The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Among the somewhat authoritative judgments that have been made in the present day about today's chaotic world situation, one of the most significant is undoubtedly that of the Englishman John Maynard Keynes, who, in his book The Economic Consequences of the Versailles Peace, offers such an assessment of the current general world situation. Keynes was undoubtedly led to such a judgment by his external circumstances. During the war, he was assigned to the English Treasury and was in a position to form a basis for such a judgment from the underlying facts that presented themselves to him there. On the other hand, he was among the envoys, among the collaborators of the Versailles Peace Treaty itself. However, he resigned from this position as early as June 1919. And this resignation, like the conclusions he reaches in his book on the economic consequences of the peace treaty, are precisely what sheds significant light on the way this personality relates to the current world situation. Keynes, too, was one of those who, when they first went to Versailles, probably still saw something of a prophet and organizer of the current world situation in the personality of Woodrow Wilson, who had come over from America and was received with such great glory. He has thoroughly changed his mind. And those of us who, even at a time when Woodrow Wilson was being declared a world liberator by an enormous crowd, including from this place here in Switzerland, has given his opinion that the empty and abstract arguments of Woodrow Wilson and his manifestos cannot contribute anything to the real reconstruction of the destroyed civilization, may well point to such an authoritative judgment today. In his book, Keynes describes, as far as personality is concerned, with an intense vividness — one might say. He describes how Woodrow Wilson arrives in Versailles, how he participates in the meetings, how slow his thinking is, how he, so to speak, always lags behind. While the others are already well ahead with their assessment of the situation, he is still far behind with something that was said five, six or ten sentences ago. He is a man who suffers from the slowness of his thinking. Much else is vividly described in relation to the personality of this alleged liberator of the world.

But Keynes also speaks about the other leading figures who were involved in this peace agreement, and speaks urgently. He describes how Clemenceau is a man who has actually slept through the whole development of European humanity since the 1770s, who actually wanted nothing more from this peace settlement than to reduce the world, in a sense, to what was available in Europe in the 1770s. And he then describes no less vividly and graphically how Lloyd George is actually superior to everyone else, how he has a certain instinct for sensing what is being thought and done and wanted by the personalities around him. And from all this one can see how difficult it is today, even for an astute observer like Keynes, to gradually arrive at a judgment through the force of the facts. That is what contributes more and more to the increasing chaos in the world today: that the leading personalities, the affairs that public life has brought to the surface in recent decades, are not at all up to the great demands of the present time. This is precisely what emerges from the book and its assessment. It shows that all the destructive forces at work in the world cannot be brought under any kind of judgment by those who have been called to leadership by public life. And since Keynes saw that nothing could come out of this conference that would lead to a healthy and prosperous further development of European civilization, he resigned from office right at the beginning of the negotiations. And the way he constructs his judgment is extraordinarily significant. In the present situation, one really only needs to construct something real on judgments that are based on such foundations. Keynes' judgment is, I would say, calculated. Only those personalities who have a certain sense and instinct for calculating the future with all sobriety from still existing forces in a certain way can really have a say in the present. They should be listened to with special attention, because the great majority of judgments made today are based on some kind of nationalistic or other prejudices, while only a few people are able to form objective judgments from the facts themselves. Keynes is one of them. He considers what might follow from what the three leading figures at Versailles have cooked up, especially in economic terms, and what would have to happen to the economic life of European civilization if nothing else occurred but the forces that were brought to bear at Versailles. And Keynes calculates – I say explicitly and I emphasize it very strongly – Keynes calculates that nothing other than the economic ruin of Europe can follow from this peace agreement. Of course, the intellectual and political ruin of Europe must be connected with the economic ruin.

Thus the book about the economic consequences of the Versailles Peace Treaty is interesting enough just because of its content. But in some respects it becomes even more interesting because of its conclusion. In this conclusion Keynes openly admits that he has no idea what should be done or wanted to get out of the chaos into which we are entering. And in making this confession, he says something that is actually extraordinarily significant, which he summarizes in a single sentence. He says that one can only hope that some salvation for European civilization will come from the combination of all the forces involved in a new state of mind and new imaginations.

My dear attendees, this is said by a man who has been immersed in the circumstances, who was called upon to participate, who, through his analysis, shows that he is a person who can calculate soberly in the broadest sense. A new state of mind, a gathering of all forces for a new view of the powers at work in the public life of humanity, where can these be found? How can we arrive at such a view?

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it will not take much impartiality to convince you that the first step in this direction is to examine the essentials of contemporary public life without any prejudice and to ask ourselves: What are the actual forces at work in contemporary public life? In earlier lectures, which I had the honor of giving here, I pointed out what kind of historical considerations should be used to arrive at the truly effective forces in human life. Above all, one must look for certain symptoms that vividly illustrate what is at work in the depths of human development. And so I would like to point out something that is perhaps one of the most outstanding forces that has worked with the forces of destruction. I would like to point out the basis of the world view of the present day, but in the way it has developed over the last three to four centuries. I do not wish to give the impression that a Weltanschhauung, founded in the solitude of a thinker, can now go out and influence every single soul, and that public affairs can, as it were, come into being out of such a Weltanschhauung. That is certainly not the case. But just as public affairs grow out of the will, out of feeling, out of the emotional life, out of the thoughts of the overall state of the human being, so too does the world view grow out of this overall state of human life, especially of the human soul. And one can see, as in a symptom, what the people of an age are like in their whole work and in their whole activity, when one, so to speak, considers the symptom of the world view, insofar as one wants to point to the world views that are decisive and have come into their own in the present. This determining factor is characterized, in particular, by the fact that everything that has not entered our world view through tradition from ancient times has developed out of the soil of natural science, which seeks to base its knowledge on external material observation alone. What does this natural scientific world view show, when looked at more deeply?

Perhaps only someone who can admire it can judge it correctly. And in earlier lectures, I have certainly expressed my admiration for the scientific world view strongly enough. These remarks, which I am developing here, are not meant to be a criticism of this scientific world view, which is certainly justified in its field. This scientific view, especially in its technical and economic consequences, has led to great fruits of civilization for humanity. But suppose there were some spirit today — it is hardly possible, firstly, given the vast field of scientific knowledge and, secondly, given its specialization — but suppose there were some spirit today that embraced the whole revolution of the scientific view from mathematics and from mechanics up to biology and up to what can be gained from biology for the science of the human soul: such a mind would undoubtedly be able to gain significant insights into certain areas of nature and being. But if such a mind were to ask itself with complete clarity the great and comprehensive human question: What is man in his own essence and in his whole relationship to the world? then the one who stands firmly on the ground of natural science, who is able to correctly assess the scope of scientific knowledge, would have to say: the scientific world view cannot answer these questions about the human being and about the relationship of the human being to the rest of the cosmos. This question remains unanswered, even by the latest physical scientific knowledge. There are already some great insights into how man has emerged in outward physical development from lower, animal-like forms to his present human form. But these insights have led man far away from what man is in his relationship to spiritual worlds. Those who cannot admit this to themselves without prejudice will also be unable to form an opinion about the inner impulses from which present-day humanity acts, whether it is organizing public affairs or destroying public organizations. For even if we are not always conscious of how we think consciously about the nature of man and his position in the world, even if we are not always conscious of the thoughts we entertain in this position, these thoughts, however unconsciously or instinctively they may be, they work in our feelings and in our decisions of will. They therefore become the creators of all public, spiritual, political and economic life. Anyone who wants to see things correctly will realize that economic interrelationships, since they are made by people, but since people in turn act out of their soul impulses, the economic interrelationships of the world are also a reflection of what people are able to feel about themselves and about their relationship to the world. Now we have to say: the scientific world view has grown large over all that is non-human. It cannot provide any answers about the human being itself. It is extensive when information is required about the sub-human realms. But how does the information that we, as human beings, acquire relate to what we should allow to flow into social life from our ideas and from our inner soul impulses, and in particular into the way we live together with other people and groups of people? Can we receive any impulses for human activity and human coexistence from those areas that lie outside of the human being? This is best shown by observing the relationship between the human being and language.

Language is basically the medium through which everything that leads from person to person comes to life. Through language, we also control economic life. Through language, we inaugurate external political and spiritual conditions. Now there is something most remarkable, which unfortunately is not often considered thoroughly enough. When we try to apply our language to scientific knowledge, we can never do anything other than extend the words, the phrases, and everything we use to express natural laws, those natural laws that we today so admire as the great progress of modern humanity, we can do nothing but extend to nature what we have formed in words as an expression of inner soul conditions or of conditions in man. Such subtle minds as Goethe's noticed this. That is why Goethe said: Man does not realize how anthropomorphic he is. -— When we say: an elastic ball pushes the other -, and we derive from it the laws of elastic' push in physics, then we basically start from what we have in the word meaning for the push that we carry out in our own organism. And anyone who really wants to investigate will see that everything that can be applied from language to natural science, which deals with the non-human, must be taken from the human being.

How did our language come to have content? It would have come to very little content if we could only imitate the mooing of a cow and other animal sounds. How did our language come to have such content? Those who can look impartially at the course of human development will find that all the content of language comes from the fact that, in times that were indeed behind our civilization, humanity had a certain instinctive-spiritual knowledge, I say: an instinctive-spiritual knowledge with the natural elementary empathy that arises in the human soul. With the impulses of the will, with pictorial imagination, which found expression in myth and mythology, spiritual insights came to man, and out of these spiritual insights he formed the content of the soul , which then became the content of his language in modern times, which is great in that it looked in a certain disdainful way at what instinctive spiritual abilities gave to man in an earlier time. In this modern time, in which one has become great primarily in relation to natural science, in this modern time our words have not been given any new content. And one thing is historically significant in the last two to four centuries: our language, all languages of our civilized world, have lost their old content. No new content could be poured into them because that which cannot provide such content, mere knowledge of nature, is that which has been developed in this very time. And in this time, which we must otherwise admire so much, there took place what may be called the emptying of civilized languages of their old spiritual content.

What did the civilized languages become as a result of losing their old instinctive content and natural science being unable to give them a new one? — They became that which has now reached a certain climax in the present day. They became that which developed into a phrase, and truly nothing that would only have a meaning in a limited area, but what is practiced today by those who exercise world domination is called a phrase. And the four to five years of horror that we have behind us have shown the world domination of the phrase at its peak. Today we live under the world domination of the phrase. What is the remedy for this world domination of the phrase? Only the acquisition of a new spiritual content, a conscious spiritual content. The old spiritual content, acquired by earlier humanity through instinct, which made language the sum of words, not phrases, is gone. Humanity that is truly attached to the present can no longer believe in it. A new conscious spiritual content must be conquered.

That, dear attendees, is what the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which has its representatives in the Dornach building, is consciously striving for: to conquer conscious spiritual knowledge in addition to scientific knowledge, which provides such great insights into everything gives such wonderful insights into everything outside of the human being, to conquer with the same clarity of thought, logical rigor, and scientific conscientiousness, spiritual knowledge that can now provide information about the great question of the nature of the human being and the human being's place in the rest of the cosmos. However, before one can proceed to such knowledge, one must admit that, although the external scientific method must be imitated in its conscientiousness today by all knowledge, it cannot itself lead to spiritual knowledge. In order to arrive at spiritual knowledge, it is necessary that the human being of today, above all, brings to bear those inner abilities that are to arise precisely on the soil of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science meant here. I have shown how man can come to such knowledge through his own soul life, for example in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' and in the second part of my 'Occult Science'. However, one thing is necessary - I have emphasized it here often enough - one thing is necessary for man, to which he now only surrenders with the greatest reluctance. It is necessary to have what I would call intellectual modesty. Modern man is so proud of his intellectual development. Intellectual modesty only asserts itself when, for example, one says to oneself: Suppose you give a five-year-old child a volume of Goethe's poetry. What will the child do with a volume of Goethe's lyric poems? It would probably tear it up or play with it. It certainly would not get from the volume of Goethe's lyric poems what an adult can get and what the volume of Goethe's lyric poetry is actually meant for. The abilities that can determine it, that can make it possible for him to let the volume of Goethean poetry take effect on him in the right way, must first be cultivated in the child bit by bit. For this development of childlike abilities, one surrenders a lot in human life today. But that a person, when he has grown up and is equipped only with the abilities that one can acquire in normal, external, sensual human life today, that he could then stand before the world itself as the five-year-old child stands before the volume of Goethe's lyrical poems, that he must first develop by taking his soul abilities into his own hands in order to extract from what what is presented to him in the world, something that can be compared to what the child first draws from the volume of Goethe's lyrical poems when he has grown up, in other words, what he does with the volume of Goethe's lyrical poems at the age of twenty-five – yes, to admit that, in his intellectual arrogance, the man of the present does not want to do that. But this must be asserted above all, that in order to truly know oneself, to finally fulfill the Apollonian saying “Know thyself,” it is necessary to take hold of the human soul faculties. How this is possible in detail will be the subject of tomorrow's lecture.

Today I would just like to emphasize in general terms that it is indeed possible for the human being to strengthen their thinking through a certain treatment of their thinking, which I will describe tomorrow. This enables their thinking to no longer passively , but that it is inwardly seized as by a will, becomes active, that it becomes more intense, that it occurs in such a way that the person knows through inner experience in direct perception: now thinking has become a spiritual-soul seeing. While in ordinary thinking one is dependent on one's thinking apparatus, on one's body, on the nervous system, and while, just when one develops thinking a little, one sees through this dependence, one also knows that when thinking is strengthened in the appropriate ways, which are described in the books mentioned, it becomes free from the body, it becomes an activity that is no longer guided by the instrument of the body. Certain meditations, to which one devotes oneself with the same objectivity with which one conducts an experiment in a chemical laboratory or observes the stars in an observatory, empower this thinking and free it from the tool of the body. It is only when this thinking is to be used for a real world-view that self-discipline of the will must be applied. When self-discipline of the will, together with inner meditation, develops into will-imbued thinking that is independent of the body, only then does spiritual knowledge arise, conscious spiritual knowledge, which in turn can give man what instinctive spiritual knowledge once gave him: content for speech, content for language. The moment man ceased to feel within himself the impulse to give content to his speech out of himself, the moment instinctive spiritual perception ceased and was replaced by external natural perception, which cannot give content to speech, the development of man in a certain respect came to a standstill. But man must recognize from the signs of the present that he must acquire self-knowledge and knowledge of humanity through conscious inner soul work, through the development of his thinking to soul-vision, and that only through this can arise what in turn gives content to our language, what can eliminate the world domination of the phrase.

But such knowledge also gives us the insight that the external world, as we observe it with our senses, is something we grow into in the course of our lives between birth and death, that these external observations cannot give us the actual spiritual, that this, the actual spiritual content, is brought into the world by us, that we bring it with us, in that we descend from spiritual worlds — as I said, we will talk about these things in more detail tomorrow — through birth into this physical world, that when we speak of the spiritual content, we must look at what people carry within, what they develop only through the instrument of their body, little by little, from year to year. It is not the ever-increasing wealth of the world's experience that brings the spirit into reality, but what we, as human individuals, bring into the world through our birth. Today people are only afraid of what man himself brings into the world. They are afraid because they believe that if he asserts it, it would lead to fantasy. But there are ways to avoid this fantasy. But anyone who realizes that, fundamentally, all spiritual content must come from human individuality will readily admit that a fruitful development of this spiritual life can only come about if the human being is given the full opportunity for human development, if he is not dependent in his spiritual development and in the expression and revelation of his spirit on any external powers that serve only here in the physical world. For with the rise of pure scientific knowledge, that knowledge which only provides information about what is non-human, there has also arisen, as organically connected with it, the dependence of spiritual life not on what the human being carries into the world through birth, but on what the external state life establishes, on what the economic life makes of the human being. At the same time as the natural sciences were coming of age, we saw the omnipotence of the state develop to the highest degree, with the state stretching its tentacles over everything that is intellectual life; it began to organize school life, and economic life, on the other hand, became decisive for the lives of those personalities who were able to enter precisely this intellectual field. But this has gone hand in hand with the fact that the human being has lost the ability to give birth out of himself a spiritual content, to give his words a spiritual content. Therefore, in the age of natural science, the dependence of spiritual life on political and economic powers has developed, and under this influence the world domination of phrase has developed.

This is the first link in the chain of present-day organizations that are working towards destruction: the world domination of phrase, of empty talk. If a person is incapable of investing words with the spiritual substance that he draws directly from his connection with the spiritual world, then words must become empty phrases; words must gradually become so ingrained in a person that he is, as it were, merely carried away by the mechanisms of language. And unfortunately we see this all too clearly emerging in modern times: that which breaks out with elemental force from the spiritual and soul inner being of the human being, which, as it were, only discharges into language, disappears. Life in the mechanisms of language becomes more and more intense, and it has reached its climax in recent years. Because people, by talking to each other about the civilized world, were talking directly or indirectly through the print of nothing, and by the words only taking place in their mechanism, that which was driven by chaotic forces to destruction developed.

I know very well that there is little inclination in the present day to go into these intimacies of human life when the causes of the present chaos are to be discussed. But no one will gain clear ideas and clear judgments about these causes if they do not want to go into these intimacies of the human soul. Not until this happens will harmony replace chaos in public affairs; not until spiritual deepening, through genuine spiritual science, gives rise in man to the urge to give his words full content. For that which certainly first appears in the scientific field, that which is born in the scientific field, it pushes its way into the other habits of life, it becomes the one that sets the tone in public life. And anyone who has an eye for observing life sees how, in the end, only the final consequences of what is ultimately present as the characteristic feature play out in everyday life, where worldviews are formed. Indeed, people have not wanted to properly survey the connections that arise there for a long time. Here in Switzerland, a blustering spirit once worked, I explicitly call him a blustering spirit so that you can see that I am not overestimating him, Johannes Scherr. He spoiled a lot with his blustering tone and his blustering judgment, which was also in the healthy thoughts that he had in what he said publicly. In the 1960s and 1970s, he made a very significant judgment based on a truly penetrating observation of historical and social life. He said: If the materialistic demon, which now only relies on that which man sees and experiences in the external world, continues to prevail, it will also enter into everything that man does in external public affairs; it will enter into economic and financial life, and a social structure will develop that will finally lead to the fact that one must say: Nonsense, you triumphed!

My dear audience! We don't like to listen to such people. This judgment of Johannes Scherr has also been ignored. But now, fifty years later, it must be said for those who look at everything connected with the so-called world catastrophe: the words of this world observer Johannes Scherr, which culminated in the sentence: You will have to say: Nonsense, you triumphed – the words have been fulfilled! For Johannes Scherr saw well how that which is spirit has gradually been squeezed out of human life, how the materialistic un-spirit has taken the place of the spirit, and he was able to turn this observation into a true prophecy. The world simply does not know that what is initially only a worldview, only a theory, that basically after two generations becomes moral, public action, becomes deed. Oh, the world should be much, much better at noticing certain connections! It should form a much more thorough judgment, a real judgment about certain things!

A philosopher, Avenarius, also worked here for a time. He is a kindred spirit of Mach, who in turn had a student work here in Zurich quite recently. These people have drawn the consequences in the field of world view from the current materialistic lack of spirit – I call it a lack of spirit because mere knowledge of nature cannot infuse our language with substantial content. They, the philosophers, Avenarius and so on, have drawn the consequences for their world view from the materialistic lack of spirit of the time. The philosophy they have gained, and the whole way in which people like Avenarius live, is good bourgeois. Of course no one will recognize in these people anything other than good citizens. But today something else should be recognized. Today, we should study the question based on the facts: What has become of the state philosophy of Lenin and Trotsky? What is the state philosophy of the Bolsheviks? It is the Avenarius-Mach school of thought! It is not just a matter of the temporal connection that a number of these people studied here in Zurich; it is the inner factual connection that what lives in the human soul as a world-view thought in one generation becomes action in the third generation. And in these deeds one can see the causes as they play out in the world. But today's humanity only wants abstract logical judgments and does not understand that something that is logically deduced is not yet a judgment of fact, that one must look with real spiritual insight into the real context, into the context of reality, and then seemingly most dissimilar, the bourgeois world view of Avenarius, which, however, emerged from a materialistic lack of spirit, is revived deep in that which fundamentally destroys all human society, which leads to the gravediggers of all European civilization.

At the same time, this indicates that this world domination of the phrase is not something that applies only to a narrow field. It is something that permeates our entire public life as a fundamental force, especially in the field of the spirit. And there will be no salvation until the spiritual life emancipates itself from that which has emerged as the basis for this phraseology, until the spiritual life emancipates itself from the external political or legal life, from the economic life, and to build only on what the spirit itself brings forth from itself, that is, what the individual human being produces from what he carries into the sensual world through birth from the spiritual world. To arrive at spiritual content is the only way to overcome the world domination of phrase. And there is something else closely associated with phrase. Because the phrase does not connect the context of the word with the content, the word very easily becomes a carrier of lies in the age of the phrase. And it is a straight path from the phrase to the lie. Hence the domination, the triumph of lies in the last four to five years, which in turn is so much a part of the process of destruction we are heading for if spirit is not called into the place of the un-spirit!

So much for the one area of public life, the area of intellectual life. But there are other areas as well. But all of them are dependent on the intellectual life to a certain extent. If the intellectual life is dominated by empty phrases and meaningless talk, then the feelings and perceptions cannot be given full expression. But that which develops in the feelings and perceptions in social life, that which is kindled in the interaction from person to person, as one person sympathizes with another, that is custom, that is what emerges from the social community into the realm of custom. And it is only from this customary practice that law can develop historically. But this law can only develop if the sentiments that arise in the interaction between people do not become imbued with empty phrases, if these sentiments are linked to words that are full of substance and to speech that is supported by thought. And in the age of empty phrases, the feeling between human beings cannot be kindled in the appropriate way either; only an external relationship between human beings can arise. The consequence is that in the age in which empty phrases develop in the field of social intellectual life, conventions develop in the field of social feeling instead of the direct substantial relationship between human beings. of man to man, which can at most be regulated by external treaties, that even between nations one raves about treaties because one does not come to the elementary living out of that which can be revealed from person to person. This age of convention makes a second area of our public life so empty of content: it deserts human coexistence, as the phrase deserts the spiritual life, the life of the soul.

This is what leads to the mere external man, not to the right born from within the man. For this right can only be ignited when the word borne by thought flows from the head to the heart. Just as real right, which can flourish in social life alone, belongs to the real spiritual life, which is filled with substantial spirit, so convention belongs to the spiritual life that lives in phrase. Thus we have characterized two areas of our public life in the present.

The third area from which public life emerges is human volition. A conscious will, a will that places a person in human society in such a way that this person brings something into society that flows from his or her own human nature, cannot come about unless it is driven by real, substantial, spiritual content. The phrase is unsuitable for evoking a real conscious will. Just as spiritual life becomes a mere phrase when it becomes dependent on the external life of the state or of the law, or on the external life of economics; just as the life of the law itself is absorbed in convention when it can only be nourished by empty phrases, so the sphere of economic life, the sphere of external human coexistence, is supported, not by the practice of real life but by mere routine, when the will is not inspired by the spirit. Therefore, alongside convention and empty phrases, we see the emergence in the age from which our present age has developed, in the sphere of life and in the outward expression of life, in the sphere of economic life, of routine everywhere.

What is meant by this: our economic life is dominated by routine – it may become clear from this if I say: a realistic consideration of our public life has shown that in the field of economic life, that chaos must end, which is prevalent in the present, where everyone only wants to acquire out of their own selfishness and no one is aware of the context in which their own production is placed in relation to the production of the whole. Only when we realize that this economic life, which has gradually descended into chaos, can only be healed by associating the most diverse professional and life spheres with one another, by people who belong together in different occupations really integrating with one another, so that associations arise from occupation to occupation, that associations arise between the consumers of a profession and the producers of the profession, in short, that our economic life acquires a structure so that the producers, by organizing themselves internally, join forces with their consumers, so that the individual who is a consumer or producer in a profession can see how his consumption and production into some economic cycle - only when the person lives in such an organization, when our economic life is based on association, only then does the individual see how he contributes to the economic process through what he produces or how he participates through what he consumes. Then the individual human being not only knows how to handle this or that in some routine of life, but he also knows that what he does belongs to the overall process of the economic life of humanity. Then he acts out of other impulses. Then what he does is not dominated by a superficial routine, but by a life practice that is only possible if one can connect an idea to it, if one places oneself economically within the overall organism of humanity. Because life has become dominated by empty phrases and because human interaction has become dominated by convention, people have not found the opportunity to associate with each other in this way. They have been turned away from the tasks they face and have become mere routine workers. And routine spread from the individual mechanical action to the mechanism of our entire organization and our entire financial system. The phrase-filled time became the time of the routiniers. And the routiniers brought about that catastrophe, which shows this or that on the surface, but which in its depths shows the causes that lie in the area that has just been characterized.

If we examine the things that dominate contemporary life with an open mind, without sympathy or antipathy, we have to say: in the field of intellectual life, empty phrases; in the field of legal life, conventions; and in the field of economic life, routine. Only the forces that I will describe tomorrow can lead to salvation. This is when the phrase is replaced by speech that is filled with a substantial spirit, with a spirit that has been contemplated, and that can only come about in an independent spiritual life that brings forth what man has to bring into the outer life, which does not want to dominate this spiritual life like the laws of nature, which are gained through outer experience. The conventions of what is externally established must give way to the living interplay that can arise when, on a strictly democratic basis, all mature human beings enter into that which is generally human affairs, which the human being does not bring in through his birth, but which can only develop in the human coexistence of mature human beings. Only when man arrives at such a world-view from the phrase-free, thought-filled word, can the true practice of life develop out of the routine that clings to ephemeral economic objects. that testify and reveal that what is achieved on the ground of economic life is more than what is accomplished by the machine, that it is a link in the overall process of human development on earth. We will not stop at this if we stand as a routine worker at our machine, in our factory, in our bank or anywhere else; we will only stop if the threads of association go from one person to the next, if one person learns from another how he or she is connected to the social organization closest to him or her through his or her consumption and production. What these people achieve together through their combined efforts and associations will be something more than what the human being can achieve in economic life. Man must work, but through his economic activity his whole human being rises out of the transitory and into the eternal. And he will experience from his economic life that precisely by becoming a practitioner in this life, he has a school of practice, the results of which he can carry even through death.

Thus it follows from an observation of the present life, which is more directed towards the spirit, from the three most characteristic domains, that of phrase, that of convention, that of routine, the necessity to work according to a threefold structure of social life, according to a recovery of our spiritual life through its independence, through a recovery of our legal life, which can only be freed from convention when living democratic interaction occurs between all mature human beings, and through a recovery of economic life in which the independence of economic life abolishes routine in favor of a real life practice. But this can only happen when people associate with each other, because it is only through this social interaction that something arises out of what the individual can produce, something that leads all of humanity beyond itself, from mere matter to spirit. Phrase means unspiritualness in the realm of spiritual life; convention means unspiritualness in the realm of the state and of the law; routine means unspiritualness in the realm of economic life. In place of unspiritualness, spirit must come. How it can, and with what forces it can, is what I will attempt to describe tomorrow. For only when, in place of empty phrases, there is again speech that is borne by thought, and only through this, when in place of convention there is the legal life that is imbued with human social feeling, and only through this, when in place of economic routine there is spiritualized economy , an economy ordered by the spirit and steeped in associations, only in this way will our entire public life be healed from what ails it in the present, one must say: what would destroy it if no healing process were to occur.

In the present, unfortunately, we only notice too much the phrase, the convention, the routine. We see the result: chaos. For the future we need the thought-borne word, the spirit filled with substance, the living law that results from the interaction of all mature human beings. That is spirit instead of un-spirit at this point. In the field of economic life we need the associations that arise from the spirit, we need the replacement of routine with the true, spirit-filled economy. In the economic field this means replacing the unspiritual spirit of the present with the spirit of the future. And only by doing so can we rise from pessimistic moods, which are all too justified today when we look at the world around us, to a certain hope for the future. We do not build on what could be thrown at us somewhere today as hope for the future, but that we build on our own human will, which wants to stake its power, its endurance, its fire, out of the present for the future, the victory of the spirit over the un-spirit.

[There follows a brief discussion).

Closing remarks

The first speaker in the discussion initially concluded his remarks by pointing out that an international language serves as a unifying element in humanity. I do not want to go into the pros and cons that can be asserted against such an international language, because this can only be decided through extensive discussion. But I will assume that those who strive to establish such an international language have a certain right. We know what has been tried and done in this direction. Well, it is not enough with the associative way in which such a language has been pursued so far, because such a language would still have to find completely different ways to people than it has found so far if it is to have a truly practical significance. But I do not want to speak out against such a language. Because, you see, on the one hand I know that what arises artificially in our time also bears the characteristic properties of all that our time can produce: a certain intellectualism, a certain intellectualism. And I cannot help but confess that it seems to me that precisely that which has brought us down today, intellectualism, the anti-elemental, was also essentially active in the construction of today's attempted international language. I can very well appreciate the view of those who say: what will ultimately become of that originality of human self-revelation in poetry, in speech, which is truly connected with the innermost being of man, if we pour an abstract language over all mankind? On the other hand, I have also heard some truly wonderful poems in Esperanto, and I must say that I have already tried to achieve a certain objectivity in this matter.

However, what I have presented today, ladies and gentlemen, is not at all affected by the question of such a language. Because, hypothetically speaking, if such a language were to be poured out on humanity, it would be unable to contain anything other than empty phrases if we did not come to a new revival of the substantial spirit. Whether we ultimately turn phrases in Esperanto or in English or in German or French or in Russian is irrelevant. What matters is that we find a way to bring substantial spirit into Russian, German, English, French and Esperanto. And that is one of the questions I have addressed today.

So, as I said, I do not want to say anything against the efforts of those who go for such an abstract language. I believe that perhaps the one point of view could be not entirely unfruitful if it were possible to have an international language for that which really lives in international economic life, for example, that then perhaps the possibility would be given for the actual spiritual life, which after all must always must always arise from individuality, to liberate the other languages. This can only happen if they can develop individually, just as the spirit must develop individually, if their development is not to be disturbed by the lust for conquest and domination on the part of political powers. I believe, however, that the hopes of the Esperantists and similar people are still on much weaker ground than the hopes of those who believe that if only a sufficiently large number of people can come together today to work towards a renewal of our intellectual life from the real spirit, then a better time could dawn, even if it is not perfect. Those who see reality as it is cannot belong to the group that hopes for an earthly paradise. I believe that the latter type of person is still more in touch with reality than those who hope for an international language.

What was said by the second speaker was essentially an interpretation of what I said in part of my lecture, and I would just like to note that when discussing such talking about such things, that it is necessary not to regard human beings as if one could simply approach them and make them better by teaching them. In public life I have often used the image for the pure teaching method: If I have a stove in front of me, then I can say: it is your stove duty to warm the room, it is your categorical imperative to warm the room. I can now preach on and on, with all Kant's insight I can preach on and on, it will not get warm. If I remain silent and just put wood in the stove and light it, the stove will warm the room without any preaching. It is the same with people. If the whole human being is in question, if not only that is in question which can, for example, provide a theoretical echo in the human being, if the whole human being is in question, preaching is of little use, because then one is dealing above all with the human being standing within a social totality. And the human being in a social totality is something different from the individual, unique human being. If we demand of the individual human being that he should somehow contribute to the betterment of humanity through a concentrated life of thought, then it must first be possible for such a concentrated life of thought to develop in a fruitful way. Ultimately, this is only possible in a free spiritual life. Further explanations can be found in the “Key Points of the Social Question”. The question today is not so much to examine what is good for the individual, but what must be brought about in the human social organism so that the individual can truly develop.

In 1894, during the nineties, I published for the first time my “Philosophy of Freedom”. In it, as a consequence of a spiritual world view, there is also a certain ethic that is built precisely on the individual human being. But there is a prerequisite, and this prerequisite must be made by everyone who grasps the problem of freedom in a serious and realistic sense: that, if it is possible to have intuitions that establish human freedom, then it must also be possible for that individual human being to bring forth something that can be built upon in social coexistence. But our attention must constantly be directed to this social life. Therefore I may say that in a certain sense my Philosophy of Freedom is supplemented by my Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage (Key Points in the Social Question). Just as my Philosophy of Freedom investigates the source of the forces that lead to freedom in the individual human being, so my Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage investigates how the social organism must be constructed so that the individual human being can develop freely. And these are basically the two great questions that must occupy us in contemporary public life. A real answer to this question will at the same time be able to shed some light into the chaos.

I would like to note that I have organized today's and tomorrow's lectures in such a way that today's lecture should, so to speak, be more of a critique of the times, pointing out what has been in the present so far, that this present has become what we see it as, drifting into chaos, equipped with tremendous destructive powers. Tomorrow I would like to explain what needs to be done to enable national life in the broadest sense and the life of civilized humanity in general to emerge from the chaos. I would like to show how the forces that already lie within man, and that lie particularly in human coexistence, can be unleashed, but how they are fettered today. Therefore, the positive, to which the last speaker obviously wanted to point, will be more in my tomorrow's lecture than in my today's. But it had to be pointed out, what we are suffering from, so that a knowledge of the will can be built on this knowledge of the present, which is necessary for a prosperous development in the future.

