The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] About half a century ago, materialism flourished as a world view in Europe. Human beings were to be recognized down to the depths of their souls according to the same laws that had been established for natural events. Ideas such as Goethe's were probably also invoked: "According to eternal, iron laws, we must complete all the circles of our existence." However, it was not noticed how the laws that Goethe wanted scientific knowledge to be based on brought him into the fiercest battle with the natural science that prevailed at the time. He strove for a natural science which, if developed consistently, could lead to an understanding of the human being as a spiritual-soul being. However, it was not his scientific approach that the materialists had in mind, but essentially that of his opponents. It was the mindless view of nature, which can never lead to a grasp of the human being.

[ 2 ] From this mindless view, some consistent personalities also spoke out about the moral nature of man. Half a century ago one could hear quite strange judgments in this direction. In the correspondence of one such consistent thinker with a materialist scholar, for example, we find the view that the criminal acts according to the laws of nature as well as the so-called moral laws. And that anyone who is naturally predisposed to be a liar, murderer and so on can only become a self-contained, perfect character if he lives out his lying, murderous disposition. Such thoughts were not uncommon at that time of materialistic theories.

[ 3 ] These moral and social consequences of the materialistic way of thinking were not viewed with the necessary seriousness by many. They were seen as quirks. They are not. Rather, they are proof of the fact that the scientific way of thinking that developed in the last third of the nineteenth century cannot produce moral-social ideas. It was therefore under the influence of these ideas that an age arose which substituted completely meaningless moral-social phrases for ethical-social ideas. With these moral-social phrases, civilized mankind lived into the twentieth century.

[ 4 ] A certain branch of science is trying to deceive itself and its followers about this fact. From this side one can hear: Nineteenth-century materialism is scientifically dead. But it is not dead. The difference between those who talk like this today and the materialists of the nineteenth century consists merely in the fact that the latter had the full courage to confess their materialism; but those of today who reject it think just like them; only they imagine that their mindless explanations of nature are not materialism. The dangerous consistency has been replaced by the much more dangerous inconsistent half-measure. Our public life is characterized by this half-measure. There are no moral-social impulses in the thoughts that are considered capable of founding a world view. Attempts have been made to construct a social world view from natural science. This was possible as long as people habitually lived in accordance with the old socio-ethical traditions and their thoughts had no influence on the development of public life.

[ 5 ] The catastrophe of war has already cleared up this situation; with every month it clears up more and more of what has happened since this catastrophe. The people in whom the old traditions have died are gaining more and more influence. Only ideas that are unfruitful for a socio-ethical world view live in them.

[ 6 ] An unbiased look at the public life of the entire civilized world reveals this fact. It must first come to the consciousness of a sufficiently large number of people before a possibility of reconstruction of the destroyed social conditions can occur. This improvement depends on the world view alone.

[ 7 ] Whoever today still insists on the view that worldview is something that abstract thinkers may make up, that it has nothing to do in practice, is collaborating in the destruction, no matter how strongly he may believe that he is working for a social reconstruction. It is necessary today, even for the smallest economic institution, that those who play a leading role in it should be able to think about how this institution fits into the overall process of human development. Such thoughts can never arise in an honest, sincere way in those who more or less consciously orient their thinking towards the materialistic direction of the new age. For the most part, he does not even notice how this materialistic thinking works into the impulses of his social activity.

[ 8 ] It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that the facts of public life today must be seen precisely in this light. Only those who see them in this way are thinking in the direction of recovery. It must seem natural to them not to compromise with that which has led to the destruction of social life out of the materialistic way of thinking. Many find it difficult to think in this way because they believe that If one should wait until the improvement comes from the way of thinking, one will have to wait a long time. Those who think this way must be told that their thinking is among the worst. For it is important that through such fatalistic thinking we do not first put on the shackles that cause us to "have to wait a long time". Anyone who says to himself: I will bring about social transformation right down to my way of thinking, shortens the waiting time that makes him so alarming.

[ 9 ] That is why it must be emphasized again and again: It depends today on that inner courage which can summon itself to see in the path to a new spirit a true practice of life and in the deviation from this path the causes of our decline. Those who can judge in this way are alone the men of the future; the others are the reactionaries, however Marxist-radical they may be. But judgment must be ready to become action, energetic life practice. - The "practitioners" will ask: "Can one go to Spa with such views?" Oh yes, one could go; one could wait and see what would happen if one went with them; but one will certainly come back with unfruitful results if one goes there with the old thoughts. One should have a judgment today that these old thoughts in Spa will lead to nothing other than what they have led to for decades.

[ 1 ] Those who prepare for the profession of teacher in today's educational institutions take many good principles about education and the art of teaching with them into their lives. And the good will to apply these principles is undoubtedly present in many of those to whom this task falls. Nevertheless, there is a widespread lack of satisfaction in this area of life. New or seemingly new objectives are constantly appearing; and institutions are being founded which are supposed to take better account of the demands of human nature and social life than those which have emerged from the general civilization of modern mankind. It would be unwise not to recognize that for more than a century the science of education and teaching has had the noblest personalities, borne by high idealism, as its nurturers. What has been incorporated into history by them represents a rich treasure of pedagogical wisdom and inspiring instructions for the educator's will, which the prospective teacher can absorb.

[ 2 ] It can hardly be denied that for every deficiency that can be found in the field of education and teaching, leading ideas can be found in the leading great educators of the past, which could be remedied by following them. The dissatisfaction cannot lie in the lack of a carefully cultivated educational science; nor can it be due to a lack of good will on the part of those who are active in educating and teaching. But it is not unjustified. The experiences of life prove this to every unbiased person.

[ 3 ] Those involved in the founding of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart were imbued with such sentiments. Emil Molt, the founder of this school, and the writer of this article, who was allowed to give direction to the type of education and teaching, and who may continue to participate in the continuation of this direction: they want to solve a pedagogical and a social task with this school.

[ 4 ] In the attempt to solve the pedagogical task, it is important to recognize the reason why the good educational principles that exist do not lead to satisfactory results to such a large extent. - It is generally recognized, for example, that the developing individuality of the child must be observed in order to obtain the guiding ideas in teaching and education. This point of view is put forward as a correct one in all keys.

