The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the background of all these considerations stands a question which is looked upon in the present age in the light of materialism, and which is far more materialistic in its fundamental conceptions than can be imagined. This question refers to the origin of certain historical events. People speak of historical necessity; namely, that the events which took place, for instance, in the past year, were historically the result, as it were, of events which took place in the preceding years.

What I characterize here as “historical” reaches, of course, into everything that proceeds out of human actions—that is, into social life and civilized life in general. The materialistic conception does not only consist in leading spiritual phenomena back to the sphere of natural science or to a material cause, but it also consists in many other things. The materialistic conception would like to investigate the idea of free will in a full light. It would also like to interpret the events taking place in the course of history in the same way in which it contemplates scientific matters; namely, that a preceding cause always produces, with a certain necessity, something which follows it as an effect. Then people say, and believe they are thinking very clearly when they say this, that all events, also those that have broken into our world-happenings with such a catastrophic force, are a necessity.

In this sense, that is, in the meaning of scientific necessity, this is perfect nonsense, although the expression—all events are a necessity—is justified in other directions. If you consider the things that passed before our souls yesterday—namely, the complicated organization of human nature, you will gain an insight, not only with your understanding but also with your feeling, into the depths of the universal order of laws. You will also gradually lose the habit of thinking that this reality can be embraced in abstract scientific ideas limited to strict laws. Then your gaze will fall on certain phenomena in Nature that reveal many things, if they are looked upon in their true light. For instance, a phenomenon like the following one: Every year a great number of life-germs develop in the ocean, germs which do not become living beings. The life-germs, or eggs, are laid—and perish. Only a small part of these grow into real living beings. This, of course, does not only happen in the wide ocean, but in the whole of Nature. Consider how many life-germs are supposed to become living beings, even in the short space of one year! How much is meant to become alive and does not attain life, when eggs are laid which do not develop! Must we not say that all these germs of life contain causes that do not produce effects? Indeed, anyone who does not consider Nature with theoretical prejudices, especially not with the precise theoretical opinion that every cause has its effect and every effect has its cause—anyone who considers Nature in an unprejudiced way will find that there are countless things in Nature which must be designated, in the fullest meaning of the word, as causes, although they do not produce effects such as should be the case if the causes would live themselves out completely. There are countless instances where life is interrupted, as it were, and does not attain its goal.

This is something that you can see outside in physical Nature. If the spiritual investigator asks himself what corresponds to this in the spiritual world—he will find something very strange. He will find something which corresponds, in a certain sense, exactly to this standing still of life in Nature, but in the way in which spiritual things correspond to things in Nature. Many considerations have shown us that often, not always, the spiritual must be characterized as follows:—Its qualities are the exact opposite of the qualities to be found in Nature—they are the exact opposite. Just as we have seen natural causes that bring about no results—that is, the process is interrupted and what is inherent in the cause (“inherent” is one of the worst possible words for the comprehension of reality) does not develop further—so spiritual investigation shows us that effects arise in the spiritual world; we can say just as little that these are determined by causes, as in the cases which we have just characterized. Yet here we have effects.

Let us ask concretely:—What does the spiritual investigator see when the eye of his soul sees such repressed processes of life? The physical eye sees that eggs, or germs, perish in this case, but the eye of the soul, or of the spirit, sees that where such eggs apparently perish, something endowed with being arises in an earlier stage, in a stage which is not as yet material. If we wish to investigate what really happens in such a case in which material causes have, as it were, no results, then we must dream in a cosmic sense, if I may use this expression. In our usual consciousness we can only dream egoistically. When we dream at night, our dreams are connected with the organism; in our dreams we are not connected with the surroundings. If we are connected with the surroundings and develop the same forces that we develop otherwise in dreams, we experience in the form of imaginations. What is kept back in the processes of Nature and does not reach the stage of physical living beings, becomes something which can very well be experienced in the consciousness of imaginative thought. Beings arise from such repressed life-germs that are only accessible to imaginative thought.

If we would not dream as human beings, but as beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, we could dream of them. In fact, if I may use ttii.s expression, the Angeloi dream of the beings that rise up every year in great numbers from the sea and from the earth, as elementary forms; these are nothing but the products of the life-germs that have apparently perished.

If you try to picture this very vividly, you can see a kind of elementary life rising out of the earth; in this elementary life we ourselves are embedded with our own soul. But we are in this elementary life more intensely still, for we take part in the process I have just mentioned. As human beings we participate very intensely in this process, and also the animals take part in this. How? Well, there is no difference between that which happens when a certain quantity of fish eggs are laid in the sea—eggs that do not develop and only give rise to elementary existence—and that which happens when we see the seeds growing out of the earth, let us say wheat. How many grains of wheat are predestined to become wheat halms,¹ and yet they do not grow into halms because we eat them! In this case we ourselves and our processes are linked up with the universe; we connect ourselves with what arises as elementary existence.

In the grains of wheat and in other products that we use for our food, we interrupt the progressive process. We do not allow the life germs to become real beings, but through our own existence we cause that, which was destined for something else, to become an elementary process, which can be seen only through imagination. But the reality that lies at the foundation of this imaginative life takes place because we ourselves are placed into the process and participate in it. From the grains of wheat or rye, from everything else in Nature which we consume in this way, from all this, an elementary life arises. This elementary life permeates us. We take up this elementary life and are placed within it.

You have here the foundation of elementary life. We can, as it were, exist only because we interrupt another progressive process and spiritualize it. Even when we eat, we spiritualize a process that would otherwise take a purely material course.

The opposite is to be found in the spiritual world. There we find effects which have no causes, for instance, like a moving billiard ball which moves because another one hits it these effects exist as it were without a cause, no cause can be indicated in their case; when we contemplate such things, the idea of cause and effect loses its meaning. Effects arise in the life of our soul and spirit, effects from the spiritual world, of which we cannot say that they have been caused. We face the elementary results (which arise as it were in the form of vapor from the processes just described) with desires arising from necessities of life. We must eat; hence we must spin ourselves into these elementary processes. Just as we face such elementary processes with a certain lust, or desire, so we face spiritual effects, which are in a certain sense devoid of causes, with antipathy, inasmuch as we are human beings on the physical plane. Inasmuch as we are physical human beings, we strive to prevent these effects from the spiritual world from entering into us.

If you try to grasp this somewhat subtle thought, you will see that we are, as it were, surrounded by a spiritual will, which strives to enter into us; at first we do not face it with desire; we are not even inclined to accept it. It is as if will motions were constantly floating around us in the air, motions which we reject. When the clairvoyant consciousness develops, it soon comes into the insight that imaginative things surround us and that we are hindered by inner obstacles from taking up this imaginative element.

Let us consider this imaginative element as a reality. Just as here on the earth a certain number of life-germs perish every year, so do spiritual imaginative things live in the world that always surrounds us as a spiritual world; they can indeed be reached through imagination, but through our human disposition we place obstacles in the way. These obstacles are not to be looked upon in an abstract way, or in general; they must be grasped as concrete and differentiated obstacles. What develops every year from physical life as an ascending elementary life, develops spiritually at some other time. Then it descends and becomes something that we reject in another period. These periods of time are not very regular, for there are times in which the spiritual life surges around us very strongly and many things wish to come to us. There are other times in which the spiritual air around us is not so full. We may take up a more or less receptive attitude, although generally speaking we do not feel inclined to take up this imaginative kind of existence that can be reached only through imagination. But certain conditions may enable us to take up a receptive attitude—we shall still speak of this—or we may take up an entirely rejecting attitude.

Let us suppose that in a certain period of time many such Beings are there, Beings who wish, as it were, to approach man in a spiritual way, and that man is disinclined to accept them. What will happen? It then happens that by rejecting these spiritual beings who wish to come to him, man creates the possibility (he creates the opportunity within mankind itself) for a continuation of the old processes within him, processes that have withered, and continue to spin their dry threads, so that they produce dead results instead of bringing about a living result. It is just the same as if a plant that has reached the end of its life were not taken away, but were to continue as a dried-up, lifeless plant to the damage of its surroundings.

In the course of historical events this takes place in the following way:—An age approaches—the beginning of the 20th century was essentially such an age—in which spiritual Beings wait, as it were, to approach man, an age in which man is called upon in every way to open his soul to new revelations. Yet he does not take up these new revelations, but rejects them. Then the old continues to spin beyond its limits, for this old needs to be fertilized anew through man. This does not happen. What has not been fertilized continues to spin on in a dry and barren way and this causes such events as the present catastrophic one.

One of the most important causes to be found in the spiritual world is the fact that, as the 20th century approached, evolution took a course that made human beings oppose the new revelation, for reasons which we shall still discuss. One might say that the spiritual world was full of all that was offered to mankind in the form of new spiritual knowledge, new spiritual impulses, yet mankind rejected this. Why? Undoubtedly such things are connected with conditions of human evolution. We know that the materialistic age had to come—it has its good qualities from certain other aspects. The materialistic age came, and one of its consequences was that man formed ideas which were connected only with one side of human nature. Think of what we discussed yesterday.

Yesterday we said that the human being, consisting of four members, physical, etheric, and astral body and ego (roughly speaking) is really of a different age, as far as each one of these members is concerned. When a human being is 28 years old, he is 28 only as far as his physical body is concerned (I said this yesterday); as far as his so-called etheric body is concerned he is 21; as far as the astral body is concerned, 14; and as far as the ego is concerned only 7 years old. Yesterday's considerations can very well show you this. A human being of 28, is really 28 years old only as a physical human being. The ego lives in him, for instance (without considering the other members) and lives more slowly, so that it is still a child of 7 years when the human being has reached the age of 28. When a man is 28 years old according to his physical body, this child of 7 is indeed connected with quite different worlds from the one where scientific necessity is to be found. But in the materialistic age man has become accustomed to form only those ideas that can be applied to the relationship of the physical body with its surroundings, and everything is judged according to this. The human being, such as he stands in the world, is really a complicated being, as we have seen yesterday from many aspects. What a human being believes that he knows about himself, what he says about himself in our materialistic age, is only a quarter of all that concerns man. It is only that part which concerns the physical body. We can speak of a scientific necessity only in regard to the relationship of the physical body with its surroundings. Of what must we speak when we consider, for instance, what is contained, as a child of 7, in a man of 28 (without taking into consideration the other members)? Here we must speak of something quite different, something from which this illuminated age, this infinitely clever age, has turned away completely. Strange as it may sound to a modern human being, we must speak in this case of wonders, of miracles. Wonders in the sense in which people often imagine them, or as they are imagined by people who like to go to spiritistic séances, are things which cannot be considered by a real spiritual science. Wonders lie in entirely different spheres; wonders lie in spiritual happenings. Just as necessities lie in the outer events of Nature, so do wonders lie in spiritual events. No human being who enters the physical world from the spiritual world, and proceeds to a physical incarnation, is a physical necessity. He is a necessity only inasmuch as he himself determines this necessity, because he has taken the superconscious decision in the spiritual world to connect himself with a certain hereditary stream. The cause need not lie in father and mother; they merely provide an opportunity. The appearance of every human being in the physical world is a miracle, a wonder. The entrance into the physical world of the human being that is 7 years old when the physical body is 28 is always a true wonder, and in respect to this, every question from a scientific point of view concerning the "cause" is nonsense. It is nonsense to ascribe to heredity that part in us which lives so slowly that it is only 7 years old, when we are 28. If we really want to find out its origin, and ask whence comes that which is only 7 years old when we are 28, we reach the spiritual world, the world that we share with the so-called dead, and in which we lived before descending to our body. Men who were able to think in an unprejudiced way could, indeed, form thoughts concerning such things, even though with great difficulty in our materialistic age.

Think how much Goethe occupied himself with scientific thoughts and how exemplary his scientific thoughts are. He had, as you know a constant longing to go to Italy before he ever saw Italy. And when he finally saw the great works of art in Italy which gave him a conception of the creative artistic activity of the Greek, he wrote to his friends at Weimar: “Here is necessity—here is God.” He wrote of a necessity that is not the one of natural science. His previous scientific thoughts gave him an inkling of the other necessity—the necessity that shines from the spiritual world and is the same as wonder, or miracle. This is what he felt when he saw Italy.

But our age is an illuminated one; our contemporaries are very clever. For this reason they have not only rejected the unjustified conception of “wonder,” but have banished wonder as such even from the spiritual world. But to banish wonder from the spiritual world implies nothing less than to do everything possible in order to misunderstand the spiritual world thoroughly. For the things coming from the spiritual world appear to us only as effects; if we look for the causes we cannot find them. For a spiritual investigator, this is an unquestionable truth. At the end of the 19th century men had no feelings of wonder and reverence for that which sought to come to them as a revelation from the spiritual world; this lack of feeling had increased to such an extent that there was an aversion to such revelations. For these revelations come to man in the same measure in which he develops reverence for all that is profound in the world.

That which can enter into the world's order of laws as wonders may also not take place—not be there. This dulling of human feelings in respect to wonder is the consequence of the omissions in the age approaching the 20th century. If we wish to speak of the causes of our present catastrophic events, we will find that these causes are not things done by human beings. Instead these causes are sins of omission. This is the essential point.

In lectures which I have held repeatedly in past years, I have pointed out that an excellent philosopher lived in the middle of the 19th century, Karl Christian Planck. In many places I have seized the opportunity of drawing attention to Karl Christian Planck, because he wrote a book that is, as it were, his philosophical, literary testament. This book sketches the details, even the spiritual details, of the present world catastrophe. Indeed, one may say that he describes them in advance. The book was written in 1880. Why? Because Karl Christian Planck belongs to those spirits who saw at the right time what was taking place. If you have a house that begins to grow dilapidated, it must be repaired in time. If you wait until it cannot be repaired any more, it falls together and the catastrophe occurs. Our present catastrophe is nothing but a collapse. If we look at it from a real aspect it is a collapse. The right time to bring about what might have taken place instead was during the decades 1870, 1880 of the past century. Men like Karl Christian Planck, who pointed out what was bound to come, never become—as we all know—leading personalities in outer life. When a leading personality is sought, when a statesman or someone similar must be found, one does not naturally turn to those who know something in the sense of Karl Christian Planck! These cannot be used—is it not so? Instead one chooses others, who very often can do nothing to repair and support the falling house. If we only look into the backgrounds of life, it can be proved historically (Karl Christian Planck is not the only one, there are many others) that the revelations from the spiritual world were given to many men at the right moment—the revelation of the event which mankind was facing. There might still have been time to avert the course of such an event. Of course, no one listened to Karl Christian Planck, and even now, who listens to those who speak of what must be said years before the catastrophe takes place, if this is to be averted?

Unfortunately we must say that the way in which humanity has lived through this catastrophic event up to now clearly shows that if it lasts another four years, human beings will have grown accustomed to it and will accept it as they accept normal life. Indeed, this has progressed to a high degree. He who understand the times, however, asks today:—What must take place? For, if something does not take place, the consequences will necessarily arise after decades, because something was left undone at the right time.

But what should take place according to the present conditions of time cannot be discovered in the surrounding physical world. If we wish to hear the right things it is, indeed, necessary today to listen to those who are able to speak out of the spiritual world. Of course, in less important things, events take place more quickly. One may say, in five years perhaps, human beings will recognize that they ought to have listened to many things, and they might already have known many things, if they had listened at the right moment. But they do not like to hear these things. They only like to hear things that show visible signs in the outer physical world. But this physical world has no significance for the historical course of events. It does not show the impulse, the motive force behind events. That which is to be the starting point and impulse for events in the social and ethical life must come from the spiritual world.

In our age humanity should be educated to understand a very great event in the course of human evolution, namely, to believe in free will also in historical evolution. At a certain point of spiritual life humanity today should be led with the greatest force to believe in freedom or free will—and wonder is identical with this. This point lies in the conception of the Christ impulse, of the Mystery of Golgotha. In earlier times humanity took an entirely different attitude toward the Mystery of Golgotha, and the more we go back in history the greater we find this difference. We have often spoken of this. Today it is not possible for human beings—especially for those human beings who are most advanced in the sense of the spirit of the age—to understand the Event of Golgotha as an historical event resembling other historical events. As a foundation for the argument to be dealt with here, I only need to point out that the significance of the Gospels as historical documents has, as you know, been shaken. We cannot consider the Gospels as historical documents in the same way in which we consider the documents concerning Socrates, Plato, Alcibiades, or Caesar as historical documents. We cannot, according to methods of historical research, consider the Gospels or the other writings in the New Testament dealing with the Event of Golgotha, as documents in the same sense. The way of thinking adopted in modern historical research loses every possibility of considering the Gospels as historical documents and of looking upon the Event of Golgotha, described in the Gospels, as an historical event, in the sense in which other historical events and facts are historically proved. It is not possible to speak of Christ Jesus as an historical personality in the same way in which one speaks of Charlemagne as an historical personality, according to so-called historical sources.

He who sees through such things will realize that the time has come in which those who love truth and try to understand things through truth must say that what used to be considered as historical sources for the Mystery of Golgotha has been shaken, owing to the attitude adopted by modern historical investigation. One must, indeed, be very dull—for instance like Adolph Harnack, the famous theologian, to stand up again and again and state that what can be asserted concerning Christ Jesus on a quarto page constitutes an historical document in the meaning of modern history! Of course, these things standing on a quarto page are just as little historical documents as the Gospels—according toe Harnack—are historical documents. But an attempt like the one of Harnack (to which hundreds and hundreds of others may be added) is connected with the lack of truthfulness of our age in regard to such things; it is never willing to draw radical conclusions, nevertheless just these are the right conclusions.

The conclusion which must be drawn is that, in accordance with what lies before us, we must confess that it is impossible to find Christ Jesus if we seek him in an outward historical way; we cannot find him in this way. We must find him through spiritual investigation. But in this way we shall surely find him. We shall find the historical event of Golgotha. Why? Because the historical event of Golgotha occurred in human evolution through freedom—freedom of will, in a much higher sense than in the case of other historical events; and because this free event must approach the human being in our age in such a way that nothing compels him to accept it as valid; instead he must accept its validity through inner freedom. Events that can be proved historically cannot be accepted freely. Events for which there is no outer historical proof are accepted for spiritual reasons, and on a spiritual foundation we are free. One becomes Christian through freedom, and in our modern age we must understand, above all, that one can be a Christian in a real sense only through complete freedom and not through the compulsion of historical documents. The task destined for our age is that Christianity shall gain the truth through which it will become the great impulse for the human understanding of freedom. That this shall be understood belongs to the fundamental truths of our age—then an insight must be gained into the fact that the evidence for Christianity must be sought in the spiritual world.

If this insight becomes as intense in human nature as it should become it will produce further insight—it will give rise to other things. What it should produce first of all is that man should learn to answer for himself this question:—How shall I make myself more receptive for the recognition of that which is not forced upon me from the physical world, against which I may at first even feel an aversion, an antipathy? What makes me more inclined toward this?

I am not led by personal vanity or conceit, but only because I wish to bring a concrete example. I have pointed out again and again, on similar occasions, that I began my literary career by refraining, at first, from setting forth my own opinions; instead everything which I set forth was connected with Goethe's spirit, in a conscious retrospect of a spirit who ascended to the spiritual kingdom of the so-called dead, already in the year 1832. But read what I wrote in connection with Goethe, in the time that preceded my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. The so-called Goethe investigators study these books chiefly with respect to the question, whether or not they render Goethe's opinions. They find Goethe-opinions only if the writer is a literary "ruminant," in other words, if he ruminates what Goethe said during his incarnation up to 1832. I was always of the opinion that schoolmasters, and also I myself, really need not repeat what Goethe said, for Goethe himself said far better what he wished to say. It is always better to read Goethe's own works than the opinions of schoolmasters, even when they are such excellent schoolmasters as, for instance, Lewes, who wrote the famous Goethebiography. What I tried to write is based on the inspiration of a Goethe who is no longer on the earth—It is the continuation of his ideas in a certain sphere after death. I wrote what could be written out of a certain feeling of a living relationship with so-called deceased souls. I mention this as an example and indeed not out of conceit and vanity, but because it is connected with the question as to what human beings must do in order to become more receptive for that which comes out of the spiritual world.

Human beings must seek a connection with the dead; they must find the way into the worlds where the dead live, but in a sensible, sound way, in a really fitting way and not spiritistically. The dead continue to speak after their death and we have seen that what they say, and what they send down as impulses, is alive. It is alive, not in the experiences we gain through our sense and not in our thoughts, but in our feelings, and in the reality of the impulses of our will. This is where it lives. But then we must also find within us that which inclines us to approach the spiritual world. Antipathy for imaginations is connected with unbelief in the possibility of being able to approach the spiritual world—antipathy for imaginations which wish to enter from the spiritual world in the form of impulses permeating our actions, and wish to enter also the social events and the moral, ethical events in human evolution. They alone can make human beings free.

Two things are needed in our age: To realize that the acknowledgement of the Mystery of Golgotha must be a free deed of the human soul and to penetrate wholly into this truth. And then, to seek in a real way the bridge to the dead, not merely in an abstract way, or in an abstract faith. In our age there is a great aversion also to this. People do not see at once through all that speaks against it. What ideal have human beings today, as far as social life is concerned? They think: “We are clever people; we were born and went to school—and that is why we are so clever; we are clever human beings, and consequently we know very well what must happen in social life. We call together meetings, elect officers, councilors, parliaments, and whatever all the rest may be called. There people discuss what must happen in social life. Naturally, for we are clever; and when such clever people as those of the present age come together, the right things must result”—This is the idea, but it is based on an assumption which is not correct—namely, that people know right away what is right.

Have you met anyone who knows what is the right thing for the year 1917 (the year of this lecture)? Not those who are now twenty years old, and love to sit in Parliament in order to talk and determine what is the right thing for 1917! Those who died long ago know this best of all. We should ask them what attitude we should adopt. This answers to a great extent the question as to how we can improve our social life—When we learn to consult the dead.

As physical human beings up to the end of our life, we know as a rule only what is convenient to us personally. Only when we are dead does our knowledge become really mature. Then it is mature to such an extent that it can really be applied to social life. But one must not think that the dead can have a direct influence, as it were, physically in the course of events, more or less like physical human beings. The dead know more than the living what must happen socially, but human beings must listen to them. And the human beings living on the physical plane must be the instruments carrying out the knowledge of the dead. Modern human beings must learn above all to become instruments. But—let us use this expression even though it is an unpleasant one—parliaments where human being will strive to let the dead be heard also will not exist for a long time to come. But no well-being can come in certain spheres unless the dead are consulted, unless social life is spiritualized also from this direction. Before believing that the knowledge gained here on earth through birth, surroundings, and schooling is ripe for social impulses, we should penetrate into that which has really become ripe for social impulses—the wisdom of those who have already laid aside the physical body, a wisdom which can reveal significant points of view if we really investigate it. Just imagine how much deeper the life of feeling becomes, what a deepening the human soul experiences, when that which I have now expressed in the form of thoughts becomes feeling, and when the ancient myths which connected human beings with their ancestors are replaced by the link which I have mentioned—when a concrete spiritual life will again permeate our spiritual atmosphere, and what can thus be grasped through spiritual science, in the form of thoughts, passes into the soul and feelings, and human beings will really live in this!

• 1. haulm: stems of beans and peas and potatoes and grasses collectively as used for thatching and bedding.

Yesterday we tried to get to know more precisely the world that surrounds us in such a way that we share it with those who have passed through the gate of death and that we also share it with those spiritual and soul beings that we count among the beings of the higher hierarchies. In this way, we have devoted ourselves to a contemplation that is suitable for opening up to us a part of that reality that plays a part in human life, without man, with his sensory perception and also with his mind tied to sensory perception, being able to know anything about it in his ordinary waking consciousness. Since this world is a reality, a reality that plays a part in the shaping of human life, it is understandable that in the time in which we live, in which man is called more and more, take the general destiny of human development into his own hands, as we have often said, that in such a time a knowledge of these supersensible things also sinks into the human soul. Yesterday we ended our meditation, which, as a meditation on the life of the so-called dead, must be deeply penetrating for each individual human soul, with the suggestion that this is particularly necessary in our time. On the other hand, however, there must also be an urgent need to reflect more closely on such things, such as those we touched on in our meditation yesterday. For in our time even half-awake people, dreaming people, should suspect that extraordinarily important decisions are being formed.

In the course of our discussions, I have repeatedly given hints here and there about what can be said from the sources of spiritual research about the character of modern times, the character of our time itself and the near future. Such things could only be given to present-day humanity, and more or less to anthroposophically minded humanity, in a very cautious way. Just see how much of this can be found in the lectures given in Kristiania many years before these catastrophic events, for the understanding of precisely these difficult, catastrophic times. And perhaps it may also be recalled that at a time when it would have been necessary to point out, in one way or another, the seriousness of the impulses at hand, in the lecture cycle that was held in Vienna in the early spring of 1914 – that is, before the outbreak of our present world catastrophe -–, the way in which social life, the way in which human coexistence in our time is spoken of, I chose a sharp, a strong expression: I spoke at the time in these lectures, which were essentially also about the life of man between death and a new birth, of the fact that something is happening in the moral and social life of the present that can be described as a social carcinoma, as a terrible social cancer. Perhaps one or the other at that time found this to be a strong expression. But perhaps one or the other has since been able to convince himself that the facts speak for it, that such a strong expression was allowed to be chosen at the time.

However, what I already hinted at yesterday is correct and should give us much food for thought: despite all this, despite the fact that it can easily be surmised what serious impulses lie in the lap of our time, humanity today is little inclined to really grasp the seriousness of the phenomena. Today, humanity is far too comfortable for that, far too happy to indulge in those comfortable concepts that can be found in the scientific world view today, because these concepts can be gained from the handrails of external experience, because they do not require much inner effort of the mind and yet they flatter people's vanity so much. But what is necessary is that humanity should wake up, really wake up, to much of what the times demand of us today. This awakening will only be possible if certain underlying facts are no longer regarded as fantasies or dreams but as realities that play a part in our times. And so I have often hinted during our discussions that a significant change has occurred to humanity, particularly in the last third of the 19th century. I have also hinted at these things here in Stuttgart. Today, we want to once again call them to mind from a certain point of view.

I have indicated the fall of 1879 as the turning point in the development of humanity in modern times. If we want to understand this development of humanity in modern times more precisely, we must say that what happened in the last third of the 19th century is only the effect of something that happened in the spiritual world before. It began in the spiritual world in the 1840s. And the time from the forties to the end of the seventies of the 19th century is an important and essential, a significant time. What happened then did not happen on the physical plane; but in the year 1879 the repercussions descended on to the physical plane, and since that time these repercussions have been taking place on the physical plane. They are a kind of reflection of what happened before in the spiritual world. If one is to describe what underlies this, one can say that in a particular field in a particular sphere it is the manifestation of what otherwise happens more often in the development of humanity, and what has always been described by those who were still able to observe such things as a struggle between Michael and the dragon. In the most diverse fields, such struggles of normally progressing spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies against spirits of hindrance and obstruction have taken place. For the cultural development of humanity, such a struggle has taken place in spiritual realms, and in those spiritual realms that are directly adjacent to the earth, in the decades from the 1840s to the end of the 1870s. At that time, in 1879, this battle ended with a victory, if one may say so, of the good powers against certain spirits of obstruction, which at that time - one can put it that way - were thrown down from the spiritual worlds into earthly conditions, so that since then they have been working and weaving in earthly conditions. Within that which is developing in the spiritual evolution of humanity, there are spirits of hindrance that were only overthrown at the end of the 1970s and hurled down into the lower world for the upper world, and now rule in people.

If we look at these spirits of hindrance, these spirits of an Ahrimanic nature, with which the spirits that we can call Michaelic spirits have fought a fierce battle, we have to say that these Ahrimanic spirits had a good significance in past periods of human development, they had their tasks in past periods of spiritual development. These tasks were carried out in such a way that they were guided by good higher spirits. We must not imagine the so-called evil spirits in such a way that we think we just have to flee from them in order to get rid of them if possible. That is namely the best way to attach them to oneself if one wants to get rid of them in an egoistic way; rather, one has to imagine that these so-called evil spirits are also in the service of the wise world order. If they are only placed in their right position, they will perform services that are necessary for the wise world order. And so we can say that for centuries, even for millennia, these ahrimanic spirits have performed the task of dividing human beings into those community contexts that have to do with blood ties. People are connected in their earthly associations in such a way that the bonds of blood also trigger and bring about certain bonds of love. People organize themselves into family, tribal, ethnic and racial contexts. All these things are subject to certain laws of the times. These are directed by beings from the higher worlds. That which humanity has specialized, that which humanity has structured in such a way that this structure is based on blood, was guided by these Ahrimanic spirits, but under the guidance of good spirits.

But now a different era was to begin. As long as human beings were guided by blood, so to speak, they could not take their destiny into their own hands in the way that has been suggested several times. For this it was necessary that the service of these Ahrimanic spirits, as it was, be eliminated from the spiritual world. These spirits initially wanted to continue their activity of dividing people according to blood from the spiritual world; but humanity was to be driven to a more general conception of its entire spirit. What is often said in our field, that humanity is to be understood as a whole on earth, is truly not a cliché, but a modern necessity. And this is based on the fact that a strong, intense struggle has taken place between the Michaelic spirits and the spirits of Ahrimanic nature, which in the past differentiated people according to blood.

This battle has ended with the Ahrimanic entities being pushed down and now prevailing among people. They will cause confusion among people, because that is their intention after this defeat: to cause confusion with everything that can be drawn from all kinds of concepts and ideas related to blood ties and blood relationships. It is particularly important to realize that since the last third of the nineteenth century, these impulses have been active in everything that human beings can achieve here on the physical plane through their thoughts and feelings, and that reality cannot be understood without taking these impulses into account. The way in which certain international relationships and the like are discussed today has been confused by these Ahrimanic spirits, who have been defeated by the spirit of Michael.

I have often mentioned that we can say that we have been in the so-called Michaelic Age since the end of the 1970s. Michael can be seen as the Zeitgeist, which has replaced Gabriel as the Zeitgeist. This means a great deal: Michael as the spirit of the age! The spirits of the age that were present in earlier centuries worked differently than this spirit of the age. The other spirits of the age that influenced the development of humanity in earlier centuries did so more or less in the subconscious. The task of the Michaelic Zeitgeist, which has been working in human affairs since the last third of the nineteenth century, is this: to release more and more in human consciousness itself that which is to take place in the evolution of the earth. This Michaelic Zeitgeist has actually descended and is working on the physical plane of the earth.

There is something connected with all this for our time that is extremely easy to misunderstand. Ours is a very, very ambivalent time. If you describe it so superficially, you could easily call our time merely materialistic. But that is not all; the matter is much more complicated. On the whole, one can say that these more recent times are, in their fundamental character, extraordinarily spiritual, extraordinarily spiritual indeed. And there have never been more spiritual concepts and ideas than those that have been brought to the surface by modern science in the development of humanity. But these concepts, if I may express myself in this way, are abstract. In themselves, in their substance, they are thoroughly spiritual; but they are not suited, as they appear, if they are not properly treated, to express spiritual realities. These concepts of natural science, which are being instilled into all education today, are a very double-edged sword, if I may use this paradoxical simile. They can be used as they are applied by academic science today. In that case they are spiritual, but only in so far as they are applied to the external material world; their spirituality is denied. But these scientific concepts can also be applied in such a way that they serve as material for meditation, that one meditates on them. Then they will most surely lead into the spiritual world. If those who today have a scientific world-picture would not be too lazy to apply their concepts in meditation, then these people with a scientific world-picture would very soon enter into spiritual science. It is not the content of the scientific concepts that is at fault, but the way they are treated. The concepts are subtle and intimate, but people apply them in a materialistic sense. It is not so easy to make this clear in all its details, but we must communicate with each other; therefore we must let many such truths approach us only by reflection, as it were.

Thus people live in concepts, in ideas that are thin, that are, I might say, pure distilled spirit, so that one needs only to apply a strong force to arrive at spiritual science; and these concepts are the ones that are to enter the human development precisely through the Michaelic Age. But they are also the ones who are most confused by the indicated, one can already say, from heaven to earth pushed, in heaven overcome ahrimanic spirits of obstacles. They arise in so many areas where man today believes he is thinking and reasoning quite correctly, but where he is exposed to the confusion of these spirits to a high degree.

It is precisely when considering such a matter that it becomes clear how development actually takes place, let us first stay with humanity. We must bring before our soul a significant law of development, which we have also to consider from other points of view. It is, of course, an extremely superficial way of looking at things to think that events in historical life simply arise from one another in such a way that what happens in 1918 is a consequence of 1917, 1916 and so on. That is a superficial way of looking at it. Things happen quite differently; they happen in such a way that what has happened in the spiritual realm continues to have an effect in the following periods, but in a certain way. You can take any year, let us say for example 1879. Then something happens in 1880 that is determined by the fact that what happened in 1878 is repeated retrogressively. In 1881, in a certain respect, what happened in 1877 is repeated retrogressively, and so on. One can start from any point in the development of humanity, as contradictory as this may seem; one will always find that earlier annual cycles show up in later ones as important impulses. One can therefore expect that, especially in an important period of time, this law will also intervene in the development of humanity with particular clarity and importance.

I have often hinted at this, and have often spoken before these catastrophic events of the important period of 1879, and that it is only the effect of what has been taking place in the spiritual world since the forties. If we now apply this law, which I have just mentioned, we can say the following: 1879 is an important period of time; certain spirits were pushed down who had previously worked in the spiritual world as spirits of hindrance, and from then on worked here on the physical plane among people in a hindering and confusing way. What happened in 1879 is, so to speak, the conclusion of an earlier event that began between 1841 and 1844 and has been taking effect over the decades. If we now take the year 1841, we have the period of struggle in the spiritual world from 1841 to 1879. Those entities, which are under the rule of the spirit, who is called Michael – one could also describe him with another name – they prepared themselves in 1841 to take up the strong, intensive fight in the spiritual world, which then found its conclusion for the spiritual world in 1879. It lasted for thirty-eight years. Now I said: That which happens retrogressively has a retroactive effect in the following period. — Now continue calculating from 1879 for another thirty-eight years: 1917. Just as in 1880 what happened in 1878 repeats itself, and in 1881 what happened in 1877, so in a certain way what took place in the spiritual world in 1841 is repeated in the physical world in 1917 as one of the most important struggles. It is indeed the case that the year 1879 marks a turning point, which shows very energetic impulses forward and backward in the observation. And in a certain way, on the physical plane of 1917, 1918, those things are now repeating themselves that had to take place in the spiritual world in the forties, and which can be described as a struggle of normal, forward-driving spirits against certain spirits of obstruction. This is not a calculation that I have only just made today; rather, many of you know that these events have always been referred to, and that from the point of view of these events, the year 1917 must be seen as an important starting point for subsequent events.

