and abstractions. These ideas, these abstractions, are most suited to gaining a knowledge of nature as it appears to our senses, and a knowledge of that aspect of social life which has to take place as a result of the forces of the sense-perceptible world. With these forces, which I shall call the western forces, it is quite possible to penetrate into the depths of the human being and of the universe. Above all, these forces of the West have provided the foundation for scientific thinking and have sought those impulses of social life which derive from scientific thinking and which mankind will need in the future in order to shape life on earth in a possible way. What follows will show this to be so. By no means all the treasures of western spiritual life have been brought to the surface.

To start with, it is perfectly true that today's natural science could only be founded on those fundamental forces of man's being which can be most adequately expressed in the spirituality of abstractness and ideas. But it is also true that in everything that has been revealed there is another essential element as well. What has been revealed in the thought processes of natural science, and the social thought processes that go with it, can indeed be taken right up to the spiritual realm. A progression can be made from the laws of nature to a recognition of the spiritual beings within nature. These beings of nature are divine and spiritual. And if Christianity is to be understood in a way that befits mankind's most current needs, it will have to be permeated with that very spirit which has so far only poured itself out into natural science and its social consequences through the forces of the West. Any world conception gained out of these forces of the West can only be satisfying if it can be expressed in clearly defined, sharply contoured concepts and ideas. Human beings will need such clear, sharply defined concepts for the future of the earth. They will have to learn to present the highest spiritual content to mankind in terms which are every bit as clearly defined as are the natural and social concepts arising out of the forces of the West.

Let us turn now to the forces of the East. Here, what is made clearest to us is the following: If, out of the forces of the East, we want to attempt to describe Christianity, or indeed anything divine and spiritual, in sharp, clearly-defined terms, our efforts will be invain. Starting with Russia and going eastwards through Asia, the whole of the East brings forth forces in its peoples which are not capable of rising up to spiritual, divine realms in sharply defined concepts. The forces here are suitable for rising up to the spirit out of the depths of feeling.

In order to describe Christianity in a manner befitting the West we need philosophy, we need a concept of the world which is clothed in modern thought forms. But to describe Christianity with the forces of the East we cannot find such thought forms if we remain at the level of outer nationality. If we remain in the external, sense-perceptible world we have to grasp other means. For instance, we have to describe the feelings which are found as soon as we start going further and further eastwards, even in the regions of central Europe bordering on the East. Look at the living rooms of simple people and see the altar with the Mother of God in the corner. See how the image of the Mother of God is greeted by visitors as they arrive. Everywhere the first greeting is for the Mother of God, and only then are greetings exchanged with the people in the room. This is something that emanates from all the forces of the human being, with the exception of those of abstract ideas. There exists a radical contrast between West and East in the inmost feelings for what is divine and spiritual. Yet all these forces are root forces which can develop further, which can put forth leaves and shoots and finally bear fruit, if only they can come to a fundamental understanding of themselves.

The West is capable of reaching a conception and a feeling of the Father God in a manner which befits the new human spirit, a conception and a feeling beside which those other divine spiritual beings, the Son and the Spirit, can stand. But above all it is the task of the West to contribute to the world concepts and feelings about the Father God which are different from those possible in earlier times, when only vague presentiments could be achieved in this respect. On the other hand, if the forces mainly present in the East are developed—the forces which can only be described suitably in what might be called a non-intellectual way with the help of external gestures—if these forces are developed with the feelings and will impulses they entail, and if they take up also the forces streaming towards them from the West, they will be able to come to a fitting concept and a fitting feeling of the Son God. In this way mankind's development into the future can only be rightly understood when the things that are achieved in the different regions of the earth are taken to be contributions to a total outcome.

Especially the more outstanding spirits in the West—though mostly they are not aware of this themselves—may be seen to be struggling for a concept of the Father God, a concept arising from the foundations of natural science. And in the East we see in the external gestures of the people, in what comes out of their feelings and their will, how they are wrestling for an understanding of the Son God, the Christ. The middle region stands between these two extremes. This is shown clearly by what has been developing more recently in the culture of the middle region. It is characteristic of modern theology in Central Europe that it is uncertain in its understanding of the Father and also in its understanding of the Son, the Christ. Endeavours to find such an understanding are taken immensely earnestly. But this very earnestness has caused the endeavours to be split in two separate directions. On the one hand we see knowledge developing, and on the other we see faith. We see how knowledge is to contain only what applies to the sense-perceptible world and everything that belongs to it. And we see how faith, which must not be allowed to become knowledge, is allotted everything that makes up man's relationship to what is divine and spiritual. These divergent endeavours express the quest, a quest which cannot achieve an adequate concept and feeling for either the Father God or the Son God without joining forces with the other regions of the earth, with East and West.

How such a global working together in the spirit should take place can be seen especially in the beginnings made by the Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev.¹ This Russian philosopher has taken western thought forms into his own thinking. If you are thoroughly familiar with the thought forms of the West, you will find them everywhere in Soloviev's work. But you will find that they are handled differently from the way in which they are handled in the West. If you approach Soloviev with a thinking prepared in the West you will have to relearn something—not about the content of thoughts, but about the attitude of the human being towards the content of thoughts. You will have to undergo a complete inner metamorphosis.

Take what I regard as one of the cardinal passages in Soloviev's work, a passage he has invested with a great deal of human striving towards a knowledge of man's being and his relationship with the world. He says: Human beings must strive for perfection. This endeavour is expressed in the way they strive for the truth. By uniting truth ever more and more closely with their souls they will become ever more and more perfect. Without this movement towards perfection human life would be worthless. Human beings must have the prospect of reaching the highest pinnacles of perfection through truth, as otherwise their lives would be null and void. At the same time they must have a part in immortality, for a striving for perfection destined only to be forfeited in death would be a fraud of universal proportions.