But I would like to mention one more thing in conclusion. Those who are serious about the great issues of the present must not think in a traditional sense, they must not be followers of something similar to a “thousand-year Reich” or the like, they must not think that we can establish a paradise on earth here, but they must think that every reality can only develop in accordance with its own conditions of existence, that within the life between birth and death one can only come to a 'yes' in this life if one is able to constantly supplement the imperfections of physical life with the prospect of a spiritual life: One of the greatest mistakes of our time is that a large number of people gradually want everything that makes life worth living to come from the mere external life. And this is how social questions are formulated today: How must the external life be designed to give people everything they imagine a paradise would offer? Those who ask the question in this way will never come to an answer. You can only come to a true, genuine answer if you are imbued with a sense of reality. And I will take the liberty of speaking tomorrow about what such a sense of reality can give as an answer to the great question of the present.

Published in The Golden Blade, 1977. It is the seventh of twelve lectures in the volume Goetheanism as an Impulse for Transformation ... Human Science and Social Science.

It seems that it would be useful to consider matters concerned with the social life of the present in the light of our recent studies of Goethe. The nineteenth century represents a very significant turning-point in the history of mankind, particularly in relation to the social life of our own time. The middle of the century brought a much greater change in ways of thinking than is generally appreciated. When considering this change one could certainly start from personalities who were not German, for example Shaftesbury and Hemsterhuis. But these examples from England or Holland would not lead us so deeply into our theme as the study of Goethe can do. At the present time, when so much—far more than people realise—is tending towards the destruction of all that springs from middle Europe, it may be of use to link up with these things, which should live on in humanity in a way quite different from the way imagined by most Germans today.

If one looks at the present situation honestly and without prejudice, one cannot help feeling oppressed if one remembers a saying by Herman Grimm—the saying of an outstanding man who lived not very long ago. For this one need not be a German, but one needs to have some feeling for the culture of middle Europe. Herman Grimm once said that there are four personalities to whom a German can look if he wishes to find, in a certain sense, the direction for his life. These four are Luther, Frederick the Great, Goethe and Bismarck. Grimm says that if a German cannot look in the direction given by these four personalities, he feels unsupported and alone among the nations of the world.

In the nineties many people had no doubt at all that this remark was correct (though I was not one of them), but today it can give us a feeling of oppression. For one must admit: Luther does not live on effectively in the German tradition; Goethe has never been a living influence, as we have often had to emphasise, and Frederick the Great and Bismarck belong to conditions which no longer exist. Thus—according to Herman Grimm's remark—the time would have come already in which a German would have to feel unsupported and alone among the nations of the world. People do not feel deeply enough to realise fully in their soul what this signifies: less than three decades ago something could be taken as a matter of course by an enlightened spirit—and today it is quite impossible. If present-day men were not so superficial, many things would be felt much more deeply. It can sometimes be heartbreaking how little the events of the world are felt.

Looking back before the nineteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, we can observe a significant impulse. It was the impulse working in Schiller when he wrote his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man; this was the time, too, when Goethe was stirred by his dealings with Schiller. They led Goethe to express the impulse which lay behind Schiller's “Aesthetic Letters” in his own tale, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.” You can read about the connection between Schiller's “Aesthetic Letters” and Goethe's fairy-tale in my recent small book on Goethe.

When Schiller wrote these “Letters”, his intention was not merely to write a literary essay, but to perform a political deed. At the beginning of the “Letters” he refers to the French Revolution and tries in his own way to say what may be thought about the will behind it, and behind the whole revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. He had no particular expectation as to what would be achieved through a great political change, of which the French revolutionaries hoped so much. He hoped much more for a thorough self-education of man, which he regarded as a necessity of his time.

Let us consider once more the basic conception of these “Letters.” Schiller seeks to answer, in his own way, the question: how does man achieve real freedom in his social life? Schiller would never have expected that men would be led to freedom simply by giving the right form to the social institutions in which they lived. He asks rather that by work upon himself, by self-education, man should reach this condition of freedom within the social order. Schiller believed that man has first to become inwardly free before he can achieve freedom in the external world. And he says: Man has his existence between two powerful influences. On one side he faces the influence coming from physical nature; this Schiller calls the influence of natural necessity. It includes everything produced by the sense-nature of man in the way he desires and so on. And he says: If a man obeys this influence, he cannot be free.

Opposed to the influence of the senses there is another—the influence of rational necessity. Man can commit himself to follow rational necessity, as the other pole of his existence. But then he cannot be a truly free man, either. If he follows in a logical way this rational necessity, it is still something that compels him. And if this rational necessity is consolidated into the laws of an external State, or something of that kind, in obeying such laws he is still compelled. So man is placed between reason and sensuality. His sensuality is a necessity for him, not a freedom. His reason is also a necessity, though a spiritual one; under it, he is not free.

For Schiller, man can be free only if he does not follow in a one-sided way either the influence of the senses or that of reason, but succeeds in bringing the influence of reason into closer accord with his humanity; when, that is, he does not simply submit like a slave to logical or legal necessity, but makes the content of the law, the content of rational necessity, truly his own.

Here Schiller, in comparison with Kant, whom unfortunately he otherwise followed in many ways, is a much freer spirit. For Kant regarded absolute obedience to what he calls duty—that is, rational necessity—as the highest human virtue. “Duty, thou great and sublime name ”, Kant says, on the only occasion when he becomes poetical, “having nothing that flatters or attracts us...” Schiller says: “I serve my friends willingly, and unfortunately I like to do it. And so it often worries me to find that I am not virtuous.” That is his satirical comment on Kant, who would regard serving one's friends as a duty. Schiller means that while an unfree man may serve his friends as a duty, in obedience to the “categorical imperative,” a free man carries his humanity so far that he does it because he likes to do it, out of love, as an inner matter of course.

Thus Schiller seeks to draw down rational necessity into his human realm, so that a man does not have to submit to it, but is able to practise it as a law of his own nature. The necessity of the senses he seeks to raise up and spiritualise, so that the human being is not simply driven by his sensuality, but can ennoble it, so that he may give it expression, having raised it to its highest level. Schiller believes that when sensuality and reason meet at the centre of his being, man becomes free.

It seems as if present-day man is not properly able to share what Schiller felt when he described this middle condition as the real ideal for human beings. If a mutual permeation of rational necessity and the necessity of the senses were constantly achieved, Schiller held, this ideal condition would be expressed in the creation and appreciation of art.

It is very characteristic of the time of Schiller and Goethe to seek in art a guide for the rest of human activity. The spirit of Goethe rejects everything Philistine and seeks for an ideal condition which is to be achieved in the likeness of genuine art. For the artist creates in a visible medium.  Even if he creates in words, he is working in a sense-perceptible medium. And he would produce something terribly abstract if he gave himself up to rational necessity. He must learn what he is to create from the material itself, and from the activity of shaping it. He must spiritualise the sense-perceptible by giving matter form. Through the formal pattern (Gestalt) that he gives it, matter is enabled to have an effect, not just as matter, hut in the same way that the spiritual has an effect. Thus the artist fuses spiritual and perceptible into one creation. When all that men do in the external world becomes such that obedience to duty and to the law comes about through an inclination akin to that of the artist, and when all that comes from the senses is permeated by spirit, then for individual human beings, and also for the State and the social structure, freedom is achieved, as Schiller understands it.

So Schiller asks: how must the various powers of the soul—rationality, sensuality, aesthetic activity—work together in man, if he is to stand as a free being in the social structure? A particular way for the forces of the soul to work together is what Schiller thought should be aimed at. And he believed that when human beings in whom rational necessity permeates sensual necessity, and sensual necessity is spiritualised by rational necessity—when these human beings form a social order, it will turn out to be a good one, by necessity.

Goethe often talked with Schiller, and corresponded with him, while Schiller was writing his “Aesthetic Letters.” Goethe was a quite different man from Schiller. Schiller had tremendous inner passion as a poet, but he was also a keen thinker. Goethe was not in the same way a keen abstract thinker and he had less poetic passion, but he was equipped with something that Schiller lacked: with fully human, harmonious instincts. Schiller was a man of reflection and reason; Goethe was a man of instinct, but spiritualised instinct. The difference between them became a problem for Schiller. If you read his beautiful essay on “Naive and Sentimental Poetry,” you will always feel that Schiller might just as well have written, if he had wanted to become more personal: On Goethe and Myself. For Goethe is the naive poet, Schiller the sentimental poet. He is simply describing Goethe and himself.

For Goethe, the man of instinct, all this was not so simple. Any kind of abstract philosophical talk, including talk about rational necessity, sensual necessity and the aesthetic approach—for these are abstractions if one contrasts them with one another—was repugnant to Goethe in his innermost being. He was willing to engage in it, because he was open to everything human and because he said to himself: A lot of people go in for philosophising, and that is something one must accept. He never rejected anything entirely. This is most evident when he has to talk about Kant. Here he found himself in a peculiar position. Kant was regarded by Schiller and many others as the greatest man of his century. Goethe could not understand this. But he was not intolerant, or wrapped up in his own opinion. Goethe said to himself: If so many people find so much in Kant, one must let them; indeed, one must make an effort to examine something which to oneself seems not very significant—and perhaps one will find a hidden significance in it after all. I have had in my hands Goethe's copy of Kant's Critique of Judgement; he underlined important passages. But the underlinings became fewer well before the middle, and later disappear altogether. You can see that he never reached the end.

In conversation about Kant, Goethe would not let himself become really involved in the subject. He found it disagreeable to talk about the world and its mysteries in terms of philosophical abstractions. And it was clear to him that to understand the human being in his development from necessity to freedom was not as simple as Schiller had believed. There is something very great in these “Aesthetic Letters,” and Goethe recognised that. But it seemed to him too simple to ascribe all the complications of the soul of man to these three categories: rational necessity, aesthetic impulse, sensual necessity. For him there was so much more in the human soul. And things could not simply be placed side by side in this way.

Hence Goethe was stirred to write his Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, in which not only three but about twenty powers of the soul are described, not in concepts, but in pictorial forms, open to various interpretations. They are headed by the Golden King, who represents (not symbolises) wisdom, the Silver King who represents beautiful appearance, the Bronze King, who represents power, and Love who crowns them all. Everything else, too, indicates soul-forces; you can read this in my article.

Thus Goethe was impelled to conceive this path for the human being from necessity to freedom in his own way. He was the spiritualised man of instinct. Schiller was the man of understanding, but not in quite the usual sense: in him understanding was led over into perception.

Now if we consider honestly the course of history, we can say: this way of looking at things, developed by Schiller in an abstract philosophical way, by Goethe in an imaginative and artistic way, is not only in its form, but also in its content, very remote from present-day men. An intimate older friend of mine, Karl Julius Schröer, who was once responsible for examining candidate teachers for technical schools, wanted to examine these people on Schiller's “Aesthetic Letters:” they were going to have to teach children between the ages of ten and eighteen. They staged a regular agitation! They would have found it quite natural to be questioned about Plato and to have to interpret Platonic Dialogues. But they had no inclination to know anything about Schiller's “Letters on Aesthetic Education,” which represent a certain culmination of modern spiritual life.

The middle of the nineteenth century was a much more incisive point in man's spiritual history than people can realise today. The period before it is represented in Schiller and Goethe; it is followed by something quite different, which can understand the preceding period very little. What we now call the social question, in the widest sense—a sense that humanity has not yet grasped, but should grasp and must grasp later on—was born only in the second half of the nineteenth century. And we can understand this fact only if we ask: why, in such significant and representative considerations as those attempted by Schiller in his “Aesthetic Letters” and represented pictorially by Goethe in his Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, do we find no trace of the peculiar way of thinking we are impelled to develop today about the structure of society—although Goethe in his “Tale” is evidently hinting at political forms?

If we approach the “Aesthetic Letters” and the “Tale” with inner understanding, we can feel the presence in them of a powerful spirituality which humanity has since lost. Anyone reading the “Aesthetic Letters” should feel: in the very way of writing an element of soul and spirit is at work which is not present in even the most outstanding figures today; and it would be stupid to think that anyone could now write something like Goethe's fairy tale. Since the middle of the nineteenth century this spirituality has not been here. It does not speak directly to present-day men and can really speak only through the medium of Spiritual Science, which extends our range of vision and can also enter into earlier conditions in man's history. It would really be best if people would acknowledge that without spiritual knowledge they cannot understand Schiller and Goethe. Every scene in “Faust” can prove this to you.

If we try to discover what main influence was then at work, we find that in those days the very last remnant, the last echo of the old spirituality, was present in men, before it finally faded away in the middle of the nineteenth century and humanity was thrown back on its own resources. It lived on in such a way that a man like Schiller, who thought in abstractions, possessed spirituality in his abstract thinking, and a man who had spiritualised instincts, such as Goethe had, had it living in these instincts. In some way it still lived. Now it has to be found on the paths  of spiritual knowledge; now man has to find his way through to spirituality in freedom. That is the essential thing. And without an understanding of this turning-point in the middle of the nineteenth century, one cannot really grasp what is so important today. Take, for example, Schiller's way of approaching the structure of society. Looking at the French Revolution, he writes his “Aesthetic Letters,” but when he asks, “How should the social order develop?”, he looks at man himself. He is not dealing with the social question in a present-day sense.

Today, when the social question is under review, it is usual to leave out the individual human being, with his inner conflicts, his endeavours to achieve self-education. Only the social structure in general is considered. What Schiller expected to come about through self-education is expected to come through alterations in outer conditions. Schiller says: If men become what they can become at the midpoint of their being, they will create a right social structure as a matter of course. Today it is said: If we bring about a right social structure, human beings will develop as they should.

In a short time the whole way of feeling about this has turned round. Schiller or Goethe could not have believed that through self-education men could bring about a right social structure if they had not been able to feel in man himself the universally human qualities that social life requires. In every human being they saw an image of human society. But this was no longer effective. In those days beautiful, spiritual descriptions of the best self-education could be written—it was all an echo or in a sense a picture of the old atavistic life, but the power to achieve real results was not in it. And today's way of thinking about the best social conditions is equally powerless. It places man in an invented, thought-out social structure, but he is not effectively present there. We must look at human society in general, we must look out at the world and find ourselves there, find the human being.

This is something that only real Spiritual Science can do, in the most far-reaching sense. Take what is objected to most of all in my Occult Science: the course of evolution through Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth; everywhere man is there. Nowhere do you have the mere abstract universe; everywhere man is in some way included; he is not separated from the universe. This is the beginning of what our time instinctively intends, out of impulses that remain quite dark. The time before the middle of the nineteenth century looked at man, and believed it could find the world in man. The time after the middle of the nineteenth century looks only at the world. But that is sterile; it leads to theories which are entirely empty of man. And so Spiritual Science is really serving those dark but justified instincts. What men wish for, without knowing what they want, is fulfilled through Spiritual Science: to look at the external world and to find there the human being. This is still rejected, even regarded with horror; but it will have to be cultivated, if any real recovery in this connection is to come about in the future.

At the same time there must be a development also in the study of man. A real understanding of the social organism will be achieved only when one can see man within it. Man is a threefold being. In every age—except for our own—he has been active in a threefold way. Today he concentrates everything upon a single power in himself, because he has to stand entirely on the single point of his own self in this age of consciousness, and people feel that everything proceeds from this single point. Each man thinks to himself: If I am asked a question, or if life puts a task before me, I myself form a judgment, out of myself. But it is not the entire human being who judges in this way. The human organism has a “man in the middle,” with something above it and something below it; and it is the “man in the middle” who has the capacity to form a judgment and to act on it at any moment. Above is Revelation: what is received through religion or some other form of spiritual revelation and viewed as something higher, something super-sensible. Below, underneath the faculty of judgment, is Experience, the totality of what one has passed through.

Present-day man takes little account of either pole. Revelation—an old superstition that must be overcome! To experience, also, he pays little attention, or he would be more aware of the difference between youthful not-knowing and the knowing that comes through experience. He often gathers little from experience because he does not believe in it. Most people today, when they have grey hair and wrinkles, are not much wiser than they were at twenty. In life a man may get cleverer and cleverer, and yet be just as stupid as before. But experience does accumulate and it is the other pole from revelation. In between stands immediate judgment.

Today, as I have often said, one reads critical judgments written by very young people who have not yet looked round in the world. Old people may write lengthy books and the youngest journalists may review them. That is no way of making progress. Progress can be made when what is achieved in later life is taken as a guide, when age is held to be more capable of judgment through the experience that has been acquired.

Thus man is a threefold being in practical life. If you read my book, Riddles of the Soul, you will find that revelation corresponds to the head of man, the man of nerves and senses; immediate judgment corresponds to the breast man; experience corresponds to the man of the extremities. I could also say: the man of the life of nerves and senses, the man of the rhythmical life, and the man of metabolism. No consideration is given today to this threefold nature of man, and so there is no recognition of what corresponds to it in cosmic terms. This cannot be discerned because of the general unwillingness to rise from the sense-perceptible to the super-sensible.

Today, when a man eats—that is, unites external nourishment with his organism—he thinks: There inside is the organism, which cooks the stuff and takes from it what it needs, and lets the rest pass away unused, and so it goes on. On the other hand, I look out into the world through my senses. I take up the perceptible and transform it by my understanding; I take it into my soul, as I take nourishment into my body, What is out there, what eyes see and ears hear, I then carry within me as a mental picture; what is out there as wheat, fish, meat or whatever, I carry inside me, after having digested it.

Yes, but this leaves out the fact that the substances used in nourishment have their inner aspect. The experience of food through our external senses is not related to our deeper being. With what your tongue tastes and your stomach digests, in the way that can be confirmed by ordinary scientific research, you can maintain your daily metabolism; but you cannot take care of the other metabolism, which leads for example to the change of teeth about the age of seven.

The essential thing in this other metabolism lies in the deeper forces at work in it, which are not observed today by any chemical study. What we take as food has a deep spiritual aspect, and this is very active in man, but only while he sleeps. In your foods live the spirits of the highest Hierarchies, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Hence in your food you have something cosmically formative, and therein lie the forces which provide imperceptibly for the change of teeth, for adolescence, and for the later transformations of the human being. Only the daily metabolism is brought about by the things known to external science. The metabolism which goes through life as a whole is cared for by the highest Hierarchies. And behind the sense-perceptible world are the beings of the Third Hierarchy: Angels, Archangels, and Archai. Hence we can say: sense-perception, Third Hierarchy: foodstuffs, First Hierarchy: and in between is the Second Hierarchy, which lives in the breathing, in all the rhythmic activities of the human organism.

The Bible describes this quite truly. The spirits called the Elohim, together with Jahve, are led into men through the breath. The ancient wisdom was quite correctly aware of these things, in an atavistic way. Thus you are led through a real study of man into a true cosmology.

Spiritual Science re-inaugurates this way of looking at things. It looks for man again in the external world, and brings the entire universe into man. This can be done only if one knows that man is really a trinity, a threefold being. Today both revelation and experience are suppressed; man does not do them justice. He does not do justice to his sense-perceptions, or to the foods he eats, for he regards them merely as material objects. But that is an Ahrimanic distortion, which ignores the deeper life that underlies all created things, of which foodstuffs are an example.

Spiritual Science does not lead to a contempt for matter, but to a spiritualisation of it. If anyone were to look at food with contempt, he would have to learn that Spiritual Science says, in a way that would seem grotesque to him: the highest Hierarchies, Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, they are alive in nutriments.

In our time threefold man is put together in an unclear, chaotic way, and made into a single entity. In social terms, a precisely corresponding picture arises when everything is brought under the single entity of State legalism. In fact, society should be seen as a trinity, composed of three members. First, economic activity, the natural foundation of life. Second, legal regulation, which corresponds to the middle element in man, his rhythmic nature. Third, spiritual life. Now we can see a trend towards making these three realms into one. Economic life, it is said, must be brought gradually under the control of the State. The State should become the only capitalist. Spiritual life came long ago under the dominion of the State. On the one hand we have man, who does not understand himself, and on the other the State, which is not understood, because man no longer finds himself within the social structure.

These three elements—economic life, legal regulation, spiritual life—are as radically different as head, breast and limbs. To burden the State with economic life is as if you wanted to eat with your lungs and heart, instead of with the stomach. Man is healthy only through the separation and co-operation of his three systems. The social organism, too, can be healthy only when the three elements work independently side by side, and are not thrown together in a single entity.

All legal regulation, which corresponds to the breathing, rhythmic system in man, represents a quite impersonal element, expressed in the saying: All men are equal before the law. Nothing personal comes into this; hence it is necessary that all human beings should be concerned with this middle realm and that everyone should be represented there. People are inclined to stop at this point, leaving a certain sterility on either side. We have to breathe; but we are not human beings unless nourishment is added to the breathing process from one side and sense impressions from the other. We must have a State, which rules through law, impersonal law. But economic life, which is half-personal, wherever men participate in it, and spiritual life, which is entirely personal, must work into the State from either side, or the social organism will be just as impossible as if man wanted to consist only of breathing.

This must become a new, fundamental doctrine: that the social structure has three members. You cannot live as human beings without eating; you have to receive your food from outside. You cannot maintain the State without bringing it the necessary nourishment from what human beings produce spiritually. This spiritual productivity is for the State what physical food is for individual men. Nor can you have a State unless you give it a certain natural basis on the other side in economic life. Economic life is for the State exactly like the element brought to the breathing process in human beings through sense-perceptions.

You can see that real knowledge of man and real knowledge of the social structure depend upon one another; you cannot reach one without the other. This must become the elementary basis for social insight in the future. The sin committed in relation to man by leaving out Revelation and Experience is committed by Socialist thinkers today when they leave out of  account the half-personal element in which fraternity must rule and on the other side ignore spiritual life, where freedom must rule; while the impersonal element of the law must be ruled by equality.

The great mistake of current Socialism is its belief that a healthy social structure can be brought about by State regulation, and particularly by socialising the means of production. We must appeal to all the powers of the social organism if we are to create a healthy social structure. Side by side with Equality, which is the one aim today, and is absolutely right for everything which has the character of law, Fraternity and Freedom must be able to work. But they cannot work without a threefold social order. It would be just as senseless to ask the heart and lungs to think and eat, as it is to ask an omnipotent State to direct economic life and to maintain spiritual life. The spiritual life must be independent, and co-operate only in the same way as the stomach co-operates with the head and with the heart. Things in life do work together, but they work together in the right way only if they can develop individually, not when they are thrown together abstractly.

The facts of the present time really prove that this insight must be achieved. It is very much worth observing how people at the present time do not see the connection between materialism on the one hand and abstract thinking on the other, particularly in relation to the social question. One great reason for the rise of materialism is that the State has gradually taken possession of all the academic institutions which were originally free corporations. If you go back to the times when such things were founded, from an atavistic feeling originating in clairvoyance, you will see how the necessity of co-operation between these three elements was still felt. Only since the sixteenth century has everything flowed into one, with the rise of materialism.

In earlier times, if a man wanted to be an outstanding jurist, he went to a university distinguished for the law, perhaps to Padua; if he wanted to be an outstanding physician, he went to Montpellier or to Naples; if he wanted to be an outstanding theologian, he went to Paris. These institutions did not belong to a particular State, but to humanity, and represented an independent member of the social organism.

Again, every school that is immediately under the power of the State is an impossible institution, and in the end unhealthy. Every undertaking concerned with production is unhealthy when managed by the State. You cannot pour anything into the lungs, not even water when you are thirsty. If this happens, you see how unhealthy it is.

Today people pour all kinds of economic and even spiritual undertakings into the realm which should be responsible only for the legal regulation of existing affairs. The radical parties go as far as wishing to separate the Church from the State, because they hope that people will be really interested only in what the State does. Then, in this clever, roundabout way, the Church could be expected to fade away entirely. But if you suggest to these people that schools need to be independent in order to restore productivity to spiritual life, they will contradict this very vehemently.

Every arrangement which makes for an intervention from the legal side into the spiritual life must lead to sterility. And in the same way it is false if the legal organisation intervenes in the initiatives necessary for economic life. The police, security, everything which belongs to social rights—not private rights and not penal law, which belong to the spiritual life—all these belong to the system of legal regulations. Everything economic forms an independent system and must be organised cooperatively, in a way that is half-personal. All spiritual life must be a matter for human individuality; in no other way can it flourish.

Schiller describes the middle condition that lies for man between the demands of rational necessity and the demands of this sense-life, and he relates this ideal to the creation and appreciation of art. In his “Aesthetic Letters” he says boldly that man is fully man only when he is playing, and he plays only when he is man in the fullest sense of the word. Schiller regards playing as the ideal condition, but of course you have to think of playing as Schiller does: that the necessity of reason is transformed into inclination, and inclination is raised to a spiritual level like that of reason. He calls the earnestness of life a game, in his sense of the word, for then one acts like a child who is playing, not obeying any duty but following one's impulses, and yet following them freely, because the necessities of life do not yet intervene in childhood.

A summit of human achievement is indicated in Schiller's “Aesthetic Letters”: man is fully man only when he is playing, and he plays only when he is man in the fullest sense of the word. On the other hand, when we have to begin with the concrete reality of the entire cosmos in order to find man in it, it is necessary that we should say to ourselves: man will achieve real progress for humanity only when he can take the smallest things in everyday life, even the most everyday game, and understands how to raise them into the great seriousness of cosmic existence. Therefore it has to be said: a turning-point in the history of mankind has come in this present time, where earnestness is knocking most solemnly at our doors.

The aim is for the articles in this section of the journal to provide an overview of contemporary cultural life. The fact that this first chapter is much shorter than those that will follow is due to the fact that in the first issue the space had to be devoted primarily to fundamental presentations of our aims and methods. However, it is not unworldly theories and dogmas that are to be cultivated here, but direct life. The spiritual eye should look in all directions to explore the paths of the soul and the world spirit. The science, art, moral and social culture of the present day should be put into the perspective that makes this journal its own. Only such an approach can truly be fruitful in the sense of an understanding of the spiritual laws of the world. — Whoever has something to contribute to such an approach will always have access to this part of our journal. Every short note and every longer exposition in this field will always be welcome. Only the one thing will have to be taken into account: our point of view cannot have opponents in the sense that a dry intellectual insight and a passionate dogmatics have them. For them there is a lesser and a more far-reaching knowledge; but nothing absolutely “true” and “false”. “Error” occurs only when a limited knowledge wants to pass judgment on things that lie outside its field of vision. For the person who sees through the true facts of the matter, it cannot be a matter of a so-called logical refutation, but solely and exclusively a matter of understanding how someone, from his point of view, comes to his judgments; and to show how he should rise from this point of view to a higher one. The point of view that Vedanta wisdom adopts when answering the materialist, for example, is the one adopted in this journal: “Everything is fine with you, my dear brother, since your hypothesis suits you... But... do you have any evidence to support your claim? Have you proven it? If you have not done so, why are you annoyed? Why are you angry with us? You have only a hypothesis without any possibility of proving it; but we give you a method by which you can prove our assertions yourself, if you want to take the trouble. Be a little more tolerant of us.” (See ‘The Secret Philosophy of the Indians.’ By Bramacharin Bodhabhikshu.)

Here, attention should immediately be drawn to contemporary views that are in stark contrast to all actual spiritual knowledge. These views are clearly and sharply presented in a remarkable book that was recently published: “The Creative Power of the Imagination” (published in German: Bonn, Verlag von Emil Strauß, 1902). Its author is the French philosopher Th. Ribot. He is known for his commendable research on “will” and “memory.” What he has to say is characteristic of a certain “scientific” way of thinking in the present day. From the point of view of this way of thinking, he will and must condemn what this journal has set out to cultivate. For him, it can only be: subject of “mystical fantasy.” He discusses this “mystical fantasy” (see pages 152ff. of the book mentioned). He summarizes his judgment as follows: “In its free sweep, in its diversity and richness, mystical fantasy is second to no other fantasy, not even to the aesthetic fantasy, although the latter, according to general opinion, is the type of fantasy par excellence. By the most daring analogies, it has constructed world views almost exclusively from feelings and images, and symbols are the material of its towering buildings... This is how animated abstractions, allegorical beings, successors to the old gods and spirits come into being” (pp. 161-162). Why does Ribot see only creatures of an unbridled imagination in the ideas of the mystic? And why does he not see them in the conceptions of the modern scientist? The reason lies in Ribot's limited outlook. And since Ribot is one of the best and most astute of our modern scientists, his point of view is particularly noteworthy. The outlook of this science knows only experiences that are transmitted through the senses. Therefore, he also wants to form concepts only about these sensual experiences.

Whoever wants to recognize the individual soul life of a person and the general spiritual life that comes into being in this, must approach both with the same impartiality with which a natural scientist approaches the facts that his senses, instruments and calculations show him. The naturalist will – quite rightly – not allow anyone to pass judgment on the laws of animal development who has not familiarized themselves with the methods and research methods of the study of living things. We can only agree wholeheartedly with our greatest naturalist, Ernst Haeckel, when he says to his critics: “Acquire through five years of diligent study of natural science and especially anthropology (especially the anatomy and physiology of the brain!) those indispensable empirical prior knowledge of the fundamental facts that you still lack completely.” — One should say to the opponents of the “unbridled mystical imagination” in the same vein: Surrender to the facts of the soul life without prejudice, do not drown out the language of these facts with prejudices that you have formed and with the belief that you can only find reality where your senses convince you of such. It is only natural that someone who, from the outset, only recognizes the reality of the facts of the senses, should speak of the mystics' explanations as Ribot does. He does not see the facts on which the mystics base their ideas, and they appear to him as a traveler's descriptions of a country must appear to the listener: the traveler says he has seen it, but the listener assumes that the traveler is telling a tall tale. Our natural science, directed purely to the facts of the sense world, has simply disaccustomed thinkers from the observation of facts that are not sense-perceptible. These thinkers should say to themselves: How little appropriate it would be to our entire scientific creed if we were to discuss the facts of physiology without having dealt with them! And then they would have to conclude: Are we not doing exactly the same in the realm of non-sensory experience! We talk about mysticism like a farmer talks about anatomy: that would be the answer they would have to give themselves, according to their scientific conscience. In our time, there is a mood of profound dissatisfaction in the minds that has been created by the described disaccustoming from non-sensory experiences. And at the same time, there is a deep longing for the experiences that can be had on the paths of the soul. More serious and profound personalities feel this. Recent literary phenomena are a clear and eloquent proof of this. In the next issue of our magazine, such phenomena will be discussed in detail at this point. In particular, writings such as Maurice Maeterlinck's 'Buried Temple', Bruno Wille's 'Revelations of the Juniper Tree', Eug. Heinr. Schmitt's 'Gnosis', Wolfgang Kirchbach's 'What Jesus Taught' will be considered here. From these in particular, the two characteristic features of the present time, as described above, emerge for the observer of the times to a special degree. A recently published book by Annie Besant, “Esoteric Christianity, or the Lesser Mysteries” (German by Mathilde Scholl, published by Griebens Verlag, Leipzig), is intended to shed light on all these endeavors. This book will also be discussed in detail in the next issue. — It should then be followed by a consideration of the results of hypnotic and similar research for the knowledge of spiritual life.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In Economic Science, as I explained yesterday, it is essential to take hold of something that is for ever fluctuating—namely: the circulation of values and the mutual interplay of fluctuating values in the forming of Price. Bearing this in mind, you say to yourselves: Our first need is to discover what is really the proper form of the science of Economics. For a thing that fluctuates cannot be taken hold of directly. There is no real sense in trying to take hold by direct observation of something that is for ever fluctuating. The only sensible procedure is to consider it in connection with what really lies beneath it.

Let us take an example. For certain purposes in life we use a thermometer. We use it to read the degrees of temperature, which we have grown accustomed in a certain sense to compare with one another. For instance, we estimate 20° of warmth in relation to 5° and so on. We may also construct temperature curves. We plot the temperatures for instance during the winter, followed by the rising temperatures in summer. Our curve will then represent the fluctuating level of the thermometer. But we do not come to the underlying reality till we consider the various conditions which determine the lower temperature in the winter, the higher temperature in the summer months, the temperature in one district, the different temperature in another, and so forth. We only have something real in hand, so to speak, when we refer the varying levels of the mercury to that which underlies them. To record the readings of the thermometer is in itself a mere statistical procedure. And in Economics it is not much more than this when we merely study prices and values and so forth. It only begins to have a real meaning when we regard prices and values much as we regard the positions of the mercury—as indications, pointing to something else. Only then do we arrive at the realities of economic life. Now this consideration will lead us to the true and proper form of Economic Science.

By ancient usage, as you are probably aware, the sciences are classified as theoretical and practical. Ethics, for instance, is called a practical science, Natural Science a theoretical one. Natural Science deals with that which is; Ethics with that which ought to be. This distinction has been made since ancient time: the Sciences of that which is, the Sciences of that which should be. We mention this here only to help define the concept of Economic Science. For we may well ask ourselves this question: Is Economics a science of what is, as Lujo Brentano, for instance, would assert? Or is it a practical science—a science of what ought to be? That is the question.

Now, if we wish to arrive at any knowledge in Economics it is undoubtedly necessary to make observations. We have to make observations, just as we must observe the readings of the barometer and thermometer to ascertain the state of air and warmth. So far, Economics is a theoretical science. But at this point, nothing has yet been done. We only achieve something when we are really able to act under the influence of this theoretical knowledge.

Take a special case. Let us assume that by certain observations (which, like all observations, until they lead to action, will be of a theoretical nature) we ascertain that in a given place, in a given sphere, the price of a certain commodity falls considerably, so much so as to give rise to acute distress. In the first place, then, we observe—“theoretically,” as I have said—this actual fall in price. Here, so to speak, we are still only at the stage of reading the thermometer. But now the question will arise: What are we to do if the price of a commodity or product falls to an undesirable extent? We shall have to go into these matters more closely later on: for the moment I will but indicate what should be done and by whom, if the price of some commodity shows a considerable decrease. There may be many such measures, but one of them will be to do something to accelerate the circulation, the commerce or trade in the commodity in question. This will be one possible measure, though naturally it will not be enough by itself. For the moment, however, we shall not discuss whether it is a sufficient, or even the right measure to take. The point is: If prices fall in such a way, we must do something of a kind that can increase the turnover [Umsatz].