[ 5 ] But today there are major obstacles to adopting this point of view. In order to come into its own in true practice, it requires a knowledge of the soul that truly unlocks the essence of man. The world view that dominates contemporary spiritual education does not lead to this. This world view only believes that it has a secure foundation if it can establish universally valid laws. Laws that can be expressed in fixed terms and then applied to individual cases. One becomes accustomed to striving for such laws when one acquires one's professional training in the educational institutions of the present. Those trained for the profession of educator are also accustomed to thinking in terms of such laws. But the human soul being resists cognition if one wants to grasp it through such laws. Only nature yields to these laws. If one wants to see through the essence of the soul, one must penetrate the lawful with artistic creative power in cognition. The cognizer must become an artistic observer if he wants to grasp the soul. It has been lectured that such cognition is not true cognition, for it involves personal experience in the apprehension of things. No matter how many logical prejudices such lecturing may have in its favor, it has the fact against it that without the participation of the inner personal, the creative grasping, the spiritual cannot be recognized. We shy away from this involvement because we believe that it necessarily leads us into the personal arbitrariness of judgment. Certainly, one enters into this arbitrariness if one does not acquire inner objectivity through careful self-education.

[ 6 ] This, however, indicates the path taken by those who accept a true knowledge of the spirit in addition to the knowledge of nature that is justified in its field. And it is up to this to unlock the essence of the soul. It must support a genuine art of education and teaching. For it leads to a knowledge of man that has such moving, living ideas in it that the educator can translate them into a practical view of the child's individuality. And only those who are able to do this can give practical meaning to the demand to educate and teach according to the individuality of the child.

[ 7 ] In our time, with its intellectualism and love of abstraction, people will try to refute what has been said here with objections such as: it is self-evident that general ideas about the nature of man, which have also been gained from contemporary education, should be individualized for the individual case.

[ 8 ] However, in order to individualize correctly, so as to be able to lead the particular individuality of the child educationally, it is necessary to have acquired in a particular spiritual knowledge an eye for that which cannot be brought under a general law as an individual case, but whose law must first be grasped by looking at this case. The knowledge of the spirit meant here does not, following the example of the knowledge of nature, lead to the conception of general ideas in order to apply them to individual cases, but it educates man to a constitution of soul which experiences the individual case in its independence. - This spiritual science follows how the human being develops in childhood and adolescence. It shows how the child's nature from birth to the change of teeth is such that it develops from the instinct of imitation. What the child sees, hears etc. arouses in him the instinct to do the same. How this drive develops is investigated in detail by spiritual science. For this investigation, methods are needed which, at every point, lead the child from merely thinking in terms of laws to artistic contemplation. For what stimulates the child to imitate and the way in which it imitates can only be observed in this way. - In the period of the change of teeth a complete change takes place in the child's experience. The urge arises to do or think what another person, who is perceived by the child as an authority, does or thinks if he or she describes this action or thought as correct. Before this age, imitation takes place in order to make one's own being an imitation of the environment; on entering this age, imitation is not mere, but the foreign being is taken into one's own being with a certain degree of awareness. However, the instinct to imitate remains alongside the other instinct to follow authority until around the age of nine. If one proceeds from the manifestations of these two main instincts for the two successive childhood ages, the gaze falls on other revelations of the child's nature. One gets to know the living-plastic development of human childhood.

[ 9 ] Whoever makes his observations in this field from the mode of conception which is the correct one for natural things, indeed also for man as a natural being, will fail to grasp what is actually significant. However, those who adopt the appropriate mode of observation for this area will sharpen their soul's eye for the individuality of the child's being. For him, the child does not become a "single case" that he judges according to a general principle, but rather a very individual puzzle that he seeks to solve.

[ 10 ] One might argue that such a contemplative approach to the individual child is not possible in a school class with a large number of pupils. However, without wanting to speak out in favor of large numbers of pupils in the classes, it must be said that a teacher with a knowledge of the soul, as is meant here, will find it easier to deal with many pupils than another without a real knowledge of the soul. For this knowledge of the soul will reveal itself in the demeanor of the teacher's whole personality; it will characterize every word he says, everything he does; and the children will become inwardly active under his guidance. He will not have to force each individual to be active, because his general attitude will have an effect on the individual child.

[ 11 ] The curriculum and teaching method are appropriately derived from the knowledge of child development. If one understands how the instinct to imitate and the impulse to submit to authority interact in children in the first years of primary school, one knows how, for example, writing lessons should be designed for these years. If it is based on intellectuality, one works against the forces that manifest themselves through the instinct of imitation; if one starts from a kind of drawing that is gradually transferred to writing, one develops what is striving to develop. In this way, the curriculum can be derived entirely from the nature of the child's development. And only a curriculum that is developed in this way works in the direction of human development. It makes man strong; any other stunts his powers. And this atrophy has an effect on the whole of life.

[ 12 ] It is only possible to apply a principle of education such as the necessity of observing the individuality of a child's nature through a knowledge of the soul of the kind described above.

[ 13 ] A pedagogy that wants to apply in practice what is theoretically advocated by many as good principles must be based on a true spiritual science. Otherwise it will only be able to work through the few pedagogues who instinctively develop their practice through fortunate natural dispositions. The pedagogical and didactic educational and teaching practice of the Waldorf school should be fertilized by a true spiritual-scientific knowledge of the human being. I set myself the task of stimulating the teachers in this direction with a course in spiritual-scientific pedagogy and didactics, which I held for them before the school opened.

[ 14 ] This describes - albeit only sketchily - the educational task for which a first attempt at a solution was made with this school. In the Waldorf School, Emil Molt also created an institution that meets a contemporary social demand. First of all, it is the elementary school for the children of those working in the Waldorf-Astoria factory in Stuttgart. In addition to these children, there are also children from other social classes, so that the character of a unified elementary school is fully preserved. That is all that can initially be done by an individual. In a comprehensive sense, an important social task for the future can only be solved with the school when the overall social institutions integrate all schooling in such a way that it will be permeated by the spirit that is brought to bear in the Waldorf school to the extent that it is possible under the present conditions.