This is expressed by Soloviev in words and thought forms which imitate those of the West, or rather the thought forms are borrowed and the word forms imitated. But the way in which it is expressed, and the way the impulse to express it is present—this is impossible in the West. You will not find it expressed in this way by any western philosopher. Just imagine Mill or Bergson saying such a thing! It is unimaginable. These are the things for which we must develop a sense nowadays. We must develop a sense for the living sources from which words flow. The content of words is growing ever more insignificant in comparison with world concepts. A sense for the living source of things is what has real significance.

We can today only imagine a person to be capable of speaking in the way Soloviev does if he still has a true experience of what every one of his compatriots does before the icon of the Mother of God. Such a person must stand immersed in his people, a people capable of bringing proof without having to base it on abstract, logical foundations, a people for whom proofs based on mere abstract logic are less important than those which come out of the whole human being.

We feel in these words of Soloviev how, coming from the East, what is said comes out of the total being of man, not just out of mere intellectual human understanding. Because Soloviev speaks and thinks and feels out of the very foundations of his people, the whole of his world conception tends in the direction of the Christ. Because he has also taken on, as something from outside, the thought forms of the West, his world conception at the same time tends in the direction of the Father God as well as the Christ. Thus we discover in him something which it is almost impossible to find anywhere in the present, and that is a fundamental, clear distinction in the feelings of a human being between the way to the Father God and the way to Christ, the Son God. In a spirit such as Vladimir Soloviev we find a hint of what must come about in the future. For what must come about is a working together of the different regions of the earth, and this cannot come about if any one region imagines itself to be in possession of the whole.

Mankind came forth out of a unity. If we go back into the obscure, remote antiquity of human evolution we come to an archetypal wisdom which was still instinctive and which, because of this, still filled the whole human being. Throughout the whole of the earth people communicated with one another, not yet by means of the logical content of language but externally, by means of the then still existing inner capacity to communicate in gestures, of which today we no longer have the faintest idea. People communicated with one another by means of something which today, if at all, remains only in those remnants of the treasure-house of language which we call interjections. Naturally, if you exclaim: Whew! or sigh: Oh! you will be understood world over. This kind of understanding resembles the communication that took place at the time of instinctive archetypal wisdom. Today we no longer know how to feel in language as a whole what the archetypal wisdom felt in it. All that remains for us is our feeling or the interjections which, of course, we only use occasionally. In parenthesis let me add that it is quite in keeping that, out of people's dissatisfaction arising from the whole chaos of our spiritual life, authors are starting to write novels in interjections. This does happen nowadays. I am not quoting, but simply mention that you can find prose passages today which read: Ah! Oh! Wow! Eh! Then the writer begins: Once there was—and then come more interjections. Some recent novels are tending in this direction. As symptoms they are not without significance. As I said, this just in passing.

We have lost the ability to invest the whole of language with what we today only invest in interjections. Consider the following: ‘Anthropos’ means man, human being. ‘Anthropoid’ means man-like, that is, the higher animals. The final syllable, ‘oid’, is connected with the word which means ‘like, similar to’. Now there is a remarkable connection between Greek and, for instance, German. In German the final syllable meaning ‘like’ is ‘ig’. This is pronounced ‘ich’. If we speak this final syllable by itself, we have the German word for ego, for our own being. This is one kind of etymological truth. The ‘ich’ in the human being is what strives in its totality to become like the universe. ‘Ich’ is like, is similar to, everything; microcosm compared with macrocosm. Of course to go into things in this way cannot be done in the superficial manner in which etymology and linguistics are conducted nowadays. One has to go down to a more profound level and gain a sense for the way in which the sounds are connected with one another.

I brought this up merely to show one of the facets of what we must do to enter into language in search of a far more alive content than exists nowadays in the languages of the world. We must strive not to take words merely as words but to seek out their living roots. We must learn to understand that two people can say the same thing and yet mean something quite different, depending on the way of life from which it stems. We shall need such a deepening of our feelings in order to enter into the kind of global working together which will be necessary if mankind is to set out once more on the upward path.

It is not enough to address Christ as: Lord, Lord! Christ must become something which fills the whole human being. This can only happen if we support our understanding with something which comes to meet us when we look towards the archetypal wisdom of the world and remind ourselves that that wisdom made mankind into a totality. It was, though, a totality in which all individuality was lost. But evolution progressed. Human beings became ever more individualized. They felt more and more that they were approaching the point at which each one feels separated from all the others, for that alone guarantees the experience of freedom. So something had to be poured out into human evolution which might once more bring unity to the whole earth. This was the Christ-being. The Christ-being will only be fully understood when we gain from it a feeling for the impulse to bring about a social unity of human beings over the whole earth. Or looked at the other way round: Only the Christ-being, fully understood, can lead to a right social impulse throughout the world.

We look to the archetypal wisdom, which developed out of instinctive foundations to a certain high degree of vision—not our vision but an ancient vision. We find this vision in its final phase expressed in the archetypal symbol of what the three wise men, the three Magi from the East, brought to Christ Jesus. What led them to Christ Jesus was the most ancient and, at that time, the highest wisdom of mankind. And at the same time we are told by another evangelist how the individual human being, out of the inmost forces of his soul, as though in a dream—for the individual is alone when he dreams, even though he may be in company with others—is also led to Christ Jesus, how the shepherds in the field, dreaming in their solitary souls, are led to Christ Jesus: the first beginning of a new age. By the fourth century AD mankind had lost the wisdom of the Magi from the East. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the highest archetypal wisdom—about to fade—meets and mingles with something that appears at first utterly devoid of wisdom, something which must be developed ever further, until in the end it can take root in every individual human being, uniting all mankind.