Of course, things must not be viewed in such a way that one says: Well, we have experienced the year 1917. Certainly, one has experienced it; but what the events actually were that took place in that year, only a few people have experienced, since few people are inclined to evaluate them in their waking consciousness. That is what it is all about.

Now, through all these things I wanted to point out that we are indeed living in an important moment in the evolution of humanity, and that it is necessary to take some things more seriously at this point in time than they are taken by the present humanity in its masses. I have already pointed out how particularly necessary it is not to ignore the normal spiritual impulses in our time. As this newer time has developed, what has actually become predominant in it? What has really gained influence in this newer time? What is radiated, I might say, into the whole of general education? Basically, only that which has grown on the coarsest field of the scientific world view. But this coarsest field of the scientific world view has only the power to grasp the dead, the inanimate, never the living, which would be so infinitely necessary in this scientific age. Even today, people still do not want to see the connection between such things and general world events. They do not want to see that the more humanity endeavors to develop only concepts that relate to the dead, they are also destroying social and community life from within. It is necessary to bring scientific concepts into flux and to enliven them in such a way that they can actually be applied to human coexistence, that they are, so to speak, suitable for explaining human coexistence.

The course of development has been this way in these newer, in these most recent times: in what has been accepted as actual science, only those concepts have been formed with which one can comprehend external, dead nature. These concepts were quite unsuitable for grasping human life. But they wanted to use them to grasp human life. And so the official scientists applied these concepts to history, to social science, to social policy, and so on. But these concepts are not useful there, and so there is no useful concept for social life at all. As a result, the social life of the earth has become too much for people to handle, has become what it has become over the past four years. People will have to learn to condense their concepts and also to vitalize them.

What the natural scientists themselves develop is certainly ingenious, useful, and conscientiously methodical, but only for the external world. Today, everyone works in their own field and does not extend the concepts that are developed in any field to the totality of the human world view. Take just one example, and you will immediately understand what I actually mean. The ordinary school physicist who today looks at the magnet needle pointing with one end to the north and with the other to the south, explains to his boys that this constant pointing of the magnet needle to the north and to the south comes from the earth's magnetism, that the earth is also a great magnet; and it would be ridiculous if this school physicist were to seek in the magnet needle itself the forces that cause the needle to point in these directions. He tries to explain it in terms of the properties of the earth; he seeks the cause outside in the cosmos. In this purely dead area, the scientific concepts are still of some use, and one or other of them may still be discovered. Therefore, it does not occur to anyone to say of the magnetic needle that it has the inherent power to always point in one direction. One assumes directional forces from the magnetic north and south poles of the earth. The biologist no longer does this. It does not occur to him to develop a similar concept. The biologist sees the chicken in which the egg is formed. It does not occur to him to ask the same question as the physicist asks about the magnetic needle. The biologist simply says: When the egg is formed in the hen, the cause of the egg formation lies in the hen. If he were to proceed as the physicist does with the magnet needle, he would say: Although the hen is the place where the egg is formed, the cosmic forces are involved in the same way as the cosmos is involved in the magnet needle when the egg is formed. I must go beyond the narrow confines of nature and take what is outside to help. In the chicken there is the place where the egg develops, but the forces come from the cosmos, just as they give direction to the magnet needle from the cosmos.

It is urgently necessary to develop such a concept and to implement it methodically. But in the eyes of the official science of biology it is foolish, fantastic, it is ridiculous, because it has completely lost its way into a blind alley of the dead. This official science cannot even apply the comprehensive concepts to such things, much less can it say anything about how people could live together politically or socially in the right way. How can one hope that something so necessary for humanity could come out of this mere natural scientific world view, namely a revival, a refreshing of these concepts? Especially in the important area of human life, this cannot be. Let us make this clear by looking at a concept that we want to grasp spiritually.

Even the mere observation of the human skeleton shows something extraordinarily important, something, I would say, magnificent. When you look at the human skeleton, you see the head, which is actually only placed on the rest of the trunk skeleton; it is a world of its own. The other part of the skeleton is formed quite differently. If we apply Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, we do indeed get the transformation of the trunk into the main skeleton, but the main skeleton is formed spherically, the head is a reflection of the whole sphere of the world. The other is formed more like a moon. This is something extraordinarily significant and indicates to us that if we want to gain fruitful insights into the human being from his form alone, we must look at something that is already indicated in the form. Our natural science is indeed magnificent, but it is illiterate when it comes to knowledge of the world. It proceeds as someone who does not read the pages of a book but writes on them: A is like this, B is like that — that is, not reading but merely describing the letters. But one must proceed to reading, one must understand, describe the forms of nature not merely as science does, but interpret them in their relationships, in their transitions. Then one comes from reading the forms of nature and natural phenomena to unraveling the meaning of the world. Of course, people who hear something like this today and who, with their thick heads, are completely stuck in illiteracy, find such a thing, when it is said, quite dreadful. Good examples could be given of how something is found to be dreadful that is so far-fetched from the human skeleton, but which can be extended to the whole human organism. Man is a dual nature, and this dual nature is already expressed in the fundamental contrast between the head and the rest of the organism.

If one now, through spiritual science, engages with these two aspects of the dual nature – one could specify further aspects, but that is not the point today – then one can already read something tremendously significant from the mere shape of the human being, if one really engages with it. From a spiritual scientific point of view, it can be seen that this human head undergoes a development from birth through physical life on earth, which now differs from the development of the rest of the organism just as the head already differs in form from the rest of the organism. It is very interesting to observe that this head develops three to four times faster than the rest of the organism. If you look at the rest of the organism, you can call it by a common name, in that it is mainly organized by the heart, so that you then get an opposite between the head organism and the heart organism. This heart organism really develops three to four times slower than the head organism. If we were only heads, we would be old people by the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, getting ready to die because the head develops so quickly. The rest of the organism develops four times more slowly, and so we live well into our seventies and eighties. But that does not change the fact that we actually have a head development and a heart development, that we carry these two natures within us. Our head development is also usually fully completed by the age of twenty-eight; the head no longer develops. What then develops is the rest of the organism. It also sends the developmental rays into the head of its own accord. If you are able to observe the shape, the characteristic development of the shape, you could come across confirmation even from external things, even if you cannot come across the thing itself. However, you have to have spiritual knowledge to come across this. But look, who has not looked at a small child and said to themselves when they see it again later: This child only later became so similar to so and so. — This is connected with the fact that the forces of heredity are actually in the rest of the organism. The head is formed entirely out of the cosmos; and only when the forces of heredity work out of the rest of the organism, which happens more slowly, does the physiognomy of the head also resemble the rest of the organism. This is just one example of how external facts can confirm what spiritual science finds. It is important to note that the head develops much faster than the rest of the organism.

You see, knowing this was not so important in the early days when people were more unfree, more directed. In those days, the good spiritual powers took care of things. They effectively established harmony between the pace of head development and the pace of the rest of development. Now the time is coming when people themselves must ensure that such things are harmonized. Therefore, people must be able to understand such things correctly, must be able to deal with them, and they sin against development if they cannot do so. And we have an important area of human life where these things are terribly sinned against. This sin is sporadically expressed today because we have been in it since the last third of the 19th century. It will be expressed in a terrible way if people cannot understand the spiritual impulses. Today they initially express themselves in the following way: No consideration is given to the fact that if a person is to develop normally, something must be given to him that takes into account the fact that his brain development is three to four times faster than that of the rest of the organism. And one area in which this is particularly damaging is that of education and teaching, for the following reasons: Under the influence of the scientific world view, concepts have been developed that have gradually become mere concepts for the development of the head, that do not contribute to the rest of the development, concepts that are acquired at the same pace as the head develops, that cannot be absorbed at the same pace as the rest of the organism develops.

This means an extraordinary amount. Time has gradually developed louder ideas that occupy the head, leaving the heart cool and empty. They come sporadically today, as I said, but the things will increasingly take hold. You can do the test if you can observe life. Because of the dichotomy of the way the head and heart develop, the human being depends on not just developing intellectually in his youth. In youth, the head is the main focus because the other aspects develop more slowly. If we wanted to educate people for the rest of their lives as well as for the head, we would have to keep them in school their whole lives. We can only address the head in school education. But today the head is treated in such a way that it cannot give anything back to the rest of the organism in spiritual and soul terms. The rest of the organism does, of course, give its inherited impulses to the head throughout life, otherwise we would die at twenty-seven, because the head is predisposed to do so. But in return, the head should also give what is cultivated in it. You can see for yourself that today's education does not do this. To prove it, ask yourself: Is it not true that people who receive a school education today only remember what they feel in later life? — Most of the time they do not even do that, but are happy to be able to quickly forget everything. This only means that the rest of the organism observes the formation of the head. If the rest of the organism received from the head the life essence it needs, then one would not only remember in terms of memory, but one would look back on what one's teacher gave one, as on a paradise, to which one thinks back with heartfelt contentment and attachment every hour in later life, into which one plunges again and again and in which one has a source of rejuvenation. It would be a source of rejuvenation if it included education of the heart, not just of the head. Then, throughout his or her life, a person would have something from childhood teaching, from school, for the rest of the organism, which develops four times more slowly, and this would also have an effect on the organism. Today it is only just beginning, and it will get worse and worse. People will become prematurely aged because they will only remember what they have absorbed into their heads, and what has meaning only up to the age of twenty-seven. After that, it remains as useless, remembered memory; and the person ages. He ages inwardly, spiritually, early on, because the formation of the head is not suited to overflow into the four times slower development of the heart.

These things must be taken into account. But if they are to be taken into account, then our school education must become a totally different one, then it must have living concepts instead of the dead concepts that prevail everywhere today. When it comes to a Kant-Laplacean theory, people will always remember it in such a way that they grow old. What is real: the spiritual and soul starting point of our universe, from which the physical has only developed, will, if it is properly incorporated into the teaching material, be a lifelong source of rejuvenation. And it is possible to shape the subject matter, not just by using a methodical approach, but by completely reworking it in the anthroposophical sense, so that throughout one's entire life, there is something that one can recall not just in thought, but that is a lifelong source of continuous rejuvenation. We must consciously work to ensure that people are not old when they are barely fifty years old, but that they can still draw inwardly, spiritually, from what they have taken in during their youth; that they can have a source of refreshment, a refreshing drink from what they have taken in as a child. But then it must be given in such a way that it is not only suitable for the development of the head, but that it is suitable for the development of the whole human organism, which proceeds three to four times more slowly than the development of the head.

To understand such things means to bring to life what are dead concepts for the natural scientist and therefore also for our general education. Do not underestimate the great social significance of what is said here. You might think that this is only important where science in the narrower sense is effective. That is not true. Science has an effect on all of today's education, on the whole breadth of today's human development. These scientific concepts extend even into the Sunday newspapers; and even those who only absorb everything that constitutes their faith today, the real and true faith, from their Sunday newspaper, which they pretend to have towards their church or their office, are infected by science, which can only deliver dead matter, even if this dead matter may be considered in the most spiritual way. These things must be clearly seen through.

So you see: Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is truly not just something that can satisfy subjective curiosity, but something that has to deeply affect our entire development in time. And again, this intervention in our development in time depends, for our consciousness, which can be trained in anthroposophy, on the recognition of what took place in human development from 1841 to 1879 and to 1917, both supersensibly and sensibly, above and on the physical plane. These things cannot be taken seriously enough. For much, very much, has not been taken seriously in recent times. And the recovery of humanity will have to consist in people again being willing to accept perceptions, ideas, feelings about world development. Just reflect on these things!

If you look back over the past few decades, what has the world's ruling class, with the exception of a few individuals, actually done in terms of world views, major world views? At most, it has allowed natural scientific concepts to be popularized in some way, and has used these natural scientific concepts, which it has allowed to be popularized, to demonstrate all kinds of illustrative things using the means of modern times. If you could somehow announce that something from the natural sciences would be demonstrated with slides, you would attract a great deal of attention and popularity. What has the leading social class actually done with questions of world view in modern times? People were very interested if someone could tell what they experienced as a North Pole traveler or as a Brazilian explorer. It is not to be criticized that one is interested in this. When someone talks about the fact that he has somehow been able to unravel the secrets of the egg germ of the May beetle, one has felt the necessity of listening to such lectures as a well-educated bourgeois of modern times, even if one has dozed off after five minutes, unless a slide has awakened one. But where is the real will to elevate the human idea to a worldview? Where it was present, and it is very characteristic, and everyone is actually forced to reflect on it today, where have there been the most lively worldview debates, the most lively interests in worldview questions for decades? There, where the Social Democrats had their meetings. There, worldviews were formed. This is only unknown in other social classes because they guard against really getting to know human life as much as possible.

But what kind of worldview do the Social Democrats teach? One that only works with the same concepts that are enshrined in the machines; a worldview that only develops views of the world in the mechanical sense: historical materialism, materialist conception of history, materialist conception of human coexistence. You can read about these concepts in every socialist magazine. Most people don't do that, but it would be quite useful to get informed. Those people who have been pushed into the machines, who have nothing to do from morning till night but work, and who, when they come away from the machines in the evening, have to deal with a social institution that is actually a copy of the machine, they have a world view that sees the world as if it were a machine. They have developed a world view that takes no account of individuality and organizes everything around the balancing concept of the dead. There is a very good saying: Death makes everything equal; but one could also say: A worldview that only deals with the mechanical, the dead, also makes everything equal, extinguishes all individual existence, all life. — So all individual existence, all life would be extinguished by the worldview that takes its ideal from the machine. As long as the matter was not serious, one allowed these things to befall one while dreaming, while sleeping, and one behaved in such a way that one rejected all questions of world view and gradually lost touch with all the impulses that can permeate human community life, human educational life in an understanding way. And basically, in more recent times, work has only been done in matters of world view where mechanical concepts were used. Even science, after all, only produced mechanical concepts. If you take Theodor Ziehen's book, which is a model for modern science, and read the final chapters, you will see that he is also one of those who say that natural science cannot come up with concepts that ethics, morality and aesthetics provide; but afterwards concepts are developed which state that everything that is not natural science is only dreamed up. Between the lines, everything that is not natural science is defamed. At the end, Theodor Ziehen says graciously: Concepts such as freedom, ethics, morality and so on must come from other fields; only the concept of responsibility should actually be rejected by real science. Man cannot be responsible any more than a flower can be blamed for its ugliness. — From a scientific point of view, this is absolutely correct if you are one-sidedly grounded in natural science, if you apply mere concepts of the dead. But then you are applying concepts that do not even come to the living, and certainly not to the I.

It is interesting to see how Theodor Ziehen talks about the I. In these lectures, which were written down and then printed so that they capture the tone of the lecture, he says about the I: “Gentlemen, it is a complicated concept, the I; when you think about what you actually think when you hear the little word ‘I’, what do you come up with?

you come? First of all, you think of your corporeality. Then you think of your family relationships. Then you think of your property relationships. Then you think of your name and title - he leaves out the medals - then... well, you think of nothing but such things. And what some psychologists have developed, he says, is just a fiction. Yes, the natural scientist, when speaking about the ego, can also come to nothing but what no human being actually thinks about when they seriously consider the matter, when they consider the ego. But the matter is serious, in that the concepts that have been developed out of the dead must also lead to the killing, the destruction, and the devastation of life. A theory that has been made out of the dead machine as a social world-view theory has a destructive rather than a constructive effect when it is introduced into life. Humanity has not decided to grasp this; therefore, it must experience it in the most extreme way. For what has happened? In the area where sources of tremendous future impulses will once arise, in the East, the theory of the dead, the continuation of the mechanistic world view in social views, in Leninism and Trotskyism, is having a destructive effect.

Consider the matter only very seriously. He who recognizes only the dead, and in man also recognizes only the dead, may he be as great a scholar as Theodor Ziehen, when he speaks about the ego, about responsibility, as Theodor Ziehen does, then his true social interpreter is not he himself — who does not dare to do so — but Lenin and Trotsky are the ones who draw the right conclusion for human society. What Lenin and Trotsky carry out are the consequences of that which is already cultivated by the purely scientific world view. But because this scientific world view makes compromises with that which is not the consequence of this world view, only because of this does it, precisely because it does not draw the conclusion, become not Leninism and Trotskyism.

It is also important, however, that things be taken in the sense of reality. What is not true has an objective effect. Thoughts are realities, not mere concepts. You cannot just say: Even if no one knows about a lie, it still works as a power. That is true, but something else is also true: If a lie exists that is not recognized as a lie, that does not change its effect; it works in the real world as a lie. And no matter how well it is meant, it still works as a lie.

There are already works today - I may have mentioned them here already - which treat the question of Christ Jesus from the standpoint of the correct present-day natural science. Very interesting books, because they proceed uncompromisingly. Above all, a Danish book. There are also others who really express what the present-day psychologist, the present-day psychiatrist, who thinks scientifically, must think about Christ Jesus. What does Christ Jesus become? He becomes an epileptic, a pathological person, a person with a morbid disposition. And the Gospels are interpreted in such a way that one sees in every chapter: they are case histories. Of course, all this is nonsense; but to say that it is nonsense, today only the one has the right to do so who sees through the matter spiritually. The one who accepts today's scientific psychology and psychiatry, from his point of view, this Christ teaching is the right one, because it draws the right conclusion there. And a person who speaks as a modern psychiatrist is still a better person, a truer, a more honest person than the one who accepts today's psychiatry and yet thinks differently about Christ, in the sense of those pastors or priests who also accept science in its entirety and yet make compromises.

A lie has an effect, however piously it is dressed up, for it is a real power. Above all, what is needed today is not to cover up life with compromises, but to face squarely what needs to be faced from certain presuppositions. If today's psychiatrist does not want to see Christ as an epileptic, as a lunatic, which according to today's psychiatry he would be, then he must give up psychiatry as it is developed today; then he must place himself on the ground of spiritual science. If people today were able to place themselves squarely on the foundations of that which can be known, then we would, with what can be known, have the right impulses for what must continue to work.

Recently, a note was slipped into my hand about a book that I was already familiar with, which had, in any case, caused the horror of the lady – because it was probably a lady. The note tells me what Alexander Moszkowski has written. I don't have the book here, but you can see from the slip what the book is about: “Anyone who has ever sat on the benches of a grammar school will find the hours unforgettable when, in Plato, he ‘enjoyed’ the conversations between Socrates and his friends, unforgettable because of the incredible boredom that emanates from these conversations. And one might remember that one actually found the conversations of Socrates heartily stupid; but of course one did not dare to express this view, because after all the man in question was Socrates, the “Greek philosopher”. The book “Sokrates der Idiot” (Socrates the Idiot) by Alexander Moszkowski (Verlag Dr. Eysler & Co. Berlin) does away with this unjustified overestimation of the good Athenian. In this small, entertainingly written work, the polymath Moszkowski undertakes nothing less than to strip Socrates of his philosophical dignity almost completely. The title “Socrates – the Idiot” is meant literally. One would not be mistaken in assuming that the book will still be the subject of scholarly debate.

Of course, today's compromisers will say: Well, we have learned enough that Socrates is a great man, and not an idiot; now Moszkowski comes along and says such a thing! But today it is necessary to have a completely different idea about such a thing. Those who know Moszkowski are aware that he stands on the ground of the scientific world view in the fullest sense of the word, right up to the quantum theory, and that he is therefore on the outermost wing of today's scientific world view. And it must be said that this Moszkowski is a much more honest man than the others, who also believe that they stand on the standpoint of the natural-scientific world-view and yet do not think that they should regard Socrates as a fool who has nothing to say on the concepts important for the world-view; who nevertheless make compromises, depict Socrates as a great man.

The fact is that today things cannot be put right for the simple reason that people do not have the sense of truth to face up to the consequences uncompromisingly in every respect. And anyone who wants to accept Socrates today must not accept the conditions that Moszkowski sets.

But that is difficult today, has been difficult for three to four centuries. Therefore, the matter was left alone until it had developed into what it has become in the last three to four years. Things must be approached at their soul-spiritual core, where their truly deeper impulses lie. It must be faced, which is particularly necessary today, to face the fact that truth and the sense of truth must enter into the souls of human beings! Then the things that are brought into the light of this sense of truth, that are illuminated by the light of this sense of truth, will be able to show their true face. Then one will be compelled to come to spiritual science simply because one sees the true face of things. For the present speaks a lot and speaks urgently, and things can be learned, such as how educational issues and questions of teaching must be studied by spiritual science today. Just as the question of the different pace of head and heart education is important for teaching and education, so there are many questions that are fundamental, important and significant for social life, for historical life, for legal life. We just have to get out of what we have dug ourselves into, out of the terrible belief in authority regarding what the scientific world view alone provides. This is necessary for our time. What the scientific world view calls 'real' provides concepts that can never reach into the realm of human coexistence. Humanity lives under this error today. If you look at things more deeply, you can see this.

That is what I wanted to say to you today. Now, let each one of you draw the conclusion from this that it is important to open our eyes and to illuminate things with the light that we can find from the light of spiritual science itself.

Yesterday I spoke about how our development appears to the Oriental. In many respects, the Oriental sees precisely what is compromising and inconsistent with his naive, intuitive spiritual faculty. And right now there are critical views among outstanding Orientals that are significant and interesting to follow. More and more views are emerging in the Asian East that the Orient must take the further development of humanity into its own hands. These views could be undone if there were more sense for what is proclaimed here as spiritual science! But then this sense must also be a living one; one must not only want to have something interesting in spiritual science, from which one prepares an inner soul voluptuousness, but one must want to have something that permeates one's whole life. And one must be able to see that it is only through the insights of spiritual science that social, moral and legal concepts can truly be grasped. What humanity has conceived under the influence of the scientific world view over the decades has not grown with the spirit that reigns in reality. No, it is at best comparable to those views that today educate people who want to spiritually kill the whole world because they only take their concepts from the world of the dead. Future times, when people will think more objectively about these things again, when the passions that so often guide and direct judgments today will have died down, future times – I am fully convinced that it can be so — will say: One of the most important characteristics of the period around 1917 was that the Weltanschhauung, which is only intended for the head and actually drives people into old age, has become a school-like Weltanschhauung. In the future, perhaps in a distant future, it will be called Wilsonism, in reference to the great schoolmaster from whom a large part of humanity wants to have a socio-political worldview impressed upon them. It is no mere accident that mere school-knowledge, which has nothing to do with the spiritual, has now become one of the most important political factors in the form of Wilsonism. This is an important and tremendously significant symptom of our time. It is just not possible to talk about these things today in a really thorough and comprehensive way that takes everything into account. But from my present allusions you will have gathered how important it actually is to try to understand these things thoroughly, how infinitely important it is to face up to these things not only out of affect, out of emotion, but out of knowledge.

I may have mentioned it here before, but I mention it again because it is important: now it is not difficult to speak out against Wilson within Central Europe; but I can point out how, in a cycle that was held long before these events, when the whole world, including Central Europe, still admired Wilson, I characterized him exactly the same way as I do now. The point is that one approaches the impulses that dominate the present time, which also dominate the present time as errors, from much deeper sources. In our anthroposophical field, our friends had the opportunity to see how, long before there was any external compulsion to see things in the right light, the right thing was pointed out again and again. May these things be better understood in the future than we have decided to understand them in the past! And I would especially urge you to bear this in mind: much of what is coming to light in the field of our anthroposophical science is infinitely better understood than we have so far chosen to understand it. It can penetrate even deeper into the hearts and souls of human beings and be awakened to a more intense life than has happened so far. May it happen! For what happens through it will already be connected with much that can truly be done, not to bring about disaster, but for the good of the future development of humanity, that can be done to make good much that has been neglected and that might perhaps be neglected further if one only listens to that which can be gained outside of spiritual science. Among our friends, too, many have a double bookkeeping of their lives. They have one in anthroposophical studies and books, for the private nourishment of their hearts and souls. The other bookkeeping is for their life outside, where they rely solely on the authority of the natural sciences. Often one does not realize that this is the case; but it is good to be a little conscientious in consulting with one's soul about these things, so that there may be harmony between these two accounts.

Man's life can only be administered in one sense. The spirit must also penetrate the scientific world view. And religious life must also be imbued with the light that can be gained from spiritual science. Take such things as were said and meant here today, and which seemingly lead the considerations of time up to supersensible heights, as they can be grasped in your presentations. Then you will see that anthroposophical education is not only education of the head, that it can also educate the heart for humanity. It is already education of the heart. It already serves all humanity, not just the humanity that might actually die at twenty-seven. It already serves to make people courageous and capable throughout their entire life. Education that fails to take into account the different pace of the development of head and heart will make him old, nervous, disharmonious and torn. Look at life, you will find this confirmed, because life can be a great teacher with regard to the confirmation of what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science brings down from the spiritual heights. Take everything that has been said, especially when it is spoken from such points of view as today, as spoken to your hearts, my dear friends, for the education of our hearts by the spirit of the world; and hold together that which should be the bond that links us together as members of our movement. Let us work together and plan to continue working, each in our own place and to the best of our ability.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In the opinion of a number of economists, as you are probably aware, it was quite impossible for the World War to last as long as it actually did last. From their knowledge of economic relationships, these economists declared that the economic life, as existing at the time, would not permit such an extensive war to last more than a few months. Yet, as you know, the facts of life refuted this idea. If people thought objectively, this in itself would convince them of the need to revise their science of Economics. For if you took the trouble at this moment to follow up the reasons which some economists, at any rate, adduced for their assertion, you would by no means be able to conclude that they were mere fools. Quite the contrary. You would see that their arguments were not at all bad and carried some conviction. Nevertheless, the reality of life refuted them. The War went on far longer than was theoretically possible. Obviously, therefore, Economic Science did not embrace the reality; the reality turned out quite differently from what Economic Science had supposed.

We can only understand such a thing as this if we see clearly the nature of the evolution of economic life upon the Earth. It consists of a series of successive stages, but one in which the earlier stages continue to exist side by side with the later. Similarly we may say that the lowest organic forms now living are somewhat like the earliest living creatures of Earth-evolution. Thus in a sense the most primitive creatures are still here, existing side by side with the highest creatures which have yet evolved. There is a difference, but there is also a marked resemblance in the forms. So it is in the economic life. The phenomena of primitive phases of economic life are still here today, side by side with those which have attained a higher stage. But in the economic life there is another peculiarity. While in the animal kingdom, for example, the more primitive forms can live literally side by side in space with the more highly evolved, in the economic life the more primitive processes are constantly penetrating into the more highly evolved ones. We might very well compare it with those cases where bacteria penetrate inside higher organisms. Only, in the economic life it is infinitely more complicated. Nevertheless, we can detect certain underlying structures, and from these we can take useful examples which will help us to bring our line of thought to its conclusion.

The more primitive forms of “political economy” must be conceived as private agricultural economies on a large scale. Their magnitude is relative, of course; but we must understand that if the private agricultural economy is self-contained, it includes within it the other members of the social organism. It has its own administration, possibly even its own defence force, its own police, and moreover its own spiritual life. Such a private economy—grown to gigantic proportions, it is true, but still preserving in all essentials the character of a primitive agricultural concern, a gigantic farm—was the so-called kingdom of the Merovingians. It was a “kingdom” in a quite external sense, but it was certainly no State. It was in fact no more that an immense farming estate, comprehending a huge area. The entire social structure of the Merovingian kingdom was really no different from this:—the economic life underlay everything. On it was built an administrative system which accorded with the prevailing ideas of right and justice; and into this was placed a spiritual life—an extraordinarily free one for that time. For, ladies and gentlemen, it is only in more modern times and notably under the influence of “Liberalism” that we have seen the rise of the maximum of unfreedom in the spiritual life. Not until “Liberalism” came did the spiritual life begin to grow more and more unfree; and it reaches the zenith of unfreedom in that embodiment of all political bliss, the Soviet Republic of Russia. Only books approved by the Soviet Government can be sold at all. The Pope does at least content himself with proscribing books; but under the Soviet Government proscription is automatic, inasmuch as no books are printed and published save those which the Government permits.

Now if we trace the further course of evolution, we see how private economies gradually passed over into national economies,¹ which again at a certain time—at the beginning of the modern period—tended to become State-economies.² The way it happens is characteristic. Private economy—initiative in private business—gradually passes over into the hands of government departments, and thus the fiscal administration grows increasingly into industrial organisation. We see the economic passing over into the life of the State; and we see the spiritual life absorbed by the life of the State at the same time. So then we witness the rise of the modern economic and spiritual organism of the State. The State, as such, has grown increasingly powerful. We, as you know, are aware that it will have to be, so to speak, articulated once more in distinct members [wiederum eine gewisse Gliederung erfahren musz] if economic life is to progress.

At the moment, however, we are not concerned with “three-folding.” We observe, as I said, how private economies were gradually joined together. It generally happened on a pretty large scale. Private economies grew into something which could be called economy on a larger scale—national economy; and in this way a new social structure was created. Yet, within the new, the element of private economy was still preserved. The more primitive phase of evolution was still there as an insertion in the new. What is it that arises at this stage in the true sense of national economy? It is a mutual exchange between the several private economies. The exchange is regulated in many different ways. The regulation hovers like a kind of cloud over it all. The exchange, the trade or commerce between so many private economies, is the essential thing that arises with this welding of private economies into a national economy. What is the outcome? We saw yesterday that in the process of economic exchange each of the parties has an advantage, or can have an advantage. The result is, therefore, that the single economies which join together for the sake of mutual exchange (the essential thing in all economic life) profit by so doing. Once more, then, the single economies, the single businesses, gain an advantage by joining together. They profit by it simply because they can now exchange one with another. We can draw up a statement. We can calculate how much the one private economy or business will gain by means of the other private economies with which it is now connected. Each party gains an advantage, and the gain of each and all becomes significant for the entire national economy.

Now at the time when the modern science of Political Economy was founded that particular stage had been reached. National economies had taken shape out of the private economies. This must be borne in mind if we wish to understand the economic ideas of Ricardo or Adam Smith. Only on this foundation can we understand the thoughts which they evolved about “Political Economy,” as they called it. It was this working together of private economies which they actually saw and upon which they based their views. In Adam Smith you can see it again and again—how he thinks from the point of view of private economy or private business and thence draws his conclusions. At the same time he has before him the picture of their joining together into a national economy. Yet even in their ideas about this latter process the older economists retained to a large extent a way of thinking based on private business. Such were the views at which they commonly arrived: they treated national economy on the analogy of private economy. Thus the fertility, the prosperity of a national economy, as they conceived it, lay in this—one national economy would exchange with another, would come into mutual intercourse with another, and would thus derive profit and advantage. The “Mercantilist” school, for example, was based on the advantages arising from such exchange between national economies.

Now already at this early stage, where the single private economies or businesses come together into a large national economy, there is sure to arise a kind of leadership. In effect, the most powerful of the private economies which have merged into a larger complex will naturally assume the leadership; and this would undoubtedly have happened at the transition from the stage of private economy into that of national economy. But it was masked and hidden; it did not come fully to expression, inasmuch as the State undertook the leadership. If this had not happened, one private economy—namely, the most powerful of them all—would naturally have been the leader. So in effect it happened that the single private economies passed imperceptibly into the form, not of national, but of State-economy.

But it was different at the next stage, when in the further course of modern history the mutual exchange between national economies—world-trade, in other words—became more and more comprehensive. Then, indeed, such a leadership emerged quite evidently. It happened, as an absolute matter of course, in the further progress of economic life, that England's national economy became the dominating one. From another point of view I have already drawn your attention to the fact that England evolved directly from trade into industrialism. Let us think what happened while England was acquiring her colonies. She set the standard for currencies. Her colonies, in the manner of private economies, joined together into a larger complex. In the first place this gave rise to those internal advantages which are always the result of mutual exchange. But, not only so: it also gave rise to that powerful economic hegemony which, with the further evolution of world-trade, subsequently exerted a dominant influence on the economic life of the world. While she was gaining her colonies, England set the standard for currencies, because it was precisely through England that gold was forced on those countries which adopted it throughout the world. For, as you may easily compute, in economic intercourse with a rich country having a gold currency, any country which did not possess it would be at a disadvantage. In a word, we may say that under the influence of world-trade England became the leading economic power.

Moreover, while this was going on, it was still possible to develop concepts of national economy in a straight line—with whatever modifications and improvements—from Hume, Adam Smith and Ricardo, and, we may add, Karl Marx—for fundamentally, though he turned their ideas pretty well upside down, Karl Marx only continued along the same lines. The ideas of these economists are only to be understood if we have before us the picture of that economic life, which arose under the dominating influence of England's economic power.

Now with the last third of the nineteenth century, there was a transition from world-trade to world-economy. It is a very remarkable process—this passage from world-trade into world-economy. Definitions are of course inexact, for these transitions tend to take place in successive stages; but if we want a definition we must say: At the stage of world-trade the economic life of the world is characterised by single national economies exchanging with one another. This traffic quickens the whole process of exchange and thus essentially alters prices—alters the whole structure of economic life. But for the rest—in all other respects—the economic life is carried on within the several territories. As against this it may be called “world-economy” when the single economic units not only exchange their products one with another, but when they actually work together industrially: when, for example, half-manufactured products are sent from one country to another, for their manufacture to be continued there. That is a radical example of what I mean by their working together industrially. So long as it is merely a question of raw products, the account will continue to show a condition of pure trade. This cannot yet be described as an actual working-together in the industrial life. But when all factors in human life (in so far as they are affected by economics), that is to say, when all production, all distribution, all consumption—not merely production alone or consumption alone—are fed from the entire world; when all things are intricately interwoven and fed from the entire world—then we have world-economy. And through the rise of this world-economy, certain advantages which existed formerly for the national economies are lost.

Let us look back once more. When private economies join into a national economy, ladies and gentlemen, they gain on the whole; they derive advantages. Every single one derives advantages. But, apart from this, what is it that impels them? It is of course not always conscious insight which impels them thus to join together. Their joining together is, as a rule, not brought about by conscious economic insight, for in most cases the feeling for liberty is too great; the private business man is not as concerned as all that with the piling up of the profits which arise in this way. Economically, these profits certainly arise; but the process is more complicated than that. The fact is that the single private economies or businesses have the same characteristic as every living organism. Namely, their life tends in the course of time to become weaker and weaker. It is a universal law and it applies equally to economic life. An economic life which is not being constantly improved always deteriorates. Thus, as a rule, the merging into larger “wholes” did not take place with the object of making private businesses profitable beyond their original level, but with the object of protecting them from imminent decline.

When once they join together, they gain the corresponding advantage, though of course it varies from one case to another. And we may say that whatever the single economies have lost in course of time is amply made up for by their joining into national economies. Indeed, as a rule, it is more than compensated. Moreover, whatever the national economies have lost in course of time is amply made up for by world-trade and the transition into world-economy. But when world-economy is once achieved, what then? With whom can it exchange? This, in effect, is what has happened. We have seen the economic life of the entire Earth gradually merging into world-economy. And at this point the possibility of reaping further advantages by merger is at an end.