[ 15 ] The above explanations show that all pedagogical art must be built on a knowledge of the soul that is closely linked to the personality of the teacher. This personality must be able to express itself freely in its pedagogical work. This is only possible if the entire administration of the school system is autonomous. If the practicing teacher only has to deal with practicing teachers in relation to the administration. A non-performing teacher is a foreign body in the school administration, just like a non-artistic teacher who would be responsible for setting the direction for artistic teachers. The nature of the pedagogical art demands that teachers divide themselves between educating and teaching and the administration of the school system. In this way, the overall spirit, which is formed from the spiritual attitude of all individual teachers united in a teaching and educational community, will fully prevail in the administration. And only that which results from the knowledge of the soul will be valid in this community.

[ 16 ] Such a community is only possible in the tripartite social organism, which has a free spiritual life alongside a democratically oriented state life and an independent economic life. (On the nature of this tripartite structure, see the articles in the previous issues of "Soziale Zukunft"). A spiritual life that receives its directives from the political administration or from the powers of economic life cannot nurture a school in its bosom whose impulses emanate entirely from the teaching staff itself. But a free school will place people in life who can develop their full power in the state and in the economy, because this power is developed in them.

[ 17 ] Whoever does not subscribe to the opinion that impersonal relations of production or the like shape people, but recognizes from actual reality how people create social order, will also understand the importance of a school that is not built on party or other views, but on that which is brought to the human community from the depths of the world's being by the new generations constantly entering it. To recognize and develop this, however, is only possible for a view of the soul as it has been attempted to characterize here. From this point of view, the profound social significance of a pedagogical practice based on spiritual science appears.

[ 18 ] Much of this pedagogical practice will have to be judged differently than is currently done by educators. To point out only one thing in this direction, it should be mentioned that in the Waldorf School a kind of eurythmy has been placed alongside ordinary gymnastics as having equal status. This eurythmy is a visible language. Through it the human limbs are moved, the whole human being and groups of human beings are induced to make movements which express a soul content in the same way as spoken language or music. The whole human being is moved by the soul. If today gymnastics, which can only have a direct effect on the strengthening of the body and at most an indirect effect on the moral strengthening of the human being, is prejudicially overestimated because it focuses one-sidedly on the physical, a later time will recognize how the soulful art of movement of eurythmy brings the initiative of the will to unfold at the same time as the physical. It grasps the human being as a whole in body, soul and spirit.

[ 19 ] Those who do not allow the present crisis of European civilization to pass them by in a kind of slumber of the soul, but experience it fully, cannot see its origins merely in misguided external institutions that need improvement, but must seek them deep within human thinking, feeling and will. Then, however, he will also recognize, among the ways to improve our social life, that of educating the coming generation. And it will not completely ignore an attempt to search for means in the art of education by which good principles and a good will can also be put into practice. The Waldorf School is not a "reform school" like so many others which are founded because one believes one knows where the faults of this or that kind of education and teaching lie; rather it has arisen from the thought that the best principles and the best will in this field can only become effective when the educator and teacher is a connoisseur of human nature. One cannot be this without also developing a lively interest in the whole social life of mankind. The mind that is open to the essence of humanity also accepts all the suffering and joy of humanity as its own experience. Through a teacher who is a connoisseur of the soul, a connoisseur of humanity, the whole of social life has an effect on the generation striving into life. People will emerge from his school who can place themselves powerfully in life.

[ 1 ] Some time ago I said in this weekly that I have no inclination for polemics. I believe that I have amply demonstrated this by the fact that I have left unchallenged a considerable number of outrageous attacks, most of which degenerate into vicious personal insults. Above all, it seemed necessary to me to devote my time and energy to the positive development of the scientific research direction which I have been trying to present to the world through my writings for thirty-five years. What is available in these writings gives others today, as it seems to me, sufficient documentation to undertake the necessary factual-scientific defense of this line of research. Recently, this task has been undertaken by academically and artistically capable personalities. This line of research provides guidelines for the social question that has become so burning in our time. In Stuttgart, a number of personalities have come together who, convinced of the fruitfulness of these social guidelines, are working tirelessly through the Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus. In other places, they have been joined by others who strive to work scientifically and socially with understanding.

[ 2 ] The recent experiences of two of these defenders of work, Dr. Walter Joh. Stein and Dr. Eugen Kolisko, with their lectures in Göttingen, are described in the previous and this issue of this weekly journal. I myself can only be grateful, in the interest of the cause, that they have accepted their not exactly desirable role.

[ 3 ] Unfortunately, one must conduct a defense even in matters that are brought to light in such a way as the allegations of Professor Dr. Fuchs in Göttingen. All my writings speak with absolute self-evidence against such absurdities as that my anthroposophy spiritually transports us back to the Middle Ages, for anyone who wants to read. For anyone who follows how my anthroposophy follows on in a straight line from what I already wrote in the 1980s, it is simply ridiculous to say that I am feeding my readers and listeners with oriental teachings borrowed in particular from northern Buddhism.

[ 4 ] Evidence for or against the scientific nature of anthroposophy must be presented from completely different angles than those that seem to be available to Professor Dr. Fuchs after his previous, merely invective-filled statements. If Professor Fuchs declares what he thinks about the natural facts known to him to be natural science, that is his private matter. Nowhere have I stated that anthroposophy agrees with what he and those spiritually like him think about nature and spirit. I have repeatedly tried to prove that the facts of nature do not demand what he and the naturalists of his ilk think, but what is demanded by anthroposophy. In this sense I speak of the harmony between natural science and anthroposophy. Anyone who, like Professor Fuchs, turns this fact into its opposite and makes insulting statements on the basis of this opposite is speaking an objective untruth.

[ 5 ] A researcher who is to be taken seriously must be required to have a sense of objective facts. Anyone who is presented with an anatomical specimen that speaks against an absurd assertion can only be taken seriously scientifically if he first looks at the specimen and considers its connection with other facts. Professor Dr. Fuchs hears that in Stuttgart my baptismal certificate has been produced against the stupid claim that I am a Jew. He says, like so many others who unscrupulously spread the lie that I am Jewish, that there are also baptized Jews. Well, my baptismal certificate contains data that speak so against my descent from Jews that they alone reveal the assertion of my Jewishness to be stupid nonsense. I need not say that I myself attach no importance to my ancestry from this point of view. For me it is merely a matter of the fact that it is a brazen lie to make me a Jew. But for me, anyone who talks about facts in this way, as Professor Fuchs does about my alleged Jewishness, even if only in passing, is not a scientist. I have a more serious view of conscientiousness in the scientific way of thinking. Whoever proves in one field that he lacks a sense of facts, I do not believe that he can have it in another field. An anatomy that seduces with its facts as Professor Fuchs did with my baptismal certificate would be devoid of any scientific character for me. For the time being, I will confine myself to these few sentences. What Professor Fuchs has said about priority and the like is something I can leave to those who really read my writings and can understand their questions.

