The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday, when we were discussing the threefold order of the social organism from morning till night, the latest issue of the journal Das Reich arrived, in the middle of our deliberations. Under the general title of “Knowledge and Opinion” it contains material that I have never read before and that I have never seen before. These statements, however, stimulated a whole series of thoughts in me, thoughts, however, that are often stimulated in me anyway.

It is in Lower Austria, in a place from which, if you look south, you have a particularly beautiful view of the mountains in the evening glow, the Lower Austrian Schneeberg, the Wechsel, those mountains that form the northern edge of Styria, a small, very inconspicuous house. Above the entrance door was written: “In God's blessing all is included”. I myself was in this cottage only once during my youth. But there lived a man who was outwardly very inconspicuous. When you came into his cottage, it was full of medicinal herbs everywhere. He was a herbalist. And these herbs he packed in a knapsack on a certain day of the week, and with this knapsack on his back he then traveled the same route to Vienna that I also had to take to school back then, and we always traveled together, then walked a bit together through the road that leads from the South Station to the city center, “auf der Wieden” in Vienna. This man was, so to speak, the embodiment of the spirit that prevailed in the area, in everything he said, but how he, as that spirit, had survived from the first half of the nineteenth century, which was not that long ago at the time. This man actually spoke a language that sounded quite different from the language of other people. When he spoke of the tree leaves, when he spoke of the trees themselves, but especially when he spoke of the wonderful essence of his medicinal herbs, one realized how this man's soul was connected with all that made up the spirit of nature in that particular area, but also what formed the spirit of nature in the wider area. This man was a sage in his own way, through his own inner being, and from this inner being spoke much more than the inner being of a human being often reveals. This man, Felix was his first name, had a spiritual bond between his soul and nature, he also spoke a lot from all kinds of reading. For in addition to the medicinal herbs that, so to speak, stuffed his little house, he had a whole library of all kinds of meaningful works, but which were basically all related in their basic nature, in their basic character to that which was the basic character, the basic trait of his own soul. The man was a poor fellow. For one earned very little, extremely little, from the trade in medicinal herbs, which one laboriously gathered in the mountains. But this man had an extraordinarily contented face and was extraordinarily wise inside. He often spoke of the German mystic Ennemoser, who was his favorite reading, and who indeed contains much in his writings of what had passed through the German mind, but precisely through the German mind in the great times when the thought impulses of Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe and those who stood in the background were still alive. For behind these minds there stood the spiritual world, which they allowed to flow over into what they revealed to the world in their writings. But what was printed in the issue of “Reich” that came to me yesterday from the estate of Ennemoser was completely unknown to me until yesterday. It contains the final section of Joseph Ennemoser's “Horoscope of World History” - I note in addition: Ennemoser died in 1854 and this is the first of his works to be published from his estate. I would like to read a little from this work by Ennemoser to introduce today's discussion:

”...The winter that covers the German regions with snow and ice may last a long time before the real spring comes, but it will come, the seed of freedom has been sown and it will grow, the law of nature will not be repealed by either cunning or military power. Just as the idea of Christianity was implanted in the rough trunk of the Germanic nation and absorbed into its life, so will this vigorous trunk unfold green branches into fresh flowers; just as the body of the church in the German architectural style is already complete in its outlines, wherein the finished dogma of faith , the towers that are still missing almost everywhere will also rise to the sky with the incense of true devotion, and the ever-spiritual life and the organization of personal relationships with the divine will only mature into self-aware understanding, the symbolic framework must first be absorbed into the living movement of purpose , the heaviness of the church must be lightened, the stability of the dogma of separateness must be guided into the current of the universally human; just as freedom should move within the laws of justice, so religion must become an enlightened truth with the light of science, and art a cultivator of spiritual beauty in natural material!

Is it not a utopian dream and will Germany be even remotely able to fulfill such a requirement? Germany will fulfill its calling, or perish most ignominiously and with it European culture. The decision is approaching, time is pressing, the wind is blowing from the east and west, a storm can break out! The trunk of old politics stands on rotten roots, the calculations of diplomats would like to be destroyed, their art has become a distorted art that no one understands. Can you pick figs from thistles, grapes from thorns? True life of freedom sprouts only on the green branches of justice and from the warm spring of charity! Or can this unnatural state persist and the disharmony that has spread to all limbs return to the old order of withered bodies?

Evening will come, the first time has passed, but Germany's end has not yet come; so far it has had childish attempts, there will come a second time when it will discard the 'childish' and have 'manly' attempts. The time of a nation is only at an end when it no longer has questions and does not care about life's higher goods, or when it is incapable of engaging in the solution of the issues of the time! The German has lost nothing but his resilience, his mind is clear, his courage firm, and who doubts the strength of his arm? Everywhere, living spirits are at work, not as imitators, but as originals. The true hunger of the Germans is the yearning for a higher freedom of the mind; the thirst and desire for the light of truth and justice are the main driving forces to set the vigorous hands to work, all of which are still unfinished, to strive for a goal that is still far from humanity. Or should the stream flow back to the sources of its origin? Are nations to become the family fiefdoms of princes again, or is it a matter of state and national rights? There is a higher law in nature and history that no nation can escape, none can go beyond its goal, but neither can any disturb the order of the whole and fall short of it, as its abilities and the spirit of language drive it to! And will not reaction guide the wheel back onto the old track? Fools, who delight only in the dreams of their youth! You can extinguish the fire that erupts in many directions, but you cannot extinguish the inner embers once they have been ignited; reaction itself becomes the means to freedom, pressure brings accelerated movement, the hatred of the parties has a stronger effect than love on the events of the future; perhaps only some kind of spark is needed, and the suppressed intellectual power of the whole nation breaks out in bright flames of enthusiasm. “Nescit vox missa reverti,“ the spirits of life slumber under a thin cover; no free action can be taken back by the spirit; foreign spirits, moods and earthly powers act alone or together on the human will, driving it with irresistible power to acts that, according to divine order, lead to the unification of opposites, to the reconciliation of parties and to the final fulfillment of the calling!”

These are the sentences of a man who died in 1854. I also had to think when I visited dear Felix in his little house one time, that I also visited the home of the schoolmaster's widow, the widow of the schoolmaster who had died several years ago, but I visited her for reasons that the Lower Austrian schoolmaster was also a highly interesting personality. The widow still had a wealth of literature that he had collected in his library. Everything that German scholarship had collected and written down about the German language, myths and legends, in order to sink it into the forces of the German people, could be found there. The lonely schoolmaster had never had the opportunity to go public until after his death; only after his death did someone dig up some of his estate. But I still have not seen those long diaries that that lonely schoolmaster kept, in which pearls of wisdom were written. I don't know what happened to those diaries. On the one hand, this lonely schoolmaster worked among his children; but on the other hand, when he left the schoolroom, he immersed himself—like many such people from the old days of German development—in what lived on in this way as the substance of the German essence. When one then went away from them and traveled to Vienna, one could see how the ancient and the most recent times merge. We live in these most recent times, and it is up to us to understand them a little, to understand them in order to find in them the possibility, as far as it is up to us, to participate in the great tasks that this time poses for humanity.

It is truly not an external matter that all these thoughts, in connection with the experiences of which I have given you a hint, passed through my soul yesterday, just after our meeting, because yesterday, too, was basically a piece of what is falling into our time, right out of the great questions that we must have. For the man said: “The time of a people is only at an end when it no longer has any questions and is no longer concerned about the higher goods of life, or when it is incapable of engaging in the solution of the questions of the time.” Yesterday, many things passed us by that could inspire the thought: How many are there still who have real questions about the time, who still care about the higher goods of life? Did we not experience it yesterday that when our Mr. Ranzenberger appeared in a good-natured way with something that could have touched the heart, he had to disappear? As in the Symbolum, one could encounter the treatment that what is anthroposophically intended experiences in the present. He was not allowed to finish speaking. Nor was the next speaker allowed to finish, who had no questions, who really had no questions, who is living out that senile youth that has no questions and which makes one fear for the future when one knows that only that which that has the strength and substance of the spirit behind it, that can only flourish in the present time if it still has questions and is concerned about the higher goods of humanity, that does not reel off abstract phrases about content-free ideals of youth and thinks itself great with them.

These things are worthy of attention. They are just as worthy of attention as when revolutionary phrases and philistinism are combined. For revolutionary phrases and radicalism are a mask for philistinism, for pedantry, for banality, which we have also encountered enough of, especially in recent times. It is necessary in our time not to speak, not even to speak in short sentences, of those things that mean compromise, but to speak in a clearly conceivable way – for one distinction should be written in the hearts of people of the present: the distinction between content and lack of content – that that which can be developed from here is the strongest opponent of lack of content. For, through the impulse of the threefold social organism, together with friends who have devoted themselves to this idea and sensed its substantiality, we have tried to bring into the world that which is backed by spiritual insight. But on the other hand, it must also be emphasized that the spiritual reality must not be confused with the phrase of the time, no matter how beautiful that phrase may be. The same sentences can be said today: one time they are empty phrases, the other time they are spiritual content. The latter must be present as reality; it is not yet present just because the words sound the same. But everything that is mere phrase, even if it ultimately seems to succeed, has no substance of reality. And it is the task of those united in the anthroposophical movement to recognize this difference between spiritual reality and insubstantial, meaningless phrase. It is not enough that people today say that humanity must show courage again, must straighten up again, must glow with new spiritual forces, and that spiritual life must break away from economic and state life and establish an autonomy of the spirit. We must distinguish whether there is any substance behind such things or whether they are mere empty phrases, born of the spirit of empty phrases of our time. No matter how beautiful they may sound, what matters is whether there is any spiritual reality behind them or whether they are just empty phrases.

I have often said here that it is not without reason that what we call anthroposophy has emerged in our time, what we call anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For decades we have tried to cultivate it in preparation for this serious 'time. But we must also understand it as such: as a preparation for this serious time. This time has very special characteristics. Outwardly, this time bears the mark of materialism, and the sister of materialism is empty talk. The more humanity clings to outward material things, the more that which it says about the outer world becomes empty talk. Empty talk and materialism belong together. Today we can only rise above empty talk by deepening our spiritual life. We can only rise above materialism by deepening our spiritual life. For, however strange it may sound, this age of materialism and empty phrases is the time when the spirit, with its content from the spiritual world, most strongly wants to communicate with humanity. The world lives in contradictions. Never before has man been as close to the spiritual world as he is today, although outwardly he is mired in materialism. Never before have people been so close to the spiritual world, but they do not realize it, they misunderstand it. And it is particularly strange when one is repeatedly told that one can only believe what anthroposophy brings, or that one must accept it on authority. However, there is nothing for which authority is less necessary, nothing for which it is less appropriate than for anthroposophy. For it speaks of that which today wants to enter into every human being, which wants to enter through the senses but is not allowed in by the materialistic attitude of the time. And this anthroposophy speaks of that which today wants to arise from within every human nature, but which people do not let up from the lower body through the heart to the head, and of which they naturally do not notice anything.

Not only do people today want to be approached by sensual external impressions, but these sensual external impressions want to flow in through the human senses in such a way that they become imaginations in the human being. Today, people are inwardly predisposed to develop imaginations, pictorial representations of the world. But he hates it, does not want it; he says: That is poetry, fantasy. He does not realize that science can give him many good things, but never the truth about man, and that he would experience the truth if he could come to his imaginations. And what lives in man's inner being reveals itself continually, only that man does not notice it as inspiration. Never before have people been so tormented by inspirations as they are today. For they notice that something from within them wants to rise to their hearts and minds; but they perceive it only as nervousness because they do not want to let it rise, or they anesthetize themselves with something else against these revelations of the spirit.

We have often spoken here of the fact that, in addition to his physical body, which can be seen with eyes and grasped with hands, man also has his etheric body. They also know that the etheric body can only be recognized by those who devote themselves to real imaginations. But today there is a way to truly grasp the human etheric body. This way consists in taking art in the Goethean sense seriously. Throughout his life, Goethe was convinced that truth comes to life in the artistic perception of reality, that art is a “manifestation of secret natural laws that could never be expressed without it.” But our school system is dripping a poison dew on everything that science should imbue with a productive artistic spirit. Our scientific humanity believes that it is getting closer to the truth by eradicating everything from its content that is imbued with the artistic spirit. In doing so, it is getting further and further from the real truth, not closer to it, and besides, the real truth is gradually being squeezed out of all the individual sciences that we have to hand down to young people. The only truth is what Richard Wahle says – in the sense in which I have expounded it – that in what is called science today, only ideas of a ghostly world live. Take everything that can be known through natural science: it gives man no conception of reality. Nature itself, with its true essential being, does not live in the conceptions of today's natural science, and the other sciences have formed themselves after natural science. What lives in these conceptions is not nature, it is a ghost of nature. The world spirit has taken its revenge on present-day people who no longer want to believe in a spiritual world, so that present-day humanity has fallen into the terrible superstition of taking the spectre of science as real science. Today, those who believe in ghosts are precisely those who call themselves monists, scientifically educated. And how could these ghosts of the world become reality?

This could happen if one seriously develops the artistic sense in oneself, as Goethe wanted to educate it in his nation, if one could absorb what comes to life in a productive capacity for contemplation – Goethe called it “contemplative judgment” – if one could dissolve the specter of contemplating nature into the productive, creative power of the spirit. In the middle of the last century, this creative power of the mind was treated in German intellectual life as the fantasy of the wild man who comes to this fantasy in my fairy tale in the one mystery drama. Thus we live with our ideas today as people in a ghostly world, we are superstitious without knowing it, we mock the superstition of others and are three times more entangled in this superstition than those we mock as superstitious people.

The etheric body of the human being is not built according to what we know as natural laws, but according to artistic laws. No one can grasp it, either in themselves or in others, unless they have an artistic spirit within them. And it is the lack of artistic spirit in the present that is so devastating, so destructive, so devastatingly interfering with the worldviews of the present. And in addition to his etheric body, we know that the human being also carries the astral body within him. This astral body is of particular importance in the present.

My dear friends, I know of no more poignant event for world development than the fact that the most important decisions regarding this world catastrophe were taken on a Saturday, on August 1, 1914 in Berlin, in the late afternoon, even into the night. For those who understand the basic laws of human life from the point of view of anthroposophy, many things are obvious, but for these others stand and mock at the superstition of others, but they are three times as superstitious as those they mock. For these people do not want to know anything about the deeper laws that prevail in the life of the world. They believe that gravity rules, that atomic forces rule. But they do not know that world history is ruled by deep-seated laws, of which the outer phenomena are only symptomatic expressions, that from epoch to epoch people have to enter ever different spheres and live in ever different ways. And so we have arrived in the present time because we, of all times in the development of mankind, are closest to the spiritual world, we just do not realize it yet. We have arrived at the point where we have to take into account man's relationship to the spiritual world. Oh, earlier people did not need to take this into account; their poor brains were still agile enough to receive the spiritual revelations they needed. But in the course of time these revelations have become empty shadows and phrases. And what is called Christianity today is often nothing more than a collection of empty shadows and meaningless phrases, not filled with the spirit. But mankind hates the real spirit; it repeatedly succumbs to its tendency towards complacency, in that which has been called Christianity for centuries and millennia, and which Christ repeatedly and repeatedly repels. It is always said: If you go among today's workers and talk to them about Christianity, they don't want to hear it. I can only say: I believe that. For just as you speak today, so you have spoken and thought for centuries and millennia, and now you want to heal the people to whom you have spoken in this way with the same thing that has brought about the misery of the time and of which you have proven that it has no hope.

Today, man is compelled to take his relationship with the spiritual world seriously, to feel that he really does not only live in the physical world, but also in a spiritual world. And until we take this attitude seriously, rivers of blood will still have to flow over poor Europe. For men hate the truth, and the hatred very often changes into fear; therefore, the people of the present are afraid of the truth. Today it is so that we cannot come to the truth at all when we make our decisions. I am going to tell you something extremely paradoxical, but I am only saying it because it is necessary that these things be said in our very serious times, because today man needs real self-knowledge, not empty self-knowledge. Man today is close to the spiritual world. When he is in his physical body, he is separated from the spiritual world; there he sees through his physical eyes, hears through his physical ears, and feels with his physical sense of touch. From falling asleep to waking up, however, he is in the spiritual world, where he lives the life that remains largely unconscious to him today, and that plays into his daily life with its impulses. But for the modern man it is so that he cannot come to fruitful decisions if he wants to make these decisions in the time from morning to evening, but he must have lived them prophetically the night before. It was not like that in the past, when people, through the different nature of their brains, still had spiritual revelations. Today, the human brain has dried up, even in youth it speaks in a senile way. For man must know: when he wakes in the morning, he has already prepared as an inner prophet what he must decide upon during the day. Only that is of real fruitfulness, what he has ready when he wakes in the morning. Everything else will lead more and more to need and misery for those who live in the superstition that one must come to one's decisions during the day, when one is in the physical body. Man should take this into account. For we live today in a time when he should make his relationship with the spiritual world real. That is why it is so distressing that the decisions leading up to the events that marked the beginning of the world catastrophe for Germany were not prepared by the corresponding personalities through what they could have experienced in the preceding night, but were made under the immediate impressions of Saturday, out of the mind of the day, until late into the evening.

I often said to friends when this war broke out: we will not be able to talk about this war in the same way as about the other wars that have taken place in history. We can talk about these other wars by collecting documents from the archives and then judging the facts. On the other hand, we will not be able to talk about this war and its origins in the same way. For at the time when this tempest broke out, all hell was let loose and the gates were sought by the confused human beings. And it will be possible to prove that of the forty to fifty people who were involved in the events that led to the war in July 1914, a large number did not have full use of their consciousness when they made those fateful decisions during the day. But that is the time when consciousness is silent during the day, and when people are not asleep, that is when the demons hostile to humanity intrude into human consciousness. We are therefore dealing with the playing into the world catastrophe of spiritual causes, and anyone who sees through the laws of the world can recognize how, through the fact that the most important decisions are only made on the basis of the events of the day, disaster occurs. Thus one will find less and less the possibility of getting out of the distress and misery if people do not strive to make their relationship with the spiritual world real, that is, to take their relationship with the spiritual world seriously in the facts that take place within. What use is it if you are a mystic, no matter how good, if you sit down half the day or sometimes the whole day and immerse yourself inwardly, trying all kinds of things to evoke an inner sense of comfort and pleasure What use is it if the spirit does not come to life in you, whereby you create living relationships between yourself and the real spiritual world and its laws, which are then expressed in the destinies in which we humans are involved?

All that is expressed in these words was one of the reasons why reading Ennemoser's words had inspired particular thoughts in me. For it was in the middle of German intellectual life between East and West. Ennemoser himself uses these words: “The wind blows from the east and the west.” He thus points first to a special relationship to the Orient and Occident, which I recently pointed out in a public lecture. He points this out as a man of the old Germanic times and shows that in the old days the German spirit was still connected to the world spirit, and that the German spirit was actually called upon to understand the great world connections a little. Oh yes, it goes to the heart when you read such a sentence in our time, written more than half a century ago: “Germany will fulfill its destiny or perish most ignominiously, and with it European culture.” “ One feels that others in the past have thought the same thoughts that have been expressed here and in other places to you and other people. Because basically much of it was a paraphrase of the words: Germany will either fulfill its destiny or perish, and with it European culture. — This Germany must have questions again, it must regain a connection with the higher goods of life. For this question hangs over us: can we still have questions of deeper significance? Can we still concern ourselves with life's higher goods? The question is one of being or not being. If we concern ourselves with higher goods and can still pose questions to the spiritual world, then we will find a way, starting from Central Europe, to prevent the downfall of world culture. If, on the other hand, we continue along the path of a senile youth and a philistine phrase that masquerades as revolutionary, then we will descend into barbarism. If people in Germany know how to spiritualize, then they are a blessing for the world; if they do not know how, then they are a curse for the world. Today the situation is such that the way that will lead to the salvation of mankind in the future runs between right and left like the sharp edge of a razor, and that anyone who wants to recognize things in their reality cannot love comfort and choose comfortable paths.

Remember that I have been telling our friends for a long time that he certainly counted, clearly counted, on generous historical impulses, but in a sense that was only beneficial in those places where he lived out the nationalistic impulses in such a way that their bearers saw them as universal human impulses. The Anglo-American world has its initiates, its people who appreciate intellectual power. Here you could preach and preach about intellectual power, and those three times superstitious people thought you were superstitious yourself. That is why the three times superstitious people have become the victims of the Anglo-American West, which saw through things. In the 1880s, or perhaps even earlier – I am only familiar with the period up to that time – this Anglo-American West spoke to the public about what it considered appropriate for the intellectual and spiritual state of that public. But he spoke from the lodges of his initiation in such a way that he said: The world war will come - that was a spiritual-scientific dogma among the English-speaking population - and its only goal can be that socialist experiments are being carried out in the east of Europe that we do not want and cannot want in the west. I am not telling you a fairy tale, but what was said in the 1880s by English-speaking people who were connected to those who knew about these things. But here these things were not taken for what they are, namely as explorations of a real reality. And so one was overtaken by what the others knew, who therefore could never draw the short straw, precisely for the reason that they knew. And in these mysterious lodges themselves, what kind of people were there? There were people who had their ramifications into all those areas that were important to work on. One has only to study what has been going on at various points, for example, on the Balkan peninsula, for decades, and try to see the connection. In the lectures I gave in various places during the war, I pointed out many symptoms in this regard. Everything was geared to the socialist experiments in the East coming through the world war and flooding Central Europe. In the lodges of the initiates, these people said: We in the West are preparing everything so that in the future, using all the means that can be gained from the spiritual world – but can be gained in an unlawful way – we will get such people for the exaltation of national honor, who can become their rulers, individual people on a plutocratic basis.

This was prepared by the West. The Ahrimanic spirits were involved in this, and it is in this world that those personalities are to be sought who can wait, who prepare their actions not by years but by decades, if these are the actions of great politics. In these English-speaking areas, there is not the militaristic discipline that is known in Central Europe, but rather a spiritual discipline, but to the highest degree. It is so strong that it can turn men like Asguith and Grey, who are basically innocent hares, into its puppets, into its marionettes. Grey is truly not a guilty person, but what a fellow minister said about him a long time ago is true: he is a person who always makes a concentrated impression because he has never had any thoughts of his own. But such people are chosen if you want the right puppets for the world theater. Things were well initiated and well prepared.

But today it is the case that man must not only take into account that which connects him to the spiritual world, which is so close to him, but he must also know that great cosmic laws are at work in the evolution of the world, in which humanity is enmeshed with its destiny, and that these can also be experienced through a spiritual science. One must only be able to finally break away from that stupidity which today is called history; for this history of today is stupidity. It believes that what follows is always determined by what has gone before.

But such a view is just as if you had a sea in front of you and said of it: Waves are washed up on the shore; each one is caused by the one before; the fifth comes from the fourth, the fourth from the third, the third from the second, the second from the first. But the truth is that forces are at work beneath the surface of the water, causing the individual waves to arise. In the same way that someone today looks at the sea, people today also look at history, and they are still proud to write pragmatic or causal history and to present these spectres to people, who in turn react to them superstitiously and take this stupidity of causal history as reality. But anyone who knows how things really are, how forces work from below, how every single event is driven to the surface, must say to himself: Unless this stupidity, which we call history today, is removed from people's minds and views, no salvation can come into human development and evolution. These are the serious thoughts that should fill the mind of anyone today who is really serious about what is happening today as a result of the fire signs.

Oh, it could be painfully soul-stirring when one tried to bring humanity to its senses on specific issues. In the 1880s, for example, I had to think: Oh, we have a physics that exerts its devastating effects on the whole world view with its absurd atomic theory, and that believes in the spectre of the external world of which I spoke earlier. How can one, I thought, teach this world again that it is a spectre? And I said to myself: If you make the world aware that what reaches us as color and light is not only quantity, as physics today with its atomistic stupidity believes, but also quality in the Goethean sense, then you could bring people from one corner to self-awareness in this regard. And I wanted to make people understand that Goethe's Theory of Colors is not dilettantism, but reality in the face of today's atomistic physical foolishness. But the time for that had not yet come. The German mind was still bowing to the English Newtonian theory of colors, which is just as suited to the Anglo-American mind as Goethe's theory of colors is to the German mind. If we had found the opportunity to take up what we needed, who knows what might have come of it! But we should not have tried to find it by taking the easy way out; instead, we should have taken the path of taking the spirit seriously. And then: Goethe's theory of metamorphosis was already a theory of the connection between humans and the rest of the living world. This theory of metamorphosis should have been developed further. But what happened? People did talk about it, but those who spoke had no idea of the real circumstances: what was said was mere empty phrases. People did not distinguish the phrases from what had substance, and so they adopted Anglo-American Darwinism instead of Goethe's metamorphosis theory.