In his youth, Augustine² endeavoured to save the last remnants of the wisdom brought to Christ Jesus by the Magi from the East. But Augustine had already received it in a form to which he could not confess in the long run. It was even then too degenerate. So he had to turn to what had been present at the beginning of evolution, to what will have to progress ever further and further, to what must be sought in order that mankind may once again find unity over the whole face of the earth.

If we pursue these hints—for that is all they are for the moment—in the right way, they will give us forces which will lead ever more profoundly into an understanding of the Christ-being, to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. This is what I wanted to add to what we have been saying about the Being of Christ.

• 1 . Vladimir Soloviev, 1853-1900. The quotation in German is from Die geistigen Grundlagen des Lebens, Part One (The Spiritual Foundations of Life), Selected Works translated by H Kohler, Stuttgart 1922.
• 2 . See Lecture One, Note 4

Dear attendees! Today it is impossible to form an opinion about the great affairs of the time without looking at what is working as the deeper forces of labor and longing in all humanity, what has been working for decades, but what is reaching a very special culmination today. In the present situation, it is not possible to form an opinion about the significance of what is actually happening to humanity without at least glancing at the deeper foundations of all human endeavor and how these deeper foundations are expressed in the present. Therefore, in this first of my two lectures, to be followed by a continuation the day after tomorrow, allow me to at least point out some sketchy observations on such deeper-lying forces of longing in present-day humanity.

It was in July 1909 that Charles Eliot, who had been President of Harvard University from 1868 and at the time of his speech, delivered a significant speech in America. As one could see from his speech, Charles Eliot spoke from the consciousness of looking at the spiritual and intellectual matters of all civilized humanity from his point of view. He called his lecture “The Religion of the Future,” and he wanted to express what this religion of the future should not be and what it should be. But when I look back on this lecture, it seems to me that what Eliot said at the time is much less significant than the overall tenor of his words. Above all, it seems to me that the most significant thing is that at that time a representative of today's civilization was so searching for a way to healthy thinking in the great questions of world view and life view of mankind.

Now, my dear audience, when pointing out something like this, one must never forget that between what was said at that time, even by the most outstanding people of the present, and today, lies that terrible world war catastrophe, which indeed teaches more than all such words could teach – which illuminates everything that such people have designated as great world and life questions in a flash in a completely different way than they could have imagined at the time. Eliot wants to lead humanity to a healthy way of thinking about the world and life. He looks back on the state of religions in those times when science had not yet shed light on the souls of the broad masses of humanity. What disturbed him about the old religions was that they pointed to a God who, in a certain sense, lives outside of that which modern science at least purports to provide such great and powerful insights into. The man felt completely at one with his time. To him, the old ideas about the spiritual world seemed to be just those that a childish humanity had formed. And it was particularly important to him that this scientific age could no longer see demonic, spiritual entities in mountains and rivers, in trees and clouds, that even a scientific age could no longer retain the pictorial old ideas of God. He also wanted to show that the world's view of life and social conditions had suffered in many ways because the religions, which had been the guides to thinking for the vast majority of people, had driven away those who were depressed, those who were miserable, those who could could not cope with life, were expelled by the physical-sensual existence into a supernatural afterlife, so that in place of the processing of life, in place of courageous intervention in life, for many people there had to be a look beyond the immediate physical social existence.

All that the various religions have to say about the reasons why one person is affected by this or that fate, and all that the old religions have to say about divine justice prevailing in the world, also appears Charles Eliot, the modern man, the man who stands in the time that begins for him with Darwin, which has reached a particular size for him through those advances in medicine that are called to physically alleviate the pain of sick humanity, as no longer up to date. And in a way, he wants the old priest, who always referred humanity to an indefinite supernatural realm, to be replaced by the physical physician, who is able to alleviate even the pain that the mother has to endure when the child enters this physical world, he would like to replace the old priest with someone who is able to lend a hand in the work that is done in the physical world, because for him it is about shaping the physical conditions of this earth in such a way that as many people as possible derive joy and satisfaction from life. Charles Eliot believes that all this must be taken up, as it were, by healthy thinking, and he hopes that from the views which science has recently provided to mankind, it may become clear what humanity is capable of achieving in order to reach this goal it so longs for. I mention this particularly for the reason that in this short speech about the religion of the future, everything that the so-called educated, especially the learned educated, have imagined as the path to modern healthy thinking, is in a sense concentrated in a representative human being.

Now this speech about the religion of the future, which has as its content what I have just characterized, has something highly peculiar. And since I have already said something similar about this speech before the war, as I am saying now, no one will be able to accuse me of what many people are accused of today: that they now, after the war has raged for so long, have been strangely enlightened by what happened before the war. Charles Eliot speaks as a man who has certain ideas, as a man can speak who is fully immersed in modern scientific knowledge and who, from the bottom of his heart, wants to give humanity a conception of life that leads to its happiness and satisfaction from these scientific ideas. But how does he speak? If one is able to read between the lines, what must one say about how he speaks? One looks at the thoughts: they are born out of the spirit of the age, but they can only be spoken if one is surrounded by a world in which, first of all, in the social, in the immediate living conditions, these thoughts do not become reality. They can only be spoken when one is surrounded by a world whose views of life are rooted in a much older time, when one is surrounded by a world where certain ideas live in the souls of people that did not originate from what such a scientifically educated religious seeks, but which have a profound influence on the shaping of social life. In other words, it can be said of such a man: he can speak, but one senses his thought at the moment when what he says is to be realized in full consequence, in unadorned form - then, when the old traditions no longer have an effect in the environment - that then these thoughts will prove powerless after all. And anyone who can understand anything at all about the terrible events of recent years will say: These events since 1914 have significantly stepped in between what could be said then and what is before us today as the great, overwhelming questions of our time. To a certain extent, Charles Eliot also points out at the end of his speech that he cannot know how what he regards as sound thinking will be realized in the immediate practice of life; only experience will show.