[ 1 ] Those who want to form a political opinion today must bid farewell to the ideas and programs with which parties were formed and public discussions were held only a short time ago. And where such parties continue to exist, where such discussions continue, they fall far short of events.

[ 2 ] The powerful socialist movement that shook modern civilization should not be captured in the terms with which it was approached a decade ago. At that time, it was thought that it could be overcome with state policy. This state policy was shaped differently depending on whether one was conservative, liberal or socialist, but there was no doubt that state policy had to deal with public affairs in some way. But at present these affairs clearly show that everywhere they do not want to submit to state policy. And if one takes a closer look at the course of events, one will find that the views on the state that people want to assert today do not coincide anywhere with the overall aspirations of mankind. In the European East, fanatics want to carpenter a state in the form they have in mind as an economic community. They assure us that their distant goal is the abolition of any kind of state structure. For the time being, however, they want to create a militaristically organized economic state. It carries the seeds of decay. For there is currently a political-democratic drive at work in humanity that cannot come to the fore in a militarized economic state. The "dictatorship" of the proletariat could paralyze this drive for a short time; it cannot eradicate it. Nor can the purely economically oriented state create a spiritual life that could satisfy the needs of humanity.

[ 3 ] The latter is recognized by idealistically inclined people. That is why they strive to revive religious and spiritual ideas. Catholics, Protestants and people with free religious sentiments can be seen on the way to this goal. But their often powerful and well-intentioned efforts are powerless. They do not penetrate into the depths of people's souls, where the forces that determine war and peace or that create sustainable economic conditions are at work. In Switzerland, American representatives of intellectual life are speaking in order to lend support to the ideas of the League of Nations from their point of view. The unbiased person must come to the conclusion that they will speak in vain. For their words will find no access to the hearts of those whose instincts urge only a reorganization of economic life.

[ 4 ] In England, the miners' strike has stirred up emotions. Even if Parliament succeeds in getting it under control now, it will have to do so through institutions that will not be able to keep the economy going in a few years' time. What the parliament has done in this case shows with complete clarity that a state parliament can indeed discuss public affairs and, through discussion, order them in a provisional manner, but that it is nevertheless powerless to master economic life.

[ 5 ] Europe breathed a sigh of relief because Bolshevism did not succeed in defeating the Poles. Many would breathe a sigh of relief if they were to experience the "victory" of one power or another over Bolshevik Russia. Those who think this way have no idea that, if they continue to work in the old sense of "state politics", they will see another terrible entity rise up out of the declining Bolshevism in the not too distant future. One that would probably be closer to them than Russian Bolshevism.

[ 6 ] State policy, which has extended its sphere over the intellectual and the economic life, which wants to educate and instruct man at the same time and also take care of his economy, has brought it to educate in such a way that the intellectual life is powerless over the organization of social life. It lives through parliaments and administrative institutions which talk and act without regard to the real course of intellectual life. In the end, it leads the broad masses and their leaders to an ideal of the state that seeks to embody a tyrannical and, what is more, inadequate economic dilettantism.

[ 7 ] Why is spiritual life powerless? Because it must become powerless when states set the norms of education and teaching. For the spirit can only attain the power it deserves if it can pursue its own goals in complete freedom. The self-administration of intellectual life emancipated from the state, especially in its most important area, teaching and education, is the only way to open up access to the hearts of men for intellectual impulses. Schools that are completely independent of the state and economic life will produce people whose intellectual power can have a formative effect on the state and the economy. It is argued that this leads back to uneducation. For where there is no state-school compulsion, most children are not sent to school. Instead, we should be looking at the solution to the problem: how to get children into schools without state coercion?

[ 8 ] Economic life demands the same separation from the state and self-administration as intellectual life. The state can extend itself only over those matters in which all men who have come of age are capable of judgment as equals. Democratic parliamentarianism is its vital element. But this parliamentarism must be organically supplemented by a self-governing intellectual and an equally self-governing economic life. Both must be governed by forces other than those that can develop in democratic parliaments.

[ 9 ] The old state formations, which have incorporated intellectual life and the economy to a large extent, will not be entities of the human community in which the modern questions of humanity can be solved. The unrest of modern civilization has its origin in the striving of intellectual and economic life out of these state formations.

[ 10 ] The East is in chaos. In the West, there should be enough discerning minds who, through the liberation of intellectual and economic life, seek a way out of the increasingly widespread paralysis of public intellectual forces. As long as there are not enough people who can succeed with such views, modern civilization will shake in unrest, and the threat will remain that world chaos will develop from the chaos of the East.

[ 1 ] The number of people who admit that a recovery of state and economic conditions can only come about through stimuli from the spiritual life is currently growing. It is also obvious enough how little "statesmanlike" thinking, which continues along the old lines, is up to the tasks arising from the turmoil of recent years. We have experienced Versailles, Spa, St. Germain and so on. The "League of Nations" haunts many minds like an idea of salvation. None of this has given the peoples of the civilized world any promising idea of what they should do in their own territories or how they can relate to each other. In Eastern Europe, the superstition that an empire can be built on the basis of one-sided economic organization is working its evil. The statesmanlike impotence of the West, the destructive superstition of the East, which leads to economic militarism: They probably contribute their fair share to the fact that many a personality concerned about the future of mankind looks to the spiritual life for help.