The economists who declared that the World-War could not last as long as in fact it did last were thinking in terms of national economies, and not of world-economy. If world-economy had been national economy, their declarations would have been quite true. But from the very beginning the World-War had the tendency to spread and spread, and by this very fact it had a longer life.

If in the state of world-economy we continue to think in the spirit of national economies, world-economy itself will at a certain point break up. Even if the break-up had not already been precipitated by various dark forces, this would have been the inevitable outcome of men's continuing to think in terms of national economy.

You see how there play into the economic domain circumstances which are quite clearly perceptible, but which cannot in the nature of things be easily taken hold of with figures and statistics. And this will show you, ladies and gentlemen, that it is quite impossible to prolong in a straight line the old economic ideas. We are obliged to admit that a science of Economics is now needed which will express the realities of the immediate present. The economic categories formed about a century ago no longer hold good to-day. What we need is an Economic Science capable of thinking in the spirit of world-economy. Herein you see one of our greatest historical problems.

Observe the leading statesmen of to-day coming together at Versailles, Genoa or the Hague. Science has only provided them with a way of thinking in terms of national economy. Whatever results they arrive at, unless and until they are permeated with world-economic thinking, must lead down-hill. Can they deny that they are tearing the economic life still more to pieces, erecting fresh artificial barriers and thus hindering the transition into a pure world-economy? We see this tendency in the immediate past—the tendency to break the world asunder as far as possible even in the economic life, and at the same time to conceal the tendency under the cloak of political and national pleas. Yet we shall have to pass into a real world-economy and a corresponding Economic Science, or we shall create an economically impossible state of affairs over the Earth. Such a condition of affairs can only continue in being for a time through one part of the Earth stealing advantages at the expense of another by means of differences in currency or the rates of exchange. This is precisely what is happening in economic life at the present moment.

To conceive what world-economics really means, we must see clearly, to begin with, that at the frontiers of the domain of world-economy (if we may use the expression) the conditions will be quite different from those of economic domains bordering on one another. Relatively speaking, world-economy exists today; and therefore, relatively speaking, a Science of World-Economy will have to follow. The domain of world-economy borders on nothing else, and this makes it necessary for us to observe still more precisely those economic processes which emerge within a closed economic domain, independently of its external frontiers. The cardinal problem for modern Economics to solve is the problem of the closed economic domain—a self-contained domain of one giant economy. For today the very smallest question—even the price of breakfast coffee—is influenced by the economic life of the entire Earth. If it is not so, it only means that progress is partial. This state of affairs is actually on the way and our thinking will have to follow suit.

To understand the economic conditions in a closed economic domain, we must see clearly that within the economic domain—in the mutual interplay of production, consumption and commerce (that is, in effect, circulation)—we have on the one hand consumable commodities, some of them relatively lasting, no doubt; while on the other hand we have the thing we call “money.” Now as regards the form of economy to which these things are subject, it makes an essential difference whether we envisage the class of foodstuffs for example (short-lived products) or of clothing (more long-lived) or, let us say, of furniture or houses (more long-lived still). With respect to their use and consumption we have these important differences of duration as between different kinds of economic products. As an instance of a really lasting economic product, we might point once more to the diamond in the Crown of England, or any other crown. Or, again, we might think of the Sistine Madonna. Such things may be to some extent regarded as a kind of product that will keep; we find them especially among works of art. Now in a social organism subject to division of Labour, having therefore an extensive process of circulation, there must be some equivalent of every product. There must be the money-value, representing the price. But a very little observation of the economic realm will convince you that this equivalent between the commodity-value and the money-value is fluctuating. A product is worth so much at one place and so much at another. A product can be worth more if it is worked up in one way, or less if it is worked up in another. Be that as it may, however, in the total economic life you will perceive that, apart from a few exceptional goods of very long duration, we always have to do with goods which pass away in time. They lose their value, and after a certain lapse of time are no longer there.

The one exception, strange to say, in our whole economic life is money. Although it occupies a position of perfect equivalence to the other elements of economic life, money does not wear out. You can get to the root of the matter in this way: If I have £20 worth of potatoes, I must see to it that I get rid of them. I must do something to get rid of them. After a time they are no longer there; they are used up, they are gone. Now if it were in a true relation of equivalence to the goods that are produced, money, too, would have to wear out, like other goods. That is to say, if the body economic contains money which is incapable of being used up—money which does not wear out—we may well be giving money the advantage over goods, which do wear out. This is a most important point and it becomes all the more so when we take the following into account. Think of all that I must do, if—let us say—through my activity and Labour I want to thrive so well that as a result of having a certain amount of potatoes today I shall have double the amount in 15 years' time. And think, on the other hand, how little an individual person has to do if he possesses £20 in money today and wishes to possess double the amount in 15 years' time. He need do nothing at all; he can withdraw his entire labour-power from the social organism and let other people work. All he need do is to lend his money and let other people do the work. Unless he himself in the meantime sees to it that the money is spent, the money need not be used up.

This is the very thing which brings into the body social so much of what is afterwards felt—shall we say—as a social anomaly, as an injustice. Indeed, gigantic changes are brought about in the body social, even economically speaking, by this reshuffling—I will not say of the relationships of property (I will not speak of these) but of the relationships of work and activity. And we may ask: How are these changes related to another factor, by which it is perhaps more easy to apprehend them? For there is still something rather vague about it if I merely describe empirically, as I did just now, this existing discrepancy as between money and the real objects in the economic organism. How can we get a picture-thought of some particular instance?

We can get a picture of it if we consider, to begin with, how absolutely fundamental for the whole economy of a closed domain is the consumption by all the human beings contained in it. This is the very first premiss: the total consumption by all the human beings who live in the economic domain. That is something which is simply there; it is presupposed: the consumption by all the human beings contained in any economic domain.

But there is also another thing which is of fundamental significance; and that is the land as such. Though this was badly misunderstood by the Physiocrats, for example, nevertheless the land is of fundamental significance, in spite of the fact, which has emerged from these lectures, that it must be constantly devalued. Indeed, it is just because of its fundamental significance that it must again and again be devalued. The Physiocrats made the following mistake. They lived in a time when land (as is of course still the case) had capital value. They conceived their ideas under the influence of this fact. They traced the economic relationships, indeed, in a very clear and graphic way. Of all the economists, they were the most rational. And from their standpoint they came to the conclusion that the intrinsic worth of an economic realm lies in the cultivation of the land, i.e., in the production of those goods which actually serve for the nourishment of man. So long as we remain within this field, we must in fact regard the land as the more or less fixed and given foundation of that which constitutes the intrinsic worth of an economic realm. You need only reflect how the workers who work upon the land, who unite with their Labour the Nature-products which subsequently serve for human nourishment, do in effect—so far as food is concerned—feed all the others along with themselves. All others are dependent on them; all others must be nourished by them. The others, it is true, can somehow get the means to pay for it, and pay more or less dearly. But we may think it out in simple terms in order to grasp the essential point. Let us suppose that there is a certain number, A, of eaters. This number A will include all the farm-workers, all the industrial workers, all the investors, all the traders, all the spiritual workers, right up to the freest spiritual life. All these require feeding. There will be another number, B, of those who have nourishment to offer. That is to say, B is the number of those who by their work really provide whatever passes over directly into human nourishment—into that part of the sum-total of economic consumption which represents the food consumed. Now if A is increased to A¹, while B remains constant, B's product will have to be further divided; and unless B can also be increased in its value somehow, people will have to be brought into the country and the yield of the land increased.

In other words, you cannot arbitrarily increase the number of spiritual workers, for example, within a given economic domain, without increasing on the other side the number of those who are responsible for the production of foodstuffs. Alternatively you can increase the fertility of the soil. The latter may, of course, be the achievement of spiritual workers, but in that case it follows that the spiritual workers of a period when the fertility is higher must be wiser; they must have higher faculties than those who went before them. Thus the increased yield of farm-Labour is in a certain sense equivalent to the enhancement of the insight with which we elaborate the products we receive from Nature. This may be done in many different ways. A man may enhance the forestry of a whole country by improving the bird-life of the country. It may be done in countless ways; we are only concerned with the principle.

So long as we are only thinking in terms of national economy, it is clear enough that such things can happen. Into a country endowed with a lesser degree of insight cleverer people may immigrate from another country, and they may then improve the cultivation of the land. Or, on the other hand, if more people move up into the classes which are not actually producing food, fresh workers may be called into the country. All these things actually happen within and across the frontiers of national economies which border upon other national economies.

All that we can think upon this matter may now be expressed in the question: What is to be done if on the side of A consumption is in excess of what B can produce? Whatever we may think at this point in terms of purely national economy, it ceases to be thinkable when world-economy arises, and when the conditions of the world are already in a certain sense disposed as for world-economy. What we have to do, ladies and gentlemen, is to form an idea of the changes entailed by the existence of a self-contained economic domain.

We can study it empirically by observing some small economy wherein exports and imports can be more or less disregarded. After all, there have been such economies. Empirically, we can study the condition within a self-contained economic realm. And we find it true: The foundation is the land. What the land yields is subjected to Labour—elaborated—and thus receives an economic value. Thereafter Labour itself is organised. We come to the class of men who are no longer actual producers of food, who are consumers but not producers so far as food is concerned. Above all, when we come to the spiritual workers, we have consumers and not producers, so far as foodstuffs are concerned. In a self-contained economic realm we must therefore distinguish, with respect to food, a certain number of producers who indeed—if I may say so—are very much aware of the fact that they are the producers; and over against them the consumers.

These things, of course, are relative; the transition is gradual. But if we consider the whole of human life within a self-contained economic realm of this kind, we must bring about what I explained a few days ago: The Capital must not be allowed to become congested. Hence at the place where the spiritual life is most highly evolved in the forming of Capital (this “place” is of course spread out throughout the entire economic realm) the excess of Capital which has been acquired must not be allowed to flow into the land, where it would become dammed up. Provision must be made for the elimination of the excess Capital. The Capital must not be allowed to become congested in the land. That is to say, at an earlier stage in the process, the congestion must be prevented by the free gift, to spiritual institutions, of the excess which has been acquired. Only what I described as a kind of “seed” must be allowed to pass on. It is here that the concept of “free gift” confronts us inevitably; there must be free gifts.

Study any of the self-contained economic realms which have arisen in the course of history, and you will see that the free gift is always there. In all essentials, the spiritual life is dependent on what, in the economic sense of the word, are free gifts, pure and simple.

From the simple case where Charles the Bald, out of what he had to give away, maintained his Court Philosopher (which some may regard as a rather superfluous article of furniture!)—Scotus Erigena—to Peter's Pence whereby the Roman Catholics of all the world give their free gifts to the Church in tiny doses, such gifts are always there. Wheresoever an economic life, no matter how gigantic it may become, represents an economic domain more or less self-contained, you have the transformation of accumulated Capital into gift-Capital for the maintenance of spiritual institutions.

In other words, now that we have inevitably come to a closed economic realm, namely that of the entire world, we should reflect that one thing is inevitable in a truly economic sense: What would otherwise become dammed up in the land must vanish into spiritual institutions. I say once more, it must somehow vanish into the spiritual institutions. It must take effect as a free gift.

For a truly modern Economic Science, we must seek an answer to this question: How (in the sense of economics) must we buy and sell, so that the values, primarily created as food-values within the purely material realm, may vanish within the spiritual domain? That is the great question. I will formulate it once more: What form of payment must we strive for in our economic intercourse, so that that which is created by the elaboration of Nature, where the productive process primarily works for the nutrition of mankind, eventually vanishes in spiritual institutions? This is the great economic question, to the answering of which we shall proceed in the next lecture.

• 1. The German “Volkswirtschaft,” here translated “national economy,” is also the ordinary word for “political economy.” The fact (indicated in the lecture) that the Science of “political economy” owes its form to its origin in the period of national economies is, of course, emphasised by the German word in a way that is not possible in English, though we are reminded of it by the title of Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations.—Translators.
• 2. Cf.Lecture I.

Chairman Mr. Gönnewein: In the name of the “Federation for Threefolding” I hereby open tonight's discussion evening and warmly welcome you to it. I assume that tonight's evening will take us a step further. In various companies, works councils have already been elected, and this evening these works councils will be given the opportunity to express everything they have to say here, and also to ask questions so that they can be dealt with in detail by Dr. Steiner, so that any doubts can be dispelled. Today's events force us more than ever to take a close look at what the coming period will bring us. I therefore assume that everyone present will make full use of the discussion. I give the floor to Dr. Steiner.

Introductory words

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees! I would like to begin with a brief introduction, as is also customary in these meetings, and hope that everything of importance to be discussed today will come up during the discussion.

We have repeatedly gathered here to discuss the question of the election of workers' councils, and we have tried to make clear in these meetings from which point of view the question of workers' councils is to be treated here, from the point of view of the tripartite social organism.

This threefold social organism should structure the whole of social life into three parts, namely the economic, the legal or state, and the spiritual sub-organism. So what has until now been chaotically merged into a unified state should be divided into its three natural parts. One may ask why this should actually happen. It should happen because historical development itself has been pressing towards this threefold order. Thus, this historical development of humanity shows us that, especially in the course of the last three to four centuries, but particularly in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century, everything that is human relationships has been pushed together into the unitary state, and that it is precisely because economic conditions have been pushed together with state and spiritual conditions that we have ended up in catastrophes. Until one is willing to recognize that it is only possible to make progress in terms of a recovery of the situation and thus also in the development of humanity by dividing this unitary state into the three parts, one will not be able to make any progress at all, neither with socialization nor with democracy. That is why we have approached the question of workers' councils from the point of view of independent economic life. You can most easily understand the necessity of dividing the unitary state, which has so far been a failure, into three parts if you recognize how everything in economic life differs from actual state and intellectual life. In economic life, on the one hand, everything is subject to natural conditions. These change and vary. The size of the population also plays a role. Then, in economic life, everything depends on people organizing themselves into certain professional branches and professional groups. Furthermore, economic life contains an individual and personal factor, which is the sum of human needs. It is easy to see that the sum of human needs would turn people into a kind of machine for social life if the needs of the individual were somehow to be regulated. That is why you also find it clearly stated in the socialist view, and already with Marx, that in the real socialist community there should be no standardization, no regulation of the needs of the individual. One person has these needs, another those, and it cannot be a matter of some central office dictating to people what needs they should have. Instead, it is a matter of fathoming out needs from life and ensuring through production that needs can actually be satisfied.

If you look at the whole of economic life, you will see that everything in economic life must be based on the principle of contract. Everything that makes up economic life is, or should be, based on performance and consideration within a social community. This fact also underlies the demands of the proletarians today, since it has been established that this fact is still not taken into account at all today, namely that a service must be reciprocated. Today the principle still prevails that one takes from the labor of others what one needs or believes one needs, without having to give anything in return. That is why the demands of the proletarian masses today express the view that in the future there should no longer be the possibility of satisfying one's needs from the achievements of the working population without the latter receiving something in return. It must be clear that in economic life it always depends on the specific circumstances, that is, on the natural conditions, the type of occupations, the work, the performance. One can only manage if one establishes connections between the different types of services. Not everything that is done today can always be utilized in the same way. Services that will only be provided in the future must also be foreseen. Yes, there is still much to be said if one wanted to fully characterize economic life in this way.

Because everything in economic life must be based on performance and consideration, and because these two depend on different things, everything in economic life must be based on the principle of contract. In the future, we must have cooperatives and associations in economic life that base their mutual performances and considerations on the principle of contract, on the contracts they conclude with each other. This contractual principle must govern all of life and particularly life within consumer cooperatives, production cooperatives and professional associations. A contract is always limited in some way. If no more services are provided, then it no longer makes sense, then it loses its value. The whole of economic life is based on this.

The legal system is based on something fundamentally different. It is based on the democratic adoption of all those measures by which every human being is equal to every other in terms of human rights. Labor law is also part of human rights. Every person who has come of age can stand up for this. Every person who has come of age can participate – either directly, for example by means of a referendum, or indirectly through elections or a parliament – in determining the rights that are to prevail among equals. Therefore, it is not the contract that prevails on the legal, state or political level, but the law. In the future, laws will also regulate working conditions, for example. Thus, laws will determine the time, extent and type of work, while what is to be achieved within the legally stipulated working hours will be regulated by contracts within the economic body.

Intellectual life, on the other hand, is of a completely different nature. Intellectual life is based on the fact that humanity can develop its abilities for state and economic life. However, this is only possible if the foundations are laid in intellectual life for the appropriate development of the human faculties, which are not simply given to a person at birth but must first be developed. It would be a great mistake to believe that mental and physical abilities — the latter are basically equivalent to the mental ones — can be recognized and cultivated in the same way as state and economic matters. What relates to education and teaching, for example, cannot be based on treaties, laws or ordinances, but must be based on advice given for the development of abilities.

Yes, these three spheres of life, spiritual life, legal life and economic life, are very different, so that their mixing is not only a complete impossibility, but also means great harm for human development. Our present confusion and social ills have arisen precisely from this mixing. If we now embark on a problem such as the establishment of works councils, we must first understand from which of the three areas of life the appropriate measures are to be taken.

You see, you are right to find in Marxism the view that in a social community everyone must be provided for according to their abilities and needs. But here the question arises: what is the way to provide for everyone in human society according to their abilities and needs? The way to let everyone have their rights with regard to their abilities is through a completely free intellectual life, independent of economic and state life, with the education and school system. And the possibility of letting everyone have their rights with regard to their needs is only given in an independent economic life. In between lies what has been forgotten in Marxism: the legal life, which has to do with what is expressed neither in economic life nor in intellectual life, but which simply depends on the fact that one has come of age and develops a relationship with every adult citizen within a self-contained area. What I do in economic life is subject to the laws of commodity production, commodity circulation and commodity consumption. How I work in the economic life is subject to the law. This distinction must be made in a fundamental way from now on. Only in this way can we go beyond what is today called capitalism and what constitutes the present wage system. Because capital and the wage system are components of economic life, everything that could lead the economic life to recovery is actually undermined. But we should not believe that things are really as simple as many people still imagine them to be. But if we start to do some really positive work, first with the workers' councils and then with the economic councils, it will become clear that this work will be a major, comprehensive undertaking. One of the most difficult tasks within the so-called socialization is to find out how, within the social order, performance and consideration can be regulated in the right way. And the works councils will have to make the first start with this regulation, that is, with the true socialization. This means that the works councils have been given a major, fundamental goal, because they will have to take seriously for the first time what others only talk about: socialization. What people today usually imagine by socialization is, for the most part, not only not socialization, but at best a kind of fiscalization. In some cases, there is a complete lack of clear thought and imagination.

As I said, many people today have a much too simplistic view of the matter, which is also due to the fact that economics and, in general, the science of human coexistence - forgive the expression - is still in its infancy, or not even that, because it has not yet been born. It is true that people rightly say: in the future, we shall not produce in order to profit, but we shall produce in order to consume. That is quite right, for in saying this people mean that it is important that everyone should receive what corresponds to his needs. But a healthy community would not yet have been created. This is only given when the performance is matched by a return service, when people are willing to provide something of equal value in return for what others work, produce and deliver for them. And this problem is very difficult to deal with, as you can see from the fact that current science has no concrete ideas or suggestions on the matter. At best, you will find the suggestion today that the state should be replaced by the economic state, a kind of large economic cooperative.

But you see, this overlooks the fact that it is impossible to centrally manage an economic entity if it goes beyond a certain size and encompasses too many different economic sectors. But people would only realize this when they have actually set up the so-called economic state. Then they would see that it does not work that way. The matter must be settled in a completely different way, namely, in such a way that, even if one adheres to the principle that production must take place in order to consume, nevertheless, the performance must be matched by a corresponding consideration. One can now say: So we do not care about the comparative value of one good with the other. — What some economists say today sounds like this: We only care about needs and then we centrally produce what is necessary to satisfy those needs and distribute them. — Yes, but you see, it turns out that you are forced to introduce the work compulsion. But this is a terrible measure, especially when it is not necessary. And it is not necessary! The compulsion to work is only considered necessary because of the superstition that there is no other means of realizing the principle of performance and reward than the compulsion to work. Furthermore, no consideration is given to the sophisticated means that will be found in the future to avoid work if, for example, the compulsion to work is introduced by law. So, it is not just that the compulsion to work is unnecessary, but it is also that it could not be carried out at all. But, as I said, the main thing remains that it is not necessary if one thoroughly implements the principle that every performance must be matched by a corresponding return. This can now be concretized in the following way.

Do people not have to work, that is, perform some service, if they want to live in human society? By doing so, they produce something that has meaning for others. What a person produces must have a certain value. He must be able to exchange what he produces for what he needs in the way of products from the work of others, and he must be able to do so for a certain length of time. He must be able to satisfy his needs with what he exchanges until he has produced another product of the same kind. Let us take a simple example: if I make a pair of boots, this pair of boots must be worth enough so that I can exchange this pair of boots for what I need until I have made a new pair of boots. You only have a real measure of value when you include everything that has to be paid for people who cannot work, for children who need to be educated, for those who are unable to work, for invalids, and so on. It is possible to determine the correct price of a product. But to do so, the following is necessary: the moment too many workers are working on an item, that is, when an item is produced in too large a quantity, it becomes too cheap. I do not get enough to satisfy my needs until I have produced the same product again. At the moment when too few workers are at work, that is, when an article is not produced in sufficient quantity, it becomes too expensive. Only those who have more than a normal income would be able to buy it. It is therefore necessary, in order to make a fair pricing possible, to ensure that the right number of workers – both intellectual and physical workers – are always working on an article. This means that if, for example, now that we are living in a transitional period, it were to emerge that any given article is being produced in too many factories, that is, that it is being produced in excess, then individual factories would have to be closed down and contracts would have to be concluded with the workers of these factories so that they could continue to work in another industry. Only in this way is it possible to ensure that fair prices are set. There is no other way to do it. If too little of a particular article is produced, new factories would have to be set up for the production of that article. That means that it must be constantly ensured in the economic life that production takes place under consideration of certain proportionalities. Then the wage relationship can cease, then the capital relationship can cease; only the contractual relationship between intellectual and physical laborers regarding the just [fixing of the share due to those who jointly create the product] needs to continue to exist. One actually lives towards this ideal, one hopes for this ideal, one must steer towards this ideal, and everything that does not steer towards this ideal, those are unclear ideas.

What is basically intended by the threefold social order is that people should not be deceived, but that they should be told what the living conditions of the social organism are, that is, how one can really live. And it is possible for the present sick social organism to become healthy. But then one must also really look at the concrete living conditions. That is what matters. But if that is to happen, if the economy is to be managed in such a way that the right prices are created, then this forms the true basis for socialization. The old wage relationships, where people fight for higher wages, which usually results in higher prices for food, housing, and so on, must be overcome. The function and significance of money today must be changed. In the future, money will be a kind of portable accounting, a record, so to speak, of what one has produced and what one can exchange for it. All this is not something that can only be pursued in decades, but can be pursued immediately, if only enough people understand it. Everything else is basically wishy-washy. Therefore, the first thing to be aware of is that it is essential for the works councils not to be based on a law, but to emerge directly from economic life. And so, in a primary assembly of the works councils, the experiences of economic life must be at the center. Then the functions and tasks of the works councils will emerge. That is what must be understood, namely that this system of works councils must arise out of economic life and not out of the old state life, and that this system of works councils must be the first thing to really show what socialization is. You can only socialize if you have socializing bodies in economic life. And the works councils should be this first body that really socializes out of economic life.

You cannot socialize through decrees and laws, but only through people who work out of economic life. Instead of merely fantastic demands, the impulse of the threefold order of the organism wants to put the truth. And that is what matters today. And I believe that today people can learn what is needed. So far, people have imagined various ways of improving the ailing life of the social organism. And how did things turn out?

You see, I have mentioned this before and now I want to refrain from talking about what ideas the previous practitioners of life had in January 1914 until August. But I want to talk about what the practitioners imagined when the misfortune occurred that led us into the present catastrophe: Bethmann Hohlkopf, I wanted to say Bethmann Hollweg, said, it will be a violent but short thunderstorm. - So he spoke of the coming war, and others have said something similar, for example: In six to seven weeks, the German armies should be in Paris and so on. The practitioners always said that at the time, and so it has always been in recent years. And now again, in the October-November catastrophe, what was not said then! Everything that was said has ultimately led to yesterday, which has presented us with hardship and misery. It is now time that we no longer listen to what people predict, but that we finally listen to what is being thought out of reality. Today, there is a lot of talk, for example, on the part of economists and political scientists, but it is never mentioned that the principle that performance must be matched by a return service is based on strict principles of reality. This principle amounts to everyone getting what they need to satisfy their needs for their performance until they have provided a new service.

We therefore want to set up works councils to which we can explain the specific task of socializing the economy. Legal norms will not help here, nor will general socialist ideals. The only thing that will help is what is honestly and sincerely taken from reality. And that is what should be brought into the works council. The establishment of the works council should really be the first step towards taking the socialization of economic life seriously. If we start somewhere, further steps will follow. Then people will also be found who will try to create equal rights for all people and the necessary institutions in which people's abilities are fostered. Today, oppression still reigns, as does the phrase. I have often referred to the phrase “free rein for the hardworking”. However, these words usually conceal very selfish interests. Only through a truly free spiritual life can human abilities develop in the future. And only in a legal life in which every human being is equal to another can political conditions develop anew. And in economic life, fair prices must prevail. Then everything will not be geared towards competition between capital and wages or competition between individual companies. But for this to happen, it is necessary to replace the competition that culminates in the interaction of supply and demand with sensible resolutions and contracts, which must emerge from bodies such as the works council that is to be established.

What do we actually want with the works council? With the works council, we want to make a start on a real, honestly intended socialization of economic life. And it can fill one with deep satisfaction that, despite some resistance, which has of course been amply asserted in certain circles of the local workforce, the idea of works councils has been met with understanding, so that we have already been able to report about twelve works councils and negotiations are to take place regarding the election of further ones. But if something truly fruitful is to come of it, then works councils must be elected in all companies in the Württemberg area. Then the works councils from the most diverse industries must gather, because only through negotiations, through the exchange of experiences and the resulting measures, can what is the beginning of real socialization come about. You can have this socialization tomorrow, but you cannot just talk about it and let theorists make laws; instead, people must be put in place with whom true socialization can be carried out. Because socialization is not something that will be achieved through laws, socialization will come when there are a thousand people in Württemberg industry. We have tried to tackle the issue where the reality is, and the reality for socialization is in the flesh and blood of the people and not in the laws that are written on paper and are then supposed to magically be transformed into reality.

What we want to derive from the reality of people of flesh and blood is called utopia. One might ask: Who are the real utopians? We don't want a utopia! Or is it a utopia to elect a thousand people who can achieve something in the economic field? Are a thousand people of flesh and blood a utopia? Yes, just when it was seen that it was not a utopia, but a number of real people who want to carry out socialization, people started talking about us striving for a utopia. We do not want a utopia, we want the purest, truest and most honest reality! That is what matters to us. That is something that one need only recognize. Therefore, regardless of what is being said by those utopians who have always gone wrong with their utopias, that is, by those utopians who are campaigning against the reality represented by the “Federation for Threefolding”, I ask you to make yourself independent, to rely on your own judgment for once. I believe that any rational person can distinguish utopia from reality. And if people accuse me of merely prophesying something, I think that anyone who has heard what I have said today will no longer speak of mere or even false prophecy. I am not prophesying anything, I am only saying: if a thousand people are chosen from all walks of life, then that is not a prophecy, because what they will do, they will do without prophecy, because they will be a living reality. Enough has been prophesied in recent years. Before November 9, what new victories were always prophesied: “We will win because we must win!” — Those who hurl the word “prophecy” like some kind of slander at those who speak from reality should take note of this. The others have done enough prophesying, that is, the leading circles so far. Now one has to speak to the world in a different tone, one that is already present in the hearts and souls of people. And you elect such people to your works council. Then you will be able to put forward the right thing for true socialization in the world.

Discussion

The chairman, Mr. Gönnewein, thanks Dr. Steiner for his important remarks and calls for discussion.

Mr. Lange: He first speaks of the danger of Anglo-American capitalism taking hold in Germany, thereby enslaving everyone.

We must help ourselves. This self-help consists in our saying: We take the economy into our own hands. The German capitalists do not want to exploit us after all. We have to go together with the German capitalists in a certain respect. There are also people among them who honestly want to work on the reconstruction. But the workers and employees must say: We take the factories into our own hands, we are no longer interested in strikes, but in work, and in work that is truly constructive. And for that we need the works councils. We need raw materials and land. But reconstruction is only possible if the working people come together. As workers, we must stand firm: only work can redeem us. The speaker continues to talk about monetary conditions.

Mr. Roser: Over the past few weeks, we have had various discussion evenings and talked about the works councils and economic councils. Many of you will be familiar with this and will have gained some insight into what the threefold social order is striving for. Nevertheless, one must repeatedly observe that the idea is still not sufficiently understood. But this is of course understandable, because the threefold social order represents a completely new idea, and as with everything new, this idea is also met with a certain pessimism. But at least we can state that the reception in those circles that have an interest in it can appear satisfactory. It must undoubtedly be emphasized that it is precisely this combining of the three organs, economic life, politics and spiritual culture, in the old state system that has conjured up so much of this terrible misery for the German people. When we read Dr. Steiner's book, we can clearly see that if we are unable to fundamentally separate these three organs, that is, to cultivate each according to its nature, then we will inevitably end up in a mess. We should therefore strive with all our might for this threefold order. As workers, we naturally have the greatest interest in economic life, because that is the factor, that is the institution in which we are represented. Therefore, we must also show the greatest interest in the economic sphere. Of course, we must also have and gain some influence in the legal or political and intellectual parliament, but as manual and mental workers, we must deal primarily with the economic body, with the economic parliament.

The question has been raised repeatedly: what area, what work is there for us? This work has been mentioned and discussed many times. It is the formation of works councils. Socialization, which has often been discussed by Dr. Steiner and other speakers, is increasingly being demanded from all sides. Why? Because it is the only way out of the chaos that can lead our economic life back to a healthy path. Socialization means the nationalization of all means of production, the transfer into the hands of those classes that can dispose of and determine them. Therefore, it would be of the utmost importance that we show even more interest in the question of works councils than we have done so far. But it is understandable, given the political circumstances, the political storm clouds that have been hanging over us in the last few weeks, until yesterday's conclusion. All of this has not allowed us to gain proper insight into this issue. I believe that things should be different in the future. We simply have to deal with this question, and deal with it very intensively, precisely because of the circumstances that arose yesterday with the signing of the peace treaty. It is self-evident: if we are not able to take socialization into our own hands, then we will never achieve our goal, but will instead drive our people towards general enslavement and impoverishment. Therefore, we must first and foremost take the question of works councils energetically into our own hands, regardless of anything that stands in our way. If we expect the works councils from the law, then we will get none, but only living paragraphs that actually have nothing else to do than to carry out what the previous exploiters have done with us so far. But they should be nothing more than the tool of the working class, of the whole nation.

We must create the works councils as an institution so that they do not have to dance to the tune of capitalism. The catastrophe of war in particular has given us enough to think about. We, who are active in the working committee of the “Federation for Threefolding”, have clearly recognized that, whatever proposal is made, there is no better idea than threefolding. Threefolding, and with it the independence of the individual corporate bodies, will form the basis upon which our national whole can be rebuilt. We want to strive for something other than the subjugation of the proletariat. Nor do we want to be responsible for the state continuing to use the entire economy for political purposes, only to ultimately sacrifice it to militarism. We must make economic life independent, so that something useful for the whole life of the nation may come of it. I therefore appeal to you: work to ensure that the idea of threefolding is carried to the masses, despite all challenges from right and left. The idea of threefolding is only challenged by those elements who do not want to take it into account and do not want to let it arise for their own benefit. That is why they fight it. I believe that we can only improve the life of our people if we realize the basic idea of threefolding: the independence of economic life, of legal life and of spiritual life. Then we will see whether we cannot count on a better well-being of our people.

Mr. Georg Müller: Dr. Steiner has left some points about the works councils still very unclear. Firstly, you will all agree with me that the establishment of works councils is not as easy as some people imagine. The law has already put a stop to that. If we want the works council system as described by Dr. Steiner, then we will have to fight hard in the future, because we must be clear about one thing: whatever is done by the workers, it will always be undermined by capitalism. Our greatest opponent is still capitalism today. As soon as you come up with practical proposals, you will find that everything you do is undermined. Therefore, I ask: what is the easiest way for us to get past this harassment? Some of you will eventually say that the only way is to strike. But now we are not talking about striking. We have to find more practical ways to implement our ideas. If the workers really want to get together, discuss and work together, we will find other ways, even outside the law. We don't just want a consultative vote, we want a decisive vote in the works councils. Not only capitalism, but also a large part of the bourgeoisie opposes this. It will take decades to push through the works councils as they are meant here. The worker cannot do it alone, and the others will not give up their companies to socialize them. The question now is: how far will the struggles go to achieve this? Above all, however, the workers must stick together more.

Mr. Hahl: As a representative of the “General Association of German Bank Employees,” I would like to say a few words. I can do this based on the experience I have had in my varied life.

I was head of a company in Egypt and as such had the best experiences with involving colleagues, not just giving orders but also educating them about business matters and asking for their opinions. This stimulated business interest. Today's law on works councils puts a stop to the real participation of employees. Above all, this law does not eliminate the feeling among employees that they are still in a kind of slave relationship to the dominant capitalism. Through tripartism, employees are introduced to the secrets of the company and educated about all its branches, so that they can have not only the right but also the ability to throw their vote into the balance when it comes to management. I would also like to say this to the previous speaker: if you have the skills, you will not be so easily taken advantage of by the capitalist manager. In the realization of the works councils in the sense of threefolding, one does not work against each other, but together on the basis of complete equality. The entrepreneurs rail against this and hold fast to the old rule of domination, without realizing that they are running the risk of losing everything. For the rebellion that is arising today in the ranks of the workers against the material and spiritual domination of capital will not cease until the human labor force, which is degraded to the level of a commodity by the circumstances, loses its slave character. This can only come about through the threefold social order and through the workers' councils that it demands. No matter how much the government socializes, it cannot escape the unrest until it tries to solve the problem through threefolding. As long as it only looks at the actions of other people and does not study the motives, it cannot get a picture of what the movement of the proletariat means. Today, the government believes that the proletarian movement is a passing fancy that can be dismissed by posters on advertising pillars with the slogan “Work! Work! Work!” The sufferings that are emerging today, however, are the logical consequences of the mixing of economic, intellectual and legal life. During the war you were able to see how the pastor in the pulpit even had to say what the state prescribed as good patriotism. This is the confusion, hence the disaster. This is the cause of the evil, that is where the lever should be applied, so that the individual areas are made independent, so that the schools and the church no longer have to do what the state prescribes.