Now, my dear audience, however strange, however paradoxical it may sound to you, today part of the world is in the process of providing this experience. What an educated, learned man could dare to say in the past, in the midst of an environment that had no need to draw the final consequences of these thoughts, is being tried to be realized today in a different frame of mind, in a different state of mind, in Eastern Europe and in a large part of Asia – as paradoxical as it may sound. And whereas one could express Eliot's thoughts, that is to say the final social consequences of a scientific world view, in complete safety and still be considered a good and honest citizen in the midst of an environment that did not even consider drawing the final conclusions from reality, human existence , you destroy life at the very moment when a clean sweep is made of the old conditions, when the old traditions in the environment no longer build the state, when you do not allow that which comes from the old traditions, albeit through special tyranny, to live on in the environment. If you draw the ultimate consequences of these thoughts for external reality, then you become a Leninist, then you become a Trotskyist, then you begin to realize what should arise purely from what Eliot sought as healthy thinking, from what wants to be born out of the purely scientific world view. But if one tries to realize that, then one does not build anything, but only continues that process of destruction that began in 1914 and that humanity will still have bitter, bitter experiences with. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a review of the relatively recent past teaches us, which was put forward in 1909 by a man who was imbued with honest conviction and with all the education of the present day.

If we now ask ourselves what connection exists between what a person, I would say, as a certain materialistic Sunday sermon in an otherwise very different world, could say and what is being realized in the east of Europe and over a large part of Asia, then, in order to understand the social connections of the present and the whole situation of the present man, one must delve a little into the deeper foundations. And it is instructive to take a look at the question: How did this materialistic world view, which was supposed to bring happiness and contentment to humanity, actually come about in modern times?

If I were to characterize what precisely characterizes the most modern thinking, the thinking that is now preparing to become social reality, I would have to say that this thinking is characterized by the fact that it is unable to build a bridge between what is knowledge of the natural side of the world and what is the moral world, what are ethical ideas, what are moral forces. On the one hand, there is what constitutes the natural side of the world, firmly established in ideas that are extremely plausible for every person who is imbued with the spirit of the present, as it has developed in recent centuries and particularly in the 19th century. On the other hand, what emerges from the human heart are the moral demands and what should elevate man to contemplation is that these moral demands are rooted in a spiritual world order - a world order where the moral and the immoral can have an effect on the shaping of the world, where the moral and the immoral can intervene in world events, just as a flash of lightning intervenes in world events.

These two worlds have been pushing each other aside for decades. And there lives the newer way of thinking, which does strive for healthy thinking and wants to use it to found a natural religion. It is able to consider the one thing, which is knowledge of natural facts, and it is also able, if man is conscientious, to consider the other: that out of the depths of the human breast speaks the voice of morality, which should then point the way to religious consciousness.

But today there is no bridge between these two worlds. There is the one world of the knowledge of natural facts. It believes that it has found a fundamental law that should stand unshakable as the result of the 19th century, the law of the conservation of matter and force - the law that should tell us that everything that happens in the universe happens out of a sum of forces that may well transform, but can never be increased or diminished, that are uncaused and immortal. The interaction of these forces gives rise to the formation of the world, to the world event that presents itself externally to our senses and from which we ourselves have grown as physical human beings. If the forces in question are uncreated and everlasting, if one can speak in the absolute sense of the conservation of matter and of force, then all the views that must arise in the wake of this view cannot be dismissed either. Then we come to assume - out of the same habits of thought that have pushed humanity towards this law of the conservation and transformation of matter and force - that all the earthly-cosmic within which we stand has come into being from the famous Kant-Laplacean nebula, from which the whole solar system is said to have formed through condensation, and that in the course of this natural process, man has also developed, having passed through the various animal forms. And we come to assume that in the human soul, like inner life illusions, those things flash up that occur to this human soul as the forces that alone can guarantee man his dignity: moral ideas and that which leads to religious consciousness.

But anyone who, with all the consequences, clings to this world, which has thus emerged from the Kant-Laplacean primeval nebula, must also think in these terms about the end of the world. He must think that this world will transform into one in which everything that humanity offers, everything that has ever lived in human souls and human minds, will disappear; he must think that within a great cosmic process all human thinking of a morality, of a divinity, is merely something that is born out of the laws of nature - just as lightning and thunder, the change of day and night and so on are born out of the laws of nature. And so we look towards an unspiritual, unspiritual world coming into being, we look towards an unspiritual, unspiritual world ending. For him, [who clings to this world with all the consequences,] the best that humanity thinks, dreams, is woven into the processes that lie between these two ends - the creation and the end of the world; the best that this humanity imagines is only an episode for him, vanishing in the purely natural All.

Dearly beloved, with the best will in the world, there is no getting away from all the quackery that people are still willing to put forward for the validity of a moral and religious world, if they admit, with all the consequences, that which underlies this scientific attitude. I know how much is preached today in the direction that, despite this scientific attitude, an ideal world view is indeed possible. It is only possible for those who do not really want to go to the consequences of thinking. And today one is well prompted to ask: Why do people realize so little of what has just been indicated in the present? Why, actually? Perhaps we can gain some insight into this by remembering the, I would say, springtime of what is now also general opinion, but which people do not admit as a general opinion among the so-called enlightened, when we refer back to that springtime of theoretical materialism that befell the civilized world around the middle of the 19th century. It has indeed become fashionable today to depict those who boldly drew the last consequences of the scientific attitude, such as Moleschott, Büchner and so on, as flat – they undoubtedly are that. But then more is needed than what is put forward by scholars or unlearned people to characterize the whole relationship we have to them.