[ 2 ] The nurturers of American worldviews are raising their voices. These voices can already be heard in neutral countries. Why shouldn't they soon reach the center of Europe? The meaning that can be heard from these voices is something like this: the "League of Nations" must come. Because it will be a blessing. But what comes out of the brains of the "statesmen" will not be able to give it a promising shape. It must have its roots in the hearts of men, not merely in external institutions. It can only become so if the moral and spiritual feelings of the people lead to an understanding of the civilized world. Therefore, the paralyzed religious feelings, the spiritual powers that have become lax, should be encouraged to a new life. - It cannot be denied that many a fine word is spoken and many a well-intentioned speech made today out of such sentiments. But anyone who can observe impartially must see that access to the hearts of men is closed to such words today. They do not have the power to arouse in the minds of men that which should come to the idea of the League of Nations in order to give it life, the power to exist. And if we want to recognize the reason why they do not have this power, we must consider how dependent questions of worldview have become in modern times on the state and the economy. By completely occupying the teaching and educational system, the states have adapted the spiritual life to their own organization in such a way that it is drawn into all their crises. Where should there be an intellectual life that serves a renewal of the state's essence, since the states have only allowed that which was appropriate to their now questioned form to flourish?

[ 3 ] In Central Europe, out of need and misery, people are calling for a gathering of confessions, for a revival and understanding in religious life. All this is well-intentioned. But here, too, there is no strength in words and speeches. The state forms want to be renewed; and what one wants to collect, what one wants to revive, was so connected with the essence of the old that it is drawn into its decline.

[ 4 ] Not a renewal of state and economic life by the old spiritual powers can be a promising goal, but only the renewal of spiritual life itself. We will have to summon up the courage to admit that new sources of spiritual life must be opened up.

[ 5 ] The view of the threefold structure of the social organism implies this courage. It would like to awaken an unbiased judgment that the prevailing intellectual scientific spirit of the present is a consequence of the nationalization of teaching and education and thus of the predominant part of public intellectual life. But it is this scientific spirit alone in which mankind of the present day believes so strongly that it ascribes to it a validity in the affairs of public life. Apart from this scientific spirit, the old views of life have no power for this life. Only people who are alien to life can delude themselves about it. Only they can believe that they can draw from old creeds speeches of power which have a determining influence on the state or the economy. Through such speeches a certain part of people's souls can be put in the right mood. But with the profit that these people gain from such influences, they will not have any effect in public life.

[ 6 ] Those who do not wish to indulge in illusions must not close their minds to the realization that modern mankind needs a view of life which does not preserve old creeds alongside the newer scientific spirit, but which grows out of this spirit itself. It is the endeavor of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to form such a view of life. Modern science only cultivates an intellectual understanding of natural phenomena. This has no power to affect the human mind and will. It is therefore unsuitable for the social shaping of life. Anthroposophical spiritual science draws not only on the intellect, but on all the powers of the human soul. It therefore also works back on all these soul forces. It can give stimulating ideas to state and economic life.

[ 7 ] Today's states still have what they can give to their own and economic life from the old creeds and world views. It is just so watered down that it is no longer recognized as a legacy of the old. That is why this fact is not acknowledged. The newer, purely intellectualistic science can achieve great things in the knowledge of nature; in the social sphere it can only produce socialist theories that are alien to life or life-destroying social experiments. It is, however, capable of being developed into a spiritual view. If it is, then it can also generate ideas for viable social structures.

[ 8 ] The mere demand for intellectual stimulation for public life is not enough today. What is needed is the courage for a spiritual rebirth. The present lives in crises of states and economic life. They cannot be solved by the forces of the old spiritual life. They will only be solved if the crisis of spiritual life itself is seen through and a solution is sought in its own field of spirit.

The Coming Day: Public Limited Company for the Promotion of Economic and Spiritual Values

[ 1 ] The shortest route to the wastepaper basket today is probably the one taken by mailings of this kind. There are so many of them, and we have experienced so often how little they deliver on their promises, that no one can be denied the right to choose this route in order to ward off superfluous literary intrusiveness. Should this announcement of a new publisher for some reason not happen, then - the senders hope - their readers will see that this justification is intended to bring about something that the events of the time really demand.

[ 2 ] The "Kommende Tag Verlag" was not founded out of the need to add to the many books that arise out of the confusion of contemporary intellectual life. Its founders are actually of the opinion, already expressed by Lichtenberg, that ninety-nine percent of the books with which the world is "blessed" are too many.

[ 3 ] But these founders see the declining intellectual life of the present. They see the other disasters of the present, the state and the economy, emerging from the decline of spiritual life. And they must imagine an ascending spiritual life from which the state and the economy must draw in order to recover.

[ 4 ] They want to serve this spiritual life.

[ 5 ] They want to deliver literary works to the world, which provide the ideas and the laws of the humanities for the recovery of the sick social life.

[ 6 ] Unfortunately, all too few people have an adequate idea of the unhealthy state of our intellectual life. They have no idea what devastating consequences for world civilization must result from this state. They therefore have no heart for efforts that are directed towards recovery out of conviction and unbiased observation of life.

[ 7 ] The "Kommende Tag Verlag" would like that.

[ 8 ] It will not serve a fragmenting academicism that only proliferates in books, alienated from life, and which is increasingly severing its ties to reality. He wants to serve a scientific attitude that warms the blood and sheds light on the meaning of human and world existence.

[ 9 ] He will not serve an attitude towards art that is alienated from life, parlor-smelling, or burdened with idleness. It will promote an artistic perception of the world that makes man a co-creator of the mysteries and development of the world through the true shaping of life.

[ 10 ] He will not serve a socially destructive view of life that preaches only moral laws and has no power to penetrate reality. He wants to contribute to the discovery of that moral basis of life that generates powerful will in ideas and gives birth to the impulses for the health of the soul and enthusiasm for action from the knowledge of life.

[ 11 ] He will not serve social fantasies which are beneficial to man if he can dream of their realization, or if he stages social orders which are devoid of human nature and the basis of nature, and which therefore awaken to social misfortune those who dream of them or act under their influence. He wants to allow social views and impulses to appear which are possible, universally human, worthy of existence, but which are drawn from the real human nature, observation of the world and living experience.

[ 12 ] So the "Kommende Tag Verlag" wants to serve social life, the moral shaping of life, the artistic revelation of existence, the scientific understanding of the world.