It is in fact similar to what happens when we observe the thermometer. If we feel cold in a room, we do not go to the thermometer and try by some mysterious device to lengthen out the column of mercury. We leave the thermometer alone and stoke the fire. We get at the thing from quite a different angle; and so it must be in Economics too. When it comes to action, we must start from quite a different angle. Then only does it become practical. We must answer, therefore: The science of Economics is both theoretical and practical. The point will be how to bring the practical and the theoretical together.

Here we have one aspect of the form of Economic Science. The other aspect is one to which I drew attention many years ago, though it was not understood. It was in an essay I wrote at the beginning of the century, which at that time was entitled: “Theosophy and the Social Question.”¹ It would only have had real significance if it had been taken up by men of affairs and if they had acted accordingly. But it was left altogether unnoticed; consequently I did not complete it or publish any more of it. We can only hope that these things will be more and more understood, and I trust these lectures will contribute to a deeper understanding. To understand the present point, we must now insert a brief historical reflection.

Go back a little way in the history of mankind. As I pointed out in the first lecture, in former epochs—nay, even as late as the 15^th or 16^th century—economic questions such as we have today did not exist at all. In oriental antiquity economic life took its course instinctively, to a very large extent. Certain social conditions obtained among men—caste-forming and class-forming conditions—and the relations between man and man which arose out of these conditions had the power to shape instincts for the way in which the individual must play his particular part in economic life. These things were very largely founded on the impulses of the religious life, which in those ancient times were still of such a kind as to aim simultaneously at the ordering of economic affairs. Study oriental history: you will see there is nowhere a hard and fast dividing line between what is ordained for the religious life and what is ordained for the economic. The religious commandments very largely extend into the economic life. In those early times, the question of labour, or of the social circulation of labour-values did not arise. Labour was performed in a certain sense instinctively. Whether one man was to do more or less never became a pressing question, not at any rate a pressing public question, in pre-Roman times. Such exceptions as there may be are of no importance, compared to the general course of human evolution. Even in Plato we find a conception of the social life wherein the performance of labour is accepted as a complete matter of course. Only those aspects are considered which Plato beholds as Wisdom-filled ethical and social impulses, excluding the performance of labour, which is taken for granted.

But in the course of time this became more and more different. As the immediately religious and ethical impulses became less effective in creating economic instincts, as they became more restricted to the moral life, mere precepts as to how men should feel for one another or relate themselves to extra-human powers, there arose more and more the feeling in mankind which, pictorially stated, might be thus expressed: “Ex cathedra, or from the pulpit, nothing whatever can be said about the way a man should work!” Only now did Labour—the incorporation of Labour in the social life—become a question.

Now this incorporation of Labour in the social life is historically impossible without the rise of all that is comprised in the term “law” or “right.” We see emerge at the same historical moment the assignment of value to Labour in relation to the individual human being and what we now call law. Go back into very ancient times of human history and you cannot properly speak of law or rights as we conceive them today. You can only do so from the moment when the Law becomes distinct from the “Commandment.” In very ancient times there is only one kind of command or commandment, which includes at the same time all that concerns the life of Rights. Subsequently, the “Commandment ” is restricted more to the life of the soul, while Law makes itself felt with respect to the outer life. This again takes place within a certain historic epoch, during which time definite social relationships evolve. It would take us too far afield to describe all this in detail, but it is an interesting study—especially for the first centuries of the Middle Ages—to see how the relationships of Law and Rights on the one hand, and on the other those of Labour, became distinct from the religious organisations in which they had hitherto been more or less closely merged. I mean, of course, religious organisations in the wider sense of the term.

Now this change involves an important consequence. You see, so long as religious impulses dominate the entire social life of man-kind, human Egoism does no harm. This is a most important point, notably for an understanding of the social and economic life. Man may be never so selfish; if there is a religious organisation (and these, be it noted, were very strict in certain districts in oriental antiquity) such that in spite of his egoism the individual is fruitfully placed in the social whole, it will do no harm. But Egoism begins to play a part in the life of nations the moment human Rights and Labour emancipate themselves from other social impulses or social currents. Hence, during the historical period when Labour and the life of legally determined Rights are becoming emancipated, the spirit of humanity strives as it were unconsciously to come to grips with Egoism, which now begins to make itself felt and must in some way be allowed for in the social life. And in the last resort, this striving culminates in nothing else than modern Democracy—the sense for the equality of man—the feeling that each must have his influence in determining legal Rights and in determining the Labour which he contributes.

Moreover, simultaneously with this culmination of the emancipated life of Rights and human labour, another element arises which—though it undoubtedly existed in former epochs of human evolution—had quite a different significance in those times owing to the operation of religious impulses. In European civilisation, during the Middle Ages, it existed only to a very limited degree, but it reached its zenith at the very time when the life of Rights and Labour was emancipated most of all. I refer to the Division of Labour.

You see, in former epochs the division of labour had no peculiar significance. It too was embraced in the religious impulses. Everyone, so to speak, had his proper place assigned to him. But it was very different when the democratic tendency united with the tendency to division of labour—a process which only began in the last few centuries and reached its climax in the nineteenth century. Then the division of labour gained very great significance.

For the division of labour entails a certain economic consequence. We shall yet, of course, have to consider its causes and the course of its development. To begin with, however, if we think it abstractly to its conclusion, we must say that in the last resort it leads to this: No one uses for himself what he produces. Economically speaking, what will this signify? Let us consider an example.

Suppose there is a tailor, making clothes. Given the division of labour, he must, of course, be making them for other people. But he may say to himself: I will make clothes for others and I will also make my own clothes for myself. He will then devote a certain portion of his labour to making his own clothes, and the remainder—by far the greater portion—to making clothes for other people. Well, superficially considered, one may say: It is the most natural thing in the world, even under the system of division of labour, for a tailor to make his own clothes and then go on working as a tailor for his fellows. But, economically, how does the matter stand? Through the very fact that there is division of labour, and every man does not make all his own things for himself—through the very fact that there is division of labour and one man always works for another, the various products will have certain values and consequently prices. Now the division of labour extends, of course, into the actual circulation of the products. Assuming, therefore, that by virtue of the division of labour, extending as it does into the circulation of the products, the tailor's products have a certain value; will those he makes for himself have the same economic value? Or will they possibly be cheaper or more expensive? That is the most important question. If he makes his own clothes for himself one thing will certainly be eliminated. They will not enter into the general circulation of products. Thus what he makes for himself will not share in the cheapening, due to the division of labour. It will, therefore, be dearer. Though he pays nothing for it, it will be more expensive. For on those products of his labour which he uses for himself, it is impossible for him to expend as little labour—compared to their value—as he expends on those that pass into general circulation.

Well, I admit, this may require a little closer consideration, nevertheless it is so. What one produces for oneself does not enter into the general circulation which is founded on the division of labour. Consequently it is more expensive. Thinking the division of labour to its logical conclusion, we must say: A tailor, who is obliged to work for other people only, will tend to obtain for his products the prices which ought to be obtained. For himself, he will have to buy his clothes from another tailor, or rather, he will get them through the ordinary channels: he will buy them at the places where clothes are sold.

These things considered, you will realise that the division of labour tends towards this conclusion: No one any longer works for himself at all. All that he produces by his labour is passed on to other men, and what he himself requires must come to him in turn from the community. Of course, you may object: If the tailor buys his suit from another tailor, it will cost him just as much as if he made it for himself: the other tailor will not produce it any more cheaply nor more expensively. But if this objection were true, we should not have division of labour—or at least the division of labour would not be complete. For it would mean that the maximum concentration of work, due to the division of labour, could not be applied to this particular product of tailoring. In effect, once we have the division of labour, it must inevitably extend into the process of circulation. It is in fact impossible for the tailor to buy from another tailor; in reality he must buy from a tradesman and this will result in quite a different value. If he makes his own coat for himself, he will “buy” it from himself. If he actually buys it, he buys it from a tradesman. That is the difference. If division of labour in conjunction with the process of circulation has a cheapening effect, his coat will, for that reason, cost him less at the tradesman's. He cannot make it as cheaply for himself.

To begin with, let us regard this as a line of thought that will lead us to the true form of Economic Science. The facts themselves will, of course, all of them, have to be considered again later.

Meanwhile it is absolutely true—and indeed self-evident—that the more the division of labour advances, the more it will come about that one man always works for the rest—for the community in general—and never for himself. In other words, with the rise of the modern division of labour, the economic life as such depends on Egoism being extirpated, root and branch. I beg you to take this remark not in an ethical but in a purely economic sense. Economically speaking, egoism is impossible. I can no longer do anything for myself; the more the division of labour advances, the more must I do everything for others.

The summons to altruism has, in fact, come far more quickly through purely outward circumstances in the economic sphere than it has been answered on the ethical and religious side. This is illustrated by an easily accessible historical fact.

The word “Egoism,” you will find, is a pretty old one, though not perhaps in the severe meaning we attach to it today. But its opposite—the word “Altruism,” “to think for another ”—is scarcely a hundred years old. As a word, it was coined very late. We need not dwell overmuch on this external feature, though a closer historical study would confirm the indication. But we may truly say: Human thought on Ethics was far from having arrived at a full appreciation of altruism at a time when the division of labour had already brought about its appreciation in the economic life. Taking it, therefore, in its purely economic aspect, we see at once the further consequences of this demand for altruism. We must find our way into the true process of modern economic life, wherein no man has to provide for himself, but only for his fellow-men. We must realise how by this means each individual will, in fact, be provided for in the best possible way.

Ladies and gentlemen, this might easily be taken for a piece of idealism, but I beg you to observe once more: In this lecture I am speaking neither idealistically nor ethically, but from an economic point of view. What I have just said is intended in a purely economic sense. It is neither a God, nor a moral law, nor an instinct that calls for altruism in modern economic life—altruism in work, altruism in the production of goods. It is the modern division of labour—a purely economic category—that requires it.

This is approximately what I desired to set forth in the essay I published long ago.² In recent times our economic life has begun to require more of us than we are ethically, religiously, capable of achieving. This is the underlying fact of many a conflict. Study the sociology of the present day and you will find: The social conflicts are largely due to the fact that, as economic systems expanded into a World-Economy, it became more and more needful to be altruistic, to organise the various social institutions altruistically; while, in their way of thinking, men had not yet been able to get beyond Egoism and therefore kept on interfering with the course of things in a clumsy, selfish way.

But we shall only arrive at the full significance of this if we observe not merely the plain and obvious fact, but the same fact in its more masked and hidden forms. Owing to this discrepancy in the mentality of present-day mankind—owing to the discrepancy between the demands of the economic life and the inadequate ethical and religious response—the following state of affairs is largely predominant in practice. To a large extent, in present-day economic life, men are providing for themselves. That is to say, our economic life is actually in contradiction to what—by virtue of the division of labour—is its own fundamental demand. The few who provide for themselves on the model of our tailor do not so much matter. A tailor who manufactures his own clothes is obviously one who mixes up with the division of labour something that does not properly belong to it. But this is open and unmasked. The same thing is present in a hidden form in modern economic life where—though he by no means makes his products for himself—a man has little or nothing to do with the value or price of the products of his labour. Quite apart from the whole economic process in which these products are contained, he simply has to contribute, as a value to the economic life, the labour of his hands. It amounts to this: To this day, every wage-earner in the ordinary sense is a man who provides for himself. He gives only so much as he wants to earn. In fact, he simply cannot be giving as much to the social organism as he might give, for he will only give so much as he wants to earn. In effect, to provide for oneself is to work for one's earnings, to work “for a living.” To work for others is to work out of a sense of social needs.

To the extent that the demand which the division of labour involves has been fulfilled in our time, altruism is actually present—namely: work for others. But to the extent that the demand is unfulfilled, the old egoism persists. It has its roots in this—that men are still obliged to provide for themselves. That is economic Egoism. In the case of the ordinary wage-earner we generally fail to notice the fact. For we do not ask ourselves: What is it that values are really being exchanged for in this case? The thing which the ordinary wage-earner manufactures has after all no-thing to do with the payment for his work—absolutely nothing to do with it. The payment—the value that is assigned to his work—proceeds from altogether different factors. He, therefore, works for his earnings, works “for a living.” He works to provide for himself. It is hidden, it is masked, but it is so.

Thus one of the first and most essential economic questions comes before us. How are we to eliminate from the economic process this principle of work for a living? Those who to this day are still mere wage-earners—earners of a living for themselves—how are they to be placed in the whole economic process, no longer as such earners but as men who work because of social needs? Must this really be done? Assuredly it must. For if this is not done, we shall never obtain true prices but always false ones. We must seek to obtain prices and values that depend not on the human beings but on the economic process itself—prices that arise in the process of fluctuation of values. The cardinal question is the question of Price.

We must observe prices as we observe the degrees of the thermometer, and then look for the underlying conditions.

Now to observe a thermometer we need some kind of zero point, from which we go upward and downward. And for prices a kind of zero-level does in fact arise in a perfectly natural way.

It arises in this way. Here we have Nature on the one side. (Diagram 2) It is transformed by human Labour. Thus we get the transformed products of Nature, and this is one point at which values are created. On the other side we have Labour itself. It, in its turn, is modified by the Spirit, and there arises the other kind of value. Value 1, Value 2. And, as I said on a previous occasion, price originates by the interaction of Value 1 and Value 2.

Now these Values on either hand—Value 1 and Value 2—are in fact related to one another as pole to pole. And we may put it as follows: If a man is working in this sphere, for example (Diagram 2 right-hand side), or mainly so—in an absolute sense it is of course impossible, but I mean mainly in this sphere—if in the main his work is of the type that is organised by the Spirit, then it will be to his interest that the products of Nature should decrease in value. If on the other hand a man is working directly upon Nature, it will be to his interest that the other kind of products should decrease in value. Now when this “interest” becomes an effective process (and so, in fact, it is, for if it were not so, the farmers would have very different prices, and vice versa; the actual prices on both sides are, of course, very “occult”) we may be able to observe a kind of Mean Price midway between the two poles where we have two persons (there must always be two, for any economic dealings) with little interest either in Nature or Spirituality or Capital. When is it so in practice? We have the case in practice if we observe a pure trader, a pure middleman, buying from and selling to a pure middleman. Here, prices will tend towards a mean. If under normal conditions (we shall yet have to explain this word “normal ”) a middleman trading in boots and shoes buys from a middleman trading in clothes and vice versa, the prices that emerge will tend to assume the mean position. To find, the mean price-level, we must not go to the interests of those producers who are on the side of Nature, nor of those who are on the Spiritual side. We must go to where middleman trades with middleman, buying and selling. Here it is that the mean price will tend to arise. Whether there be one middleman more or less is immaterial.

This does not contradict what we have said before. After all, look at the typical modern capitalist. Are they not all of them traders? The industrialist is after all a trader. Incidentally he is a producer of his particular goods; but economically he is a trader. Commerce has developed very largely on the side of production. In all essentials, the industrial capitalist is a trader. This is important. In actual fact, modern conditions amount to this: All that arises here in the middle (Diagram 2) rays out to the one side and to the other. On the one side you will soon recognise it if you study the typical business undertaking; and we shall see how it appears on the other side in the course of the next few days.

• 1. now published as “Anthroposophy and the Social Question.”
• 2. see “Anthroposophy and the Social Question.”

What I would like to give you today is a thoroughly undemanding analysis of some recent directions in recent philosophical thinking. I want to take some well-known currents of thought from the surface of recent intellectual life as my point of departure. Later—very soon, if not in the next lecture—we will have time to consider some of the details and the special ramifications of contemporary thought. I would like to describe a certain tendency that is fundamental to some of the most recent of contemporary schools of thought. The whole direction taken by certain schools of thought is marked by the loss of a sense for how to orient oneself in reality, and by the loss of a sense for truth in so far as ‘the truth’ refers to an agreement between our knowledge and something that is objective. Just observe what difficulties the adherents of some recent schools of thought find themselves in when they need to decide whether a judgement about reality—about some aspect of reality or other—is right or wrong. They have difficulty in finding valid epistemological grounds, valid scientific or philosophical grounds, for their decision. There is no trace of a principle or—to use a more scientific expression—of a criterion for deciding whether particular judgements are true judgements; that is, there is no way of deciding whether they have been made with regard for reality. Certain of the old criteria have been lost and it is quite evident that nothing has come along to take their place in recent times.

I would like to take as my point of departure a thinker who died very recently. Initially, the physical sciences were his field. He turned from them to a kind of inductive philosophy in which he attempted to find something to replace the old concepts of truth, the feeling for which has been lost. I am speaking of Ernst Mach. Today I can only give you an outline of his ideas. Ernst Mach was sceptical about all the concepts produced by the thinking that preceded his time-all the thinking up to the last third of the nineteenth century. Although it approached its concepts more or less critically, this earlier thinking still spoke of the world and man under the assumption that man perceives the world through his senses—processes his sense perceptions with the help of concepts, and thereby arrives at certain pictures and ideas about the world. This assumes—and, as I said, I cannot go into all kinds of epistemological considerations today—that the impressions of colour, sound, warmth, pressure, and so on, originate in something objective. It assumes that the impressions are made on our senses by something objective, something objectively out there in external space and, in general, external to our soul life. It assumes that these impressions create sense experiences which then are further digested. And it also assumes that the human I is the true agent which is actively at work in the whole process of knowledge, and forms the basis of the entire life process. This I was acknowledged in one form or another and there was much speculation about it. People said: There exists something which one is justified in seeing as a kind of I. It is active and it is what ultimately shapes sense experiences into concepts and ideas.

Ernst Mach looked around our given world and said, more or less: None of these concepts are justified—neither the concept of subjectivity and of the I which is the subject of knowledge, nor the concept of the object that is the basis of sense impressions. What are we really given? he asked. What does the world really put before us? Fundamentally, all that is given are our sensations. We perceive colours, we perceive sounds, we have sensations of smell, and so on; but beyond these sensations, nothing at all is given to us. If we review the whole world, everything is some [form] of sensation, and beyond the sensations nothing objective is to be found. The entire world around us actually resolves into sensations. The multiplicity of sensations is all that there is. And if we can say that nothing exists beyond sensations, then we cannot say that there is some kind of I active within us. For what is given to us in the sphere of the soul? Again, only sensations. When we observe what is within us, the only thing given is the succession of sensations. These are strung together as on a thread: yesterday we had sensations; today we have sensations; tomorrow we will have sensations. They connect like the links of a chain. But everywhere, nothing is there but sensations; there is no active I. An I only appears to be there because groups of sensations are associated with one another and thus are separated out from the total world of impressions. We call this group of impressions ‘I’. They belong to us and are a part of what we perceived yesterday and the day before yesterday and half a year before that. We have found a group of sensations that belong together, so we use the expression ‘I’ as a common designator to apply to them all. Thus both the I and the object of knowledge fall away; the manifold of sensations is all that a human being can talk about. At first we relate to the world naively but, if we observe reality, all that is really there is a multiplicity of variously-grouped colours, variously-grouped sounds, variously-grouped experiences of temperature, variously-grouped experiences of pressure, and so on. And that is all.

Now along comes science. Science discovers laws. In other words it does not simply describe sensations—here I see this sensation, there I see that sensation, and so on—it discovers laws, laws of nature. Why should men need to establish natural laws if all they ever experience is a multiplicity of sensations? Merely watching the multiplicity of sensations never leads to judgements. It is only when we have more or less achieved laws that we arrive at judgements. What have our Judgements to do with the world of experience, which is really nothing more than a chaotic multiplicity? What guides one in forming judgements? Sensations are all that one has to go on-and Mach maintains that one sensation cannot even be measured against another. If that is so, what is the source of criteria for passing judgements, establishing laws and arriving at the laws of nature? To this Ernst Mach replies that it is merely a matter of economy of thought. By devising certain laws we are enabled to follow particular sensations and hold them together in our thought. What we call a law of nature is a method of associating sensations. It is the method we feel is the most economical for our thinking, the one that requires the least amount of thought.

We see a stone fall to earth. This involves a collection of sensations—one here, one there, and so on—nothing but sensations. The law of weight, of gravitation, gives us a way of combining these sensations. But there is no further reality in the law of gravitation; the sensations are the real content.

But why should we ever think out the law of gravity in the first place? Because we find it convenient: it is economical to have a concise way of referring to a special group of sensations. It gives us a kind of comfortable overview of the world of sensations. And the ways of thinking that we find most comfortable—these are the ones we call laws. What we accept as valid laws are the thoughts that give us the most convenient overview of some group of sensations. Laws provide us with certain useful expressions. Through them we know—so to speak—that when one set of conditions (that is, some collection of sensations) is repeated, then others will again be found to follow them. It is convenient for me to use the law of gravity to gather together the sensations aroused by a falling stone, for then I know: If this is a law, one thing will fall to earth like another. Thus I can think about the future in terms of the past. That is economy of thought. It is the law upon which Ernst Mach says the whole business of science is founded—the law of economy of thought, the law of the application of the least energy, which says that the greatest possible sum of sensations should be thought with the least possible number of thoughts.

You can see that no one will ever arrive at reality in this way. For, collecting together groups of sensations in the most comfortable manner possible serves nothing beyond making one's life more comfortable. The expressions to which one is led by the principle of economy of thought tell one nothing about the real basis of the sensations. The thoughts merely serve to give us a comfortable orientation in the world. The only fundamental reason for a thought is that we find it comfortable; that is why we connect certain sensations as we do. Thus you see that we have here a criterion of truth that quite deliberately tries to avoid establishing any sort of objectivity. Its only purpose is to support man's capacity to orient himself by means of sensations.

Richard Wahle¹⁶ was a thinker who based his ideas on similar considerations. Richard Wahle also said: People think that one thing is a cause, that another thing is an effect; that an I lives within us, that objects live outside us. But that is all nonsense. (I use approximately the same expressions as those he used.) In truth, the only things in the world that are known to us are these: that here I see the occurrence of a colour, that there a sound occurs. The world, says Wahle, consists in such occurrences and nothing more. We have already gone too far if we name these occurrences ‘sensations’, as Mach called them, for the word ‘sensation’ already contains the hidden implication that there is someone present who is doing the sensing. But how could one possibly know that the occurrence of which one is presently aware is a sensation? Out there is an occurrence of colour, an occurrence of sound, an occurrence of pressure, an occurrence of warmth; within is an occurrence of pain, an occurrence of joy, an occurrence of repletion, an occurrence of hunger. Or within is an occurrence in which someone thinks, ‘There is a God.’ But nothing more is present there than the occurrence in which someone thinks, ‘There is a God.’ Having the idea that God exists is just like having a pain. Both are only occurrences. Wahle believes, to be sure, that one must distinguish between two kinds of occurrence, the primary ones, and the so-called miniatures: Primary occurrences are those that come with an original sharpness, such as occurrences of colour, occurrences of sound, occurrences of pressure, occurrences of warmth, occurrences of pain, occurrences of joy, occurrences of hunger, occurrences of repletion, and so on. Miniatures are fantasies, intentions and, in short, everything that appears as a shadowy picture of primary occurrences. But when one takes the sum of all primary occurrences and all miniatures, that is all the world has to offer us. Fundamentally, everything else is poetry—it has been written-in without justification. Such is the case, Wahle believes, when, instead of restricting themselves to saying, ‘Three years ago there were certain occurrences, then there were others’, people are blinded by the fact that these occurrences follow one another and make the further assumption that the occurrences are collected together in an I. But where is this I? There is nothing there but occurrences, occurrences that are arranged in sequence, series of occurrences. Nowhere is an I to be found. And then others come along and claim to have discovered laws that connect occurrences, natural laws. But these laws, too, present us with nothing more than series of occurrences. And it is absolutely impossible to come to any decision as to why the series of occurrences are as they are. When men think they know something because they have strung together occurrences in a particular way, that knowledge is just so much folderol. Such knowledge, according to Wahle, is neither valid nor is it especially lofty—it is just a sign that someone has had to think something out because he has had difficulty in relating to his own occurrences. The I is the most curious of all mankind's inventions. For nowhere in the sum total of occurrences is such a thing as an I to be found. Some unknown factors seem to lurk behind the manner in which occurrences follow one another, since it does not seem arbitrary. But—and I am using the words that Wahle would use—it is entirely beyond the capacities of human judgement to ascertain what kind of unknown factors might be at work there. There is nothing one can say about them. All that a human being can know is that occurrences occur and that the factors directing them are unknown. Physics, physiology, biology, sociology—they all falter about in the dark, seeking for the director-in-charge. But this faltering about merely helps us to live with the occurrences. It will never lead us to knowledge about the unknown factors at play in the succession of occurrences. It is human folly, therefore, when people believe they can arrive at a philosophy which teaches us something about why the occurrences are as they are. Humanity has devoted itself to this folly for a time; it is high time they gave it up. One of Wahle's most important books bore the title The End of all Philosophy. Its Legacy to Theology, Physiology, Aesthetics and National Policy (Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende. Ihre Vermachtnisse an die Theologie, Physiologie. Aesthetik und Staatspedagogik). In order to teach about this ‘end of philosophy’, and in order to teach that philosophy is nonsense, Richard Wahle became a professor of philosophy!

Above all else, we can see that a total helplessness regarding the criteria of truth lies at the root of such an approach. All impulse to come to any decisions regarding knowledge has been lost. What this is based on could be characterised in the following way. Imagine someone who has a book which he has been reading for a long time. He has read it again and again and certain information contained in the book has become a part of the way he lives. Then one day he thinks to himself: Yes, here I have this book before me and I have always assumed that it gives me information about certain things. But when I take a really good look at it, the pages contain nothing but letters, letters, and more letters. I have really been an ass to believe that information about things that are not even in the book could somehow flow to me from it. For nothing is there but letters. I have been living in the mad expectation that if I let these letters affect me and if I enter into a relationship with them, they could give me something. But nothing is there but rows of the letters of the alphabet—just letters. So I must finally release myself from the insane notion that these letters describe something, or that they could somehow relate to one another, or that they could group into meaningful words, or such like. That really is a picture of the kind of thinking on which Wahle's non-philosophy, his un-philosophy, is based. For his great discovery consists in this: Men have been foolish asses, he says, to believe that they could read in the book of nature and explain how occurrences are connected! They witness occurrences, but there is nothing there beyond the unconnected occurrences. At the very most, there might be some further, unknown factors at work which are responsible for the special groupings of the letters.

This is how Wahle fails to identify with the impulse to decide about the truth of judgements and to make discoveries about the nature of the world. Human knowledge has lost the power to formulate any criterion of truth. In earlier times one believed in the human capacity to arrive at truths by means of judgements based on inner experience.

This belief has slipped from one's grasp. Hence the way philosophers wander about in this area, philosophising. By way of these two examples I wanted to demonstrate how a criterion of truth and a feeling for one's capacity to produce the truth have been lost.

A contemporary school of thought called Pragmatism demonstrates the loss of the older understanding for a criterion of truth. In Pragmatism you have a large-scale, calculated version of this loss. William James¹⁷ is the most prominent, if not the most significant, proponent of Pragmatism. The following is a brief characterisation of the principle of Pragmatism as it has recently appeared.

Men pass judgements and they want them to express something about reality. But no human being can possibly generate anything within himself that will enable him to pass a true judgement about reality. There is nothing in man that, in and of itself, leads to the decision: that is true and the other is false. In other words, there is a feeling that one is powerless to find any original, self-sufficient criterion for whether something is true or false. And yet, because they live in a real world, men feel it is necessary to make judgements. And the sciences are full of judgements. But if one reviews the entire spectrum of the sciences with all their judgements, do they contain anything about anything that is in a higher sense true, true in the sense in which the old schools of philosophy spoke of truth and falsehood? No! According to what William James says, for example, any line of thought which asks whether something is true or false is a totally impossible way of thinking. One makes judgements. If certain judgements are passed, then one can use them to get along in life. They prove to be useful and applicable to living—they enhance one's life. If other judgements were passed, one would soon cease to come to terms with life, one's life would cease to progress. They would not be useful, they would harm life. This applies to even the most unsophisticated judgements. One cannot even say, reasonably, that the sun will rise again in the morning, for no criterion of truth is available. But we have formed the judgement: The sun rises every morning. If someone came along, maintaining that the sun would only rise for the first two thirds of the month, but not during the last third, this judgement would not bring him forward in life; he would run into trouble in the last third of the month. The judgements we form are useful. But there can be no talk of whether they are true or false. All that can be said is that one judgement helps us to get on in the world, enhances life, and that the contrary is the case with another, which gets in the way of life. There is no independent criterion of truth and falsehood: what enhances life we call true, and what hinders life, false. Thus everything to do with the question of whether or not we should pass a certain judgement is reduced to external matters of practical living. None of the impulses one once believed one possessed are valid.

Now, this line of thought is not the arbitrary product of one or the other school. One of the most extraordinary things about the line of thinking I have just described is that it has spread to practically the whole of our earth's intellectual community. It makes its appearance, independently, in one place and then in another, because present-day humanity is organised so as to fall into this way of thinking. The following interesting example demonstrates this. In the 1870s, in America, Pierce¹⁸ wrote the first book about Pragmatic Philosophy. This was taken up by William James and, in England, by Schiller,¹⁹ and these and others continued to develop it. Now, at the very same time that Pierce was publishing his initial treatment of the ideas of pragmatic philosophy in America, a German thinker published the book The Philosophy of As If (Philosophie des Als Ob). It was a parallel occurrence. The philosopher in question was Hans Vaihinger.²⁰ What is this Philosophy of As If all about? It begins with the thought that human beings are actually incapable of forming true or false concepts in the way they used to do, although they still persist in forming them. The atom is a well-known example of this. The concept of the atom is, of course, wholly absurd. For our thinking attributes all sorts of qualities to the atom, qualities that will not stand up when, they are put to the test of the senses. And yet sense impressions are thought of as the effects of atomic activity. So the concept is contradictory. It is a concept of something that is totally unobservable. The atom, as Vaihinger says, is a fiction. We create many such fictions. All the higher concepts we form about reality are, fundamentally, fictions of this sort. Since there is no criterion of truth or falsehood, the reasonable man of the present needs to be clear that he is dealing in fictions. One must be fully conscious about making fictions. One must be clear that the atom is nothing but a fiction and that it cannot really exist. But one can observe the various things that are manifest in the world as if they were ruled by the life and movements of atoms—as if. For this fiction is useful. Establishing such fictions makes it possible to connect the appearances in certain ways. The I is also a fiction, but it is a fiction one has to create. For it is much more comfortable to treat the appearances that come together as if an I were active within them than it is to get along without the fiction of the I ... even though one can rest assured that it is a fiction. Thus we live according to fictions. There is no philosophy of reality, only a “Philosophy of As If”. The world humours us by appearing as if it agreed with the fictions we have made about it.

As a whole, in its tendencies and also in the way it presents individual arguments, the philosophy of Pragmatism is very similar to the “Philosophy of As If”. As I said, it was written down during the same period, the 1870s, when Pierce was writing his treatise on ‘Pragmatic Philosophy’. But an objective criterion of truth was still possible for the humanity of the 1870s. They still possessed enough rudiments of the old beliefs for their science not to have to consist of fictions. The 1870s were an awkward time for someone who wanted to become a professor of philosophy to publish a ‘Philosophy of As If’. It was not yet possible to get away with it. So Vaihinger looked for a way out. At first he acted as one has to act (has one not?). He left the Philosophy of As If lying in his desk while he went about his teaching. When the time came, he accepted his pension. Then he published the Philosophy of As If, which has now appeared in numerous editions. I simply tell the story; I am not pointing my finger, I am not judging, I am only telling the story.

So we see that there was a tendency for the old criteria of truth to break down and for truth to be measured against life. Formerly it was believed that life should be shaped in accordance with the truth, so life was put in the service of truth. What one meant by truth in the old sense did not include fictions, not even useful fictions. But, according to the extraordinary definition of the Philosophy of As If, truth is the most comfortable form of error. For, although there is nothing else but error, some errors are more agreeable and others less agreeable. The fact that what we call truths are simply the more agreeable errors is something we must clearly understand.

Thus, an impulse to do away with the concept of truth as it had been understood in older theories of knowledge really has been developing in the more recent schools of thought. One must ask oneself, ‘What is this all about?’ Naturally, there would be much to tell if I were to give you a comprehensive account of the matter. But to begin with we will take only one from among the many possible examples. In recent times, a boundless flood of empirical knowledge has become available to mankind. At the same time, men's thinking has become increasingly powerless. Thinking has lost its sovereignty over this inexhaustible richness of empirical observation and empirical knowledge; it cannot hold them together.

The way in which people have become more and more accustomed to abstract thinking is another factor. One did not think so much in earlier times, but one tried to keep one's thinking connected to the external world and to actual experience. It was felt that thinking needed to be connected with something and that it could not progress if it were wholly isolated. But along with the extensive cultivation of thinking, one has also learned to think abstractly—has become accustomed to abstract thinking and has become fond of it. To this must be added other harmful characteristics of our age, above all, the view that anyone who wants to become even so much as a lecturer must produce some kind of elevated thinking or research, and that those who want to become professors must do something quite immense! A kind of hypertrophy of thinking, so to speak, has been thus created. Thinking is set loose on its own; it begins to arrive at forms of thought that, as such, are merely internally logical. I will show you one of these internally logical thought-forms.