We need only recall a few facts to appreciate the full seriousness and significance of this matter for the social situation of contemporary man. I would like to mention the fact that, for example, a cultural historian much discussed in the 1870s said: One of the most important results of modern times is that scientific knowledge has destroyed everything that was born out of ancient religions as an ethical ideal. Yes, this cultural historian dryly writes that what has been characterized as truth or untruth from this point of view is only a scientific result, like the falling of rain, and is to be considered from this point of view. But a letter from a bold, inwardly bold personality to a contemporary natural scientist is particularly interesting. The letter contains the following: “The newer world view teaches us that everything that people experience is subject to the natural law of cause and effect in the same way as what we see with our senses in the external world. All the good deeds and thoughts that people produce from within themselves, all the religious ideas they produce, are nothing more than the result of purely natural processes that take place within man, just as cloud formations take place outside in nature. So, as far as I am concerned, everything that people have conceived as moral commandments is an illusion, said the personality. And I am of the opinion that someone who is born with the tendencies to be a thief, a robber, or a murderer is just as entitled to live out his murderous and thieving tendencies to the full as someone who is born to the opposite. I am convinced, writes this personality, that it would even be detrimental to the moral development of a personality predisposed to murder, that is, it would be immoral if it did not live out its inclinations. Of course people today will say: That is a paradoxical truth. But why do they say so? They say it because, on the one hand, they have tremendous respect and complete faith in authority for everything that is said to them from the kitchen of science, but because, on the other hand, they do not have the same courage as the personality who wrote this letter to draw the consequences. They stop halfway because they do not want to admit to themselves that if you draw these conclusions, the rest follows.

Now, I would like to say: Just as Charles Eliot was able to speak as he did in 1909 in an environment that did not think about translating his thoughts into social reality, so that personality was able to enthuse about the full expression of criminal instincts, since the full expression of his abilities was part of the moral worth of the personality. The time had not yet come when social institutions were to arise from what people think in this direction, although they could not arise. But then the other question arises: how are these institutions to arise, which must now take shape as a development of our declining way of life?

Dear attendees, when you consider the situation of people today and look at what is actually living within them – and after all, it is from within that that takes place in all outward, business, industrial, and practical life - when one considers all this, one comes, admittedly, to a bitter judgment about the situation of the present-day human being. For, what would it be like if a sufficiently large number of people had the courage to awaken the soul, to wake up the sleeping soul and to say to themselves: If we accept in its entirety what has flowed into thinking from scientific knowledge over the last three to four centuries , then we must shape everything that is to flow into social life according to laws that are empty and devoid of everything that arises within the human being as an impulse of morality, as an impulse of the religious world order, because such laws can then only come from the natural scientific attitude.

And the real beginning of a social order of life, which structures society only as natural phenomena are structured outside - we see it made in the east of Europe and spreading across Asia; we see it taught theoretically in Marxism for decades. It could also talk, this Marxism, as long as it did not occur to its surroundings to respond to it with reference to the shaping of reality. Now the face of the world has become more serious. Now it is a matter of raising the question in a comprehensive sense: Is what has been presented as the path to healthy thinking also a path to a possible life for humanity on earth? Because the matter is so serious, the whole way in which people are, and in particular the way those are who today believe that they can build social life on the achievements that are only good for a certain branch of knowledge of nature, must be addressed. What have these achievements brought us?

I have often and for many years pointed out here in Stuttgart the magnitude and significance of the scientific world view, and those who have heard me often will certainly not see in me a despiser of this scientific world view – within the limits in which it is justified. But what is at issue here is something else. The question is: Is a scientific world view possible if it is a matter of applying the laws of human knowledge to what is to shape social life?

To answer this question, one must look at the supposed path to healthy thinking that this scientific world view has taken. There we see that this natural scientific world view has fathomed everything in the facts of nature that can be applied in the fields of technology and industrial life. There we see that what could be realized in technology and in industrial life and in transport through the knowledge of the laws of nature has been developed on a large scale. All this had reached a high point when the catastrophe of 1914 occurred, which showed how little social observation had followed the observation that built machines, covered the world with means of transport, and so on, based on the knowledge of natural science. Yes, what we see in our technology, regardless of whether it leads to construction or destruction, is related to a certain direction of scientific thinking. This direction of scientific thinking wanted to become universal, wanted to become generally valid, wanted to mean something for all of human life.