These are the individual facts in a specific area, by which one can see what we have sinned against the individual facts, and what should be done, for example, with such individual facts. Today is a serious time, and it is necessary that we reflect on the great impulses of the Central European spirit, which gave the signature to the period from the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. If we can summon up the forces that were at work in that time, then there may be hope that we will again see questions arise and that we will again find goals and access to the spiritual forces of the world. For what Ennemoser wrote more than half a century ago is as true for our time as it is for his: “The decision is approaching, time is pressing, the wind is blowing from the east and the west, a storm can break out!” Today you can feel it. “The trunk of the old policy stands on rotten roots, the calculations of the diplomats would like to be destroyed, their art has become a distorted art that no one understands. Can you get figs from thistles, grapes from thorns?” And I ask: Can you make revolutions with philistines who act radically? Can the spirit be emancipated and left to its own devices with senile youth? We need true spiritual substance, not that which merely behaves in a radically phrase-filled manner. We need truly enthusiastic youth for everything that young people can be enthusiastic about, but not a youth that spouts senile phrases and has programs for everything and confuses these phrases and programs with spiritual content. One would like to see a ray of spiritual power penetrating into their hearts, so that it might prepare people to distinguish between thoughtless phrase and substantial content. But when substantial content comes to people, they say they do not understand it, it is not quite clear to them. And when the attitude lives in something: you have to form your sentences in a way that befits the truth - and it is not always convenient for it to fit into every cheap phrase - then people say: you write convoluted sentences. How often have I said: Those who take the truth seriously must write some sentences in such a way that they deal with the next sentence while formulating one, and that they place what is said in one sentence in its proper light with the next. If we take this seriously, we will develop the kind of attitude that enables us to understand anthroposophy in its deepest inner sense. Above all, we will develop the ability to distinguish, to really distinguish. Are people today really able to distinguish between things that are, for example, dawning and things that are setting? They are not. And it is here, in this power of discernment, that the big questions we have to ask ourselves must arise. We must ask ourselves what Goethe wanted for natural science. Was Goethe's theory of colours a morning light to recognize the essence of colour more deeply than physics can, or do we want to turn it into an evening glow that testifies that the sun of Goethean culture has already set? Was Goethe's theory of metamorphosis a morning light, or do we want to turn it into a Darwinian law that makes the sun of Goethean culture set? These things must be thought through and felt through today. Without this, it cannot continue.

Take the experiences of the last few weeks: you can become hopeful and hopeless at the same time. We have begun to work here in the spirit of the threefold social order. We began in such a way that we took no account of a certain stratum of humanity. We spoke to the humanity that makes up the broad masses, and we had found that no one can deny our understanding of the souls of the broad masses. During the war I once spoke a word of warning: We were condemned during the war to have healthy roots of the people, and that out of these roots of the people individualities developed, which were the German greats; but what the middle class was, that was what could fill one with doubt, that was what so easily wanted to take the easy way out in relation to truth and education. And so it came about that in our movement for threefolding, what had emerged from the roots of the people was brought into a rather alarming view: the party leaders. And the party leaders, who no longer belong to the people, are now presenting the people with a choice: either to remain reasonable and listen to what is truly based on spiritual foundations, but what can be understood in a reasonable way by human understanding, like everything that is based on spiritual foundations, can be understood by the mind, if one only wants to, or to follow the leaders and to lead Europe little by little to the fate of the ten to twelve million people who were killed during the war catastrophe, and the so-and-so many millions who were crippled, and to bring ten to twelve more millions to death or to starve them. This choice has been made today. And anyone who cannot grasp this idea cannot raise their thoughts to the level of strength necessary for the seriousness of the times.

A few weeks ago, we tackled what - it may not be aptly described as the cultural council. For three weeks we have been fiddling with the matter, and it has not been resolved. The matter had to be presented in the way it was presented, because it was also necessary to appeal to what remained of healthy instincts in the general wilderness. What was said from this point of view need not be national-chauvinistic, nor need it have the hostile point against another people. The English themselves know very well that as individual Englishmen they are something different than as a people. The man, who I have often quoted, who is one of the finest art critics, once said a beautiful word, in which he said something like the following: Oh, that's where we make history. There you examine how events actually developed and resulted and how peoples get into wars. But all that has been written is only there to praise the one that we need, according to our subjective point of view, and to condemn or defame the other. And it is true that when nations wage war, they wage war everywhere like savages and do not ask why. lerman Grimm says that the moment people wage war, they become savages. When people become a state, a nation, they do not become higher, but lower. This is the great misfortune of our time, that the state or the sense of belonging to a nation is valued higher than the individual human being. But people today are so enmeshed in the esteem of communities rather than of the individual that they feel quite comfortable being dehumanized, being a state template. It is naturally difficult to create something that can truly emancipate intellectual life. But in our time, humanity is closer to the spirit than one might think, despite its materialism. Inspiration and imagination rule in us. But because of our lack of productive imagination, we transform our imagination into all kinds of ghostly images about the world's interrelations, with which we defame the real world's interrelations. If you tell someone: Europe hangs together in such and such a way – as I did a few years before the outbreak of this war in the lecture cycle in Kristiania; if you look at the world in such a way that you judge it with inner psychology, with inner vision, then the dreamers regard it as a superstition, and if you set about putting it into practice, then these same people consider it utopian or ideological. But what matters is that we see clearly in these matters today. In their sense, the members of the Anglo-American world have seen clearly, and we have seen dimly. —- And inspirations also change, turning into wild animalistic emotions that want to live it up in blood. Look at the blood that is flowing today, look when people are lined up against the wall and shot: these are the inspirations that want to come to people with the good will of the spiritual world, which is hated by people and which therefore transforms into wild animal instincts. Because if a person does not want to allow what wants to come to him from the spiritual world as inspiration, then it transforms into wild emotions, into animalistic drives.

This should be borne in mind by those who have been involved with anthroposophically oriented spiritual science for decades. They should bear in mind that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is not just about collecting knowledge. Whether you ultimately know something about the astral body and etheric body and I, purely conceptually, or whether you copy out a cookbook and just juxtapose what is in the cookbook in your mind, it makes no difference; one is no more valuable than the other. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must pass over into the human soul as knowledge, but one must not confuse this knowledge with the dull, muffled mystical feeling. Ennemoser has already said this very rightly in this essay, for he says: “Just as freedom should move within the laws of justice, so religion must become an enlightened truth with the light of science.” But people today do not want to illuminate religious feeling with anthroposophical science; they want to have an abstract divinity in the mystical feeling. And above all, they do not want art to become a cultivator of spiritual beauty in natural material.

But this is what anthroposophy must aim to achieve: it must not only impart knowledge; admittedly, knowledge, but knowledge that can become inner enlightenment, that spurs on our power of discrimination. If it can do that, then much will be served in Central Europe. For we must be able to look to the west and to the east with a gaze that sees and recognizes the world. We in the west must be able to distinguish between what rises hostile to us and what is hostile only in the declining. Here too I recall from my boyhood, when I was in the area where the Styrian mountains are, how every week, twice, I had before me in the train that Count Chambord, who lived in Frohsdorf Castle, on whose face lay the most ancient catholicity, the most ancient ultramontane Jesuit education and at the same time that which was the reflection of the French “L'Etat c'est moi”. That was still truth. Everything else is no longer truth. No matter how much France may develop her power today, she is in decline, just as the Anglo-American element is in the ascendant. But these things must be properly assessed. We must see through them so that we can fertilize ourselves with the laws of spiritual life, so that we can transform thoughts into will and find the courage to really place ourselves in the present, which demands so much seriousness and so much significance from us. We must always renew the attempts and make these attempts again and again to knock on the door of our contemporaries: Do you want a free spiritual life, do you want a soil in which a free spiritual life can develop? For these attempts must always be made. If we want to let some truth and wisdom flow into humanity, then we must put it to the test, whether people want to accept it or not; it can very well impair the matter that people do not want to accept it. Therefore, I ask you not to lie down on a lazy bed by saying to yourself, according to Ennemoser's sentence: “Germany will fulfill its destiny or perish in the most disgraceful way, and with it European culture. “ These words are not to be understood in this way; rather, you must say to yourselves that Germany will fulfill her calling if there are people who have enough strength to revive the German spirit in themselves, unchauvinistically, unnationally, as a part of the world spirit, in whose sense we have to work between East and West. And if the world rejects what can come from Central Europe, then the time should have come for us, those who for decades have committed themselves to anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, not only with our heads but also with our hearts and with all our willingness to make sacrifices, to remember and say: We are here! And that we are here to cultivate the spirit should not be a lie of the soul, but should unfold as a truth of the soul! And when others are ready to accept the call for truth, as it can come from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, then, when this understanding occurs, what was intended as the Anthroposophical Society could become what it was intended for. Today, the call for the emancipation of spiritual life goes out to all people of good will. But those people who have laid claim to it from the standpoint of the spirit should be honest about it and say: If the others leave the path of the spirit, if they do not have the courage to do so, then we will take it upon ourselves. We have the courage to do so. We do not want the spirit to be an empty phrase for us; we want it to pulsate as reality in our blood; we want to say what has to be done for the spirit.

It seems that at this present moment the question should arise in every soul: Where is humanity heading? Where is the path of humanity within the so-called civilized world going? It is the events of the present that undoubtedly lead to this question arising in every soul. Therefore, today, in the first part of our reflections, we will speak about this question: Where is humanity heading?

We have often spoken of purely human differentiations, of the differences that exist between the soul dispositions of people in the West and those in the East. And I have already indicated in a public lecture at the Siegle House how the present-day armed struggle, which is by no means over yet, will be followed by the great battle of spiritual life between the West and the East, and how this battle will be one of the greatest, most significant battles that humanity will have to fight out in the course of its earthly existence.

A truth that has often been spoken here and within our anthroposophical movement in general should be awakened again and again in the soul for the realization of the human being and his tasks, and that is the truth that in the fifteenth century a radical change took place within European humanity , a radical change which at first was little noticed by people, but which is very clear, both for the spiritual life and for the life of the soul, as well as for the outer physical, for the human body, for the prevailing laws of economic life. In all three areas, the emergence of human independence, the emergence of the human consciousness soul, is clearly noticeable around the middle of the fifteenth century. Since that time, man has had to gradually work his way out of the earlier patriarchal conditions of humanity in order to fully grasp his humanity, to rely on his own judgment, his own feelings, and on the will born of his own judgment and his own feelings. But since that time, human development has also, in essence, forked, if I may use the term. This means that humanity stands at a crossroads. While up until the middle of the fifteenth century humanity went more or less straight ahead, as guided by its instincts, from that point in time in the fifteenth century humanity could go either right or left, the path is forked. Such developments do not take place overnight; such developments allow old legacies to flourish in particular. And there are certainly old legacies left over from the stages of human development that were gone through before the fifteenth century. But those qualities of humanity have also developed alongside, which are precisely characteristics of nature, that have actually only moved into the development of humanity since the fifteenth century.

But we can describe in a very specific way what this turning point in the fifteenth century actually consists of. As you know, I have often emphasized that the history taught in schools is only a fable convenante, something that has terribly little to do with the inner development of humanity. One must go to what has truly happened if one wants to understand the development of humanity. If we now want to describe what actually happened in the middle of the fifteenth century, we have to say that until the middle of the fifteenth century, human beings lived more or less instinctively, carrying all kinds of ancient, atavistic abilities from the primeval times of humanity in their blood. This instinctive life must be replaced by a life of soul and spiritual consciousness. And this life of soul and spirit consciousness should actually become the characteristic life of modern humanity. The purely animal instincts that arise from the body should be transformed into soul and spiritual instincts. There are many forces that want to work against this development of the human being towards the soul and spirit. I have often emphasized that, for example, the Catholic Church, at the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 869, by establishing a dogma, forbade people who were Catholics from meditating on the spirit at all. In those days, the spirit was forbidden for European humanity, insofar as it belonged to the Catholic Church. That was, so to speak, the first resistance against what is most necessary for humanity, against the dawning of spirituality for civilized humanity. That is why it has also come about that this civilized humanity must work its way to the spirit, must work its way against all those powers that oppose the spirit, which, so to speak, would like to hold humanity back in the dullness of the old, instinctive life. What will happen to humanity if it continues to live only from the heritage of the old, the actually overcome, manifests itself in the most diverse ways. It manifests itself differently in the West, in the middle of Europe and in the East.

We must, however, first ask ourselves: What actually awaits humanity if it does not want to turn to a spiritual life, to an understanding of the spiritual life? And I have already mentioned in earlier lectures that something particularly characteristic in the development of humanity is that in ancient times, for example still in the time of pre-Christian cultures, people remained capable of development up to a much higher age than they are today. Today, as I have often indicated, a person is only capable of development up to about the age of twenty-seven. That is the furthest limit of his ability to develop. He then retains the forces that he has developed up to the age of twenty-seven, and lets them continue to flourish in his physical body. Just consider how capable of development man is in the first years of life. He goes through everything that leads him to the important epoch of the change of teeth, around the age of seven. People just become dull to what is going on inside them; they don't pay attention to it. But inner revolutions take place in a person as he approaches the change of teeth around the age of seven. Inner revolutions take place in a person again as he approaches sexual maturity around the age of fourteen or fifteen. The external history does not speak of such an inner revolution of man. The completely Catholicized external history of Europe does not speak of it, and it knows why. Such revolutions took place in ancient humanity, in pre-Christian humanity, up to a much higher age. Man was capable of development for a long time, and so he was able to use the developed powers of his age to penetrate into regions of the world, where he cannot penetrate today if he wants to remain in the ordinary method of education, in the ordinary outer life, because he is only capable of development up to the age of twenty-seven, and then lets that which has developed in him become distorted and ossified. So that actually people become old in their inner soul earlier and continue to vegetate. What has been taken from man by natural forces, clearly taken since the middle of the fifteenth century, must be replaced by conscious work on his soul. And if it is not replaced, man can only rush towards a state that ossifies, mechanizes and so on his later life again and again. These are inner laws of development exactly the same as the laws of development in outer nature, only today man is afraid to develop such strong thinking and cognition that he penetrates to these inner laws of human development. But he must penetrate, if certain things are not to occur in the development of humanity, which will otherwise certainly occur.

Through this law of development, humanity, if it remains as it has developed, faces continuous catastrophes, such continuous catastrophes for which the present catastrophe that has been unfolding since 1914 is only the beginning. These catastrophes cannot be averted by the means that humanity has developed as an old heritage. For man is approaching a development that would, in the future, make his entire soul useless for the later years of his life. Gradually, people would come over the civilized world who, in their youth, show all kinds of spiritual and soul enthusiasm, but who then fade away, and who would vegetate into old age, without soul. Mankind would become soulless, mechanized.

Anyone who has embarked on observing life, especially in our time, could also make observations in this direction in the outer life. I can tell you, especially in the decades of the last third of the nineteenth century, I was always able to observe the emerging talents and even geniuses as they developed. No phenomenon was more common than that people developed as poets, as artists, and also as scientists in their younger years, only to fade away in their twenties and then produce nothing of note. You don't observe such things, but they are there; you just don't train yourself to make such observations. But such observations show what threatens humanity in our time if it does not grasp what can only come from spiritual and soul development itself. And this is evident in the most diverse ways across the geographical territories inhabited today by civilized humanity.

The peoples of the West, in a sense, have strong instincts. These strong instincts of the peoples of the West will protect them from this withering away of the soul and spirit for a long time to come. I would like to say that instincts still arise from the animality of the peoples of the West that protect them from soullessness and ossification. Therefore, these peoples of the West need to cultivate spiritual-mental life less than the peoples of Central Europe and the East. These peoples of Central Europe and the East can do nothing worse than imitate Western culture in any field. Because when they want to imitate, they imitate something for which they have no instincts, something that can never flourish in them. And it was basically our misfortune, our self-inflicted misfortune, that we got so involved in imitating the West in the most diverse areas of life. And in certain circles of the West, which are privy to these things, they know all that I have told you now very well. Therefore, they attach great importance to forcibly de-animating and de-spiritualizing the East, which naturally, through its spiritual qualities, strongly resists de-animation and de-spiritualization. Hence England's efforts in India to work towards the greatest possible de-animation and de-spiritualization.

You see, this is the course of civilization if humanity does not take itself spiritually and mentally into its own hands. Then we will experience that certain democratic-social ideals will instinctively flourish in the West, while in the East that which has already begun will continue. This development in the East must indeed inspire us to special thoughts. We, who for decades have always emphasized that the future of Europe has its source in the Russian national spirit, in the national spirit of the East - we, who have always pointed to all the fruitful forces that must arise in the East of Europe, we must today take special care to consider this East. We can only look at it correctly if we look at ourselves correctly.

We in Central Europe have emerged from the developments that took place during the Thirty Years' War into a certain idealism of spirit, which flourished in Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, in the German philosophers, and which also had its reflection in German music. With that, what is usually called German idealism flourished. This German idealism reached its zenith in the philosophy of Flegel. What, then, is this philosophy of Hegel, which developed out of Goetheanism in Central Europe as the most inwardly sound system of thought? Well, this philosophy of Hegel only carries to its highest point what already lived in Lessing, Herder, but especially in Goethe. And this must be clearly recognized, especially today, in this time of crisis. What lived in this German idealism? Yes, it lived for the last time, in a magnificent way it lived for the last time, what in the form in which it lived at that time must not remain in humanity. German idealism must be regarded in a certain respect as a very beautiful, magnificent, mighty afterglow. And anyone who regards it as anything but a magnificent and mighty sunset regards it wrongly and commits an offense against the spirit of human progress. This is especially evident in Hegel.

It is difficult for people to delve into Hegel's thought-structure, which has been driven to the highest level of abstraction. But anyone who does so as a human being – not as a university professor, but as a human being – can form an opinion of where the human spirit has actually been driven by developing Hegelianism out of Goetheanism. Hegel explains human reason, which reigns in phenomena, as the actual divine-spiritual out of Goetheanism. Hegel places human reason on the highest throne; the reason that reigns in reality places Hegel on the highest throne. Basically, he only carries out what Goethe has already done. Now the peculiar thing is – if you really immerse yourself in Goethe and Hegel as a human being, you notice this – now the peculiar thing is that spirit reigns in Lessing, in Herder, in Schiller and Goethe, in Hegel, but that this spirit that reigns in them knows nothing of the spirit. This is something that people will have to understand, that today still sounds so familiar to people that they understand absolutely nothing of it. It is spirit that prevailed in this German idealism, it is spirit, but it knows nothing of the spirit, it does not deal with the spirit, it does not speak of the spirit.

Hegelian reason is first developed in logic, that is, in ordinary human thinking, which becomes world thinking; it is developed in natural philosophy, where all natural phenomena are administered according to reason; it is developed in the human soul, in human historical characteristics, in what man has produced as religion, as art, as science - but then it is over. This philosophy does not speak of the spirit as spirit. It is spirit itself, it speaks of everything that is not spirit in a spiritual way; but it speaks nothing of the spirit. It is the last sunset, the last beautiful, glorious sunset of that which actually set as the sunshine for all mankind in the middle of the fifteenth century. Therefore, it is necessary to take up a very special position precisely towards German Idealism. He who wants to conserve it, who simply wants to take up what Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller thought, or what Hegel then brought into magnificent abstract world formulas - whoever wants to do that merely in reflection, whoever wants to be a disciple in the ordinary sense of the word in this time, that person sins against the progress of humanity. We cannot take over into the culture of the present day, into the development of the newer times, that which has shone forth as the evening light of humanity, that which still contains within itself the last elements of the light of Greek and Roman antiquity, we cannot do this without it having a killing effect, simply as knowledge, as something absorbed and digested. This was already on my mind as a very young person. That is why, in the 1980s, I did not pursue Goetheanism as much as the others, that I wrote about Goethe, that I historically processed what Goethe researchers, for example, historically processed, but I tried to merely absorb Goetheanism and develop it further. I wrote my theory of cognition of Goethe's world view with the aim of showing how one can think and feel about the world in the spirit of Goethe. Yes, it is based on everything I have just said. It is based on the fact that we can learn from the dawn of German idealism how we can develop further, but that we do not have to continue this dawn in the form in which it has been handed down historically. We have to develop something different spiritually and mentally from this German idealism than it directly presents to us. We must learn from it, gather strength to move forward. Therefore, today Goetheanism is not a cult of Goethe, not a worship of what Goethe directly created, but Goetheanism is the transformed, the converted continuation of what one can develop inwardly, by studying Goethe, by penetrating oneself.

To an even greater degree, this is the case with Hegel. Whoever today would be a Hegelian, whoever would bring Hegelianism to humanity in this or that form, would appear as a withering influence on the progress of our culture. But whoever makes the nature of Hegel's subtle thought-formation his innermost soul-property and from there takes the step that Hegel could not take: into the spirit, he does the right thing, he does what lies in the sense of human progress. You see, our difficult position in the world is that we are least of all Goetheanists when we parrot Goethe, and we are most of all Goetheanists when we can rise to the challenge of saying we must do everything differently from the way Goethe did it if we want to work in Goethe's spirit; we must do everything differently from the way Hegel did and said it if we want to work best in Hegel's spirit. History already shows us the way in a certain sense. For Hegel, the Prussian state was the most reasonable institution in the world, because reason is sought in all things. “The real is the reasonable.” Therefore, the state in which he himself had found a place as a person was the most reasonable of all. All universities were good for him, the Central European universities the centers of the world, and the Berlin University the center of the center. These things are in fact mysteriously connected with those forces in the evolution of humanity, which I have often described as such that one cannot devote oneself to them if one wants to live comfortably in soul, because these forces lead one inwardly to all kinds of pitfalls and abysses, to transitions and inner upheavals. Those who today measure the right by the wrong kind of Hegelianism and false kind of Goetheanism are ignorant of this. And there are truly not a few such people today. And we must realize how these people hinder real human progress.

A book has been published that is truly written in the spirit of the present, written by an inwardly astute and artistically sensitive person, Ernst Michel. The book is called “The Way to Myth.” There is even goodwill to return to a spiritual and psychological understanding of life. But how does Ernst Michel judge the path of Goetheanism? You see, there is one passage I must show you because it is inwardly connected with our present consideration. He says on page 38: “The highest knowledge that, according to Goethe, is granted to man is the intuitive penetration to the archetypal phenomena, i.e., to the seeing comprehension of the created, the appeared as a moving, flooding effect of divine powers. But these themselves remain hidden from us in their metaphysical essence. Man can add nothing and take away nothing; he cannot influence the spiritual, he can only enter its sphere of activity by beholding it or not. Not even the greatest man can transcend this fundamental law of human existence. Theosophy, even in its form as anthroposophy, would have been unreservedly rejected by him (Goethe). “

So you see, this is how a person views Goethe's way of thinking. He points out the instinctive element, the penetration into the archetypal phenomena, and then says: Theosophy, even in its form as anthroposophy, would have been unreservedly rejected by Goethe. What thoughts does one have in the present about something like this, if one really thinks in terms of progress? One has to say: certainly, Theosophy, also in its form as Anthroposophy, would have been rejected by Goethe. But to present it to humanity in the way it is presented here in this book is to sin against the progress of humanity. For it is not a matter of what Goethe would have rejected in his time and until his death in 1832, but of what must have an effect today and what Goethe, in his living spirituality, wants to make of himself. Those, then, who only look back in this way sin against the real progress of humanity.

This is the fear and hatred of today for the living spiritual life into which we must enter if we really want to strive for the development of humanity. It is therefore no wonder that people who look at world development in this way fall into error after error. This is how this author views today's expressionist art, and he finds something about this expressionist art – he speaks very unclearly – but he does not find out how this expressionist art, in all its awkwardness, is nevertheless a beginning of something new, a beginning above all of something that Ernst Michel could not even dream of. That is why Ernst Michel says: “Expressionism followed Symbolism as the second movement, consciously wanting to lead artistic creation back to its highest task: to be shaped confession, expression of a spiritual world view.”