Just picture the following: Here is a mountain. On this mountain (A) a shot is fired. After a while, say two minutes, two more shots are fired. Then, after a further two minutes, three shots are fired.

And now, over here (B) there is someone who is listening. I will not say that he is wounded, but he is listening. What he hears would be, first a single shot, then after a certain period, two shots, and then, after another pause, three shots. But now let us assume that matters are not so simple, with one, two, and then three shots being fired here, and over here someone who hears the shots—first one, then two, then three. Let us assume that someone (C) moves from this mountain (left) towards this other one (right). Assume that he flies at a certain speed and that he moves very fast. You know from elementary physics that sound requires a certain time to get from here (see drawing) to there. Therefore, when a shot is fired here (A), a certain period of time will elapse before it will be heard by a person who is listening over here (B) ... then the sound of the single shot will arrive. Two minutes later, the pair of shots will arrive and, after a further two minutes, the three shots. But let us assume that this other person (C) moves faster than the speed of sound. As he passes this mountain, moving towards the other, he is already moving faster than the speed of sound. The first shot is fired ... then two shots ... then three ... After the three shots have been fired, he arrives at this other mountain and flies on at the same speed until he overtakes the three shots—that is, he flies past the sound of the three shots—flying quickly past them, for he is moving faster. Eventually, the sound of the three shots will arrive here (D). He is flying after them. He hears them as he overtakes them and continues onward, flying towards the two shots that had been fired earlier. These he also hears as he overtakes them. Then he overtakes the single shot and hears it. Therefore, someone who is flying faster than sound would hear the shots in reverse order: three shots ... two shots ... one shot. If one is living in circumstances usual for an ordinary human being on the ordinary earth, and thus has the usual relationship to the speed of sound, one would hear one shot at this point, two shots here, three here. But if one does not behave like an ordinary human being on the ordinary earth, but instead is a being who can fly faster than the speed of sound, one would hear the events in reverse order: three shots, two shots, one shot. All that is required is that one practise the minor skill of chasing after the sounds while flying faster than the sounds of the shots are moving.

Now, this is unquestionably as logical as it could be. There is not the slightest logical objection to be brought against it. Thanks to certain things that have emerged recently in the sciences, the example I have just been describing to you—in which someone flies in pursuit of sounds and hears them in reverse order—has been used to introduce countless lectures. Again and yet again, lectures begin with this so-called example. For this is supposed to demonstrate that the way in which one perceives things is a result of the situation in which one is living. The only reason that we hear as we do, rather than in reverse, is that we move at a snail's pace in comparison with the speed of sound. I cannot describe here all that is derived from this train of thought, but I wanted to acquaint you with it, since for many it is the basis of a widespread, acutely discerning theory, the so-called theory of relativity.

I have only described the most obvious parts to you. But you can see from what I have described that everything here is logical—very, very logical. Now, these days one finds countless judgements—the philosophical literature is teeming with them—all of which are derived from the same assumptions about thought. It is as though thinking has been torn away from reality. One thinks only about certain isolated conditions of reality and then constructs further thoughts from them.

It is scarcely possible to reply to such things, for the naturally expected reply would be a logical reply. But there can be no logical reply. It was for this reason that I introduced a certain idea in my last book, On the Riddles of Humanity (Vom Menschenratsel). This is the idea that if one wants to arrive at the truth, it is not sufficient just to form a logical concept, or a logical idea. There is the further requirement that the concept or idea must be in accordance with reality. Now, a very lengthy discussion would be required if I were to show you that the whole of the theory of relativity does not agree with reality, even though it is logical—wonderfully logical. We could show how the concept that is constructed regarding the series of one, two and three shots is completely logical and that, nevertheless, it is not a concept that would be formed by someone who thinks in accordance with reality. One cannot disprove the theory, one can only refrain from using it! And someone who has understood the criterion of being in accord with reality would refrain from using such concepts.

The empirical phenomena that Lorentz,²¹ Einstein, and others are trying to understand by means of this theory of relativity must be approached in an entirely different manner, not along the lines in which they and the others are thinking.

What I have been describing to you here is only one current in the ongoing stream of recent thought. Naturally, remnants of earlier thought are always being intermixed with the more recent thinking. But the ultimate and radical consequences of the assumptions on which almost all recent thinking is based are already contained in what I have been describing to you. We can see one distinctive peculiarity. A self-sufficient criterion of truth and falsehood has been lost—or, better said, the feeling for such a criterion has been lost. The resulting emancipation of abstract thinking has led to the formation of concepts which, being logical, are indisputable. In a certain sense they even accord with reality. But they remain merely formal concepts, for they are not suitable for saying something real about reality. They swim on the surface of reality without penetrating to the actual impulses at work in reality.

The following is an example of a theory that stays on the surface of reality and does not want to submerge in reality: Consider how, within the sphere of human reality one can distinguish the mineral realm, the plant realm, the animal realm and the human realm. And men live within a social order, as well—one could call it a sociological order. Perhaps other, higher, orders could be found, but we are not presently concerned with those. Now, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when a materialistic concept of reality held sway, the fashion in which people pictured these superimposed realms was one that must seem simplistic to us. Basically, only the mineral realm was taken into account. One said to oneself: Now, plants consist of the same things that are to be found in the mineral realm; they are simply organised in a more complicated way. The animal realm is again just a matter of further complication, and the human realm is more complicated still ... and so we reach the higher levels. Mind you, when one proceeds further, to the social order, it is no longer possible to discover more complicated atomic movements. Certain patterns of movement correspond to the mineral realm—that is how people pictured things. The movements become more complicated in the plant realm—this one knew, although it was not possible to observe the atoms. Still more complicated movements correspond to the animal realm, and even more complicated ones to the human realm. All was built up in this way. But, of course, when one comes to the social order it is not so easy to continue thinking in terms of atoms, for no atomic movements are there to be observed.

It was left to a thinker of the final third of the nineteenth century to at last accomplish the wonder of reducing sociology to biological concepts. He treated social structures, such as families, like cells. These then group themselves, do they not, into regional communities—or whatever we shall call them?—which are the beginnings of tissues. Then the theory goes further—countries are complete organs ... and so on. The person who created this way of thinking.²² Schaffle then wrote a book Social Democracy's Empty Future. (Die Aussichtslosigkeit der, Sozialdemokratie), which drew on these theories for support. Hermann Bahr,²³ the Viennese writer, was still a young, but very talented, whipper-snapper in those days. He wrote a reply to Schaffle's Social Democracy's Empty Future and called it, Herr Schaffle's Empty lnsights (Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herm Schaffle). This outstandingly-written book has since been forgotten.

Thus, as I was saying, the old materialists conceived of reality in terms of ever more complicated structures. In doing so, they naturally had to introduce certain concepts, concepts, say, about how the movements of the atoms, which in a mineral are fixed, become more labile and seek to achieve a balanced form in plants, and so on. In short, various theories were constructed in which it was attempted to derive one thing from another. Once materialism had been active for long enough, it was possible to think back and see how little fruit it had borne and how poorly its idea of reality had stood up to exacting tests. And so people came to the idea: Yes, to be sure, there is the mineral realm, and after that comes the plant realm. Mineral substance is contained within the plant, and the laws applying to minerals even apply there; the salts and other substances contained in the plant function in accordance with their own physiological-chemical laws. But the plant realm can never arise out of the mineral realm. Something further is required, some creative element. When one proceeds from the mineral realm to the plant realm, something creative has to be added to it. This creative element—the first creative element—works creatively in the realm of the minerals. Then a second creative element manifests itself in the mineral realm and the animal realm arises. So the animal sphere must take hold of the plant and mineral realms. Then a fourth creative element appears and takes hold of the three lower realms—takes them into the human sphere. Then, when we come to the social order, a further creative element again takes hold of the subordinate realms. A veritable hierarchy of creative elements! Of course there is nothing objectionable in the logic of this thinking. As thought, it is correct thought. But you will certainly have to think differently about these matters if you call to mind some of the concepts of spiritual science—concepts which we shall not be discussing today. These reflections remain stuck in abstractions; they never arrive at a concrete picture. Some details are mentioned, of course, but when one sets about thinking in this fashion one is stuck with an abstract concept of creativity. All the thinking remains stuck at the level of abstractions. And yet it is an attempt to use clear, formal thinking to overcome an unadorned materialism. One arrives at something higher, but only as an abstract concept.

Boutroux's²⁴ philosophy is an attempt to overcome unadorned materialism. He makes use of a formal thinking derived from the unprejudiced observation of the hierarchy of the realms of nature. He seeks the concept of an ascending creative scale in what could be called the hierarchy of the sciences. This leads to interesting conclusions. But the whole attempt remains stuck in abstractions. It is easy to show this by examining the details of Boutroux's philosophy. To begin with, I will only describe the line of thought he takes; perhaps the rest can be introduced later. Here we have an attempt to capture reality by applying abstractions to a more or less superficial observation of reality. But it is not thus to be captured. He does not want a mere ‘Philosophy of As If’, nor does he want to found some sort of mere pragmatism, or to restrict himself to an unreal enumeration of occurrences. But he cannot arrive at the sort of concreteness needed for reading the external world and for discovering what lies behind it. He cannot help us to look at the external world as one looks at the letters in a book to discover what is behind them; he only shows us some abstractions. These are supposed to express what it is that lives in the realms of reality. Whereas it was the criterion of reality that was missing in the other philosophical lines of thought I have been describing, what has been lost here is the power to take hold of reality concretely. One is no longer able to submerge in the inner impulses that are at work in reality, but only to skim along the top.

This shows us another fundamental tendency of modern life. I mentioned that thinking has emancipated itself in a particular way Torn from reality. Once emancipated from reality, it proceeds in abstractions.

If you will observe all the various recent schools of thought, you will perceive how the ability to plunge into reality has been lost. The ability to grasp reality in its true shape is becoming weaker and weaker. For a classic example of this follow the development of thought that leads from Maine de Biran²⁵ to Bergson.²⁶ Whereas Biran, living in the first third of the nineteenth century, still pursued a line of thought whose important psychological concepts enabled him to submerge in the real sphere of the human being, Bergson strikes out on a curious path that is wholly characteristic of the particular tendencies at work in recent thought. Bergson notices, on the one hand, that it is not possible to submerge in an immediate, living reality by means of the usual abstract thinking nor with the help of anything offered by scientific thinking as it is currently practised and as it is embodied in various scientific conclusions. He saw that this thinking is fundamentally unable to connect with reality—that it will always remain more or less on the surface of reality. For this reason he wishes to grasp reality by means of a kind of intuition. At present, I can only give you the broadest outlines of this intuition at the moment. It is an inner mode of experience; it contrasts with an approach which tries to capture reality in external structures of its own devising. This leads Bergson to some odd conclusions regarding the theory of knowledge and psychology. I will omit the intermediate steps and proceed to the summit from whence he points to the materialistic view that memories and other higher manifestations of soul life—manifestations involving complicated inner forms or movements—are dependent on structures in the brain. He says, to the contrary, that the shaping of these complicated forms has nothing at all to do with the purpose of the brain. What happens, rather, is that the soul acts and comes into relationships with reality which are then expressed in sensations, perceptions, in practical engagement with life, and in the way we move our body. These things are beyond the reach of abstract thinking and must be grasped by intuition, by inner experience. The function of the inner structures that are dependent on the brain extends no further than to their effects on perception and on the promotion and arrangement of life. Memory is not the result of formations in the brain; memory functions with an intensity that is independent of the brain.

This is an attempt to overcome a materialistic concept of knowledge. It is a curious attempt in that what it brings to light is the opposite of reality. For memory depends precisely upon the support of the physical body, the physical brain and the whole physical system.

Memory could never be established in the soul life if the soul were not able to extend its development into the physical body and establish within it the things necessary for exercising the faculty—the ability—to remember. So here we have a theory in which the drive to overcome materialism leads to conclusions that are precisely the opposite of the right ones. The truth of the matter is that memory needs to be annexed to the soul—it is among the capacities that the human soul needs to acquire. Therefore, memory, with the help of the physical body, needs to be annexed to the soul. But Bergson arrives at a contrary view—the view that the physical body does not participate in the development of memory. I am not describing these things in order to say something in particular about Bergsonian philosophy, but merely to show you this curious manifestation in contemporary thinking. Proceeding in an entirely logical fashion, one arrives at the opposite of what is correct.

We could start, therefore, with those more epistemologically orientated philosophies which speak of the inability to arrive at a criterion of truth and falsehood, and then proceed to the philosophies that are more concerned to arrive at the truth. What we would find, throughout, is that they all arrive at exactly the wrong conclusions because of their helplessness in dealing with the truth. Thus does contemporary thinking lean towards the very things that are incorrect and false. This phenomenon is connected with the way in which mankind has developed a tendency towards abstractions and an ability to work with abstractions, for this has made man a stranger to reality. Mankind is detached from reality and cannot finds its way back into reality. You can read about this in detail in my book, The Riddles of Philosophy (Die Ratsel der Philosophie). If one separates oneself from reality and lives in abstractions, the way back to reality is not to be found. But a counter-tendency is beginning to make itself felt. People are beginning to discover in themselves a kind of longing for spiritual concepts. But the helplessness persists; there is still an inability to arrive at the spirit. Significant and instructive things are to be observed happening in contemporary attempts to find a path that leads out of this absolute helplessness, a path leading to spiritual truths. And we have just looked at an example in which thinking that has been emancipated from reality seeks for the truth and arrives at the opposite of the truth.

The philosophy of Eucken²⁷ is a characteristic example of someone who is seeking for the spirit without having the slightest ability to grasp even so much as the shirt-tail of anything spiritual. Although Eucken speaks of nothing but the spirit, he does so only in words. He never actually says anything about the spirit. Because his words are wholly incapable of capturing anything truly spiritual, he speaks unceasingly of the spirit. He has already written countless books. To read through his books is a genuine torture, for they all say the same thing. There you will always find ... that one must discover how to grasp one's own being with thinking that exists in itself, that takes hold of itself without any dependence on anything external or on any external resistance, that beholds itself within itself, that proceeds entirely within itself and in so doing enters into itself and then recreates itself from out of itself. If you hear Eucken deliver a series of lectures about Greek philosophy, or read one of his books about it, you will find the development of Greek philosophy presented in this manner: At first thinking tries a little to take hold of itself, but it cannot yet do so ... Or you can hear how Paracelsus is gradually beginning to take hold of the inner world ... Or you can read a book about the development of Christianity-everywhere you will find the same things; everywhere the same! Yet our modern philistines find this philosophy so infinitely important; they rejoice to hear someone speaking about the spirit and theorising about the spirit as long as they are not required to know anything about the spirit or to actually enter into anything spiritual. This is why many say that Eucken's philosophy is the reawakening of Idealism, the reawakening of the life of the spirit, and is the right philosophy for creating a cultural ferment that will again enliven today's deathly, exhausted spiritual life, and so on. And yet anyone who has a feeling for what pulses, or ought to pulse, through a philosophy, and who reads or listens to Eucken, will have the lively impression that he is supposed to take hold of his own hair and drag himself into the heights, and then drag himself higher still, and higher still again. For such is the self-consistent logic of Eucken's philosophy. I have tried to give a totally objective account of these things in my Riddles of Philosophy. Anyone is capable of saying what I have just said, for it is not necessary to embark on critical analysis—merely acquainting oneself with the concepts as they are is enough.

Thus we see how certain contemporary streams of thought flow from a helplessness in the face of truth; we see how it is even possible to construct philosophies out of such helplessness in the face of reality. If one were not concerned about life, this might not seem so terrible. But terrible it is. And now and again it is necessary to enter into what lives and weaves in contemporary intellectual life in order to develop a feeling for what might overcome these things.

I have only described to you a few of the currents of thought that have been important to the intellectual life in the most varied places, places where philosophical views of the world are presented in lectures and are taught. Over the last years, the various streams of thought have been developing similar tendencies, so that a common structure of thought exists overall. I touched on this when I showed you how the ‘Philosophy of As If’ and Pragmatism arose at the same time, independently of one another.

But the thinkers have also borrowed various things from one another. The exchange of thoughts is always an active business. Vaihinger was wholly independent of Pierce; the two, one in Germany, the other over there in America, arrived at this approach to life independently of one another. Indeed, one finds many such echoes between personalities in one culture and personalities in another. Only by observing these in detail does one obtain a true picture of what is really going on in the spiritual life. And an unbelievable amount is written and thought and considered along these lines today, but the speculations pay no attention, to some of the simplest of things. Certain connections are ignored because the present day has not preserved a sense for reality. And this sense for reality is something that must be learned. As a sort of appendix to today's lecture let me state: This sense for reality is a thing that has to be learned.

If I may be allowed to mention something personal, I should like to say that I have always attempted—even in external scientific matters—to develop the sense for reality, the sense for how to keep on the trail of reality. This consists not only in being able to judge what is really there, but also in being able to find ways of applying real measures and real comparisons to reality. Perhaps you are acquainted with the so-called doctrine of the eternal return—the return of the same things—that is to be found in Nietzsche. According to this doctrine, we have already sat together countless times before in just the way we are sitting now. And we will sit together in this way countless times again. This is not a doctrine of reincarnation, but a doctrine about the repetition of the same things. At the moment I am not concerned to criticise the doctrine of the eternal return. This doctrine of eternal return is derived from a quite definite picture of how the world was formed. Out of this other, prior, view of the world Nietzsche developed some impossible ideas.

I was once present with other scholars at the Nietzsche Archive. The doctrine of the eternal return was being discussed and people were interested to know how Nietzsche might have arrived at this idea. Now, just think of the marvellous possibilities there! Anyone who is acquainted with academic circumstances will see what beautiful opportunities there are for writing the greatest possible number of dissertations and books about how Nietzsche originally came upon the idea of the doctrine of the eternal return. Naturally, one can come up with the boldest of theories to explain it. One can find all kinds of things; one only has to look for them. After the discussion had gone on for a while, I said to the gathering: Nietzsche often arrived at an idea by formulating the contradictory of some idea he encountered in another person. Thus I was trying to approach his ideas realistically. To my knowledge, I said, the contrary of this idea of his is to be found in another philosopher, Duhring, who said that the original configuration of the earth made it impossible that anything should ever repeat itself. And I said that, to the best of my knowledge, Nietzsche had read Duhring. So I suggested that the simplest thing would be to go into Nietzsche's library, which has been preserved, take down the books by Duhring, and look at the passages where the counter-theory is to be found. We then went to his library and located the books. We found them the relevant passages—with which I was quite familiar—and found heavy markings in Nietzsche's own hand and some characteristic words. When he came to passages where he intended to formulate a contradictory idea—I am no longer sure exactly which word he used in this particular case—Nietzsche would write something like ‘ass’ or ‘nonsense’ or ‘meaningless’. There was such a characteristic word written in the margin at this place. Thus the idea for ‘the doctrine of the eternal return’ was born in Nietzsche's spirit when he read this passage and formulated the contradictory idea! Here it was just a matter of looking in the right place. For when he met certain ideas, Nietzsche really did tend to formulate the contradictory idea.

Here we have another characteristic manifestation of the powerlessness of the modern criterion of reality. I have been showing you some of the things that originate in this powerlessness. We have another example in this use of contradiction to confront a stated truth or a pre-existing judgement when one is unable to arrive at any independent criterion of truth of one's own. But one must not generalise about such things. It would naturally be absurd to take this example and come to the abstract judgement that Nietzsche arrived at his entire philosophy in this manner, for at times he was entirely positive and simply extended an idea while remaining completely faithful to its original spirit. This, for example, is how the whole of what we encounter in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Bose) came into being. This can be demonstrated in all particulars. Once again, all one has to do is go to Nietzsche's library. There one will find a book on morality by Guyau.²⁸ Read all the passages where Nietzsche has made notes in the margins—you can then find them again, summarised, in Beyond Good and Evil. Beyond Good and Evil is already contained in Guyau's treatment of morality. These days it is necessary to pay attention to such connections. Otherwise one can arrive at entirely false impressions about what kind of person this or that thinker was.

Today I wanted to share with you some perspectives on the modern intellectual life. I have restricted myself to what is most familiar and straightforward. If circumstances permit, we can return to these matters in the near future and examine them in greater detail.

• 16. Richard Wahle (b. 1857): Das ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende. Ihre Vermachtnisse an die Theologie, Aesthetik und Staatspedagogik, Vienna and Leipzig, 1894.
• 17. William James (1842 – 1910): American philosopher and psychologist.
• 18. Charles Sanders Pierce (1839 – 1914): American philosopher.
• 19. F. C. S. Schiller (1864 – 1937): English philosopher.
• 20. Hans Vaihinger (1852 – 1933): Philosophie des Als Ob, System der theoreticshen, praktischen und religiosen Fiktionen der Menschheit auf Grund eines idealistischen Positivismus, 2nd edition, Berlin, 1913.
• 21. Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853 – 1929): Dutch physicist; founder of the theory of electrons.
• 22. Albert Schaffle (1831 – 1903): Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie. Drei Briefe an einen Staatsmann zur Erganzung der ‘Quintessenz des Sozialismus’, Tubingen, 1885.
• 23. Hermann Bahr (1863 – 1934): Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herm Schaffle. Drei Breife an einen Volksmann als Antwort auf ‘Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie’, Zurich, 1886.
• 24. Emile Boutroux (1845 – 1921): French philosopher.
• 25. Francois Pierre Gauthier Maine de Biran (1766 – 1824): French philosopher.
• 26. Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941): French philosopher.
• 27. Rudolf Eucken (1846 – 1926): German philosopher.
• 28. Marie Jean Guyau (1854 – 1888): French poet and philosopher. Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction, Paris, 1884.

Do not think that I wish to speak to you today about understanding between the different classes of people of the present day, as is so often the case now from certain quarters, where it is said that it is necessary to talk about understanding. I would like to speak of a quite different kind of understanding, as we shall see shortly. To speak of that understanding is out of the question when we look at how this life has developed over the last decades, perhaps even longer and right up to our own day, how it has now run its course into loudly speaking facts, which are, however, quite frightening for some people who would not have dreamed of these facts a short time ago. What good would it do to speak of understanding in this way compared to what can be heard on the site where this understanding is so often longed for today?

A few days ago you could hear all sorts of things from one such side, in Bern, at the so-called League of Nations Conference. What was said there about the desirable and, as people believe, possible international life of the near future truly reminded one of the speeches of certain statesmen, speeches that were always made from the same basic tone in the spring and early summer of 1914. Let us quote a few words from one such speech by a former statesman of the later belligerent powers. They went something like this - he said this to his Reichstag -: “Thanks to the efforts of the cabinets of the governments of the major European powers, we can assume that European peace will be secured for a long time to come. - In May 1914! That was the peace that was spoken of, that then came, and that caused at least ten million deaths and crippled eighteen million people! That is how people knew what lay dormant at the time.

I myself, if I may make this personal remark, in the spring of 1914, in the face of what one could see approaching, if one was not blind and deaf to the realities, had to speak the words in a meeting that I was able to hold in Vienna: We are suffering from a creeping cancer in the social organism of the present, which must break out as a mighty ulcer in a very short time. - You could talk like that back then.

Now, I think the facts have shown that one was more right when one spoke of the creeping cancerous disease in the social order of the present than when one spoke as the statesmen of that time spoke to anesthetize, to awaken illusion in the people. And so now, again, very, very many people are talking about what is to come between the peoples in terms of international life. And they are talking past and thinking past what is and will be the most important and essential thing and what is already being announced today by loudly speaking facts; they are talking past the actual true social demands of the present.

How did some people describe the life of so-called modern civilization until the terrible years that began in 1914? One could hear again and again how enormously mankind had progressed, how compared to earlier times it was possible to travel quickly over long distances of the earth to do business, how thought flew across the earth at lightning speed, how science and art - what is called science and art in certain circles - were spreading and so on. Song after song of praise was sung for this modern civilization. And the last four and a half years? What has become of this modern civilization in Europe in the course of it? How could it come about? Only because this modern civilization, to which such songs of praise were sung, rested on a foundation that was undermined, not by anything hostile to humanity as such, but by the most justified demands of a large part of the present population of the earth in the most diverse directions. They did not perceive what this civilization has brought us as an existence worthy of humanity.

But this civilization was only possible because it rose like a superstructure on the substructure, which consists in the fact that countless people did not have an existence worthy of a human being. And the thing that must be regarded as the worst is that a deep gulf had opened up in terms of understanding, a gulf between those who, on the one hand, sang the praises and those who, on the other hand, had to call out again and again from the meetings that they had taken from their hard work: it can't go on like this!

There was little inclination in the leading, leading circles to reach the kind of real understanding that should have been sought for decades, indeed for perhaps more than half a century. For this half century, the proletarian movement has been growing more and more. And it is growing in such a way that one can say: Up to now the life of the proletarian population has stood there like a powerful world-historical critique of what the ruling and leading classes had done in world history, in the development of mankind. Today the facts speak this language of criticism, which has been held up to these ruling classes so and so often. How have the hitherto ruling classes very often responded to the cry: “Things cannot go on like this”? It was only necessary - I would like to cite examples - not to go so far as, for example, a characteristic personality who stood out from the ruling classes of the immediate past, such as the German Emperor, who said with reference to the proletarian masses, insofar as they acted as socialists: “These animals that undermine the soil of the German Empire must be exterminated. Or another time he said - these are his own words: These people are the enemies of the divine world order. - They are not merely the enemies of other people, but the enemies of the divine world order. - As I said, there was no need to go that far, but people did have strange ideas. In the German Reich, for example, for certain reasons which I do not wish to criticize here, the Social Democrats had voted in favour of war credits, at least a large proportion of the Social Democrats had voted in favour of war credits, and had also - again for reasons which I do not wish to discuss - done their military duty, had generally behaved in a certain way towards the so-called world war. Do not believe that the opinion of people from bourgeois intellectual circles was so rare that, when they saw how patriotic the Social Democrats behaved, they seriously believed - that is a fact - that the soldiers of the future would actually be all men who would dutifully allow themselves to be used for what they would have been quite gladly used for, especially in the previous empire, if things had turned out differently, but very differently, than they did. They would have been very gladly used to approve taxes in the Reichstag of blessed memory.

Now, even some socialists did not dream of the loudly spoken facts that have now come to pass. Even on the socialist side it has often and repeatedly been emphasized: After this world war, the government will not be able to deal with the proletarian population in the same way as before; it will have to take their will into consideration. Well, the facts have changed quite a bit, haven't they? This government, at least a large part of it, cannot take much account of the will of the proletarian population today.

If you look at both sides, you can see on the one hand what the Austrian socialist Pernerstorfer characterized the attitude of certain bourgeois circles during the World War as saying: These millions, in so far as they belonged to the belligerent states, would gladly make their peace with Social-Democracy; but they would like a peace on the condition, for instance, which would correspond to that to which the other, to whom one offers lifelong friendship, accepts it, but that the person concerned hangs himself afterwards. - But if we look at the other side, there was also no possibility of evoking much understanding. I may well speak from personal experience here, for I worked for years as a teacher at the workers' educational school founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht, helping to develop the world view that had formed in proletarian souls. Anyone who knows what developed in the proletarian soul also knows what proletarian demands were contained in what resounded through the souls of the proletarians again and again in those meetings, which they often took away from their working hours and from their physical health. This was expressed again and again in three different ways. Some, however, did not speak with a full and broad understanding of what was revealed in these three things, but there was a deep feeling in the proletarian souls about what was interwoven in these three demands, even if they did not seem to be expressed as demands. The first was clothed in the words: materialist conception of history; the second was clothed in the word, in the word of surplus value, which is of great importance to the proletarian; and the third was what the proletarian has meant for decades, even if he spoke from his understanding, from his conception, by the class struggle, which indicated how in recent times the proletarian has become within the class struggle what one can call the class-conscious proletarian.

What is actually clothed in these three words? At first it looks quite theoretical, quite scholastic, when one says: one is committed to the materialist science of history; but today we want to speak in practical terms and not theoretically. What was actually meant by what the proletarian wanted and wants to express in relation to his world view when he speaks of a materialist view of history? Since that time, since modern capitalism has developed simultaneously with modern technology in the course of modern history, he has been able to hear an old song from the leading, leading circles. But the proletarian, when he looked at the leading circles, noticed very little of what is claimed today to be stimulated in the human soul by this old song. Then the people of the leading circles spoke: Man lives in a certain social order from generation to generation. Just as historical life develops, so lives mankind; and it lives according to laws which correspond to a divine world order. It was called a moral world order, it was perhaps also called the ideas, if one wanted to be enlightened, which govern the historical life of mankind.

The proletarian looked at those circles who spoke as if their lives were conditioned by spiritual and moral powers that walk and weave through the world. But he, for his part, had nothing of these moral powers; he probably saw even less of a divine world order working itself out in the facts. One spoke of a divine world order, but one did not see it, this divine world order. Above all, he did not see it in the actions of people, in the behavior of people towards each other. After all, he had been - and this had been developing for centuries - locked into the capitalist economic order, the soulless, desolate capitalist economic order. It had come up at the same time as modern technology, which had called many people away from the old craft, which was said to have a golden bottom - it had a golden bottom in a certain way - but it had no golden bottom, which the modern proletarian experienced at the machine in the factory. For him, this social order was expressed in his standing at the machine, in his being harnessed into the capitalist economic order. And he saw, as this newer technical and capitalist life emerged, how the leading circles had set up as a modern state according to their interests what they had taken over from a certain social organism from ancient times. Above all, he saw how the leading circles, from what they had as income through the modern economic order, through the modern state, how they employed their so-called spiritual leaders, how they employed their teachers, their lawyers, their physicians and so on. And, as I said, he noticed little of the fact that a divine, moral world order was at work in this spiritual leadership. Rather, because he was used to looking at the dependence of man on the economic order, he noticed how these leading circles were also dependent on the economic order. Capitalism, modern technology, the system of exploitation, he saw that they placed the spiritual leaders in the places where they stood. When this modern spiritual life emerged in the modern state, it was often said in certain circles of this spiritual life: “Oh, this distant Middle Ages, philosophy, worldly wisdom - and by that they meant science in general - was in a certain sense the handmaiden of theology. However, it was less emphasized from this side that in more recent times science had truly not become something that was a free science on its own, but that it was a faithful servant of the modern state system. Again, there was no need to go as far as a famous modern physiologist who once said of a learned body, the Berlin Academy of Sciences: those scholars who belong to this Berlin Academy of Sciences are the intellectual protection troops of the Hohenzollerns. As I said, there was no need to go that far; but one could see, for example - and it all came to a certain height during the World War - one could see strange things during this World War. Certainly, the mathematicians, the chemists, one cannot immediately prove how they obey orders from above; on the other hand, their science shines less brightly, is less conspicuously connected with what pulsates through life. History is more closely related to that which pulsates through life. Anyone who has followed what has been produced as history, especially by those who have worked and ruled as civil servants in this area, could probably form a more unbiased judgment than many others, for example, if he looked at everything that was said about the historical significance of the Hohenzollerns during this world war and even before, truly long before. Truly, the history of the Hohenzollerns will look different when it is written in the future! It can be said that what these gentlemen produced in this field was a faithful reflection of what those in power actually wanted; it was really not a free intellectual life, it was nothing more than a spiritual superstructure over the economic order of the last centuries and especially of more recent times. What wonder, however, if the proletarian, looking at all these conditions, said to himself: Oh what, all moral world order, all ideas in history! What has divine world order to say! Every human being is dependent on the economic foundations. As these economic foundations are, so he spreads out his thoughts, so he lives out his feelings, so he ultimately thinks in relation to his religious ideas: all an ideological superstructure! What is truly real is the economic order!

As I said, one can understand that which arose as an impression from the immediate life in the soul of the proletarian. This proletarian was compelled - the ruling class itself had to call him to a certain education, it could no longer use the old uneducated, the old illiteracy in its economic order - this proletarian was compelled within the education he wanted to receive, which he longed for, to accept what had come up as science, as the whole scientific thinking about the world in the newer times.

But this proletarian was also compelled to do something else than absorb science in the same way that the ruling circles, for example, absorbed this newer science, which arose at the same time as modern technology and capitalism. I would like to cite again and again an example that I already brought here the other day to illustrate this question. I have just spoken about this area. One could be such a daring natural scientist as Karl Vogt, the fat Vogt, one could be a scientific popularizer like Büchner, one could be quite free-thinking, quite enlightened in the manner of both; one could say to oneself: away from me all the old prejudices. But the effect that this modern scientific attitude had on these classes was quite different from the effect it had on the soul of the modern proletarian. The leading circles spoke of the fact that human beings are descended from animal creatures. I don't want to say now whether this doctrine is nonsensical or in any way justified, but they did say so, I just want to state the facts. But this doctrine was conceived by the ruling classes in such a way that it only got into people's heads. It was possible to gain a head superiority. But in social life, in the social order of life in which one stood, laws prevailed that were truly not derived from the basic view that all men descended in the same way from some animal or other. And people found it convenient not to set up the social order, not even to think about it in terms of this modern scientific view.