And there we see, how isolated spirits live, I might say, who stand there like oddballs in the general development, but who had started out with the attitude of “how we have come so gloriously far”; we see how they look at what is emerging and look into the future with tremendous apprehension. One need only refer to Solowjow, the Russian philosopher who, unfortunately, is only known in Central Europe since the war years, but who died at the beginning of the century. He took a deep look at human life, but he was also enlightened enough to look at practical life and to observe this practical life with his tremendously benevolent, mild soul. This philosopher Solowjow was overcome with the most bitter concern when he said to himself: “All that the modern world view gains from the scientific basis is also spreading over my Russia through an internally rotten rule. And so Russia is covered with all the glories – he does not say this ironically – with all the glories of modern technology and modern transportation, and what should provide the basis for a healthy Russian way of thinking disappears as if stolen from the world. With every railroad that is built and every industrial plant that is established, what should be the basis for healthy Russian thought is disappearing: the land. And one hears Solowjow say that he understands that healthy human thinking is connected with the land in a different way from that kind of thinking which breaks away from this land, which exists, as it were, at an abstract level, even if in a physical reality, and appears on a natural scientific basis as modern culture. Of course, one might call this one-sided; and in a sense it was one-sided. But how can one expect the man who lives in a world that strives with all its might to bring into the world everything that can arise from a scientific attitude, how can one expect him to gain a sound and calm judgment when he wants to stand up against the materialistic dream of all mankind; how can one be reproached for one-sidedness when he expresses his concern, which in a certain way had to appear insane at a time when this modern culture had not yet embarked on its decline as much as it has now, since Solowjow has been dead for twenty years. Now, that Charles Eliot, of whom I have spoken, also indicates approximately what he imagines a kind of future religion to be, when people will no longer believe in an external God or when they will no longer believe in demonology in broad circles. He says: The view of a unified God will prevail, who is intrinsic to things, who is also intrinsic to the human soul and who is at work in all that is natural law. But it is clear from this speech, and it is indeed clearly stated in it, that even for a well-meaning person like Charles Eliot, this God is linked to what he knows about the material that is spreading throughout the world, about the eternally transforming but indestructible force. In essence, the unity of God is nothing other than the unity of matter and of power. And from such theoretical convictions he then preaches to the world that which should serve as the practical basis for human life. He says: “Ever shining will be the sentence ‘Serve your fellow man’.” Serve your fellow man — that is repeated again and again in that speech. But in the case of such a sentence, such a demand, it is truly not only a matter of saying the words, but it is a matter of whether what is demanded of people can also be fulfilled by them – fulfilled by releasing forces from the depths of their souls, which ultimately find their expression in social service to humanity, in social work according to the sentence: “Serve your fellow man”. In other words, we must ask whether a Weltanschhauung is capable of forming a basis for true human love. Is a Weltanschhauung capable of being the root of a plant which, when it grows out of the soil, blossoms and bears fruit as human love? This question cannot be answered in a one-sided, logical and theoretical way. This question can only be answered on the basis of what happens historically. And if Eliot had only waited for the experiences that are now arising and will arise through the shaping of Eastern Europe and Asia, then he would have had his doubts. For the historical result is that the socialist doctrine, which wants to build only on the same scientific premises on which Eliot wants to see the world of the future, life in general, built, that this socialist direction is not able to found social life on free love, welling up from within the human heart and bearing fruit in the world. For what would awaken human love does not sound to us from this social teaching and social tyranny. What does sound to us is the fulfillment of the saying, “Serve your fellow man because you love them.” Instead, we hear the dry, empty, and desolate words of duty to work, of how people are driven to work as if with military drill.

And I would like to say: If on the one hand you listen to Charles Eliot in 1909, when the experience of the present was not yet available, giving his paradigmatic speech from the Harvard University chair, then an echo from a later time, the speech that was recently given by the Russian Socialist Minister of War, who said: Those people who are sincere about the social order will not fail to recognize what we owe to this war. He sent our sons back to us as soldiers. They have become capable soldiers. They have learned to obey and to submit to authority. We do not want to ignore what we owe to this war in that it has trained us officers who can command, who know how to move people to the appropriate place through coercion. And we do not want to forget the leading men of the war, who are able to organize so that everyone submits to the authority of this organization. This talk of translating militarism into the social structure of life sounds like an echo of what we hear from Eliot's speech, which is only a world view because no one around him thought of realizing it. People just don't know that they have sought healthy thinking in ways that, in their ultimate consequence, result in what can now be seen so clearly today. And people do not want to admit the connection between what people have believed they had to think about the world and life for centuries, but especially for decades, and what is now presenting itself as the will to shape the world socially - but which is completely powerless to shape this world in such a way that a dignified existence is actually possible in it. It is from this unwillingness to understand that everything that is sought as a path to healthy thinking within - the life situation of the contemporary human being - emerges.

From my book “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future” everything emerges that the efforts of the Federation for the Threefold Social Organism have brought into being. The aim is to seek a path to healthy social thinking without entertaining illusions, by at least keeping one thing in mind when dealing with these questions: What are the underlying thoughts of what today wants to realize itself in life-destroying structures? What were the underlying thoughts that led to the absurdity of the events that began in 1914? But anyone who does not want to form a clear and healthy judgment on these questions, no matter where they stand, cannot participate in what every person today is called upon to do, according to their abilities and position in life. What is needed today is clear and consistent thinking. But this clear and consistent thinking also leads us to raise the question: Where does that which has developed as so-called healthy thinking on a scientific basis actually come from?

Those who know the historical context know that, in terms of the development of our ideas and the creation of our concepts in public life, we have not progressed further than the Middle Ages. Much is said about the darkness of the Middle Ages, but we still think in the forms of thought of the Middle Ages. What we have brought further are the achievements of knowledge of nature, which have their counter-image in technology, the achievements of knowledge of inanimate nature, actually only of a part of inanimate nature, because only that has its counter-image in technology. What we have achieved, what can be mastered with the means of calculation, with the means of geometry, has become our world view. This has gradually conquered such a position in human thought that it appears in this thought as the self-evident basis of all views of life.

Has humanity also endeavored to further develop the inner strength of thinking, the inner strength of the soul in general? No, that cannot be said. The thought form, the way of thinking, the whole configuration of thinking, with which natural science, even the seemingly most exact and strictest natural science, works today, is the same as that used by the scholastics of the Middle Ages. In the scholastics of the Middle Ages these thoughts were great, these thoughts were ingenious. Why was that so? Because these thoughts set themselves the task of looking into a spiritual world. One may think as one likes about the content of what I have just indicated; but what emerged from the training and development of scholastic thought, when viewed calmly and objectively in the context of the development of modern culture, cannot be interpreted other than as I shall now attempt.