The day before yesterday, the new Prime Minister spoke those words about the life and death of our nation. These words can be applied here with full justification. A struggle against the enslavement of the working class is taking place here. And if this slave relationship is not abolished - and it will only be abolished through the threefold social order and the workers' councils it demands - then it could be that we are indeed doomed to die as a nation. Then it could be that the passions conjured up take everything from capital, that we become the battlefield between Bolshevism and the Entente. That is why I consider it the urgent duty of everyone to advocate tripartism and workers' councils. That is why I call on you once again to elect workers' councils in the spirit of the tripartite division of the social organism.

Mr. Münzing: I would like to start by mentioning something that is in the book “The Key Points of the Social Question”. It says on page 78: “Whatever increase in capital from the means of production – after deduction of the rightful interest – owes its existence to the effect of the entire social organism.” “After deduction of the legitimate interest” - I would like to ask you to tell me what I should understand by that. In my opinion, the whole question that revolves around capitalism and socialism ultimately boils down to the words: ‘Money bears interest, capital bears interest.’

If we examine the idea more closely, we can repeatedly find that in reality money differs in such a way that it bears interest without working. As workers, we must be disgusted when we hear that money works. Who works? Not money, surely! Money is used to make others work in order to obtain interest. Today there are views that say: the social question can be solved by abolishing commercial profit and the like, and there are many other recipes for solving the social question. I believe that the solution to the social question could only be achieved if the parties were to prescribe: Interest forbidden! That also affects the war loan and the money in the savings bank. I would like to ask you to think this idea through, even if it is not the topic of tonight's discussion. If a government came today and said that money would no longer bear interest, the whole situation would be postponed immediately. All the speculation is ultimately based on the fact that capital in the savings bank bears interest, that money has to work. I miss this simple demand for the abolition of interest in all the programs. And I would like to ask Dr. Steiner for information in this regard. I am a newcomer, but I have come across this question again and again. Rent also belongs in this question. It should then be paid in such a way that certain wear and tear of a house would be paid for, because a house does lose value through use. And to the works councils: if the works councils are to have real practical value, they must have the opportunity to influence not only wage regulations but also price regulations.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to respond only to the two direct questions. Mr. Müller is concerned, in a sense, that the works councils could not prevail and that, above all, if they approached the employers with what they assumed to be their powers, they might simply be rejected. You see, in such matters we must also take the actual situation into account, and we must bear in mind that something like the works councils envisaged here has basically never faced the business community. Just consider how, in the course of capitalist development in modern times, the protectionist relationship between the state and capitalist entrepreneurship has grown more and more. On the one hand, the capitalist entrepreneurship supported the state, on the other hand, the state supported the entrepreneurship. This is particularly evident in the various causes of war, especially in the West. But a body that has really emerged from economic life itself, from all sectors of economic life, and that is supported by the trust of the entire workforce, such a body has never faced capitalist entrepreneurship. And I ask you not to disregard this fact. I ask you to compare it with what has already happened historically, namely that when such unified rallies took place, something could be achieved through these rallies. As Mr. Müller said, it certainly depends on whether this unity, this unity, really exists. And the election of the works councils can only take place if this unity exists. It should arise from this unity.

If the works councils exist, then they will be a revelation for the unification of the current workforce, and then we will see what happens when the united workforce confronts the business community in the form of the works councils. It is not only the 'works councils of the individual company that face the individual entrepreneurship, but the entire works council, which is made up of members from all sectors and companies, faces the entrepreneurs of an entire economic area. The individual works councils return to their companies as representatives of the entire works council and now face the entrepreneur not as individuals, but as representatives of the works council of the corresponding economic area. This is a power that one must only become aware of. You can safely take a chance on such a trial of strength; it will have significant consequences. That is one thing.

The other thing is that, as Mr. Müller also said, the works council should not just have an advisory vote. No, it should not even have just a deciding vote, but should be the actual administrator of the company. It should simply manage the companies itself on behalf of the entire workforce. Naturally, certain difficulties arise from this, and they arise in quite different areas than you imagine. For example, initiative within a company must not be paralyzed by the fact that many want to give orders and the like. But all this can be overcome. That is one thing. But then there is something else to consider. I ask you: what is the capital of an economic enterprise basically based on? No matter how much money the capitalists have, this money only has value if people work, nothing else! So, the workers are not opposed to those people who are actually still entrepreneurs, but to those who only have money. And in this context, we must be clear about one thing: if we live in reality, then we do not live outside of time, but we live in a certain time. And I have the feeling that many people from the working class still talk as if things were as they were seven or eight years ago, before we sailed into this catastrophe of war. I don't think many people have thought about what it means economically that when the war ended, some companies were manufacturing all sorts of things and then breaking them up again. Such things were done because no one knew how to maintain production in a natural way. Things have changed, but today we still have the habit of talking about the old conditions from the point of view of capitalism.

You see, in many respects the situation is such that old truths are no longer truths at all today. Of course, the truth of surplus value is a sweeping truth, only today it no longer exists for the most part. It has been blown away, and what is so feared today as capitalism is actually based on terribly hollow ground. This is no longer recognized. You can see this from the fact that people are now thinking: for God's sake, if we could only save ourselves to Entente capitalism, so that we can crawl under there; we can't cope on our own anymore. The time will come when the works council will no longer face capitalism in the old way, but will face the collapsing entrepreneurship and take over what has collapsed. And the time will come when you will say: It was good that we had these works councils, because someone has to manage the factories; the others can't do it anymore, because the business community has largely collapsed, it can't do it anymore. That's what these works councils are for. They may not be present everywhere, but that will be the case. For the most part, they will find abandoned battlefields. It will even not infrequently happen that the entrepreneurs will be glad when the works councils come on behalf of a closed economic area. Now they are still doing so because they believe that they can be covered by the protector state and the laws. They would like to have what they themselves can no longer do covered by the protector state. In this case, strange circumstances would arise. Not only would the works councils be decorative pieces, but the channels would also be found again through which the run-down capital could be restored, through which in turn a variety of things would flow back to where they had gone. People have strange views about this. In Tübingen a professor said: We shall become a poor people in the future. People will no longer be able to pay for schools, so the state will have to step in and pay for them. — The professor was afraid that people would no longer be able to pay for schools. He had only forgotten to ask himself: Where will the state get the money? But only out of the pockets of individuals! In this respect, laws very often only mean that things that have some value end up where they are supposed to be. And under certain circumstances, laws can only be a detour to getting the already crumbling capital back on its feet. A workers' council that emerges from economic life and from the working population will not be one of those. It will know how to stand on its own two feet. Then let it come to the showdown. There is no need to tell us that the workers' councils will stand paralyzed before the entrepreneur. The opposite could also occur due to the current situation.

We do not live outside of time, but in a particular time, and in this time, we know that capitalism is on the verge of collapse. We have to take this into account. We must also be aware that economic life must be rebuilt from the other side. And socialism is helped by the collapse into which capitalism has run itself. For the world war catastrophe was at the same time the collapse of capitalism and will consequently influence the collapse more and more. I ask you to bear this in mind. When considering things that relate to the future, one must take such factors into account.

When quoting something like the sentence about interest, I would ask you to bear in mind that every sentence in my book strives to honestly state what really is the case, and that my book strictly rejects everything that is said to be the result of interest. So, real growth of capital, as is the case today, where capital can double in fifteen years, is impossible if the reality I describe in my book comes to pass. But I am talking about a legitimate interest rate. In this context, I ask you to consider how I talk about capital in my book. Because, you see, it is easy to fool people by telling them: If you abolish all interest, then the right thing will come out. — In all these things, it is only a matter of whether you can do it. And I have only described things that can really be done.

Consider the situation. If the things in my book are realized, money will take on a certain character. I have sometimes expressed this rather trivially to friends by saying: money really starts to stink for the first time in the economic order meant in my book. What does that mean? It means the following: When I acquire realities – money itself is not a reality, but only in that the power relations are such that money is a reality – when I acquire realities, these are subject to the law of being consumed. We have capitalism in the real sense not only within the human world, but also in the animal world. When the hamster hoards, when it lays in its winter supplies, then that is its capital for the near future, only it has the property that it can only be used in the near future, otherwise it would perish. And in our capitalist economic system, we have managed to make money lose the character of all other realities, at least for certain short periods of time. What do we do when we calculate the interest? We multiply the money by the percentage rate and by the time period, and then divide by a hundred. That is how we arrive at the interest. As a result, we have been calculating with unreal, illusory constructs! We have been calculating with what we have presented as representations of reality. What was produced by capital may have long since become unusable, may even no longer exist at all, and yet, according to our power relations, we can calculate: capital times interest rate and time divided by one hundred. [...] In the future, it is important to be aware when founding a company or business – and this must happen again and again, otherwise the whole process of human development would come to a standstill – that past labor is always used in future labor.

You see, when you set up a new business, you have to employ new workers, regardless of whether it is a society or an individual that does so. In the past it was the individual, in the future it will depend on the structure of society. So you have to employ workers. When you set up a business that cannot yet give anything back to society, these workers need to feed and clothe themselves. So in order for this business to come into being, work must have been done earlier. Therefore, it must be possible for earlier work to be used for later services. But this is only possible if, when my earlier work is incorporated into a later service, I derive some benefit from it. Because in reality, let's say, I work quite hard today, and it doesn't matter how, but in ten years some new business will be built from what I work on today. That's added to it. When I work today, I also have to get something for my work. It's just that the work is saved for the next one. And that is what I call legitimate interest, and I have called it that because I want to be honest in my book, because I do not want to have cheap success by calling white black. In economic life, past work must be used for future services. Just as work in the present has a return service, so must it also have a return service in the future if it is saved. Economic life makes it necessary for past labor to be used in the future. Consider that capital is gradually being depleted. Whereas capital has now doubled in fifteen years, in the future it will more or less cease to exist after fifteen years. The reverse process is taking place! As the other things become stinking, so does the money. Thus, capital does not bear interest, but it must be made possible for what was worked on earlier to be included in a future performance. Then you must also have the reward for it. I could have called it [in my book] reward, but I wanted to be completely honest and wanted to express: The purpose of economic activity is to incorporate past labor into future performance, and that is what I call the fair remuneration for interest. That is why I also said explicitly: there is no interest on interest. There cannot be, nor can there be any arbitrary labor of capital. Money gets stinky. It gets lost just like other things, like meat and the like. It is no longer there, it no longer works. If you take the things as they are presented in my book, you must bear in mind that I start from what is possible and what should really be, and not from demands that arise from saying: We are abolishing this and that. Yes, my dear audience, someone might eventually come up with the crazy idea of saying: We are abolishing the floor. Then we would no longer be able to walk! You cannot abolish things that are simply necessary in real economic life or in other areas. You have to take things as they are, only then can you be honest. I do not promise people the earth, but I want to speak about the real living conditions of the social organism. And so I wanted to speak here of what can really be implemented, and that will already be what also brings about what unconsciously underlies the demands of the broad working masses. And it is better to strive to fulfill these demands out of a knowledge of reality than to lull people with mere promises.

Mr. Haupt from Eßlingen: He voluntarily created works councils in his company a long time ago. Among other things, he states:

What does the employer imagine a works council to be? He sees the establishment of works councils as a spectre! It is the worker's duty to also show trust and say: We don't want to tear everything down, that is not our goal. We want to work, but without a knout, freely from our own hearts. If you approach the employer like that, he is also willing. I know for a fact that a large number of Esslingen companies would like to do things this way. But they can't because they have made a compromise with the unions. The union leaders have come up with a collective agreement, so to speak as a last resort, to bring together the masses who want nothing to do with them. This is a mistake that will have bitter repercussions. It will become the grave of the unions. Only the works councils can save us from this mess. The unions have the greatest interest in not doing this. The employers' associations are hiding behind them and are glad that the works councils are not progressing as quickly as they had hoped.

There are three ways to introduce works councils: either the employer in question does it voluntarily – that's what I did – which is probably the most sensible thing. I said to myself: everything is broken, we are clear about that. So let's see if we can find something new to get out of this misery after all. – The second thing is: not so much talking! Action and not talk! Talking is useless. They talk and talk, but the Confederation has made a great effort and said: people, take action. You can't tell, the people are asleep. - The third measure is power. But I say explicitly: power without terror, without strikes, that's important. - By power I mean the ability and the awareness of having the masses behind you. They will push things through. If the matter were organized as I envision it, the union or a corporation of workers' representatives would come together first and listen to the views and contradictions. The corporation would then take advantage of this and approach the employer. You can't get more rejected than that. But if the employers reject this, they have created a poisonous wound; it remains a volcano. Well, that would be the last hand the two can shake. Otherwise there is no other option than ruthless terror. We can come together if we really want to. That's what matters.

The tasks of the works council are not that easy. If you have works councils yourself, you know what curious things can come to light. There are people who are wholeheartedly committed, but there are also those who come with political intentions and the like. We have experienced many things. Finally, I would like to say to you: take action today, not tomorrow. Get in touch with the “Association for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism”. I am convinced that the group in Stuttgart will then take matters into their own hands. They are trying to come to an agreement with the employers after all. And then you stand in front of the employers and say: We declare that the works councils have been elected. - Let's trust each other! Woe to anyone who goes on strike! They must not go on strike! It must be possible without terror, without power, without oppression of the soul and the like.

Mr. Schlegel: I am basically of the opinion that the works councils and the body that brings together the works councils, as Dr. Steiner described them in his lecture this evening, are the only practical way to implement the socialization of economic life, which is to create the material basis for the advancement of humanity. And this evening will probably be the only opportunity to take a step towards socialization in order to save our people and our Reich, our country, from economic collapse. On the other hand, I am of the opinion that one should not wildly establish works councils because the “Bund” wants to do so. The prerequisite would be that the employers do not oppose these works councils. If, for example, works councils are introduced in only some of the companies, how do you then imagine the consolidation, that is, the body of works councils? The regulation of production is the main thing. How does Dr. Steiner think that these bodies will gain power if not all political and state power is concentrated in the hands of the works councils? Is it not impossible to introduce the works councils alone for such a small area as Württemberg? For Württemberg's industry is not yet sufficient to produce all the goods. Württemberg needs the exchange. I ask Dr. Steiner to comment on these concerns.

Dr. Steiner said that it would be impossible to bring the workers' councils into being through legal provisions. I am of the opinion that it is necessary that the election of the workers' councils be made mandatory according to the centralist principle. The only question is what form the law will take. It could also take the form that is necessary. If the entire working class, intellectual and manual laborers, is united and has political power, then it will be easy to gain political power in the state and then take the necessary measures for socialization. I appeal above all to the representatives of the socialist parties to work towards achieving unity.

I would remind you that we could win over large numbers of employees and the rural population to the idea of socialism if only we were united. We need precisely the intellectual proletariat and the peasantry if we want to implement socialization. It is understandable that large masses of workers go to the USP and the Communists, because when people are complaining, they turn to them when they cannot get what they want. Dr. Steiner has already pointed out that the old ideas are still alive among a large part of the working population and that the situation today is the same as it was before the war. He also said that if we tackle socialization, we would very quickly achieve a material improvement for the masses of the working population. That is a mistake! Even if we tackle socialization through the works councils and through the threefold social order, all we achieve at the moment is to save our economic life from ruin for the time being. It will take years of work and, above all, the destruction of the capitalism of the Entente before the fruits of socialization can be seen. In this respect, too, the party leaders must point out the actual situation to their followers.

I would also like to point out that there is actually a tripartite structure to the social organism [interjection: oh oh] and that the task at hand is to reshape it and steer it in different directions [laughter]. The three areas are only combined [laughter], they can only be torn apart. I say this because in many circles there is a view that something new should be created. It is only a matter of reshaping it, and doing so according to the principles that the “Federation for Threefolding” represents.

It would be just as necessary as the creation of the works councils to work more with the workers and employees in a spiritual sense than has been done so far. The ethical goals of socialism have been pushed into the background today in favor of material goals. There should be agitation for this. Dr. Steiner believes that the works councils will bring about the unity of the proletariat. I believe that the socialization and the works councils will bring about the unity of the proletariat. Mr. Haller: I would like to correct some of what the speakers have said. One gentleman spoke of power without terror. If the working masses are still so skeptical of these works councils today, it is because the working class knows full well that nowhere in world history is it written that capitalism will ever voluntarily renounce its prerogatives and place the entire system in the hands of the masses. I think the most important thing would not be to quickly elect the works councils, but to spread the idea among the masses, because the works councils are quickly elected once the ideas have been spread among the masses. It has been said that the election of the works councils is preparatory work. I cannot disagree with that, but I would like to emphasize that we have no interest in continuing the future state in a capitalist form. We have to build something new.

If the workers' councils in the industrial state of Württemberg gain power, it might be impossible to maintain control over the entire Reich in the long term, because the capitalists are united and will also reconcile with the Entente capitalists. If the masses of workers were as united internationally as the international capitalists, we would have been spared this terrible ruin. We must try to get the whole economy under control.

Dr. Steiner said that many have not yet understood socialization. The workers do not understand what it means. There is still a lot of education to be done. And the intellectual workers have not yet been aware that they depend on the entrepreneur just as much as the proletarian manual laborer. It has been said that a bridge must be built between the manual laborer and the intellectual laborer. I have not yet seen much of such a bridge being built. If the leaders are not willing to build this bridge, the intellectual and manual laborers must do what is necessary themselves. If it is said that we would then possibly surrender the battlefield between Bolshevism and Entente capitalism, I must say that the conditions in Russia and Germany are quite different. In Russia, the intellectual workers have been engaged in sabotage. I ask the manual workers to prevent this disaster in this difficult hour. The intellectual workers must stand by us so that we can finally reach our goal. If a works council is elected today and the entire economic entity is in our hands, a director will have no more rights than a works councilor. The works councils are to be the nucleus of economic life. The works councils must realize that they are only the nucleus and say: Mr. Director, you may continue to manage the post under our control and leadership. We are not here to chase people away, but we only want equal rights for all.

Mr. Biel: I actually wanted to refrain from saying anything, but since I am also a member of the works council, I would like to say a few words. I would like to come back to how necessary it is that we seek to create a new economic system. In my opinion, this new economic system can only be found through the threefold social order proposed by Dr. Steiner. You are all well aware that the conditions we face are very difficult. We will have to start with a down payment, and this down payment alone requires a reorganization of economic life. It can no longer be the case that we produce under the old conditions, that we stand there as workers with the so-called minimum living wage and next door is a capitalist who earns millions. We are then always forced to pay out of our own pockets the debts that this old society and the still existing capitalists have incurred. For these reasons alone, everyone should be aware that the old method is an impossibility. I do believe, however, that there is still so much reason in humanity that the conditions of the Entente will be rejected as impossible. I believe it will happen very soon. Let us approach the election of works councils with care and not let what our brothers in the East have achieved slip away again, so that they do not have to reproach us later with: You were shown the way, but you did not want to go it. — They showed us the elementary school, now we want to see if we are capable of passing the matriculation examination.

Mr. Spörr: It is clear to us all that the works councils are a necessity. It is also clear to us that in our entire spiritual life, in all that we think and feel, new paths must be taken. I therefore welcome the fact that Dr. Steiner is able to cast his thoughts into the masses in such a gripping way and also find his followers there. However, one big question remains unanswered for me in Dr. Steiner's statements: How will the employers' resistance to this movement be broken? The employers will take the position of only granting what they are legally obliged to grant. However, the laws that are made today are not made by practitioners, but by party bigwigs. We need men who can create laws that can be used. And we must act quickly, otherwise we will be crushed by Entente capitalism. It will take a long time before the Entente's workers have come to understand what necessity has taught us.

I believe that there is only one guideline, namely that we work as quickly as possible to ensure that intellectual workers get involved in areas where organized labor is involved. That was the curse of the revolution, that precisely the educated masses were not politically mature. Here the “Bund” has the task, above all, of educating. When we look at bourgeois circles today and see that the people who owe the working class their freedom of speech are willing to shoot this working class, these are factors that make us think. I do not think it is right for the government to be able to hold on only by arming itself. Above all, education must be carried out here.

Mr. Gönnewein: Most speakers rightly stated very clearly that enough words have been spoken and that they want to see action. This can only be underlined. If we cannot take action today, it is not because the people are not mature, but because they are not united. I believe that the people are actually mature. At least one might assume that they have been brought to maturity during these four years. But attempts are being made from all sides to divide the people, because people do not want anything to come from other sides, except from the so-called party leaders themselves. If we do not yet have workers' councils in various enterprises, especially in large enterprises, it is not because the people are not ready for them, but because efforts are being made from all sides to prevent them. We are willing to do this. But because it was Dr. Steiner who came up with the idea of threefolding, and not those who believe they are called to do so, it is not the right thing. I recall that when Dr. Steiner gave his first lectures to the workers, they cheered him and declared that something had come that could free the workers from their misery. After examining the matter, the party leaders came to the conclusion that if they paid too much homage to the matter, it could go awry for various reasons. So they dragged the matter through the mud, so that many approached the party bigwigs to stir up sentiment for them. It is not the work of the party bigwigs that is dangerous, but that of their satellites, because they allow dogma to be imposed on them. That is an unhealthy relationship. As long as this is not understood, we will not get out of the mess.

It has been rightly pointed out that people are only trying to make inflammatory speeches. They can go anywhere. Every day, there is an opportunity to hear all sorts. Today it would have been appropriate and a particular satisfaction if these gentlemen had come to the discussion evening and told us clearly that they have something better than Dr. Steiner's idea. We try at every opportunity to invite the gentlemen to finally come up with something better. But that has not yet happened.

It has already been pointed out that capitalism will not give up its privileges, of course not. We are aware that this is an invincible opponent for us. We know full well that it can only be brought down through intensive struggle. But we can no longer speak of such capitalism. After such misery, there can no longer be any talk of capitalism on this scale. Today it is imperative that if we do not want to fall into misery, we must start to unite all of humanity in order to emerge from the ruins. There can be no question of not being able to declare one's solidarity with intellectual workers. One speaker said that the bridge between manual and mental laborers has not yet been built. Certainly, there are manual laborers who have the good will to build the bridge. But I would like to remind you that it is precisely those who have not yet seen the bridge who prevent us from doing what is necessary. If you talk to an engineer or a higher-level employee, for example, they will shout after you: “Look, this worker traitor! He's cuddling with capitalism!” How are we supposed to build the bridge to bring about an agreement? There is no doubt that more thought needs to be given to this.

If we say that we must take up the fight against capitalism and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and then introduce the threefold order, we are aware that if we do not have the power, the matter must fail because of the spirit of the entrepreneur. But I have come to the conclusion that it will not remain so, but that the coming time will already give us something. We would have to be out of our minds if we did not see from today's situation that something new must come. But then it is necessary that we do not fall into the same mistake as on November 9, when we were cheated of the whole story, of not approaching the matter consciously enough. Today we must occupy ourselves with the idea of wanting to put something tangible in place, so that when we have the power we also know how to make something out of it. When the Communists say to me: We want everything in the way we think about it -, then I call out to them: I hear the message well, but I lack faith. One must ask: If the people are not ripe for socialism, how then should communism have a place? Unfortunately we have not yet come so far, therefore we occupy ourselves with that which gives us the opportunity to ascend to the light. And here I must say that threefolding is a step by which we can ascend to socialism. It is therefore unjust that we are constantly criticized for declaring our solidarity with the capitalists who have descended to the proletariat in order to do something together with the proletarians so that humanity can survive. Today, we cannot look at everything as we did in 1913. Someone should come along today and explain to us a better way out of our misery! Until that happens, it is unseemly to drag this idea through the mud in the newspapers and elsewhere. Today would be the opportunity for these gentlemen to stand up and show a better way. I call out to you: do not let yourselves be put off by these gentlemen! If you have joined the idea of threefolding, do not let them tell you: it is not the right way – but choose for yourselves! Do not let yourselves be counted among those who allow dogma to be imposed on them, but go the straight way as militant and class-conscious workers in the parties! But here too, in the “Association for Threefolding”, you can find inspiration for absorbing an idea. Here, the proletarian and the class-conscious fighter have nothing to forgive each other. Therefore, whenever you are approached by the party, you must say that it is an injustice to restrict you when you go where your conscience sends you, where you can learn something.

On July 2, there will be a continuation of the discussion here. I would like to ask you to bring with you people who still have no faith in the threefold social order. Those who have pricked up their ears this evening will already have realized what it is about. We do not need to do any more training courses, we do not need to explore what the “covenant” wants, but we do want to strive to carry the idea of threefolding into other circles and tell the leaders that they should sit down on their behinds and read Dr. Steiner's book. Then they will come to a different opinion. Shout it in the faces of the gentlemen, so that they finally understand, for they are slow of comprehension.

Rudolf Steiner: I have only a little more to say to you, but this little will be necessary.

First of all, it has been said that in principle the only practical possibility for solving the socialization question lies in what the threefold social order wants in relation to works councils or similar. But it has been criticized that the “Bund für Dreigliederung” wants to have the works councils elected in a wild way. Yes, I don't really understand what is meant by the fact that this one is a wild election. Under certain circumstances, one might even be of the opinion, if one studies the draft of the law for the works councils quite impartially, which was in the press some time ago, that this one is a wild thing. So it is important to try to see the matter really impartially. Then it will become clear that if what we as works councils envision comes about in economic life, a good deal of what must be conquered in the future as real power will indeed be achieved. When people keep saying that we are not getting anywhere if we don't have this or that, and that economic power is of no use to us if we don't have political power, and the like, then you have to say in response that it's a matter of starting somewhere, and that you can't always be deterred by saying that this is of no use and that is of no use.

You see, I can well understand when someone says: Even if a small area like Württemberg elects works councils, not everyone will do so; the whole of Germany should vote. Yes, of course it would be best if the whole world elected works councils. But I think that since we cannot do it all over the world right away, we should start where we can do it. We have to take into account the circumstances that exist, and first of all we have Württemberg as a closed economic area. If we just start somewhere, then if the project is successful, it will also be possible to continue. I think that we should not be deterred by all the objections. If it is not possible to set up works councils throughout Germany right away, then we must think about what would be fruitful for Württemberg. What is important is to recognize this threefold nature, to see that the matter must be taken in hand in each of the three individual, independent areas of the social organism. I must say that the esteemed speaker who spoke of the wild works councils – because they emerged purely from economic life – has not yet fully understood the threefold social order, otherwise he would not have been able to say that this threefold order is actually already there and that the threefold order is just mixed up. Of course these three members of the social organism are there, but the fact that they were mixed up before is what was wrong. Therefore we want to separate them. It is not important that they are there, but how they are formed or should be formed. And the “Federation for the Threefold Social Organism” would certainly not have been formed if it were not important to present these three elements in a correct way, side by side, in their independence. The fact that the three elements are presented in the right way in life is what is important.

Some other things have been said, in particular by the gentleman who, with a slight smile, touched again on the subject of the “idealist”. But what he said was entirely informed by a certain abstract idealism. For example, he said: practitioners must arise. Yes, we must bring things to the people as they are, then one is a practitioner, not when one calls idealistically: practitioners must arise. We do not want to wait, but we want to take such measures that the practitioners can assert themselves. That is what we can do. The call “practitioners shall arise” is an abstract idealistic call. Nor should we say, “A struggle will arise.” That will not create practitioners; they will arise through the liberation of intellectual life and the other areas. Because whenever it is said that we need development, and a sense of pessimism is introduced into the whole thing, I would like to draw your attention to the fact - although I have also pointed this out in the relevant places in my book - that certain things cannot be done overnight. But after all, works councils can be set up overnight, so to speak, and then things will move forward. It is not a matter of always just pointing to development, but of getting down to what can really be done in the short term. I would always like to call out to those who talk about development that they seem to me like a person sitting in a room where the air has become bad and who, before he faints, could open the window to improve the air, but he would have to do the next step. He should not wait for development to improve the air. That is what we should finally understand, that where human action is concerned, people must actually take action. We cannot wait until the Entente workers can come to our aid. Let us do what the workers are supposed to do here, then there is a chance that we will make progress and address the most pressing issues. That will do us more good than devoting ourselves to abstract ideals.

Now I would like to come back to one point in particular. It is always said that socialization can only arise from the unity of the proletariat. It can just as well be said, and this will be the really practical thing, that the proletariat should try to devote itself to one great task! What causes the disunity? It arises from the fact that one does not set oneself the right tasks, that one talks past things, that one does not talk much about what matters, not about where the shoe pinches, but that one makes party programs that one can vary at will. Then one can say this and that. But in really factual things, the proletarians agree. They need only remember that it depends on the issues. Therefore, try to establish a body that emerges from the trust of the workforce, in which one negotiates on substantive issues and the objectively necessary. You will see that there will be agreement, because you will talk about something that really is, and not about something that is a mere party program and the like. Party programs are mostly there to avoid talking about the real issues. Try to make a start with this works council and use it to talk about the factual things themselves, and perhaps unity will come about as if by magic.

Mr. Gönnewein, you have the last word, and I would like to say to you: Take to heart what has been said! Carry it to your colleagues, so that it may bear fruit for the good of the tripartite social organism. — The meeting is hereby closed.

An Introduction by Hella Wiesberger Concerning Rudolf Steiner's Place in the History of the Occult Movement

Rudolf Steiner has become the pioneering leader in the field of esotericism, in which man should be given freedom through him.¹

As the first modern scientist of the supersensible, Rudolf Steiner was completely on his own. He only ever taught what he could give and take responsibility for from personal experience. Far ahead of his time, he recognized that the turn of the 19th to the 20th century would usher in not just a new century, but a completely new era in which humanity would be confronted with social upheavals of unimaginable proportions. With the ever-increasing individual consciousness, a tremendous struggle for freedom would begin; great technical and economic progress will be achieved through the increasingly life-dominant agnostic-pragmatic way of thinking of the mechanical-materialistic sciences, but at the same time the last remnants of the ancient knowledge of the connection with the world of the creative-spiritual as the true origin and goal of all existence will be lost. The inevitable consequence of this must be worldwide spiritual desolation and a feeling of meaninglessness in life.

From this insight, Rudolf Steiner gained the conviction that this historical process, necessary for the sake of general progress, can only be met by one thing: by a new world and life view rooted in modern individual consciousness, but oriented towards the Creative-Spiritual. And so, from his personal experiential knowledge of the supersensible world and life purpose, he developed the modern spiritual science of “Anthroposophy” and lived and taught in accordance with the spirit of the new age, according to the principle: freedom through the modern spirit of science, also in the field of the supersensible, of esotericism.

With this basic intention, he also brought about a turning point in the history of the occult movement. For the wisdom of the occult movement came from other sources of consciousness. It went back to the so-called original wisdom that had been revealed to mankind in the days of the primeval world and had enabled it to gain a very extensive mastery of the material forces of existence. As long as man still acted without personal responsibility in full agreement with the intentions of the spiritual worlds, this wisdom formed a common fund of knowledge. But when, in the course of the development of personality, egotism made its appearance and the natural connection with the supersensible worlds gradually disappeared, the supersensible knowledge conferring power had to be protected against misuse. It was withdrawn into the mysteries. But from there it continued to influence public cultural life well into the early days of the Christian era. It was only when, through Christianity and the rise of intellectualism, progressive cultural awareness became increasingly focused on the knowledge of material laws of the world that the old mysteries gradually lost their dominant position and were finally eradicated as public institutions. Since then, the old mystery wisdom could only be cultivated in secret, small circles. There it was strictly guarded until in the 19th century the signs of the times demanded that a spiritual counterpole be created to counter the exclusively materialistic-agnostic cultural thinking.

This task had raised a question that had become a serious problem for the occult movement of the 19th century. It was the question of whether the wisdom should continue to be kept secret under these circumstances, or whether it would not be more correct to popularize it. This question touched so deeply on the lifeblood of the working method practiced so far - since one was obliged from time immemorial to pass on the higher truths only to those who were prepared to receive them, in order to protect them from abuse - that one could not immediately decide to popularize it. They tried a compromise solution, first of all to test, so to speak, how public awareness would react to the knowledge of the existence of spiritual worlds and beings. This is how the manifestations of the spiritualist mediumistic movement of the forties to the seventies of the 19th century came about. The result was, however, different than expected, but the dam of strict secrecy had been breached and so it became inevitable to at least popularize the basic truths. This happened through the Theosophical Society, founded in 1875 by the Russian Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the American Henry Steel Olcott.

Although these two attempts had led to sensational movements, in the deeper sense they had to be considered a failure, mainly because the culturally dominant scientific thinking rejected the mediumistic path as unscientific. This was justified to the extent that the mediumistic path not only meant a return to earlier levels of consciousness, but also an impairment of the free right of self-determination. On the other hand, mediumship was the only method for supersensible research that had existed until then.²

While the occult movement was still facing this dilemma at the end of the 19th century, Rudolf Steiner had already solved the problem on his own spiritual path. Not through the traditional teachings preserved in the secret societies, but through his own experiences since childhood, he was quite naturally connected to the supersensible and, as a result of his scientific education, also mastered the mechanical-materialistic way of thinking of the sciences, he had gained the decisive insight that supersensible knowledge and beings can only be beneficially combined with modern cultural consciousness if the method can guarantee the same certainty and independence as is the case in modern natural science.

On the basis of this realization, he made it his first task to develop a method for supersensible research that was based entirely on scientific principles. Through a process of strict self-education, he transformed his thinking from a sensual to a supersensible level, and in so doing, he attained the necessary certainty of knowledge about the spiritual realm. At the same time, he discovered freedom as a real experience and as the basis of morality. Thus, for him, thinking free of sensuality became the starting point for a scientifically clear connection to the supersensible world and to a science of freedom as the basis of an “ethical individualism”.

The consistently further developed experience of the nature of the I led in turn to the realization of the macrocosmic representative of the I, the spirit of Christ, whose nature reveals itself in true freedom and love. Thus Rudolf Steiner had also paved the way for a contemporary understanding of the two greatest Christian ideals, freedom and love, as they are later repeatedly expounded by him as the basic impulses of the central event of human development, the mystery of Golgotha and the deepest task of humanity connected with it: to shape the earth into a cosmos of freedom and love (Düsseldorf, April 18, 1909).

The later statement that the ethical individualism of the “Philosophy of Freedom” is already built upon the Christ impulse, even if this is not directly expressed there (Dornach, May 24, 1920), as well as the other statement that there is no other way at present to “impart original wisdom of initiation directly than by keeping fellowship with the Christ” (Stuttgart, March 7, 1920).

On the basis of this community with the “emancipation of the higher consciousness of humanity from the fetters of all authority” achieved through thinking free of the senses, ³ Rudolf Steiner had created the conditions for a healthy liberation of esotericism from the era of its ties to particular circles. Whereas in the past it was only possible to penetrate to the world of spiritual realities with a subdued consciousness under the guidance of a spiritual leader whose authority had to be unconditionally recognized, today, through Rudolf Steiner's pioneering work, every serious seeker, in a clear consciousness and in free self-responsibility, can do so.