[ 13 ] It will endeavor not to lapse into one-sided promotion of this or that "point of view", but to deliver the spiritually valuable products of all directions to the judgment of the readers of its books. It is not opinions about this or that that should be favored according to the tastes of the leaders of the "Kommenden Tag Verlag", but those works which these leaders feel can serve the spiritual life demanded by the times. A materialistic book written with spirit will today - against the will of its author - do more to promote the development of spiritual life than a spiritless collection of amateurish slogans about a "spiritual world order". A will determined by these guidelines should permeate all the activities of the "Kommenden Tag Verlag". The many who still believe today that something can be achieved by merely "popularizing" the traditional spiritual life, by founding popular education centres in which what has been cultivated in places alien to the people is popularized: they will find this publishing house highly superfluous. For its justification is based on the conviction that what has led out of the narrow circles, through educational illusions, into the declining phenomena of the present cannot have a fruitful effect in the broad circles of the population.

[ 14 ] The "Kommende Tag Verlag" is a member of the overall enterprise "Der Kommende Tag, Aktiengesellschaft zur Förderung wirtschaftlicher und geistiger Werte, Stuttgart". The other members of this company have the task of developing economic activities that can provide the people with healthy economic forces. They are to participate in the reconstruction of economic life in the spirit of a national economy demanded by the times. They should also support free schools, scientific and medical institutes and the like through economically fruitful activities.

[ 15 ] The affiliation with such enterprises is what characterizes the "Kommender Tag Verlag". Spiritual creation has to be part of the whole circle of human life if it is not to run the risk of becoming a luxury of civilization. The spiritual and the material must support each other if the one is not to be alienated from the other to the detriment of humanity. Rudolf Steiner's book "Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft" ("The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future") is to be one of the main pieces for the initial activities of the "Kommenden Tag Verlag". Over 40,000 copies of this book have already been sold in Germany and it has been translated into almost all cultural languages. From a practical observation of the spiritual, social and state conditions of human existence, it contains the justification of such a will as gives direction to the "Coming Day Publishing House" in a single area of life. In it, its author combines the anthroposophical direction he founded in spiritual science, in which he has published a large number of writings for 35 years, with the realistic observation of social life and will.

[ 16 ] The "Kommende Tag Verlag" thus places itself in the midst of the spiritual, ethical and economic tasks of the present; and it seeks to do justice to these tasks through its connection with the School of Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum in Dornach, in which the anthroposophically deepened way of research, newly fertilizing all branches of life, also erects an artistic building which, although still unfinished, already represents the nurturing place of this way of research and art. In another way, in the field of education, this way of research and life practice has a place of activity in the Stuttgart Waldorf School.

[ 17 ] Through this connection in the most diverse directions, the "Kommende Tag Verlag" presents itself as an enterprise that has its widely ramified roots in the circle of a spiritual, artistic and social movement, which, out of a firm will, makes the necessary reshaping of the collapsing civilization its most serious task.

In December 1920, Der Kommende Tag AG
Stuttgart, Champignystrasse 17, publishing house

Upper Silesians!

[ 1 ] Should discord, hidden and open internal struggle become a permanent state in Upper Silesia to the agony of its population, to the detriment of the economy, to the destruction of all cultural assets? Can Upper Silesia remain a constant threat to peace in Europe?

[ 2] No! But how can this be prevented?

[ 3 ] The Upper Silesian question is a European question. The whole of Europe is concerned about the economic prosperity of industry, especially the coal resources of Upper Silesia. Upper Silesia is of crucial importance for the European economic cycle. The spiritual-cultural problems and tasks of this region, as a middle ground between Eastern and Central Europe, weigh heavily in the balance. The spirituality of the Upper Silesian peoples can only have the right effect if a real solution to the nationality question is found here. This would also be a decisive step towards ushering in a new era of international relations in general.

[ 4 ] It is also imperative in the European interest that political and governmental conditions are restored to health if Upper Silesia is not to become a source of political unrest that permanently calls European peace into question.

[ 5 ] So the problem of the organization of Upper Silesia is a question of the economic, legal-political and cultural-spiritual recovery of the whole of Europe. All the measures taken by the powers to date have brought nothing less than a solution to European problems and social issues. But since the Upper Silesian question can only be solved in the context of a truly contemporary reorganization of European relations, no current solution to these questions that is grounded in reality can be anything other than a temporary state. It is therefore necessary to deliberately create such a transitional state in Upper Silesia. Neither Wilson's famous unworldly 14 points, whose application to real life, especially in the East, is an impossibility, nor the violent methods of a bygone era can lead to a reconstruction of European life. This reconstruction can only be achieved if we realize that we are basically dealing with three different areas:

economic life,
the legal-political life,
the spiritual-cultural life.

[ 6 ] In the previous state, these three areas were intertwined, and the chaotic conditions of the present have ultimately emerged from this confusion. The only realistic organization of social life can therefore only consist in the independence of these three areas. The way to this is shown by the threefold structure of the social organism. It demands that the state releases the economy on the one hand and intellectual life on the other from its sphere of power.

[ 7 ] Economic life then only includes the production, distribution and consumption of goods, which are to be managed by experts on an "associative basis" ¹. Unhindered by state and political power relations, the producers and consumers of the various countries will work together to regulate the satisfaction of all needs.

[ 8 ] The spiritual link in the threefold social organism comprises science, art, religion, the entire educational system and the administration of justice. All these spiritual and cultural factors can only fulfill their task and properly stimulate social life in complete freedom from state intervention. Spiritual life, culture, must develop out of the free cooperation of all spiritual-creative individual personalities and give itself its own administrative bodies.

[ 9 ] The middle link, the legal-political part of the social organism, then remains primarily the police and administrative activity on a legal basis; it is regulated by a democratically elected parliament. Since this parliament deals only with purely state-political questions, it can disturb neither economic nor intellectual life.

[ 10 ] (All details about the threefold structure of the social organism can be found in the book "Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage" by Dr. Rud. Steiner, "Der Kommende Tag" AG Verlag, Stuttgart, Champignystraße 17, as well as in the weekly newspaper "Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus" published by the same publisher and other relevant literature.)

[ 11 ] Only through such a structuring of the social organisms in Europe would the economic cycle be able to take place independently of political state borders, across them, according to its own laws. - Likewise, the intellectual exchange between parts of the people that are separated by political borders is possible across these borders in a free manner, uninhibited by state power politics.

[ 12 ] Until such a healthy tripartite organization of the social organism has been carried out in the various national territories throughout Europe, the Upper Silesian question cannot really be brought to a final solution.