Expressionism is very difficult to understand today, sometimes anti-artistic, not just inartistic, but it is the clumsy way to seek artistic embodiment of the inner spiritual. In this context, Ernst Michel considers the following judgment to be justified: 'Transcendentalism, as the new world view is emerging, does not, however, refer to a new religious revelation, but to the philosophical teachings of Henri Bergson and the new gnosis of Rudolf Steiner, which proclaim intuition as a latent spiritual power in man that is called to replace religious revelation. In the power of intuition, of the seeing consciousness, man is said to be able to overcome the intellect and its illusory knowledge and to penetrate directly to the spiritual essence of things.

At such a point, one must, so to speak, immediately catch the person who is growing out of the present in an oblique way. For here that which is our anthroposophy is thrown together with that which is a phraseology of Henri Bergson brought into the last phases of a development, which stirs up everything that is a world view and which seems to be the well-known personality who always revolves around himself to catch his own braid, who points everywhere to intuitions but never arrives at an intuition, who always talks about how one should penetrate to the soul, but never takes a step to penetrate to a real spiritual knowledge. It is becoming so difficult for people of the present time to distinguish the fruitful from the unfruitful. We in Central Europe have the possibility of making this distinction if we adhere to the great distinction: Goethe as he was until 1832, and Goethe as he must work in us. And the same applies to Hegel. For when they work in us in a transformed form, their spirituality is fruitful for us, helping us to find our way into the spiritual world.

What I have now explained to you is at the same time the key to understanding a very, very important phenomenon of the nineteenth century, which has not caused people to reflect more thoroughly because people in the present are averse to thorough reflection. But is it not strange that the dialectician Hegel, who only spoke from the air of the spirit, should have as his most brilliant disciple the completely materialistic Karl Marx, who only thought of the material and economic? In the mid-nineteenth century, extreme idealism suddenly turns into the most mindless materialism, and not Hegel, but Karl Marx becomes the spirit to which the most forward-looking people of the present adhere. We have not yet been able to really examine this underlying fact in its foundations because we have slept the sleep of Scelenz in the center of Europe. It can only be examined by asking: If the spirit of Karl Marx were to spread throughout Europe, what would become of Europe?

We must begin in the East. From there, the real inspiration of modern civilization would emerge from the national soul, and this East would face a fate that can be described as follows: The mechanization of the spirit, in an economic papacy the complete mechanization of the spirit, the killing of all productivity and freedom of the spirit in a large, extensive accounting over a large territory. Furthermore, the vegetarianization of the human soul. In particular, this vegetarianization of the soul would assert itself in the field of legal opinion and state life. Oh, it is interesting how in our age the unclear but genuinely Russian doctrine of 7o/stoi, the penetration of Dostoyevsky's soul, but also what was less observed in Central Europe and what I would like to call the Russian heroism of the legal idea, has emerged from the spirit of the East, which wants to move forward. This Russian heroism of the legal idea was widespread among many people before this world war catastrophe broke out. These Russian heroes no longer thought of the individual person, they only thought of the human being as such, of what should be right from person to person. And they would have gone not only through fire but also through physical death for the realization, and to a large extent they also died for the realization of the legal idea. And so, in other areas of this Russian life, too, before the outbreak of the world war catastrophe, weighed down by the terrible things the world has experienced through tsarism and imperialism, one finds a certain heroism of the Russian soul. And now it is flooded by that which wants to mechanize the spirit, which wants to vegetate the soul; so that if it continues like this, the Russian East would live through the development of humanity with a sleeping, numbed soul for centuries to come. It would also oversleep what it could have given to the world itself. Furthermore, in this European East, the animalization of the body and the birth of animal instincts in the body are being hastened. |

The old spirit of humanity would be imposed on this unhappy Europe, first in the East, if one did not agree to steer into the spirit of progress. For it is not progress that is now to be carried to the East, it is the most reactionary current, which is born entirely out of what was already destined for humanity to perish around the middle of the fifteenth century. What lives today in Russian Leninism is the continuation of the spirit that dogmatically abolished the spirit at the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in the year 869. This must be seen through. And what rises up against it out of a truly democratic-social spirit is what counts on the real progress of humanity. For this most reactionary thing wants, even if it is not aware of it, the mechanization of the spirit, the vegetarianization of the soul, the animalization of the bodily instincts, which would express themselves more and more in the views of blood. It is no use closing one's eyes to these things. He who wishes to speak out of the spirit of truth must look facts in the face, whatever the consequences may be; and he must also look unsparingly in the face those facts in which a great number of people are foolishly seeking their salvation. And I would say: only in the most extreme case does this Russian East show where humanity wants to rush. It wants to steer with the old spirit into the mechanization of the spiritual life by absorbing the school completely into the state. It wants to rush into the deadening, into the vegetarianization of the soul, by dulling the real sense of right and wanting to replace it with the bookkeeping of a seemingly, but not really socialized state. And it thinks it is leading people to a natural human life by unleashing the most savage animalistic, bodily instincts that man carries within himself.

This is the task that we, born out of the deepest distress in Central Europe, should see clearly in this respect as well. We must clearly see how we have to absorb the great age of German idealism, how we have to transform and reshape it, so that people will not, as would happen in Russia, go around like living corpses when they reach a certain age. In the future, individual abilities would flare up in people at a young age, and all the old people would walk around like living corpses. And culture would die out, because the earth has not been able to give man anything in the way it did since the fifteenth century; he must seek it for himself if he wants to thrive on earth. We in Central Europe have the task of showing humanity how to develop through body, soul and spirit. We have to rebuild that kingdom of the spirit that was undermined by dogmatic Catholicism in 869 at the eighth ecumenical council in Constantinople. Otherwise, along with the spirit of humanity, the soul will also be lost, and it will become a living corpse on this earth, since the earth will no longer be able to give any more vitality. Hence the constant search for the spirit, hence the necessity for a real world view of freedom. Not of that freedom which can be connected with the blackest reactionaryism, but of that freedom which is born out of the spirit of modern man.

In the extreme rarity of its occurrence, Central European humanity was predisposed to bestow on Hegel and Goethe just enough spirit to enable it to function as spirit, but no longer able to grasp spirit , at most, could only hint at it symbolically in Goethe's Fairy Tale and in the second part of Faust. In Hegel's case, he described the world spiritually, but in such a way that this spiritual description of the world remained spiritless. If we see Hegel as a person who can speak about the world entirely from the standpoint of the spirit, but at the same time as the most spiritless person who has ever been born, then we see Hegel correctly. But this legacy of spiritlessness is precisely what is inherent in the Central European development. That is why we have come to the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century in an absolutely spiritless way. We have come to a reign that no longer reflects on life at all. And from not reflecting on life, from the fact that one has unlearned all thoughts about life, it then followed in 1914, which one could express like this: in July 1914, at the end of the month, it was the case that in demonic spirits had confiscated all thoughts in Central Europe, so that these confiscated thoughts would not work in the souls of people, and out of the chaotic subconscious could arise that which then arose. For Central Europe, with its two empires, really gave the impression in July 1914 of people who act in such a way that all thoughts have been confiscated from them. Today, it is not enough to be naive about these things. Today, these things must be seen in the Spirit of Truth, and this Spirit of Truth must at the same time be allowed to be fertilized by what is necessary for the further development of humanity.

Therefore, one must also realize what kind of attitude would bring about humanity, which only comes from the scientific world view, from that scientific world view that wants to understand the whole world and which has then produced its idiotic, feeble-minded blossoms in the monistic associations, where only phrases and phrases were spoken because otherwise nothing could be spoken. Let us assume that this scientific world view, which has crept into all social thinking and feeling, would take hold of humanity. What would be the result? Yes, one must know what the peculiarity of the scientific world view is. You see, Flaeckel was a splendid man, really full of life, a brilliant fellow. I may have already told you the story I experienced myself: We were once sitting in Weimar, I with the old publisher Hertz von Berlin at one end of the table and Haeckel at the other. Now, Hertz, who was a man of the old school, said something like this in the conversation: Yes, what Haeckel teaches leads humanity to its downfall, it is a misfortune for humanity. — Haeckel was sitting, as I said, at the other end of the table. Hertz continued speaking, then this so pleasant, beautiful apparition of Haeckel caught his eye, and he asked: Who is that down there? No, he exclaimed, that cannot be, bad people cannot laugh like that! - You see, in such symptoms those things that came from the old were confronted with those that wanted to go towards the new. But a peculiar phenomenon must be observed: those people who first study natural science in the cabinet or with the nets in the sea, examining Medusa, as Haeckel has done so frequently, who do the research first hand in the laboratory, they can be inwardly active people, they can be there with their soul and even with their spirit. But the pupils, and this is already the third generation, show themselves to be absolutely spiritless and soulless. That is the peculiarity of the scientific world view: it drains people of their spirit and soul, and numbs them. But because it cannot yet drive the emaciation so far in those who do the research at first hand, that is why the original naturalists are often highly likeable guys. The next student, who still has the teacher's image before him, is not entirely without spirit; the third, who is the student's student, is usually already a spiritless and soulless fellow, a monist.

But there is something else connected with this monism. If you become imbued in soul with this monism, if you become imbued in soul with the spirit of modern natural science, then you become alien to man as man, and antisocial instincts develop in you. Sympathies between people fade, while antipathies increase more and more. That is why I have often had to say it here: however great the triumphs of natural science on the ground of nature, human nature, the human essence, is ruined by them from the foundations up, for they produce antisocial instincts and create abysses between human beings. Today we are already standing at such abysses between man and man, which is shown by the fact that only to the slightest degree can man understand man today, can man really empathize with man.

What must take the place of what has just been described? It must be replaced by the development of the soul, which makes its way by absorbing what you, perhaps with weak powers, will find described in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. This is at the same time a book on the education of humanity. This is what should be begun with at the beginning of the twentieth century: to speak to people about how they should rely on themselves, on their own strength. Such a thing must also be made fruitful pedagogically. Such a thing is the foundation for Central European pedagogy.

Now, it is impossible for the forces that are to be revealed in “How to Know Higher Worlds” to be cultivated in any state school.

Establish state schools in any form, and people are driven away from what is to be developed in their souls and minds. This can only flourish if spiritual life is placed on its very own free basis, if spiritual life is placed in self-government. Therefore, this shift of spiritual life into self-government is the fundamental question of humanity in the present time. For through this movement of spiritual life into self-government, that which has been most lost under the scientific education of mankind will in turn be generated: the rule of an artistic understanding of the world, from which the imaginative understanding of the world will then arise. For the development of mankind has reached a certain point: when man encounters man today, they can no longer recognize each other at all, because the physicality for this has already been too much dried up. They can only recognize people if they can form a picture, an imagination of them. And more and more, direct personal contact, and everything that should be there for people, will have to be based on images, on imaginations that people can form of each other, on looking at the soul and spirit in people. The actual developmental impulses of people must be thoroughly changed. And there too, it must already be stated: suppose the way of thinking that dominates all of humanity today, the materialistic way of thinking, were to triumph – now we are at the fork in the road of culture – this materialistic view were to triumph: then, starting from Russia, all of humanity would mechanize in spirit, vegetarize in soul, animalize in body, because the evolution of the earth itself is pushing for it. The evolution of the earth gave off the invigorating forces of man, you can follow this into the fifteenth century, where even the prices in Central Europe were the normal prices of the individual economic goods. This is only obscured by history, which is a fable convenante. The earth could only give man what he could find within himself without consciousness until the fifteenth century; only until then could it be the unfolding of man. Since then, man has had to work his way into grasping a pictorial, spiritual view of the world and of other people, in order to come to a right relationship from person to person. If the materialistic world view were to prevail, what I have just characterized would happen, then desolation would flood the earth and the war of all against all would be accelerated.

There is only one way out of this situation: if people turn to spirituality, that is, to pictorial vision, to the imaginative; if they are able to replace that which comes from Greek culture and was beautiful about it, the birth of the spirit, with the realization of the spirit in the world ; if they replace what was alive in Romanism and what, proceeding from Romanism, wreaked havoc in Europe, the officialdom, if they know how to replace that with free legal intercourse, and if they know how to replace that which has particularly flourished in the West through instincts with an organized economic life.

But for this it is necessary that what is recognized scientifically on the one hand is also recognized spiritually. The world could not progress if there were no free spiritual workers in it. Imagine how the world would progress if nothing spiritual were produced. Things must be invented, people must live in art, in a free world view, otherwise humanity would become ossified. Humanity would become ossified under the mechanization of the spirit. But what is the basis of free spiritual creativity? Free spiritual creativity is based on the fact that we preserve for life certain qualities that we otherwise only develop normally in childhood. When someone is as old as Goethe was when he completed Faust, he does so with the soul forces that he acquired in the first third of his life; they must remain, they must be preserved. In the normal course of development, they die out today. In Goethe and in German Idealism, they were still there as inheritance, as the red afterglow of the day, a last stroke of luck in the development of humanity. Now it must be cultivated, cultivated in a spiritual life that really looks at people's individual abilities and develops them appropriately through spiritual pedagogy.

And what, then, is the spiritual and psychological basis of all economic life? This may still sound strange today, but all economic life is based only on economic experience and on having been immersed in economic life, and it is therefore best developed by those soul forces that have been immersed in life for the longest time, namely by the soul forces of the last third of life. Just as one develops a true art only through the very first soul forces, so one develops a true economic life through the last soul forces. If people cannot plunge into an age through the so-called normal development, in which we all break down and can no longer be young, we will not be able to manage, no matter how socialist a state or socialization is. For this it is necessary that we consciously immerse ourselves in the cultivation of the characteristics of old age in human beings; so that we do not grow old ourselves with them, but that we can put them on like a garment. To do this, we must grasp them in our imagination, we must grasp them in pictures. We are instructed to grasp the forces of youth in pictures, in our imagination, on the one hand, and to grasp the forces of old age in pictures, on the other. Humanity is compelled to educate itself towards such a goal. And it cannot educate itself if it does not take the whole of life seriously. Today people take this life so much for granted, as if it were basically already over when a person reaches their late twenties. By this time they are terribly clever, they can no longer become cleverer, they can do everything, can judge everything, and they could not judge better. That later life also has possibilities and absorbs forces is something that humanity knows nothing about because it does not want to develop these forces, because it renounces them. But we will all have to know how to manage our youthful energies, how to manage the energies of middle age, of old age. But we shall only learn this in the threefold social organism, when we lay the things apart, and not when we mix and melt everything together, as the most reactionary development of modern times has done, and as it is often intended to do to the detriment of humanity, to the sin against the spirit of human progress. Our education must arise entirely from a true understanding of the soul's life. For example, we must come to completely eliminate snap judgment, especially in relation to life. Quick-wittedness is nice, it can be there, but it should only be there so that we can make jokes, be amusing. One must be aware that the purpose and goal of quick-wittedness is to live out the phrase. Irony and humor can be beautiful, but they must be phrases, of course. We do not want to disparage the phrase in the place where it is justified. We should appreciate artistically designed phrases, but they must not appear in the wrong place, they must not appear where the word should be imbued with life. We can only get used to this if, for example, we look seriously at the following: there is a person who says something to me that does not suit me or that suits me. A certain revelation occurs from person to person. We quickly judge it. If people could get into the habit of doing it again the next day, after twenty-four hours, when they have slept in the meantime, when their spiritual and mental state has changed completely, then people could get into the habit of visualizing the whole situation again: The person said this and that, you are facing him - and then judging, then something important would happen. In the first place it is not the judging that is valuable, but the power of the soul, which always allows that to be involved which happens to the human being between falling asleep and waking up. This power is cultivated, and it is the gradual development of this power that is particularly necessary for the formation of the imagination. This conscious work of working one's way into an unconscious life will develop the imaginative world and the world that can actually underlie a social life in humanity.

It is equally necessary to understand certain things that have to be understood at some point. You see, as strange as it may sound today, one does not usually see what is for the good or ill of humanity when it occurs in humanity. If I tell someone today the law of corresponding boiling temperatures in physics, he believes me because he is used to it, not because it is logical, but because he has been used to believing in scientific laws for a few centuries. But if I speak today of a spiritual law that is just as well founded as a scientific law, he does not believe it, because it must first be known for a few centuries. But we do not have time to wait that long. People must consciously familiarize themselves with the upheavals of living life. 'People need discoveries and inventions, that is a natural law. When such discoveries, but especially inventions, especially technical inventions, are made by people who are not yet in their forties, then these inventions have a retarding effect on the overall context of humanity, actually holding something back in humanity, especially against the moral progress of humanity. The most beautiful inventions can be made by young people: it is not for the progress of humanity. If a person reaches their forties and retains their inventive spirit for what is to be done for the physical world, then they also give moral content to their invention, and this has a moral effect in the progress of humanity. When something like this is expressed, it is madness for humanity, since humanity does not recognize spiritual laws at all. But it is a spiritual law that man only reaches the point, through his inventive talent, of being able to work for the progress of humanity in the spiritual and especially in the technical field when he is forty years old. We have to take this into account in the laws of human development. Only when humanity decides not just to think: How do you set up these or those economic offices? but when it decides to think: What must be cultivated spiritually and emotionally among people? What must be considered? — then salvation for humanity can be expected.

The church has worked long enough for the sake of human selfishness. They have worked together quietly, this church and this state. I have already said recently that a person can only truly develop freely when he is a very young child, because he is still too unclean for the state. But as soon as he is clean, he is accepted by the state and prepared, not for a human being, but for a state official. But the human being is consoled by playing with his egoism to the highest degree. He is guaranteed a pension until death if he is no longer able to work. This is a very strong incentive for the souls of civil servants. And then, when the state no longer provides, the church takes care of the person by making his soul immortal without his intervention. First of all, the person is insured during retirement, and then, after death, the soul is insured. All of this is built on selfishness. In the future, it will not be built on selfishness. Why did Aristotelian Catholicism keep secret from people that their spiritual self is also there before it enters into existence through birth? Aristotelian Catholicism only wanted to take into account people's egoism, their fear of death and their desire for assurance of an immortal soul after death. But people find it too difficult to accept the idea that I have descended from the spiritual world and that I have to carry out here on earth what I have received as a spirit. This is the most radical thought that must strike present-day humanity: that man must not regard his physical life merely as a preparation for life after death, but that he must also regard it as a continuation of a spiritual life before birth. Then he will change from being a lazy person who does not want to do anything to a person who is aware that he has something to accomplish on earth, that he has a mission. Until this thought can penetrate people, there is no way to avoid their sinking into materialism.

With these considerations, I ask you to consider what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should actually be for people today, what it should give them, and how it should work as an ingredient in the present soul for the whole of human cultural development. In the first part of my talk today, I wanted to present to you the picture that would arise if humanity were to continue to live in the traditional way: the picture of the mechanized mind, the vegetarized soul, the animalized body. This was the picture I wanted to present first. And in the second part, I wanted to present to you what must happen in order to achieve a spiritual life that the old earth can no longer provide, that man must seek out of inner freedom. Those who consider this path of our spiritual life will have the basis for reflecting on the important and essential aspects of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Eight days ago today, I tried to explain from a certain point of view why European culture is now standing at the edge of an abyss, why it is moving towards its own decline. It is undoubtedly of the greatest importance in the present time to acquire a full consciousness of the forces of decline that are at work in this European culture. It is precisely on this point that we must not allow ourselves to be under any kind of illusion, because it is precisely the pursuit of illusions that has brought us to the present European situation, the pursuit of illusions that have always been an outgrowth of real practice, and yet they are nothing more than illusions, because they are drawn from very narrow experiential contours, from very narrow experiential surfaces, and because they disregard a truly pervasive experience. But it would be a very false kind of view to think that a critique of these facts is enough. There can be no question that a mere critique of these things is enough today. Rather, one must see what the actual historical context is. For in a certain sense, one will recognize through this historical context that a temporary decline of European culture, at least according to the current trends of this culture, is a necessity, a completely lawful necessity. And one will arrive at the reconstruction only by recognizing this necessity and not by stopping at a mere criticism. But, as I said, one must also have the inner honesty to really want to go beyond illusions. Illusions are comfortable for our momentary life, but often they are destructive for the real further development of humanity. And today I would like to present a certain reflection to you, which will be, so to speak, a kind of résumé of what has been inwardly acquired here on spiritual scientific ground over the years, and which may be suitable to lead beyond such illusions of the present and to the realities. What we must always remember when we look impartially and without prejudice at the real character of our contemporary culture is that this culture is based entirely on the kind of thinking, feeling and sensing that can flow from the scientific world view. This scientific world view has produced great and powerful advances for humanity in the right environment, and it would be highly foolish to somehow disavow or disown these great and powerful advances for humanity. Only he who fully recognizes it, who, from this side, stands fully on scientific ground, has a right, as I have said many times, to look at the other, which a scientific world view cannot give. What natural science gives us, what it basically seeks solely and exclusively, is a world view that encompasses nature, that encompasses everything that one brings into one's soul when one surveys nature with one's senses and when one forms intellectual combinations from the individual sensory perceptions. It is precisely through its separation from the human being, through the separation of everything that arises from human nature itself, that this scientific world view has grown. You will find a more detailed discussion of this in my two books 'The Human Riddle' and 'The Soul Riddle'.

On the other hand, however, it must also be recognized that everything that can be gained in this way from a scientific point of view, however exact it may be – and its exactness should not be underestimated – cannot provide any information about the actual nature of the human being. The reasons for this can also be found in the two books just mentioned. But I will emphasize only one point here: Those who believe that they can gain something from mere observation of nature in the future, something that also makes man himself understandable, they believe that by perfecting scientific methods they will be able to understand not only the dead, the inanimate, but also, one day, the living. They simply think: So far, it has only been possible to understand physical and chemical laws by scientific means, that is, to understand what was in the dead material; but it is believed that by continuing this kind of investigation, it will be possible to understand the structure of the living from its components, and then the living will have been grasped in a scientific way. The opposite is truly the case. Those who look into the very thing that makes natural science methods great – and they are great – know that they are great because they are limited to understanding the dead, the inorganic, and that the more they perfect themselves, the more they will distance themselves from an understanding of the living. This means that the more we advance on the terrain of natural science, the more the living world eludes our research, and with it the first step towards understanding the human being. In today's reflection, I would like to mention a few things about the fact that this is not just a scientific matter in the present day, not just a theoretical matter, but that it is a cultural matter today. And I would like to start from certain historical facts. When we look back at ancient ways of shaping worldviews, when we look back at what lived on as the legacy of even older worldviews, what lived in Egyptian culture or in the Chaldean- Assyrian-Babylonian culture, not to mention what lived as an old heritage in ancient Indian culture, it is difficult for people today to see through this old way of knowing from their own inner being. We have wonderful research in this field by Assyriologists and Egyptologists, but all this research is not enough to present anything other than the individual facts to human observation. They are not enough to revive the essence of the ancient way of knowing in us. We have sought precisely this on anthroposophical ground, and there the present man will have to free himself from many a prejudice that, as I said, necessarily adheres to him today with a certain regularity. What confronts today's man when he delves into pre-Christian worldviews, that appears to him quite naturally and understandably as something that he can only consider to be overcome, that he can only regard as the expression of a childlike stage of human culture. As I said, for the modern man this is not only understandable, but even self-evident. But for the one who, through a certain inner spiritual development, as you will find indicated in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, is able to survey the facts brought up by Assyriologists and Egyptologists with regard to the question: How did the human soul actually relate to the universe in theory and practice in ancient times? It becomes clear that what lived at that time emerged from a completely different inner soul condition, that it was not merely something childlike, but simply a completely different kind of knowledge. And because it is so very different, because it is based on something so very different from the way we actually look at the world, it appears to man as a childish level of culture or as wild superstition. For those ancient beliefs, man was much more a part of the cosmos, of the universe, than he is today for his beliefs. Today, we may find it laughable what ancient peoples said about the connection between man and the universe. But it is no longer laughable when we ourselves penetrate certain secrets through a new kind of research, which cannot be revealed by the scientific world view.