The only requirement for this, which everyone has to set for themselves, is spiritual activity. This is essential not only for individual but also for general progress, to such an extent that civilization must perish if each individual is not willing to give civilization a new impetus through the new spiritual knowledge. This was already stated by Rudolf Steiner more than six decades ago (Dornach, July 2, 1920).

It is precisely this aspect of activating the will of the individual with regard to social co-responsibility that fundamentally distinguishes anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from the ancient wisdom preserved in the occult movement. For no new fundamental social impulses can come from the ideas of the occult movement, which arose from the revelations of an epoch of humanity that was still rooted in group consciousness. On the other hand, social thinking cannot be developed without knowledge gained through initiation. For this social necessity, anthroposophy sees itself as an instrument of new revelations of the spirit that take personality consciousness into account. To make these new revelations, which have begun especially since the end of the Kali Yuga in 1899, understandable to humanity and to open up anew through them the meaning of the greatest human event, the mystery of Golgotha, has become a cultural-historical task that Rudolf Steiner took on and about which he once said: “Anyone who does not understand anthroposophy in this sense does not understand it at all.” (Dornach, December 20, 1918). That is why, at the time when he began to present his social insights, he appealed to the ability to distinguish within his own ranks by pointing out:

“Where, then, can one find a truly modern and effective way of addressing the burning issues of the present day that is in touch with reality? You will not be able to find these things in the rituals and precepts of one or other masonic or confessional community. One would like to see discernment taking place!” (Dornach, December 15, 1918).

In this same connection, he also asserted that the spiritual movement he represented had never been dependent on any other and that he was therefore under no obligation to anyone to keep silent about something he himself felt should be said in the present time.

“There is no commandment of silence for one who is not indebted to anyone for his spiritual knowledge.” This alone is enough to distinguish this movement from all others. Anyone who claims that the teachings of anthroposophical spiritual science are proclaimed differently from the sense in which the word “theosophy” , that I stand up for it purely personally, may not know the circumstances for my sake and often not have been there, but look at it from the outside, but he proclaims untruth, out of malevolence or not out of malevolence. But anyone who has been here often and says something different, for example, asserts some kind of past or a connection between this spiritual movement and another, when he knows the conditions here, is lying. That is what it is about. Either he will tell an untruth out of ignorance of the circumstances, or he will lie when he knows the circumstances. All opposition to this movement is to be understood in this way.

Therefore, I must emphasize again and again: I have only to withhold that which I know cannot yet be communicated to present humanity because of its immaturity. But I have nothing to withhold for any reason because a vow or the like would have been made to someone. Nothing has ever been taken into this movement that came from another side. This movement was never spiritually dependent on any other; the connections were only external.

On the basis of this statement, the question arises as to why Rudolf Steiner then joined other movements at all, if he felt obliged to reject both the old practice of secrecy and the old method of research?

This contradiction can only be resolved if the two main laws of esoteric life are taken into account, which Rudolf Steiner always tried to follow as far as possible. These are the two commandments of absolute truthfulness and the maintenance of continuity. Rudolf Steiner repeatedly presented these two laws to his esoteric students.⁴ He himself followed the commandment of unconditional truthfulness by teaching only what he had recognized as true through his own research, and the commandment of continuity by not simply replacing something incomplete with something completely new and more perfect, but by building on what already existed and seeking to transform it into something more perfect. For him, this meant bringing to life the most profound Christian idea, that of resurrection, in the realm of the imagination. If we experience the living continuation of the present in this way and thereby fulfill the words of Christ, not only to bind the bodies with the blood, but to the souls with the spirit, then this can become a path to the knowledge of the mystery of Golgotha (Berlin, April 24, 1917).

According to Rudolf Steiner, much would be gained if those who lived later were to orient themselves in this way towards the deceased, in order to consciously maintain continuity in development. When he wrote about Goethe, he himself had completely disregarded his own opinion and tried only to express the thoughts that could come from Goethe; he had written an epistemology of Goethe's, not his worldview. Just as he had delved into the world of Goethe's thoughts, so had he also delved into those of Nietzsche and Haeckel, since one can only arrive at real insight if one does not want to represent one's own point of view absolutely, but rather delves into foreign currents of thought. And only after he had endeavored for two decades to work from such insight, to acquire, so to speak, the right to influence the living, he advocated the public dissemination of spiritual science. For now no one could rightly claim that “this occultist speaks of the spiritual world because he does not know the philosophical and scientific achievements of the time.” ⁵

This path of Rudolf Steiner's, which is so unusual for ordinary thinking and feeling, could not be understood at all by opponents, and only with difficulty by friends of his spiritual-scientific worldview. Aware of this difficulty, he repeatedly endeavored from time to time to make it clear, at least to his anthroposophical friends, that the spiritual current he represented was never dependent on any other and that certain connections had only been superficial. He admitted that the distinction was complicated by historical events. But even if, from an external point of view, it might have been wiser to found the Anthroposophical Society without any relationship to other societies, the relationships were nevertheless justified by fate (Dornach, December 15, 1918).

This remark makes it clear that the connection with other societies at that time was founded on the tension between the polarities of freedom and love in their form of truthfulness and continuity as applied to esoteric life. The striving for truth and knowledge requires freedom, but at the same time what is recognized as true should connect fraternally with what already exists in the world. It is obvious that even Rudolf Steiner's strong power was not always able to balance the pole of a free, truthful life of knowledge with the pole of continuity as brotherhood. This was objectively impossible because the world is involved at the pole of continuity and this was respected by him to an extent far beyond the norm, based on his ideals of freedom and love. However, he was unable to cultivate brotherhood at the expense of truthfulness. When this became a problem in the Theosophical Society, it led to a split.

Only by ignoring Rudolf Steiner's subtle behavior towards the two poles of esoteric life can misunderstandings and misjudgments regarding his spiritual independence arise. But beyond all such passing judgments, the historical significance of his cultural achievement will be more and more confirmed, which lies precisely in having created a science for the study of supersensible realities, through which freedom also became possible in the field of esotericism.

It could be objected here that Rudolf Steiner also practised secrecy with his Esoteric School. This objection would not be justified, however, because for Rudolf Steiner, even in the Esoteric School, it was never a matter of secrecy in the usual sense. He was always concerned only with maintaining a genuine scientific spirit, which in public education quite naturally requires that serious knowledge can only be imparted in stages. For example, higher geometry cannot be presented to anyone if they do not know the basics. While this is clear with regard to geometry, there is a widespread belief in relation to supersensible knowledge that one can understand and judge everything in this field without any prerequisites.

Rudolf Steiner's teaching activity was structured solely in terms of this factually determined, gradual teaching, from public teaching with no prerequisites at all to teaching with prerequisites. All levels of teaching had their common root in what he described as his “inaugural act” before the public beginning of his work for a science of the supersensible:

"I will build on the strength that enables me to bring spiritual students onto the path of development. That alone must be the significance of my inauguration act.⁶

The Esoteric School served this purpose in a special way, because here the students were taught according to their individual predispositions and needs. But when the Esoteric School was re-established as the “Free University for Spiritual Science” in 1924, the esoteric teaching was also structured in a strictly methodical and generally valid way. However, this could only be done for the first class. The failure of his physical strength in the fall of 1924 made it impossible for Rudolf Steiner to complete his last great work.

• 1. Marie Steiner, Foreword to Rudolf Steiner “The Stages of Higher Knowledge”, GA 12.
• 2. Described in detail in 'The Occult Movement in the 19th Century and its Relationship to World Culture', CW 254. Cf. also 'Spiritual Soul Teaching and World View', CW 52.
• 3. Letter to Rosa Mayreder dated December 14, 1893, in “Letters I”, Dornach 1953 (GA 39).
• 4. As related by a member of the esoteric working groups, Adolf Arenson, in a letter dated December 24, 1926, to Albert Steffen.
• 5. See the autobiographical sketch from 1907 in “Briefwechsel und Dokumente 1901–1925”, GA 262; also the lecture Zurich, December 3, 1916.
• 6. Letter of August 16, 1902, to Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, then representative of the German Theosophists (in “Briefe II”, so far only in the 1953 Dornach edition).

We have been reflecting on the significant events which took place—as it were, behind the scenes of world history—during the nineteenth century. The nature of it all is such that if one does not want to be entirely abstract, it is necessary to characterize many of the things which have to be said with regard to the spiritual world by considering their reflection or mirror-image in the physical world, for events here in the physical world truly do reflect spiritual events.

Before going on, I want to draw your attention to something of great significance which lies behind all these things. As you know, the transition from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period of civilization came in about 1413, that is in the fifteenth century. This has been characterized in many ways, but let me add today that spiritual guidance of earthly affairs involved mainly members of the hierarchy of Archangels—you will find some of the details in the small volume entitled The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Humanity.¹ As I said, they were mainly involved. Try with all intensity to gain an image of this: angelic spirits pursued their tasks in the spiritual worlds. Much happened on earth as a result. History, human life in the fourth post-Atlantean age, resulted on earth. Angelic spirits belonging to the hierarchy of Angels served the higher hierarchy of Archangels; they did this in such a way, however, that the relationship between members of the two hierarchies was entirely above the earthly and in the spiritual realm, hardly touching on human life. This changed with the coming of the fifth post-Atlantean age, for then the members of the hierarchy of the Angels became more independent in their task of guiding humanity. Thus humanity was more under direct guidance from the Archangels during the fourth post-Atlantean age and will be under direct guidance from the Angels during the fifth age—that is throughout our present fifth age, until the fourth millennium. We can therefore no longer say that the relationship is entirely unconnected with the physical world. This is how the fact can be presented at the spiritual level.

It can also be presented at a more physical level, for all things physical are in the image of the spirit. Looking for the indirect route by which the Archangels guided humanity by working with the Angels during the fourth post-Atlantean age, we can say: This was done via the human blood. And the social structure was also created via the blood, for it was based on blood relationship, on blood bonds. Both the Archangels and the Angels had their dwelling place in the blood, as it were. Truly, the blood is not merely something for chemists to analyse; it is also the dwelling place of entities from higher worlds.

During the fourth post-Atlantean age, therefore, the blood was the dwelling place of Archangels and Angels. This is changing with the fifth post-Atlantean age, for the Angels—I am referring to the Angels of Light, the normal Angels—will take possession more of the blood, and the Archangels will be more involved in the nervous system. This is putting it in the terms of the modern science of physiology. Using an older terminology I might also say: during the fifth post-Atlantean age the Archangels are essentially more at work in the brain and the Angels in the heart. You see, therefore, that a major change has occurred which can be traced all the way to the physical structure of human beings.

The things people do and achieve here on earth are connected with the spirits which are at work in them. People tend to imagine—not always correctly—that Angels and Archangels are somewhere in Cloud-cuckoo-land. If we were to take the whole of human neurological life as a place, and the whole of the blood life as another place, and add what belongs to these when we are in the other worlds between death and rebirth, we would have the realms of the Archangels and Angels.

The fifteenth century marked a specific period in earth evolution and in the corresponding evolution of the spiritual world. We can characterize the events of the time more or less as follows. In the fifteenth century the earth held the greatest attraction for the regular Archangels who were seeking to make the transition from the blood to the nervous system. Going back from the fourteenth to the thirteenth, twelfth and eleventh centuries we find the earth's power of attraction growing less and less; beyond that time it would grow less and less again. We might say the Archangels were directed by higher spirits to love earthly existence most of all during the fifteenth century. Strange as it may seem to many people today who think only in grossly materialistic terms, it is nevertheless true that earthly events are connected with such things. How did America come to be rediscovered in such a strange way, and people began to make the whole world their own again—exactly at that time? Because at the time the Archangels were most attracted to the earth. They therefore guided partly the blood and partly the nervous system in such a way that human beings began to go out from their centres of civilization to make the whole earth their own. Events like these must be seen in conjunction with spiritual activities, otherwise they cannot be understood. It does, of course, sound peculiar to people who think in crude materialistic terms if you say: America was discovered and everything we read about in so-called history happened because, within certain limits, that was the time when the earth held the greatest power of attraction for the Archangels.

The Archangels then began to train the Angels to take possession of the human blood, whilst the Archangels wanted to make the transition to the nervous system. By the early 1840s the point had come where certain retarded Angels made the attempt to take the place which belonged to the Archangels in the nervous system rather than reside and reign in the blood. We are therefore able to say that in the 1840s a significant battle developed in the way I have described and, if we consider its most material physical reflection, it took place between the human blood and the human nervous system. The Angels of Darkness were cast out of the nervous system and into the human blood, and now wreak the havoc in the human blood which I have described. It is because they are at work in the human blood that all the things I have described as due to the influence of retarded Angels are happening here on earth. It is because they are at work in the human blood that people have become as clever as I have said. All this developed slowly and gradually, of course, and we are able to say that whilst the profound break came in 1841, the whole of the nineteenth century had been infected with it.

An evolution of profound significance has thus been initiated. One important fact to which I have already drawn your attention in these lectures² is that not later than the seventh millennium in earth evolution women will grow infertile, and reproduction will no longer be possible. If matters went entirely according to the normal Angelic spirits in the blood, human reproduction would not even continue for as long as this; it would only continue until the sixth millennium, or the sixth post-Atlantean period of civilization; according to the wisdom of light, the impulse for reproduction would not continue beyond this time in the seven periods of civilization in this postAtlantean age. However, it will go on beyond this, into the seventh millennium and possibly a little beyond. The reason will be that those cast-down Angels will be in charge and will give the impulses for reproduction.

This is highly significant. In the sixth post-Atlantean period of civilization, the human fertility which depends on the powers of light for its impulses will gradually come to an end. The powers of darkness will have to intervene so that the affair may continue for a time. We know the seeds for the sixth postAtlantean period of civilization lie in the East of Europe. The East of Europe will develop powerful tendencies which do not allow physical human reproduction to continue beyond the sixth period of civilization but, instead, let the earth enter into a form of existence in soul and spirit. The other impulses for the seventh post-Atlantean period of civilization, in which procreation will be guided by impulses from the cast-down Angels, will come from America.

Consider the complex nature of these things, which can only be discovered—I have to stress this again and again—by direct observation of the spiritual worlds. Mere theorizing will generally lead to error, for with this we tend to follow a single line of thought which will finally led to the statement that human procreative life will be extinguished in the sixth postAtlantean period of civilization. It needs actual spiritual observation to enable us to observe the different currents which interact to produce the whole. You have to put a great deal into it if you are to arrive at significant insights and their interactions, such as those of which I have been speaking.

The enormous complexity of human beings becomes apparent when you consider that now, in the fifth postAtlantean age, Archangels and Angels are active in them via the nervous system and the blood, but so are the abnormal spirits which oppose them. This is where the forces are anchored which act with each other, against each other and so on; there we see what is happening in reality. Looking at events in outer life, one only sees the surface wave and not the forces which cast it to the surface.

We can give another instance of the way in which the spirits of darkness, who were cast down in 1879, seek to exert an influence—before 1879 from the spiritual world and since then from the human realm. You will recall something of which I spoke in an earlier lecture:³ that humanity as a whole is getting younger and younger. If we go back to ancient India, we find that people remained young and capable of physical development well into ripe old age; during the Persian epoch less so, in Egypto-Chaldean times even less, until into Graeco-Latin times people were only capable of development until they reached the span extending from their twenty-eighth to their thirty-fifth year. Today they have grown even younger and are only capable of development up to their twenty-seventh year, as I told you. Later a time will come when this only goes to the twenty-sixth year, and so on. You will recall that I referred to someone who is at the hub of things at the present time and who can only be really understood if we realize that the age of 27 plays such a special role in life today—and this is Lloyd George. For it is always significant when the life of the soul coincides with the outer life of the body.

The fact that in our fifth post-Atlantean age people are naturally capable of further development only until they reach their 20s, is important as a basis for the concerted action of Archangels and Angels. The normal spirits, the spirits of light, want to direct human evolution in a certain way. This is as follows: human beings are naturally capable of further development until they are in their 20s; the spirits of light want to keep this an intimate affair, letting it proceed without much ado in human beings; then, in the twenty-eighth year, between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years, the development which has gone on quietly is to emerge. Mark well, therefore. Something which evolves in the human blood until people reach their twenty-eighth year is to enter more into people's self-awareness, it is to be handed over to the blood in self-awareness. It is therefore the intention of the normal spirits, the spirits of light, that the inner life should develop quietly, unambitiously and selflessly and only come into action when individuals have reached the age of 28, when the years of apprenticeship are behind them, as it were, and they become journeymen, and finally masters.

The spirits of darkness which had been cast down from the spiritual world rebelled against this. They wanted people to take an active role in life and be masters at using the external intellect in their twenties, rather than go through quiet inner development.

Here you have a social phenomenon traced back to its spiritual foundations. A significant battle is taking place among us, you will find. The spirits of light only want us to reach maturity and be ready to take on an active role in public life after the twenty-eighth year. The spirits of darkness want the time put forward, so that it comes before the twenty-eighth year; they want to push people out into public life at an earlier time. All the impulses in our social life which reflect these elements have their origin in this—when in some place or other, for instance, the request is made to bring the age of majority down even further, into the 20s or even earlier than the 20s. There you have the origins of these elements.

People do, of course, find it uncomfortable to know such things today. For they make it evident to what extent the spirits of darkness are causing havoc in public affairs. Much of what I have been saying has so far been known instinctively and atavistically by people. This has come to an end, however, and people will have to be prepared to gain conscious knowledge of things that used to be known instinctively and were also instilled into human minds by the ancient Mysteries. Spiritual principles must be included in shaping the social structure; they have to be thought of, rather than people wanting to shape the world blindly on the basis of mere emotions. The spirits of darkness find it easiest to achieve their aims if people are asleep to what goes on in the spirit. They can then easily gain power over what that they cannot achieve if people enter consciously into the spiritual impulses that are active in evolution. Much of the mendacity which exists in the world today serves the purpose of rocking people to sleep so that they do not see the reality, are deflected from reality, and the spirits of darkness have it all their own way with the human race. All kinds of things are falsely presented to people to deflect them from truths they could experience if they were awake and, indeed, ought to experience, if human evolution is to proceed in a fruitful way. This is the age when human beings must take affairs into their own hands.

It will be of real importance to see certain things in their true light, which, however, will only be possible if one knows the spiritual powers involved. We may say that the nineteenth century brought everything which can cause people to be deflected from the truth. Just think what it really meant that Darwinism intervened so profoundly in human evolution, even at the most popular level of thinking, exactly during the most important phase of nineteenth-century evolution. It is strange to see what people sometimes come up with in this respect. For example, Fritz Mauthner's famous Dictionary of Philosophy⁴ includes the interesting statement that it was not how Darwin overcame teleology, the theory of design and purpose, which mattered, but the fact that he did overcome it. In other words, in Mauthner's view it was most fruitful that someone presented organic evolution taking its course without involving spiritual entities and their designs and purposes.

Now, for someone who is able to see these things in their proper light, the matter appears as follows. If you see a horse-drawn vehicle, a cab with a horse in front, the horse is drawing the cab. You will, of course, say that the driver is sitting on the box and guiding the horse with the reins. But if you ignore the driver, you will find it interesting to study what goes on in the horse to make it draw the cab; you can go into every detail of how the horse sets about drawing the cab, if you leave aside the fact that it is given its intention by the cab driver.

This is the actual basis of Darwinian theories; one simply leaves aside the driver, saying it is an old superstition, a prejudice, to say that the driver is guiding the horse. The horse is drawing the cab, anyone can see that, for the horse is in front. Darwinian theory is entirely based on this kind of logic. Being thus biased, it has, of course, brought to light some excellent truths which are of the first magnitude. But it blocks all possibility of a real overview. Countless scientific facts suffer at the empirical level from the fact that people overlook the driver. They speak of cause and effect; but they seek the cause for the movement of the cab in the horse, considering this to be a great advance. People fail to realize that this type of confusion between horse and driver—such ‘horse theories’, if you will forgive my putting it bluntly—exists right, left and centre in modern science. These theories cannot be proved wrong, just as it is not wrong to say the horse draws the cab. This is quite correct, but true and false in the outer sense is not the issue. Materialistic thinkers will always be able to refute a spiritualistic thinker who knows that the driver is there as well. Here you see where the hairsplitting, astute, critical intellect could lead, which the spirits of darkness want human beings to have. It does not matter about getting things right, let alone complete; what counts is that one follows the model where the horse draws the cab. Logic can easily separate from reality and go its own way. It is possible to be utterly logical and at the same time be far from reality.

Something else has to be considered when we speak of human evolution. It is that the spirits of darkness have power mainly over the rational mind and intellect. They cannot get hold of the emotions, nor the will and, above all, not the will impulses. This touches on a profound and most significant law of reality. You have all of you, though to a different degree, reached a sufficiently respectable age for it to be fair to say you have lived several decades, or two or three decades at least. In the last decades we have seen a wide variety of social efforts, many supported by press journalism, some also by book journalism, but very few based on real knowledge and on the facts. We have seen strange forms of social and political life evolve in Europe and America. Yet, strangely, we find in all these things the ideas belonging to the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, but not the emotions, nor the will impulses. This is strange indeed. It can only be discovered if we carry out genuinely honest and conscientious investigations in the spiritual world. People who came down from the world of the sprit in the 1840s to incarnate in human bodies and are now up in that world again know about these things; they have the point of view of the spiritual world and know that in recent decades the intellects were active which were ripe for the age, whilst the will impulses were still those of the 1840s. The will moves much more slowly in human evolution than do ideas. Please take this as a highly significant truth: the will moves much more slowly than do thoughts. For example, the patriarchal, solid-citizen-type habits of people who were not being rebels or revolutionaries in the 1830s and 1840s but were more inclined to follow the general trend, continued to live on into the decades of which I am now speaking. Their thoughts went ahead, however, and so there are continuous discrepancies between thought life and will life in evolution, discrepancies which do not show themselves in all, but only in some, spheres of life.

It is entirely due to this that something became possible in the nineteenth century which had not been possible in any previous century. Superficial historians may well disagree, but it is pointless to go against it. What I mean is this: never before in the historical epochs of human evolution did the intellect, or acumen, positively intervene in life. Go back to the slave rebellions in ancient Rome; the slaves were essentially aroused by rancour, by will impulses. In the nineteenth and on into the twentieth century this is different. Modern social democracy does not compare, historically speaking, with the old slave rebellions; it is something entirely different, born out of theories produced by Lassalle,⁵ but mainly by Karl Marx,⁶ including his theory of the class struggle. A purely critical element, purely theoretical, based on ideas, set people going and made them into agitators. This was because the people who took up Marxism and became agitators still had the will impulses of the 1840s. They had not been able to catch up as far as the will was concerned. This discrepancy in will had the effect that, under the guidance of certain powers, a purely intellectual movement generated agitation among the masses.

This is something which did not exist before; it shows, even more than what I said yesterday, that in the nineteenth century, partly during the time when the Spirits of darkness were still above, and then after they had come down, they sought above all to encourage the physical intellect by working through one particular stream. There you see it at work, you see it take hold of the emotions, even, in the 1830s and 1840s, and for once acting not as pure intellect alone to convince people. You see the direct effect of the intellect in agitation, revolution, revolutionary longings. Never before had the intellect been at the helm to that extent. It is important to consider this. We must penetrate the time with understanding by discovering what goes on behind the scenes in ‘world history’.

Ask anyone who does not take much interest in these matters how old history is, and for how long humanity has been engaged in the discipline known as ‘history’ today. They will say that it goes a long way back. But ‘history’, as we know it today, is not much more than a hundred years old. Before that, memorable events and ‘histories’ were recorded ‘world history’, as it is called, where a thread is followed through human evolution, is just slightly over a hundred years old. Look at the stories or histories which preceded this. Why did modern history come up? Because it is a product of transition. Are there any special reasons why history, in the way it is handled today, should be regarded as a science? Well, we can give a number of reasons, the main one being that several hundred professors are employed as professors of history at all the universities on earth. This reminds me of an individual who taught criminal law and who tends to come to mind whenever we speak of the reasons for developments. This individual taught criminal law at a university. He always started his lectures with what he considered to be proof of human freedom. Well, he did not produce much by way of real reasons: ‘Gentlemen, freedom has to exist, for if there were no freedom there would be no criminal law. The fact is that I am a professor of criminal law; therefore criminal law must exist; it follows that human freedom also exists.’

Whenever you hear opinions expressed on what are said to be developments in the course of human evolution, you will hear the fine words: ‘History has shown.’ Look at the things that are being written on current events. Again and again you will see the phrase ‘history has shown this,’ when someone wants to present his nonsense about what will happen once peace is made. They will say: ‘It was like this after the Thirty Years War,’ and so on. These truths are of the kind of which I have spoken before when I said that, according to people's calculations, a war cannot take more than four months today. In reality, history does not teach us anything. In materialistic thinking, sciences can only be called such if one has repeated instances which allow one to draw conclusions as to future developments. When a chemist does an experiment, he knows that if he combines certain substances certain processes will occur; combining the same substances again will result in the same processes, and the third time it will be the same again. Or one gets a certain cloud combination which generates lightning; a similar combination will again generate lightning. Modern thinking is based on premises according to which a science cannot be a science unless it rests on this type of repetition. Do think this through. History cannot be a science for people who take the materialistic point of view, for things do not repeat themselves in history, the combinations are always new. It is therefore not possible to draw conclusions by using the method employed in other sciences. History is merely a product of transition. It only became a science in the nineteenth century. Before then, memorable events were described. You see, writing your family history is not considered to be ‘history’ either. Even the German word for history, Geschichte, is far from old. Other languages do not even have this word, for the word ‘history’ has quite a different origin. In the past, the singular was das Geschicht, as in das Geschicht der Apostel, and so on, ‘what has come to pass’.⁷ Then the plural die Geschichten came to be used, which is the straightforward plural of das Geschicht. Today we have to say die Geschichte. Yet in Switzerland die Geschichten was still the plural of das Geschicht 150 years ago. Then the article was changed and one said die Geschichte—singular—which had been the plural when the word had the article das. This is the origin of the word; you can read it up in works on etymology.

The term ‘history’ will only have real meaning when spiritual impulses are taken into account. There we can speak of what really has come to pass and, within limits, of what happens behind the scenes. Limits are set in so far as we compare this with what can be predicted to apply in the physical world in future—the position of the sun next summer, for example, and so on, but not every detail of the weather. The world of the spirit also has elements which are like the weather of the future in relation to the future position of the sun. Generally speaking, however, the course of human evolution can only be known on the basis of its spiritual impulses. History is therefore embryonic and not what it is supposed to be; it will only finally be something when it makes the transition from its 100 years of existence to consideration of the spiritual life which is behind the scenes of what comes to pass at the surface level for humanity.

It means that people must really wake up in many respects. We merely need to take up a theme which is not without significance for the present time, such as the theme I have just taken up: How old is history? Many people—and this is not to blame individuals but merely the system used in schools—have never had the least idea that history is still so young and cannot yet be in accord with reality. Imagine what it would be like if natural science were only 100 years old and you wanted to compare it with earlier stages in natural science! These things only move gradually from being something which is merely learned, to becoming real life. It is only when this is seriously considered and these issues become issues in education that people will come to understand the reality of life.

On the one hand people must be introduced to the life of nature when still young, as one sees in some—I am saying some—of the stories in Brehm's work,⁸ where it is really possible to gain a living perception of things which happen through creatures from the animal world. Distinction must be made above all between anything based on reality and the allegorical, symbolic tales told by people whose approach to nature is entirely superficial. These would merely come between the children and their understanding of reality. The point is that we should not tell them anything symbolic and allegorical, but introduce them to the real life of natural history. We might consider the life of bees, not in the way zoologists do, but rather in the way of someone who enters into things with heart and soul, without being sentimental about it. Maeterlinck's book on bees⁹ is, of course, very good, but it would not be suitable for children; it might induce someone to write a children's book on bees, or perhaps on ants. You would have to avoid any form of allegory, nor should you speak of abstract spiritual entities; you would really have to go into the concrete reality.

On the other hand, ‘history’, which is nonsense and harmful to children as it is now written, would have to be handled in such a way that one could always feel the spiritual at work in it. Of course, you cannot tell children, not even boys and girls at grammar school, what actuality happened in the nineteenth century; you can give expression to the real situation through the way in which the story is told, in the way in which events are grouped and by the value given to one element or another.

The stories concocted for the nineteenth century are certainly not what is needed to give even people of more mature years an idea of what really happened. We ought to show how something was in preparation during the first, second, third and fourth decades of that century, which really came to life in the forties. All we have to do is to describe things in such a way that the individual concerned gets a feeling for events in Europe and America during the 1840s: this something special is ‘chumbling and churning’ in there, if you will forgive the expression.¹⁰ Then again, when one comes to the 1870s, we would not say it was the time when the Angels were cast down from heaven, but we can speak in a way for people to see, and feel, that a major change came at that point in the nineteenth century. Anthroposophy can also enrich earlier history. The rubbish presented as Greek and Roman history in schools today could really come to life if the anthroposophical impulses we have come to know were brought into it. No need to use exactly these terms and ideas, but tell the story in such a way that it emerges in the telling. People have moved a long way away from this and must come closer to it again.

This is the only way in which people can get a sense of reality. They lack this sense today even with regard to the most primitive aspects of life around them and the events in which they share. People think they are realistic and materialistic today when, in fact, they are the most abstract of theorists you can think of, stuffed full with theories, fast asleep in nothing but theories and not even aware of the fact. If one of them should happen to wake up—it is not a matter of chance, but if we use the popular way of saying it we might say: If one of them should by chance wake up and say something whilst awake, he would simply be ignored. It is the way things are today.

You will no doubt have heard that certain people are over and over again proclaiming to the world that democracy must spread to the whole civilized world. Salvation lies in making the whole of humanity democratic; everything will have to be smashed to pieces so that democracy may spread in the world. Well, if people go on to accept ideas presented to them as they are, with wholesale acceptance of the term democracy, for instance, their idea of democracy will be like the definition of the human being which I gave you: A human being is a creature with two legs and without feathers: a plucked cockerel. The people who are glorifying democracy today know about as much about it as someone who is shown a plucked cockerel knows about the human being. Concepts are taken for reality, and as a result illusion may take the place of reality where human life is concerned by lulling people to sleep with concepts. They believe the fruits of their endeavours will be that every individual will be able to express their will in the different democratic institutions, and they fail to see that these institutions are such that it is always just a few people who pull the wires, whilst the rest are pulled along. They are persuaded, however, that they are part of democracy and so they do not notice they are being pulled and that some individuals are pulling the strings. Those individuals will find it all the easier to do the pulling if the others all believe they are doing it themselves, instead of being pulled along. It is quite easy to lull people to sleep with abstract concepts and make them believe the opposite of what is really true. This gives the powers of darkness the best opportunity to do what they want. And if anyone should wake up they are simply ignored.

It is interesting to note that in 1910 someone wrote that large scale capitalism had succeeded in making democracy into the most marvellous, flexible and effective tool for exploiting the whole population. Financiers were usually imagined to be the enemies of democracy, the individual concerned wrote, but this was a fundamental error. On the contrary, they run democracy and encourage it, for it provides a screen behind which they can hide their method of exploitation, and they find it their best defence against any objections which the populace may raise.

For once, therefore, a man woke up and saw that what mattered was not to proclaim democracy but to see the full reality, not to follow slogans, but to see things as they are. This would be particularly important today, for people would then realize that the events which reign with such blood and terror over the whole of humanity are guided and directed from just a few centres. People will never realize this if they persist in the delusion that nation is fighting nation, and allow the European and American Press to lull them to sleep over the kinds of relations that are said to exist between nations. Everything said about antagonism and opposition between nations only exists to cast a veil over the true reasons. For we shall never arrive at the real truth if we feed on words in order to explain these events, but only if we point to actual people. The problem is that this tends to be unpalatable today. And the man who woke up and wrote these statements in 1910 also presented some highly unwelcome accounts in his book. He produced a list of fifty-five individuals who are the real rulers and exploiters of France. The list can be found in Francis Delaisi's La Democratie et les Financiers,¹¹ written in 1910; the same man has also written La Guerre qui vient, a book which has become famous. In his La Democratie et les Financiers you will find statements of fundamental significance. There you have someone who has woken up to reality. The book contains impulses which allow one to see through much of what we should see through today, and also to cut through much of the fog which is made to wash over human brains today. Here again, we must resolve to look to reality.

The book has, of course, been ignored. It does, however, raise issues which should be raised all over the world today, for they would teach people much about the reality which others intend to bury under all their declamations on democracy and autocracy and whatever the slogans may be. The book also gives an excellent exposition on the extremely difficult position in which members of parliament find themselves. People think they can vote according to their convictions. But you would have to know all the different threads which tie them to reality if you wanted to know why they vote for one thing and against another. Certain issues really must be raised. Delaisi does so. Thus, for example, he considers a member of parliament and asks the question: Which side should the poor man support? The people pay him three thousand francs a year and the shareholders pay him thirty thousand francs!’ To pose the question is to answer it. So the poor dear man gets his three-thousand-franc allowance from the people, and thirty thousand francs from the shareholders! I think you will agree it is a good piece of proof, a sign of real acumen, to say: How nice that a socialist, a man of the people like Millerand¹² has gained a seat in parliament! Delaisi's question goes in another direction. He asks: How far can someone like Millerand, who was earning thirty thousands francs a year for representing insurance companies, be independent?

So for once someone did wake up. He is well aware of the threads which run from the actions of such an individual to the different insurance companies. But such things, reported by someone who is awake and sees the truth, are ignored. It is, of course, only too easy to talk about democracy in the Western world. Yet if you wanted to tell people the truth you would have to say: ‘The man called so and so is doing this, and the one called so and so is doing that.’ Delaisi has found fifty-five men—not a democracy but fifty-five specific individuals—who, he says, govern and exploit France. There, someone has discovered the real facts, for in ordinary life, too, a feeling must awaken for the real facts.

Here is something else from Delaisi: There was once a lawyer who had all kinds of connections, not just insurance companies, but centres of finance, financial worlds. But this lawyer wanted to aim even higher; he wanted sponsorship not only from the worlds of finance, industry and trade, but also from the academic world of the French Academy. This is a place where the academic world can raise one to the sphere of immortality. There were two ‘Immortals’ within the Academy, however, who were involved in illegal trust dealings. They found it perfectly possible to combine their work for immortality with trust dealings which the law of the land did not permit. Then our sharp-witted lawyer defended the two Immortals in court and managed to get them off, to whitewash them so that no sentence was passed. They then had him admitted to the ranks of the ‘Immortals’. Science, responsible not for the temporal things of the world but for things eternal and immortal, made itself the advocate of this selfless lawyer. His name is Raymond Poincar.¹³ Delaisi tells the story in his La Democratie et les Financiers.