[ 13 ] In Upper Silesia in particular, conditions are crying out for such a tripartite solution.

[ 14 ] Here, two cultures, two national individualities that permeate each other, fight for the opportunity to live out their lives. The school system and judicial jurisdiction are the most important points of friction. Only through the liberation of intellectual life can these burning issues be resolved, especially in Upper Silesia. The two cultures, the German and the Polish, will then be able to develop side by side in accordance with their respective life forces, without the one having to fear being raped by the other, and without the political state taking sides for one or the other. Each nationality will establish not only its own educational institutions, but also its own administrative bodies for cultural life, so that friction is excluded. - And if the economic cycle in Upper Silesia were also detached from the state-political, the economic issues in Upper Silesia could be integrated into the overall European economy and only solved by agreements between the economists of the countries involved.

[ 15 ] In the present, therefore, the following is the only realistic, viable option:

[ 16 ] The Upper Silesian region rejects annexation to a neighboring state for the time being, until an understanding of the tripartite structure is awakened there. It constitutes itself in such a way that its economic factors manage themselves - as do its spiritual factors. It creates a harmony between the two by means of a provisional legal-police organism extending only over its territory and remains in this state until the entire European situation has been clarified.

[ 17 ] Despite the fact that this state of affairs is a provisional one, it appears, if it is carried out, as a model for the measures which the whole of Europe must take for the recovery of its conditions.

[ 1 ] Only short-sightedness can understand this call as not being in the German spirit. True German sentiment has always thought this way.

[ 18 ] So, inhabitants of Upper Silesia, unite all branches of your economic life in free associations independent of the state! Declare your educational system independent of the state and place it under its own administration! Set up a provisional police-administrative-parliamentary state until European conditions assume a healthier basis! The only thing that will help you is what you can achieve from these demands at the Entente Commission. Everything else is worthless for you.

Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus
Wroclaw local group

Speaker on threefolding and Upper Silesia at the Wroclaw branch of the Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus, Wroclaw, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße 16, 2 Treppen, request.

• 1. Note in the leaflet: Details on the "associative economy" can be found in the publications listed below.

[ 1 ] The group of people who began to propagate the idea of the threefolding of the social organism in the spring of 1919 wanted to work honestly on the improvement of human living conditions. Out of this honesty, they could not bring the working population the old slogans and catchphrases that had been used for decades in socialist agitation. These phrases and slogans could be used to criticize the existing social order, to tell the leading classes what they had failed to do, but they could not be used to build anything. They could be used to dream up utopias, but they could not add forces to social reality that would serve life in such a way that every human being could find a dignified existence in it.

[ 2 ] The proponents of the threefold idea did not start from such phrases and slogans. They based their will on the solid teachings that life itself provides. They spoke from the standpoint of these life teachings to the leading classes as well as to the proletarians. They have not yet been understood by either side. But they know, precisely because they have drawn their thoughts from real life, that there can be no question of an improvement in conditions until these teachings of life are understood. They can do nothing but repeat these teachings until they find a sympathetic ear.

[ 3 ] Why have the bearers of the Threefold Thought not been understood? The proletariat thought they spoke too complicatedly. It could not immediately see how their thoughts really showed not only a goal, but also a way out of the spiritual, national and economic impossibilities. They wanted them to speak more simply. But they did not realize that life itself is complicated. The bearer of the threefold idea is in the same position as a doctor. He has to give his advice. He will only be able to do this if he knows the whole complicated human organism. Can he be expected to speak to every human being about this organism in a way that can be understood, if he does not get involved in what needs to be learned about the life of the organism? This cannot be demanded, because in complying with this demand he would have to resort to catchwords and phrases. But these bearers could not do that. For they only wanted to say what was imbued with honesty in every sentence. What they have to say can be understood. But you first have to bring yourself to this understanding.

[ 4 ] The proletarian will say: So you want to speak all kinds of learned things to us, but we want to hear the simple language of the people. To this we must reply: No, we don't want to speak scholarly stuff, but the language of real life. We only want to speak of capital and labor from the point of view of expertise, like a doctor or expert in nature speaks of the human organism, and not like a curing physician. But if you want to speak in this way, you will only be understood if the other person also wants to follow the right path of understanding. This path will only be found if he wants to go through heart and soul to the mind. The writer of these lines is imbued with the conviction that the bearers of the Threefold Thought speak in such a way that one can see their understanding of the true situation of the proletariat if one wants to judge them from the heart and soul. Up to now the proletariat has not sufficiently sought this path through heart and soul. It has judged according to the doctrines of the mind which it has imbibed through popular socialism. It has demanded that the bearers of the Threefold Thought should also speak as it has been accustomed to speak according to these intellectual doctrines. They could not do so because they know that these teachings contradict life and therefore lead to nothing.

[ 5 ] The writer of these lines does not want to speak of a wild fantasy. He is therefore not saying that the mind should be set aside and that a path can only be sought through the heart and soul. Certainly, the intellect must be the safe guide, but in social matters there is no other way to the right use of the intellect than through the heart and soul. My "Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage" and my book "In Ausführung der Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus" count on such a path. I do not believe that in these books anyone misses the assessment of life from the point of view of the intellect, but I was nevertheless pleased, in the interest of the cause, when I recently read in a review of the first book from another source that in it the social question is grasped by the powers of the heart as well as the intellect.

[ 6 ] No more than from the proletarian side has the idea of threefolding been understood by personalities in the leading circles. Their thoughts have been so caught up in the economic routines of the past that from the outset they do not get involved in anything that does not run along their usual lines. Some of them realize that something has to happen, but if you come out with specific thoughts about what should happen, they shy away from it because they believe that they have reality and that it should be disturbed by fantasy. Most of them say they have no time to deal with such ideas. And if you don't want to be unfair from the outset, you even have to admit - they really don't have time. They are busy from morning till night in order to continue working in the old sense, they come out of the office in the evening with a tired head that doesn't want to take anything in, even if they sit down once with good will - to look at the thing. So they limit themselves to gluing together the fractures that arise in the traditional. They will not have time until they have to realize that the time they have spent was wasted and that the time they thought they were not allowed to spend would have been much better spent. I'm talking about those who have at least some good will. The others - alas, they are so numerous - cannot seriously be counted on.