Of course, it is strange for today's man to hear or read that these ancient people saw a connection between the individual forces of our planetary system and what takes place in man himself, or that they saw a connection between the position of the sun in relation to the individual images of the zodiac and, in turn, what takes place in man. Today, people can imagine that their existence is dependent on the composition of the air in a particular area, on the nature of the soil and also on the social order in which they live, but they can no longer imagine a more far-reaching dependence of man on the great processes of the universe. These great cosmic processes have become for him only the object of mathematical-mechanical consideration. This has been the case ever since modern times have selected from the even more comprehensive world picture of the Kep/er that which is subject only to mathematical-mechanical consideration. Indeed, one can say that, to a certain extent, beneath the surface of human culture, which is considered to be the appropriate one for today, there are all sorts of things that are reminiscent of those old views. What is happening today with the revival of old views about the connection between man and the universe. We see the flourishing of astrological and theosophical endeavors, and so on. All these endeavors, as I have often explained here in detail, are nothing more than the very unintelligent old traditions that have sunk below the level of human education required for today. At best, they are wild amateurish attempts driven by people who may feel that there is still a truth, that there are secrets behind what can be scientifically researched, but who do not want to engage with what can arise from the human powers of the present time itself. We must not see the revival of old pre-Christian truths as a goal for our present culture, and the more we try to keep reviving the old, the more we harm real progress. We must be able to ruthlessly reject what, in the guise of sectarianism, stubbornly reigns under the cover of actual culture, otherwise we will not acquire the right in this day and age to cultivate the real science of the spirit alongside natural science.

But we must look at it as it is, precisely because it must be overcome. We must look impartially and without prejudice at what the ancients had as the content of their knowledge. Today, those who reheat things in the way just described treat the matter rather amateurishly. The ancient people realized, for example, that in the innermost part of their soul they felt differently, simply subconsciously differently than usual, when Saturn, Jupiter or Mars were above their heads, especially at their zenith, and that they felt differently in their soul than usual when Venus or Mercury were invisibly below the horizon. From these inner experiences they said to themselves: There is an effect of the upper planets. And by the effect of the superior planets on man he understood that which radiates from Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, which he simply experienced, which he knew, just as we know when a gust of wind strikes us on the side. Mankind has simply lost this feeling. He knew that the radiations of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars are strongest when these three planets are visibly above the horizon. And he knew that the strongest effect on his human organism comes from Venus and Mercury when these planets are below the horizon. Thus, the world, with which he thought of the human being in context, was divided into an upper world, the world of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars - which this upper world was for him, even when Venus and Mercury were visible above the horizon , for he said to himself: above the horizon these two planets do not have their actual effect - and into the lower world, which for him was realized in the outer space, when the two planets together, Mercury and Venus, were below the horizon.

In short, man thought of himself in connection with the whole universe. Today we already fail to consider ourselves in connection with the very nearest part of our universe. Just think about it: the air that you just inhaled, which is working in your organism, will soon be outside of your organism again. That is, what is outside is inside afterwards, what is inside now is outside afterwards. You can only seemingly separate yourself from the outside world by taking the boundary of your skin for reality. But you are in reality nothing more than a piece of this outside world. Because what is inside you now will later be outside, and what is outside will later be inside you. We hardly pay attention to this. In any case, we do not use this eminent, meaningful fact to examine our knowledge. The ancient man thought of this dependence as being further extended because he was of a finer sensitivity, because he could perceive other things than inhaling and exhaling, which today's man also hardly pays attention to. Just as the modern human being can still feel part of the earth's atmosphere when breathing – but only if they reflect a little – so the ancient human being felt part of the whole of the universe that they could see. He thought that everything outside of him in the universe was an effect in the human being, which is why he called it the microcosm. And he thought that everything that manifested itself in this microcosm had a corresponding counterpart somewhere in the great universe, the macrocosm.

The sentence “The microcosm corresponds to the macrocosm” is often spoken today. But as it is spoken today, it is a mere phrase. It is only a phrase if it is not based on the living inner feeling that underlay the more sensitive perception of the ancient human being and that today's human being no longer has. A wonderful picture emerges of the connection between the individual and the universe, whether it is seen as superstition or as ancient wisdom, as ancient science. A wonderful picture emerges when we consider what lies in this ancient wisdom, or in this ancient “superstition” if you will, as the real secrets of man. Now, historically, the matter is as follows. Even in the eighteenth century, and to some extent into the nineteenth, there was, though below the surface of academic science, a continuing tradition of this ancient wisdom, or, for that matter, ancient superstition, in what is called education. There could not have been such spirits as Paracelsus, as Jakob Böhme, not even as Taler or Eckardt or Valentin Weigel, if there had not been this continuous old tradition. These masters would have been quite impossible. But the strange thing is that human receptivity becomes dulled for these old things, the further the nineteenth century progresses. As I said, in the beginning of the nineteenth century much had still been preserved. Then human receptivity, human capacity for these things dulled. And the consciousness of the earlier man: I stand as a man not alone on my two legs or on the soles of my feet, but I stand as a member of the whole universe – this consciousness was no longer present for newer humanity from the depths from which it had blossomed in ancient times. Hence the necessity in world history that today's human being, out of his or her own perception, regards what has been handed down to him from earlier times as an old superstition, as a childlike view of human development. This is what is so misunderstood today: that the human being also lives in a real development with regard to his cognitive faculty. It is remarkable how in this field people do not notice the contradictions in which they live. On the one hand, everyone today speaks of development on the basis of Darwinism, but little is said about the development of the human being itself. That our way of looking at the world did not come into being with the emergence of humanity, but is a product of development, is something that is theoretically admitted; but as soon as it comes to practically living with such a truth, one does not want to stand on the ground of this truth today.

But now the question arises: What is actually real in this old world view in the face of our present way of knowing, what is actually real in these things? The actual reality of these things is that we simply had to make progress in the realm of the dead universe, the mechanical-physical-chemical universe. The progress we have made in the last three to four centuries, and increasingly in the nineteenth century, would not have been possible if the old way of looking at things had continued to be propagated. Those things are properly understood by those who see through them, I might say, at their nodal points.

The mid-nineteenth century is such a turning point in human development. At the end of the 1850s, a whole series of human advances coincided, which, in their peculiar relationship to one another, show us what was actually important and essential and not yet recognized in this mid-nineteenth century within human development. Certain things escape the human observer in this field because they are not considered general education. The fact that a book on “Psycho-Physics” was published by Gustav Theodor Fechner in 1858 usually escapes the observer in this field because it is not considered general education. But anyone who delves into the human development in a subtle way will see that this psychophysics expresses a fundamental trait of the whole modern way of looking at the world. Psycho-physics: seeing the psychic only through the external physical manifestations, that is contained in this book as a special trait in a spirited way; because Gustav Theodor Fechner was a very spirited man.

A second event that coincides with this year is the discovery of spectral analysis by Kirchhoff and Bunsen, which is intended to prove the unity of the universe in a substantial way by looking out into the universe through spectral analysis, that is, if one only looks outward through a human mode of knowledge that is diametrically opposed, or rather, polarically opposed to the view that I characterized to you earlier as feeling oneself to be standing within the whole universe. Spectral analysis sees the material unity; the old world view was merely based on the spiritual unity with the entire cosmos. Here you have two important advances of recent times, which clearly point to what shows the turnaround in the newer view of knowledge. And not without inner connection, held together by the inner nature of man, other phenomena then arise with such appearances. Just take the following. I do not know how many people have made a clear observation on this point; but anyone who has made an effort, who does not speak offhand about these things, but wants to speak from experience, could make the following observation: In 1859, the time when spectral analysis came about and when Fechner's “Psycho-Physics” was published, one could observe that it was the secular year of Schiller's birth, what was said about Schiller at the unveiling of the various Schiller monuments and what was said at the Schiller festivals in 1859. Now, anyone observing these things can really notice how, especially in the secular year, the old veneration of Schiller in the speeches that are held turns into empty phrases, how it no longer exists in its original elementary liveliness, how Schiller's idealism fades and what is still said about Schiller becomes a phrase.

And again, at the same time, the first, so to speak, standard work appears, the first work setting the tone for materialist historical research, Karl Marx's book on political economy. This coincides with many other phenomena. The threads that run through the development of modern humanity become entangled. And once one has occupied oneself with the old view of humanity, as it still existed at the end of the eighteenth century, for example, even the standard-bearers of the French Revolution were concerned with it, and followed the progress of this old view of humanity into the nineteenth century, one sees a dying away, one sees how these sparks fade away. Our friend Sellin recently published a German translation of the works of Lomz and Claude de Saint-Martin, entitled God, Man, and the World. I believe that as many people as possible should read the book and that as many people as possible should be honest enough to admit that they don't really understand a single sentence in its true basis as it appears in this book. Those who have some knowledge of spiritual science, which in turn draws on spiritual principles in a modern way, will have some idea of what is really present in Saint-Martin. But with the education of humanity today, one should be honest about it, one must regard what is in Saint-Martin as pure nonsense. That one is not honest in such matters, that one believes one understands things that are old, is precisely the dishonesty in today's human thinking. |

And what has this stage of development of humanity brought about? Precisely the necessity to delve into the mechanical-physical-chemical world order. It is hardly possible to imagine anything more impossible than to come to today's physics or mechanics or chemistry from the point of view of the world view cultivated by Jakob Böhme, or by Paracelsus or Saint-Martin. That is impossible. It is impossible to lump everything together. Humanity had to discard for a time the completely different way of thinking that it had in order to make progress in the physical, chemical and mechanical fields, which is urgently needed for the development of humanity.

But these advances lie in the knowledge of the inanimate, the dead. And it must be emphasized again and again that the scientific world view has grown precisely because it has developed the exact, the powerful, the admirable method for the knowledge of the dead. But what did this mean that had to be temporarily lost for man? Today, this knowledge of the dead lives not only in the conception of nature. In every newspaper article, in general education, it permeates the thought form of people, so that they understand everything according to the pattern of natural science and can no longer do otherwise than to look at everything that is in the world for them according to the pattern of natural science, as if natural science could give the only reality and as if everything that is to be put into reality should also be permeated with a natural scientific way of thinking. But now this natural scientific way of thinking, which is so great in the field of natural science itself, has a certain effect when it is expressed in other human lives. It makes, not in the first generation, perhaps not even in the second, not the researcher himself, but only in the student and in those who then transform the scientific knowledge into world views, it makes anti-social, it justifies anti-social impulses. We must not ignore the fact that it is the consequence of permeating our entire soul with scientific views that we develop anti-social drives, in some dishonest, illusionary way, because that which allows us to penetrate the secrets of nature best removes us from the perception of our neighbor, the human being. And no matter how often we say, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself', if we allow only scientific views to permeate our entire human soul, then antisocial instincts arise in us, which make this sentence, or all sentences of brotherhood, a mere phrase. And so it happens that the call for social order arises at a time when, from another side, the most anti-social instincts are emerging. This is the most significant thing in our time, and the honest person today must look at it urgently. In this examination, one must not be distracted by anything, by clinging to old views, by inflammatory behavior from this or that side. Here, at this point, one must see honestly and straightforwardly. And that is the real inner reason why it is impossible to make progress in the present time without a spiritual renewal, without a recognition of the spiritual world from within the innermost human being. In the course of human evolution, the abilities have been lost that, through observation of the external world, make man appear to himself as a member of the universe. We must rebuild a spiritual world from within. The anthroposophical world view sets itself the task of creating the basis for a truly social shaping of the newer human order. Certainly, it would be very out of place today to speak of cultivating only the inner being; that would be a kind of refined inner egoism. Today one must speak of how the outer institutions must be rebuilt. But we must always bear in mind that we would not make progress in the best-organized institutions if people did not acquire the ability to rebuild a spiritual world from within.

I have tried to make a start at rebuilding a spiritual world from within and presenting it in a popular way in my books “The Riddle of Man” and “The Riddle of Souls”. In the book 'Riddles of the Soul', I pointed out for the first time that if a person really looks at himself inwardly, he is not the chaotic unity that those who today only want to recognize human nature in the corpse, that is, in the dead, speak of. What the human being really is – a head organism, a rhythmic or thoracic organism and a limb organism. The more exact connections can be found in the appendix to my book Von Seelenrätseln (The Riddle of the Soul). the tripartite structure of the human frame, which has been established with all the progress of modern science, must become one of the starting-points for a true conception of man in the future. We must come to realize the great difference that lies within us when we consider ourselves as head, chest and limb people, with everything that is connected with the limbs, namely as sexual organs, which are always only inward extensions of the limb organs, and also as the actual metabolic organs.

When we see the human being as a threefold creature, we understand its higher unity for the first time, whereas today's conventional natural science throws everything into confusion in the human being. For once we have laid the foundation for this view of the threefold nature of the human being, we understand the human being in turn as standing in the universe, but now not as a spatial being, but as a temporal being. And that is what makes the great difference between our way of knowing and the present one. Here Goetheanism has created the elementary basis, here one must continue to research along the path of Goetheanism, and then one comes to a real knowledge of the human being. Then one looks at the human being as he presents himself to us as a being with a head, so that one is able to look insightfully at this form, at this shaping of the head. Then one can see that the formation of the human head is completely connected with embryology and one sees that the embryology of the human being starts from the formation of the head, and the other formations, the other organ formations, are actually added more or less secondarily, in form. But then one also finds that the human head is connected in a completely different way to what a person, when they say “I”, as the chest human being, who is essentially a rhythmic human being. In the head is the most perfect human organization, one might say, from the very beginning of the formation of the human embryo. The head is rounded like the universe itself, and what is not rounding in the head is only different from rounding because it is supposed to be connected with the rest of the organism. The head has a certain independence, except that certain qualities of the head then extend to the other limbs of the human organism, because the whole is a unity, and because what I say about the formation of the head is only developed to an extreme degree in the head, but is metamorphosically repeated in the other limbs of the human being; to speak in Goethean terms: If the head represents, so to speak, in the highest morphological perfection what wants to be realized in man out of inner foundations, then the human being with limbs represents what, I would say, is only rudimentarily humanly formed in man, what gives the human form the least perfection. And the thoracic man is in the thick of it. The thoracic man actually lives through the rhythmic movements, because basically everything in the human being is rhythmically moved. And I have, I would like to say, indicated a most striking rhythm in the development of mankind in earlier lectures. Today's humanity considers such things to be coincidental. But if it considers these things to be coincidental, then that will lead humanity even further into ruinous thinking. I have told you: if you take the number of breaths in one minute, the remarkable thing is that you get a certain rhythm in the number of breaths for one day, for twenty-four hours, and that in twenty-four hours you take as many breaths as you experience 'days in the normal course of a human life if you live to be about seventy-two years old. And that this is the same number as the number of a so-called Platonic solar year, the number of those years in which the sun apparently passes through the entire zodiac.

This is only a small part of the rhythmic process in which the human being lives through his breathing-chest process in the whole universe. The human being is this threefold being. And now, as we contemplate this threefold nature of man, we are standing at the starting point of a realization that I need only hint at today, because basically we have spoken about the details so often; today we have looked at them in relation to their morphological unity. We are at the starting point of a scientific realization that is clearly presented to people: The formation of the head is a consequence of what the human being has gone through before coming into physical existence through birth or conception. The forces that the human being has gone through in the spiritual life before coming into physical existence through conception live in the formation of the head. In all that lives in the formation of the chest, lives that which the human being can experience and develop here between birth and death. And in the formation of the limbs lives the metamorphosed disposition to what man is post mortem, after death, in the spiritual life. That which was actually driven out of the consciousness of European humanity by the Ecumenical Council of 869, the pre-existence of the human soul, which also provides a real insight into the post-existence, will be scientifically proven when people have only first familiarized themselves with the corresponding habits of thought. Then it will be only a step to the realization of repeated earth-lives, of which we have often enough spoken. But all this knowledge must be built up from within. What the old man built out of the contemplation of the universe and its connection with it, because he still had a higher sensitivity, the modern man must build up from within through a strong inner power, which he can acquire in the way I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. And these powers, which the individual can only acquire through knowledge, will be developed socially if we pursue such a science of man that allows us to recognize the soul and spirit in the physical. But not in such a way that we prattle about it in mere phrases. For everything that today's philosophy talks about the soul and spirit is a prattle in mere phrases. One only speaks of realities when one can say: Look at your head, it is the reflection, the mirror image of a prenatal spiritual development. — There you have a real fact, only then does one have the right to speak of these things in terms of the modern world view. Only when one can say: “Your limbs show the transformed pre-formation for the brain formation of the next life on earth” – only then is one standing on solid ground. Then one can speak about these things in concrete terms. And this way of thinking, which, because everything is connected in the human soul, will in turn instill social instincts into humanity. And from this, social feeling will arise. For between the old world view, which relates to space, and the new world view, which relates to time, stands the impulse that has entered humanity as the impulse of Christianity, which means, as it were: away from the outer, mere spatial view – it steers towards the innermost nature of man. But we must not stop at merely directing attention to the confused and chaotic feeling; we must let a concrete world-view shine forth out of this feeling, but a world-view that now places the human being in time within the universe.

We stand in the present between these two things. We have lost the old spatial view, and out of social and human suffering must be born the newer temporal view of the development of man. And Europe has so far devoted itself entirely to the declining spatial view. This Europe must learn to absorb the view of the times. This is the fork in the road that European civilization has taken so far, and at this fork in the road we must decide whether we want to rush headlong into destruction or whether we want to awaken European civilization to a new life. Many speak of destruction; only a few dare to speak of a new life. But individual voices sound strangely out of what is known as European civilization.

The most decadent part of this European civilization is, as I have often explained in detail, in the Romance culture. The Treaty of Versailles is only the last convulsion of the declining Romance culture, which is unconsciously felt, which behaves like a reality in the world for the last time, while inwardly it has long been doomed. But this downfall gives rise to strange intellectual blossoms. And I would like to say that anyone who sees through human development inwardly breathes a sigh of relief when confronted with something like a recent book on art by Benedetto Croce. Benedetto Croce gave four lectures on art in Texas, not in Europe. The first is called “What is Art?” and in this lecture there is a sentence that is nothing more than the essence of a comprehensive Romanesque view of art, that is, an artistic view that emerges from decadent Romanism like the dawning of a new era, like a new plant rises from the rotting plant seed.

“But in the history of thought this attempt has often been made consciously and methodically” - he is referring to the attempt to understand art through today's thinking, and he regards this attempt as a futile one - “starting with the ‘canons’ that Greek and Renaissance artists and theorists for the beauty of bodies, from the speculations about the geometric and arithmetic relationships that are said to be found in figures and sounds, to the investigations of nineteenth-century aesthetes, for example Fechner's, and to the “communications” that the ignorant are in the habit of presenting at the congresses of philosophers, psychologists and naturalists of our day on the relationships of physical phenomena to art.

When I spoke in Munich of the living comprehension of art, of an understanding of art that disregards this understanding of art through dead scientific knowledge, at first, of course, everyone objected. But Croce continues: “If one asks why art cannot be a physical fact, the first answer is” – please listen now! “physical facts have no reality, while art, to which so many devote their whole lives and which fills everyone with divine joy, is supremely real. Therefore it cannot be a physical, that is, unreal fact."

Now I ask you to look in spirit at the perplexed face of European philistinism, that perplexed face, from which one must say: Yes, but everything that is out there in space is real, art is unreal. And here a person, with the finest artistic sensibilities, cries out to you: Art cannot be a physical fact because physical facts are unreal and art must lead precisely to reality.

This is something that must be reversed in a certain respect. And beyond art lies that which is attained on a path whose first elementary steps I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. There is the living contemplation of the true world, of true reality. But it is a great thing to see how a man like Croce already senses that art is more real than what the honest philistine recognizes as the only reality. Because at bottom, when he sees a man killed in a drama, this philistine would like to say: Well, thank God it is not real. Such things show the strong clash between the old and the necessary new, and it will certainly be art, on whose ground the most powerful struggles in the present must take place. For the view that has taken its model only from the dead, the view that has led to such great triumphs in natural science, also sails in social life towards a mere shaping of a dead man, one that must perish. Marxism is built according to the pattern of natural science. He wants to understand the social order as one understands the external natural order. What has he achieved? A beautiful, magnificent, ingenious critique of the modern economic order. But he is faced with the impossibility of putting something in the place of this modern economic order that he has criticized. And anyone who can delve into the question: What kind of structure could be achieved through Marxism, through the living out of Marxism? he will say: Nothing, only destruction, realized criticism, that is, destruction is the only thing that could be achieved. Isn't it strange that where the extreme consequence of Marxism has been drawn for the external life, in Eastern Europe and Russia, a strange criticism emerges, a criticism that could really draw the last consequences of Marxism, that life in the way it had to as a consequence of Marxism, and if it then only comes across such things in a strange way through experience, as stated in my book 'The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Present and Future Life'. For in the “Key Points” you can find that what actually lives on in individual ideas in Marxism is nothing other than the legacy of the bourgeois world view.

Everywhere people are dealing with a dead world view when they want to build something out of Marxism. And isn't it strange when a critic of what is happening in Russia says the strange sentences: “We relied on the help of bourgeois specialists who were thoroughly imbued with bourgeois psychology and who betrayed us and will continue to betray us for years to come. Nevertheless, it would be childish to pose the question in the sense of whether we could build communism only with purely communist hands and without the help of bourgeois specialists.” And further: ‘Without the heritage of capitalist culture, we cannot build socialism. Communism cannot be built on anything other than what capitalism has left us.’

That means: we carry over the bourgeois philistines simply because we have no real content for communism. Now, a strange confession: communism can only be built on the legacy of what capitalism has left behind. And further: “Practically we have to create a communist society with the hands of our enemies,” that is, with bourgeois hands. That is, we have to establish an inverted class society; that is, not to abolish a class state, but to turn into helots those who were formerly at the top. “Practically we have to create a communist society with the hands of our enemies. This seems to be a contradiction, perhaps even an insoluble contradiction. » Please listen to the sentence as it is! «In reality, however, only in this way can the task of building communism be solved.

So it seems to be an insoluble contradiction, but in reality only with the help of this insoluble contradiction can the building of communism be solved.

And further: “This presented enormous difficulties, but only in this way could they be solved. The organizational, creative, joint work must drive the bourgeois specialists into a corner so that they are forced to march in the ranks of the proletariat, however much they resist it and however much they may fight against it step by step. We must educate them to a high level as technical and cultural forces in order to keep them for ourselves and to turn the uncultivated and wild capitalist country into a communist cultural country.

Now, this is a dry statement of what must be done if a new idea, a new spirit, is not to be born: the only way forward is to continue to work with the legacy of capitalist culture. But since the mode of thinking extends only to the dead, this can only lead to the annihilation of European civilization. And this annihilation, which is coming from the East, will surely come and spread to the West if a new way of thinking does not take hold in European humanity, if people are not able to look at reality quite differently than it has been looked at for the last three to four centuries, and, at its culmination, in today's world.

Now let us ask ourselves: What about the one whose inheritance is to be taken up? What about that? We have just heard a voice about how the East is to be built on the heritage of the Old; for until now it has been built entirely on the heritage of the Old. There is still no new thing for the outside world, which must first come out of a renewal of the spirit. But what has the old brought about in terms of spirituality? This can be seen from the symptoms. I recently spoke in Heilbronn. I do not care what the line-shagger says about my lecture, that is not the point, but this line-shagger finds it appropriate to express the current world view in a short, concise sentence. He says: “The banality of his whole presentation, which is strongly reminiscent of American propaganda, was most clearly demonstrated by the way he incorporated the old slogans of the French Revolution – liberty, equality, fraternity – into his tripartite structure.”

So, in today's civilization, there is the possibility that it will be spoken out of: liberty, equality, fraternity are hits, are old hits. Let this sink into your souls, let it sink into your hearts. As Hamlet said, “Writing tablet, writing tablet! That a man can always smile and smile and still be a scoundrel!” Write this down in your soul: in today's culture, there is the possibility to call freedom, equality, fraternity “old hits”! And then one wonders where the impulses for the downfall of this culture lie? Don't be too comfortable, my dear friends, don't be casual! Tell people that this is possible, that the noblest goods of humanity are being dragged through the mud these days by what calls itself “European education”. Then you will perhaps be able to convey this spiritual after all, if you can only make it clear to people what they are oversleeping in their souls. For today people read right over these things, they take them for granted. But these things must be looked at. And until it is seen how strong the impulses of decline are, how trivial that is which has finally sailed into this world war catastrophe, there will be no salvation. And if there is to be salvation, it will only be possible if it emerges from humanity's renewed immersion in its spiritual depths. We cannot see the goal in a mere rehashing of old spirituality today. We must today inwardly muster the strength to create a new spirituality. The destiny of Europe depends on this: either this new spirituality, or Europe will become a tomb with regard to its culture! There is no third way, and for one or the other humanity must decide. Either into ruin, or courageously into the new spirituality!