It is not a bad thing to know these things, which are ingredients of reality. They must be seriously considered. And one is guided to develop something of a nose for reality when one takes up anthroposophy, whilst the materialistic education people have today, with innumerable channels opening into it from the Press, is designed to point not to the realities but to something which is cloaked in all kinds of slogans. And if someone does wake up, as Delaisi did, and writes about how things really are, how many people get to know about it? How many people will listen? They cannot listen, for it is buried by—well, by a life that again is ruled by the Press. Delaisi shows himself to be a bright person, someone who has gone to a lot of trouble to gain real insight. He is no blind follower of parliamentarianism, nor of democracy. He predicts that the things people think are so clever today will come to an end. He says so expressly, also with reference to the ‘voting machine’—which is approximately how he puts it. He is entirely scientific and serious in his discourse on this parliamentary voting machine, for he understands the whole system which leads to these ‘voting machines’, where people are made to believe that a convinced majority is voting against a mentally unhinged minority. He knows that something else will have to take the place of this if there is to be healthy development.

This is not yet possible, for people would be deeply shocked if you were to tell them what will take its place. Only people initiated into spiritual science can really know this today. Forms which belong to the past will definitely not take its place. You need not be afraid that someone speaking out of anthroposophy will promote some kind of reactionary or conservative ideas; no, these will not be things of the past, but they will be so different from the ‘voting machine’ which exists today that people will be shocked and consider this madness. Nevertheless it will enter into the impulses of evolution in time. Delaisi, too, says: In organic development certain parts lose their original function and become useless but still persist for some time; in the same way, these parliaments will continue to vote for quite some time, but all real life will have departed from them.

You know that human beings have parts of the body which are like this. Some people can move their ears because the muscles for this existed in the past. We still have those muscles, but they have become atavistic and have lost their function. This is how Delaisi sees the parliament of the future; parliaments will be such atavistic remnants which have died and will drop off, and something quite different will come into human evolution.

I have quoted Delaisi and his book which appeared not so long ago, in 1910, to show you that there really are enough people—for one such individual will be enough for many thousands. It is important, however, not to ignore these people. Apart from my efforts to introduce you to the laws of spiritual life and the impulses of spiritual life, I also regard it to be my function to draw attention to significant elements in present-day life. It means, of course, that initially you will hear aspects called significant in these lectures which are not considered significant in life outside, if you find them mentioned at all. The things we do must be radically and thoroughly different from those which are done outside. And we can only truly follow the science of the Spirit in the way it should be followed if we accept this in all its depth and seriousness.

• 1. Steiner, R. The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and of Humanity. (GA 15) Tr. by H. Monges. Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1970.
• 2. See lecture 5.
• 3. See lecture 2.
• 4. Fritz Mauthner (1849–1923), Woerterbuch der Philosophie, neue Beitraege zu einer Kritik der Sprache (translates as ‘Dictionary of Philosophy, New contributions to a critique of the language’), 2 vols, 1910/11. The statement relating to Darwin is to be found in a section on history. It reads as follows: ‘It is not the way in which Darwin annihilated teleology that will remain for ever; what will not be forgotten is the fact that he sought to understand the world of nature without resorting to teleology.’
• 5. Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864), German social democrat.
• 6. Karl Marx (1818–1883), founder of modern international Communism.
• 7. Das Geschicht, or die Geschichte, derives from the past participle of the verb geschehen, to have come to pass; die Geschichte nowadays translates into English as ‘history’, or ‘story’, ‘account’, depending on the context. (Translator)
• 8. See Note 2 of lecture 11.
• 9. Count Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949), Belgian dramatist and writer. Nobel prize for litersture 1911. His La vie des abeilles (1901) has been translated into English. Maeterlinck also wrote La vie des termites (1926) and La vie des fourmis (1930).
• 10. See Note 7 of lecture 8.
• 11. Francis Delaisi (b. 1873), French social scientist and writer.
• 12. Alexandre Millerand (1859–1943), the first socialist to hold ministerial Position in a French government. Minister of Commerce 1899–1902, of Works 1909–1910, of War 1912–1913.
• 13. Raymond Nicholas Poincar (1860–1934), president of the French Republic 1913–1920; his policies were extremely anti-German.

The first theme proposed for your consideration would be: The great questions of the present and the threefold social organism. It is necessary that we choose these topics that you want to address in such a way that there is an opportunity to get to know as precisely as possible, firstly, what the present needs and, secondly, what the impulse for the threefolding of the social organism has to offer with regard to the great questions of the present. always have the opportunity to point out, on the one hand, that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must provide the basis for this kind of social thinking, which is to be brought into the world through the threefold social order, and, on the other hand, that the opportunity should always be offered to advocate for the “day to come” and the like. Its activity will have to extend to our movement as a whole, both to the spiritual side and to practical institutions. On the one hand, you will have to make it plausible to the world that it is necessary in the present time to cultivate a truly productive spiritual life; on the other hand, you will have to take into account the practical side, that we simply, as a intervene as a movement in social and economic life, and that we must therefore be strengthened financially as much as possible, not for our own sake but for the sake of the progress of economic life.

Today, in particular, I would like to raise a few points regarding the necessary topics, to set the scene for our further deliberations. It might be best if we then choose a second topic along the lines of: The free system of education and teaching in its relation to the state and the economy. - And if we then choose the third topic: The economic association system and its relation to the state and to the free spiritual life. - By choosing these three topics, we will have the opportunity to present to the world in the next few weeks what really belongs to our movement as a whole in an effective way.

Now let us first talk about something fundamental regarding the first topic. Above all, it will be about showing people that threefolding is, so to speak, already there as a demand, that one is not doing anything other than shaping what is already there in the right way. There it is, but in a form different from what it should be and will be when it has been fully developed; there it is as a demand of three things, but today they are chaotically intermingled and precisely because of this they fight each other internally fight against each other like some kind of monstrosity, which might have come into being in something like this, as if the head of man were in his stomach and the digestive organs in the heart and the like, if the three systems of the organism were mixed up. So what is actually there, what wants to develop, should be given the right form.

To make this clear, let us start with the third link in the social organism, with economic life. This economic life can be characterized, as it exists today, by following its development over the last few centuries. In the last few centuries, economic life itself has only taken on the forms that exist today and out of which the whole social question has arisen. It has certainly been a somewhat longer process. Even if we go back as far as we want, the economic life that we face today does not go back further than the 14th or 13th century. That was the time when European economic life went through a kind of crisis, one might say a creeping crisis. That was the time when European economic life was thoroughly preparing for a change.

If we go back to earlier times, we find that European economic life was thoroughly influenced by the continental trade and traffic movement from Asia through Central Europe to Western Europe. And we find in those older times everywhere that economic life takes place with a certain matter-of-factness, and that traffic also takes place with a certain matter-of-factness. To a certain extent, economic conditions had not yet developed so intensely that it was necessary to restrict and organize the freedom of trade and commerce. But as the population of Central Europe became more and more dense, as economic life became more and more intense, the necessity arose to organize all kinds of things. And out of the freer economic life of the older times, a much more constrained economic life emerged. The freer economic life of earlier times is characterized by the fact that the individual economies, the individual households, which were more like household economies, were run by their private owners, with the help of servants and a population in bondage, according to the instincts of their private owners, and that an extensive trade, which was certainly conducted across from Asia, did not need to be regulated in any particular way either. It could be carried out quite freely, because economic life was not yet intensive.

But, as I said, with the increase in population, and with the development of other conditions, which we can mention in a moment, the intensity of economic life became greater and greater; and it became necessary to take certain protective measures that were not necessary before, protective measures that all had more or less the character of supporting the consumer. It is a curious fact that at the same time as economic life was going through a kind of creeping crisis, as it did in the 13th and 14th centuries, without much ado, a tendency to protect the consumer in some way emerged everywhere. What is it other than consumer protection when the cities through which trade had to pass, through which the trade routes ran, asserted the so-called staple right, so that the passing tradesman had to stay for a certain number of days and only then was he allowed to pass through with the goods he could not sell in the city during those days and then sell them freely? So it is about consumer protection, everywhere it is about consumer protection.

In particular, although it is not immediately apparent, something else in this period is definitely calculated for the protection of the consumer. I have just delved into this question and finally found out – if you approach it with an open mind, you cannot help but find out – that the establishment and development of the guilds, although they seemingly organized production, were basically undertaken to support the consumption of the products manufactured in the guilds. This was done indirectly by organizing the production system. Although the guilds were formed by combining similar trades, the main focus was not so much on organizing production in some way, but rather on ensuring that those who joined the guilds could sell their products at such a high price that their consumption was secured in the appropriate way. The guilds were in fact a protective device for consumption. If you simply take any manuals from the library and look up the data you can find there, you will be able to say to yourself, when you consider the guidelines I am giving you here, that the economic life of that time is characterized in a certain way by this.

And now this economic life developed under such protective measures for several centuries. But it always had a kind of creeping crisis in itself. It just became more and more intense. And that is the peculiar thing: an economic life that becomes more and more intense in a certain territory also makes more and more restrictions, protective measures, and organizations necessary. An economic life that is open in some way, that has access to inexhaustible sources on some side, namely agriculture, land, does not have the urge to organize itself. An economic life that is enclosed on all sides and becomes more and more intensive has the urge to organize itself.

Now, this European economic life would undoubtedly have faced a decadence of enormous significance over the course of the centuries if an event with which you are all familiar had not occurred. What initially saved us from this decadence was, on the one hand, the opening of sea routes and, on the other, the discovery of America. This opened up economic life again towards the West. It cannot be said, because the opening was too great, that an outlet was opened there. That would have been a very large outlet! But this is what in turn took economic life in a completely different direction. Now, of course, the advent of modern technology coincides with the impact of this path to the west. But this modern technology would never have been possible under any other circumstances than through the opening of the whole of economic life to the West. These things simply gave what gave the newer economic life its basic configuration. The most important political events that I mentioned yesterday then take place within this economic life.

Now, in this European economic life, we have two tendencies. One tendency developed under the compulsion of the intensive economy in the second half of the Middle Ages and even beyond, and subsequently took on the character of a certain economic way of thinking. People learned to think economically under the conditions that developed, say, from the 13th to the 16th, 17th century. That is when people absorbed the ideas of how to run a business. What became the driving economic ideas were developed in trade, and very slowly also in industry, and even in agriculture. They essentially took shape during this time. One could also say that those sections of the population who were primarily called upon to think economically in connection with the European territories have developed their economic ideas under the influence of these events. Such things then become deeply ingrained in people. It is precisely in these matters that human souls become conservative. And what sits within people as conservative ideas essentially stems from this period.

Now, on the other side, economic life opened up as I have described to you. And through this, something came into the whole concept of economic life, but it was not immediately incorporated into the way of thinking, but only gave this way of thinking a special economic impetus. It is the connection with the West, with America, with that which came from the opening of the sea routes. That gave economic life strength.

And so, I would say, on the one hand the concrete content of economic life emerged, and on the other hand the momentum. These facts were so strong that they initially gave the configuration to the newer social life in general, and also gave it its materialistic form. And this modern civilization took on more and more the character that must result from these two factors.

Now we have an economic life that simply predominates by the force of events, that makes a strong impression on people and on human development. This economic life also takes on the character that economic life alone can take on, because it is the case that each of the three areas of the social organism takes on its own legitimacy simply through its nature and essence: in economic life, the commodity and the price become the determining factors.

However, social conditions can be distorted by confusing economic life with the other two areas of the social organism. Then each individual area follows only its own laws in conflict with the others. And so it has come about that because economic life predominated, it drew other areas of life, other social areas, into its system of laws. And the conditions arose that then led to the modern social question.

For if we go back in historical development, the proletarian movement as a specific wage movement, as a movement against slavery of labor, does not exist. I explained yesterday that the division of labor, whether one was master or servant, was shaped in older times according to political considerations. Now economic life has been set up in such a way that everything is drawn into the character of a commodity. Everything became a commodity. And so it was only in this period that human labor power became a commodity. Before that it was service, devoted or forced service. But it only became a commodity in this most recent period. For it was gradually paid for in the same way as a commodity is paid for. And economic life cannot help but make a commodity out of everything that enters into its sphere. And in this sense, I believe we have actually always had the threefold social order. We just have to make it real, we just have to introduce into the world that which exists in a false form in its true form. For in the false form it causes mischief and leads to decline. If we are able to give it its true form, it must become the rising sun.

But it is not only that labor power has been turned into a commodity; materialistic intellectual life has also been turned into a commodity in the form of capital. Please take a look at the capital market and the utilization and application of capital in modern times and compare it with the utilization of capital in ancient Greece, for all I care! In ancient Greece, the person who was politically powerful was the one who had the power to carry out something; he had the power to build this or that. For political reasons, he found those who did the work, and his capital consisted simply of the fact that he was the master through his hereditary circumstances and could command a number of people. That was capital in ancient Greece. In the more recent times that we are now considering, essentially what leads to enterprises also becomes a commodity. What is it, after all, that you do when you buy or sell securities on the stock exchange? What are you trading in? You are basically trading in entrepreneurial spirit. What entrepreneurial spirit is essentially becomes a commodity on the stock exchange. You don't even have the specific, the particular entrepreneurial spirit in front of you, you don't even know what you are buying or selling; but in reality you are buying or selling entrepreneurial spirit. You can observe this particularly in the capital market environment. In short, everything becomes commoditized where economic life becomes predominant. Everything becomes a commodity: labor power becomes a commodity, intellect becomes a commodity. That has been the course of recent development.

Now, at the same time, something else is happening. The modern state is emerging for political reasons. First of all, we see, doesn't it, how this modern state is formed from certain earlier freer relationships of the surrounding rural population to the existing cities, which have emerged from ecclesiastical centers or the like in Italy, from a slightly different way of thinking in France and England. So what states are, that is what is emerging.

While the actual concept of the state is already emerging in the West, in Central and Eastern Europe we actually still see different conditions that are freer in this respect. We see how it arises from the old conditions that the former town, which had arisen for some ecclesiastical or similar reasons, becomes the center of the market. And as the old towns become markets, new towns arise in turn. It is interesting to see how cities really do arise under the influence of economic life in the 13th, 12th, 11th century. First of all, the cities arise in such a way that in today's southern Germany and in the west of Europe they arise at distances of five to six hours' travel. In the north and east, they arise at distances of seven to eight hours' travel. In older times, this is something that is taken for granted. Why? Because the farmers who work the surrounding land can get there and back with their products in a day. This arises out of inner necessity. But when something like this arises in history, then later, under the influence of the principle of imitation, something arises that is not connected with such necessity. At first there is the necessity to have towns that are five to six hours' journey apart, or seven to eight. Then the others realize that something can be done and imitate it. And so something arises that is not historically necessary. This affects the healthy thinking of some people about these things. The historians treat the one cities in the same way as the others, that is, those that did not arise out of economic necessity in the same way as the others that arose out of economic necessity. Then everything is mixed up and confused. But the right way to look at such things is to have a sense of distinction. People can very knowledgeably prove to you that this is not true, that this or that city arose out of economic necessity. Of course that is sometimes not true. Because this city did not arise out of economic necessity, but under the influence of the later principle of imitation. But the general truth is nevertheless correct. The development of cities as markets took much longer in Eastern Europe than in the West, where unified states were formed that then sought to incorporate everything into their framework.

Now, basically, historically speaking, as unpleasant as it may sometimes seem today, it is the case that in Italy, out of the spirit of a certain patriarchal togetherness between the peasant population and the urban population, the peculiar territorial areas arose and a certain federalist state system emerged, while another emerged in Spain, France and England. And even if, as I said, it is unpleasant for some to think about, it is nevertheless the case that, more towards Central Europe and the East, the formation of states, like the formation of cities in the past, even came about through imitation. And here we come to something that you cannot tell people today, because otherwise you would not be divided into three, but even into four. But the truth still exists because of that. It was, of course, an economic necessity, but it also came about because of the character of the peoples that the western states emerged as unified states. But the Central European states and the Eastern states actually only came into being through imitation. There was no historical necessity for them. Basically, Austria and the German Reich ultimately perished because there was no historical necessity for their internal centralization, but rather that it was actually an imitation. And the unified state of Italy is an imitation of the same principle, which came into being at about the same time as the unified German state. And North America is another purely external imitation, without having really arrived at the inner reality of what the Central European states are. It is completely dependent on flowing into economic association. Incidentally, anyone who properly considers the economic conditions of North America will be able to predict the course of events.

Now, you see, alongside all that had emerged, so to speak, from the original economy, the new configuration of trade then arose under such conditions as I have just described. And that was where the fusion of political and economic life first arose, not in the field of industry, but actually in the field of trade. The trades were only involved. It is fair to dispute what I am saying now. Because people just need to say: the trades must come first, and then you can act. But that is not the point. Even today, take very developed industries, they often have not grown beyond the commercial sphere. People only create their own products for the trade they do. We are not yet so far advanced that we have already made the transition from the primary production, which is based on nature and is integrated through trade into industry, to the point where industry would now set the tone. Because the moment industry starts to set the tone, association becomes a necessity. The structure of today's business life is still determined by the principles of commercial life; industry, too, is based on the principle of commerce. Basically, manufacturers are traders who merely create opportunities for themselves to trade. They also set up their industrial establishments according to commercial considerations; these are the decisive factors. Because the moment the industrial reaches into the commercial, then association becomes a necessity. The fusion of the state with economic life has actually happened indirectly through the commercial.

And on the other hand, each of the three limbs of the social organism has its own laws and fights against the other limb if it is not detached in the right way. You see, in fact the field of constitutional law has been fighting against the economic field in economic legislation, old-age insurance and so on, for a long time. What does this mean other than that they foolishly want to separate the worker from economic life? It would be sensible to separate them thoroughly right now! But the states are definitely on the march – if I may use the word, which, as you know, has been misused by Wissel – on the march to an independent legal existence. By creating labor protection legislation, old-age insurance legislation, and so on, they are bringing the organization of labor, the regulation of the type and time of labor, out of economic life anyway. Now we see that the second link of the social organism is also on the way to emancipation from economic life.

Now, the matter of intellectual life is somewhat more confused. All real intellectual life has grown out of the old theocracies in its inner essence. Please, you only need to study university life in the 12th and 13th centuries. This is entirely developed out of the ecclesiastical being. And this was an emancipated intellectual life. It only gradually grows into state life. A large part of the European struggles consists of nothing more than the transition of ecclesiastical institutions into the state. And for these ancient times, it must be said that the freedom of educational institutions was much greater in the old ecclesiastical system than it was in the later state system or than it is today. For things develop out of spiritual life with full consciousness. For example, in the year 869 at the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, the Church consciously abolished the spirit, that is, it was elevated to a dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and spirit, but only of body and soul, and that the soul has some spiritual qualities. In those days, this was made conscious. Nowadays, philosophy professors preach that man consists of body and soul and do not know that they are only the executors of an ecclesiastical dogma. What we call philosophy has definitely grown out of the old ecclesiastical life, and Mr. Wundt in Leipzig is definitely only an offshoot of the old ecclesiastical dogmas, even if it no longer appears so in the way he presents it. But it is the same with the other things that have grown out of the old theocratic type of spiritual life. The theological faculties, well, look at them, they have grown out of the former spiritual life to such an extent that today they only present a kind of caricature, and the same applies to the law faculties. If you want to see, you will find the same old theocratic essence in modern civilization everywhere. I will not speak of medicine. It is quite obvious that it has outgrown other affiliations with the old intellectual life, which developed in an ecclesiastical, religious way. We have a current, a branch of intellectual life, that has completely outgrown the ecclesiastical life, which was free in relation to the state and which was the only intellectual life for the older times. Alongside this, I would say, not outgrowing it but standing alongside it, has come what modern science and technology is. There, spiritual life has arisen on its own soil and has only resembled that which grew out of the church in the past. That is why it looks so strange, what has been organized, I would say, spasmodically, in imitation of the old institutions. One after the other, technical colleges, commercial schools, agricultural schools and so on were built. All of this has been spasmodically shaped somewhat similar to what grew out of the earlier church life. And so we have the quite unnatural structure of our higher education system. On the one hand, something that is in many ways old-fashioned, the actual university system; after all, it carries its ancient ecclesiastical heritage with it. On the other hand, there is the modern agricultural school, the technical school, the mining academy and so on, which has been humorously added to the system, which has sought a similarity, even in the outward appearance, in the title system and the like, with the universities.

On the one hand, we have intellectual life as it arises from the old, free ecclesiastical life and is gradually absorbed by the state; and on the other hand, we have the pushing in, I would like to say, again out of a certain freedom, because the mind must indeed be free; the state cannot produce genius, of that intellectual life that in turn places itself in state life. It would have been in keeping with the ideal of many people to educate real artists at the art schools as well. But as you know, the teaching program does not yet exist by which one can educate genius or the real artist, although many people would like it to. So we see how the spiritual life is absorbed with inadequate means. Basically, only the outer form is absorbed. The content must always, if I may say so, creep away on the sly, most certainly creep away. Because, if someone is in the uncomfortable position of having some intellect at all, then, as far as possible, they have to get it through the terrible ordeals of exams and so on with as much secrecy as possible, so that it doesn't freeze during the whole procedure and so that they can still develop it afterwards. Yes, you have to secretly smuggle what the actual intellectual life is. That is just the way it is. And basically, this is nothing more than a kind of emancipation of intellectual life, a latent emancipation.

Here, too, we are facing a looming crisis. The ultimate consequence of the nationalization system is, of course, Marxism, and, radically, Bolshevism. Everything is nationalized; the entire state is turned into a large industrial establishment, into a giant enterprise, at least that is the initial ideal. Now, if you do that, then it is necessary to organize all the technical knowledge into this whole menagerie, machinery I wanted to say, of course, to organize all the machinery into this whole machinery, because without this technical knowledge you cannot make any progress. Modern technology is necessary. But all the Bolshevism and all the ways of introducing the Marxist principle into reality will lead to nothing but plundering in this area. That is, for a time, the technically gifted can be enslaved. But they will gradually disappear if we do not move on to an independent, emancipated, free, productive intellectual life. This is the crisis we face wherever the nationalization of intellectual life is making radical progress. For just as the other two limbs of the social organism have their own laws, the legal-political and the economic life, just as the economic life turns everything into a commodity, just as the state-legal life, after all, brings that which does not fit into the economic life under its organization and subject it to its laws, so too must intellectual life, following its own laws, emancipate itself from the other two.

These three spheres of the social organism are clearly defined: the spiritual, the juridical-political and the economic. Therefore, these are also the three great issues of the present day. The three great issues of the present day are precisely the issues of the proper shaping of spiritual life, the proper shaping of state-political life, and the proper shaping of economic life.

And this is evident wherever today's amateurish attempts arise. Look, for example, at what is happening within Central Europe, within Germany, in terms of religious denominations. In the attempts at a Protestant unity, in the Young Catholic efforts and so on, one tries to galvanize the old, to squeeze something viable out of the old in order to have some kind of spiritual life, because one does not have the courage to be productive in the spiritual life. Everywhere you look, you see amateurish attempts to give birth to a new spiritual life. Of course, the attempt to squeeze something out of the old lemon cannot lead to real spiritual creativity. Only the turn towards a productive spiritual life can lead to this. But we see amateurish attempts everywhere. We see how Americans appear to revive ancient Christianity because they believe that humanity cannot recover from the old principles of the state. But nowhere is there the insight that a spiritual life must be produced anew from its original sources. Everywhere, people are muddling through with what is already there. This shows that people are instinctively on the right path, but that they have not found the courage to really establish an independent spiritual life in its purity.

On the other hand, we see how the old principle of the state, which has developed in Europe since the 15th and 16th centuries, is dying away. For what else is it, what has been taking place since Brest-Litovsk and Versailles in the monsters called peace treaties and the like, what is it but a dying state principle that can no longer create something fruitful out of itself, that creates structures that cannot exist? Czechoslovakia, for example, will not be able to exist because it does not have what it needs to have. The Polish state structure, on the other hand, is to be re-established. It cannot be re-established, and so on. It is only possible for state life to recover if it is built on the democratic principle of equal human beings, that is, if it encompasses the affairs that are the affairs of each person who has come of age.

As long as today's life is chaotically thrown together, we will not get any further. There we see how, in fact, state life is withering away on the one hand, but on the other hand has already shown how it must take up the regulation of work. We see how it takes on new tasks. And then we can say: So we have the spiritual question, which is manifested in the faltering attempts that are expressed in the Protestant unification efforts and in the Young Catholic efforts; we have the constitutional question, which is evident, for example, in the peace treaties; but we also have economic life, which stands as the third great question of the present, from which, after all, the great war broke out towards the West, and which is discharging itself in the form of revolutionary and similar impulses.

This must be treated from the most diverse sides. Among the lectures I have given here, you will find one that deals with these matters. It is from this point of view of the three great contemporary issues that we must approach our first topic. We must show that the great questions are there today: the spiritual question, the constitutional-legal question and the economic question; that therefore the threefold social order is not something that has been invented, but that it is derived from the three great questions of our time; and that on the other hand, what has been prepared as anthroposophical spiritual science is precisely a foundation for a truly productive spiritual life.

What existed as a spiritual life from ancient times in the denominations, of which the university sciences of the present are only a branch, has lived itself out; the other has not yet been able to begin to live as a spiritual life, that is, that which has grown out of science and technology. It has not yet been able to spiritualize itself. It must be driven upwards with the same way of thinking from which the old spiritual life arose. Spiritual science will again be as productive as the earlier one was, which then came into decadence in the religions.

That is what gives spiritual life its content, its momentum. And then, when you see things in this way, when you realize that you can answer the question, “Yes, where should the free spiritual life come from?” with complete conviction: Yes, we not only have to talk about the demand for a free spiritual life, but we also have something that can be placed within the framework of the free spiritual life, that produces the spirit, that is living spirit. You will then be able to point to the anthroposophical source that belongs to it. You can develop something that, if you want to bring it to people, must be brought to them with a certain enthusiasm, so that, in a sense, the inner turns outwards, so that what you are as human beings, what you have grown together with, really goes out to the audience. That must be the one tone that you strike in your lectures. You must be clear about the fact that anthroposophy provides the content, the nourishment, for the free spiritual life.

On the other hand, you will find the other tone when you thoroughly feel that economic life turns everything into a commodity, that what must not be a commodity must be taken out of economic life. Then you will find the dry tone of sober reflection that must pervade your lectures when you speak of economic life. Because there you can speak soberly, dryly, there you must speak as if you had to do arithmetic.

And so you will find the two nuances you need for your lectures, and they will indeed be different from one another: the dry, sober tone of the dry economic commentator and the enthusiastic tone of the person who not only speaks of a political ideal as the free spiritual life, but speaks in such a way that he knows what wants to be included in it.

And then, moving rhythmically back and forth between the two, you will find the third tone, the tone you need for the treatment of the state-legal aspect.

But it is necessary that you, so to speak, are intensively threefolded in your own moods, so that you recognize correctly, that you relate to spiritual life in one way, to state-political life in another way, and to economic life in yet another way. One speaks about spiritual life out of inner strength and conviction; one speaks in such a way that one actually knows: every human being is a rightful participant in the harmonious spiritual life of humanity, in the harmony of the spiritual life of humanity. One speaks about the life of the state in such a way that one lets one's soul swing from one side of the scales to the other: duties - rights, duties - rights! One speaks with a certain cool superiority, which does not necessarily have to be the superior mendacity of the old statesmen; but it is done with a certain superiority, in that one allows one's right to be done to the other in the life of the state and in the life of the law. And one speaks about economic life as if one did not have one's own purse to manage; that leads to nothing sensible, but one speaks to the feeling as if one actually held the purses of other people in one's pocket and had to manage them. One speaks from feeling in this case, that one must proceed as cautiously as possible, that many things can turn out differently than one expects. The secure feeling one has about spiritual life – if one has grasped it correctly, nothing can ever go wrong in spiritual life – one cannot have this secure feeling about economic life. Something can go wrong there. That must also be in the tone with which you speak about the matter. That is why you will find it in the “key points”: intellectual life is spoken of with absolute certainty and certainty; economic conditions are only mentioned by way of example, so that one has the feeling that it could also be different.

This is what will give your speeches a certain inner strength: if you are inwardly intensely threefolded. And that is what I recommend to you, to take it to heart a little, so that you may perhaps strike this note. Since most of you are young, if your attention is drawn to this threefoldness of the human orator, it will be something like a kind of power source for your work.

[ 1 ] On December 2, 1900, Ludwig Jacobowski was torn from a busy and hopeful life by a sudden death. Only those who were so close to him that he spoke to them about his ideas and plans in the last days of his life will have any real idea of what was carried to his grave. For one always had to make an addition to everything he had achieved. He made it himself. He was only satisfied with himself when he saw great tasks ahead of him. A twofold belief animated him. One was that life is only worth living if one's personality is restlessly enhanced in its efficiency; the other was that man does not belong to himself alone, but to the community, and that only he who is as useful to others as he can be deserves his existence. Under the influence of such sentiments, he continually widened the circles of his activity. It was a beautiful moment for him and for others when he spoke of what he was about to do. The way he spoke always inspired the belief that he would achieve what he wanted. He did not shy away from any obstacles. Not those that lay within him, nor those that he encountered along the way. There are few people who work so hard on themselves to enable themselves to accomplish their tasks. He had the highest confidence in the foundation of his being. But he never believed that it would be easy for him to work this reason out of himself. He could look back with the deepest satisfaction on the work he had done to work his way up to what he had become. But he probably never felt this satisfaction in itself, but only because it gave rise to the feeling that his working power would be equal to any obstacle in the future. Above his desk hung a piece of paper with core sayings. The Goethe sentences were also written on it:

No sooner are you safe from the grossest deception,
Hardly are you master of the first child's will,
You think yourself superhuman enough,
Fail to fulfill the duty of man! How much are you different from others?
Know yourself, live in peace with the world!

[ 2 ] The essence of his thinking and feeling is expressed in these sentences. Seeing life as a duty was part of his innermost nature. For he lived with this attitude from childhood. It is as if he had already felt as a boy: spare yourself no work, for you will one day demand much of yourself as a man, and woe betide you if you have not made yourself resilient!

[ 3 ] Ludwig Jacobowski was born on January 21, 1868 in Strelno in the province of Poznan, the third son of a merchant. He spent his first five childhood years in the small district town, a few miles from the Russian border. In April 1874, his parents moved to Berlin. The boy first attended the Luther Boys' School here. There he was a diligent, ambitious pupil. This remained the case when he entered the sexta of the Louisenstädtische Oberrealschule, but things changed from the quinta onwards. His diligence had diminished and he did not enjoy his lessons very much. He had to be returned to the Luther Boys' School. An eye operation that had to be performed on him at that time and the fact that he had to attend a language school because of a speech impediment had a profound influence on the boy's basic mood. The feeling that he had to work his way through a rough, brittle surface was richly nourished during this time. Such sensations caused him countless gloomy hours. A remnant of these hours probably never left his soul. But such feelings were always accompanied by the opposite pole: you have to steel your will, you have to replace out of yourself what fate has denied you. For him, dejection was always just the soil from which his almost unlimited energy grew. When he was twelve years old, he lost his mother. Fate ensured that his life was built on a serious foundation. In his twentieth year he also had to follow his father to the grave; he saw two brothers die in the prime of life. His determined will and his courage to face life grew again and again out of his dark experiences. Goethe's words "Over graves forward" were also among those that could be read on the note above his desk.

[ 4 ] A complete transformation took place in the boy when, from about the age of thirteen, he began to immerse himself in the treasures of German intellectual life. It is indicative of the idealistic trait of his soul that he felt drawn to Schiller's creations with true fervor during this time. Thus he created for himself the objects of his interest, which he had initially been unable to find at school. When he returned to the Louisenstädtische Oberrealschule, he joined the ranks of the good pupils more and more. He had now found his own way to gain understanding from the outside world. In the top class he had reached the point where he was exempted from the oral Abitur examination on the basis of his good written work. He passed this exam on September 30, 1887.

[ 5 ] The friendship with a boy who died as a senior secondary school student had a great influence on Ludwig Jacobowski's development. This was a gifted boy who developed significant mathematical abilities in particular. This friendship was a good counterbalance to Jacobowski's more purely literary intellectual interests. An understanding of genuine, even exact scientific rigor, which remained with him for life, was planted in Jacobowski at that time. As a result, he always had an open mind for the great achievements of natural research and their far-reaching significance for the entire thinking and feeling of modern mankind. Throughout his later life, he was devotedly faithful to the memory of his childhood friend who had died at an early age. "I am once again erecting a poetic monument to him," were the words I heard from him, accompanied by an indescribable look of gratitude.

[ 6 ] The extent of Ludwig Jacobowski's interests can be seen in the course of his university studies. He was enrolled in Berlin from October 1887 to October 1889, then in Freiburg i. Br. until Easter 1890. He initially attended lectures on philosophy, history and literary history. The circle soon expands. Cultural history, psychology and national economics were added. One can see how a main inclination increasingly emerges. He wanted to understand the development of the human imagination. Everything was driven by this fundamental interest. In 1891, he earned his doctorate in Freiburg with a treatise: "Klinger and Shakespeare, a contribution to the Shakespearean romance of the Sturm und Drang period." It is clear from the concluding sentences what shape his ideas had taken. "Literary history should finally stop praising and blaming. Both belong to a romantic period of criticism. Modern criticism - the first traces of which can be discovered in France with Sainte-Beuve, Taine and others - has to live beyond "good and bad", beyond "praise and blame". Psychological understanding is the only and first thing that criticism can achieve. That is why Klinger's dependence on the great Briton to understand psychologically must be understood as something naturally necessary. And judgments against necessities of a psychological nature are decidedly superfluous and wrong. Therefore, when Hettner says that Klinger saw in Shakespeare "a license for everything strange and outlandish, for everything crude and crude", this judgment must be rejected outright. Klinger only saw in Shakespeare a model of genius. His impressionable, receptive nature, supported by an excellent memory, had to store up, process and reproduce a large number of Shakespearean motifs. In this psychological "must" lies an aesthetic justification of his dependence on Shakespeare."

[ 7 ] From then on, Jacobowski's thinking was focused on the laws of the development of the human spirit. He also carried within him the conviction that poetry arises from a necessity deeply rooted in the human soul. This drew him to the study of folk poetry. He looked everywhere at the primitive cultures of primitive peoples and savages to see how poetry necessarily arises from the imaginative and emotional life of man. From such studies he gained a deep understanding of what truly deserves to be called poetry. One of his peculiarities was that everything he studied scientifically immediately penetrated his feelings and gave him a firm judgment. It was highly enjoyable to listen to him when he showed from the smallest details of a poem to what extent something was really poetic or not. He assumed that in the most developed art poetry the characteristics that can be perceived in the most primitive poetry are repeated. This is not to say, however, that Jacobowski based his own artistic work or even his aesthetic judgment on reflection. For him, knowledge was completely compatible with the originality, even naivety, of creation and feeling.