I once stood, as I said, I mention this fact once again here in this city, on a joint podium with Rosa Luxemburg, who recently met her tragic end. She and I were speaking about science and the workers to a large working-class audience near Berlin. In her particularly unique way, in her calm and composed manner, she spoke at that time above all from the spirit of modern science; but she was speaking to modern proletarians. She spoke to these modern proletarians like this: Just look at science today. It is said that man does not have his origin in some primordial spiritual state, for, she said - and I quote her words almost verbatim - man was originally a quite indecent being who climbed trees, and from such beings we are all descended. Of course - she then said - there is no reason to make distinctions of rank between people, as we do in today's social order. - Yes, you see, one could be an enlightened person and be in the circle of the leading, ruling class, one could have a head conviction, but that which was spoken in this way had a different effect on the modern proletarian. The modern proletarian approached this - it must be said - bourgeois science with great, with enormous confidence, for he believed that it contained the absolute truth. And because he had been called away to the machine, into the factory, into the capitalist economic order, because he had been torn out of everything that had gone before, because he no longer had any traditions, because he could not remain in a completely new relationship to life, he was compelled to take what this bourgeois science gave him as directed at the whole person and to ask himself: Is this the way the world is in the eyes of this modern science?

This is the main direction of the spiritual life of the modern proletarian. That is what compels him again and again to feel in his soul that things cannot go on like this. And behind this lies one of the demands.

The second of the demands, one could hear it again and again and again if one did not merely belong to the leading circles and thus thought in a certain way about the proletariat, but if one, living among the proletariat, could think and speak with the proletariat - one could feel and sense it again and again and again. Anyone who lived within these circles knows that Karl Marx and his successors threw something into the working class in a theoretical way with the concept of “surplus value” and everything connected with it, which had an igniting effect. For in this modern working class there was something that understood, deeply and painfully understood, from the living conditions of modern times, what surplus value is.

This is the point where one must say: Today we stand at a turning point in historical development. That which lived in the modern proletariat was a criticism of what the leading circles have done so far in the historical development of mankind. Today the modern proletariat is called upon to act. This action will only be possible if, precisely on this point, which follows on from the word surplus value, we have the courage to go beyond what Karl Marx meant when he spoke of surplus value and what is connected with it, wherever we want to make progress in human life itself.

What was it, then, that evoked such a deep, sensitive understanding in the soul of the modern proletarian in connection with this surplus value? It was that which touched the basic nerve of the whole modern economic system. What is economy? Economy, on the basis of which we all live materially? What is commodity, production, circulation, consumption? Into this cycle of economic life, in which only commodities should circulate, there has entered, in a certain form since ancient times, that which can only be characterized by saying: within the modern capitalist economic order, the labour-power of the modern proletarian continues to live in the same way as a commodity. It is bought, it is exchanged like a commodity for other commodities. - This is what the modern proletarian feels. Whatever has happened in small chunks to divert his attention from this fundamental fact, so to speak, we are deep in a context in which proletarian labor is nothing more than a commodity. Here the modern proletarian feels much more than one has actually been compelled to express in theoretical words, even in socialist science; here the modern proletarian feels the whole inhumanity of his existence. He sees in his existence only the continuation of the old slave existence, of the medieval system of serfdom. The slave is sold as a whole person; the modern proletarian, because he owns nothing himself, must carry his labor power onto the labor market, which is bought from him. But can one carry one's labor power to the labor market without carrying oneself? Are we not so bound up with it as human beings that we suffer the fate that our own labor power suffers? That is what matters: Not only a different form of remuneration, which is nothing more than a purchase of labor power as a commodity, but the disrobing of labor power from the commodity character in modern economic life must be striven for. This is precisely the more or less clearly expressed question of the modern proletariat: how can it happen that man, even if he has nothing else to contribute to the social organism but his labor power, can be given an existence worthy of a human being? What does it actually mean that his labor power, which can in no way be compared to any commodity, is no longer a commodity? What is that actually? That is the great lie of life: that which can never in reality become a commodity, labor power, is turned into a commodity in modern life. This makes it an experimental lie, a lie of fact thrown into reality; it must be transformed into truth - this is how one could radically formulate the demand on this point.

And the third thing is what the modern proletarian sees: It is struggle. He looks at modern economic life; he has a feeling in the depths of his soul that in economic life salutary things can only blossom out of public spirit. How would this public spirit express itself in a particular case, for example? Well, one can say in a special case: the entrepreneur, the employer and the worker, they produce together. The commonality, the public spirit, should therefore consist in the fact that they have the same interest towards the social organism. Instead, the entrepreneur buys the worker's labor power like a commodity, while they produce the product together. He gives him nothing more from the product than the purchase price for this commodity. The employment contract, however more or less disguised it may appear, does not help to overcome this. As long as this labor contract is concluded for the use of the proletarian's labor, this contract must always turn labor power into a commodity. The only thing that must be possible is that the contract between what is now called the worker and what is now called the entrepreneur need not be concluded, must not be concluded about labor, but must be concluded about the division of the product between the worker and the manager of labor. There is no other justice in this field. There is no other real expression of what is called public spirit in this field. But what does the modern proletarian see instead of such a public spirit? Well, he sees the class struggle. He sees his class producing out of physical labor-power in struggle with the entrepreneurial class, and he sees surplus-value flowing into the entrepreneurial class without his having any share in the “destinies” which this surplus-value has within the social organism.

The proletarian is really not so stupid as to believe that surplus-value need not be produced. If everything produced by manual labor were eaten up, then there would be no schools, no spiritual culture at all, then no state system could exist; there would be no taxes and so on; for all that is in these things, which the proletarian also knows to be necessary for the development of mankind, flows from surplus value. But the proletarian wants something else. And those who regard the modern proletarian question merely as a question of bread conceal the facts. Certainly, it is a bread question; but it depends on how this bread question is felt. The modern proletarian today feels it from a completely different background, from the feeling of an inhuman existence. That is what matters. And instead of a sense of community, he feels the class struggle between himself and the one with whom he jointly produces for the social organism.

What, then, is the experience of this modern proletarian in modern life? By posing this question, appropriately enough, one can already arrive at the practical measures by which the proletarian demands of modern times can be satisfied in the future. One can say: Yes, so far it has proved to be in a certain way a truth, a truth of the last centuries, that spiritual life is only something like a superstructure, like an ideology, like a smoke that comes out of what the mere economic system is. But deep down the proletarian feels a longing for a real spiritual life, for a spiritual life that is there to satisfy every human existence. Even if he says that all spiritual life comes out of the economic order, in his unconscious he wants precisely a spiritual life that does not come out of the economic order, he wants a free, self-sufficient spiritual life, he wants a true spiritual life. That is one thing.

The second is that he looks at the modern state. What does he see in this modern state? He sees the class struggle in this modern state, and he has the feeling that where the class struggle prevails, something does not prevail that arises from every human consciousness as a necessary demand of life. In a social order in which the class struggle can prevail, privilege prevails; for whence would the struggle of the leading circles against the propertyless circles come if not from privilege? But privilege must not prevail - so says the soul - justice must prevail. That is the second demand. It is the one that can be expressed in something like this: The modern proletarian sees in the modern state the embodiment of the class struggle. But he demands justice on the ground where the class struggle prevails. And on the ground of the modern economic order he sees the development of that which turns his labor power into a commodity. He sees himself caught up in this economic process. Certainly, theoretically the proletariat has hitherto established as a science that everything is dependent on national economic life. But in the depths of the soul, there it rummages: I want to become independent of the economic life that now prevails; I want a completely different life from that which is dependent on this economic life.

If we look from this point of view at the great, widely spoken facts of the present, which are troubling Europe and will continue to do so more and more, they speak like this: A spiritual life has arisen out of the purely material interests of the leading, leading circles. That is not what gives all human beings an existence worthy of a human being. What the leading circles have made of the modern state through the development of technology and capitalism has resulted in a community of privilege, not of right. And class struggle must cease; legal life must take its place. In economic life it has resulted that labor power has been harnessed to the circulation of commodities; human labor power is brought to the commodity market. Human labor power must be taken out of the pure economic cycle. That is what is expressed in the present world-historical facts. How did all this come about?

Well, you need only look at a few facts, which could be multiplied a hundredfold, from the point of view of a particular question. It will perhaps surprise you that we are talking here about the very point of view I am now suggesting. However, today we are at a decisive turning point in the social movement. In recent times we have often heard the phrase, more or less wittily expressed, but it is certainly not, not merely a phrase: that which brought about this world war catastrophe has not been there since mankind has had a historical memory. This has been repeated often and often. But the sentiment is less often emphasized: Well, if this is the case, if people have managed to kill ten million people and cripple eighteen million in a relatively short time, if this has happened in an incomparable way, why do people not perhaps feel comfortable asking themselves: in order to make such things impossible, must we not resort to new thoughts, to thoughts that are just as impossible compared to the previous habits of thought as this world war is compared to the previous experiences of human history? You will have to excuse me if I express the thoughts meant here somewhat radically to one side or the other. Let us look at individual facts which, as I said, could be multiplied a hundredfold. Austria is a very characteristic example of how a state lived under the conditions of the past era. I can talk about it right now because I have spent three decades, half of my life so far, in Austria. It is precisely in this Austrian state that one can study what actually lies at the heart of what can, indeed must, destroy a social organism in our time. When, in the sixties, a so-called bourgeois constitutional life began to develop out of the old Austrian patriarchalism and despotism, deputies were elected to the Austrian Imperial Council according to four curiae: firstly, the curia of the large landowners; secondly, the curia of the Chamber of Commerce; thirdly, the curia of the towns, markets and industrial towns; fourthly, the curia of the rural communities. The latter were not elected directly, but indirectly, because the rural communities were not considered so secure. The representatives of these four curiae were now in the Austrian Imperial Council and made laws, made rights. But what does that mean? It means that they were purely economic representatives, representatives of pure economic life in the parliament, and they made laws. What must come out of that? The interests of economic life must simply be transformed into laws, into rights, into rights over labor, into rights over property. Strange as it may seem, many a bourgeois national economic speech has been made about property: Ownership is a right, ownership of the means of production, ownership of land is a legal relationship. Because everything else that you will define about property has no meaning in the economic process. Only that which establishes ownership, the right to make exclusive use of an object to the exclusion of others, is significant. Having the right to dispose of it is what constitutes the basis of the national economy. In the existing state, we are dealing with a privilege rather than a right.

There is one example that could be multiplied indefinitely. Where this was not determined by an electoral law in the old order, it could do so by itself. The association that called itself the Association of Farmers was, for example, a purely economic representation of interests in the German Reichstag. Let's take another example. In the German Reichstag there was also the so-called Center, a purely religious community. Spiritual life was carried into legal life. Spiritual interests were expressed in legal life. All this is connected with what the interests of the hitherto leading circles gradually became in the modern state. When modern times came along with their technology, with capitalism, this state, as it had emerged from the Middle Ages, was found as a framework. First of all, the intellectual life was incorporated into this state, theology was trained, theologians, as they wanted them in the state, lawyers, physicians, especially schoolmen; all this was trained. The entire intellectual life was incorporated into the state. People were hypnotized by the idea that the state would serve our interests, so let's teach in it, let's administer intellectual life in a way that suits our interests, in a way that can emerge from the state itself.

And on the other hand, it was believed that progress would be served by incorporating certain branches of the economy, the postal system, the telegraph system and the railroad system into this modern state. That is the tendency: to merge everything into the modern state. That is a bourgeois tendency. Socialism, too, is basically nothing other than the inheritance of the bourgeoisie, which it has inherited by taking up again the ideas of the old cooperative system, thereby taking up the capitalist economic order, which must rightly be overcome on the basis of its demands. But the fact that he now wants to turn the social organism into a large cooperative, using the framework of the state, is the bourgeois legacy. A healing, a real recovery of the social organism can only come about if one has an eye for how the damage under which we live has arisen precisely because three areas that have nothing to do with each other have been merged together, and that the modern state had to absorb everything because more and more was being asked: What should the state do? - We have seen what it can do in the devastation and destruction of Europe over the last four and a half years! Today it is more appropriate to ask: What should the state actually refrain from doing? What is better if it does not do it? - This is the question we should be asking today. If you look at the whole circle of debates as we have conducted them so far, you will not be surprised when I tell you that on the basis of the most conscientious consideration of social life, really with equally good science, which only cannot be presented in all details in the course of a single lecture, one comes to the demand to make the most necessary practical demand today for the satisfaction of proletarian needs, namely: To take the road back with regard to nationalization, with regard to welding together three things that are quite different from each other in life.

To help us understand each other better, let me remind you of those three fundamental ideas of modern times that emerged at the end of the 18th century from the innermost needs of humanity, from the French Revolution, like a motto of modern times: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. - Well, it was by no means stupid people in the 19th century and right up to the present day who have shown again and again that these three ideas are not compatible with each other, that freedom is not compatible with equality and so on. Nevertheless, anyone who can feel that, feels that these ideas themselves are healthy stages of human life, even if they contradict each other. And why do they contradict each other? They only contradict each other because they have been raised as a demand more and more within what can never be a single centralization in itself, but which must divide into three independent members developing side by side. In the future the social organism, if it is to work healthily, must first of all divide itself into a spiritual organism, where all spiritual life has its own legislation and its own administration, where from the lowest teacher onwards man does not listen to the orders of a state, is not forced into the power of economic life, but lives solely and exclusively in an organization founded on spiritual laws themselves, where he knows himself to be completely within a spiritual world, a purely spiritual world. It is not a question of our being tied more and more into an official organization, into a bureaucracy; for spiritual life can only develop if the heart and mind develop for individual initiative, for that which lies in the personal, in the individual abilities of man. If they are cultivated in a free spiritual life, then such a spiritual life will develop which can offer every human being an existence worthy of a human being. For then that which develops as spiritual life will not be based on economic compulsion, not on state compulsion, but will spring solely from the impulses that underlie free humanity. He who produces spiritually will speak to all men and the spiritual organization will have the sole interest of cultivating spiritual individualities. Individual human abilities are a unity, a unity in schools, secondary schools, universities, a unity in art and science. These more purely spiritual branches, however, work in unity with those individual faculties which flow into capital in the social organism.

Capitalism can only be placed on a sound basis by becoming the bearer of a free spiritual life. That alone would make it possible to fulfil the demand that is usually made today for the socialization of the means of production. For only a free spiritual life can give rise to social understanding, and only in a free spiritual life is it possible to constantly transfer to the general public that which comes about with the help of the means of production and the land. This first of all with regard to the free spiritual life.

What is the constitutional state, the actual political state, must also develop as an independent organization in the healthy social organism. It has to do, for example, with the regulation of the administration of leadership relations. But above all it has to do with the regulation of human labor, which must be lifted out of the mere economic process, not by abstract laws, but by people themselves.

How must the economic process proceed? On the one hand, the economic process is dependent on what is at its limit, on the natural basis, on the available raw materials of an area, on the yields of the soil and so on. One can improve the yield of the soil to a certain extent through technology; but there is a limit to this, a limit which is erected for prosperity, a limit on which prices depend. That is one limit. In a healthy social organism there must be a second limit. This second limit is the legal and political organism, which develops independently alongside the economic organism. In the political organism, that which affects all men equally, that which democratically concerns every man, where every man must come to an understanding with every man, is at work. This is the ground on which the measure and nature of human labor must be decided on the basis of the interests of this humanity. Only then, when the measure and nature of human labor is decided on the legal ground independent of the economic ground, then this labor flows into the economic process, then the labor power of man is price-forming. Then no one dictates the price to labor power, then it is as price-forming as the land with its yields and so on is price-forming itself. That will be the great economic law of the future, that economic life will be caught between two boundaries, so that the measure and price of human labor will not be determined by the economic forces themselves.

And the third independent area will be economic life itself. For the sake of brevity, I can only hint at the significance of this transformation of economic life. I will give you a concrete example so that you can see that I am not presenting you with complicated theories here, but with what can be read from practical life and can be incorporated into practical life. You only have to name one word, and then every man and his thoughts are immediately involved in this word in economic life - well, one in a different way than the other - you only have to name the word “money”. But you see, most people know money; some know it from the abundant quantities in which they have it, some from the small quantities in which they have it; but they believe they know it. But what money actually is in the social organism, not only do everyday people have no real idea, but our learned economists of today have very little idea of what money actually is. Some are of the opinion that money is based on the metal value of the gold or silver on which it is based; others are of the opinion that it is a mere stamp, depending on whether the state stamps more or less thin instructions on goods and so on. One speaks of a metaphysical process of money and so on, as all things are; one always has the need in science to choose quite learned words. But none of this matters; on the contrary, the most learned gentlemen today agree that there must be something for money as a means of exchange. That which must be there is the treasure of gold, to which one must always return in order for money to have value.

Now, of course, since England is the world power and insists on gold, the gold currency cannot be overcome overnight in international trade. But the question must be raised precisely with regard to the recovery of economic life: What about the fact that people say that circulating money, regardless of its form, must always be related back to the amount of gold that is available in any state, because, they say, gold is a popular commodity, a commodity that does not change its value for a long time. - You can read up on all these theories. They refer to the excellent properties that gold has in order to be represented by money.

Now, what is it that money actually refers to, as national economists believe that money refers to gold? Here a greater advance in science is necessary. An answer is needed which people will not believe in today. I will speak of this in more detail in my forthcoming booklet on the social question. People today still claim not to believe in this answer. But if you take an unbiased look at economic life, you will get the answer when you ask: What is the real, actual equivalent value of circulating money? - He receives the answer, however strange it may sound to people today: gold is only an illusory value, wherever it may be. - That which in truth corresponds to money is the sum of all the means of production existing in a social territory, including land. Everything that is only expressed by money refers to this. All the beautiful qualities which the national economists ascribe to gold, so that it can give the currency, all these qualities, they are in truth to be ascribed to the means of production. Hence the question must arise precisely from the circulation of commodities with the aid of money: How can that which, though in ever-continuing transformation, in ever-continuing reorganization, but as a best value, underlies all national economy, how can it become such a uniform basis of economic life as money itself, which is only the representative? All that lives in the means of production, as common as money is in its nature, so common must the means of production be. That is to say, their circulation must be such as corresponds to the fact that no one can work on the means of production except by the cooperation of the whole social organism.

There are two things to be considered. First, that the social organism would lose an infinite amount if individual abilities were excluded. Man should work for the social organism through his individual abilities as long as he has them and as long as he wants to use them. But the moment he ceases to work for the social organism, the means of production which he administers must be transferred by the rule of law to the generality of the social organism.

I need only point to one branch of our modern life, and the matter is settled. It is that branch which modern man must regard as the most insignificant, the most insignificant, the most insignificant, because it is so treated in modern capitalism: that is spiritual life. What one produces spiritually is certainly connected with one's individual capacity; but thirty years after death it passes into the public domain and no longer belongs to one. - This most insignificant good, this most insignificant good, is treated in this way today. People are looking for a way to transfer what the individual produces into society. It is about this transition. It is also quite fair in the spiritual field. For what one has on the basis of one's individual abilities is nevertheless owed to the social organism, and one must give back to the social organism what one has gained on the basis of one's individual abilities.

So in the future, through the rule of law, what is produced with the help of material means of production must also be transferred to the general public. It is not necessary to think about how the means of production can be socialized bureaucratically, as in the previous social order. Those who oppress have grown out of capitalism. Thus, in the future social order, the oppressor will be recruited from within bureaucratism, from the ranks of those who today call themselves socialists, if one would only work towards a cooperative socialization of the means of production. But a just development of what the individual produces out of his individual abilities, a just transition is that into socialization. That is what we have to strive for. Then, if you think this through, you will realize: Many have said from an old economic organization and state order, spiritual order: if we want to keep humanity together, then we need what supports each other, throne and altar. Well, in modern times the throne is often a presidential chair and the altar a Wertheim cash register. But the attitude is often very similar in both cases.

The only question is whether things would be much better if the throne and the altar were merely transformed into an office and a machine and a factory, and if everything became mere bookkeeping instead of the previous administration. What is demanded as a social demand is deeply justified; however, we are living in a historical turning point. We need ideas that thoroughly transform the old. And just as intellectual life, economic life and political state life have striven towards each other under the influence of the bourgeois circles of modern times, so the modern proletarian should understand that the way back must be taken. After all, has this modern proletarian acquired an understanding of the organization by studying how the individual economic and life circles must interact with one another, has he studied the class struggle, has he really become acquainted with the economic circles in their relationship to one another? He would have to understand that the unity of the social organism is not disturbed, but on the contrary promoted, if not a mere uniform centralization, in which everything is muddled up, is sought, but if the three branches, spiritual organization, legal or state organization, economic organization, are separated from one another with their own administrations, with their own laws.

Don't tell me it's complicated, how sovereign states should interact! It will all happen in a much more intensive way, in a much more harmonious way than now, where everything is chaotic and confused. If the modern proletarian, looking and feeling his demands, strives for really practical solutions to his life's questions, for the fulfillment of his hopes, then he will turn to this organization, which may still sound strange today. And I do not believe that in other circles there could ever be so much understanding for the newer historical things as in proletarian circles. Oh, I have seen it, because in the last four and a half years I have often and repeatedly made suggestions to people in this direction, I have told them: what is demanded by this threefold structure is not an abstract program, not a figment of the imagination that arose in one night, it is based on life, it is what will be realized in the next ten, twenty, thirty years, especially in Europe. And it will be realized whether you like it or not; you only have the choice of either accepting reason now and realizing some things out of free choice, or you will be faced with revolutions of the most monstrous kind. - Well, the revolutions are coming soon!

Therefore I believe that he who has been placed by the external conditions of life in that which at first says nothing humanly, in the lifeless machine, has been harnessed into the desolate capitalism, I believe he must have an understanding for such ideas which differ from the old, but which are intimately related to the new, the emerging, the becoming. And I have the conviction and believe that they will gradually sink into the hearts and souls of the newer man, the modern proletarian in particular, I have the conviction: If the proletarian understands these demands and the possibility of their solution in the right sense, then, by becoming a class-conscious proletarian who works towards his liberation, he will liberate his class, and thus at the same time liberate man, then he will put something else in the place of the class: the tripartite healthy social organism. He will then not only become the liberator of his class, but the liberator of all humanity, that is, of everything that deserves to be and should be liberated as truly human in humanity.

Discussion

The organizer expresses his astonishment in deeply felt words that the workers' movement is being met with understanding from a hitherto unknown side. He expresses his thanks not only for the lecture, but also for the intellectual work that preceded it.

1st speaker (Dr. Schmidt): Agrees with Steiner's objective, asks about the path to realization. This had been mapped out by the socialist movement to date: Party, trade union, cooperative movement. As today, the three areas of life will remain interlinked in the future, but will be shaped by the supporters of the socialist movement. The first goal must be to change the economic order in the sense of equality.

2nd speaker: It will be easy to agree on the content of the objective. Threefolding is a utopia (reference to Fourier). The path to it is predetermined by the development trend of the time: the class struggle.

3rd speaker: The intellectual movement must also be taken into account. Every revolution has been prepared by ideas.

4, Speaker: The experience of war has confirmed the materialist view of history. Contradicts the statement that socialism adopts the bourgeois belief in the state. The dictatorship of the proletariat has no other purpose than to prepare for the abolition of the state. Spiritual freedom will only be possible in a community of freely producing people. Only the proletarian mass movement has a chance of success.

Rudolf Steiner: What the honorable speakers have said will not actually offer much opportunity to go into detail on one or the other, for the reason that it is quite natural that the objections made are based on the common views. I would like to say that I have been able to anticipate in every detail the things that have been said. I would just like to take up a little more of your time with regard to a few points that seem important to me.

First of all, I would like to draw your attention to the following. When something like what I have said this evening is said, one can always hear a kind of objection, which consists in the fact that it is said: I can't really imagine how things will turn out in reality. And on the other hand, it is almost demanded that one should not give utopia. I do believe that it will take some time before people realize that what I have said this evening really relates to a utopia in the same way that black relates to white: it is the opposite of a utopia. Things are a little bit connected. What I wanted to say really cannot be characterized in any other way than as I have already said to some people: That lies in the development trend of the next ten, twenty, thirty years. And whether we like it or not, we will have to implement it, either through reason or through revolution. There is simply no choice not to carry it out, because time itself wants it. And the development of mankind has already at times really followed guidelines which it has taken, and has apparently taken them back again, and of course it is not a question of a real return to earlier conditions, but of course the way back is then a way to a completely new form. It is true, of course, that we know that trade union life, cooperative life and political party life have achieved tremendous things in recent times and that we owe a great deal to them. But on the other hand, it must be said that in all the things that have been achieved there must be something unsatisfactory, something not yet finished. Today we are not convinced that there are new facts. But there is indeed something there that finally demands a different kind of orientation than we have had up to now! When people say that I have overestimated the power of the idea - I was not talking about ideas at all! I have just said the opposite of what could be described as the power of the idea. What did I actually put forward as a demand? I put forward a possible social organization. I pointed out how people should relate to each other so that they can find the right thing. A utopian always starts from the idea that this is how the social order should be organized. Basically, he thinks he is smarter than everyone else; you have to wait for him, and once he has spoken, you have nothing more to say. If he can't make contact, he sits in his attic and waits. It never occurs to me, not in the least, to wait for a millionaire, nor to believe in any way that I know better about this or that than another person.

You see, there is a very general social phenomenon that man as an individual cannot achieve, that is human language itself. It has been said countless times that if a person lives on a desert island, grows up alone, without hearing other people speak, he himself will not be able to speak. Language develops from a social phenomenon in people, through other people. It is the same with all social impulses. We cannot arrive at anything social except by people interacting in the right way; that is why I had to develop an idea. It does not occur to me to believe that one can reform anything with an idea. I tried to answer the question: How will people develop if they relate to each other in the right way, if they manage economic life on the one hand, legal life on the other, and spiritual life on the third? Associations will preferably be set up in the economic state, composed of producers and consumers, of professions and so on; if they live in the democratic constitutional state, the ideas, the impulse of the equality of all men before reality will grow out of quite different conditions. When they are inside the spiritual organization: How will they interact there? You see, you only have to look at reality. A judge can have aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandchildren and so on, he can love them very much, love them tenderly, and that is good. But if someone steals, and he is supposed to judge as a judge, he will have to condemn it in exactly the same way, from the other source, as he would have to condemn a complete stranger.

I have often been told by professors that I want to divide humanity into three classes. I want the opposite! In the past, people were divided into the nurturing class, the teaching class and the military class. But today's doctrine teaches nothing. The nurturing class is nothing more than a class of force, and the military class is given the task of telling the dispossessed what the haves want! Yes, you see, that is precisely what is to be overcome: the estates, the classes are to be overcome precisely by dividing the organism as such, separately from man. Man is the unifying factor. On the one hand, he will be part of the economic organism, and on the other hand, by being part of the economic organism, he can also be a member of the representation of the political state; he can also belong to spiritual life. This creates unity. I want to liberate man precisely by dividing the social organism into three parts. One only has to understand what this is about: It is the opposite of a utopia, it is a real reality. It is about calling on people not to believe that some tricky utopia is being thought up, but to ask: How should people be organized so that they can find the right thing on their own by working together? That is the radical contrast to everything else. All the others start from the idea; here we start from the real social division of people, here we really point out that all differences are wiped away by the fact that man himself, as a mere human being, forms the unity. And therefore I would be sorry if precisely that view made an impression which declares the opposite of all utopianism to be a utopia! That is what I am actually sorry about, because it has not hit the nerve of my arguments. That is the important thing, and I would like to draw particular attention to that.

So it's not about overestimating any power of the idea. There is no emphasis here on the power of utopia, but on what people will say and think and feel and want when they are placed in the social organism in a humane way. Precisely because the thinking here is real, it is of course difficult to point out details. It is possible; but anyone who gets into the habit of thinking in real terms knows that if you really let people judge, let them judge from within themselves, they may even judge a concrete case differently, and both ways can be right. Let me give you the following example:

You see, one will naturally have to make use of the means of production in the future through one's individual abilities; for he who can manage any business will not have to manage production for his own sake, but because those who work for him enter into a free contract with him, because they realize that their work will prosper better if it is well managed. This is something that absolutely must be taken as a basis in the future, something that will arise of its own accord. Then you have to say: something new will actually emerge under the conditions that are being created here; there will no longer be any ownership, but only administration. We will then only know one administration. For I have pointed out that material property can be treated in a similar way to what is regarded today as the most precious thing, spiritual property. This means that after a certain period of time - and we don't mean “after death”, but when the business is no longer working productively with the means of production - the means of production are transferred to another management. This is very complicated in detail, but precisely because the thinking is realistic and not utopian, it can only be pointed out: People will find the right relationship with each other if they are in the right position. That is what matters.

You see, after such decisive facts have occurred, after the world war has just happened, one can have the opinion that new ideas really must come, but one cannot always emphasize again: We must stand still with our demands! That is what has been proclaimed for decades. We won't get anywhere by saying: we want a society that develops freely, we want a free social society for people - but how? - I have said that up to now it has been a kind of policy, now it is a matter of fact. The previous speaker quite rightly referred to Russia. That is quite right. At the moment when such decisive facts really emerge, we can no longer just grope around in uncertainty. Yes, it is a matter of being able to imagine something quite definite. And that, I believe, is what can be seen from what I have presented: it is not a program, but a direction. You can continue the present conditions from their present starting point wherever you want, if you only want to. Just take the reconstruction of the former conditions as it is in Russia. You can at any time in any field, when state administration has begun, throw off this spiritual life by first establishing free schools, by establishing free cooperatives in economic life, and so on. You can continue to work on any point, whatever the starting point may be. You must not imagine all this according to Swiss conditions. Life is becoming more and more international. In Germany, for example, something completely different is needed today than a few years ago. You can continue to work from any starting point; it will just be a matter of continuing to build. And I am counting on it, whether in a cooperative, in a trade union, in any party, there is already the possibility that something will emerge; wherever you sit, you can organize things in such a way that these three parts emerge in all areas. Then we will arrive at an organization that is truly appropriate and demanded by a healthy social organism, and not at a utopian or utopian socialization.

Avoiding any utopia is what we should strive for above all else, to eradicate any belief that we can do anything with abstract ideas. You can only do something in social life with people who know what they want in the very specific situation in which they find themselves. It is not a question today of a struggle between those who are still to be called the dispossessed and the haves. If they work, as is the direction of movement that I have outlined today, if the haves and the have-nots work in the right way, things will turn out in their favor. If the haves resist, they will soon have lost their property. But the point is that the masses have a knowledge of what is to happen. And you see, in this respect, one might say, it is even worse with social impulses than with medical and technical materials. If someone knows nothing about building bridges and yet wanted to build one, it would collapse. If someone cures someone, well, you usually can't prove whether the patient died despite the cure or perhaps even as a result of the cure; that's where things get tricky. And when it comes to the social organism, that's where things get the most tangled, because you usually can't prove what's a cure and what's a cure, which is why people usually talk in vague terms. You see, I heard a speaker who also talked about social things; he mainly wanted to prove that you don't really need anything else, just Christ, then everything will be fine in social life. Well, you shouldn't think that a debate about this is being started now. But I have experienced the following. I had to remind myself of something I read in my schoolboy days, I think almost forty-five years ago. It said that Christ was either a hypocrite or a fool, or he was what he described himself as: the Son of the living God. - As I said, I am not criticizing, neither in one direction nor in the other; I only remark: I was in Berne the other day, and a gentleman made a speech there after the League of Nations Conference, in which he said that the whole League of Nations is wrongly organized - I believe myself that it is wrongly organized - but he said that it will be wrongly organized if it is not dealt with: Christ was either a fool, or a hypocrite, or he was the Son of the living God, as whom he described himself. - In short, everything that was in my textbook forty-five years ago was presented by the Lord to his faithful congregation. And that is the most important thing to note: In between lies the world war! The people, after having had two millennia to bring their things to the world, have come so far that the world war has nevertheless come. Doesn't all this indicate that something has to be learned from the world war? Is it not socially better and healing for the social organism if something new is really learned in the socialist field, in the field of socialist knowledge, as a result of the world war? Do we have to say that we are conservatively sticking to the old ideas, which have also been shipwrecked in many respects by the world war? That is what I particularly want to emphasize: it really was foreseeable and it is very important to me - I say this without any rejection - and I am very glad that things have been said as they have been said. But I would like to emphasize that much damage has been done in the world by the conservative standstill, by the rigid emphasis on what has been said over the centuries and what has now been said for decades, by this rigid emphasis, by this standstill in this conservatism! May socialism not cause damage to itself through this conservative standstill! For this damage would be very, very great, perhaps much greater than that which has already been done elsewhere.

You may have heard from what I said at the end of my lecture that it is precisely out of socialism, and even more so out of the proletariat, that the liberation of that which is to be liberated in man can take place. So it is not a question of an idea, it is not a question of overestimating an idea, and I have also said nothing about socialism having to unite with the state enterprise and the like; rather it is a question of solving a problem of humanity!

And because I believe that the individual is quite indifferent to what he demands of himself, he should demand something in common with other people. One cannot help but fail with socialist demands if one wants to make them as an individual. You have to make them in the human community.

So what I demand is not some idea, not some utopia, but what people will be able to say of their own accord when they are inside the social organism.

The explanations which I gave you yesterday on the path which the human intellect will take in future, are based upon quite definite facts, which come to light through spiritual-scientific knowledge. Let me indicate some of these facts today. You should realize that practically when the human being stands before you, he is that being described in Anthroposophy. That is to say, we first have before us (you know this from my THEOSOPHY) a fourfold being. We have before us the Ego, the so-called astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. The fact that whenever we face a human being we always have before us these four members, implies that the ordinary way of looking at the world today does not really enable us to know the true essence of the person who stands before us. We really do not know it. We think that the person we see before us fills out space with his physical body and that we see his physical body. Yet we could not see this physical part as we generally see it with our ordinary power of vision, if it only stood before us as a physical body. We see the physical body with our ordinary eyes, as it generally appears to us, only because it is permeated by the etheric body, by the astral body and by the Ego. It may sound strange to you if I tell you that our physical body is a corpse, even during the existence between birth and death. When we see a human corpse, we really have before us man's physical body. The corpse is the physical body which is not permeated by the etheric body, by the astral body and by the Ego. It is abandoned by these bodies and then reveals, as it were, its true being. You do not have a true conception of yourself if you think that you are carrying through space what you imagine to be your physical body. You would have a far better conception of yourself, if you were to think of yourself as a corpse, carried through space by your Ego, your astral body and your etheric body.