Eight days ago today, I gave you a kind of reflection here that ended with similar words to those of the last public lecture at the Siegle House on Friday. I pointed out how present-day humanity is faced with two possibilities, one of which must inevitably lead to the decline of Europe's current civilization, while the other is the only way to escape from decay. I would now like to show you how such statements are by no means mere assertions; they are not so simply because they can be derived from real spiritual insight and the resulting knowledge of the conditions of the present development of humanity. But even for those who do not want to engage in this spiritual vision, there are many, many possibilities to see the vision confirmed by the external facts of contemporary life. A few individual facts from the abundance that could be cited are to be cited today.

A little booklet has been published in Münster in Westphalia with the title “Christianity and Socialism” by Johann Plenge, who has already published a number of works from his point of view to help us understand the currents of our time. This booklet contains a lecture by Plenge that he gave based on the impressions he had received from two other lectures. Max Scheler, a philosopher of our time who is actually quite well known, had given a two-part lecture in Münster on April 8 and 9 of this year on the question: What is Christian socialism? And Johann Plenge responded immediately, on April 11, in the final lecture of his social science proseminar at the Academy of Münster, with his own response to Scheler's lectures on “Christianity and Socialism” from his point of view. It is interesting to note what Plenge recounts about the brief prehistory that took place between these two lectures. Scheler, who undoubtedly belongs to the most astute thinkers of the present, had given his double lecture on Christianity and socialism on April 8 and 9, and already on the second day Plenge delivered his reply. Plenge reported that in the meantime he and Scheler had met in person and agreed on various questions, as Plenge said. However, if one really follows what Plenge then said in response to Scheler's remarks, one does not get the impression that these two gentlemen, who are in a sense representatives of contemporary thought, have come to an understanding. but one has the distinct feeling that these two gentlemen, in their backgrounds, have talked past each other, and have talked past each other in such a way that this missing the point is almost characteristic of certain mental and social phenomena in the present day. It is characteristic because today, what I have often characterized here is taking place on the broadest scale: that people today have such strong anti-social drives that even if they have the best will to communicate with each other, they actually always talk past each other. Talking past and thinking past each other is so strong in the present day that one can have conversations of the following kind.

Someone comes to you and you develop certain views, let us say, about pedagogy or something similar, which arise from anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientific demands. These views are such that they actually differ from the views that are currently prevalent, and which are also regarded as extremely good. The person in question often listens and then says in conclusion: “Yes, I completely agree. I have been thinking the same thing for a long time, I see that as the right thing.” But he said exactly the opposite of what had been said, simply because we have now reached a stage in the development of humanity where the same sentences and phrases can be said and mean the opposite of what they mean when spoken by someone else. We have, to a certain extent, distanced ourselves from the inner content of language – this is a characteristic social phenomenon of the present day – we have distanced ourselves from the content of language to such an extent that we can express one thing and also its opposite with the same words and sentence structures. In the face of such a modern phenomenon, it cannot be a matter of averting our gaze from it because it is convenient, but it can only be a matter of looking straight at it and asking ourselves: what actually emerges from such an occurrence? I would now like to give this characteristic example of Scheler-Plenge because, on the one hand, we have here a man who strives for a system of thought that is to give socialism a present-day form, socialism as he imagines it; as he thinks it out of a Catholicism tinged with Christianity, which in his case, in Scheler's, arises out of a truly inner enthusiasm, which arises out of the truly inner, emotional direction of a Catholicism that is Catholicizing and goes as far as the will. From this Catholicizing Christianity, he fights against present-day capitalism, namely the capitalist spirit, and he promises himself only from the spread of his Catholic-Christian way of feeling the possibility that present humanity will be imbued from within, from the heart, with a social attitude, and that then a social order of life will also emanate from this social attitude. Scheler, then, stands on ground on which only that which man develops out of a certain inner knowledge, a sentient knowledge, can flourish. From this point of view, he champions his Christian socialism for the present.

Johann Plenge takes a completely different approach. He does not start from what, so to speak, arises from within as a social insight, but Plenge wants to start from what is present in social life. He wants to start from the phenomena that manifest themselves in social existence. He wants to observe how one person relates to another, how groups of people come together socially, and so on. In contrast to Max Scheler's kind of will science, he therefore advocates a certain social science. And he tries to characterize, from the point of view of this social science, those institutions that he thinks will bring about a certain social order in our human life. Now, as I have already mentioned, these two gentlemen were talking at cross purposes, and Plenge even had the belief — Scheler probably did not have it, I do not know — that they understood each other to a certain extent. They did not understand each other at all. And that is simply because today, in the broadest circles, the element is missing through which people can truly communicate with each other inwardly. And this element is none other than that which is asserted here as the understanding of the spiritual world itself, which can have a harmonizing effect on the various directions of thought and feeling in today's world, and on the directions of will, and from which today minds like Scheler and Plenge still want to keep absolutely away. Such an appearance as that which occurs in the dialogue between Plenge and Scheler permeates our entire present human life.

Now, we are interested in looking at this permeation in relation to Central Europe. And here I would ask you to recall how I developed it here last time, last Sunday: that within Central European spiritual culture we have Goetheanism, and that we also have what I characterized for you the other day, in a somewhat paradoxical way for today's world, as Hegelianism. Hegelianism, Hegel's world view, also has something very remarkable about it historically. As Hegel presents it, it is pure idealism, the comprehension of the world through reason, that is, through the rarest of all substances, spirit. Now the peculiar thing is that, firstly, Hegel had a large number of students, and these students were grouped from the extreme right, from reactionism to the extreme radical left, also grouped in political and religious terms. There was a lively dispute among these students. And you know that the saying was coined that Hegel himself is said to have said before his death in the presence of his students and those who wanted to or were to have them: “Only one has understood me, and he has misunderstood me.”

But now something else has come about. Among the students of this Hegel was also Karl Marx, the founder of the current socialist world view in one of its forms. Under the influence of Hegelism, Karl Marx became a complete materialist, even with regard to the historical view. Quite naturally developing out of Hegelism, Karl Marx became an anti-Hegel. Hegelism has completely, if one wants to speak in its own language, turned into its opposite.

Yes, but how does something like that come about? Something like that comes about because a way of looking at things, as Hegel developed it from his own inner being, and which is the most purified, most diluted spirituality in the form of logical human reason, can only remain healthy in historical development if it develops in a single personal individuality. Even the pupil can no longer develop a healthy spirituality, and in the third generation such a view becomes a completely unhealthy element if one swears by it dogmatically. That is why I told you last time that in relation to such things the grotesque demand arises that one should, for example, immerse oneself in Hegelianism, but only learn from it, as well as from Goetheanism, to fertilize one's own mind, to enter into this element of thinking and viewing oneself, and then one must leave the path and educate oneself further in the same way.

Those who swear by Goethe, swear by Hegel, and thereby simply adopt their dogmas, harm themselves and others. Those who truly want to be Goetheans today must not swear by Goethe dogmatically, but must develop further that which is present in Goethe in an embryonic form. And to an even greater extent this is the case with Hegelianism. In Hegelianism it becomes apparent what is actually present. This Hegelianism in the German development is a highly, highly characteristic phenomenon. For there is something present that is a characteristic of logical thinking in general. No one can actually understand what logical thinking is for the human being who does not understand something of spiritual science. For only spiritual science shows him that there is also another, a supersensible human being, not only the human being who appears to us as the sensual body. These two things, the supersensible and the sensual human being, blur into a single wild chaos for the contemplation of humanity, because what contemporary anatomy and physiology reveal about the human being is a wild chaos. But if one learns to properly distinguish the supersensible human being, of whom I also spoke twice in the recent public lecture, from the sensual human being, then one becomes acquainted with the strange paradoxical fact — spiritual facts are mostly paradoxical for sensual perception — that logical thinking would not exist at all for the development of humanity if people were not born into the physical body and developed there. For logic, especially when developed to its highest level, the sensory body is the appropriate instrument. Therefore, anyone who develops supersensible knowledge, who really immerses themselves in supersensible knowledge, must experience that it is extremely difficult to put this supersensible knowledge into words at all, but that if they want to grasp this supersensible knowledge with ordinary logic, that is, with what is only bound to the instrument of the external physical body, then this supersensible knowledge is killed for them. Then it is over with this supersensible knowledge. On the ground of logic, supersensible knowledge dies. For our human life, it must be brought to a mirror image, as it was with Hegel. But then one must not live in this mirror image, otherwise one is immediately out of the spirit. Therefore it is not the case that Hegel brought German thinking to the highest spiritual development, but that in this spiritual that Hegel offers, the most spiritless is contained, that there is no longer any spirit at all in Hegelism. That is to say: in Hegel the physical body grasps spirituality and at the same time squeezes it out. The highest logic, this Hegel; the most spiritless philosophy, this thought produced by the highest effort of the spirit! No wonder that it breaks down into the materialism of which we are aware, into Marxism, and that it becomes in this way a real phase of development in the nineteenth century.

You see, that is how serious things are at present. And one does not understand what actually lives as substance in our present time if one cannot get involved in such things. The present human race is such that it wants so much to believe in something, that it is so tremendously glad when it can put something forward, or can hear something, upon which it can swear as upon the master word. And when he swears by it, then the greatest harm is done, because the most important demand of the present time is this, that man must develop his free spirituality. And in the moment when he sins against the freedom of his judgment, he makes himself sick at the same time. In the present time man cannot help it, it is an historical fact, he cannot help it if he wants to reach human heights, but he must free himself inwardly. It is more than a vision when one says the following: Imagine the content of Hegel's philosophy as a kind of spiritual scheme, as a kind of etheric body entering the world, working in its purely logical substantiality. If we imagine this ghost of the spirit sweeping across the world, then we have the model for what has occurred physically in the last four to five years as the European world catastrophe. What was most potent in the soul as Hegelianism takes physical form as the horror of the world war catastrophe of the last four to five years. One must have the courage to look into these spiritual connections, otherwise one will not understand anything about the events of the present. People today would like to make it so easy to come to spirituality. But they are prevented from doing so by the demands of the time itself. If we gather together scientific experiences today and develop them to the highest level of logic, we thoroughly expel the spirit from the human being. Plenge does this, of course only to a certain extent. He develops a purely Ahrimanic thinking, as we call it in our spiritual science, and he presents it to the world.

The opposite is the case when people want to develop something from within, as Schopenbaner, Hegel's strange philosophical twin, did in contrast to Hegel. When people want to develop something from within, from the will-like element, the opposite occurs. Then it happens that they repeatedly, not for themselves but for their students, for those who adhere to them dogmatically, want to push people into mere belief in revelation, where one says: Imagination can no longer achieve anything, one must come to the truth from a completely different starting point. This leads to a certain element of faith that is not human, but at most Königsberg-Kantian, and which appeared to a particular degree in Schopenhauer. But the original spirit never has the tendency to fall into the damage, but only those who follow, namely the third generation. That is a law of the world. And Schopenhauerianism is akin to the belief in revelation, which is becoming so popular in our time. The mere acceptance of a revelation, as it is particularly developed in the Catholic Church of the Counterpart, insofar as it is orthodoxly Catholic, and as it has reached its culmination in the declaration of the dogma of infallibility: that is the opposite element. Spirituality that arises from within is drowned in this element. Just as logic drowns the inner being, so mere belief in revelation drowns that which arises from within and seeks to embrace the external world. We see this today as a particularly characteristic phenomenon. And we live in these currents. These currents unconsciously permeate everything that is demanded from the left and right today. What do people know when they praise or denounce this or that outlook on life? What do they know about the forces that lie within these outlooks on life? They know nothing about it. The people on the extreme right have no idea of the content of their intuitive impulses, which make them so conservative and reactionary. The radicals, even the most radical Bolsheviks, have no idea of the content of their instincts, and how they kill with their logic what they want to bring to expression in the outer life. Unconscious life is very strong in humanity today, and it is out of this unconscious life that those things develop which are actually the effective ones and which are to become active in consciousness by means of a spiritual sifting of one's knowledge with what can be taken from the supersensible. What is effective in the present can no longer be sifted in any other way.

Now there are three currents in the present, in the immediate present, but these too are only like the surging waves of what is seething in the depths, and what I could only characterize to you in a few strokes, starting from Max Sche and Johann Plenge and showed you what logical thinking, which was taken to the highest level in the nineteenth century, and what the belief in revelation, which was taken to the highest level in the dogma of infallibility, what these mean for the human soul.

From the seething and swirling that goes on in the depths of the human soul, and which is very extensive, three things come to the surface, but by no means in such a way as to reveal the true inner essence for today's man.

Firstly, let there be no illusions: what is spreading over the world, consciously spreading, is Anglo-American world domination, which is stretching its wings over contemporary civilization. Consider all the individual phenomena during the war years and in today's so-called peace agreements. It is called “peace” because today, often, one's words mean what one should actually mean by the opposite words. All that has happened turns out to be a single manifestation of one of the great contemporary waves of the spread of Anglo-American rule, of the Anglo-American path to world domination. That is one thing. It shows itself in its spread, which will be clever and cunning, through its group soul, in order to counter many things that oppose it.

The second element appears in a completely abstract form, so that it is impossible to show in this abstract form that something reasonable can come out of the ideas and will impulses in which this thing appears today. That is the striving for a so-called League of Nations. This striving for a so-called League of Nations, as it arises particularly in the mind of Woodrow Wilson, is, as it stands today before mankind, still a complete impossibility, because it is one of the worst abstractions, because, as it is conceived, it has no basis in real human life. But the fact that it is there, that it is being discussed, shows that people are nevertheless longing for something international out of this human life, something that they are only talking past – as they talk past everything these days – by developing the theory of a League of Nations.

The third element is the social striving in the present. These are the socialist impulses, these social impulses, which one can say arise from justified, subconscious grounds of a large part of present-day civilized humanity, but that they assert themselves as completely chaotic instincts. For what is spreading today through socialist striving across Europe to the Far East is the saying: I want this, I want that; I set this or that up as an ideal – but nowhere do people know what they actually want to do and what they are actually talking about. That one does not know how to bring things into a certain way of thinking, into a certain content of thought and feeling. Yes, one even hates this content of thought and feeling today. This is particularly characteristic of an article by a certain Seeger, which appears in the first issue of the Tribüne, which is published here in the neighborhood. There the threefold order is rejected in the name of the proletariat and socialism is demanded. Yes, if you were to ask the gentleman to say what he now imagines by socialism, he would of course not be able to say anything of real substance. The most absolute lack of content is shown by talking like that. But that comes from the fact that one no longer comes to any thought content at all, that one only has instinctive sensations and feelings. And in the end it is all the same whether this gentleman calls what he feels and experiences socialism or whether he would give it a different name, for example Europeanism or negativism or something similar; he would speak meaningfully in the same sense. One would always think the same thing when he utters it, that is, nothing. Many people today are not yet aware of this, unfortunately not yet aware of it.

These are the three currents that are emerging from the confused chaos of the soul in the present day: Anglo-American world domination, the longing for such internationality as is expressed in the pursuit of a League of Nations, and socialism. But with the thinking that is widely used today, one will never get behind what is actually behind these currents. For this, a completely, completely different thinking will be necessary, the kind of thinking that does not have the ordinary body logic, but whose logic is born at the same time, as this thinking gushes forth from supersensible knowledge, according to methods that, contrary to current scientific methods, but nevertheless in their sense, must be found in spiritual-scientific-anthroposophical terms.

Now, what I am saying emerges in characteristic phenomena. You know that our own observations, when they become historical, follow a very specific method, which I have often called the method of symptomization here before you. The aim is to recognize what lives in history through symptoms. Not in the way that history is usually viewed in the present, in which we simply consider what follows as causally arising from what came before, in a mechanistic way, but by viewing the development of history as a continuous stream from which phenomena emerge at every point from spiritual depths. In this way, what arises and manifests itself in external phenomena cannot be understood in causal terms, but as a revelation of profound inner processes. And much of what is happening in the present must be recognized in this way in the visible phenomena as a symptom of what is going on deep within.

In these days you may be confronted with a significant symptom. You have all no doubt reflected from some point of view on the subject of the Versailles Peace Treaty, which has wreaked such havoc on our Central European life. As you know, this document has naturally given rise to the most diverse thoughts in people's minds. But one thought, which you can already find in the newspapers, has been given less consideration, and for those who want to dig deeper, it is a thought that points to something extraordinarily characteristic. This is that this Versailles peace instrument, which is to have a profound impact on modern civilization, is not at all comprehensible. If you approach it honestly and try to understand what is actually intended by the individual points, you cannot arrive at a realistic understanding. One cannot understand the thing, one cannot fathom what is actually intended by this peace instrument. Especially when one tries to find out exactly what is meant from the most diverse formulations, it is impossible. It is therefore no wonder that a Frenchman, Professor Aulard, in the “Pays” expresses himself about this peace instrument in the following way. “It is actually my duty as a historian, journalist and citizen to read the peace treaty and form an opinion about it. But so far I have not succeeded, and I must confess that I was not able to read the entire peace treaty to the end."

And that is an honest man. The others read the treaty and believe they understand it. But Aulard feels obliged as a journalist and citizen to understand the treaty; he reads every sentence over and over again and has not yet come to the end because he honestly admits to himself that he cannot understand the thing.

Then he continues: “In my profession, I have studied many cumbersome, obscure diplomatic documents; but the Treaty of Versailles is a mind-boggling task, the like of which I have never encountered. You would think it was not conceived in French; there is no trace of French clarity and order in thought, so that one believes one is dealing with a translation. I will not speak of Anglo-Saxon verbiage. But the treaty is a mass of verbiage and a jumble of articles. I found the explanation of this fact in the last article of the peace treaty. French is no longer the diplomatic language of the world. We have lost that prerogative. It has been taken from us. All the great treaties of modern history have been written in French."

Now it must be said that the French language did not become the language of diplomacy, that is, the language in which it is possible to set down what has been agreed upon at the diplomatic level, for no reason. It has become so because it is the language of a declining modern cultural element and has great concision. This treaty is in English, conceived in English words and sentences, and it makes that impression on those who are accustomed to thinking with old clarity, and it must make that impression. It is true to say that the English language does not have the precision to express what is to be expressed there. But that is the characteristic of the English language, that is, the language spoken by the peoples who are now taking over world domination. The language of the peoples who are now taking over world domination has the peculiarity that one cannot express everything that is to be spiritually surveyed in it directly in the way it arises when one takes language only as it exists today. This English language does not have the possibility of expressing itself in such a way that what is expressed is completely congruent with the spirit. One must be able to contemplate such a thing without becoming emotional about it, without turning it into a kind of English hatred. One must be able to contemplate such a thing as a scientific fact; that is just the way it is. With some study “sine ira” one must contemplate what turns out to be the characteristic of the future world language. But this characteristic of the future world language is something that is extraordinarily beneficial for humanity. There can be nothing better for modern humanity than that within the element of the people that takes over world domination, a language develops that cannot be equated with the spirit.

Consider this fact in connection with another, which I have mentioned in various places, but also here before. I have often said: Among those writers of the past epoch - in the present I could no longer imagine it -, among the writers of the nineteenth century living out, those whom I love most of all for their style, for the way they shape thoughts, is Herman Grimm. Herman Grimm shapes that which has emerged as his view into such thoughts that I have always been extremely fond of dwelling on these thoughts. Nevertheless, when I once spoke with Herman Grimm and wanted to counter only very little of my view of life with his, he simply replied: “Let's leave that, dear doctor, we can't understand each other on that!” It was impossible to say anything to Herman Grimm about the way I viewed the things of the world. He simply could not do otherwise than to brush it away with a wave of his hand. But if you want to know how these things were thought about in the nineteenth century from a certain Central European social background, then you have to go to Herman Grimm, who came from Bern on his mother's side, so he had not only southern German but also Swiss blood in him, who had the uncle Jakob Grimm, the father Wilhelm Grimm, and who had as his wife the daughter of Bettina Brentano, Gisela von Arnim, who was thus completely immersed in a certain social outlook of the nineteenth century. Today, when I read Herman Grimm, it seems to me as if I were reading from a distant past, centuries ago. What appears in Herman Grimm are documents of the nineteenth century. And it has been very interesting for me – as I have often said – that when I looked at history and read Woodrow Wilson's literary reflections, I sometimes found echoes of Herman Grimm that sounded literally familiar to me in Woodrow Wilson. Nevertheless, they are not copied, because Woodrow Wilson might not even understand something if he read Herman Grimm. But if you have an eye for such things, you notice something very peculiar about Wilson. He notices that Wilson speaks as if something were actually being recorded phonographically, as if his consciousness were not fully present during his speech, and as if a demon ruling in the subconscious were gushing forth everything, with the exclusion of the actual personality of Woodrow Wilson, which then mechanically clothes itself in the words and sentences. When you read Woodrow Wilson, you feel as if you are talking to Ahriman himself, who reigns in the depths of Woodrow Wilson's soul. — Herman Grimm is there, with every single sentence, the whole personality is always there; Woodrow Wilson is completely gone, a demon speaks through a human mouth in the depths of the human soul. Those who do not know this do not understand the most important and essential connections for the current world view.

But what is expressed in all this? In all this, the most important thing is expressed. In the Anglo-American language, the connection between the human soul and the language element no longer exists as it did in older times. Language has become separated from the human being; as language, it becomes abstract. When one hears English spoken, certain turns of phrase, especially at the ends of sentences, always seem to one as if one were looking at a tree that has withered in the outermost treetops and at the tips of the branches. Language causes the inner permeation with the soul to die. This evokes the opposite element, the opposite pole of the soul life: the necessity to communicate beyond language.

You see, that is the tremendously important thing. In the future, people will not be able to communicate with each other in English if they do not at the same time develop a direct, elementary, feeling understanding from person to person that is not rooted in language, and that gives life to language. But this means nothing less than that the supersensible human being, the first supersensible human being, must enter into the historical existence of humanity. Until now, people have only spoken out of their physical bodies. What they have achieved as language out of their physical bodies will die out with the English language. It will of course still be there, but it will become more and more an abstract jingle. And people will have to relate socially through their etheric bodies, so that as they speak they will bring about an understanding from thought to thought, a real, not a superstitious, mind reading. Mind reading is a requirement for the coming centuries. Communicating directly from thought to thought and being aware that language will only become more and more a way of drawing the attention of others to one's own thoughts. When speech is still fully soul-based, I can, under certain circumstances, when everything is buzzing in the room here, where people are having witty conversations and everything is mixed up, I can ring a bell, right, then it will become quiet. I have announced that I now want to speak, then people will understand what I am saying. This is how speaking will be in the future. It will certainly have to accompany the development of thought, but it will be a continuous ringing of the other, and the understanding from person to person will have to arise from a much deeper soul element. This is to be enforced by the evolution of humanity in that, among the ruling future peoples, among the Anglo-American peoples, language as such is being deadened, and the necessity arises to confront the demon within the individual human being with the demon in the other human being.

There, of course, the human being - forgive the harsh expression - will face the human being much more nakedly than today. In speech one can lie, but thoughts will show when they are false. But in the transition period one does not recognize their seductive, illusory character. That is also the reason why the fourteen points of Woodrow Wilson so beguiled the world. And now you will understand how to grasp something like the unclear peace treaty as a world symptom of our time. It is very significant that this unclear peace treaty should arise at a time when people are supposed to turn from language, its arrangements and grammar, which emerges only from the physical body, to the direct understanding of thoughts. To the same extent that people will understand the workings of the spirit from person to person, the different languages of the earth will no longer be an obstacle to fraternal cooperation. And only to that extent will a League of Nations become possible. And only to that extent will socialism be possible, to which extent the spiritual will be added to today's purely animalistic relationships - these animalistic relationships between people have almost reached their highest point. Socialism under today's social conditions, which are anti-social, depends on people absorbing spirituality, soulfulness, and being able to understand each other through language. Otherwise it is impossible to arrive at a genuine socialism. One can strive for it, one can talk about it, but one talks about it in mere verbiage. And verbiage is what one always hears in the marketplace of political life today. It is always the same: when you hear a politician from any party today, you hear words that you could more or less say yourself. You hear old party programs that have been known for a long time. You don't even need to listen, but a horrible specter arises from within, a black figure that is and wants to be filled; filled with that which can arise from the transformation of anti-social instincts through the development of social life, but which in the future must flow from spirit to spirit, while language, especially in the past, was in many respects that which first made human beings social beings. From language and from what was brought about through language as a connection between people, patriarchal and other social connections emerged. Now that language is dying out, an inner spirituality must take the place of what was the substance of language. That is the condition of real progress.