Who knows with what acumen, with what mastery of the technique of thinking, such ideas as those of the Trinity, the sacraments, and the incarnation of Christ were pursued - but which were then ideas in the social life of all humanity - who knows with what acumen these ideas were pursued, which have no counter have any counterpart in the world of ideas, where thought must rely entirely on itself, one will say: however one may think about the Trinity, however one may think about the Incarnation of Christ, the development of thought technique, logical consistency and inner responsibility to the forms of thought in those days was magnificent. It lives on as inheritance. Today we think with no other thinking than the scholastic Catholic scholars have thought; we have only transferred these thoughts to scientific fields. We think with the thought forms of the Middle Ages in the materially developed areas of modern times. We just do not think with the same sharpness because we do not train this sharpness of thinking. If we are enlightened people, we refrain from training this thinking with concepts such as the incarnation of Christ, the Trinity, and so on; we do not train this thinking with the vision of a supersensible world. If we ask for the reason: Why is this scholastic thinking so trained, why is it so internally sharply contoured? we must say: because — whatever the positive religions may say, which often want to cover up the fundamentals of the true facts — because this thinking has developed out of the vision of the soul, which in ancient times was still valid up to Plato, yes, even up to the Neoplatonists, because this thinking has developed out of the vision, the spiritual-soul vision of a spiritual, a supersensible world. He who wanted to arrive at thinking had to look to a supersensible world; he had to train his thoughts in such a way that they could not only master that which lies before our eyes in the gross material world, but also that which must be grasped with the same subtlety and sharpness as the things of the supersensible world. In an instinctive way, not in the conscious way that the world-picture which I have been presenting here for years represents, in an instinctive way, but still in a spiritual way, the thinking of those ancient times was grounded in the ranks of St. Augustine, the High , on a thinking that was schooled by beholding the supersensible world, because this thinking was a sprout of beholding into the supersensible world, even if this is denied by the positive theologians. This thinking had already weakened in the Middle Ages. In ancient times, people used this thinking to penetrate into a spiritual world through the inner strength of the human being. In the Middle Ages, this spiritual world was regarded as something that could not be explored, but only interpreted by the soul itself. Now, in terms of the training of thinking, we are heirs to scholastic thinking. We are still part of the same school of thought, but we can no longer perfect it. We can no longer develop the correct contours of thoughts with logical clarity because we do not train them on [spiritual] problems where thinking is left to its own devices; we can only follow what is being looked at in the experimental room.

And what is the last offshoot of Catholic, scholastic thought in the Middle Ages? Where is the last offshoot of what emerged as a social view from the theocracy of Augustine and his successors, from this tight organization, this militaristic arrangement of human coexistence? Where is the last offshoot, the last offshoot of medieval Catholic theology with regard to its thought forms? That is Marxism. That is the doctrine which is being prepared today as a socialist teaching for the masses. All the thought forms of modern socialism are nothing more than the last decrepit offshoot of the thinking that still rose to half its height in high scholasticism. It was born out of supersensible observation, but is no longer suitable for an age of natural science. We have come to describe the wide world of natural existence, to have geometrized and mechanized it - and people like Charles Eliot speak entirely out of this sense of having arrived - but we have not come to find our way into this world from thought. Therefore we had to speak, as Du Bois-Reymond spoke about the limits of knowledge of nature and the seven world riddles. What question was answered by Du Bois-Reymond in his sensational speeches “On the Limits of the Knowledge of Nature” and “The Seven World Riddles”? — The question that the legacy of scholastic thinking cannot penetrate into natural science. That is no wonder. Thomas Aquinas had the doctrine of revelation before him; he had the doctrine of the supersensible worlds before him, as it was then common practice. The newer natural science was not yet there at that time; he could not deal with the newer natural science. If one were to continue to work in his spirit - not in the sense of the Catholic revival of scholasticism, of Neuthomism - then one would have to say: This is something that has become outdated, which in the theoretical socialism of Lenin and Trotsky seeks to realize itself out of scholastic, superscholastic thought forms in the east of Europe and in Asia. All this thinking, which has become decrepit, must in turn be transformed into thinking rooted in the vision of the supersensible worlds. Just as scholastic thinking, which has now become decrepit and too weak to cope with real social conditions and cannot be the root from which love blossoms and bears fruit, was present at the beginning of that thinking, which has now become decrepit, this thinking must be replaced by a thinking rooted in a knowledge of the supersensible world.

When Charles Eliot complained that what he imagines to be healthy thinking is not really appreciated in the broadest circles of people, but that most people only want to deal with it superficially through hypocrisy, he said: On the one hand, those people who are serious about science cultivate such a natural religion and seek to establish it for the future and develop it later, but we see how some of those people, who are also among the educated, seek a substitute for the old traditions in all kinds of secret societies, in the Masonic lodges, in the Odd Fellows lodges. We see, as Charles Eliot says, how a large part of humanity, honestly seeking the supersensible, seeks a way to the spirit in spiritualism and Christian Science. We see how the broad masses, out of old habit, cling to the traditional denominations. — Charles Eliot complains about this. He sees this as the thing that stands in the way of pursuing this path to healthy thinking. But he does not realize how what he is developing actually stands outside the reality of natural science. He does not even come to realize that what has emerged must be grasped with a different kind of thinking than the thinking that is only the legacy of the scholastic Middle Ages: with a thinking that has been reborn from the spiritual world. Truly, what has emerged today as socialism is nothing other than what lived through the centuries of the Middle Ages and has not been overcome in the minds of the masses to this day, despite the influence of modern culture. And even when these people appear as opponents of the creeds, their thought forms are still entirely in the spirit of these creeds. With the same thought forms with which the medieval man wanted to penetrate the supernatural God, with the same thought forms the modern naturalist, the layman popularizing the modern world view, the theoretical socialist turns to the unity of matter and force.

What must be gained by a new way of seeing is what has been advocated from this platform for many years and in Stuttgart in general. It is a matter of realizing how what is now being cultivated as a social vision through the threefold social organism is a necessary result of this new way of seeing – the necessity of a renewal of thinking, a rebirth of thinking out of the spiritual world. Only this rebirth of thinking can lead us to build the bridge that could not be built in the last centuries up to our time: to build that bridge between the world that stands as the world of natural facts and that can be overlooked with pure natural causality, and the world that arises in the human interior, the world of morality, of religious upliftment, of religious world plan. And only by having the courage to think in terms of this world view will we come to understand what is necessary in terms of both a view of life and a social direction for the present.