[ 7 ] Whoever wants to understand the threefold idea must take the trouble to follow how stimulating thoughts for legal and economic life can only come from a spiritual life that is set on itself. He must allow himself to be instructed by life as to how an educational and teaching system administered by the legal and economic system loses that responsiveness which is necessary for the maintenance of the social organism. From there he will also come to an understanding of an associatively organized economic life and a truly democratic legal life. The writer of these lines has tried to show this path of understanding as best he could in the above-mentioned books.

[ 8 ] If one wishes to point to such a path, one must start from the social forces at work in the present age. Modern technology has reshaped life; modern science has penetrated the souls of the widest circles as a view of life through the developed school system. This has created new ideas of a humane existence. The promoters of the threefold structure reckon with these two very real forces of the present. You will understand their ideas when you feel what these forces mean. Many reckon with technology, but not with the lives of the people who are involved in this technology. Others reckon with the spirit of science. They want it - and rightly so - to be cultivated in schools. But they do not reckon with the moods of the soul that it creates. The idea of threefolding reckons with what they leave out of the equation.

[ 9 ] The proletarian has lost confidence because he feels that so many do not reckon with his life or his soul. Things will only get better when he finds his way through heart and soul to the social ideas that reckon with both, and which for this very reason can no longer offer him his cherished slogans, because they want a real path and not intoxication with utopian thoughts.

[ 1 ] In my "Key Points of the Social Question", it was said of the politics to which modern civilization has brought itself that it had reached the nil point of its ability in 1914. It has not left this point since. The path from Versailles to London is the impossible attempt to stop at this point and yet at the same time to make progress. The terrible war proved that it was not possible to continue the policy pursued up to that point. We sailed into the decisions by force. The negotiations in London did not get beyond this way of bringing about decisions.

[ 2 ] We will not get out if we do not move in the direction of the insight that the future of modern civilization will be decided by ideas. What these ideas must be has often been said in this journal. Until what has been said here has been introduced into the realm of insightful will by a sufficiently large number of people, we will have to continue to live under the sign of violence.

[ 3 ] A union of states has won a victory. In America, before this victory was won, Woodrow Wilson said what the victors wanted to do with the victory. America had to convince itself through Versailles that what had been said were insubstantial words. You cannot create realities with insubstantial words. Lloyd George is reported to have said recently that you never know how far you will be led if you have to resort to force. In America, Harding has been seated in the chair where Woodrow Wilson previously spoke insubstantial, ineffective words. Harding has now also spoken. For all that is relevant to modern civilization, these new words are nothing more than a continuation of Wilson's.

[ 4 ] Victory will decide nothing for modern civilization. For ideas must decide. And these ideas will decide, regardless of whether they appear with the victor or the vanquished and gain recognition. The situation within modern peoples is such that the necessary ideas can override victory or defeat.

[ 5 ] It is sad when those who speak of ideas in this way today are answered: The victors have the power, and ideas cannot help the defeated. Without ideas, the victors will only be able to bring about a life of violence and through violence. With this life, they will lead the world and thus themselves into decline. The defeated could lead the world to uplifting forces through ideas. He could make much out of defeat with ideas, the victors will not be able to make anything out of victory without ideas. Seen from the center of Europe, it is truly tragic when the victor, Lloyd George, longs for a capable German statesman. From the London point of view, however, one should find it tragicomic, because one cannot find it comic, because the world situation is too serious for that.

[ 6 ] The negotiations in London, Harding's inaugural speech, are proof that the victors are helpless in everything except the use of force. Wherever one recognizes this, one will be at the beginning of the insight that only new ideas can help. For the helplessness is only a consequence of the fact that in London, as in Versailles, they want to build a new world with the old ideas and do not realize that among the dead that the war has brought are above all these old ideas. The war was characterized by these old ideas. It owed its existence to the fact that these ideas were already corpses in 1914.

[ 7 ] In London they were negotiating about economic matters. If the modern unitary state formations want to bring about economic decisions, they can only do so by force. The real decisions must be made by world economic life, which is detached from these entities. This is one of the points on which the threefold structure is based. It must do this because it wants to speak out of reality. In Versailles and London, people wanted to act out of unreality.

[ 8 ] People keep coming and saying to the promoters of the ideas of threefolding: Why don't you make us practical suggestions? They don't realize that the necessary ones have already been made. We can only make progress with the threefold structure. Without it, you can go to Versailles, to London, to Italy, to America; it will help nothing.

[ 9 ] This has often been said here. Today it only needs to be pointed out that the events in London and their consequences speak the same language.

[ 10 ] And the East? One looks longingly towards it; one longs for Lenin's and Trotsky's fall. One assumes that these fanatics for destructive forces will disappear from the scene tomorrow. After all, it will only help modern civilization if ideas of construction flow over that on which they have worked with forces of decline.

[ 11 ] There is talk of the need to seek economic links with the East. They must certainly be established. But above all, the East is seeking intellectual understanding with Central Europe. This has not yet been offered to it. If it first brings it the stimulating ideas, then the economic connection will come as a consequence. To talk about the latter without wanting the former is to place oneself outside the conditions of real life.

[ 1 ] The circumstances of the times and the opposition of wide circles interested in economic life force the "Coming Day" to dispense with a further socio-economic program for the immediate present and to keep its activities within narrower limits. In the near future, it will be the association of some economic enterprises with spiritual enterprises that support each other. The spiritual enterprises: Waldorf School, Clinical Therapeutic Institute, Biological and Physical Research Institute are to serve scientific-spiritual and moral-social progress in the sense that corresponds to the demands of the present and the near future. The purely economic undertakings should provide the material basis for the overall enterprise. They should initially carry those undertakings that can only bear economic fruit and financial returns in some time, because the spiritual seed to be poured into them now can only sprout after some time.

[ 2 ] The shareholders will continue to receive the dividend promised in the program from this closely held company. An expansion of the activity can also take place as far as possible in this transformed program. Although the program originally developed for the further development of economic life in connection with the cultivation of spiritual values is a necessity of our time, its comprehensive realization is currently hopeless due to the limited willingness of the contemporary community involved in economic life. Thus, what is initially possible must take precedence over what is necessary. Those personalities who are sympathetic to the idea of the "Coming Day" will be all the better able to unite their interests in it. Serving them will be the duty of its leadership.