But people like Max Scheler and Johann Plenge are not at all interested in such things. Plenge was also one of those who received our appeal “To the German People and the Cultural World” but did not sign it, saying that they liked the appeal very much but found it too unclear and therefore could not put their names to it. I fully understand this, because the whole mental organization of a man like Plenge is such that he can only adhere to the words and the structure of words, that he does not suspect, because of the special nature of the words and the structure of words, that a new spirit is behind it. Therefore, he does not perceive anything of what is actually meant to be said by this call. Because, of course, one cannot put the words and form the sentences in the way that humanity is accustomed to through today's newspaper plague and through the scientific plague, these formed words and formed sentence combinations seem strange to people. And in addition to not finding the spirit, they also find the language unclear. I fully understand both, for there is something to overcome first – which I wanted to characterize through today's lecture – if one is to truly understand what is to be said, so to speak, in a new language.

This is something that should penetrate into culture in general, into the spiritual culture of humanity, in other areas as well. If you ever come to our building site in Dornach, which is intended to house our School of Spiritual Science, you will find everything treated differently than the way things have been treated by art up to now. Even the walls themselves will be treated differently. What does a wall mean in all previous art, in all architecture? A wall means a conclusion. One was inside something that was closed off by the walls, and this also had to be expressed through the artistic motifs, through the artistic forms. One had to feel inside something. In Dornach, this tradition, which is a thousand years old, is being broken. The walls are — of course, artistically this must be taken — not in such a way that one feels closed in, but everything is so shaped, everything is so artistically formed that the wall becomes spiritually transparent, that one has the inner feeling: it ceases to be, this wall. Through each twist and turn, the soul is put into such a mood that it perceives the walls as spiritually transparent. This is taken to the point of physicality in the windows. For the windows I devised the principle of making glass etchings, that is, single-colored glass panes are treated in such a way that they are scratched out with a diamond pencil, and they are only a work of art when the external sun shines through, when a connection is created through the external world. Only the radiance of the sun makes the scratched-out work a work of art. But the artistic element is also preserved in the form: walls that destroy themselves, so that one does not sit inside as in a closed space, but as if one were in direct contact with the macrocosm as a microcosm, as if one were in intimate contact with the whole universe. -– This must be sought in all areas of existence. Speaking abstractly of it, that the sensual world should be a Maja, no longer does it for the future. If one denies the existence of the sensual world, it will only become truly apparent in its existence. But if one overcomes this existence artistically, through the artistic form itself, then what is otherwise to be achieved through contemplation, through thinking, through abstraction, is achieved through the will.

This in turn helps to ensure that language becomes something that is actually spiritually transparent, something that one no longer listens to, but through which one listens in order to hear the thoughts directly. Language must first dry up, as it does in English, in order to become transparent, so that one listens directly to the thoughts, so that that connection from soul to soul occurs, which consists of a kind of mind reading. The English will not be able to do that. English culture will not be able to do that, the culture that produced Shakespeare or Newton or Darwin, despite its size. It cannot do it alone. It can only be done if Central European culture reflects on its better element and contributes to world culture to this spiritual feeling from person to person. We must learn to break thoroughly with what we have developed as a desecration and denial of ourselves in recent decades. We must learn to reconnect with the greatness of Lessing, Herder, Goethe and so on, and learn to name the “German” that we have completely forgotten in recent decades, that we have completely alienated ourselves from. Then we will be able to contribute our share to the development of world culture. And above all, we must learn not to be dreamers and not to indulge in illusions, but to look at reality as it is. This is what is most urgently needed today. We must learn to look more closely at people and to judge them from a certain spiritual point of view. We must have the courage to say: When two people stand opposite each other in the affairs of the present day, as Scheler and Plenge did, then the one, Scheler, speaks in a Luciferic way, out of impulses that he allows to be fertilized by a Catholicizing Christianity. Ahriman speaks to Lucifer, not the human being in between. This human being in between must first be found again. But we must have the courage to look people in the face in this way. Today, people pass each other by without really getting to know each other. They glance at each other superficially and form judgments about others that suit them; they do not form the judgment that is truly true.

This, my dear friends, is why I say that we must stop indulging in illusions. We must develop the courage to face the truth in a way that is still unheard of for many people today.

With this in mind, we must stand between East and West, and we must also have the courage to judge things in the East in such a way that we say to ourselves: That which has often been mentioned here as the national element that lies in the East like a germ that wants to develop into the future is currently being drowned out by an anti-Russian, one could even say anti-human element. For in what is developing in Russia, the extreme consequence of logical thinking, which is both inhumane and stultifying, is developing, which can no longer produce anything productively, but can only plunder the old. It really seems like a tremendous tragedy, like a bitter tragedy, when one looks at what emerged in the Russian East in the second half of the nineteenth century and what reached its highest level in the extraordinary spirit of Soloviev, who, although he is not very well understood in the West, was extraordinary for Russia. In Solowjow, everything that is seminal in Russia is philosophically summarized. In Central Europe, little attention has been paid to Solowjow. A university professor of philosophy, who is very famous, came to the conclusion one day that there is a Solowjow and that these are also thoughts of the present with which he should deal. But since he did not have the inner drive to deal with the matter directly, he told one of his students: “You want to become a doctor, so write me a doctoral dissertation on Solowjow, and at the same time I will be able to teach myself about this Solowjow.” In recent times, this had more or less become the method by which university professors acquired knowledge about unknown figures in intellectual production. The university professor of whom I am speaking is not only a university professor, but a famous philosophical figure of the immediate present.

There is something in this East that will in turn work its way out through the destructive Leninism. But for that to happen, it is necessary that one also learns to understand the third element, the real social striving of the present in its spiritualized form, that one learns to penetrate it with real spiritual science. Then the tragic and bitter phenomenon that appears in Soloviev will come to mind. Then one will say to oneself: on the one hand, a Soloviev, emerging from this European East, full of newly developing, fertilizing spiritual seeds that can flourish in the East, which Europe can only fail to understand them fully; and then, sweeping away this phenomenon, the world war catastrophe, carrying, even in a sealed carriage, through Germany to the east, the executioner of intellectual life, Lenin. And the great deception in Central Europe for many that things need not be taken so seriously!

The disciples of Solovyov appeared on the scene like comets when the Russian Revolution was getting under way. They wanted a renewal of the dull, benumbed, paralyzed spiritual life, which was as dark as a night of the soul, as spiritual death, the killing of the soul with all its relationships. And these people, who seemed to be true disciples of Soloviev, wanted a release: Kartachov, Samarin. They wanted to spark a spiritual movement in Russia from the first sparkling rays of the revolution. In the place of this there arose what now appears as a wild obliteration of all spirit in Lenin, this gravedigger of all spiritual life, where everything is denied that the great figure of Soloviev had presented to the people of the East. And around this central phenomenon, all around, the proletarian masses, seduced by those to whom they adhere as their leaders. This is an infinitely sad phenomenon, which will only lose its sadness when people are willing to see the truth in the confusing facts of the present. An inner will that does not just want to rail against what is happening in the present, but also wants to see the truth and recognize what is happening in the justified proletarian demands across the entire civilized world. But in order to see the present clearly and without illusion, we must be able to distinguish between what is deeply justified, but unconsciously emerging from the broad masses of the proletariat as the still unborn seeds of the future, and what is instinctive because it is the last putrefying remnant of a declining culture. That is what often rises to the surface from the minds of the leaders of the proletariat today. Our time has the misfortune of having to face the most flourishing side by side with the most rotten. That is the fate of those times when an upward trend wants to assert itself alongside a downward trend. Then the downward trend often appears in the form of the upward trend, in the mask of the upward trend. Then one must look very closely. Then one must see in Lenin the former Czar, who appears in a different mask, the same way of thinking that was in the former Czar, only with different words, dead words, useless for what they express. One must see the metamorphosis of Czarism into Leninism in the Russian East of the present. It must be recognized that what appears on the outside can be the opposite of what appears on the outside. That is how difficult it is to see through the circumstances of the present. What is happening historically is as if a person were to approach me with a smiling face, with banal, sweet-talking eyes, with a look that wanted to beguile me, and I would be forced to tell him: Despite your mask, despite your sparkling eyes, your loving smile, you are a devil!

This is required of people in the present day: to seek the truth under the most difficult circumstances. But this testifies that this present time needs to discard all the comforts of thought and feeling and to make an effort to penetrate to the truth. Everything that is expressed today in the words: childlike confession, mere naive acceptance of the Bible, that leads you to bliss. That is not a bliss that leads to this, that is just indulging in the most desolate selfishness of the soul. Everything that wells up today out of this attitude must be observed, must be looked at. And when, instead of a courageous and real penetration into what is necessary for the present time, we encounter aunts-like conceptions of the relationship between anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and the threefold social organism, then we must not be glad because this aunts-like conception is seemingly externally buttery and benevolent. We must not believe that we could not reject it. Rather, one must call the aunty-like aunty-like and know that today this aunty-like is the destructive one, that this aunty-like is the one that produces the Bolshevism it wants to reject. The cure can only consist of manly, aunty-free engagement in strict spiritual science. This is what must be laid upon our soul today, what must become an element, a ferment of our soul life. If it cannot do this, then humanity will not advance. If we decide to continue in the old ways of thinking and feeling, we are deciding on decline. It will become uncomfortable from the inside, and extremely uncomfortable from the outside. Or, however, one can pull oneself together through a strong inner power to grasp the spirit, then that which should die will be grasped by the spirit, and the spirit will transform it into a new European civilization, as it calls everything that dies to new life. The spirit will create a new life, and we will in turn have that which is an ascending current of human beings into a spiritual life.

Because circumstances will probably arise in the next few weeks that will mean no lectures here in the branch, I will have to give something summarizing today. Something comprehensive that will point to certain time relationships, the observation of which makes it possible to gain a more precise insight into the tasks of the present time. And such an insight into the tasks of the present time is, as can be seen from various things that I have just discussed here, most urgently needed today.

The human being, especially in Central Europe, is actually so attuned today that he either fears or despises knowledge of the spiritual world. Both are, of course, inwardly related. But it is precisely this fear of the spiritual world and this contempt for the knowledge of the spiritual world that are connected with the extraordinarily difficult situation in which Central Europe has come to be, and in which it will continue to be.

Over the years and in recent weeks, I have already hinted at many things that I would like to summarize today. You will have gathered from the observations made here that in the West, among the peoples of the Latin and Anglo-American races, extrasensory knowledge plays a role in everything these peoples undertake in the broadest political sense. Anyone who believes that, for example, Anglo-American politics is not dependent on certain supersensible insights into the development of humanity is under a great illusion. And in the same way, supersensible insights play a part in everything that is striven for in the East, among the peoples of Asia and as far as Russia. In this connection, however, everything that concerns the present Russian regime must be excepted from what is being striven for in Russia. That is certainly foreign and far removed from all supersensible knowledge. These conditions show that we in Central Europe are, as it were, wedged in between world formations that are definitely determined by supersensible knowledge, which is often not of an impeccable nature for the present time. We have spoken of these things. And it has also been pointed out that this must not be the case, that in Central Europe, in a certain stubborn way, people close themselves off from real supersensible insights. For this closing off from supersensible insights would drive this poor Central Europe more and more into hardship and misery, into confusion and chaos.

It may correspond to a present-day note in all parties on the left and right to regard everything supernatural as something childish in the development of humanity. The peoples of Central Europe would suffer greatly if they continued to close their minds to supersensible knowledge, for they would simply be strangled by what is saturated with supersensible knowledge in the West and in the East. It is important to point out that in the broadest circles today, trust in those who have extrasensory knowledge has vanished, that this trust is to be eradicated through the mere worship of what can be mustered as knowledge without extrasensory vision. On the other hand, it is also true that no time is more in need of the most intensive cultivation of trust in those who can communicate something of such supersensible knowledge than our own. Thus we find ourselves in Central Europe in a situation in which we have the most urgent need of something that we also most intensely want to reject. This fact must be faced without bias. For example, we must ask: Where did the Anglo-American world get these insights into the course of human development that have become so pernicious to us in Central Europe? And what are the sources from which the eastern peoples, namely the eastern peoples of Asia, will be able to gain in the future that will be suitable to choke our throats in Europe? Only a clear insight into these things can really bring salvation.

If we follow what is spread as world ideas even among so-called completely enlightened historians and politicians in England and America, we will find that even in these enlightened people, their ideas are influenced by supersensible knowledge about the course of the world. In the Anglo-American world, this knowledge has been gained in a kind of mediumistic way since the middle of the nineteenth century in particular. The path suggested in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds', for example, which is the direct path from the development of the human soul forces, is not popular in the Western world. In the Western world, one proceeds as follows: one seeks out certain people who are considered particularly suitable for making inquiries about the spiritual world, people who have more or less mediumistic abilities. Those who do not believe what I am about to explain, or rather the following generations, will have to pay heavily for this unbelief. Mediumistic personalities are sought out. These mediumistic personalities are brought into other states of consciousness, into trance-like states of consciousness, and when one knows the corresponding machinations by which, after the external mind has been shut down, what they carry within themselves in their subconscious is revealed through such mediumistic personalities, then one finds out precisely what was resting in the subconscious of these personalities. And it was particularly in the course of the nineteenth century in the Anglo-American world that the principles were discovered through which the successes could be achieved politically against Europe and Asia. They simply brought personalities who were suited for this into a certain trance, and then they developed the tasks for the Anglo-American world out of this trance. The people of the Anglo-American world are much too clever to do it the way the Central Europeans do, who simply do not believe what is revealed in this way from the depths of existence. With this disbelief, they close themselves off to all those impulses that could help them to advance in the real movement of humanity.

Now the path I have indicated here, which consists of experiencing supersensible developmental impulses of humanity through mediums, is an extremely precarious one. For it is self-evident that the instincts of the Anglo-American race prevail in the bodies of all those who are selected from the Anglo-American population. And the cultural-political impulses that are obtained in this way come out so that they are colored, mixed with what the egoism of the Anglo-American race is. And so these impulses are then effective in the egoistic service of the Anglo-American race. And anyone who can see through what can be seen through in this area knows that the successes of the Anglo-American race against Central Europe have been achieved with the help of what the occultism of the Western world has brought up from spiritual sources in the way I have just indicated. The method that is followed in this is easy to see through. You only need to remember what was said here eight days ago. You only need to remember that the ordinary logical mind, as it is used by us in external sensory observation and to create external sensory science, that this mind extinguishes real supersensible knowledge. For this ordinary logical mind is, after all, bound, bound in the most eminent sense, to the tool of physical corporeality. As soon as you develop up to those powers of cognition that are mentioned in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, you are no longer dependent on the tool of the physical body with these powers of cognition of yours. As soon as you make use of the logic to which one is accustomed in today's everyday life, that logic to which one has become accustomed as a result of today's external natural science, you are placed in the impossibility of getting to know that which actually prevails socially and spiritually in the development of mankind. Therefore, the people of the Anglo-American world, who are well aware of this fact, seek to gain their political principles by excluding the ordinary logical mind. By putting suitable personalities into a trance, the ordinary logical mind is eliminated. The medium speaks from the depths of his soul, without the use of reason. And if what is gained in this way is then clothed in the thought forms of common sense, it can be easily understood and can also be used in practical life. In the Western world, this is done by spiritualistic means for everything observed in the treatment of political and cultural facts, excluding the ordinary mind. Important impulses for the cultural policy of the Western world have been gained in this way and have been effective in recent years.

The opposite approach is taken in the Orient, by the people inhabiting Asia and also by certain elements of the Russian population in the European East. You see, I do not believe that the ideas of the threefold social organism would have been properly received if I had not first explored the human organism itself, the exploration of the human organism of which I have spoken, at least in outline, in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (The Riddle of the Soul). There I showed how the ordinary human natural organism is a threefold one, how this human natural organism is divided into three parts: a nervous and sensory organism, a rhythmic organism and a metabolic organism. Recognizing these three parts of the natural human organism is of immense importance for the current thinking of humanity. And through the recognition that one exercises in this view of the threefold natural human organism, one also comes to recognize the social organism correctly in its threefoldness. Just as we can investigate today that the natural human organism consists of these three parts: the nervous or sensory organism, the rhythmic organism, which is linked to the rhythmic activity of the respiratory and cardiac organization, and the metabolic organism, just as we can investigate it today, it was not investigated in ancient times. But in ancient times there was a certain instinctive, atavistic knowledge of these things. And the Orient, which had come particularly far in terms of the ancient way of looking into the supersensible world and gaining supersensible knowledge, has retained to this day the instincts to apply in life what can be gained from such supersensible knowledge. Therefore, the Oriental still seeks supersensible impulses today, just as the Occidental does; but he seeks supersensible impulses in a different way. The Oriental does not try to eliminate the intellect through mediumistic machinations, as the inhabitant of the Anglo-American world does, but on the contrary, he tries to fertilize the intellect. That is to say, he tries to stimulate the nerve-sense human being from the rhythmic human being. Therefore, in the Orient you will find that those who want to recognize something supersensible are recommended, above all, to train their human respiratory activity, to train the whole rhythmic human being. The Oriental yoga exercises, which are supposed to give these people of the Orient real knowledge, these Oriental yoga exercises are based on training the rhythmic human being in such a way that, through a certain type of breathing, through a certain technique of heart movement, influence is exerted on the human mind, which is otherwise only bound to the physical tool. By devoting himself to certain yoga exercises, the Oriental takes ordinary rhythmic breathing and ordinary heart activity out of their natural course and puts them into such a course that they gain influence over the mind, which would otherwise be directed only to the sense world, and which, through this influence, gains insights into the supersensible world. Thus the Oriental, by the opposite path from the Occidental, also has real knowledge of the supersensible world. These two paths of knowledge also lead to real knowledge. But just as the American and the Englishman, as occultists, for the reasons I have given you, gain knowledge that lies in the sense of the national ego, so the Oriental, by approaching directly the body, which is glowing with racial impulses, through his yoga exercises, gains impulses that are egoistic to the race. We are stuck between the national egoistic impulses of the West and the race egoistic impulses of the East. But insights can be gained in this way. And those who gain insights in the West and in the East in this way simply laugh at the Europeans who believe that they can gain real insights through their sciences or their social considerations. What the Europeans prattle out of their natural science, out of their so-called causal knowledge, and what they then prattle into their social science and social agitation out of their way of thinking, is regarded by Western and Eastern people as just a prattle, which it basically is compared to real knowledge. Because what is contained in our European sciences and in our European impulses for agitation is, compared to the real forces that guide the development of humanity, a mere rambling. And because we live in mere hot air, because we reject everything that is taken from reality, we bring misfortune upon ourselves. As soon as people unconsciously notice that something has been taken from reality, such as the idea of threefolding, they quickly vilify it as something that must not exist. But as long as we want to eliminate everything that is real from the world through ramblings - be it the ramblings of science or the ramblings of political parties - we will not emerge from chaos and confusion, but only drift deeper into chaos and confusion. But we must also be completely clear about the fact that neither the path of the West nor that of the East can be ours. For here in Central Europe it is necessary that the path be followed that is truly modern in the most eminent sense. And that can be no other than the one described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. What is the basis for what is described in this book, in contrast to the West and the East? To understand this, one must, however, gain some insight into the development of humanity. Above all, one must have assimilated a great truth about time, which consists in the fact — as I have often mentioned here — that a turning point for modern humanity occurred in the middle of the fifteenth century. According to our spiritual-scientific historical classification, this is where the fifth post-Atlantic cultural development begins, which differs significantly from everything that has gone before and which lasted from the eighth century BC to the fifteenth century AD. That is when humanity's endeavor to gain all knowledge through a new state of consciousness begins. This struggle of humanity to place itself at the apex of the personality, to fully develop the consciousness soul, goes hand in hand with other facts that I have already mentioned. And there is no other way for us to strive for supersensible knowledge than by taking this fact fully into account.

External science must remain mere idle chatter because it cannot see into the course of earthly evolution as it is connected with the development of humanity. What external natural science talks about are only the ripples that drift to the surface of life. This outer natural science speaks of what is investigated in the physics laboratory, what is observed through the telescope and microscope; it speaks of what is observed in the corpse; it speaks of everything that is dead in evolution. Nowhere does it speak of what is alive in evolution. For there is no test tube for any laboratory, there is no chemical reaction by which one could determine that which can only be determined through the supersensible experience of the human being himself. It is only the human being, the living human being, through whom the great events can be investigated. The great events of earthly existence must not be investigated by turning to the retort in the chemical laboratory. The great events of earthly existence must be investigated by turning to the being where the strong reactions occur, to the human being himself. But if we just present the development of humanity as it is today, we will not get to the most important things; we have to look at them through the millennia, and that is really only possible through supersensible knowledge. And when we look at it through this supersensible knowledge, we find that in everything we call food today, for example, in all the external material substances we can absorb to satisfy our physical needs, what lived in them before the fifteenth century no longer lives in them today. However paradoxical and absurd and insane this may appear to people of the present day, who are so scientific in their own opinion, and who are so full of nonsense in ours, however paradoxical and unreasonable it may appear to people of the present day, it is nevertheless the case that certain forces of almost all foodstuffs and almost everything we take from the physical world to satisfy our bodily needs have changed since the fifteenth century. Before the fifteenth century, in all material things, whether taken directly from nature or cooked, there were forces present that still had an effect on the soul. By eating, man still received certain soul forces from what he consumed. Since the middle of the fifteenth century, the ability to supply people with soul forces through simple eating has been completely lost. Since then, we have truly entered a stage of earthly development in which we can no longer obtain anything from the earth itself and from what it gives physically to satisfy our physical needs. Since that time, only physical processes take place in our metabolism, whereas before, when we digested, our metabolism was still soul-based, just as it is today — forgive the harsh word — in a cow or a snake, for example. It will surprise you that I say just that. But with regard to the external metabolism, the cow, when it digests, is a more material being than man, and so is the snake. When you see a cow lying or standing after it has eaten, or when you watch a snake digesting its food, something is alive in the astral organism of that cow or snake that was also alive in humans in the past, when they were more attuned to the animal, but is no longer alive in humans today. We have been so released by nature on this side that it no longer works in the same way as it used to. You may find it surprising that food has lost its soul-effect for us, but not for the cow; but that is the way it is. Expressions always mean different things to different beings. Precisely for man, because he is organized differently, food means something different than for the cow or for the snake, which of course the materialists do not believe. Precisely for man, because he is organized differently than the cow, the matter is as I have just explained. Therefore, today we have to take into account this more physical way of our metabolism compared to the past. But we also have to learn to take into account all the things that have changed on the other side.

You see, if we were to remain awake throughout our lives, we would be the most foolish beings imaginable in relation to the supersensible world, for we would only ever use our intellect through the instrument of the ordinary physical body. That means that all supersensible insight would have to fade away for us. It is our good fortune that every time we fall asleep, we withdraw our mind from the physical brain and then have that of the supersensible world. Today, however, we do not yet want to develop our consciousness to bring this knowledge of the supersensible world, which we unconsciously gain in our sleep, into the physical organization. But we have to, then we will become different people than we are now. It is indeed the case that while we are becoming more and more physical in our processes during our daily digestive activity, we are already becoming more and more spiritual during our sleep. And it is only a matter of bringing in what we accumulate in spiritual experiences from falling asleep to waking up. We bring this in by not doing it like the Oriental, that is, by not infiltrating our mind from the breathing process, so to speak, but by treating ourselves purely spiritually and mentally as described in 'How to Know Higher Worlds Higher Worlds?” is described, that in this changed outer life – which occurs for us because we treat ourselves in this way – everything that the mind accumulates in the supersensible world from falling asleep to waking up can enter.

I have already mentioned that the influence of the supersensible world cannot be gained in the way that many people do today: they drink so much beer in the evening that they have the necessary heaviness in bed. Yes, it is certainly not possible to dwell in the supersensible world from falling asleep to waking up in such a way that what has been supersensibly experienced can actually enter. Rather, we have to treat this body, which has been different from what it used to be since the mid-fifteenth century, as it were, from the soul, as it is in the sense of the book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” is. Then we first get supersensory attitudes, and then also supersensory knowledge.

What is recommended here as a Central European path to the supersensible world differs quite significantly from the path of Westerners and Orientals. What is recommended here is a training that has simply been demanded by human development since the fifteenth century. What is being done in the West is based only on what has been observed through the experiences that were made with the Native Americans. These Native Americans, who were wiped out during the conquest of America, were, in the opinion of the Europeans, quite uncultured people. Yes, outwardly they were quite uncultured people. But the strange thing was that these American Indians, who were wiped out, had very intense supersensible knowledge, and that they gained this supersensible knowledge through methods that the Anglo-Americans then learned from these Indians and cultivated in a somewhat more cultivated, but thereby also more decadent, way. This is based on a very significant process in the evolution of the earth.