If we go back as far as the 8th Century, B.C., which is as you know, the beginning of the 4th post-Atlantean Epoch, we come, as you also know, to the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch of the earth's development. There, human bodies had a different constitution from that of today. The human bodies of olden times, the mummies which you can now see in museums, were not constituted, in their finer essence, as human bodies are now constituted. They were filled to a far greater extent with vegetative life, they were not so lifeless, not so corpse-like as the human bodies of today. These physical bodies were, so to speak, far more similar to the plant nature, whereas the physical body of modern man—and this is already the case from the Graeco-Latin epoch onward—has a greater resemblance with the mineral world. If through some cosmic miracle we would now be endowed with the bodies of the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples, we would all be ill. They would bring us illness. We would bear within our body tissues which tend towards an over-exuberant growth. Many an illness simply consists in the fact that the human body in part goes back to conditions which were normal in the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch. In the present time we find ulcerous growths in the human body, which are simply due to the fact that in the one or in the other person a piece of the body tends to become something resembling the whole body among the Egyptian-Chaldean population.

What I told you now, essentially depends on the development of humanity. We modern people therefore carry about with us a corpse. This was not the case with the Egyptian: his knowledge was different from ours, his intelligence worked differently from our intelligence.

Now consider carefully the following question: What does the human being recognize with the aid of that knowledge which he designates as modern science and in which he takes so great a pride? Only lifeless things! Science constantly emphasizes that the ordinary intelligence cannot grasp life. To be sure, some investigators believe that if they continue experimenting, they will one day be able to understand the alternating play of life through complicated combinations of atoms, molecules and their alternating forces. This will never arise. Along the chemical-physical path, they will only be able to understand the mineral, lifeless substance; that is to say, they will only be able to grasp that part of living matter which is now a corpse.

But that part in man which is intelligent and exercises cognizant forces, is nevertheless the physical body; that is, the corpse. What is really done by the corpse which we carry about with us? It goes furthest of all along the path of mathematical-geometrical knowledge. There, everything is transparent; but the further away we go from the mathematical-geometrical sphere, the less transparent things become. This is because the human corpse is, today, the true instrument of cognition, and because a lifeless instrument can only be used to recognize lifeless things. The etheric body, the astral body and the Ego in man are not instruments of cognition, but they remain, as it were, standing in the dark. If the etheric body were able to cognize, in the same way in which the physical body recognizes lifeless things, it would first of all recognize the living essence of the vegetable world.

With their living, plant-like body, the Egyptians perceived the plant world quite differently from the way in which we perceive it now. Many an instinctive knowledge concerning the plant world can be traced back to Egyptian insight, to what became embodied with the Egyptian culture through an instinctive form of cognition. Even certain botanical facts in the medical sphere are, in many respects, based on the traditions of ancient Egyptian wisdom. Indeed, to the lay judgment it may often appear amateurish to draw in Egyptian sources, when certain truths are transmitted which do not seem to be of great value. You know that many so-called lodges, which have not a right foundation, call themselves “Egyptian Lodges.” This is only because in these circles there still exist traditions of the wisdom which could be obtained through an Egyptian body.

We can say that with the gradual transition from the Egyptian into the Graeco-Latin epoch, man's living plant-like body died; already in ancient Greece this living, plant-like body had more or less died, or was at least dying off slowly. Now we already have a physical body which is dead to a high degree, and this lifeless condition particularly applies to the human head. I already explained to you that an initiated spiritual scientist can perceive the human head as something lifeless, as something which is constantly dying. Humanity will grow more and more conscious of the fact that it is the corpse which we use as an instrument of cognition, and that this corpse can only grasp lifeless things.

The more we advance into the future, the more intensive will be the longing to recognize only that which is living. But the ordinary intelligence, which is bound up with the lifeless body, cannot perceive what is alive. Many things will be needed in order that man, who has lost the possibility to penetrate into the world in a living way, may once more attain to this. We should bear I mind all that we have lost.

When the human being passed over from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean age, he was as yet unable to do many of the things which he does now. You see, each one of you, from a certain time of your childhood upward, can say “I” when referring to yourself. You pronounce this word “I” very carelessly. But in the course of human development this word was not always uttered so carelessly. There were older times in the evolution of humanity—though even in ancient Egypt these olden times had to a great extent already waned—there were older times in which the Ego was designated by a name, and if this name was uttered, it dazed people. One therefore avoided pronouncing it. If the name applicable to the Ego, which was only known to the initiates, had been pronounced in the presence of people in the times immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, the sound of this name would have dazed the whole congregation; all the people would have fallen to the ground, so strong would have been the effect of the name applicable to the Ego.

An echo of this may still be found among the ancient Hebrews, where one spoke of the unutterable name of God in the soul, a name which could only be pronounced by the initiates, or shown to the congregation in eurhythmic gestures. The origin of God's unutterable name may therefore be seen in the facts explained to you just now.

But little by little this name was lost. And with it was lost the deep effect which radiates from such things.

During the first post-Atlantean epoch we have a deep influence proceeding from the Ego; during the second post-Atlantean epoch, a deep influence proceeding form the astral body; during the third post-Atlantean epoch, a deep influence going out from the etheric body, but one which people could bear, for, as I explained to you yesterday, it brought them in connection with the universe, made them feel their relationship with the universe. In the present time, we may pronounce the word “I,” we may pronounce all manner of things, but they do not make any effect upon us, because we now grasp the world through our lifeless body. That is to say, we only take hold of the lifeless, mineral essence of the world. But we must again ascend and return to the regions enabling us to grasp life. Whereas from the Graeco-Latin epoch, beginning in the 8th Century, B.C., up to the middle of the 15th Century A.D., the greatest value was attributed to an ever larger acquisition of knowledge through the lifeless body, our intelligence now follows the path described to you yesterday. But we must resist mere intelligence. We must add something to our intelligence.

A characteristic which we should bear in mind is that we must now retrace the path in a right way; in the present time, in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, we must in a certain way learn to know the vegetable world; during the 6th epoch we must learn to know the animal kingdom, and only during the 7th epoch the real kingdom of man. Thus it is one of the tasks of humanity to transcend the mere knowledge of the mineral world and ascend to the knowledge of the vegetable world.

Now that you are able to understand this upon a deeper foundation, consider who is the person whose chief characteristic is this search for a knowledge of the plant world. This man is Goethe. By approaching life from the basis of lifeless things and by reaching, in opposition to the science of his days, the law of metamorphosis, the living process of plants, Goethe appears to us as the representative of the 5th post-Atlantean age, in its first beginnings. Read Goethe's small pamphlet, written in 1790, entitled: “An ATTEMPT to explain the metamorphosis of plants,” and you will find in it that Goethe incessantly tried to grasp the plant in its process of growth, not as something dead and finished, but as something in a constant process of growth, passing from leaf to leaf. Here you may find the beginning of the knowledge which should be sought in the 5th post-Atlantean age.

Goetheanism therefore strikes the fundamental note for what we should seek during the 5th post-Atlantean epoch. Science should, as it were, wake up to the meaning of Goethe and proceed from the study of lifeless things to that of living things. This is what I mean when I continually emphasize that we should acquire the capacity to abandon dead, abstract concepts and to penetrate into living, concrete concepts. The explanations which I gave you yesterday and the day before yesterday really constitute the path leading into these living, concrete regions of thought.

But it will not be possible to penetrate into such thoughts and concepts unless we take the trouble to unite the elements which form our world conception and our views on life. Through the special configuration of modern civilization, the different currents of our world conception are allowed, as it were, to run inorganically side by side. Consider how inorganic and disunited are in many cases a person's religious and natural-scientific views! Many people have both religious and scientific concepts, yet they do not throw a bridge from the one to the other. Indeed, they have a certain reluctance, a certain fear in doing this. Yet we should clearly realize that things cannot remain as they are.

During my present visit, I pointed out to you how selfishly modern people develop their world conception. I drew attention to the fact that today people are chiefly interested in the soul's life after death. Out of pure egoism they take an interest in the life of the soul after death. I have also told you that it is now necessary to take an interest in the life of the soul from birth onwards insofar as this life is a continuation of the life before birth or conception. Our world conception would become far less selfish than it is today, if we were to observe a child's development, the way in which it grows as a continuation of its pre-natal, soul-spiritual existence, with the same longing and the same interest with which we think of the life after death.

This egoistic character of our modern world conception depends on many other things besides. Now I come to a point which clearly shows that modern people must become more and more conscious of the real facts lying at the foundation of these things. During the epoch leading up to the present time, the egoistic element chiefly developed in man; the Ego has permeated our world conception and the Ego has also permeated the human will. Let us not fall a prey to any illusion in regard to this.

Most egoistic of all have become religions, religious creeds. Even superficial facts can show you that religious beliefs have become egoistic. Consider how much a modern priest must reckon with people's egoism. The more he takes into account human egoism, the more promises he makes for the soul's life after death, the more easily he reaches his aims. Among modern people we do not really find much interest for any other thing, for they do not care much for that weaving spiritual life of the soul which manifests itself so wonderfully after birth; i.e., after conception.

One result of this egoistic interest in the life after death is the way in which modern people think about God in the different religions. To think of God as the highest Being, does not imply anything special. In this connection it is necessary to eliminate every delusion. What do most people imply when they speak of “God”? I have already mentioned this before. What kind of Being do they mean, when they speak of God? It is an Angel, an Angelos—their own Angel whom they call God! It is nothing else, my dear friends! People still have some inkling of the fact that a guiding spirit accompanies them in life; to this guiding spirit they look up, and it is this Angel-being whom they call God. Though they do not speak of it as an Angel, though they name it “God,” they nevertheless only mean their Angel. The selfish note of religious faiths is that their idea of God does not go beyond the Angel. As a consequence, human interests have grown narrower, a trait which may be clearly seen today in public life.

What are the questions which people ask today? Do they inquire after the general destinies of humanity? Oh, in a certain sense it is very painful today to speak to people of general human destinies! People also have no idea how many changes have taken place in this connection, even in a comparatively short space of time. You see, today we may tell people that the war which has been waged on earth during the past four or five years will be followed by the mightiest spiritual battle ever waged, a battle which will spread over the whole world, which never existed before in this form, a battle which is a consequence of the fact that the Occident designates as a Maya or as an ideology what the Orient designates as reality, and that the Orient designates the ideology of the Occident as a reality. Today we may draw attention to this important, weighty fact, yet people do not even realize that if this same thing had been said only a hundred years ago, it would have stirred the souls so much that they would have had no peace!

The most striking fact of all is this change in humanity, this indifference in regard to the great destinies of human existence. Today nothing penetrates into the human souls, but rebounds, as it were. The most encompassing, the most important and intensive facts are now taken as sensational facts. They do not shake the human souls enough. This is only dependent on the fact that the constantly increasing, intelligent egoism restricts human interests.

People may now have democracies or parliaments—they may come together in parliaments, but the destinies of humanity do not breathe through these parliaments, for the men who are elected into parliament are not filled with the breath of mankind's destinies. They are filled with the breath of egoistic interests. Each person has his own egoistic interest. External schematic similarities in these interests, often due to a common profession, induce people to form groups. And if these groups are sufficiently large, they become majorities. In that case it is not human destinies which pass through parliament, or through these representative groups of people, but only human egoism, multiplied by so and so many persons.

Even religious faiths have been transferred to the sphere of egoism, because the human souls are only filled by interests which appeal to their egoism. Religious faiths will pass through the renewal which they need, when human interests have grown wider, when they have acquired a form which transcends the purely personal destiny and ascends to the destiny of mankind as such, when people will once more be stirred, deeply stirred on hearing that in the West there is a civilization which differs from that of the East, and that in the Centre there is a civilization differing from that of the two poles of East and West; a religious renewal will come when human souls will be stirred to hear that in the West the great goals of humanity are sought (if they are sought at all!) by turning to mediumistic people, who in a trance condition are, as it were, consciously brought into a sub-earthly connection with the spiritual worlds so that they reveal, mediumistically, something about the great historical aims.

In Europe, one could so frequently explain, though people will not believe it, that there really exist societies in Anglo-American countries where people with mediumistic faculties are brought into a kind of trance, in order to discover from them, by cleverly formulated questions, something about the great destiny-goals of humanity.

People also do not believe that the Orientals, too, obtain information concerning the great destiny aims of humanity, not mediumistically, but mystically. This is almost palpably evident today, for one can everywhere buy Rabindranath Tagore's beautiful speeches, revealing on a large scale how an Oriental thinks about the goals of humanity. People read his poems, as if they were the feuilletons of some cheap writer, for today they do not distinguish cheap writers from men endowed with great spirituality such as Rabindranath Tagore. They do not realize that today the most varied racial substances live, as it were, side by side. I already explained to you, in many lectures, the standpoints which should be applied to Central Europe, but these explanations were not taken as they should have been taken.

With these words, my dear friends, I only wish to prove that it is possible to grow conscious of something which transcends egoistic human destinies, something which is connected with the destiny of whole groups of man, so that differentiations can be made throughout the world. If we raise our soul's eye with understanding to these destinies of mankind in the whole world, if we take a deep interest in this element transcending the personal destinies, we attune our soul for the comprehension of something higher and more real than the Angel; namely, the Archangel. Thoughts revealing the true nature of the Archangel cannot come to us if we only move in spheres pertaining to purely egoistic, personal human interests. If preachers only move in the regions of human egoism, their sermons may be full of words dealing with the Divine, yet they will only preach of the Angel. The fact that they give it another name constitutes an untruth, and does not change it. Only if we begin to take an interest in human destiny extending over wide spaces do we attune our soul for the comprehension of the Archangel.

Let us now pass over to something else. Let us try to develop a feeling of the successive impulses in the evolution of humanity, indicated in recent lectures. Consider the fact that a great number of our leading men are given a classical education during the years in which the human soul can still be shaped and molded; they are taught in schools which are not the product of modern civilization, but of a past culture, of the Graeco-Latin epoch. You see, if the Greeks and Romans had done the same thing which we are doing now, they would have established Egyptian-Chaldean schools. But they avoided this. They took their subject of instruction from life itself. We take it from the preceding epoch and train the human beings accordingly. This has a great significance in human life, but we have not recognized it. Had we recognized the importance of this fact, the feminist movement would have struck a different note, voicing the following truth; Men who are to learn how to use their intellectual powers are now being trained in antiquated schools. This hardens their brain. Women fortunately were not admitted to these schools (the “gymnasiums” of the Continent). Let us therefore develop our intellectual powers more originally; let us show how they can unfold in the present time, if they are not dulled in youthful years by a Graeco-Latin schooling.

But the feminist movement did not strike this note. On the contrary, it often advanced the following claim: Men have crept under the Graeco-Latin schooling, let us women also creep into it. Let us also have a gymnasium training.

You can therefore see, my dear friends, how the understanding of the things which were really needed, did not exist. We should know that in the present time we are not being educated in keeping with modern requirements, but in accordance with standards pertaining to the Graeco-Latin culture. Consequently this Graeco-Latin culture fills modern life. We should be aware of this. We should feel the Graeco-Latin ingredients of culture in the leading personalities of our days, in the so-called intelligentsia, among the intellectuals; this is one stratum which exists in the present time. Our whole spiritual culture is permeated by it. We do not read any newspaper which does not contain traces of Graeco-Latin culture, for we write in a Graeco-Latin style, even though we write in our own language.

As already explained to you, our juridical views are steeped in Roman thought—which is again something obsolete and antiquated. Roman life fills modern law. Sometimes the old native law comes into conflict with Roman law, but it cannot assert itself. This, too, should be felt: That what we call justice or injustice in public life is steeped in the impulses of a past epoch.

In the economic sphere alone we really live in the present. It is a significant fact that we only live in the present in the economic sphere. Some things will therefore have to be modified. Let me say in parenthesis that many women collect modern concepts only in regard to cooking; i.e., in domestic economy, so that there they are truly modern; but everything else is antiquated; it is something which we graft into the present. I do not say that this is a specially desirable thing—in any case, the other thing is not at all desirable; namely, that in the present time even the souls of women turn back to antiquated cultures.

When we survey our cultural environment, we do not find in it only that which is active in space, but also the impulses which come from very remote times. And if we acquire a feeling for such things, we discover not only the influence of the past, but also that of the future. In fact, it is our task to introduce into the present these impulses of the future. For, my dear friends, if a kind of rebel against the past would not live in each one of us, opposing the Greek character of our culture and the Roman character of modern legislation, if the future were not to shed its light into these spheres, our fate would be a sorry one.

In regard to modern culture, we should therefore consider, in addition to space, also time; that which penetrates into the present, into the history of our times, from a remote past and from the future. As modern people we should realize that in the same way in which America, England, Asia, China and India exist in the present time, so the past and the present exist in the human soul and send their influences into it, insofar as we are Europeans, for past and present represent the two poles of East and West. We thus have within us ancient Greece and ancient Rome and the future. And if we take the trouble to envisage this fact, if we realize that past and future, or things to come, live in our soul, we are filled by a new feeling, which can transcend egoism in human destiny; it is a feeling which differs from that of a mere spatial contemplation of life.

Only if we develop this mood in our soul, will we acquire the possibility to develop thoughts concerning the sphere of the Spirits of Time, or the Archai. That is to say, we come to the third Divine element in the hierarchic order. It is good to envisage these three Hierarchies in thoughts and concepts, with the aid of the means just explained. For the Spirits of Form, which come after the Archai, are far more difficult to understand. But for modern people it suffices to make the attempt to transcend egoism and to penetrate into the unegoistic sphere; they should repeat this attempt again and again and occupy their minds with the things just characterized!

This should particularly be the case with teachers (let me emphasize this). What I explained to you just now should be borne in mind particularly in the training of teachers. Teachers should not have the right to educate and train children unless they acquire a concept of that egoism which only reaches up to the nearest Divinity; i.e., the Angel, and unless they acquire a concept of the unegoistic powers which determine destiny and which exist spatially side by side here on earth; i.e., the Archangels. And they should also acquire a concept of the influences of past and future in modern culture—the Roman character of law, the Greek spiritual substance—and of the undefined rebel of the future in man, who can rescue him.

At the present time, however, people are not much inclined to penetrate into such things. A short time ago, I emphasized again and again in my lectures that one of the social tasks of the present time is to extract our educational substance for the years which young people now pass in schools, from the present, to do the same thing which the ancient Greeks also did: to extract our educational substance from the present.

At the same place where I repeatedly spoke of this matter as one of the most important social problems, there appeared a short time after my lectures—I do not wish to construct a casual connection; this is indifferent, but it is symptomatic!—a large number of advertisements in all the local newspapers making propaganda for the local “gymnasium.” I gave lectures in which I characterized, as I have now done, the classical gymnasium education and at the same time advertisements appeared in praise of a gymnasium education, stating all that the youth of Germany owes to its gymnasiums for the “strengthening of national consciousness” of “national strength”, etc., etc. And this, a few weeks before the Peace of Versailles! These advertisements were signed by the local school celebrities, etc. What one has to say today from a truly objective foundation of human evolution always rebounds, flies back again. People reject it—it does not touch the depths of their souls.

This explains the difficulty of acting in regard to the social question. For the superficial attitude with which people approach the social question will never be of any use. The social question is a deeply significant one; it is a problem which cannot be solved unless one is willing to look into the depths of man's being and of the universe. This very fact should be able to show us how necessary it is to set up certain truths contained in the threefold structure of the social organism.

But we must acquire an organ capable of grasping what our present time really needs. It will be difficult to acquire this organ in the spiritual sphere, for the spiritual substance in education, which has gradually been assimilated by the ruling body, the state, drew out of the human being every active force, every true striving, thus transforming him into a “resigned” member within the structure of the state. I have already spoken to you here, I think, of the question: How does the great majority of the people really live? (Exceptions are, of course, always borne in mind). Up to the sixth year of his life a human being is allowed to live unhampered, for he is still too grubby for the state! The state would not like to take over the tasks entailed by the care of young children; the state therefore leaves the human being in the care of powers outside its own sphere. But then it lays claim on the human being, the state then trains him so that he may fit into the state economy, into the stereotyped model; he ceases to be a real human being and becomes something which bears the imprint of the state. In that case he can be “of use” to the state. He strives after this, for it is inculcated into him; in that case, the state does not only look after him while he is working, but also when he ceases to work, by according him a pension until he dies. To many people a position entailing the right of a pension is a great “ideal”! And the religions speak of a kind of pension for the time after death! The soul obtains a pension; without any effort on its own part it obtains eternal life through the church itself. The church sees to this! It is uncomfortable to hear that salvation can only be attained by a free spiritual striving, independently of the state, and that the state should limit itself to the juridical sphere. The right of having a pension will NOT exist in a juridical state! This alone is for many people one reason ... for rejecting it! One can see this again and again.

And in regard to the most intimate life of the spirit, we must say that religious life will, to be sure, require a world conception valid for the future; it must demand from man that he should work for his immortality, that he should be active in his soul, so that he may take up the divine impulse, the Christ Impulse, through his own activity.

During my life I received innumerable letters from church people stating that Anthroposophy is a fine thing, but that it contradicts the “simple”, “plain Christian faith” of the soul's salvation through Christ, of eternal life attained through Christ, without having to do anything for it. “Faith in the salvation through Christ” is something which they cannot abandon. When people write or say such things, they think that they are especially pious. But they are simply selfish, thoroughly selfish and egoistic, for they do not wish to make any effort in their soul, they wish to leave everything to God, who will carry their soul safely through the portal of death and pension it off.

Matters will not be so comfortable in the world conception which will in future create the religious substance. We will have to grasp that the divine essence within us must be developed within the soul. It will then no longer be possible to submit passively to churches who promise to carry the human souls safely through death ... one objectionable custom at least has now ceased; namely, to do this in exchange FOR MONEY, but secretly this still plays a certain role, even in regard to the attainment of eternal life. This transition to a stage of inner activity, so that we look up to a world to which we belong, is an urgent requirement, yet it does not attract mankind greatly.

In order to acquire a feeling for the requirements in this sphere, we must envisage the facts explained today—the metamorphosis of humanity since the times of ancient Egypt, where even the body had a more plant-like character. But if it were now to fall back into this plant-like condition, it would grow ill—ulcerous growths, etc. would appear—and then the fact that we really carry a corpse about with us, which is the true instrument of cognition. These truths enable us to gain a feeling for the requirements of humanity, showing us how to progress in the right direction, how progress can now be made in regard to the social question. We should no longer be content to regard an important matter such as the social question in as simple a way as possible.

You see, this is the extraordinary difficulty of the present time, and you should bear in mind the fact that modern people like to hear explanations on the most important facts of life in a few abstract sentences. When a book like the “Fundamental Points of the Social Question” contains more than a few abstract sentences, when such a book contains the results of an observation of life itself, then people say that they cannot understand it, and that it seems confused to them. But it is the misfortune of the present time that people do not like to penetrate into the very things into which they should penetrate. For abstract sentences which are quite transparent, only deal with lifeless things; but the social sphere is a living sphere. Here we must apply elastic conceptions, elastic sentences, elastic forms. It is therefore necessary, as I frequently explained to you, to consider not only the transformation of single things, but we must also learn to think differently in regard to the innermost structure of our thoughts and reflections.

On taking leave from you again for a couple of weeks, my dear friends, I wished to speak of these things, for now we must feel that we are standing under the sign of cooperation in our anthroposophical or social movement. I would like you to be filled more and more with the understanding that if anything is to be attained in the social sphere, the spiritual science of Anthroposophy must flow into human souls. Let me recommend one thing to you, although I repeated it again and again—it really is essential that the anthroposophical truths which we are able to gain for ourselves should be recognized as the true rule of conduct for our activities and for our striving in the present time; we should have the courage and the will to push through with anthroposophical truths. The worst thing of all is that modern people lack the courage to push through with something which is really needed. They allow the best forces of their will to be broken; they are not willing to carry them through, although this is so sorely needed.

You see, my dear friends, learn to stand courageously by the fact that the people who take an interest in the representative edifice of our spiritual efforts, in the Goetheanum, are well accepted by you; be glad for each person who shows but a grain of understanding, and go towards him, but do not set store on the fact that people bring bad will, or what is more frequent today, lack of understanding towards Anthroposophy—limit yourselves to reject this in a corresponding way. The essential thing is the courage to push through with these things. Let us consider ourselves as that small group of men whose destiny it is to know and to communicate to the world the very things which it needs most of all. Let the people mock at us, let them say that it is conceit to think this; it is nevertheless true. To say to ourselves that “it is nevertheless true,” to say this earnestly, so that our whole soul is filled by it, calls for an inner courage which we must have. Let this courage fill our soul with anthroposophical substance. This will enable us to do what must be done by each one in the place where he is standing. This is what I wish to tell you today.

We can really say that we are welcoming each day which brings us nearer to the goal (which now encounters the greatest obstacles) of working in the world through our Building. For this Building is, after all, the only thing which takes into account even in its architectural forms, the great destinies of humanity. And it is good that people already begin to take notice of the Goetheanum. But another thing is needed for a progressive activity in regard to the social question; namely, that through a means such as the Goetheanum, with its forms which are stronger than any other architectonic forms of the present, an influence should be exercised on the spiritual improvement of the human forces; people should once more become accessible to truths which must be known, so that they may rise up not only to the sphere of the Angel world, but also to the sphere of the Archangel world and that of the Time Spirit.

Yesterday I tried to explain the seriousness of the times in which we actually live, in a reflection or through a reflection that was linked to Oswald Spengler's book “The Decline of the West”. I remarked that anyone who knows how to take such things seriously today must be overcome by a great cultural concern, the same cultural concern that can be characterized in a very specific way, namely, the concern that arises from the fact that our civilization cannot continue to develop without a crash landing that, from the point of view of the science of initiation, will become the world. It is therefore necessary that all human activity and all human will be fertilized by that which can be spiritually perceived today. Then, when the threshold that exists between the physical and the superphysical world is crossed, out of that knowledge, which cannot derive anything from the physical world, but which has a thoroughly enlightening effect on this physical world, the impulses for social life in the present and in the near future must also come from this knowledge. And today, man is actually led to consider everything that emerges from the traditional cultural stream as antiquated; he is led to place all questions that can arise today in the perspective that is given by this science of initiation. The cultural concern arises when one sees how, on all sides, there is a storming against that which wants to assert itself as such initiation wisdom, and how all external forces of civilization in the present day are actually directed towards not allowing such initiation science to become a real factor in our civilization. Necessity and rejection stand in the most extreme contrast to each other in almost all areas of our lives today, and one would like to appeal again and again to those who can at least take it seriously in their hearts with the demand for a new construction of our cultural and civilizational life. Instead of this, we see that, owing to the lethargy of the most advanced sections of present-day humanity, those personalities and groups who carry over from the past into the present like shadows very definite spiritual impulses and who, in spite of everything, know exactly what they want, always gain the upper hand. So while those who call themselves progressive today are splitting up over individual issues, splitting up over this or that program, barely seeing further than the end of their noses, we see the old spiritual currents, which have already sufficiently demonstrated how they were bound to lead modern civilization into a catastrophe, at work everywhere, and we see them, I would say, “happy” at work. This is something that cannot be sufficiently considered from all sides, and to which we should always return again and again.

I have often made a comment to you on various occasions. I have said: If one becomes acquainted today with what can arise out of today's initiation, what one can know today, out of the developmental conditions of humanity, about the spiritual world and its connection with the physical world, then one actually only begins to be truly amazed at what has been handed down as the original wisdom of humanity. This original wisdom of humanity in its actual form has been lost, and only its later traces have been preserved in the most diverse documents, monuments and so on. The most important thing was forcefully destroyed by the church when it spread in the West, from Africa and the Near East, out of calculation. But what has been preserved is collected by scholars today and can be read in all kinds of writings, although it is difficult to read because the present-day philological scholarship makes the things it has to communicate to the world unreadable, if possible, by commenting on them, by the way they are handed over to the world. But the things are communicated. One can, however, say that they cannot be read, because the most important things can only be read if one rediscovers the lost reading key. And one cannot discover it through historical research in the way of our erudition. Basically, one can only bring up the words. Today, the actual deeper meaning can no longer be found other than by independently rediscovering the truths and facts from the spiritual world itself, and then, from today's fully conscious science of initiation, gaining insight into what was contained in the ancient atavistic original wisdom handed down from the gods. One can only approach the ancient wisdom and read the external records with that which is being investigated today through the powers of spiritual research, and only with that can one really read the external records.

Thus, for example, it is also handed down from learning that in the ancient mysteries there was a kind of sun cult, and that in these ancient mysteries that which today's science calls the word “sun”, or for which it has, better said, only the word “sun”, was worshipped as a kind of supreme deity. But one does not get a concept of what was actually meant in the ancient mysteries by the sun, by which, after all, one basically means what one imagines to be the central heavenly body of our planetary system, what one originally wanted to express with the word “sun”. In those ancient mysteries, the sun, the physical sun that the physical eye sees, was regarded only as a kind of reflection of what the spiritual sun is. This spiritual sun was not bound to a place. It was something beyond space. It was that which the initiate absorbed within himself, which the initiate absorbed as the central spirituality of the world and made it his own. And only when one really gains an understanding of what was worshipped and experienced as the sun being in today's knowledge of initiation, when the mysteries of this sun being are taught in rituals, only then does one also get a correct idea of what these ancient people said to themselves: If you, as an inhabitant of the Earth, want to rise to the level of what the origin of your own being truly is, then you must not remain on this Earth. You see minerals, plants, animals on this earth, and you also see your physical fellow human beings. All of this is earthly. But something lives in you that is not earthly, and even if you know everything that can be known about minerals, plants, animals and physical people, you are still a long way from knowing what leads you to an understanding of the essence of human being, because this essence of the human being can never be known through knowledge that relates to earthly things, because this essence of the human being is not related at all to the earthly, but is related to the supermundane, which first takes place in the light of the sun.

Thus the mystery servants of ancient times were called upon to recognize their own nature, to fulfill the “know thyself” within themselves, to turn their spiritual gaze up to the sun, to the sun in the spiritual sense, because nothing could be found on earth that constituted the human being, that made up the human essence. Only when one has penetrated to the full significance of these central conceptions of the ancient mysteries, which in a certain period were to be found in Western Asia as well as on the island of Ireland; only when one has grasped this mysterious connection between the human soul and the being of the sun, and can say: The people of ancient times had to go beyond the earth to find their own nature – only then do you get a correct idea of the full significance of the mystery of Golgotha for life on earth, because only then can you see that a great cosmic event took place that had a fundamental, central significance for the earth. Only through this could one understand that the being to whom the sun-worshipers looked up, those who turned their faces, their spiritual faces, towards the sun in order to experience the nature of man, that when they experienced the current of the times in the right sense, they said to themselves: That being who was sought in the old mysteries outside of the earth, has now descended and has connected himself with the earthly evolution. How, then, can we hope to gain any conception of the nature of the Christ, of the whole process of the Mystery of Golgotha, except by seeing how the Being that was not on earth before, that could only be sought in extra-terrestrial regions, how this Being of the Mystery of Golgotha can be found in the world of men, if it is sought in the right way in the world of men.

Thus, only when we measure what we have to say about the Mystery of Golgotha from the anthroposophical point of view against what was thought by the ancient mystery servants, when we know what sun worship and sun wisdom was in these ancient mysteries, only then do we get the right shade of what we are saying. Only then will we know how to appreciate what it means to speak of Christ, the Spirit of the Sun, in the present day. In my lectures, which are reproduced in the book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact', I have tried to show how all pre-Christian life was an ascent to the Mystery of Golgotha, and how the Mystery of Golgotha calls out on the world-historical plane as a mystery for all humanity, which in the individual mysteries, in the rituals of the old mysteries, took place only symbolically and allegorically, if we may speak in such terms, but in a condensed form, now became reality as the Mystery of Golgotha for all humanity. Thus, right from the very beginning — for these lectures were among the very first that I gave in the course of our anthroposophical movement — the tone has been sounded within our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from the very beginning, which above all looks to the Mystery of Golgotha being placed in the right way in the evolution of the earth. In a corresponding way, attempts have always been made to characterize that peculiar progress which, from the pre-Christian to the Christian, must be understood in its true sense only in our time.

Now it is important to understand correctly how those currents that bring a certain spirituality from ancient times into the present actually relate to these things. Today I would like to point out the following, and tomorrow I will expand on it. If you familiarize yourself with what has been preserved in the Christian creeds as rituals – in the Protestant faith this has been greatly reduced, but you can still find a lot in Catholic rituals, although some of it has also been incorporated into Protestant prayers – you take all this, you will find little that you can actually associate with a very serious view, unless you start from spiritual science and permeate what has been handed down as empty words with these spiritual-scientific insights.