My dear audience, this spiritually-oriented world view, which is based on knowledge and is so thoroughly imbued with the existence of a spiritual-divine world, is what is meant here. It is clear about the fact that in everything that lives in the knowledge of man, that which man experiences inwardly as his thoughts about the world, and also in what arises from man as human will in individual or social relationship, that in all this the divine lives just as it lives in the outer existence of nature. This is what I wanted to express in my Philosophy of Freedom at the beginning of the nineties, and what has now been expressed again by the publication of the new edition of this book. That is what anyone who wants to build a real bridge between the contemplation of nature and the contemplation of those impulses of humanity that must arise out of human freedom and that can only give a justifiable structure to social life if they arise out of freedom. But one thing is absolutely necessary: we need to summon up a little more inner courage to think than the dormant souls of the present generally have. Here it is necessary to seriously consider the question: Wherein are rooted the things we expect as the future of humanity?

The external view of nature says: That which we expect as the future of the earth, as the future of the entire solar system, must arise through the transformation of matter and of force out of what we see around us, what is already there today. We calculate, we apply mechanics, we apply the mechanics of atoms, which so many have spoken of, earlier in the absolute sense, now in the hypothetical sense or in the sense of fictions. Then you realize that what we have to regard as the end of the earth happens through the transformation of matter and energy and without what is going on in man, because that is only an episode in these facts of the world. This is a necessary consequence of a purely naturalistic view of the world. This naturalistic view of the world appears to the view of the world that I have been advocating for decades as if someone were to look at the plant root and say: everything that arises there must arise from the plant root. That is, he would assume: there is the root, it produces stem, leaf, stem, leaf, and so on. He would only see what can develop out of this root, and he would not see that this root, which he now has before him, is rotting and dissolving, but that a new germ will arise from the plant that has grown from the root, in which the new plant is already predisposed. Read what is available in the literature of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, and you will see: This is how this spiritual science, which is based on supersensible vision, judges the great cosmic context, as described in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. It says: at the basis of what we now have before us as the physical-sensory world, rooted in it, arises what develops in the depths of our soul as moral impulses, as ideal contemplation, as ideal thought forms, as religious truth courage - one must only see that in the right light. There it develops, as the germ develops in miniature in the plant. When once this whole world, which surrounds us as the world of matter and of force, will have decayed, will be a corpse, will have been scattered into space, what will be the end? The end, when all around us is scattered into the world, will be that which now arises as a spiritual germ in the human soul. This atomization, this annihilation of matter, this annihilation of strength, that is what we are looking forward to. But just as the human soul rises out of the human corpse at death, so that which lives as a germ in the human soul, that which is the moral impulse, that which is the ethical idea, that which is the elevation to the Divine, rises out of out of this pulverization] that which lives as a germ in the human soul, that which is moral impulse, that which is ethical idea, that which is elevation to the divine; this is what shapes the future, this is the new world. The future of the world does not come into being through the transformation of the seemingly transforming substance and the seemingly transforming force, but through that which now lives in our soul as soul-knowledge, as spirit-knowledge. There, in the human breast, the future lives, even if only as a germ. And because we are looking at a cosmic future that has its germ in this inner being of ours, we must have the courage to fight against this law of the conservation of matter and energy. We must have the courage to lead back to its true basis that which, in the 19th century, developed out of a scientific attitude into a world and life view. We must build the bridge between what is external and sensual and what is inwardly spiritual and real. We cannot build it as long as we are hindered by the illusion of the conservation of matter and energy. We can only build it through the newly perceived spiritual world, which opens up a thinking to us that has grown with social life.

This social life, if man is able to look into his inner being, so that he says to himself with all inner conscientiousness, with all inner strength and emotion: And if everything that my eyes see, what my ears hear, what I feel in the outer world – that is, everything that science alone speaks of – then what I now awaken in my inner being will live on as a metamorphosis, then what lives is moral value, what gives man his dignity from within. Spiritual science establishes the reality of the ethical, the reality of the moral, the reality of the religious, because it does not succumb to the illusion of the eternity of force and matter. Look at the metamorphosis of power and matter as described by Charles Eliot in 1909, and you will see that a spiritual-scientific worldview, as advocated here, has within it the power to say yes to spiritual life as the seed of the future. And let us imagine a human community that lives with such souls. Let us imagine that people enter social life with this sense of responsibility - not with illusions of the causality of social life - then we may hope that from such inner conscientiousness, from such a cosmic sense of responsibility, something will arise that can bring the social organism to recovery. That which emerges from a new spiritual science is the way to healthy thinking.

It is also that which, when present in a sufficiently large number of people, can be brought into the right relationship to the situation of the present human being. But that which cannot build this bridge, to which the moral order of the world must appear as no more than an episode, that will - if it alone is to be valid, if it seeks to push aside everything else, if it is opposed to a true spiritual-scientific world view, will always be reduced to absurdity, as everything that we have gloriously advanced in has been reduced to absurdity by the terrible catastrophes of recent years. Those who cannot learn from the lessons of these last years cannot see what social forces lie in the idea that seeks a new way of thinking based on observation – a way of thinking that can only be mastered by a sufficiently large number of people, and that only when it is equipped with the great ideological issues that confront us today.

Dear attendees! I have thus basically expressed, albeit only in sketchy terms, what I want to say today as an introduction to what I will say in more detail and in more specific terms the day after tomorrow. And now that my task has been fulfilled, I would like to briefly return to some of the things I said here last time, because otherwise the wrong conclusions are always drawn when certain things are not mentioned at all.