[ 8 ] In his twenty-first year, Ludwig Jacobowski was already able to publish a volume of poems entitled "Aus bewegten Stunden" (Pierson, Dresden and Leipzig 1889). It is the reflection of a youthful life that was richly wrestled with pain and deprivation, that was driven back and forth between gloomy moods and joyful hopes. A great striving, a life of beautiful ideals that struggles uncertainly and anxiously for form and language. Genuinely youthful poems, but which emerge from a serious mood. One thing is striking about these poems that is deeply characteristic of the poet. He is almost completely free from the passing trends of his surroundings. The day with its buzzwords, the prevailing trends of the literary cliques have no influence on him. Even if he does it in a youthful way, he struggles with ideals that are higher than those of his contemporaries. He is not one of those strikers who, with nothing to support them, immediately count themselves a new epoch of intellectual life.

[ 9 ] These were difficult times for the young man before and after completing his university studies. He also worked in the family's shoe factory at the time. Between business activities were the hours in which he wrote his verses, in which he devoted himself to his studies on the origins and development of poetry. Nevertheless, his first volume of poetry was followed a year later by a second, "Funken" (Pierson, Dresden 1890), and in the same year a magnificent work appeared on "Die Anfänge der Poesie, Grundlegung zu einer realistischen Entwickelungsgeschichte der Poesie" (Dresden 1890). Gustav Theodor Fechner's work in the field of aesthetics had made a deep impression on Jacobowski. He saw this thinker's "Vorschule der Ästhetik" as a fundamental work for all future aesthetic studies. In his opinion, Fechner had taken these studies out of the sphere of arbitrary ideas and placed them on the solid ground of reality. The laws of artistic creation should not be derived from speculation, but from the scientific and psychological observation of human nature. In an essay entitled "Primitive Narrative Art", Jacobowski expressed his views in this regard with the following sentences: "Only recently has psychology learned to look around at wild tribes and children. Let us hope that aesthetics and poetics will follow suit. The beginnings have already been made, but there is still much to be done to recognize the aesthetic functions of the child. Let us hope that time will also bring us ripe fruit in this area. Only then will it be possible to clarify the entire germs of poetry, from which the most glorious tree grew in the paradise of the earth ... For a history of the development of poetry it is always of value to follow attentively the products of the childlike soul as well as the study of primitive peoples." Starting from such points of view, Jacobowski wrote a series of essays on the history of the development of poetry. These include: Fairy Tales and Fables of the Basuto Negroes. Supplement to the Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung, ii1. March 1896. Arab folk poetry in North Africa. Supplement to the Vossische Zeitung, March 10, 1895. Stories and songs of the Africans. Magazin für Literatur, 1896, No. 30 and Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung, July 24, 1896, as well as supplement of the Vossische Zeitung, October 1896. Das Weib in der Poesie der Hottentotten. Globus, Vol. 70, 1896, No. ir and f. - When Karl Bücher's "Arbeit und Rhythmus" then appeared, Jacobowski welcomed in this book a beautiful fruit of the standpoint that he himself had made his own in the history of the development of poetry.

[ 10 ] Everything Jacobowski undertook in this field he regarded as preparatory work for a great work on a realistic history of the development of poetry. He was tireless in collecting material for this work. He was intensively occupied with cultural-historical studies, from which the genesis of poetic creation was to emerge before his eyes. In particular, he was thoroughly familiar with the cultural-historical research of the English. He left behind a wealth of notes on the lives of primitive people. In such works he developed an incomparable diligence, and in the processing of the material he was characterized by a comprehensive sense and unerring judgement. The friends he had in the early nineties were of the opinion that his real talent lay in this field and that he would one day achieve great things as a scholar. - He himself pursued these matters with devoted love and perseverance, with the intention of one day attempting a fundamental work on the "History of the Development of Poetry". However, this scholarly activity did not initially form the focus of his work.

[ 11 ] In this center stood his own poetic achievements. It was for their sake that he wanted to live first and foremost. He never doubted for a moment that he was a poet at the core of his being. Whether this core would penetrate through a hard shell, however, may well have often been an anxious question before his soul.

[ 12 ] Jacobowski's soul was moved back and forth between two extremes. A strong, indomitable will was in him alongside a soft, sensitive mind, in which the processes of the outside world with which he came into contact left sharp traces. And it was his vital need, in the noblest sense of the word, to feel the value of his personality. Anything that got in his way in this direction caused him the deepest resentment. Imagine him with such a disposition in the nineties amidst the brutal outbursts of an anti-Semitism that was simply incomprehensible to finer natures. And imagine his idealistic way of thinking at a time when he saw nerdiness, crude struggles for base goods, frivolous play with sacred feelings becoming more and more insolent every day. His first novel "Werther, the Jew", published in 1892 (Pierson, Dresden), tells in powerful words what moods were stirred in him by the sight of such goings-on. He wrote it in the midst of hardship and true anguish.

[ 13 ] Wolff suffers from his father's ethical views and the prejudices directed against the young Jew. His father's money speculation deprives his son's teacher, to whom he is truly devoted, of his fortune. Wolff's passion for the teacher's wife turns the young man into a deceiver of his father's friend. At the same time, this same passion destroys his beautiful bond of love with a child of the people, who seeks redemption in voluntary death from the torment that his affection for the student has brought him. The young man's willpower is not strong enough to show him the way through the contrasts into which life throws him and through the confusion into which his own passions have plunged him. His sense of humanity alienates him from the people to whom the natural ties of life bind him. At the same time, these ties weigh heavily on him. The world pushes him back because of his affiliation with people whose faults he himself deeply detests. - Jacobowski allows the fate of the modern Jew to be reflected in this individual fate. The novel is written with heart_ blood. It contains a psychology whose object of study was his own bleeding soul. One might criticize the novel for being written by a young man who has not found the peace and time for objective observation of the soul, because the experiences of his own soul are still striving too hard to find expression. One might also say that Jacobowski's artistic talent for composition was not yet great at the time. One thing must be conceded: we are dealing with the document of a human soul whose tragic undertones must speak to every heart that is not hardened against the suffering of an idealistic mind. Such a heart is compensated for all the faults of the narrative by the profound truth with which a personality unreservedly expresses one side of his nature. - Anyone who was close to Jacobowski knows this side of his nature. It was the side against which the energy of his will had to fight again and again. One can speak of a highly heightened sensitivity towards everything that was directed against the justified claims of his personality to full respect and recognition from his fellow man. At the same time, he had a rare need to share in everything that was worth living for. His devotion to people, his absorption in the outside world instilled in him a constant fear that he might lose himself. Jacobowski is not Werther. But the fate of Werther is one that Jacobowski had to constantly protect himself against. When he wrote "Werther", the possibility of becoming a Werther was clearly before his eyes. That is why the novel is a confrontation with himself.

[ 14 ] A person who has put as much into a work as Jacobowski did into his "Werther" cannot be indifferent if he encounters a deaf fellow world. There was no sign of any recognition of his undoubtedly honest intention and equally undoubted talent. One can sympathize with the pressure that this lack of success exerted on the young poet. Later, when he spoke of those days, he honestly admitted how he had suffered from this lack of success. He was not one of those immodest natures who never doubted their own talent. Encouraging recognition would have been very valuable to him at this time. One may attribute the fact that his poetic work now briefly took a back seat to a strong preoccupation with political issues to the fact that he lacked such recognition. However, his involvement in political issues was not one that was lost in the interests of the day. He always considered the political in connection with the development of culture. The last decade of the nineteenth century was only too suitable for presenting the most diverse questions to sharp minds with a broad horizon. The repeal of the Socialist Law gave the social movement a powerful outward appearance in its cultural significance. The old parties had disintegrated; their ideas and their momentum were no longer equal to the ever-advancing development. Old, reactionary powers believed that their time had come. Slogans and dark instincts began to exert an effect on the wider masses that had not been thought possible for a long time. One of these dark instincts, the anti-Semitic one, particularly caught Jacobowski's attention. It hurt him deeply in his most personal feelings. Not because he was attached to Judaism with these feelings. That was not the case at all. Rather, Jacobowski belonged to those who had long outgrown Judaism in their inner development. But he was also one of those who tragically had to feel the doubts that were cast on such outgrowth out of blind prejudice.

[ 15 ] However, these blind prejudices were only a partial phenomenon. They were part of a powerful current that was increasingly becoming a sum of reactionary ideas. It was believed that an ideal basis for this current could be created by infusing the prevailing world views with Christian ideas anew. The buzzword "practical Christianity" dominated people's minds. And the idea that the state had to be built on Christian foundations seemed to exert a powerful attraction. - This prompted Jacobowski to examine such views. His extensive "Study" on the "Christian State and its Future" (Berlin 1894, published by Carl Duncker) is a result of these debates. His preoccupation with cultural-historical problems provided a solid basis for the "Study". He carefully examines the influence of the church on the states. He lets history speak its important verdict on the extent to which the Church has intervened in the development of Western humanity. And in order to recognize the moral foundations of the state, he examines the changes in the moral concepts of various peoples. The conclusion he comes to can hardly be doubted by those with insight: "The end of the Christian state is a fact for the insightful parties in Germany, against which its appointed representative, the conservative party, will run up a storm in vain. The compelling logic of history has always been stronger than the limited individual wishes and special interests of political parties. And so it is a fact that the Christian state is crumbling more and more in all European states." In the second part of the "Study", Jacobowski pursues the present-day approaches to new foundations of social order: the national, ethical state, the free Christian community, the free ethical community. He conducts a stimulating investigation into the viability of the various young ideals of the future. - Because of the youth of these ideals, such a debate cannot produce a real result. "No one knows who will replace the "Christian state", no one knows whether this replacement will take place under peaceful conditions." For Jacobowski himself, however, the study was of great importance. Through it, he had gained what he could not have lived without, according to his entire disposition: he had acquired an understanding of the world around him.

[ 16 ] The struggle with the environment is also the problem that he makes the subject of a dramatic work in 1894. He wrote "Diyab, the Fool, Comedy in Three Acts" in a short space of time, from April to June of that year. Just as "Werther" represents one side of Jacobowski's nature, his emotional world, "Diyab" represents his willpower, which repeatedly asserts itself against all currents. The "Werther" is based on the more or less unconscious feeling: I have to defend myself against these manifestations of my nature; in the "Diyab", the feeling may speak in the same way: this is how I have to relate to the outside world if I want to make my way. - The sheikh's son, Diyab, was born of a white mother and is therefore regarded as an outcast. The scorn of the whole neighborhood follows him. He saves himself from this mockery by fleeing into the solitude of his inner self, thereby rising above all the mockery of the world around him. He becomes superior to those who mock him. They know nothing of his innermost self. He hides this from them and plays the fool. They may mock him in this mask. But his own self grows outside in the solitude where the palm trees are. There he lies among the trees of the forest, living only himself and his plans. He cultivates his powers to a strength that will later make him the savior of his tribe. Those who mocked him in the past then shrink back from the power of the enemy, and he, the outcast, overcomes them. The strong-willed man only put on the fool's mask so that he could make his fortune unrecognized by others. Behind the fool's mask matures the personality that takes revenge for the treatment meted out to her and her mother, the personality that conquers the throne of the sheikh and the beloved through boldness and strength.

[ 17 ] "Diyab" is not written with a bleeding heart like "Werther", but with a beating heart. It was written at a time when Jacobowski was just finding himself. An inner security breaks through, which protects him from the kind of disgruntlement that followed the limited external success of his "Werther". - From this time onwards, a new period in Jacobowski's endeavors can be assumed. There is also a change in his lifestyle. He broke away from a friend, a lyricist, who was very successful as soon as he appeared on the scene. Jacobowski undoubtedly owed much to this friendship. The criticism that all his achievements received from this side was a constant incentive for self-discipline. He only ever remembered this childhood friendship with gratitude. But it had to end if Jacobowski wanted to find himself completely. The feeling that he needed spiritual solitude, complete dependence on himself, led to Jacobowski's estrangement from his friend.

[ 18 ] The collection of poems "From Day and Dream" (published by S. Calvary, Berlin 1895) is a kind of conclusion to his first creative period. Jacobowski's three lyrical collections are a faithful reflection of all the struggles of his third decade of life. The striving for simplicity, for a popular art form is a fundamental trait of his poetry. A genuine idealism is expressed in atmospheric images that seek vividness and plasticity. A certain symbolic way of imagining things often pervades. The processes of his own soul are symbolized by events in nature. While in the first poems of his youth the intellectual still predominates, later a full view of reality increasingly comes to the fore. At first, it is the poet's own inner self that preoccupies him:

From the day's pleasure and pain
The universe weaves a lullaby,
That draws into tired human hearts,
Bringing sweet peace,
When the soul never approaches
The divine image of truth
Wrapped in the night.

[ 19 ] Afterwards, our poet struggles to shape the outside world. He makes nature speak. He personifies reality. He holds a dialogue with it. The secrets of nature's workings and his own world of emotions intertwine. Poems such as the delicate "Forest Dreams" in "From Day and Dream" stem from this kind of interaction:

The sun spreads its blessing
Like a golden carpet
. Woodruff perfumes the paths,
And redthorn scatters its blossoms.
Only sunshine and sky blue
Shimmer through the cool canopy of leaves.
The peregrine falcon with a bright cry
Keeps me awake on soft moss.
Now he has fallen silent in the sultriness,
I dream sleepily to myself
And dream that in the fragrant puddle
I myself am stalk and blossom...

[ 20 ] Deeply rooted in Jacobowski's nature was always a firm belief in the harmony of the universe, in a sun in the course of every human destiny. It was probably only this belief at the center of his soul that helped him overcome many a bleak moment in his personal destiny. He suffered greatly from these personal experiences, but there was something in his outlook on life that always worked like light. He would not have been able to appreciate himself as he wanted to if he had not felt the strength within himself to bring light into his darkness. So he steeled this strength and worked on himself incessantly. And this work constantly gives him new hope, lifts him above moods, as expressed in the poignant "Why?" in "Out of Day and Dream":

... When I awoke to the first day of summer,
The dark night was already waiting outside.
I looked up at the golden sunlight,
The gray rain cloud shifted in front of it;
And I stretched out my child's hand, rejoicing
To the rose bush that was all in bloom,
Then thorns warded off my exuberance,
And from joy the red blood ran...

[ 21 ] The melancholy cycle "Martha" in "Aus Tag und Traum" points deep into the poet's soul. It encompasses an elegiac undertone that trembled in Jacobowski's heart until his death. A sudden death in 1891 had snatched his childhood sweetheart away from him. From then on, the memory of her was one of the images he returned to again and again. The departed woman lived on in his heart in the most tender way. She was like a presence to him in hours of sadness and joy. It was a lasting loyalty of a very special kind that he retained for her. When he spoke of her, his voice changed. You had the feeling that he sensed her presence. Then you were not alone with him. That's what made all the poems about his childhood sweetheart so intimate.

[ 22 ] His preoccupation with political issues had earned Jacobowski a position with a newspaper and in an association that kept material worries at bay in the last years of his short life. Those who had dealings with him could only praise his diligence and hard work in this position. When one considers that his occupation in this position took him out of his literary work every day anew, then one cannot marvel enough at the sum of what he nevertheless achieved in the literary field. The number of novellistic sketches he wrote is large, and his activity as a critic was extensive. Characteristic of him is the position he took towards his shorter novellistic works. He wrote a large number of such sketches in the mid-nineties. He saw them as works in which he was developing his style as a narrator. The moment he was ready to take on larger works, working on such sketches lost its appeal for him.

[ 23 ] As a critic, Jacobowski is characterized to an outstanding degree by his ability to completely immerse himself in the achievements of others, to immediately feel the core of a foreign personality from their creations. Anything doctrinaire is far removed from him as a critic. His judgments always stem from a fresh, original feeling. You can see everywhere that he is fully involved in what he is talking about. Ultimately, he does not want to judge at all, but only to understand. His pleasure is not in condemning, but in recognizing. One reads with particular pleasure the remarks in which he justifies his approving judgments with his own warmth. - Anyone who wanted to follow Jacobowski's work as a critic closely would see how this man was intensely involved in the intellectual life of his time, how he drew his circles of interest in all directions.

[ 24 ] A collection of sketches has been found in Jacobowski's estate, which he was preparing to publish in book form in 1898. They were to bear the title: "Stumme Welt. Symbols". The collection is indicative of his way of thinking and his entire inner life at this time. When you read through the sketches, you get the impression that Jacobowski was called to be the poet of the modern naturalistic world view. The new understanding of nature initially seems to have something unpoetic and sober about it. Its penetration into the purely natural processes, its commitment to pure, unadorned reality seems to frighten away the poetic imagination. Jacobowski's "Silent World" proves the opposite. He had completely settled into the scientific confession. He was imbued with the greatness of the view that sprouts from his immersion in the eternal, iron laws of the universe. Darwinism and the doctrine of evolution were dear to his heart. It is true that they tore apart the veil that once enveloped nature. But what emerges from behind this veil is not as devoid of poetry for those who are able to see, as people with a conservative outlook would like to claim. The marvelous laws of matter and forces give birth to poetic images that are in no way inferior in grandeur to the images of earlier imaginary worlds that were transferred from the human soul into nature. Modern man no longer wants to let nature speak in a human way. The whole mythical world of spirits is silent when the ear, educated in naturalism, listens to the phenomena of nature. The eternal cycle of matter and forces seems to be a "silent world". But whoever knows how to make this "silent world" speak can hear completely new, wonderful secrets, mysteries of nature whose harmonious music would be drowned out by the former loud voices of anthropomorphic world views. Jacobowski wanted to depict this music of the "silent world" in his collection of sketches.

[ 25 ] The new view of nature rightly invokes Goethe as the progenitor of its ideas. And for those who delve into Goethe's scientific writings, the phenomena of the world become letters from which they learn to read and understand the plan of the cosmos in a new way. Many people read Goethe far too superficially. Jacobowski was one of the few who sought to gain a proper position vis-à-vis Goethe. He treated everything relating to Goethe with a holy shyness. He knew that one grows if one retains the belief that one can always learn something new from Goethe. He immersed himself in Goethe's view of nature at an early age. But even in the last days of his life he could still be heard saying: now I am beginning to understand Goethe. He realized how Goethe could be a guide when it came to making the "silent world" speak. He then did not have the volume published. New approaches emerged from the basic idea that holds the sketches together. A cosmic poem was to grow out of it. He wanted to allow his spirit to mature in order to imbue the seemingly deified world with new life, to conjure up new mysteries from the cosmic processes. The epic of the mysteriously revealed workings of the eternal forces of nature was to be called "Earth". It is not for the editor of the estate to pass judgment on the germ-like sketches of a comprehensive thought to be published as "Stumme Welt" (2nd volume of the estate). I only considered it my task to communicate the poet's intentions.

[ 26 ] It seems that Jacobowski initially saw his profession as a poet in the development of his imagination in the direction he had taken in the "Silent World". This is probably also the reason why he did not initially regard the field of drama, which he had entered so promisingly in "Diyab", as one in which his individuality could fully come into its own. Certainly, like others, he also thought of ultimately living out his artistic intentions in dramatic forms. But his strict self-criticism demanded restraint from him in every field until the moment when he felt he had reached the highest level in the respective sphere according to his ideals. In 1896, he completed a drama in four acts: "Homecoming". It is set in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War in central Germany. It is intended as a portrait of the times on a grand scale. After completing the work, the poet heard a wide variety of opinions from those he shared it with. These judgments ranged from bright, unreserved enthusiasm to complete disagreement. Jacobowski initially left the drama in his desk. He waited to see what he himself would say about it at a later point in its development. In the months before his death, the work became worthwhile to him again. He would probably have reworked it. As he was no longer able to do so, it must form part of his estate in its original form. One gets to know the poet from it at a certain time in his life. It will have to be judged from this point of view.

[ 27 ] The stories "Anne-Marie, ein Berliner Idyli" (S. Schottländer, Breslau 1896) and "Der kluge Scheikh, ein Sittenbild" (S. Schottländer, Breslau 1897) belong to a transitional stage in Jacobowski's development. They show him in his striving for plasticity, for the vividness of the figures. Reading them, it is as if one senses the resignation he imposed on himself. His larger ideas were already living in his soul at that time. In order to give them shape, in order not to lose himself in their schematic form, he had to give his epic style juice and strength. He did this with more or less unpretentious stories.

[ 28 ] The symbolizing aspect of his art is then clearly revealed in the collection of stories "Satan laughed, and other stories" (Franz Wunder, Berlin 1897). One need only consider the basic idea of the first tale, which gave the collection its name, to realize what the main feature here is. God has taken away the devil's dominion over the earth by creating man. Yet the devil secures his influence by seizing the woman. The demonic powers of sexual life are symbolically outlined in a few characteristic strokes.

[ 29 ] In the year 1899, the poet appeared with a work of art that is entirely based on this symbolizing principle, his "Roman eines Gottes: Loki" (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). It is fair to say that Jacobowski's various inclinations flow together like branches of a great river in the creation of this work. His urge to eavesdrop on the popular imagination and to understand its quiet weaving led him to take the external plot from the figures and events of Germanic mythology. His observation of social life led him to focus on Loki, the "disinherited god", the revolutionary of the world of the gods. The psychology of man, who can only assert himself through the strength of his inner self, through his strong will, and that against adversity from all sides, made the Loki figure particularly appealing to Jacobowski. Werther and Diyab in one person, but more Diyab is Loki. He is this, as Jacobowski himself wanted to be Diyab.

[ 30 ] No real process, even if it were given in idealistic art form, could have expressed what the poet wanted to say. The eternal struggles of the human soul are before his eyes. The struggles that take place in the deepest recesses of the mind. Place and time, all accompanying phenomena are almost indifferent here. The action must be lifted into a higher sphere. May the individual events that life brings to man have this or that tragic or joyful outcome: they all bear the hallmark of an eternal struggle. "God created man in his own image, which presumably means that man created God in his own image." This is a famous statement by Ludwig Feuerbach. One could expand on it and say: if man wants to represent the deepest processes of his inner being, then he must transform the life of his soul into the life of the gods; the primal battles in the depths of his chest are embodied in the battles of the gods. Because Jacobowski wanted to depict such primal battles, his novel became that of a god. These primal battles take place between the two souls that dwell in each breast, between the soul that gives rise to goodness, love, patience, kindness and beauty, and between the other, from which come hatred, enmity and rage. Balder and Loki face each other in incessant war in every human mind. Hamerling expressed the thought that describes what lived in him when he wrote his "Ahasver" as follows: "Overarching, towering, mysteriously spurring and driving, accelerating the crises, standing behind the striving and struggling individuals as the embodiment of the balancing general life, that is how I imagined the figure of Ahasver". Jacobowski often emphasized in his conversations that he thought of his "Loki" as so "overarching", so "towering", so "standing behind the striving and struggling individuals as the embodiment of the balancing general life".

[ 31 ] The poet's intentions are revealed most clearly by a trait in Loki's character. Jacobowski has always assured us in conversation that we can only fully understand him when we know how to interpret this trait in the nature of his hero of the gods. Loki, the god born far from Valhalla, the child of the gods' sin, who grows up in pain and deprivation, who does not know his mother or his father: he has something over all the other gods. Happiness and eternal joy are theirs. He has pain and torment. But he has the gift of wisdom before them. He knows the future of the other gods, which is hidden from them. They live, but they do not care about the driving forces on which their lives depend. They do not know where these driving forces are leading them. It is not happiness that opens the mind's eye, it is not joy that makes you clairvoyant, but pain. That is why Loki sees into the future. But there is one thing Loki does not know. He must hate Balder, the god of love. He does not know the reason for this. For his own fate is locked up in it. This also remains hidden from him. This is the point at which Jacobowski's most secret intentions are revealed. Loki's wisdom ends before the question: why must the knowing Loki hate the ignorant but love-filled Balder? This, however, points to the fate of knowledge. It is the greatest riddle to itself.

[ 32 ] No summary or even a judgment is to be given here about "Loki". Only the poet's intentions are to be told, as he gladly communicated them in conversation about the work he loved so much. He felt that with "Loki" he had made a huge leap forward on his path of development. He had come to believe that the affirmative forces within him would triumph. Clarity about everything negative in human destiny was what he sought above all, and what he had achieved in himself through his "Loki" poetry. Beauty, goodness and love are the perfect things in the world. But perfection needs destructive forces if it is to fulfill its full task. Loki is the eternal destroyer that is necessary for the good elements to renew themselves, the demon of unhappiness that happiness needs, the evil spirit of hatred from which love stands out. The creator who is never allowed to enjoy the fruits of his creations, the hatred that creates the ground for all love: that is Loki. - The person who seeks the truth finds the destructive urges of life at the bottom of his soul. The demonic forces of Loki oppress him. They cloud the bright days of life, the moments of happiness. But one understands, one only feels the shining days in their true power when they stand out from the Loki mood. With such feelings in the background, Jacobowski has brought together his poems from the years 1896 to 1898 under the title "Leuchtende Tage" (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf. 1900). They are imbued with a luminosity that arises from a dark background, but which makes life all the better for it.

[ 33 ] The fact that he was able to appear before the world with "Loki" and the "Shining Days" brought about an inner transformation in Jacobowski. Only now did he have the feeling that he could approve of his own achievements. He now had the confidence in himself that his strict self-criticism was in harmony with his own creations. An inner balance came over him. The future became ever brighter. He had found himself and his belief that "our stars" would redeem him. If you look at the pictures of the poet from the successive stages of his life, you can also see the expression of his inner transformation in his facial features. A sense of security, of harmony, appears more and more. Jacobowski had to fight many a battle with life before he really reconciled himself with it.

[ 34 ] The certainty, the unity of character also stimulated his urge to work. He was a man who only knew himself to be happy in his work. He saved the contemplative, the solitary, reflective contemplation only for life's moments of celebration. He wrote his "Loki" in a few weeks, in 1898, in Tyrol, as he was detached from the contexts in which life placed him. His poems were only written when his inner self lifted him above reality. Within this reality itself, however, he was compelled to contribute to the spiritual life of his time to the best of his ability. His work on "Zeitgenossen", which he published together with Richard Zoozmann in 1891 and which, however, only had a short existence, arose from this urge. He found a field for this urge when he was able to take over "Gesellschaft" in 1897, the journal that had served the spirits longing for a new era of literary life since the mid-1980s. Jacobowski's need for the all-round cultivation of intellectual interests characterized the volumes that appeared under his editorship. He wanted to honestly serve true cultural progress with all the means at his disposal. Nothing was excluded that could contribute to this goal. It is natural that a pronounced individuality, such as Jacobowski was, had to give a magazine edited by him a strongly personal touch. At the same time, however, he was aware of the editor's duty to allow personal inclinations to recede into the background. And above all, he knew the duty to pave the way for young talents to enter the public eye. He had the courage to evaluate what was not yet recognized. In such evaluation and recognition, he was selfless and very confident in his judgment. He was unique in his concession to every legitimate aspiration. As many as sought his advice, his help: all found him helpful. He did an unspeakable amount of work in silence. And he knew how to do everything with nobility. - You got to know him in all the goodness of his nature through small traits.

[ 35 ] One such small trait is recorded here. He was chairman of the "Neue Freie Volksbühne" for a short time. It was during a summer outing of the members of this association. Jacobowski was in charge of the plays that were organized outdoors. It was heart-warming to see how he romped and jumped with the children, how he took part in the race and how he was even the first to reach the finish line, despite the fact that quite good runners were obviously taking part. And how he then found the right way to hand out the small prizes to the children.

[ 36 ] Jacobowski found inner satisfaction in an enterprise that he launched in 1899 with his "New Songs by the Best Recent Poets for the People". In a booklet for ten pfennigs, he offered a selection of the best creations of contemporary poetry. He soon heard evidence of the usefulness of his enterprise from all sides. The little booklet was received everywhere. He was always happy to tell people how lucky he was with it. He carefully collected everything he heard about the effect. He wanted to write a brochure based on his experiences about the interest in true poetry in the widest circles of the people. For in all this he had a great perspective. He wanted to counteract the bad taste, crudeness and wildness of the people. Stupid ragamuffins and silly jokes were to be replaced by true poetry. He repeatedly said: "I have made the attempt. I would have unreservedly confessed to the public that the first step had failed if that had been the case." But he was able to describe this first step as a thoroughly successful one. The continuous booklets he began to publish under the title "Deutsche Dichter in Auswahl fürs Volk" (German Poets in Selection for the People), also at ten pfennigs (in Kitzler's publishing house, Berlin), were to serve the same purpose. Two booklets, "Goethe" and "Heine", were published a long time ago, the third, "Grimms Märchen", was ready when he died and was published a few weeks after his death. He worked tirelessly in every direction to make the ideas expressed in these publications fruitful. He also intended to publish a collection of poems for the army. In an interesting essay that he published in the "Nation", he spoke out about the current type of poetry and songs that are prevalent in military life. In such plans, which served charitable aims in the ideal sense, he possessed an admirable strength and a happy handling.

[ 37 ] In connection with his folkloristic studies and his efforts to promote folk culture is the publication of his collection "Aus deutscher Seele. Ein Buch Volkslieder" in 1899 (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). He wanted to bring to life the folk poetic treasures piled up in numerous books in libraries. He says of these treasures in his foreword: "Their content, because it is insufficiently disseminated, gives way to the flat street songs of the big cities and the miserable sentimentalities of stupid operettas. So it seemed to me that the time had come, as far as the strength of an individual and the understanding of my poetic ability would allow, to publish a collection which, arranged according to aesthetic criteria, would present to the German people anew some of the truly valuable and glorious songs from the jumble and confusion of the accumulated mountain of songs." - Jacobowski was able to describe "Aus deutscher Seele" as "the result of these considerations and the fruit of many years of the most intimate occupation with the wonders of the German folk soul and folk poetry".

[ 38 ] The idea of making important "questions of the present and outstanding phenomena of modern culture" accessible to wider circles in a form they liked came from Jacobowski's plan to publish a collection of small writings - in booklets of 32 to 8o pages - in an informal series. Three such booklets were published in 1900 under the title "Freie Warte, Sammlung moderner Flugschriften" (J.C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). They are: "Haeckel und seine Gegner" (by Dr. Rudolf Steiner), "Sittlichkeit!?!" (by Dr. Matthieu Schwann), "Die Zukunft Englands, eine kulturpolitische Studie" (by Leo Frobenius). These and the titles of the writings that were to appear in the near future show how comprehensively Jacobowski thought of the task he had set himself. The following were also announced: "Das moderne Lied", "Die Erziehung der Jugend zur Freude", "Schiller contra Nietzsche", "Hat das deutsche Volk eine Literatur?", "Der Ursprung der Moral". The pamphlet "Hat das deutsche Volk eine Literatur?" ("Do the German people have a literature?") was written by Jacobowski himself. In it, he wanted to talk about the experiences that led to his Volkshefte and similar endeavors, and also about the results of such undertakings.

[ 39 ] Another link in Jacobowski's efforts to serve his time was the publication of an "Anthology of Romantic Poetry" under the title "The Blue Flower". Together with Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski, he published this collection of Romantic poetry from the end of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century in 1900. The 400-page volume begins with works by Herder and ends with one by the Prince of Schönaich-Carolath. Jacobowski added an essay "On the Psychology of Romantic Poetry" to the "Introduction" compiled by Fr. von Oppeln-Bronikowski. He believed he was doing the best service to the urge of the time to move from naturalism to a kind of neo-romanticism by collecting the pearls of romantic art.

[ 40 ] The qualities of Jacobowski, through which he worked directly from person to person, the stimuli that could emanate from him in this way, came to fruition in a literary society that he had founded with a few friends in the last period of his life. Every Thursday in the "Nollendorf-Kasino" in Kleiststraße, he gathered an artistically and literarily stimulated circle under the name "Die Kommenden". Younger poets had the opportunity to present their creations here, and important questions of art or knowledge were dealt with in lectures and discussions. Artists of all kinds visited the society, which met here informally every week, and Ludwig Jacobowski was constantly striving to come up with new ideas to make the few evening hours they spent here enjoyable for the guests. He had also made plans to compile artistic booklets with the performances from these evenings. The first was in progress when he died. It was completed by his friends after his death and published in his memory with contributions from his estate. The "Kommenden", who still meet every week, faithfully cherish the memory of their founder.

[ 41 ] An external cause led Jacobowski to write a short social drama in one act, "Work", at the end of 1899. Axel Delmar had conceived the plan of dramatically depicting the more important turning points in the development of Germany in a centenary play comprising five one-act plays, to be performed at the "Berliner Theater". Wichert, Ompteda, G. Engel, Lauff and Jacobowski were the five poets. The latter had the task of dramatizing the social thinking and feeling of the present, the most important cultural phenomena at the end of the century. One does the "work" an injustice if one attributes a tendency to it and judges it accordingly. The aim was merely to illustrate how social trends are reflected in different social classes and people.

[ 42 ] In the last months of his life, a painful experience that shook Jacobowski to the depths of his soul found poetic expression in a one-act verse drama entitled "Glück" (Happiness) (J.C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf. 1901). It will only be possible to talk about this experience at a later date. He himself hinted at the mood from which the drama was written in the verses preceding "Zum Eingang":

It was like dying when I lived it!
It was a comfort to me when I wrote it!
Who ever trembled in the same affliction,
Accept it and love it!

[ 43 ] Some of the poems in this estate come from the same mood. "Happiness" in dramatic form has come naturally to the poet from the Syriac poems in which he has set down the moments of a tragic experience. These lyrical poems from the last period, united with all the poetry he has produced since the publication of his "Shining Days", appear here as an estate. With regard to the compilation of the poems, the points of view which the poet himself observed in his "Shining Days" have been retained. The headings of the individual sections of the volume of poems are therefore the same as in the "Shining Days". The sharp character that Jacobowski's soul life has taken on in recent years made this section desirable. A second volume will bring together all the sketches he himself compiled in a booklet entitled "Stumme Welt". He did not allow it to appear independently because he wanted to develop the plan in a larger form later and, under the title "Earth", work up the ideas on which the "Silent World" was based into a cosmic poem in a grand style. He considered it necessary to immerse himself deeply in the natural knowledge of the new age before he could begin his great work. A deep inner conscientiousness and shyness prevented him from tackling this fruitful idea too early. He was not destined to carry out the project, which would probably have revealed what Jacobowski's deepest inner self held. A third volume was to contain the above-mentioned drama "Homecoming". A series of "ideas" that are characteristic of Jacobowski's thinking and personality are added to the second volume as an "appendix". As small as their number is, they clearly show the depth of his outlook on life and his humor, as well as the ease of judgment he had towards certain things. They prove that he was one of those people who knew that not everything must be measured with the same yardstick, but that different things must be measured with different yardsticks.