If you take, for example, the ritual of the Mass or some other ritual of the Catholic Church, you will find words, many words. But if you look at these things honestly, you will find that you can take these words, or rather that the faithful can take these words, but only if you approach the matter with complete sincerity and attach real meaning to these words. It is no different in Protestantism. Where does this come from? You see, if you really investigate something like the Catholic mass ritual, and it is similar for other rituals, with the tools of spiritual science, then you come to the conclusion that these things are far older than the founding of Christianity. If you take the mass ritual, then you will have to go back to the very old forms of the ancient mysteries to understand its content. In a certain similar way, the rituals of the ancient mysteries proceeded as the Mass ritual proceeds. And the thing is this: when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred in the evolution of the Earth, the wise men, the truly wise men of all mystery schools, who are represented in the Bible by the “Three Wise Men from the Orient,” so to speak, offered their ritual, their view and their knowledge as a sacrifice to honor and comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha. In a sense, what was offered to the old gods was transferred to the new God, who passed through the mystery of Golgotha. So that if one now wants to imbue the formulas of today's church with spiritual juice, one can only come to such spiritual juice by looking back at the meaning that was connected with these things in the mysteries. Otherwise they remain empty, without content. If they remain empty, without content, then one can indeed lull and lull congregations to sleep with them, but one cannot awaken them, one cannot bring them to a real connection with the spiritual world, one can only ensure that the congregation sleeps gently in its members.

We live today in a time when the spirits must actually be awakened. You can see that from a reflection like the one we had yesterday. But for many centuries the spirits have been lulled to sleep by bringing up as tradition that which actually comes from the ancient mysteries and for which the meaning has been lost. In such matters, which are borrowed from the wording of the ancient mysteries, in which one had not only the wording but the inner meaning, in such matters the religious denominations have a powerful, one might say magical, means of putting wide sections of the community to sleep, for the empty words retain a certain effect. And the denominations would like to preserve this effect, would not like to lose this possibility of effect. Therefore, if a spiritual movement arises today that, based on original knowledge, points to the content of these things, then, of course, no one is more opposed to it than those who would only like to preserve the empty verbiage. It is easy to say: the churches preserve these empty verbiage. But the modern mind, that modern mind which is asserting itself today in all kinds of movements, of the most modern kind, does not care about these creeds. Above all, one can boast and declare from the point of view of modern science that one has gone beyond these empty words, that one is enlightened. But one is not enlightened if, for example, one establishes a world view in the sense of modern natural science, as the modern monistic world views are, as the world views are that modern social institutions would like to bring about. One is not enlightened because this modern science is nothing more than the continuation of those empty words. Without knowing it, it is. You are studying natural science today, and the moment you ascend to the laws of nature, you have only the distillates of medieval empty phrases, in which even in the Middle Ages there was much more of the old meaning than there is today in science. No wonder we live in a time of decline!

But on the other hand, you can see from this how much the bearers of such knowledge must want to prevent their origin from being revealed. A large part of the latest efforts of the various denominations that have ridden the West into disaster is to fight with all possible means everything that points to the origin of what is contained in the word formulas of the individual Christian confessions. The official representatives of the Christian denominations are most concerned not to let arise anything that points to the origin of their formulas, because they would thereby be unable to keep the souls of their congregations asleep. For the moment that real spirit is poured into these word formulas, the moment that people find themselves ready to receive such spirit, in that moment one sees how the sleeping of souls no longer continues. The souls can certainly close themselves, continue to sleep, but then they do not find the necessary rest in this sleep; at least they begin to dream of all kinds of things. In any case, only those who say to themselves: these confessions contain the words for great secrets of the world, but the bearers of these words today strive to deny this origin and persecute those who point to this origin.

Take a specific example. Whether it be on the part of the Protestant professors or pastors, whether on the part of the Catholics, whether on the part of the university “pastors” of natural history, physiology, mathematics or the like, astronomy, in short, on the part of the clergy of any direction, atheistic or theistic, you will find today that people make fun of it, and you don't know how much you are following the saying: They mock themselves and know not how! For where do all these denominations get the teachings they give to the sleeping souls of their faithful from their various religious books? From the Akasha Chronicle! Only the trail is to be covered up. It is to be covered up that in ancient atavistic clairvoyance, what is in all religious documents, including the Bible, has been drawn from the Akasha Chronicle. Therefore, if someone comes along today and points to this Akasha Chronicle and says, “This is nonsense!” — then, of course, he is saying that what he himself teaches is nonsense, because it has the same source. This same source is thereby denied; it is lied about this source, only it is official that it is lied about this source. This is the corrupting factor of our time, for it lulls the souls. It leads people to the most confused judgments in their daily lives. The result is that even today you can be a follower of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and still not have come so far that you see the things that are happening with open eyes, that you do not want to look at certain connections at all. And if you look, you usually interpret them the opposite way.

I would like to draw your attention to a modern phenomenon, which I can already see will take on many different colors because those who benefit from it will continue to struggle for a long time. But today this phenomenon already points to deeper connections. Perhaps you have noticed that the world is saying everywhere today: The Entente is giving in, it is moving away from the terrible provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. One points out such things with a certain satisfaction from Central Europe; one discusses such things in neutral countries. But one does not connect it with the phenomenon with which it is connected. Even if the powers will continue to struggle and the connection will be obscured again, today it is in the context. Fehrenbach is German Chancellor; he belongs to the Center. The Roman clericalism is making tremendous conquests in the world, and now that the chances of Rome are better than they were weeks ago, people think differently about the revision of the Treaty of Versailles than they did. It does not matter that those in former Germany who are always the clever politicians have said: The Entente will not be particularly pleased with Fehrenbach, the reactionary!

If you want to see through these things, then you have to consider quite different things in order to judge a little what actually lies in the currents of the development of civilization. You may know that almost every twelfth sermon, to put it mildly, rages against Freemasonry somewhere in the Catholic Church. It is, of course, a well-known phenomenon to you. Now, this opposition to Freemasonry, it may interest people today in the face of certain currents that know what they are doing and that, for example, emanate from the Western Center. For we are dealing, on the one hand, with the Roman Church current; I am not saying with Christianity, but with the Roman Church current, because there are few Christians and many followers of the Roman Church. On the other hand, we are dealing with a whole series of secret societies that are in the English-speaking countries, and I have indeed pointed out the tendencies and goals of such secret societies during the war. There are such secret societies of the most diverse colors. Those who are in the so-called lower grades of such secret societies usually know very little of what the top leaders actually intend; but even within the top leadership there are the most diverse currents. I would like to talk about one such current today, which in turn is part of a whole that we do not want to consider today – we want to limit ourselves to one such current. You see, there are such currents that are based on Freemasonry. Freemasonry initially had three degrees for its members, which today have basically become empty words, ritual shells, ritual formulas, from which the meaning can only be found if one shines a light into these things with modern spiritual knowledge, modern spiritual insight. But at least in all such societies, the three lowest degrees are formed in such a way that, if one has enough spirit to follow the ritual correctly, one can see how this ritual is based on ancient ceremonies, mystery ceremonies. And in a certain sense – admittedly not if one merely lets this ritual take effect on oneself, but if one illuminates it with spiritual-scientific knowledge – one can get a sense of what the connection is between what took place in the mysteries before the mystery of Golgotha and between what the task of humanity is after the mystery of Golgotha. But now, in many such masonic currents, a whole series of higher degrees has been superimposed on these three. I am now speaking, and I wish to remark this once more, not in general of the high degrees, but of certain high degrees of certain Masonic orders and other occult societies, the Odd Fellows order and so on, again not of all, because in this area the genuine is always extremely difficult to distinguish from the inauthentic; but I am speaking of certain very widespread currents in this area. There is a structure based on the three lowest degrees, in which people are initiated into humanity, into the “know thyself,” into the mystery of death and its connection with the course of the cosmos. Many of these orders have ninety-five degrees. You can imagine how proud one can be when one has been initiated into ninety-five degrees. You just can't imagine how meager these initiations are, because one usually imagines something extraordinarily profound and significant behind those empty words, but they are there. I would like to say, however, that certain tendrils of all these things, of the empty words, have their content. There is something in these empty words, and it is always reckoned by those who give such empty words that there are some people who then reflect, who remember that there should also be something inside,

Now something very peculiar happens. When people actually come who reflect on what is contained in these high degrees, which have been conferred on them or into which they have been initiated – there are people who then begin to think – then a very specific result occurs. If these people have also thought about the three lower degrees and have at least somehow sensed something in them, then what they sensed in the three lower degrees is completely destroyed by what is implanted in them in the high degrees. A terrible fog is poured out over what can be sensed in the three lower degrees. And without their usually having any awareness of it, people become befogged in these high degrees. Where does this come from? It comes from the fact that in certain periods, from the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, but continuing into our times, certain people have crept into those Masonic orders, were inside and introduced these high degrees , developed these high degrees within Freemasonry, so that in a number of these high-degree Masonic orders these foreign bodies are inside; high degrees, developed by foreign personalities who have crept in. People are gullible, even when they are initiated into things. And those who have crept in are the members of the “Society of Jesus,” the Jesuits. At a certain point in time, from the end of the 18th century onwards, the Masonic orders were teeming with Jesuits, and they were doing the high degrees for certain orders. So you don't just find Jesuitism where Freemasonry is criticized or preached against, but you find a great deal of pure Jesuitism in the high degrees. It does not matter at all, in the opinion of Jesuitism, that one attacks what one has set up oneself, because in this field that is part of politics, of the correct guidance of people. If one wants to lead people to a certain goal, a clear goal that is clear to the people, not just a goal that is clear to the leaders, then it is good to approach them from just one side and show them a way to this goal. But if you want to keep them as dull and sleepy as possible, show them two paths or maybe even more, but two will suffice for the time being. One goes like this, and one goes like this (see drawing). You are a Jesuit by officially belonging to the Society of Jesus and take this path, or you are a Jesuit by belonging to some high-grade Masonic order and take this path. Then people look. It will be very difficult for him to find his way around. It is very easy to confuse him.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Our public life is permeated in the most diverse ways by such confusing currents. People today would have every reason to wake up and take a look at things, because there is no need to fall for them. But most people today fall for these things. One need only look at a somewhat longer life to know how people with whom one was young and who are still alive, instead of turning to some spiritual-scientific direction, have completely returned to the fold of the Catholic Church. I know of many such examples. They only point to some of the things that are happening in our time, and it is not right not to draw attention to these things, not to point them out. At the present time, in particular, it is of the utmost urgency that our anthroposophical friends are made aware of such things, even if it may only be the case for a very small part that it can somehow lead to the really necessary seriousness. Because it is precisely this seriousness that is lacking at the present time, this seriousness that one would so much like to see. You must realize that we are dealing with an important turning-point in the field of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Of course, this spiritual movement had to begin first. I will explain these things in more detail tomorrow. Today I will only sketch out a few threads and tomorrow I will go into some things in more detail, especially in this area. Now we are faced with the necessity, the absolute necessity, to put these spiritual truths into practice. This turn of events should be given our earnest and serious consideration. As long as the Anthroposophical Movement was merely a spiritual-scientific movement, a movement of teaching, of the dissemination of ideas, it was something that carried away, as it were, a spiritual current like in a river bed. There might be cliques, a lot of trifling, playing around, nebulous mysticism among the followers, but the spirit always makes its way and it goes beyond cliques, beyond prejudices, beyond selfishness. At the moment when anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to intervene in social life, when it wants to become practical, as it has been doing for more than a year, that is no longer acceptable. We are really faced with new soul tasks, and these new soul tasks must be taken seriously. It must be understood that the cliquishness, the trifling, the trifling, the playing, the false mysticism, which have crept into our ranks, cannot continue, because they would have a destructive effect. We must face the fact that things are becoming more serious in view of the events of the present time. And in the face of this I have often said: One would like to be able to put something quite different into one's words than one can usually put, in order to evoke a response in souls to what one actually has to say about the affairs of the present. What is said finds so little echo; forgive me for saying it so bluntly, but it finds little echo. Again and again it is pointed out that things cannot be seen through immediately, that one first wants to make progress for a while, and so on. But if we were not deceived by prejudices, if we did not even love prejudices, we would be much more likely to be seized by the actual impulse that lies in this spiritual-scientific life. The opponents are well aware of this and I would like to say: the opponents show that you really don't need to be a genius to find effective means.

Before I left, I gave a public lecture here: “The Truth about Anthroposophy and How to Defend It Against Falsehood.” In that lecture, I said, of course only as a figure of speech, that I could not attribute the attacks that appeared in the so-called “Spectator” to an educated person, because an educated person could not possibly say anything as reported there; nor could I assume that it had been said by anyone who had had any kind of education, a grammar school or academic education, because the style and attitude pointed to a thoroughly uneducated person. — As I said, it was just a figure of speech, and so I was taken by surprise by the title page of the essays, which have now been published as a brochure. The brochure is called “The Mystery of the Temple of Dornach. Part One”, so there will be a second part: “History of Theosophy and its Offshoots”, by Max Kully, pastor of Arlesheim. So it seems that if Arlesheim does not have a pastor who has not studied at a gymnasium or theology, it seems that he is an educated person who has written these things.

Well, the rest will follow – I promise you the second part of this brochure, which I have already started: it will report in great detail on these matters. It will provide an explanation of the Steiner method, occult schools and doctrinal structures. Steiner in the judgment of former “theologians.” Steiner as a financier and in his very latest role as a sociologist. – So you see, there are many more things to come!

And after all, there are some interesting things in this little brochure that was given to me today with a pack of attacks that have come recently. You see, it's a nice package! I just skimmed through it, but still, the way this “educated man” writes is interesting. I don't need to remind you of what I said here about this man's knowledge of the Akasha Chronicle. He wrote about it as if it were a book that you have in the library and copy from. Now he says in a postscript to his article: “Steiner came in his lecture” - it is the lecture on “The Truth about Anthroposophy...” - “to also talk about the Akasha Chronicle. He denied and ridiculed what the ‘Katholisches Sonntagsblatt’ published about this matter.

So this “educated man” has taken something about the Akasha Chronicle from the lectures in Stuttgart and Düsseldorf that were handed down to him and from the explanation of the Lord's Prayer, and, because it was necessary to say that the “drip” is not capable of understanding something like this, but because he believes that the infallibility of the Church naturally also works in him, he cannot be fallible, so he finds it necessary to say that I denied my own writings, he says this, although only what the pastor of Arlesheim says had to be denied!

You see, things go a little too far with regard to what has been sufficiently characterized here in that lecture before I left. But now, what comes next is somewhat striking; not to me, because I will not shrink back from saying what I consider necessary in the spirit of today's world, even if such things should not be lies. But I do ask you to listen to the following sentences with some attention: 'Since then we have been initiated on this point by an authoritative side. By Akasha Chronicle the theosophist understands something that supposedly exists in the spiritual world' and so on. It would be quite useful if you would listen to it and, above all, pay a little attention with your eyes, so that it can be said from this side: “Since then” - that is, since June 5, 1920 - “we have been initiated in this matter by an authoritative source.” That is, if it is not a lie, then someone who listens to the lectures here has told this pastor what he has to understand by the cycles according to the Akasha Chronicle. I would like to draw your attention to this fact, as I said, if it is not a lie; because it could be that there are people among us who simply carelessly read over such a sentence. After all, all kinds of things happen. In the package, for example, I also find a nice article written by a Protestant clergyman. The whole thing from the Catholic camp is now continuing in the Protestant camp, and we are already dealing with a continuation of an article in the “Evangelisches Schulblatt,” which, by the way, has very strange peculiarities. That “Schweizerisches Evangelisches Schulblatt”, the organ of the Protestant School Association of Switzerland, a weekly journal for Christian education in home and school, has announced “pamphlets” in its “book table”, including “The Struggle for the New Art” by the Jesuit priest Kreitmaier! Just by the way. But you see, people do come together in strange ways!

But I would like to read you a little of the critique contained in this “Evangelical School Journal”. It talks about all sorts of things, but we want to read especially the critique that concerns the threefold order, the “key points”, and I ask you to pay a little attention now:

"We are left wondering what Steiner actually wants. Above all, we need to learn to read Steiner. Perhaps then we will get on the right track. In these factories with educational cooperatives, specialist libraries, baths, home decoration courses and so on, the fund - to be paid for by the factory owner, of course - has not been forgotten. Not only does it pay for all this, but - watch out! at the same time, through sufficient means, the possibility of attracting the best representatives of intellectual life to lecture courses. There is indeed a fly in the ointment (there is something to be gained), and it is not necessary to add “thus helping both sides”. Mr. Steiner correctly suspects that these factory worker education cooperatives are liquidating funds that he would like to “earn”. He calls this classically “allowing the necessary means for further development to flow to science.” These intentions are so transparent and everything is so clumsy when we just poke our nose a little between the lines.

"Should we really offer our hand to the everywhere insolently emerging leveling tendencies (this includes, above all, the exclusion of any religious education from schools) by smearing the educational porridge itself on the countryside and in the factories? The whole of life should teach us that it is utter nonsense to want to bring all people to the same level of education. Generation after generation fails because of this unnatural problem, but nowhere do we want to learn from it, not even from the most obvious: nature! We only need to take a look at the animal or even the plant world to see the most enormous differences in its creatures everywhere. The human race will never make an exception. The whole of the past teaches us the fact that a small minority is opposed to a large majority, that only individual capable people stand out. Would it not be possible to find a little sense of quality for these differences (especially in questions of race and nationality) in a school program? We would soon see where the people are sick! Certainly not in the countryside.

"But enough! I have already exceeded the intended length of my response. It could easily be doubled or tripled if I wanted to examine the whole complex of unworldliness and lack of sense of reality that comes through in the article. (If desired, I can provide comprehensive information on this in further articles and will not miss the opportunity to put the whole Steinerei in its proper light!) But there is one more thing I would like to ask: where does Pastor Ernst get the bold assertion that “we are striving in the germ for what Steiner wants on a large scale?”

Well, I read that and I wondered; where does this tendency to “bring urban culture to the countryside, to manure and chicken dung to the land”, and so on, actually come from? I wondered: where is it in the “key points” or in our literature on threefolding when this is being attacked? At last I realized that I had not only been given two numbers of this “beautiful” paper, but a third one as well. These “beautiful” attacks with the title “A False Prophet” – which I read out – are in numbers 26 and 27, and in number 23 there is an article: “The Relationship of school and state according to Dr. Steiner”, and this article contains all the things that are mentioned and attacked in numbers 26 and 27 as outgrowths, as necessary in the sense of threefolding. This article was written by Pastor Ernst in Salez and is written extremely benevolently, but it is written in such a way that threefolding is supposed to ‘bring urban culture to the countryside’ and so on. So you see, you are not only harmed when you are attacked by priests, but even more so when you are defended by them! There is no need to be overjoyed when you have supporters on this side, because basically the supporters make it even worse than the opponents.

Well, some of our friends could also learn something from that; because with such things I have to remind myself again and again how often I heard: There and there I was in a church again, and someone preached quite anthroposophically or theosophically. I have often pointed out how one should not fall for such things and how things actually stand. But today I was at least able to surprise you with the interesting fact that one now already has such followers, who then provoke refutations that one is no longer familiar with at all!

Tomorrow we want to continue the conversation in a somewhat more serious way about the notes that have been struck today.

I have always had respect for the historically given. In it lives the spirit that develops in the becoming of humanity. And so I was in favor of, if at all possible, the new arising being linked to the historically existing. («My Life's Journey,» Chapter 36)

Those who, like me, go their own way, must endure many a misunderstanding.

(Preface to the first edition of 1901 of the writing “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and its Relationship to the Modern Worldview”, CW 7.

On the History of the Esoteric Section

Just as the volume “On the History and Content of the First Section of the Esoteric School 1904 to 1914” documents that and why Rudolf Steiner initially connected the first section of his Esoteric School to the existing School of the Theosophical Society for reasons of historical continuity, the present volume also documents why and in what way historical continuity with an already existing context working with cult symbolism was also maintained for the second and third sections of the School – the working group cultic of knowledge.

After it became known that this was the so-called Egyptian Freemasonry ^1a he was branded as a “Freemason” by certain quarters in a derogatory sense. He himself commented on this accusation twice. Once in a letter written shortly after the formal affiliation to the theosophist and freemason A.W. Sellin ^1b dated 15 August 1906 and then the section of his autobiography 'Mein Lebensgang' (My Life) (chapter 36) written a week before his death. Marie Steiner-von Sivers, co-founder and co-leader of the working group, responded to the attacks by National Socialist publicists that took place after his death with an essay entitled “Was Rudolf Steiner a Freemason?” All these and other documents are summarized in the first part of the present volume and in chronological order, except for the letter to Sellin, which was placed at the beginning because of its fundamentally enlightening content.

The question form that Marie Steiner-von Sivers chose for the title of her essay already indicates that there is indeed a problem here. This question can be answered both in the affirmative and in the negative. It can be answered affirmatively if one looks only at the external fact of the affiliation and not also at the reasons that led Rudolf Steiner to do so. The answer is negative because, despite the formal affiliation, he never saw himself as a “Freemason” in the usual sense, had no connections whatsoever with regular Freemasonry and was never regarded by the latter as belonging to it, since Egyptian Masonry is considered irregular.

To clarify this apparent contradiction and to make the fact of the connection understandable, the question of why Egyptian Freemasonry was chosen should be addressed first.

Why Egyptian Freemasonry was Chosen

We can take the whole of modern culture: it appears to us as a memory of ancient Egypt. ... We see this even in the initiation principle.²

According to its origin legend, Egyptian masonry traces its roots to the legendary first Egyptian king Menes – Misraim in Hebrew – who is said to have been a son of the biblical Noah, son of Ham. He is said to have taken possession of the country, given it his name (Misraim = ancient name of Egypt) and established the Isis-Osiris mysteries. At the beginning of the Christian era, Ormus, an Egyptian priest-sage who had been converted to Christianity by St. Mark, is said to have combined the Egyptian mysteries with those of the new law. Since then, they have been preserved as ancient Egyptian Masonic wisdom. In this sense, it was declared by those who brought the Misraim rite from Italy to France at the beginning of the 19th century to be the “root and origin of all Masonic rites”. ³ According to Rudolf Steiner, King Misraim, after conquering Egypt, was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries of that time, the secrets of which originated in ancient Atlantis. From that time on, there has been an unbroken tradition. The new Freemasonry is only a continuation of what was founded in Egypt at that time (Berlin, December 16, 1904).

The secrets of the ancient mysteries include the experience of the immortality of the human spirit. ⁴ And occult Freemasonry also wanted to convey this experience. The deeper reason for Rudolf Steiner's words (p. 67) may well lie in this direction, according to which he linked to the Memphis-Misraim order because it “pretended” to move in the direction of occult Freemasonry. In its “manifesto” of 1904, it was stated that he was in possession of practical means handed down from ancient mysteries, by which one would be able, already in this earthly life, to procure “proofs of pure immortality”. ⁵

When Rudolf Steiner, in keeping with the esoteric obligation of continuity, took up this tradition, he did not for a moment think that he was working in its spirit. From the very beginning, he insisted that modern times must seek a new wisdom that is appropriate for them, one that flows from the realization of the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, and that real knowledge of immortality today can only be acquired through a deeper understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha (Berlin, May 6, 1909).

He once characterized the necessity of a new wisdom in one of his presentations of ancient Egyptian wisdom as follows:

”...Our time must give birth not to an ancient wisdom, but to a new wisdom that can not only point to the past, but must work prophetically, apocalyptically, into the future. We see an ancient wisdom preserved in the mysteries of past cultural epochs; an apocalyptic wisdom, for which we must lay the seed, must be our wisdom. We need a principle of initiation again, so that the original connection with the spiritual world can be restored. That is the task of the anthroposophical world movement.

Another revealing spiritual-scientific research result is that from the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean, mysterious channels lead to the fifth, the present post-Atlantean cultural period.

"We can take the whole of modern culture: it appears to us as a memory of ancient Egypt.... We see this even in the initiation principle. For when modern life was to receive an initiation principle in Rosicrucianism, what was it?.... That harmonious concord of Egyptian memory in wisdom with the Christian impulse of power.” (Stuttgart, August 16, 1908)

Elsewhere, Anthroposophy is spoken of directly as the new Isis wisdom of the new age. A new Isis legend is even developed and hinted at in connection with the wooden sculpture “The Representative of Humanity between Lucifer and Ahriman”, which was placed in a central position in the first Goetheanum building and was intended to make the basic impulse of anthroposophy visible to visitors in an artistic form. Another, “invisible” statue: the new Isis, the Isis of a new age (Dornach, January 6, 1918). Reference is also made to a deep relationship between the Isis mystery and the Grail mystery, which includes the Christianized re-emergence of the Egyptian mystery being, as well as to the figure of Parzival as a “model for our spiritual movement” (Dornach, January 6, 1918; Berlin, February 6, 1913; Berlin, January 6, 1914).

A further reason for linking to Egyptian masonry in particular is illuminated by the research result that today's humanity is in the opposite situation to that of ancient Egypt. Just as the spiritually oriented ancient Egyptians, by mummifying the human form, prepared world history for intellectuality, for thinking bound to the physical brain, so today's humanity must again acquire spirituality for intellectuality, and this must be done by way of an analogous phenomenon to the Egyptian mummy, namely the old cult forms. These are therefore analogous to the Egyptian mummies because, in contrast to ancient times, when it was possible to perceive how spiritual entities were attracted through ritual acts, this is no longer the case today, neither in lodges nor in churches. There is just as little spiritual life in their actions today as there was life in the Egyptian mummy of the person who had been mummified. Nevertheless, something is preserved in these mummified rites that can and will be resurrected once we have found a way to bring the power of the mystery of Golgotha into all human activity (Dornach, September 29, 1922).

These few examples of spiritual scientific research results should make it sufficiently clear why Rudolf Steiner linked his work to Egyptian Freemasonry.

Regarding the External Prehistory

I merely want my step to be viewed from the standpoint of occult loyalty.⁶

For the Theosophical context, the year 1902 was marked by three events. Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers took over the leadership of the German section of the Theosophical Society, which was founded in 1875 by H.P.Blavatsky and others. Annie Besant, Blavatsky's successor in the leadership of the Esoteric School of Theosophy - but not yet president of the Theosophical Society - was admitted to the so-called mixed Freemasonry. ⁷ John Yarker, honorary member of the Theosophical Society and Grand Commander of Egyptian Freemasonry, of the Order of the Ancient Freemasons of the Memphis and Misraim Rite for Great Britain and Ireland, granted Theodor Reuß, Heinrich Klein and Franz Hartmann, who belonged to both Freemasonry and the Theosophical Society in England, a foundation charter for this school of thought in Germany. ⁸

When Rudolf Steiner's autobiography states that some time after the founding of the German Section in 1902, he and Marie von Sivers were offered the leadership of a society working with the cultic symbolism of the ancient wisdom, this suggestion did not come, as might be assumed, from the main representative of the German MemphisMisraim Society, Theodor Reuss, but, as Marie Steiner reports in her essay “Was Rudolf Steiner a Freemason?” , from a person who had gained the impression that Rudolf Steiner understood spiritual matters better than any mason. In private, she added that it was a Czech. That this person must have been connected with the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry is clear from the remark in the “Life Course”: “If the offer had not been made on the part of the indicated society, I would have established a symbolic-cultic activity without historical connection.”

The offer must have been made around 1903/04. For since May 1904 a series of lectures had been preparing the way for a symbolic-cultic approach. On September 15, 1904, Rudolf Steiner met the freemason A. W. Sellin in Hamburg, where he was to give a lecture. He must have asked him about the German Memphis-Misraim Order, as can be seen from his report of December 12, 1904. But even before this first report from Sellin arrived, Rudolf Steiner had sought out Reuß on his own initiative. In his lecture in Berlin on December 9, 1904, in which he spoke about high-degree Freemasonry and the Memphis-Misraim Order, he had already quoted from the latter's organ Oriflamme, while Sellin was still trying to get it. Rudolf Steiner's first conversation with Reuß must therefore have taken place between September 15 and December 9, 1904. The further conversations cannot be dated. On November 24, 1905, Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers joined the Memphis-Misraim Order. However, the negotiations regarding the modalities for the charter to independently lead a working group dragged on until the beginning of 1906. The contract was concluded on January 3, 1906.

The fact that Rudolf Steiner did not mention the name Reuß in his autobiography, only Yarker, is often interpreted by opponents as if he wanted to conceal his relationship with Reuß, because Reuß had soon fallen into disrepute in Masonic circles as an occultist. This cannot have been the real reason, however, because by the time the autobiography was written, it had long been public knowledge that the document had been issued by Reuss. Rather, the motive of historical continuity may have been decisive here as well. For Yarker, already referred to in the lecture of December 16, 1904, as a “significant character” and “distinguished mason” - was at that time the representative of Egyptian masonry who was decisive for Europe and also a central figure in relation to the Theosophical Society. He was an honorary member of the Society, apparently because he had played a decisive role in its founding in 1875, as stated in the work by the Italian Vincenzo Soro, “La Chiesa del Paracleto” (Todi 1922, p. 334), which is in Rudolf Steiner's library: “The most select heads of international Freemasonry had cooperated in the founding of the Theosophical Society, among them John [H.] Reussner, a member of the high degrees of the Freemasons of the Orient, who had been initiated by the Great Orient [the French Grand Orient] in 1858.” (Todi 1922, p. 334): “The most exquisite heads of international freemasonry had cooperated in the founding of the Theosophical Society, among them John Yarker, the closest friend of Garibaldi and Mazzini.” ⁹

The Theosophical Society, originally with a distinctly Western character, was to become the pioneer for the popularization of supersensible truths necessary in modern times. Through the first great work of its founder, H.P. Blavatsky, “Isis Unveiled” (1877), a wealth of knowledge of ancient Western occultism had become public. For this, she received the highest degree of adoption of Egyptian Freemasonry from Yarker.¹⁰ They also discussed setting up a ritual for the Theosophical Society.¹¹ However, this plan was not realized at the time. When Blavatsky's successor, Annie Besant, later became active in the area of symbolic cults, she did so within a different masonic current.¹²

Rudolf Steiner therefore had good reason to mention only Yarker's name in his autobiography, because only he – not Reuß, who merely represented the order in Germany in a position that could not be avoided given Rudolf Steiner's intentions – represented everything that was crucial in terms of the necessary historical continuity.

Regarding the inner prehistory

One does not receive a reward, but a difficult task.¹³

A particularly telling testimony to this, and to how crucial Rudolf Steiner's own inner situation was for him, is the letter of November 30, 1905, addressed to Marie von Sivers a few days after entering the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry. It shows that he did not

on his own personal initiative, but in agreement with the “occult powers,” that is, with the spiritual world, and that since “for the time being it seems worthless to all occult powers,” he cannot yet say whether the matter can be done at all for his planned working group to be linked to this order. This question seems to have been resolved only in the last few weeks of the year. On January 2, 1906, the first lecture on the royal art held jointly for men and women in a new form rounded off the inner constitution of the circle. If it says in this lecture: “[...] and even today, Freemasonry can only be described as a caricature of the great royal art, we must not despair in our efforts to awaken the forces slumbering in it; a work that falls to us in a field that runs parallel to the theosophical work,” This statement is further substantiated by a word from a lecture on Freemasonry given shortly afterwards in Bremen on April 9, 1906. According to this, there is an inner relationship between Theosophy and Freemasonry in that Theosophy represents more the ideational, the studying, and the Masonic cult more the practical side of esoteric work. But while the Masonic world no longer understands the ceremonies and the effectiveness of the ritual forms, Theosophy can speak again of the inner truth of these ceremonies, of the spirit that underlies the ceremonies and symbols.¹⁴

A further testimony to the fact that he did not act arbitrarily is his oral statement that the task of saving the Misraim Service for the future had come to him as a result of his occult research at the time on the rainbow; one does not receive a reward, but a difficult task.

What the difficulty of this task might have been, he apparently did not explain directly. However, it may well be seen in connection with that weighty statement in the preparatory lectures: “I have reserved for myself the task of achieving an agreement between those from Abel's and those from Cain's family.” (Berlin, October 23, 1905, lecture for men). This intention - to overcome the polarization that occurred at the origin of humanity into two opposing main currents through the Christ impulse - was not only the basis of the Erkenntniskultic work, but of his entire work.

The statement that the task had come to him as a result of his rainbow research is in some ways justified by the fact that it was mentioned in lectures given during the period in which the Erkenntnis cultic working group was being prepared. It says:

"The rainbow has a special significance in occult wisdom. You know the rainbow that appears after the flood. Now we find this symbol repeated in Norse myths.” (A rainbow leads from Valhalla to Earth.)

It signifies the transition from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean era. In the Atlantean era, the air was much denser and the water much thinner than it is today; a rainbow was not possible in those times. It was in truth a realm of mist, a Niflheim. In the north, the human race emerges from masses of mist. The water masses that flooded the continent of Atlantis were to form from this realm of mist. So there was no rainbow in the Atlantean age. Occult research has explored what this explanation means.” (Berlin, May 5, 1905)

And in an answer to a question given in a lecture half a year later, the question as to whether anything more could be said about Noah and the Flood is answered as follows:

"The question regarding Noah is connected with my very latest occult research. No one will find anything in Lucifer ¹⁵ find something that I did not know at the time I wrote the articles. But now I know a little more. Now the climatic conditions have become clear and vivid to me. I have learned to understand something that I would have mentioned at the time if I had understood it at the time. At the time, I took the part of Noah allegorically. It was a picture for the deep spiritual meaning. But now I know that this rainbow in the Bible corresponds to a real fact.