You know that history tells a one-sided story of how things have progressed in the development of culture. History tells of all kinds of cultural migrations from Asia to Europe via Greece, Rome and so on. But it does not tell us that another cultural migration took place, not from Asia to Europe, but from Asia across the Pacific to what is now the West, to America, along the routes that were perfectly possible in ancient times. What was achieved in the way of spirituality in the East was brought to America. And you know – at least those of you who were here when I spoke about it here a year ago – that the whole external history of the so-called discovery of America and of the great human developmental principles is wishy-washy. Because I said at the time: Until the twelfth century, people in Europe were well aware that there was an America in the West. It has only been forgotten. The knowledge was covered up, and the discovery of America is only a belated discovery, a rediscovery of what was once well known. First, the connection between the European and American nature was broken, then it was rediscovered. But it was discovered in such a way that the Americans of the time, the American Indians, were massacred. This kind of cultural expansion was the first step on the path we then continued to follow step by step. Yes, it is indeed the case that when the Europeans came to America, they found an external culture of dirt in the material world among the Indians, but they also found a high spiritual life among these so-called wild people, whom they wiped out. And these wild people spoke at every opportunity of the great spirit that lived with them in all the details of their lives. It was sometimes a great experience for those Europeans who could understand it, to get to know the way these American Indians spoke of the great spirit. How was it that in the course of the evolution of the earth these Indians, who were so degraded in appearance, had preserved the possibility of looking up to this great spirit that permeates and interweaves the world? It was through this that they had preserved the possibility, in spite of their outward physical degradation. They were outwardly and physically ossified. Thus they had retained, like a mighty memory, the knowledge of the great spirit that had come to them from the East, from our East, but by the opposite route across the Pacific Ocean. They had preserved that. They had separated the spiritual knowledge from the knowledge of the soul and the knowledge of the body. They lived, so to speak, completely absorbed in the spirit.

The Europeans had an awful fear of what emerged as knowledge of the spirit from the North American Indians. The Europeans had indeed already ensured that this fear of the spirit would not be dispelled. I have often mentioned to you the memorable Council of Constantinople in the year 869, at which the Catholic Church abolished belief in the spirit, at which the Catholic Church decreed that in future one should not believe in body, soul and spirit, but that one should only believe in body and soul. And this abolition of the knowledge of the spirit has brought about all the chaos in science and knowledge that has befallen Europe. It was therefore no wonder that this European humanity, grown in fear of everything spiritual, was seized with even more terrible fear when it now came face to face with the American Indians and their knowledge of the great spirit. But as I said, that was only the beginning of the road we have continued to follow. We have gradually lost our belief in the soul as a result of the great European Enlightenment, and in today's materialism we believe only in the effectiveness of the body. But from this belief, from this superstition in the effectiveness of the body, there must come forth that which in turn leads to the knowledge of the spiritual, of the supersensible, by the path of which I have just spoken, and which must be neither the path of the Occidentals nor the path of the Orientals, but the specifically Central European one. And from this Central European path, we will also find that which alone can lead out of social hardship and social chaos. No other path can lead us out.

But you also see that this path requires some effort. You have to do something with yourself. You have to have the patience to develop your soul and spirit. For since the middle of the fifteenth century, these soul and spirit forces have no longer developed in such a way that one merely needs to eat and then, from the digestion of the food, inhales that which can infiltrate us with spiritual views. We have to take our development into our own hands, so to speak, if we do not want to remain foolish. But that is the great ideal of materialistic humanity in Europe: to remain foolish, not to become wise, to recognize only that which arises from the digestion of the body. This is basically the true cause of the social damage that has occurred in Europe since the middle of the fifteenth century: the ideals of European materialistic humanity not to take their own soul and spiritual development into their own hands, but to remain as they were born and to develop with the greatest possible exclusion of any spiritual and soul development.

And in doing so, people do not even notice what the historical connections actually are. They do not even notice, for example, how the same impulses that carried the Eighth Ecumenical Council in 869, which abolished the spirit, carry our university science and our social theories of today. People believe themselves enlightened because they see only what is in their consciousness. They do not realize that there would have been no Marx, no Engels, no Lassalle, with their peculiar thinking, if Marx and Engels and Lassalle had not been the disciples of those who were prepared for their views by the Ecumenical Council of 869. Social democracy, in its various parties today, is the faithful discipleship of what prevailed in the Catholic Church. The people just do not realize that. They do not realize that they are often the latecomers of Catholic-Christian impulses. They only believe themselves to be in the impulses of the very latest times. It will be a mighty coming to themselves when one day the parties, especially the left-wing ones of today, realize how Catholic they are in the bad sense. When people's eyes are opened to this, when they wake up to it, oh, it will be a strange realization. That is why they are so careful to ensure that people's eyes do not open to these connections. It is already the case today that anyone who sees through things only has to say what, after all, makes all people of today, from left and right, feel quite uncomfortable. If you understand the context of things, you cannot agree with the left and the right today. Therefore, today more than at any other time, one would like to exclude from public activity all people who understand something of the matter, and one would prefer to have as leaders those who, in their bullishness, are not clouded by any knowledge of the subject. But unbiased thinking about these things must enter into human minds and hearts; otherwise things will not progress. Therefore, it must be admonished again and again to such an unbiased view of the present situation. Above all, this connection must be recognized, which exists between correct social principles and what is known of the supersensible world.

There are three important concepts in the social field. You will find them in my book The Essentials of the Social Question: the concept of the commodity, the concept of human labor, and the concept of capital. In recent times, much has been said about these three concepts by academics and non-academics, by parties and non-partisan people. But hardly anything has been as inadequately based and as pompously proclaimed as the three concepts of commodity, human labor, capital. I do not want to say that sometimes quite accurate feelings about these things have been put into the world. Because the feeling that I have often characterized in my lectures, that has been triggered in the great proletarian mass by considering labor power as a commodity, this feeling is quite justified. Important social impulses must also come from this feeling. But that does not at all prevent the concept, the idea, the real impulse from which the feeling originates, from being fundamentally wrong. For one cannot recognize the concept of the commodity without having at least taken in the first step of supersensible knowledge. However paradoxical it may appear to people today, it is nevertheless true. A commodity is something to which human labor is attached, in which, as it were, the human being has invested himself. The definition of a commodity as you find it in Marx is quite incorrect. This is because Marx only uses the concepts that can be derived from ordinary sensory science. A commodity cannot be understood by anyone who does not have a concept of imaginative knowledge. Therefore, there will be no definition of the commodity until imaginative knowledge is recognized. And I have taken these things into account in my book “The Crux of the Social Question.” No wonder people say they don't understand these things. They have to find their way into the way of thinking that prevails in this book, not into the one that prevails outside of this book in the literature that separates from all reality.

No one can talk about human labor without knowing something about inspired insight. Because today, simply to say: a commodity is stored-up labor power – or: capital is stored-up labor power – is, of course, pure nonsense. I have already mentioned here that labor, the use of labor as such, is not decisive for any economic concept. Someone who plays tennis all day or does something else that has no economic effect at all applies the same labor as someone who chops wood, which has an important economic effect. What matters is not how much labor is put into the human development process, but how what emerges from work as a product is incorporated into the economic life of the nation. No thing derives its value from labor. The moment you make the value of a commodity dependent on labor, you would end up with nothing but absurdities. Therefore, it is important how labor is placed in the national economic process; otherwise, labor is something that is completely independent of all economics, something that is bound to human nature itself. Therefore, one cannot decide on labor from within the economic process itself, but one must decide on labor on the basis of something that is independent of the economic process, on the basis of pure law. You will also find this discussed in the book 'The Core of the Social Question'. In order to know something about these things, it is necessary to look into reality in a completely different way than the scientific drivel of the present day can. These things must be spoken about in all seriousness, because everything that appears in today's world is nothing more than scientific drivel, with tremendous arrogance and self-importance. And scientific drivel, in the face of the demands of the present, is everything that does not want to rise from mere sensual knowledge to supersensible knowledge. The function that labor has in the process of human development can only be found if one has an inkling of inspired knowledge.

And as strange as it sounds, no one can truly understand the function of capital without an idea of intuition, of the highest form of knowledge. The Bible already sensed this when it said that Christianity was to be fought with mammonism. However, this knowledge must, so to speak, be one that works in the opposite direction. One must educate oneself about what is to take the place of ahrimanic capital through supersensible knowledge, not through knowledge bound to sensuality. Thus, the development of a healthy national economy depends on people engaging in healthy supersensible knowledge, otherwise national economic matters will continue to be rambled on about in the future as they are now. In order to recognize something socio-economic, it is necessary today to know the science of initiation. But this science of initiation, of which we are speaking here, is rejected and despised by those who want to work publicly today. Therefore, what can be heard today from the mere sensory view in the form of party opinions sounds to him who sees through things - and this must be said - like the clanging of the sayings of a company of fools. Now you can imagine that since the truth is not pleasant, it is even less pleasant to tell this truth to today's humanity. But this truth must be told to today's humanity. The fact is that today's humanity does not want to hear the truth, but it is absolutely necessary that this truth be told to today's humanity without reservation. For today's humanity, according to its feelings and emotions, definitely wants what this truth implies. But today's humanity is lulled into all that could be called the illusions of life, and it does not want to let go of these illusions of life.

Some time ago, I quoted a man who came from the Latin culture, mentioning that a flare-up of particularly strong truth can often come from declining cultures. Beredetto Croce says in his “Outlines of Aesthetics” – I quoted it to you a fortnight ago – that art cannot possibly be based on the external physical world. Why not? According to Benedetto Croce, because the external physical world is not real and art strives for reality. Such things seem quite incredible to today's humanity. And yet they are true, absolutely true. That which lives in real art is a completely different reality than that which lives in the sensual external appearance. In artistic creation, one strives out of the unreality of physical nature towards the reality that is first sensed in the spirit and can then be found in the spirit through supersensible knowledge. Therefore, it is precisely in supersensible forms, in supersensible artistic creations, that present humanity must be helped, because it wants to find the way back into the supersensible world. But it is only possible to make progress in these matters by developing an inner sense of what is truly true. The instructions in the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' also point to this. We also need to develop an appreciation of how little the ordinary cultural means of our time actually develop this sense of truth. Just think how we have come to a point in the last five to six years where the voice of truth is hardly heard in world affairs. Think of how much untruthful stuff has been spoken in world affairs in the last five to six years and to this day. All this bears witness to the present world's tendency towards untruth. It must be mentioned again and again, right here in the bosom of this society, that acquiring a sense of real truth is eminently necessary. When work began here in the spirit of the anthroposophical movement, there were many people in the bosom of this movement who, from old circumstances, had always liked to retouch the truth. It is precisely in such movements as the anthroposophical one that old faults are cultivated rather than new virtues. Such a glossing over of the truth was something that had developed into a particular inclination. And it was often difficult, especially within this society, to introduce something that simply consists of calling a lie a lie. Whenever people in this Society have said something that is not true, there has always been a tendency to excuse it, to present it in such a way that good intentions might lie behind the untruth, and so on. No, it is essential that we call untruthfulness untruthfulness. You know that it was the turning to the truth that caused this Anthroposophical Society to separate from the old Theosophical Society, which, as you also know, continues to live in the world. Now, with regard to everything that is at work in this Anthroposophical Society, they continue to lie in the Theosophical Society. And it is necessary, because I am also taking into account other contemporary phenomena, that I draw your attention today to the fact that, in the course of time, the Theosophical Society has been lying in a very sophisticated way about the anthroposophical movement, even lying in a book whose preface contains the sentence: “I hope I have reported the truth.” But within this book, for which the authoress hopes to have reported the truth, it says under many another: “It is certain that Steiner's separation was a blessing.” — The separation of the Anthroposophical Society from the Theosophical Society. — “The Occultist” — now you hear the blatant lie — “The Occultist” — that was meant for me — “was also a convinced Pan-German. If we assume for a moment that he had become president of the Theosophical Society, he would have found there much more substantial means and influence in almost all countries of the world. He could have pursued his Pan-German policy more freely and with more authority. And in all likelihood he would have done so."

And what is this lie formed from? From the fact that I not only gave my lectures on anthroposophy in Germany, among Germans, but also went to other countries. I have given lectures from Bergen to Palermo, and I still regard it today as a most beautiful sign of the impulse that could come from this movement for world peace, that as late as May 1914 I was able to give a speech on anthroposophy in Paris, in German, to a public audience, so that each sentence had to be translated. They were not Germans from Paris in this lecture, but all Frenchmen. We had already come so far that in May 1914 our world view could be spoken about throughout Europe. Then the event occurred that took peace and the possibility of life from the world. It is a fact that just before the outbreak of this terrible world catastrophe, in May 1914, in Paris, the Anthroposophical Society was working on something that could have contributed to world peace. And where did all these speeches come from? Not a single one was initiated by us, but was requested by friends in Bergen, Paris, London, the Netherlands, Palermo and so on. They were always requested by the others. The lie is fabricated from this, that they were held to propagate Germanness throughout the world. It is necessary to call a lie a lie. This book, which promises in its preface to report the truth, brings, at least about everything that relates to the Anthroposophical Society and to me, nothing but lies. Now, one might say that I am turning against the others, while here, you see, the following unctuous sentences follow. I ask those who know the facts to compare these sentences with the facts: “What was the attitude of our president towards this colleague, who first sought to reduce her influence in inner circles and then wanted to oust her? Her behavior was always one of great tolerance and perfect courtesy. She saw great intellectual value in him, a rare philosophical development; she appreciated everything that was beautiful and sublime in him, and... did not speak of the rest. She constantly recommended tolerance and patience to her students, which “plus royalistes que le roi” were annoyed by the behavior of the German section. In doing so, she was simply following her principles. “

Please compare this with the truth of what has happened, and you will see the extent to which one can lie. Perhaps it will be said, when people hear what I have said today, that I am attacking. But I would like to point out that I never said anything critical before I was attacked.

These things must also be considered as a cultural-historical phenomenon, which expresses itself in the fact that in a movement that wants to work towards the spirit, lies can also be cultivated to a high degree. It is indeed necessary that we strive for the sense of truth in the most tremendous way today. The whole matter has only been translated into German and even published in German in Basel in order to somehow destroy the anthroposophical movement that will emerge from the Goetheanum in the future. You see, these people are accustomed to introducing nationalistic impulses even into that which they disseminate as spiritual science. Therefore, they cannot imagine anything else but that the other person also has such impulses. Today, it is of no use but to call a lie a lie, even when this lie appears on such ground, where one says in abstracto and theoretically that the search for truth is taking place. Whether the lie appears on confessional or ideological ground today, those lies that can be confronted with facts must be branded as lies, otherwise we will not move forward. For the spirit of lies, the spirit of deception, is the greatest enemy of real spiritual progress. And I hope that I have shown you, especially today, that spiritual progress is the only thing that can truly move the world forward by providing some points of view that I consider to be particularly valuable for the present time.

And so I would like all of you to consider the things that have happened here in context, in such a way that on the one hand there is the social, on the other the spiritual, but that the two belong together intimately. It is precisely the failure to see things in this context that is causing the present disaster.

Eight days ago I said here: Three demands permeate the social life of the present age.

1. The conquest of world power by the Anglo-American powers.
2. The efforts, which today are still quite abstract, that are moving towards a League of Nations.
3. The efforts we call social.

These three currents are the three decisive currents in today's cultural world: the world domination of the Anglo-American powers; the alliance of nations; the striving for a social organization of world affairs. There are three formidable obstacles to these three endeavors: The spirituality of the ancient Indians, the Indian spirituality, stands against that which the Anglo-American world, radiating from England, strives for as a world power. This will be the great contrast: the search for world principles by medial means – the search for world principles by the yoga path in India. This battle will be the greatest spiritual battle that has to be fought out in world history. To see clearly what is present as two poles in the movement of the times is the first task of anyone who wants to be a true spiritual scientist.

In the field of striving for the League of Nations, it must be clearly seen that two impossibilities are involved in this striving today. The one that confronts the modern striving for human unity, for that humanity of which Ferder, Lessing, and Goethe had spoken, the one that confronts this striving of modern humanity for human unity, is precisely national egoism, national chauvinism, in all fields. And now the League of Nations is supposed to become a unity of peoples closed in on themselves. The building of the Tower of Babel shows that the very thing that was done to prevent the League of Nations was to separate nations into their nationalities. And that is supposed to be the means to unite the nations. Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, his utopia, wants to solve the task of uniting the nations by preserving what is implied in the building of the Tower of Babel. It will only promote that which further divides the nations. It will only increase the confusion of the Tower of Babel. Thus, the second movement is full of contradictions; there are two impossibilities in the politics of the League of Nations.

And in the third, the social movement, there is a rejection of the spiritual. Only the economic and the material are taken into account, and it is believed that a spiritual will spring from the material itself. The aim is to establish a paradise on earth, excluding everything that can bring order to paradise, excluding the spirit. There you have the full contradiction in the third striving as well.

There is no other way to overcome these contradictions than to follow the path of the spirit, which works in the sense of human development and not against it. And the anthroposophical movement, in so far as its limited strength permits, should champion these paths. It will not be understood if it does not understand that it champions what is realistic and possible in contrast to what is unrealistic and utopian.

Since we are still able to meet today, it seems right to me to refer again to some things that have been said just recently, and which are of some importance for the whole attitude of man in our time.

That there is such a thing as the necessity for a new attitude of man in our time should be clear from the considerations that have been presented to you here and elsewhere in this time. That the kind of judgment that was usual in the previous epoch can no longer carry man into the future is something that must be recognized today. This must be emphasized again and again, because it is precisely against this that the feelings and perceptions of the present-day human being still most resist. The present-day human being would also like to be present, so to speak, when a new era is ushered in – it is so obvious to him that a new era must approach – but he does not want to become a different person himself. He would like to continue judging things in the way he has been accustomed to judging them so far. And even when he does manage to bring himself to admit that a new way of judging things must take hold, he always falls back into the old way of thinking. He does this particularly because the new attitude actually demands a radical introspection of the person. And this radical introspection is actually very, very unpleasant for the modern person.

Now, if we want to grasp the full depth of what underlies what has just been said, we have to take a good look, with good will, at the whole way in which we have become accustomed to living our lives in the modern era, especially since that point in time that I have often characterized as the point of a major turning point in the development of humanity, since the middle of the fifteenth century. One can say: That which today arises in a radical way from human hearts as demands has actually always been smoldering to a greater or lesser extent below the surface of people's consciousness since that time; but all things that develop always develop unnoticed for a time and only then become fully ripe to break out and enter into existence quite radically.

Now, in our recent endeavors, we have had to point out a certain threefold structure from a variety of perspectives. You know that our entire external public work is permeated by the impulse of threefold structure. But here I have also had to point out that human knowledge, if it is not to lead people astray, must also be based on the threefold nature of the human being itself. Science, which human beings have developed out of a certain necessary lack of clarity, this science, which, as it is now, also began in the mid-fifteenth century, regards the human being more or less as a unity. It is not clear to it that the human being really is a threefold being, which must be described as a main human being or nerve-sense human being, as a rhythm human being or breathing and circulation human being, and as a metabolism human being. These three aspects of human nature are quite distinct in their essence. The reason why people do not really want to admit that human beings themselves live in this threefold structure is because, when they want to structure something, they want to arrange the things so nicely next to each other. We see time and again that when people do make an effort to organize something, they want to have this organization side by side, they want to store the parts of this organization next to each other so that they can see them nicely with their external powers of perception. This is the basis of the strange essay that the Tübingen professor wrote against the threefold order. I have already mentioned that the good Professor von Heck, with complete disregard for what is actually said in the threefold social order, has constructed his own threefold order. He cannot understand the kind of thinking that is at issue here at all; he cannot penetrate to the feeling that we live in an age in which a new thinking, a new feeling, is necessary. And so he hears about a spiritual, a legal or state, and an economic member of the social organism. Three members, he says. In the one member we have known so far, we have gradually become accustomed to a parliamentarism. It has been hard enough for people of this kind to get used to it; they prefer to be governed centrally, from the top down, but they have got used to parliamentarism. But if you do go in for it, then paragraph A, paragraph B and paragraph C must stand side by side. Intellectual, legal, economic, that must be so outwardly tangible if one is to get involved in it at all. Yes, in this way, by approaching the new with the old way of thinking, one will certainly not make any headway. And one can very well criticize the threefold order, as Professor von Heck does, but it is still his own absurd threefold order that he criticizes, and not the one that the Federation for Threefolding is currently sending out into the world.

Now, all this is connected with the fact that man instinctively resists what is most necessary in our time, the reorientation of all thinking and feeling. And this reorientation of thinking and feeling will not come either until one is willing to gain at least subjective, initial relationships to spiritual science, to the real knowledge of spiritual life. And on the one hand, people will have to be willing to recognize the threefoldness in social life as a necessity, but also to acknowledge the threefoldness of the human being himself as a fact given by nature. But the fact that the human being does not have these threefoldness neatly nested side by side, but that one link always merges into the other, that is precisely what confuses the new human being who is bound to his old ideas. For, of course, when I speak of the head organization, of the nerve-sense organization, this head organization, when viewed externally, is first of all centered in the head. It has its center in the head, in the head itself. But it sends out the necessary extensions into the whole of the rest of the human being; for the sense capacity is, of course, in the whole human being. That is to say, as a head human being, the human being is only a nerve-sense human being in terms of the main thing; the whole human being is a nerve-sense human being. And as a rhythm human being, the human being is a chest human being. The rhythmic system, the breathing and circulation system, has its center in the chest. So the point is that man, as a rhythmic being, is a chest being. The respiratory and circulatory systems are localized in the chest system, but of course the rhythm, the rhythmic activity, is sent into both the main system and the metabolic system. So only in the main sense is the chest human being a rhythmic human being. And it is the same with the metabolism. Of course, metabolism is also present in the head, also in the chest, but it is regulated by the limb system, as I have always characterized it. So what has to be listed as limbs runs into the other. Of course, this confuses people who always want to draw lines and who only want to have what occurs to them standing side by side.

A different way of looking at things, a completely different way of relating to reality, is therefore necessary for the human being who wants to engage in thinking and also in willing and doing for the near future. But one should not think that these things have only one meaning for cognition or for the world view. These things have their own special significance for the life of humanity, for our whole attitude towards life. And this must be taken into account very carefully. We must judge our whole life from this point of view and then ask ourselves the question: How must it be reshaped? In a sense, we have a threefold structure in our lives, but this threefold structure demands, firstly, a precise understanding and, secondly, further development. The precise understanding must arise from the fact that, with a certain fertilization of knowledge through spiritual-scientific contemplation, one looks at what is actually present in our lives. What is there in our lives? What we demand as a special link through the threefold order is, of course, there, but it is only mixed up in a chaotic way with the other two, the legal and the economic links. The spiritual is part of our real life, in that man simply needs a certain spiritual guidance for external culture, for external life. Without spiritual guidance there is no external cultural life. In our present life, this spiritual guidance is not based on an original, elementary expression of human nature, but on something that has been handed down. It is based on something that has been transmitted to man historically. You will surely remember that when one speaks of the newer spiritual life that arose with the great transformation in the fifteenth century, one speaks not of a new creation but of a renaissance or reformation. One speaks, and rightly so, not of a new creation but of a rebirth, of a re-establishment of something old. And in a certain sense, spiritually we live only in a re-established old age. Spiritually speaking, we live from the inheritance of what has, in a certain sense, been concentrated out of much older, oriental and Egyptian spiritual culture in Greek culture. The fact that we have our old Greek gymnasium today is, I would say, only a clear indication that our spiritual life is actually a Greek renaissance.