There are certain things I have to put before you which apparently have not much to do with what we are at present discussing, with our discussions, that is, of the social question. Tomorrow, however, it will appear that this connection does none the less exist. Last time I concluded by showing why children born in recent times, since 1912–13, say, come from their spiritual life before birth with what one might call a certain reluctance to merge themselves into the cultural inheritance they find on earth as a legacy from their immediate forbears or ancestors of the last century. I told you that among the actual experiences possible in the spiritual world a kind of meeting takes place between the souls of those just dead, who are returning to the spiritual world through the gate of death, and those souls preparing to appear again on the earthly stage. Whatever links with the spiritual world men have had before they die act forcibly when they have passed through the gate of death. This is of special significance in our time. In our time if a faint feeling of the link with the spiritual world still lingers, it is an atavistic one. After passing through the gate of death into the world of spirit, man can therefore receive impulses that they can carry on only if they have consciously concerned themselves with conceptions of the spiritual world. Today there already exists a great difference between those who have died having gained ideas of the spiritual world in one way or another in true thought-forms and those personalities who have lived entirely in the conceptions of our materialistic culture. There is a great difference between these souls in the life after death, and this difference is felt particularly strongly by those souls who are setting about their return into incarnation in an earthly life.

Now you know that in the course of recent times, until well into the twentieth century, the materialistic tendencies, materialistic thinking and feeling, on the earth became more and more intensive. Those rising into the spiritual world, through the gate of death have few impulses which, if I may put it so, awaken in those about to descend to earth pleasurable anticipations of their earthly sojourn.

Its culmination was reached in the second decade of the twentieth century. So those children born in the second decade came to earth with a deep spiritual antipathy to the civilization and learning customary on the earth. This stream of impulses that came to earth with those children helped in large measure to call up the inclination on earth to wipe out this old civilization, to sweep away this culture of capitalistic and technical times. And he who is in a position to penetrate the interrelationship between the physical and super-physical worlds in the right way will not misunderstand when I say that the desire for a spiritual civilization in the hearts and souls of our youngest fellow citizens has contributed essentially to the events on the earth in recent years.

You see, my dear friends, that is—if I may put it thus—the bright side of the sad, the terrible events of recent times. It is a bright side in that it shows that the dreadful things caused by the decadence of the materialistic age have been willed by heaven, sent down as messages in the subconscious of recently-born children. It is an expression of soul which in the most recently born children is something quite different from that in children born in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. It is now essential that mankind should direct finer powers of perception to such things. In these days mankind is proud of being practical: where, however, this practical sense should be most active in observation of actual life, people pass lightly over all these things in their seeing, speaking and thinking. The melancholy expression seen in our youngest children, in their countenances, until their fifth or sixth year is little noticed. Should it be noticed, that in itself would awaken an impulse that must cause a powerful social movement to take place.

But one must acquire the sense for the expression, the physiognomy, of human beings in their earliest years; one must indeed develop such a sense, it is quite essential. Much of the sense for these things can be cultivated (however strange that may sound to many today) by allowing oneself to enter into the aims of Eurhythmy, not just superficially seeking sensation, but with one's whole soul. You will soon see why this is so.

Whoever is in a position, through his occult experiences, to communicate with the dead will readily notice that many thoughts (for it is by means of thoughts that one does communicate with the dead) by which one wishes to have a mutual understanding with the dead are not understood by them. Many thoughts that men have here on earth, customary thoughts, sound to the dead (naturally you must take this in the right way, I am speaking of interchange of thought with the dead) as a foreign incomprehensible language. Probing further into this situation, one finds particularly that verbs, prepositions, and above all interjections, are relatively easily understood by the dead—I repeat relatively easily—but nouns hardly at all. These leave a kind of gap in their grasp of the languages used. The dead never understand if one speaks to them chiefly in nouns. It to noticeable that when a noun is turned into a verb they begin to understand. Speak to the dead, for example, of the germ of something; the word germ in most cases will not be understood. It is as though they had heard nothing. Change the noun into a verb and speak of something germinating and the dead will begin to understand.

Wherein lies the cause? You realise that it lies not in the dead but in ourselves, in those, that is, who speak with the dead. And this is because since the middle of the fifteenth century, at any rate for all mid- and west-European languages—and the more is the farther west one goes—the living feeling for the picture expressed by the noun has been so lost that, when nouns are used, they sound nebulous, echoing only in the mind; indeed few people think of anything actual and real when using nouns. When obliged to turn nouns into verbs they are forced by an inner compulsion to think more concretely. To speak of a germ does not generally mean that a concrete conception of the germ of a plant, say a germinating bean, exists as an image in the mind, especially if the talk is abstract. A picture arises of something vague and nebulous, as it might in the case of some principle. When you say “what germinates” or “that which germinates,” because you have used the verbal form you are at least found to think of something growing, that is, something that moves; which means that you go from the abstract to the concrete. Then because you yourself go from the abstract to the concrete the dead begin to understand you. But, for reasons I have often explained here, because the living connection between those alive on the earth and those who have passed through the gate of death, the discarnate souls, must become increasingly closer, because impulses coming from the dead must work more and more effectively into the earth, then will of necessity take gradually into their language, into their speaking into their thinking something written over from the abstract to the concrete. It must again become an aim of mankind to think imaginatively, pictorially, when they speak.

Now I ask you how many people think concretely when, let us say, they read of legal proceedings, where there were judges who judged, pronounced judgment; to have judged, to pass sentence—that is, to exercise the judicial function.¹ Where then is the concrete thinking, or where in the whole world is there any concrete thinking, when the noun. the right or justice is uttered? Just take this very vague abstraction that is in mind when the right, justice, is spoken of, when going to law, the right thing, is expressed in speech. What then is the right really, taken purely from the point of view of language? We have in these days often said that the state should be above all a rights-state—what then is the right considered purely in itself? For most people it remains quite a. shadowy conception, a conception that traffics in the dreariest abstractions. How then is one to arrive at a concrete conception of the right? Let us examine the matter by taking a single case.

You will have heard, my dear friends, certain people called clumsy (literally “left-handed”). What are clumsy people? You see, what we try to do with the left hand when we are not naturally left-handed we usually do awkwardly, not being skilful. at it. When anyone conducts his whole life in the same way as one behaves when doing something with the left hand then he is clumsy. The basis of the description clumsy is the completely concrete conception “he does everything as I myself do when I use my left hand”; no dreary abstraction. but the wholly concrete “he behaves as I do when I use my left hand.” From that arises, apprehended concretely, a contrast in feeling between the left-handed and the right-handed, what is done with the right hand and. what with the left. And what is right-handed (skilful) is contained in the noun “the right”. The right is originally simply what is performed as skillfully for real life as what is done with the right, and not with the left hand.

There you have indeed brought something concrete into the matter. But now picture to yourselves . . . you need only picture it with a clock, but there are numerous other cases in which. one could do something similar as a rule, when you have to regulate a clock, you will not wind with the left hand, but with the right; that is how you regulate a clock. This winding from left to right accomplished with the right hand is the concrete regulating, righting, setting right. One even says “to set right”. There you have the concrete conception of the circular movement from left to right, the putting right. That is to judge, to right. One who has strayed towards the left where he should not be is net right by the judge.

It is by means of such things that one can succeed in linking concrete formative conceptions with the word. You see, such image conceptions were still linked with the words till right into the fifteenth century. But this thinking in imagery has been thrown overboard. We must once more cultivate this making of imaginative conceptions. For the dead understand only what resounds formatively in speech. Everything no longer resounding in imagery—as is generally the case in modern speech—everything that does not produce a picture, which is not formulated in pictures to produce an Imaginative conception in the people concerned is incomprehensible to the dead.

When you consider the matter further you will see that in the transformations into vivid imagery but now is the first to go. Then everything passes into verb form, or at least passes into something that compels one to develop picture conceptions. You see when one cultivates such a style today that picture conceptions underlie it, then as a rule one gets the response that people do not understand this, it is very hard to understand. But he who faces our times honestly will consciously strive to put things in such a form as can be conceived entirely in pictures. In the pamphlet which was published on the social question—where one is forded into abstractions because at present wherever the social question is discussed we get for the most part mere abstractions—in that pamphlet itself I strove as far as possible for a style in which the matter could be presented in picture form. It is especially in the present-day discussions over the social question that the capacity for being abstract is driven to its furthest extent. People have gradually become accustomed to accepting the words as a sort of verbal currency with which they no longer think in any concrete pictures at all. Today, to read a social pamphlet or book you find you must have been for years accustomed to what is meant in order to come to terms with the book at all. The whole meaning of such discussions depends upon the conventional use of words. Who today in speaking of “possessing” deals that the word has a certain connection with “to be possessed”? Yet the genius of speech as I have often remarked is very much more significant than what the single individual can think and speak; it creates innumerable connections that only need to be discovered by the individual for a return into a certain spiritual life. It is just when we tried to find the verb behind every noun and make it a practice not always to speak of light and sound, but to speak of what illumines, of what sounds, and then find ourselves obliged to penetrate more and more into the reality of things in contrast to the non-realities, that then we arrive at a path that can lead to healing.

Even the adjective is much better than the noun. I'm speaking much more concretely when I say “he who is diligent” than when I say “The diligent”. But “the diligent” is indeed much more concrete than what I call up the dreadful specter (for the dead really feel it a dreadful specter), the dreadful specter “diligence”. When you speak of “the how”, “the what”—Goethe once claimed the apt phrase “I ponder the What, I should rather ponder the How” (Das was bedenke, mehr bedenke Wie)—it is for the dead a speech full of life because they themselves need to feel concretely when you use such words as what and how as now. Today when you talk about a principle—“I take a certain standpoint on principle”—you have for the dead called up to specters, first the “principle”, were generally no one now thinks of a principal at something concrete, secondly “standpoint”. Consider this ghost of a “standpoint”. It has generated greatly already in our language and in all West European languages,, so that in speaking of it for the most part, everything significant is left out. Sometimes the compositor even corrects one! When in the manuscript I write “when one sees something from out of a certain standpoint” then the compositor generally cross out the “out”, and one has to insert it again in one's revision; for people have become accustomed to utter the nonsense “When one sees something from a standpoint”. To speak in concrete terms one has to say “to see something from out of a standpoint”, and thereby say something concrete but when one speaks of seeing a thing from a standpoint—for one speaking concretely the only possible conception is that one sees something from a point on which he stands; a little piece of a point! Now, a little piece of a point is surely a bit difficult to think of.

You see, such things are extraordinarily important and significant, for they give an intimation of the relation between the sense world and the world of the spirit. These things give a conception about this relation between the sensible and the supersensible much more than what it is today often so impressively given in abstract words. And as for the methods—my dear friends, just look through the literature of spiritual science which I have tried to put into writing, and test the method there—it is a test which apparently few have carried out; the method always is to explain one thing by another, so that the matters are mutually clarified. And a real understanding of the spirit can be arrived at in no other way than by one thing referring to another. Take for example the one word spirit! Anyone who wants to avoid the materialistic thinks that he must for ever be speaking of spirit, spirit, spirit. Take the word Geist in the German language. In Latin it has a still more concrete character: Spiritus, which is something which for most people does not clearly indicate what they understand by our word geist, and on further consideration it all becomes very abstract because you cannot conceive a Spiritus, can you? That is the fundamental concrete conception. But “Spirit Self” (Geistselbst), “spirit” (Geist), what is that? What is its actual concrete significance? Do not most people imagine the spirit—as I have often complained—as something materially very tenuous, absolutely thin, like a thin mist, and if they want to speak of spirit, they speak of vibrations. At theosophical gatherings, at least at their teas, I have so often heard people speak of “such good vibrations”! I do not know what they mean by these vibrations, in any case they were conjuring a very material process into the room. These worth Geist, Gischt, Geischt, Geschti, and so on, a sort of vapour issuing from some opening: this would be the concrete conception. In our time, however, the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization, one cannot arrive in this way at a concrete idea of Geist, spirit: it is impossible. For you either remain in some shadowy abstraction that you connect with the word “spirit” (Geist) or you are obliged to think of Spiritus, spirits of wine: in thinking of an inspired (begeistert) man you then arrive at a very curious picture. Or else you are obliged to think of something welling up, spurting out of a crevice, a vent hole, and thus arrive at a concrete conception.

Now in the method as carried out here in the anthroposophical prosecution of spiritual Science the attempt is made, by means of many-sided conditions of the conceptions in question, gradually to lead over into the concrete. Just think, if from one side only it is mentioned that the human being is divided into physical body, etheric body, astral body, sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul, spirit self . . . and here “spirit” comes in—spirit-self, life spirit, spirit man. It can only take effect with full consciousness, for most people who hear the matter can come to no concrete conception of it at all. But then it soon follows that the people will be told—“Look at the course of human life: from birth to the seventh year, to the change of teeth, the physical body comes principally into activity, then till the fourteenth year the etheric body, then the sentient-body, then from the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth year the sentient soul, then in the thirties the intellectual soul,” and so on. With that people are told: “Observe the concrete man from the outside developing through the course of his life and the differences that appear. If at the beginning of his twenties you look at a man with his special characteristics, these characteristics will be symptoms for what you pictured when the expression “sentient soul” is employed. If you look at a child with his characteristic of doing everything that his elders do, of doing everything through his physical body, then in the way the child behaves you will get an idea of what one understands by “physical body.” And if you look at an old man with his gray hair and wrinkled countenance, with the flesh noticeably withering and observe him in his movements, the way he acts, you no longer see as in the child, how whatever is in him is acting chiefly through the sheaths, instead you see in the old man, indeed, what is beginning to free itself from the physical body. Observing the old man, you will gradually get an idea of the spirit from his gestures, his way of behavior. Comparing an old man with a child and comparing the gestures of the old with those imitated by the young, there is awakened in your soul a feeling of the difference between spirit and matter. Think how in that way the pictorial power in imaginative ideas is helped, my dear friends. It is an indication that one should. think concretely of the course of human life, and then gain an experience of filling your onetime abstract words with concrete content.

Again we try in every way possible to show how, for example, mankind itself has become younger and younger—how we are now twenty-seven years old, that is—we have in our civilization arrived as mankind at our twenty-seventh. year. When you compare what you can know of early civilisation-periods with what you hope of later periods that will again support imaginative thinking. Through forming conceptions by way of comparing and relating them you progress from the abstract to the concrete, and strive to prevent the abstract from having any longer a value in itself, but to lead over to the concrete, to discover the genius of speech.

In this the school must come to the help of what is a great task of civilization. In the school this creation of concrete ideas should be made a practice so that in speaking one begins to feel oneself into the speech, to feel oneself in the world in speaking. Take as an example that I have written something on the black-board. Someone says “I do not understand it”. . . Think of the confused abstractions you sometimes have in mind when you say “I do not understand”. They would become concrete if you would picture to yourself that you want to grasp it, take it in, comprehend it. But you do not grasp it, you remain aloof—you do not get into touch with the matter. But you must think with your very hands. Try with the most important words. What will you be doing? You will in fact be doing eurhythmy in spirit! When indeed you speak concretely you do eurhythmy in spirit. You cannot do anything else than eurhythmy in spirit. He who is actively alive in sea things finds most men of today—if you will allow me to say so—sluggards, men who go round with their hands in their pockets and then want to talk without any feeling. For, spiritually considered, abstract thinking is putting the feet together and the hands in the pockets, and withdrawing everything as far into oneself as possible. This is how the man of today speaks. To leave out the concrete from one's thinking is just to be slovenly. But most men are that today. People must become more mobile inwardly, that is, they must feel with the world. Even those who do this often do so unconsciously. One knows people who place their finger on their nose when considering anything. They are quite unconscious of the fact that this is an actual concrete eurhythmic expression of the strong feeling of self when deciding on something. People today do not even consider why they have a left and a right hand, or two eyes. And in learned books the most foolish things—which explain nothing—are said of the seeing with two eyes. If we did not possess two hands so that we can grip one with the other we would not be able to have any clear idea of our own self, our “I”. It is only because we can grasp the one hand with the other, the like with like, that the conception “I” is attainable in the right way. And just as we can cross the left hand with the right, as we experience ourselves, and are astonished at this experience, at experiencing ourselves, we also cross the axis of sight in our eyes, although this crossing is not so visible as that of the hands. And we have two eyes which we can cross for the same reason as we have two arms and two heads.

If we wish to keep in sight the deeper essentials of human development from the present into the future we must bear in mind the necessity of taking up into our speech what the speech of today lacks. Because of its lack man is shut off from the whole world in which he is between death and a new birth. Hence we are exhorted, when we would establish a connection with a dead person, not simply to speak with him in verbal conceptions, for that achieves little, but to think of some concrete situation—you have stood near him in some particular way, have heard his voice, have shared an experience—to think quite concretely of the situation and everything that happened in relation to it that makes a connection with the dead. Today man uses language in a sense which shuts him off completely from the world of the dead; the genius of speech has died to a greet extent, and must be reanimated. Much that is customary today in the use of language should be dropped. A very great deal depends upon this, my dear friends. For it is only by actually trying to listen to the genius of speech lying behind the concrete words that we shell come back to imaginative conception (which I have already mentioned here as essential for future evolution). Then we shall gradually free ourselves altogether from distorted abstractions.

Something else is involved in this. A man feels an enormous satisfaction today in thinking in abstractions, free from the reality that the senses bring him. But he simply comes thereby into gaps in his conceptions; at least they are gaps for the dead. Today when people repeat spirit, spirit, spirit, the words are just so many blanks for nothing concrete is called forth. Most present-day thoughts are abstractions. The farther east one goes, say Europeans the more pictorial speech becomes. And that is just the reason why speech is more nearly related to spiritual things the farther east one goes; because it is more in the form of pictures. Speaking in abstractions should not lead away at all from the concrete sense-conception, but should simply illuminate it. Just think how many of you, my dear friends, thought concretely of the sentence I have just spoken: the sense-conception that have reality should be illumined by the abstractions? You may imagine the concrete sense-conception as a darkness which is illumined by the abstraction. So when we utter the sentence “into our concrete conceptions abstractions enter to illumine them” we think of rays of light falling into a dark room which is blue-black except where the yellow rays stream in. So when I state “into our concrete sense-conceptions the abstractions send their light” I have in mind a dark room into which fall bright rays of light. For how many people is it the case today that they really have such a picture in mind? They say aloud the word illumine without having any of the actual concrete conception in what you would call a spiritual sense. But the important thing is that when we pass over into abstraction, we do not only have a different picture of the concrete, of the physical, that we experience the change in conception. We can make this experience our own on watching eurhythmy; for then through another, less over-worked, medium, through the medium of gesture, what lies within the words comes to expression. And men can find their way back to imagery in ideas.

Few men are conscious that a hand outstretched is an actual “I”, for they do not know that in uttering “I” and connecting it with a concrete conception that they are extending a part of their etheric body. But gradually they realise that they are extending something of their etheric body in uttering “I” by watching the same movement in eurhythmy. It is no arbitrary matter that is introduced here, but actually something connected very strongly, very powerfully with the development of our civilization.

It is important to grasp this. Our period now is the fifth post-Atlantean, that is one, then we have the sixth and seventh ahead of us leading to a great break in human development. During this fifth post-Atlantean period speech must again recover its concrete character, and conceptions become pictures again. Only in this way can we fulfil the task of this fifth post-Atlantean period. Now speech will return less and lees to picture-conceptions the more the state gains control of the spiritual life. The more schools, and spiritual activities have come under state control in the last centuries the more abstract has all life become. Only the spiritual life based on itself will be able to call up this necessary symbolization of man's spiritual being which must be evoked. In the course of the fifth post-Atlantean period things will appear which will act most disturbingly on the spiritual strivings. During this period everyone will only rightly experience himself who can imagine himself in the following situation: “You are in the world, you must be conscious that on the one side you are constantly approaching luciferic beings, and on the other ahrimanic.” This living feeling of standing an man within this trinity must impress itself more and more on mankind in this fifth post-Atlantean period, thereby overcoming the great dangers of the period. The most varied human characters will appear in this fifth post-Atlantean period: idealists will be present, and materialists. But the danger for the idealists will always be that of entering luciferic regions in their conceptions, of becoming fanatics, visionaries, passionate enthusiasts, Lenins, Trotskys, without ground, real actual ground, under their feet, with their wills they can easily become ahrimanic, despotic, tyrannical. What real difference is there between a Czar and a Lenin? In their idea materialists easily become luciferic, prosaic, pedantic, dry, bourgeois; and in their wills become luciferic: greedy, animal, nervous, sensitive, hysterical. I will write this up on the boards:

Idealists: Ideas can easily become luciferic: fanatical, visionary, passionately enthusiastic. Wills can easily become ahrimanic: despotic, tyrannical.

Materialists: Ideas can easily become ahrimanic, prosaic, pedantic, bourgeois. Wills can easily become luciferic: animal, greedy, nervous, hysterical,

You see, idealists and materialists are exposed to similar dangers from different sides in this fifth post-Atlantean period—the idealists to both the luciferic and the ahrimanic: only from the side of ideas to the luciferic, from the side of will to the ahrimanic while materialists are exposed to the ahrimanic more, in their ideas., and to the luciferic more in their wills, The various characters that arise will have this in very different degrees. That is where the difficulty of bringing mankind forward will lie: for all that will be a source of error. Whether he be idealist or materialist, man will never be able to progress aright unless he has the good will to penetrate into material reality in full understanding, and on the other hand also letting the spirit enlighten him in the right way, that is, when he is not one-sided. One should not become one-sided where the most concrete outlooks on life are concerned, in particular not there.

Whoever likes only children faces the danger that very strong ahrimanic influences affect him; whoever prefers the old is in danger of being affected by the strongest luciferic influences, Many-sided interests will be essential for men if they wish to help civilization to evolve fruitfully towards the future. That is the foremost task of this fifth post-Atlantean period.

But these three consecutive periods will encroach upon each other considerably. What comes two expression in the sixth, and even what the seventh expresses, must already be unfolding in the fifth. There will not be so much differentiation in the future as there has been in the past. In the sixth period it will above all be necessary for men to cause the ahrimanic to be fettered, that is to come to terms with reality. How does one come to term with reality? For this it is essential in the first place that the life of rights that has separated from the cultural and economic spheres, that this life of rights in which men must live together democratically must now become as conscious in a higher way as it was unconscious in the Egypto-Chaldaic period. In everything that goes on between man and man, men must learn to experience significant processes on a higher level. Such ideas must become as living as they are presented in my last mystery play, in the Egyptian scene, where Capesius says that what takes place there in little has significance for the whole of world events. When men once more realise that no one can lie without a mighty uproar being made in the spiritual world, then things will be fulfilled as they must be in the sixth post-Atlantean period. And when we arrive once more at the possibility of a wise paganism alongside Christianity then what must come to pass in the seventh period, but is even now particularly essential, will be realised. Humanity has lost its relationship to nature. The gestures of nature no longer speak to man. How many can have any clear idea today when one says: in summer the earth is asleep, in winter awake? It seems a mere abstraction. But it is no abstraction. Such a relation to the whole of nature must be gained so that man can feel once more his identity with all nature.

These are matters that are essential for the inner life of the soul. Of how it is connected with all that we call social impulse we shall speak further tomorrow.

• 1. Translator's note: The argument here is based on the customary use of the german words richten, Richter, das Recht, and rechten, meaning “to judge”, “a judge”, “the right” or “justice”, and “to go to law”, and the root from which they all sprint.

Dear fellow students, esteemed audience! I would very much like to stick to the topic, and since we will be talking about threefolding afterwards, I would ask that any questions relating to threefolding be deferred to later. But I do believe that it is justified to say a few words about the threefold order here, because Dr. Unger himself, in his discussions, took the threefold order as the basis for his views on the creation of technology as a free art.

In a certain sense, it cannot be maintained – I also expressed this in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, and Dr. Unger probably meant it that way – that the idea of threefolding as such, that is, the threefolding of the social organism as an idea, as a concept, is a kind of new discovery in the strict sense of the word. Rather, there may be a kind of new discovery in the social laws to which I referred in the essays of 1905. The threefold social order is actually an old idea and has been mentioned many times before in this form. The essential thing about the way in which the threefold social order is presented here and how it appears in the present is not its actual character as an idea but the position it seeks to occupy in relation to the whole social organism. The idea of structuring the life of humanity as a whole into a spiritual part, a state-legal part and an economic part has had to come up again and again. And if, here and there, someone were to claim that this is something completely new as an idea, I believe that, as I am well aware, there are bound to be claims of primacy. That is why I pointed out in the “key points” that the way the idea of threefolding appears here is something quite different.

The idea of threefolding, as it is advocated by me, for example, is the result of decades of observation of the needs of contemporary humanity. If you look at the situation with open eyes in the present day, you had to recognize as early as the end of the 19th century that things were heading for a catastrophe. And in the spring of 1914, in a series of lectures that I gave in Vienna to a small circle (a larger one would probably have laughed at me at the time because of my remarks), I pointed out that in the near future the conditions of the civilized world (I did not just say “European conditions” at the time) were heading towards a decisive catastrophe. You see, that was at a time when disaster was already very close. Nevertheless, in the following weeks, people in positions of responsibility for the course of events spoke in the following way. A statesman with responsibility, to call outstanding - of course only in the sense of what our time so often calls “outstanding” - said, when it came to discussing the general world situation in a parliament: the relations between Central Europe and Russia were in the most favorable way imaginable; one could be convinced that peace would be consolidated more and more. He could see this from the friendly neighborly relations that existed, for example, between St. Petersburg and Berlin. — So it was in May 1914, spoken of by those in positions of responsibility, after it had been necessary, as it was by me, to point out with all energy beforehand that the circumstances were pushing towards a catastrophe, and simply because the three elements of human coexistence, the spiritual, the legal and the economic, had interacted in such a way in all of social life that the catastrophe in its depths can actually only be seen in the confusion of these three areas. One could see, especially if one had an eye for it, how the increasing intellectualism of modern times affected our entire public life, how the complete devotion of people to the intellectual element, as had developed in the usual scientific mind-set, which has permeated everything else as well – one could see how this devotion to the intellectual prepared everything for the catastrophe in a certain sense. That is where the deeper reasons lie, and anyone who does not yet see them there today cannot meaningfully participate in a discussion about constructive forces.

You see, back then you could experience something like this – I'm not saying this out of immodesty, but because it seems symptomatically significant to me as my own experience – in the summer of 1914, I gave a German lecture in Paris about the things I usually talk about and, for example, also talked about yesterday. This lecture was not given for a German colony there, but was translated word for word, so it was explicitly given for the French, not for German colonists living in Paris – they were not there either. So in May 1914, with what had flowed from German spiritual life in the strictest sense — for basically it is the case that everything that is asserted here as anthroposophy has flowed from German spiritual life — one could somehow make a certain impression with it all over the world. We were at that stage in the spiritual realm. But what worked against this was, again, the economic realm. And one only has to look through it carefully to see how this disharmonious working of the spiritual life with the economic life was the primal phenomenon of all the phenomena that were preparing in the 1880s and had reached their peak at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Of course, countless forces and currents converge there, so that it is impossible to summarize everything in a few words.

But if one wants to emphasize an important phenomenon, a fundamental phenomenon, it could be done in the way I once did in a lecture in Nuremberg in 1908. At the time, I pointed out how characteristic it is of modern social life that the personal has actually been increasingly eliminated, especially in what is called capitalism, in capitalism in general – without wanting to belittle capital in the economy , of course, you cannot conduct modern economic life without capital investments, that is, without capitalism. And the way that capitalism is often talked about today is nothing more than the purest layman or dilettante behavior. What it is about is that the capitalist essence, basically since the beginning of the 20th century, let's say – it was already prepared earlier – has become more and more impersonal and impersonal. I like to tell an anecdote here; anecdotes are sometimes indicative of what happened. When international economic life was still more dependent on personality, it once happened that the finance minister of the King of France also had to come to Rothschild in Paris because the king, for reasons you can easily imagine, had to turn to the banker. He came just at the time when Rothschild was dealing with a leather merchant. Now, capitalism leads to a certain instinctive socialism; one must realize that. Rothschild, who was very powerful and who asserted the personal element in everything he administered in a capitalist way, not the impersonal capitalist – Rothschild was therefore dealing with a leather merchant. The servant entered and announced the finance minister of the king. He should wait until I am finished, said Rothschild. The servant could not really understand this and the one who was waiting outside could not understand it at all. He thought there must be a misunderstanding. “Please say,” he sent the servant again, “the minister of the king of France is here.” Rothschild had him say again that yes, he would just have to wait. The minister did not understand this at all, he tore open the door and was inside. He said: I am the Minister of Finance of the King of France. - Fine, said Rothschild, I still have work to do, please take a chair and sit down. - Yes, but I am the Minister of the King of France! - Please take two chairs, - said Rothschild.

I tell this story so that you can see from this anecdote, too, that under capitalism something was indeed at work that lay in personal will and personal emotions. This personal element ceased to exist. What I have said is, of course, not a line of argument, just an illustration. The argument would have to be developed in a whole series of lectures. But just at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, this personal element took a turn towards the purely factual. I would like to say: forces came into play through which the capital masses moved as if by themselves. Share capital came to the fore, as opposed to individual capital, and society took the place of the influence of the individual personality. This introduced an impersonal element, so that in modern economic life man was gradually harnessed as if into an impersonal element. And in place of personal initiative came what might be called routine. It was no longer possible to develop anything other than routine in economic life. Those who study economic history will find how these things are rooted in the development of modern economic life, and how they are the things that pushed towards the terrible world catastrophe. That was now there, and so one could believe, especially at that time, that the right time had come when people could understand from their practical lives that the interaction of these three areas must be sought in an appropriate way. And that is the essential thing about the threefold social organism: not the idea as such, but the way in which, in every detail, things are thought out of the concrete, out of direct life practice. There is something thoroughly anti-utopian in this impulse of threefolding, as it appears here, something that rejects every kind of utopia, that only wants to work out of the practical side of life.

This is what is so rarely seen and what is often not given due consideration, even by adherents of the so-called threefolding idea. It happens very often that the threefold order is discussed, even by its adherents, as if it were a utopia, as if it had not emerged from what all people actually want in their fields. One need only summarize the individual wills. Most of the time people are not consciously aware of what they want, but they do want it. The subconscious plays a much greater role in social life than one might think. That is why people have repeatedly said to me: Yes, what is written in the “Key Points”, which after all underlie the impulse for threefolding that is emerging today, that is what this or that society in this or that field also wants. Another came with a different area of specialization. “That is nothing new,” they said. — ‘All the better,’ I said. ”The less something is new, the better. The more it is rooted in what people already want, the better.” What matters is that a certain understanding should arise among the individual specialized fields. And here I do believe that Dr. Unger's lecture today could be of extraordinary importance because it was inspired by the thought that ultimately what the technician wants in his field cannot be solved as a special question without turning one's gaze to the whole of social life. It is therefore of little significance when people say that the specialized ideas have already been expressed or have appeared here or there in echoes, or when they say that everything has already occurred before. Let us assume the most extreme hypothesis. Let us assume that Dr. Unger had not said anything new, but that his ideas had been expressed for decades by the most diverse technical branches and societies for my sake. But I believe that one thing must be agreed, even if this hypothesis were correct: they have not been implemented, these ideas – surely no one will claim that. Some may claim that they have been nurtured, but no one can claim that they have been implemented. Today they are questions as they were decades ago. And that is because they were treated in a specialized way, so that the technician limited himself to his circle and dealt with all special technical questions from this point of view. But things cannot be solved that way today. We not only have a world economy, we also have a world consciousness, something that encompasses the whole world and that can only be dealt with as a world issue in the economic and technical fields. The reason why a solution could not be found is that the technician was, to a certain extent, isolated. The technician was even painfully aware of this isolation because, as a modern technician, he is the most modern aspect of the personality in modern life. It can be said of the most diverse other aspects of modern life: they have their roots here and there. The modern technician is what he has become through modern technology. He represents a class in the entire social order, and his particular profession gives rise to a social context that is itself a social issue. However, this can only be treated in the context of social life as a whole. Therefore, what Dr. Unger formulated with the words “Technology as a free art” will remain a utopia as long as the connection between the special wishes and ideas of technicians and universal social ideas is not found. The technician most of all needs to acquire a universal view of social needs, and this is because he has placed himself in modern life as something new. The farmer also needs this social perspective, inasmuch as agriculture itself is being spun by technology. But as a farmer, he is ancient. But the essence of the social question must emerge most significantly from that which has emerged as something completely new in modern social development. And that is perhaps what needs to be emphasized. I do not want to go into specific questions of threefolding, which arise when one is speaking about specific questions of the technicians. The essential point is that the questions of the technicians are treated as a chapter of the great general social questions. It is not a matter of assuming, for instance, that the anthroposophical side simply wants to draw the question of the technicians into the threefolding movement from the outside. The threefolding movement would be a mere slogan if that were the intention. But slogans are not at issue here. The point is that the movement, which could also call itself something else, aims to bring the three aspects of social life into the right relationship with one another. This is in contrast to intellectualism, which seeks to throw everything into one pot , even if it then takes out of that pot, for example, the Fourteen Points, which, insofar as they were Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, truly leave nothing to be desired in terms of their intellectualism. The idea of threefold social order was first expressed by me, just when, at a terribly serious moment, the solution of the questions was once again sought not from the practice of life, but from minds, from intellectualism, with Wilson's fourteen points. Particularly abroad, one could see how these fourteen points, when they arose, addressed something pathological in humanity, and it was highly regrettable that at the most serious moment in the recent development of German history, in the fall of 1918, 1918, Central Europe even agreed to these Fourteen Points and could not see how, at the present moment, we are compelled to engage directly in practical life without any vague theories and to study things from that basis. The Fourteen Points were a utopia; further development has shown that. Humanity will have to convince itself that nothing can be achieved with such utopias, but that something can only be achieved if one engages realistically with what is there; if one is able to think out of what exists not only logically — that is easy today — but realistically.

Anthroposophy strives for this kind of thinking, which can only be grasped when, when we speak of the spirit, we do not do as that farmer did when he was shown a magnet: “Oh, nonsense, that's a horseshoe, I'll use it to shoe my horse.” That is more or less how someone who denies the spirit of this reality behaves. And there is no way around it: if someone wants to think in a realistic way, they must also address the spiritual. That is why anthroposophy is a spiritual science. And what it has in common with the deepest, most significant demands of our time is that it wants to be realistic, that it wants to be practical when it comes to practical matters, especially in the economic and technical spheres. And although everyone has or believes they have this or that different opinion – for example, that anthroposophy does not deal enough with God, which is a completely unfounded opinion, or that for some people it deals far too much with God, who are opponents from this point of view, and the same applies to the other things mentioned here, they are said from different points of view again — but everyone, even if they have different views on one or the other, if they are serious about realistically shaping our social conditions in some specialized area based on the universal thinking of the whole, will then also find points of contact with what asserts itself as the anthroposophical movement. For it does not want to be fanciful, but human. And it will be happy to join forces with anyone who understands the human element.