On the old Atlantis, the climatic conditions were different. The distribution of air and water was different ..., so that one finds that on the old Atlantis the formation of a rainbow was not yet possible. Such conditions only became possible when Atlantis was flooded and the new continents rose. Now it is hinted [in the Bible] how the rainbow emerges from the flood.” (Berlin, October 22, 1905, question and answer session)

If you ask yourself what the task of saving the Misraim service has to do with rainbow research, the answer becomes clear when the characterization of the Misraim service as “effecting the union of the earthly with the heavenly, the visible with the invisible” (Berlin, December 16, 1911) ¹⁶ is translated into the image of a bridge. Then the connection between rainbow research and the Misraim service becomes immediately apparent. On the one hand, the rainbow has always been a symbol of this bridge from the invisible to the visible, and on the other hand, from the very beginning, Rudolf Steiner's basic intention was to build such bridges for all fields.

How the building of bridges in the field of art was to be tackled in connection with the new Misraim service can be seen from the letter to Marie von Sivers of November 25, 1905, in which it says about the day before the connection to the old Misraim current was completed: “It would now be the task to catch the masonic life from the externalized forms and give it birth again (...), to shape religious spirit in a sensually beautiful form.“ ¹⁷

The first opportunity for this arose soon after, when the German Section was responsible for organizing the annual congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society at Whitsun 1907. The Section shaped the congress according to Rudolf Steiner's models, sketches and indications in such a way that a harmonious scientific-artistic-religious experience could be conveyed. The rainbow also appeared in the seal pictures of the Apocalypse of John, painted according to Rudolf Steiner's sketches, as a new element in contrast to their traditional depictions. And with the performance of the “Sacred Drama of Eleusis”, which, in terms of cultural history, signifies the birth of the dramatic arts in Europe, there should be, even if only in the weakest form, a “link to the ancient mystery tradition”.¹⁸

This latter reference is given a special nuance by the tradition that the Eleusinian mysteries were to be renewed through the Misraim rite.¹⁹ The founder of these most famous mysteries of antiquity, the goddess Demeter, personified for the Greeks the same as Isis for the Egyptians.

A few years after the Munich Whitsun Congress of 1907, Rudolf Steiner's first mystery drama was created and work began on building a structure for it. After a wealth of new art forms had been created for it in a short time, these too, like the spiritual science itself, were characterized as a “synthesis between the understanding of heaven and earth”.²⁰ So again - figuratively speaking as a bridge. Later, he himself would use the word 'bridge-building'. In describing how art is an outstanding representative of the bridging between the invisible and the visible because it makes visible and outwardly embodies that which otherwise remains inwardly in the soul, he said, looking back on his twenty-year effort, together with Marie Steiner-von Sivers, “to let the occult current flow into art,” literally: “Everything that has emerged in the anthroposophical movement has arisen from the impulse to build a bridge between the spiritual and the physical.” ²¹

If the intention to build a bridge from the invisible to the visible was behind both anthroposophy as a science of the spirit and the artistic language of forms developed from it, then it was also behind the efforts to build social life on new insights. This can be seen precisely from the facts about the establishment of the new Misraim service.

Regarding the establishment of the new Misraim service

So what I have established has nothing to do with what used to be called the “Memphis-Misraim Grade” in Germany.²²

The constitution took place completely independently of the negotiations with Reuss about the legal authorization to lead an independent and completely independent working group. If the negotiations had not led to a result, Rudolf Steiner would have set up his working group regardless of historical continuity. He had already begun the preparations some time before the negotiations began, namely immediately after he had settled the external matters regarding the first section of his Esoteric School with Annie Besant in London in mid-May 1904: through a series of lectures that extended from May 23, 1904 to January 2, 1906 (“The Legend of the Temple and the Golden Legend,” CW 93), and an esoteric course of 31 lectures (“Fundamentals of Esotericism,” CW 93a) held from September to November 1905.

There are no records of when and how Rudolf Steiner informed the members of the German Section of his intention to establish a knowledge-cultic approach. Only from the letter of a Leipzig member ²³ dated February 17, 1905, that he had told him that he would soon try to introduce the occult teachings of Theosophy into Freemasonry, by which, of course, he meant Freemasonry as an entity and not as an organization. In his Berlin lecture of December 16, 1904, he had already said: “If you hear something about the German Memphis-Misraim direction, you must not believe that this already has a significance for the future today. It is only the frame into which a good picture can be placed one day.” It is also recorded that at the end of his Berlin branch lecture on October 16, 1905, he announced that he wanted to speak at the general assembly of the German section on October 22 about issues related to Freemasonry and that, therefore, as many external members as possible should be invited. At the General Assembly, he then announced that the next day, “according to ancient custom”, which was only overcome in the theosophical world view, he would speak separately for men and women about occult questions in connection with Freemasonry. Thereupon he spoke, in preparation for the next day's topic, about the fundamental relationship of the Theosophical Society to occultism. The next morning (October 23rd) there followed a lecture, first for men and then for women, on Freemasonry and human development.

Two days later, on October 26, 1905, the main social law of the future was developed for the first time in a public lecture, not in an external but all the more in an internal connection with the intentions of the work of the School of Knowledge: that work must, on the one hand, be freed from its character as a commodity by being separated from its remuneration, and, on the other hand, can be sanctified as a sacrifice of the individual to the community. In the future, we will work for the sake of our fellow human beings because they need the product of our labor.²⁴

The connection between the public presentation of this social main law of the future and the beginning of the knowledge-cultic work arises, on the one hand, from the importance of pictorial thinking for social life and, on the other hand, from the underlying motif of the knowledge-cultic work, to impulsing to selfless social action from moral self-responsibility, just as the instructions for moral life were once given from the mysteries. Thus, in the sense of Goethe's saying “Nothing is inside, nothing is outside, because what is inside is outside”, the constitution of the new Misraim service and the simultaneous publication of the social main law of the future can be seen as two poles of one and the same impulse. The intention to build a bridge can be clearly perceived here.

The inner constitution was rounded off with the lecture on the royal art in a new form, held jointly for men and women on 2 January 1906. The following day, the written agreement with Reuß was concluded, according to which Rudolf Steiner was entitled to set up an independent symbolic-cultic working group. Marie von Sivers was authorized to admit women, but from the very beginning, women and men had always had equal rights in Rudolf Steiner's working group. The following revealing note can be found in Marie von Sivers's notes from the lecture on Freemasonry in Bremen on April 9, 1906: “Because the Freemason wanted to keep the woman in the family, he excluded her from the lodge. On higher planes, something happened that makes it a necessity for women to be drawn into all cultural work. The occult cooperation of man and woman is the future significance of Freemasonry. The excesses of male culture must be held back by the occult powers of woman.“ ²⁵

From the beginning of 1906, wherever there were esoteric students of Rudolf Steiner, work was also being done on the Knowledge cult. The first lodges to be set up were in Berlin, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart. After the hundredth member was admitted at the end of May 1907, the leadership of the Misraim Rite in Germany passed to Rudolf Steiner, as agreed. From that point on, he was the sole spiritual and historical legal representative of the Misraim service until he declared it dissolved after the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914. By then, around 600 members had been admitted.

“Falling asleep” of the working group due to the outbreak of the First World War and the war-related statement against Freemasonry

A cause that should serve all of humanity without distinction of race or interest turns from a good one into a bad one when it becomes the basis of power for individual groups of people. ²⁶

In his autobiography, My Life, Rudolf Steiner describes how the Erkenniskult organization fell asleep with the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914 because, although there was nothing of a secret society, it would have been taken for one. Marie Steiner reports in her essay 'Was Rudolf Steiner a Freemason?' that he declared the institution to be dissolved at that time and, as a sign of this, tore up the document referring to it.²⁷ The latter obviously because it had become clear to him through the outbreak of war that through certain Western secret societies, Freemasonry, as an “originally good and necessary thing” that should serve all of humanity without distinction, had been placed in the service of “national egoism and the selfish interests of individual groups of people”.

It was this abuse for particular political ends that he held responsible for the disastrous developments that were ushered in by the 1914 World War, and he condemned it in the strongest terms. This is explained in detail in lectures from the war years 1914 to 1918.²⁸ At that time it was extremely important to him to contribute as much as possible to forming a judgment about the occult background that led to the outbreak of the war and, above all, to openly clarifying the question of war guilt. That is why he also wrote a foreword to the essay “Entente Freemasonry and the World War” by Karl Heise when he was asked to do so by the latter. However good or bad this essay may be, it was in any case the first attempt to substantiate the tendencies pointed out by Rudolf Steiner with external documents.

The harsh condemnation at the time of the special political tendencies of certain Western secret societies did not, of course, apply to Freemasonry as such. This is confirmed, for example, by the fact that shortly after the end of the war, he advised a member of his “dormant” symbolic-cultic institution to seek admission to Freemasonry. This is clear from his letter to Rudolf Steiner dated February 25, 1919, which states, among other things: “On February 13, I now, also following your advice, let myself be admitted to the Freemasons. And in fact I joined the association of the Great National Mother Lodge in the Prussian States, called “To the Three Globes” St. John's Lodge ‘From Rock to Sea,’ the same lodge to which our friends A. W. Sellin and Kurt Walther, as well as Hackländer in Wandsbeck, belong. I hope that in the course of time I will be able to awaken and maintain an interest in anthroposophically oriented occultism in this circle. It is with this in mind that I have taken this step. I hope that it will soon be possible to resume our occult community meetings too!“ ²⁹

Tolerance towards the masonic cause was expressed again a few years later, when in 1923, when the English national society was being formed, the question arose as to whether the man designated as Secretary General could really be considered for the post because he was a mason. Rudolf Steiner replied as follows:

"[...] I have always said, when the question has arisen as to whether someone should enter the anthroposophical movement from some other movement (in this case, freemasonry was meant): It is really not a matter of what someone is in another movement, but rather that when he enters this anthroposophical movement, he is a good anthroposophist. So it is really not a matter of whether someone also belongs, say, to a shoemakers' guild or a locksmiths' guild. I am not making any comparisons, I am just stating the principle: the fact that someone belongs to a shoemakers' or locksmiths' guild, etc., does not in any way affect what is anthroposophical in them. If he is a good anthroposophist, that is what matters for the anthroposophical movement. Whether he is a good, bad or mediocre freemason is none of the Anthroposophical Society's business. (...) It would be an unwise judgment to make the value of a member as an anthroposophist dependent on whether he is a freemason or not.

I have said [before] that a number of the oldest and most valuable members are Freemasons. I cannot imagine how an obstacle could arise from some form of Freemasonry for belonging to the Anthroposophical Society. I cannot imagine it. I think the Anthroposophical movement wants to be something in itself. It would not be able to bear fruit in the world if it did not let out of itself — let me use the expression — out of its own seed in a positive way. What matters is what it has a positive effect on. How it turns out when compared to one thing or another is not what matters. When I buy a suit, it is important that it suits my taste and arises out of my intentions. What does that have to do with someone coming along and saying: That suit doesn't look like the one the other person is wearing. It is really not at all about putting on the other person's suit, but one's own. You don't put on freemasonry when you become an anthroposophist. So it is actually quite impossible to make this judgment.

But of course there is something else behind such a thing. You will forgive me for saying so, but in my opinion anthroposophy is not always appreciated highly enough by its members. There is a tendency in present-day humanity to always value more highly that which is older, which has more fuss about it, which acts more mysteriously, and so on, and to disparage that which appears openly and honestly simple, judging it by the standard of the fuss and the like, which presents itself in an indefinite way. It is a kind of disparagement of the anthroposophical movement when it is judged in such a way that one says it can be harmed by the fact that this or that member comes from this or that other movement. It would have to be terribly weak if it could be harmed by such things!“ ³⁰

Why Rudolf Steiner did not want his circle to be understood as a ‘secret society’

“A secret society was not created by this.” ³¹

For Steiner, it was not primarily a matter of the principle of secrecy, but rather of the fundamental difference between his kind of symbolic-cultic work and that of the so-called “secret societies”. He saw it as a primary requirement that what is expressed by symbols, signs, gestures and words, etc., can also be understood through corresponding explanations derived from a real spiritual view. However, “explaining” should not be understood to mean that one says this symbol means this and that symbol means that, “because then you can tell anyone anything”, but rather that the teaching must be designed in such a way “first reveal the secrets of the course of evolution of the earth and of humanity and then allow the symbolism to arise from them”. This means that one must first have grasped what can be grasped by the intellect: the content of spiritual science.

In contrast to this, working with mere contemplation of symbolism, as is usually the case in occult societies today, is no longer a legitimate continuation of what was legitimate in earlier times. This is because in those times, people had a stronger sensitivity of their etheric body, which enabled them to have a corresponding inner experience. For the person of the modern age of consciousness, for whom the mind, bound to the physical brain, has become decisive instead of the sensitive etheric body, symbols, signs, gestures and words must remain something external; he cannot connect them with his consciousness soul. Nevertheless, they had an effect on the etheric body, i.e., on the unconscious. But in our time it is not allowed to act on the unconscious without first going through the conscious. For the consequence of this is that one

"if you want, you can make people docile tools for all kinds of plans, quite naturally. Because if you work on the etheric body without the person knowing it, you switch off the same powers that he would otherwise have in his mind if you do not then give the mind something that must be spiritual science today. You switch them off, and then you turn such brotherhoods into a tool for those who want to pursue their plans, their goals. You can then somehow use such brotherhoods to pursue any political goals, or you can establish the dogma that 'Alcyone is the external physical carrier of Christ Jesus'. ³² And so those who are prepared will make themselves instruments to carry this out into the world. Then one need only be dishonest and unrighteous in the appropriate way, and one can achieve anything in this way by first creating instruments.

And now – isn't it true that all things follow from real knowledge? – anyone who knows how the fifth post-Atlantic period differs from the fourth post-Atlantic period – and this is said again and again in our group – knows why it has to be so: first there must be an acquaintance with spiritual science and only then can an introduction to symbolism be given. Wherever the intention is truly to establish a spiritual movement, this process is naturally adhered to. For anyone who has only become acquainted with what is contained, for example, in my Theosophy or in the Secret Science and has tried to understand it, will never be harmed by any transmission of symbols.

Behind the modern-day aversion to so-called “secret societies” there may thus instinctively lie the justified feeling that it is not right to exploit ceremonial effects for special purposes. Rudolf Steiner always condemned this in the strongest terms, but he always emphasized that this by no means applied to all, but only to certain occult associations.

On the basis of the above and the fact that in his symbolic-cultic activity everything was geared to the general human and the fully conscious penetration of cult symbolism - hence the term “cult of knowledge” - it can be understood why he did not want his circle to be understood as a “secret society”, despite the obligation of secrecy.

• 1a. A documented history of this direction, which is not recognized by regular Freemasonry, does not exist. Based on various literary traditions, the following picture emerges.
  Egyptian Freemasonry is primarily understood to mean the Misraim Rite, while the Memphis Rite is considered to be its imitation, created in the 19th century. Both rites were combined, but are said to have always been practiced separately, so that the term “Memphis-Misraim” refers not to one rite but to two different rites.
  The Misraim Rite became widespread in France in the first half of the 19th century, was banned on various occasions, and then more or less disappeared in the second half of the century. It had somehow found its way to America, and it was from there that Yarker got his charter for these two rites for Great Britain and Ireland. He combined the Memphis and Misraim Rites and the Scottish 33° Cerneau Rite in a single organization. In 1902, Yarker gave Reuß, Hartmann and Klein a charter to introduce this “United Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Masonry” in Germany. The man who had suggested and arranged this was the Austrian industrial magnate and inventor Carl Kellner (1850-1905), according to Möller/Howe (op. cit. $84 in the note about Reuß) one of “the most remarkable occultists of that time in the German-speaking area”. He had the idea of a Masonic academy and believed that he could best realize it through the system of Egyptian Freemasonry. The name “Oriental Templar Order” (O.T.O.) is attributed to him. However, these designations actually mean nothing. They were constantly being changed. Compare how differently they appear even on Reuss's documents. For Rudolf Steiner, all this was of no importance. He merely allowed himself to be nominally authorized by this current, out of an occult obligation to maintain historical continuity, in order to establish and lead his own symbolic-cultic work independently. It is clear to any expert that the ritual texts he used are his original creations. Anyone who wants documentary proof of this is referred to the published German translation of the “Rituals of the Misraim Rite (Rite Egyptien dit de Misraim)” by Bernh. Beyer, printed in “Das Freimaurer-Museum. Archive for Masonic Rituals and Historical Research. In zwangloser Folge herausgegeben vom Geschichtlichen Engbund des Bayreuther Freimaurer-Museums». Schriftleiter: Dr. Bernh. Beyer. Band 7, Bernhard Sporn Verlag, Zeulenroda/Leipzig 1932.
• 1b. Sellin, Albrecht Wilhelm (Berlin-Ludwigslust 1841-1933 Munich)
  Colonizer in Brazil, later a merchant in Hamburg. Played a role as a co-founder and pioneer of the Berlin Society for Experimental Psychology. In this context, he experimented with Max Dessoir, Albert Moll and others in 1888-92 to answer the question of the difference between animal magnetism and hypnotism. At that time, he also became acquainted with Blavatsky's Theosophy, which, however, did not satisfy him. From 1902, editor of the Masonic journal Bundesblatt, the organ of the Grand National Mother Lodge of the Three Globes, and later Grand Archivist of this grand lodge. When he heard Rudolf Steiner lecture in Hamburg in 1904, he immediately became a member of the German Section and an esoteric disciple of Rudolf Steiner. Since he was retired soon after, he devoted himself entirely to the study of anthroposophical spiritual science and worked as already 70-year-old still in the performances of mystery plays by Rudolf Steiner in Munich in the years 1910-1913 in supporting roles. W. Sellin, 'Erinnerungen aus dem Berufs- und Seelenleben eines alten Mannes', Konstanz 1920. See page 45ff.
• 2. Stuttgart, August 16, 1908. In this sense, Rudolf Steiner's four mystery dramas, in the two scenes of initiation in an Egyptian temple (the seventh and eighth scenes of “The Awakening of the Soul”), the initial motifs for the destiny-linked bond between the personalities who are portrayed as modern spiritual seekers in the mystery dramas are to be found in the Egyptian period. See also lecture Dornach, December 27, 1918.
• 3. Lennhoff/Posner, Internationales Freimaurer-Lexikon, article “Misraim-Rituss”; cf. also Rudolf Steiner's remarks Berlin, December 16, 1911 on page 94 of this volume. In his major work “Comparative Handbook of the Symbolism of Freemasonry with Special Consideration of the Mythologies and Mysteries of Antiquity”, Schaffhausen 1861, the Freemason Joseph Schauberg also proves the cultural-historical accuracy of the Egyptian origin of Masonic symbolism in volume II.
• 4. In this context, it is interesting that according to Rudolf Steiner, the “Egyptian Book of the Dead” is the only document of the ancient mystery wisdom that has been almost completely preserved. This is how it was handed down orally by the Egyptologist Gregoire Kolpaktchy, who translated the Egyptian Book of the Dead at the suggestion of Rudolf Steiner, because, as Steiner said, this could only be done by someone who had not only the hieroglyphic but also the occult key. See “The Egyptian Book of the Dead”, translated and commented on by Kolpaktchy, Otto Wilhelm Barth Verlag, 1970.
• 5. See the lecture in Berlin on December 9, 1904, in which the manifesto of the Grand Orient of the “United Scottish, Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry” was discussed in connection with the question of immortality.
• 6. )

• 7. Yarker, John (1833-1913)
  Originally high-ranking within regular Freemasonry. Due to his experience that, because of the way Freemasonry was governed, it had become “the workshop, almost the paradise of the bon vivants, the amiable hypocrites”, the “paradise of the sellers of useless masonic baubles... the paradise of the masonic “emperors” or charlatans who beat power and money out of the aristocratic pretensions,” he left regular Freemasonry and founded various high-grade systems on a mystical basis. Since 1872 he had been the representative of the Egyptian rites for Great Britain and Ireland. According to H.P. Blavatsky (H.P.Blavatsky, “Isis Unveiled”, 2nd volume, 8th chapter), he was one of the highest masonic authorities of his time, of great erudition and genuine knowledge. He played a decisive role in the founding of the Theosophical Society (see page 51 of this volume) and was an honorary member. After the publication of H.P. Blavatsky's first major work “Isis Unveiled” (1877), he conferred on her the highest degree of adoption of Egyptian Freemasonry on November 24, 1877. In 1902, he issued a charter for the introduction of the same in Germany (see the note “Egyptian Freemasonry”).
• 8. Reuß, Theodor (Augsburg 1855-1923 Munich)
  It is almost impossible to get a clear picture of this enigmatic personality, although a biography has recently been published in which a great deal of material has been compiled. See Helmut Möller/Ellic Howe, Merlin Peregrinus: From the Occult Underground of the West (Würzburg, 1986). Reuss's life was essentially shaped by politics, writing and freemasonry. Occasional writings of a political and Masonic nature are insignificant, the testimonies about him are contradictory and uncertain. What is certain, however, is that he was always short of money and that his Masonic activities also served as a means of making a living. In his later years, Masonic interests took precedence over everything else. He was involved in numerous groups, some of which, however, existed only on paper. In 1902, Yarker, together with Franz Hartmann and Heinrich Klein, received a charter to introduce the “United Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Freemasonry” in Germany (see the reference to “Egyptian Freemasonry”). Rudolf Steiner, who for reasons of historical continuity wanted to link his own working group on symbolism and cults to the ancient Egyptian mystery tradition, negotiated with Reuss from the end of 1904 until the turn of the year 1905/06 regarding the conditions under which to be able to establish his circle nominally independently and secured in the process by contract (see document on page 82f.) that the leadership of the Misraim Rite, as soon as he has admitted the 100th member to his circle, will pass over to him alone. This was the main reason why he had entered into contact with the German representative office of the Egyptian Freemasonry. In his 'Autobiography', Rudolf Steiner responded as follows to the accusation of having associated with a man like Reuss:
  It is of course easy in retrospect to consider how much 'wiser' it would have been not to tie in with institutions that could later be used by detractors. But I would like to remark, in all modesty, that at the age in question here, I was still one of those people who assumed that others with whom they had dealings would be straightforward in their ways and not devious. This belief in human nature was not altered by spiritual vision. The latter should not be misused to probe the inner intentions of fellow human beings if this research is not desired by the people concerned. In other cases, the investigation of the inner soul of another remains something forbidden to the spiritual seer, just as the unauthorized opening of a letter remains something forbidden. And so one stands vis-a-vis people with whom one has to do, as does anyone else who has no spiritual insight. But there is the difference between taking the other person at face value until you have experienced the opposite, or having a hostile attitude towards the whole world. Social interaction between people is impossible in the latter case, because it can only be built on trust, not on mistrust.
• 9. According to Robert Ambeain, “Cérémonies et rituels de la maçonnerie symbolique”, Paris 1978, the Italian freedom fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi (1802-1882) is said to have become Grand Master of Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry in Italy in 1881. Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872). For more on both of them, see Rudolf Steiner's lecture Stuttgart, 9 April 1924.
• 10. On November 24, 1877. Perhaps it was a mere coincidence, but Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers actually made their personal connection to the Misraim current on November 24 as well (1905).
• 11. Josephine Ransom, A short History of the Theosophical Society, Adyar 1938, pp. 99f.
• 12. Cf. on this under “Individual References”.
• 13. Personal statement by Rudolf Steiner, as reported by Marie Steiner-von Sivers and Klara Walther.
• 14. According to notes by Marie Steiner-von Sivers, cf. p. 137.
• 15. The magazine “Luzifer”, later “Lucifer-Gnosis” and the essays “From the Akasha Chronicle” (GA no. 11), see the article “Our Atlantean Ancestors”, is meant.
• 16. Cf. on page 94.
• 17. See the letter on page 80.
• 18. See “Bilder okkulter Siegel und Säulen. The Munich Congress at Whitsun 1907 and its Effects», GA 284.
• 19. Cf. Karl Heise in “Entente-Freimaurerei und Weltkrieg”, Basel 1919, p. 115.
• 20. Lecture Dornach, September 20, 1916.
• 21. Lecture Torquay, August 20, 1924.
• 22. Letter to Sellin.
• 23. Rudolf Jahn, from 1905 to 1908 chairman of the Leipzig branch.
• 24. Lecture in Berlin, October 26, 1905 on “The Social Question and Theosophy,” reprinted in “Contributions to the Rudolf Steiner Complete Works” No. 88. In the essay “Theosophy and the Social Question” (today “Spiritual Science and the Social Question”), which began in the October 1905 issue of the journal “Lucifer-Gnosis”, the main social law is not discussed until the third part, which was not published until a year later, in September 1906.
• 25. In an undated letter from Paula Moudrä, a writer from Bohemia who had spoken to Rudolf Steiner in Prague in November 1907 about her admission and had been asked by him to send him a written request, it says: “You pointed to an important event in the astral world in November 1879, after which the woman is now admitted to the initiation. I think it is most important that my approach to you and my request for acceptance happened in November 1907."
• 26. From Rudolf Steiner's preface to Karl Heise's “Entente Freemasonry and the World War,” Basel 1919, reprinted in “Contributions to the Rudolf Steiner Complete Edition” No. 24/25 Easter 1969.
• 27. Not to be confused with the 'Treaty and Brotherly Agreement' on $. 82 in the present volume.
• 28. See the seven-volume series “Cosmic and Human History”, in particular “Contemporary Historical Reflections. The Karma of Untruthfulness”. Part One and Two, 'Central Europe between East and West' and 'The Spiritual Background to the First World War', CW 170ff.
• 29. Johannes Geyer, at that time pastor in Hamburg, from the autumn of 1919 teacher at the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart. From 1912 a member of Rudolf Steiner's Esoteric School. According to the biography in “Der Lehrerkreis um Rudolf Steiner in der ersten Waldorfschule”, Stuttgart 1977, he is said to have given numerous lectures in a Masonic context on the spiritual origins of Masonic symbolism from the point of view of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, and thereby gained high recognition.
• 30. London, September 2, 1923.
• 31. “My Life”, see page 95 of this volume.
• 32. Alcyone = name of the order for Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), for whom the order “Star of the East” was founded by Annie Besant and C.W.Leadbeater in 1911. The then very young Krishnamurti was proclaimed as the bearer of the expected rebirth of Christ as the coming World Teacher. The order quickly spread throughout the entire Theosophical world. Only Rudolf Steiner vigorously rejected this as occult nonsense. That is why the German section led by him was officially excluded from the Theosophical Society in 1913. Krishnamurti then dissolved the order himself in 1929 and publicly distanced himself from the role intended for him. He also severed his connection with the Theosophical Society, since in his opinion any organization can only hinder spiritual development. 32

[ 1 ] The theosophical school of thought of the present day not only seeks to satisfy the thirst for knowledge, but also to bring security into the practice of life. This is the side of it that is most misunderstood by those who do not want to delve deeper into it. A theosophist is easily considered to be an unworldly person who, in his “fantasies” in the cloud regions of the spiritual, neglects the harsh, hard reality. It should not be denied that there are followers of this world view who make such ideas seem justified. But such people themselves fall prey to a serious misunderstanding. They are dissatisfied with the spiritless view of reality that they see around them, and with the life that comes from such a view. They want to turn to life in the spirit and be filled with a nobler aspiration than that of sensual, everyday well-being. But they confuse a disastrous conception of reality with reality itself. And instead of freeing themselves from that conception, they take flight from life.

[ 2 ] But it is precisely a matter of finding the spirit within the reality that surrounds man. It is not this reality that is spiritless, but man who cannot find the spirit. Just as one does not seek electricity, light and other natural forces outside the world, so too, with a true theosophical attitude, one does not do so with spiritual forces. Theosophy, properly understood, is the recognition of such spiritual forces and laws within the world. Not only that which the eyes can see and the hands can grasp is a world force, but also that which is accessible only to the eyes of the soul, and which no instrument can control, but which the power of the spirit can master and actually move, if it knows how. The technique is based on the fact that man subjects the perceptible forces of his senses to his insight; and 'theosophy can lead to a spiritual technique that brings the higher forces into the service of human salvation. From this point of view, the theosophical attitude will not lead to aloofness from the world, but to active participation in life, indeed to the noblest and most understanding practice. For its arena is not a workshop in which material products are delivered, but life itself, as it takes place between human beings.

[ 3 ] The true theosophist is convinced that countless spiritual threads connect one human soul to another. He learns to recognize that not only his outwardly visible actions, but also his innermost soul movements and his most hidden thoughts have an effect on the weal and woe, on the freedom or slavery of his fellow human beings. This means that man recognizes the spiritual forces, that he is aware that what takes place in his soul is just as much a fact as that which the eye can see. And what he thinks and feels is something that sends its effects outwards, just as a magnet or an electric battery has an outward effect. The theosophist does not see all this in the same superficial way as the sensualist, but in such a way that he attributes reality to the spirit just as he does to the table that he can touch with his hand.

[ 4 ] Those who become familiar with theosophy will gradually come to regard such an attitude as a matter of course. And from this attitude will then arise the right relationship to the life of the soul; and from this, in turn, the appropriate treatment of all the tasks of life.

[ 5 ] Only those who are able to set the forces stored in their souls in motion in the proper way will find the right position in life, just as only those who know the laws of the external forces of nature will be able to apply them for the good of humanity. An electric battery is used to good effect by anyone who knows the nature of electrical effects. But man himself is a spiritual-mental battery, and the laws that he should apply in life with his fellow human beings must be directed at himself.

[ 6 ] It was said in the previous essay that the guardians of higher knowledge bring a part of it to publication within the theosophical spiritual work, because only in this way is it possible for the soul that is earnestly seeking truth to find a way out of the doubt and uncertainty to which the newer science, which is directed towards sensory perception, leads.

[ 7 ] The practice of life is similar. It is different now than it was in the past. How all conditions have changed. Just compare the simplicity of life in earlier times with the demands on people today. People enter into new relationships with each other. The personality has emerged from relationships of dependence that gave their existence a narrow scope, and it has been granted incomparably greater freedom of movement. But with this, a greater responsibility also rests on it. Old fetters have loosened; the conditions of existence and the struggles for existence have become more diverse. The old forces that guided the forefathers of present-day humanity are no longer sufficient for the new demands.

[ 8 ] For such reasons, we see the emergence of aspirations and outlooks on life that were unknown in the past. How many questions are occupying the minds of people today. Such “questions” arise from all areas of life: the social question, the legal question, the women's question, the educational and school question, the health and nutrition question, etc. The underlying cause of all this is that certain conditions in life must be newly regulated. And a fundamental difference from earlier times is that such regulations must now be brought about with the participation of the individual. Compare this with the way things used to be done in the past. How apparently indeterminate forces guided the masses, without the individual personalities being predisposed to direct, active intervention.

[ 9 ] A superficial view is of the opinion that the institutions of past times were created by the instincts of the people or by the arbitrary will of individuals. But anyone who looks more deeply into the course of human development and follows the progress of history without materialistic superstition will realize that the regulation of practical life has proceeded no more from instincts or caprice than religions have their origin in “childlike popular imagination”. The beliefs originate from the wisdom of the great leaders of the human race, and the same is true of the institutions of practical life.

[ 10 ] The threads that have held and still hold the network of human social order together lead to the secret schools. Unconsciously, people were led to the goals of their lives. It was precisely this unconsciousness that gave existence the security that is associated with the instinctive character. However, the progress of humanity now requires that the personality be freed from this instinctive way of existence. Instead of being guided by hidden forces, the order of the whole must henceforth be ensured by the knowledge and judgment of the individual personality. From this it follows that man is in need of a knowledge of the forces of life practice, which was previously accessible only to the initiated of the secret schools. From these places, the spiritual forces were lawfully put into effect, which play from human soul to human soul and cause the harmony of life.

[ 11 ] At the present time, every individual needs a certain degree of insight into the great world aims if he is not to renounce the free mobility of the personal. Everyone is becoming more and more a co-worker in the building of society.

[ 12 ] The theosophical spiritual work is directed towards this goal. It alone can point the individual in the right direction for the above-mentioned “questions”. For the structure of humanity is a whole, and anyone who wants to contribute to it must, to a certain extent, have an overview of the whole. All the questions mentioned are interrelated, and anyone who wants to work on one of them without an overview of the whole is living without a plan. This does not mean, of course, that everyone should participate equally in all these “questions”. Certainly, an individual will find enough work in one. But the direction towards the comprehensive human goals gives the individual work its meaning and justification. He who wants to solve the “women's question” or the “educational question” etc. in complete isolation is like a worker who, without regard to an appropriate overall plan, begins to drill a hole at any point on a mountain and thinks that a proper tunnel will result. The theosophical way of thinking is not only not far removed from the practical questions of life when it is understood in the right light, but it rather strives for the only possible practice. Only those who do not want to look beyond the narrowest circle can deny the practical sense of such a direction in life.

[ 13 ] Of course, many of the things that theosophists strive for in terms of shaping their lives still seem impractical today; and the narrow-minded may often feel quite practical compared to such enthusiasts. But the latter, if they had to, could point to many a practical institution that was considered to be fantasy by those who thought themselves “practical” when it was first proposed. Or was the postage stamp a fantasy compared to the old systems? And yet the leading practical civil servant regarded the idea of this system, which came from a “non-practitioner”, as a fantasy, and among other things made the objection that London's “postal building” would not be large enough if traffic took on the volume that was predicted. And the General Postmaster of Berlin, when the first railway was to be built from the capital to Potsdam, said: if people want to waste their money like that, then they should just throw it out of the window, because he had two post coaches going to Potsdam every day, and there was nobody in them; who would then want to travel by train!

[ 14 ] True practice lies with those who have the bigger picture; and cultivating such practice as a mindset should be the task of the theosophical view of life.