But what is Greek intellectual life based on? It is difficult to see through this because Greek intellectual life has, in a certain way, very strongly developed that on which it is based: oriental intellectual life. But it has greatly transformed this oriental spiritual life. As a result, if you delve into Greek intellectual life with a mere sense of knowledge, without taking into account spiritual-scientific presuppositions, you do not realize what this Greek intellectual life is actually based on. It is entirely dependent on the fact that the members of the conquering class were instinctively granted the right to reveal the spiritual, while the members of the conquered class were not granted this right. Greek culture actually contains a dual population: the ancient population that inhabited the Greek peninsula in European primeval times and which had a very different social structure from that of later Greeks. The later Greeks, we can actually begin with the incursion of that intellectual power that found its expression in the royal dynasties of Agamemnons and so on. This Greek life spread over a native population. And these conquerors were of a different blood than the native population. You notice this different blood in what I have already mentioned here, in Greek sculpture. This Greek sculpture has clearly separate types: the Zeus type, which has different ears, a different nose, and a different position of the eyes than the Hermes-Mercury type, which in turn has a different nose than the satyr type. These last two types point to the Greek indigenous population, who were of a different blood than those we know as the bearers of Greek culture. This means that the entire configuration of Greek intellectual life, which we have adopted as the Renaissance, is of an aristocratic nature, a reformed theocracy of the Orient and Egypt. It is built on the view that the things of the world do not reveal themselves, as was later believed, through proof, but that they want to reveal themselves through revelation: on the one hand through revelation on the part of the oracles or the like, that is, through that which breaks into the human world as spiritual revelation; but that which is to rule the world also reveals itself as deeds. Man does not want to decide about these deeds with his reason and intellect, but he lets powers decide that are outside of him. Among the latter, Greek culture adopted the martial principle of the Orient. It has only transformed it, so we do not notice that in Greek culture two things have merged: theocracy and militarism. But theocracy and militarism are the elements of aristocracy. So we take into our spiritual life, precisely with the grammar school, with the adoption of Greek, an aristocratic element that has, on the one hand, theology and, on the other, military decision. Theology, which does not arrive at its truths by way of proof; military decisions, which do not arise out of human reason but, according to human views, are the result of an external judgment by God or nature. We have this, so to speak, in our social organism through Greek culture, which achieved so much in its state and in its epoch. Through Greek culture we have the aristocratic way of feeling of human beings. And these things must be taken psychologically. Of course, none of the people of the present day will become a Greek in his attitude when he absorbs the aristocracy of the classical period into himself, but he will become something that no longer fits into our time: he will become a bearer of an aristocratic principle that must be overcome. No matter how much enthusiasm there may be for this aristocratic element in our time, no matter how much it may be accepted, in so far as it expresses itself in the life of the mind and in the forms of the life of the mind, this aristocratic element is based on something very agreeable, on Greek culture, which we certainly do not want to do without. But in the way it is based on Greek culture today, it cannot become the general basis of human culture. Therefore, it must be introduced into our culture in a completely different way. This is something that we, so to speak, carry within us as the first element: a spiritual life configured from Greek culture.

Now, however, we also carry a second element within us, namely Roman life. We not only carry Greek life, chaotically mixed into our social culture, into our spiritual life, in terms of its form, its design, its structure, but we also carry Roman legal life within us. We basically carry within us the obsession of shaping that state which was only good and right for the development of humanity in the time when Roman civilization flourished and in the place where it flourished. Greek intellectual life and Roman legal life are within us. It is extremely interesting to see how, in the middle of the fifteenth century and later, European legal life actually wanted to establish itself on its own foundations, how it wanted to develop something quite different from what actually emerged. The ideas of Roman law broke in and permeated the structure of the states, just as Greek intellectual life permeated the structure of the states. And so our legal life did not become something that emerged from an original, elementary impulse of human nature, but something like a kind of renaissance, an adoption of an old one.

But where they could not take up an old one was the basis of economic life. You can cling to an old spirit, you can cling to old legal forms, but you cannot eat what the Greeks ate, nor what the Romans ate. Economic life does not tolerate this transfer of the old. Economic life developed out of Central European, Germanic, Frankish and other conditions, and it did so with a certain elemental force. But it was permeated by the renaissance of spiritual life and by the renaissance of legal life. And it is interesting how people feel: yes, in our social organism only economic life is viable, in the newer sense, viable. Marx and Engels in particular have this feeling. I have described it somewhat in the fourth number of our threefolding newspaper under the title “Marxism and Threefolding”. Marx and Engels feel: Yes, in relation to economic life, it is moving forward according to newer impulses, and these newer impulses only have to be properly developed; they are not yet present in the external world of facts, but they are present in human longing. And so Marx and Engels want an economic life that no longer influences people, as Greek life did, by governing them in relation to their spiritual powers. Marx and Engels no longer want a social structure that influences social life in the sense of Roman law. They see this as a foreign body of modern economic life. They feel the strangeness and therefore want to throw it out. They want to establish something in economic life that no longer rules over people, and a law that only administers production processes, economic circulation of goods, and so on. But that is not the only task of modern times. The task of the modern age is to recognize that, while economic life must be transformed and given the configuration demanded by human longings, we can no longer make do with a legal life that no longer fits into our economic life, nor with a spiritual life that is based only on the Renaissance. In our time we need not only a reasonable organization of economic life, we need a reorganization of the legal system to take the place of Roman law, and we need a complete renewal of intellectual life. That is to say, we need not only a spiritual renaissance, but a spiritual re-creation. And Christianity, too, which has fallen into the Greek and Roman ages, cannot be understood by us as it was understood through the medium of the Greek and Roman, but must be newly understood by us with a newly created spiritual life. That is the secret of our time.

Look around you at the old in the European East. There you will find that in this European East, Christianity in Russian Orthodoxy has been permeated with the Greek world view. We have taken up Christianity in the Roman world view, not in the Greek. As a result, we no longer have anything inside us that comes from the Greek world view, but we do have inside us in Christianity what comes from the Roman conception of law. Let us try to recognize the basic structure of this Roman conception of law. The Roman conception of law is based on not regarding people in terms of their blood. In Greece, one was worthy if one belonged to the teutonic blood, the aristocratic blood. What the gods revealed through members of the aristocratic blood was also the right thing, the wise thing. In the Roman cultural element, it was different. There it gradually emerged that one was what one became through one's incorporation into the abstract state, into the constitutional state. One did not become, as with the Greeks, a person of blood, but a person of the state, a citizen. One was nothing special except as a citizen of the state. It was inconceivable that a person should stand there with body, soul and spirit, but it was important that he should be registered in the state system, that the state system should stamp him as a citizen. And when citizenship spread from the Italian peninsula, from Rome, to the whole of the Roman Empire, it was a tremendous event. For in those days people felt that it was something connected with life. But has it not remained so for us in a sense? It has remained for us in a sense that we organize our entire public life according to our system of government, which is derived from Roman thought and feeling.

I once had an old acquaintance who had acquired a childhood sweetheart when he was eighteen, but he could not marry her in his eighteenth year. He had to wait and first earn some money. And so the man had become sixty-four years old. In order to be able to marry, he went back to his hometown, because the love of his youth had remained faithful to him and he wanted to marry her. But what had happened? The church and parsonage, where the baptismal records were kept, had burnt down and the baptismal records had been destroyed. The man had no baptismal certificate. He wrote to me from his hometown and said: Yes, according to my common sense, it seems to me that the fact that I was born is proof that I am here, but people don't believe me because I don't have a baptismal certificate that testifies in writing that I am here. So, first of all, it must be stated that one is there, that one is outwardly categorized. Of course, when you tell someone something like this, they say it's an exaggeration. But it is not an exaggeration. Because this plays a major role in our public relationships. This is the way of thinking that has taken the place of the theocratic way of thinking of the Orient, and which has been somewhat transformed by Greek culture. The Roman way of thinking is an abstract one. The Orient believed in divine powers that enter into man through blood. In the Orient, the person open to the divine was the person related by blood. In the Roman cultural element, one was imbued with the belief in concepts, in ideas, in abstractions. This belief, which was a metaphysical one, in contrast to the theological belief of the Orient, was joined by jurisprudence. Just as militarism is the sister phenomenon of theocratic aristocratism, so jurisprudence is the sister phenomenon of the abstract civil principle of ideas that already appeared in Romanism. Metaphysics and jurisprudence are siblings. The time is coming when not only things will be accepted as revelations, but when everything is to be proved. Just as one proves in jurisprudence that someone has stolen, so it should be proved that not only is 2 times 2 four, but also that there is a God. This led to the recurring proof of God's existence. All the proof of our scientific logic is nothing more than a metamorphosed legal logic. That this legalism has entered into our public life, you can, if you care to, truly recognize everywhere even today. Just think how people complain that in the most diverse administrative offices in the administrative apparatus, which is entirely formed out of the Roman Empire, that where people should sit who understand something of the technical, lawyers sit, not technicians. That is really the case. Lawyers sit in these positions everywhere. That is the second thing that has entered our lives, just as theocracy and militarism were the first sibling couple. Theocracy and militarism, that is, Greekness, is rooted, however strange it may sound, in the spiritual constitution of man; Romanism is rooted in its conception of law. And from these foundations, which I have mentioned to you, the Western Roman Catholic Church also differs from the Eastern Greek Catholic Church. The Eastern Greek Catholic Church has remained more of a spiritual matter. The Roman Catholic Church is actually, at its core, a completely civil and legal institution. It has always asserted itself as such. It has transformed what should be purely spiritual into legal institutions. But it has even introduced legal concepts into the Catholic worldview. The justification of man before God through confession and such things, which arise entirely from legal thought, can be found at every turn in later Catholic dogmatics, which is not originally Christian but Roman dogmatic, permeated by Roman thought. And what has passed through Roman thought, the strongest, most abstract expression of it, is actually found in Protestantism, which is based entirely on a legal concept: on the justification of man by faith.

These are the old elements that are in our cultural life. One must turn one's gaze to these old elements without prejudice, because in our time they are ripe to die. Marx and Engels realized this. But they did not realize that we now need something new to take their place. They believed that economic life should continue in the mere administration of the branches of production, goods and things; the rest would come by itself. It does not come by itself. In addition to the material administration of the branches of production and goods, we need a democratic legal structure and a new creation of spiritual life. Nothing material can give birth to anything spiritual. Therefore, the threefold social order is intimately connected with the whole challenge of our time. It emphasizes the necessity of replacing the old spirit that has been squeezed out of our culture with a new spirit, with a new creation of the spirit. We, as people of culture, cannot be satisfied with a new Renaissance. We cannot reheat the old, but need a new creation of the spirit. This is what spiritual science, oriented to anthroposophy, seeks to be. It will therefore be most contested, because people cling to the old. And secondly, we need a new creation of the legal system, which must be brought completely into the democratic channel, which must be created in such a way that it cannot be created from the old conditions, because never in the old conditions does man face man as man, but always with some class or privilege involved. That is the task of the man of the present: to really put himself in the position of the new creations. In many cases he lacks the courage to do so. But this courage will have to be mustered. It will be mustered when the most lethargic part of our population, and that is the part that has gone through academic studies – on the whole it is so, there are exceptions of course – when this drowsiest part of our population, when it is willing to break with tradition, whether it be in the form of revelations that came to us from Greece or abstract ideas that came to us from Rome. One must consider the possibility of developing a right through a democratic state, of developing a spiritual life through a new creation that stands on completely free ground and must therefore break with all the nonentities that are based only on the preservation of the old or on anything nebulous and unclear. Please consider from this point of view what is taking place in these days.

The Social Democratic Party claims – I am not talking about nuances here – to be the party that will bring about a reorganization of modern economic life. Leninism within this social democracy is actually the most consistent expression of this social democratic view, because Lenin is truly a worthy successor to Marx. This Leninism wants to create a spiritual life out of mere economic life on the ground, where that is least likely to happen because it is contrary to the instincts of the people. It wants to do this through Lunacharsky's alchemy. I am not speaking about these things in response to any news, so that one can say that fairy tales are being told about Russia and the like. There is no need to listen to the descriptions, because they are naturally colored by subjective perception. The bourgeois will describe it differently than the Social Democrat. No, I am basing myself on what Lenin himself said in his work. I know that what underlies his view is not the creation of a new culture, but the destruction of an existing one. I do not want to talk about the school system as it is described, but about the laws that are being given to the Russian school system, and from that no intellectual life can arise. It is not what is described that matters to me, but what the same people do when they want to create something new out of their illusions. We in Central Europe are not yet so far advanced, we cannot yet make these great mistakes, but we are well on the way to ruining everything that wants to come in the future.

Do not Marx and Engels take the view that economic life is everything, and that spiritual life must develop out of it? That is theory, that is utopia. What happens in reality? One feels: Yes, if we merely make economic institutions in relation to the present culture, then a real spiritual life does not seem to come of it after all. So one makes compromises with the old spiritual life: social democracy with the center. According to Marx and Engels, it should not be the Center that rises from the smoke that would enter into our brains and those of future generations in a stimulating way, but it should arise from the independence of economic life as the superstructure. Very strange, in the Marxian and Engelsian theory: economic substructure, economic substructure; spiritual, ideological superstructure, law, custom, intellectual life in general, however, — illusionistic theory. In reality: the economic foundation, social democracy; the superstructure is taken care of by the Center and the Roman clericalism. The foundation: the Marxist-inspired economic state or the Marxist-inspired economic cooperative; the illusory superstructure: the ideal man who arises from the illusion and is supposed to surrender; the reality: the fat Erzberger. You see, these things look grotesque when you say them out loud, but they express reality and, if they are seriously considered, they show where we actually stand and what errors we are heading towards. But they also show that we will not escape from these errors unless we decide to approach the re-creation of a spiritual life and treat this re-creation of the spiritual life sympathetically. We must treat it sympathetically because the time has come when spiritual life cannot remain merely a world view, cannot remain merely a theory, but must be incorporated into the practical treatment of life.

The fact that modern medicine could only rely on one natural science and build itself on one natural science, which did not take into account the threefold human being, the nerve-sense human being, the rhythmic human being and the metabolic human being, has made this modern medicine, which is now something practical, both as hygiene and as a healing method, one-sided, which is already felt not only by many people, but also by many doctors, thank God. But our medicine will never be placed on a sound foundation if it is not based on the threefold nature of man. Oh, the head man, who is modeled on the cosmos, is something quite different. Therefore, something quite different are those irregularities in human nature, the pathological irregularities that are of cosmic origin. Something else is the damage to human nature that has a telluric origin and that essentially comes from the detour through the metabolism, that has an earthly origin, not a cosmic one. Something else is everything that is connected with what is between the cosmos and the earth, with what lives partly in the air and also in the water. In the future, this must become the starting point for a truly freely pursued medical study. For it is indeed peculiar that of these three things, which I have just mentioned and which, in truly practical medicine, must be built up on the basis of the threefold nature of the human being, only one can actually, I might say, be learned in the official, scholastic way. One can only study that which is based on the human metabolic system through the methods that exist today solely through our university teaching, which is modeled on Greek and Roman life. And actually, our whole medical-scientific way of thinking is a way of thinking based on the metabolic system. Because the way we have science today, there is actually only the science of metabolism. But if you want to add the other things, that which can occur in human nature as damage through air and water, then you are actually dealing with a lot of individual things. What occurs in humans as damage from air and water is very individual, and can only be learned through dedicated interaction with older physicians who already have experience in this field. This can only be acquired by a young person joining an old, experienced doctor, not in a school-like way, but as an assistant, which is what happens in today's clinical assistantships, but as a caricature, pushed down into the metabolic sphere. It must be the case that a certain medical instinct, a certain medical intuition, which in some people is more pronounced and in others less so, borders on clairvoyance, occurs in the case of someone who is an assistant to an older doctor, and so that he does not even think of treating things in a merely typical and schematic way, but that he combines, out of instinct, new individuality and older individuality, in which he has been trained and which he does not merely imitate. And what comes to the human organism in the way of damage from the head, which, as I said before, although it permeates the whole person, is only centered in the head, cannot be taught at all. There is no method by which one can learn to recognize from the outside those diseases that arise in the human organism from the head. These can only be recognized through original talent, and this talent must be awakened. Therefore, it is necessary to consider from the very beginning whether such abilities can be awakened in a particular person.

You see, this is where the attitude comes into play, which must develop in the independent spiritual organism, and which will go to the point of paying attention to human talent, that is, putting each person in the place to which he is led by his particular talent. It is therefore necessary that this particular spiritual life be truly placed on its own feet, for only in a free spiritual life, where the talents are allowed to rule freely, will the talents also be truly recognized. In this way, by entering into the spiritual, man returns in a certain way to the natural, the nature-like, and this in turn will give rise to possible relationships. You all know that today we suffer from the fact that all conditions can no longer be properly cared for because we do not administer the things of the world from a natural way of thinking, that is, from a spiritual way of thinking. There are certain positions in the state or elsewhere; but there are always far too many people for these positions. There are always many more applicants than are needed. Other positions are not filled because people are not trained. Certain professions cannot exist because people are not educated. In the free spiritual life, as envisaged by the idea of a threefold social organism, none of this can happen, because the human being does not shape things out of arbitrariness, but because he shapes in harmony with the great laws of the world. And where that happens, things usually go well. Wherever human arbitrariness is used to shape things contrary to these great laws of the world, things usually do not go well. And the Roman system has the greatest predisposition to arbitrariness. The purely metaphysical-legal system has the greatest predisposition to mere arbitrariness. The Greek system had a certain instinct arising from consanguinity, even if this instinct only thinks for the minority. The economic system has its own natural necessity. The metaphysical-legal system is what distances man most from the foundations of nature in terms of his feelings and perceptions. The Roman-legal system is what we should consider first and foremost without prejudice. Because until we have overcome it in all areas, we will not make any further progress. If someone were to ask today: Will there really be enough people in the future, or not too many, for a particular profession in the leading positions, arising out of an independent spiritual life? then one can only answer: These things cannot be answered in the way that logic works, which is constructed according to the pattern of Roman jurisprudence, but rather in the way that the logic of facts works. Some decades ago, the news spread from Vienna to the educated world, as they say, that people had been found who could regulate the type of births in the future. That is, in the future it would be possible to regulate whether what is to be born will be a boy or a girl. You know, this Schenk theory caused quite a stir, and people had great hopes for it. Do you know what the real effect would be? The effect would be that in this approximate order, in which about the same number of men and women are born, the greatest disorder would arise if gender were left to human arbitrariness. The greatest disorder would result. And so it will be when, with regard to other, less natural things, people again apply their arbitrariness. The fact that we have too many people for one occupation and too few for another is due to the unnatural nature of human thinking and human institutions. The moment this arbitrary, metaphysical-legal Roman way of thinking and organizing is replaced by one that is inspired by spiritual science and intuition, and which in turn merges with what was also an older instinct, we will once again enter into a life that regulates the social order in such a way that it can endure.

As you can see, the new social thinking cannot be properly grasped from a merely abstract way of thinking. In a sense, one must already have entered into a kind of marriage with nature itself. And those people who today believe most in thinking naturally think most unnaturally, because they think in a distorted Roman-legal way, which has spread into all our affairs. One would not believe how, for example, even in something as far removed as possible from Roman law, in medicine and medical thinking, this abstract quality has crept in.

And now we must not forget that this whole abstract being has become so unnatural since the 1870s. We can only distinguish between what came before and what came after. Until the 1870s, old traditions were still in place in all areas. The good elements of the various renaissances were still at work. For in the 1970s and 1980s, it was clear to see that the old was losing its validity for human progress, and that humanity must strive for new creations, both in the legal sphere and in the entire spiritual life. For only in this way will economic life, which is quite clearly demanding its own reorganization, be imbued with such human thoughts, which are necessary.

But the necessary practical activities, such as medicine, can only be enriched if something completely new is created from spiritual life, not if renaissances are started from spiritual life. New creation of spiritual life, that is what we need.

It was truly a product of the necessity of our time that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science was combined with social action in the Federation for the Threefold Social Organism. And in recent months, the necessity has also arisen to seek a closer connection between the social and the spiritual. Of course, the old guard will have something against it too. They had something against the threefold social order in general; they will also have something against this hand-in-hand approach. People have no sense of how strong the old guard is. They also have no sense of how necessary it is in our time to cut off the plaits and thus overcome European Chinese culture, otherwise Asian Chinese culture could become far too dangerous for us if we continue to wear the plaits of European Chinese culture.

Now, in our circle, a certain understanding of this necessity arising from the spiritual-scientific foundations has begun, and we have indeed seen that the elements are present to at least prepare humanity for a certain receptivity for the new spiritual striving. Friends of ours have worked to spread the anthroposophical worldview here in Stuttgart and in the surrounding area, and it has been a great success. It is to be hoped that these things, which are also eminently necessary socially today, will be understood. It is wrong to believe that humanity at large is not open to these things. In the present time, if we want to understand what is socially necessary, we need a thinking that has been trained by those concepts and ideas that come from spiritual science. Because, you see, in addition to all the other contradictions in the present, there is also this contradiction: legal-Roman, merely logical thinking and spiritual-scientific thinking. Spiritual scientific thinking, which everywhere is based on the logic of facts – Roman Catholic legal thinking, which is only based on the logic of concepts, only on the selfish logic of man. This thinking will never be strong enough to see through reality. I have given you a clear, concrete example of this.

In Zurich, Avenarius taught, in Prague and Vienna Mach taught, and one of his students was Fritz Adler, the son of old Adler. Mach and Avenarius, with their purely positivistic sensory assurance, were good average people, they were good present-day people, or, for that matter, good past-day people, for there is supposed to be something new in the present. And all those who represented the philosophy of Avenarius and Mach naturally believed themselves to be good present-day people. This was still the case, as a rule, with the first generation of students, when they formulated purely positivistic theories of sense perception, but no longer with the next generation of students. Then the logic of the facts came into play, and it was characterized by the fact that Avenarius and Mach are the political philosophers of Bolshevism. Imagine these honest Central European citizens, who certainly never went too far in this direction, as the idols, the philosophical idols of the Bolsheviks. This is the logic of facts, it is a logic that can be seen through by anyone who engages in spiritual scientific knowledge that goes with the facts. Those who think only in Roman-legal terms analyze the philosophy of Mach, the philosophy of Avenarius. Yes, they find nothing in it that could be logically extracted and then become a practical system of Bolshevism. Oh no! Even what people could do according to the views of such a purely conceptual logic, such a purely metaphysical logic, is also good. That is to say, what the Roman-minded logician must think of as the consequence of Avenarius's world view is good bourgeois. But what the logic of reality develops from it is Bolshevism. Today we need concepts that master reality, that enter into reality. We have strayed very far from reality through the Roman-legal essence, which has crept into everything, everything. Today people believe that they are expressing their own free human nature. In reality, they only express what has been instilled in them by the Roman or Catholic - but that is also Roman - legal being. That is why it is difficult today to bring to people that which does not arise from human arbitrariness, but which springs from the facts themselves. Of course, spiritual science itself must sound different in the way it is presented than what has been produced in this way. But in the depths of human nature there is already a yearning that meets the moods of spiritual science. And if there is enough perseverance and courage, it is precisely from these currents, which can be found today in some of our friends, that spiritual science will be carried out into the world; it will arise out of these currents that which the present time needs. Today, we should not be deterred by the appearance of opinions that come only from the Romanic bourgeoisie in their way of thinking, saying: Oh, if humanity is to advance through what you mean, then it will take decades! That is nonsense again in the face of reality. It is again nothing more than Roman-legal logic. The truth must be thought differently. If you look at a plant as it grows, it develops leaf after leaf, slowly at first. And anyone who thinks that it will always continue at that pace is quite mistaken. Then there is a jolt, and the calyx and petals develop rapidly from the leaf. And so it will be, if only we ourselves have the strength to persevere with what we can achieve spiritually and socially. It depends on the will. It may look for a long time as if things are going very slowly. But then, when everything that can grow has come together, the turnaround will come suddenly. But it will only work well if as many people as possible are prepared for it. That is what I wanted to tell you right now as a kind of conclusion to our work during these weeks, which I would like to call our “Stuttgart Weeks”. For it is a matter of not slackening our efforts to work for the good of our own cause. Not looking to the left, not looking to the right, but looking to the good that flows from our own cause, that is what matters. And avoiding, even if only in our thoughts and feelings, to have any mistrust of what flows from this cause itself. No matter how much the things that flow from our cause are attacked, we must not be deterred by such attacks. For these attacks, we need only take a closer look at them all, and we will soon find that they sound and resonate from the old, even if they want to be “confessions of renewal”. For all renewal today can only come about if economic thinking is joined by new legal thinking and a new spiritual life. This is what we must regard as a necessity, what we want to infuse into everything, what we must permeate ourselves with in order to participate in the social reorganization of humanity.

That, my dear friends, was what I wanted to say to you today, because I firmly believe that the iron we have forged so far must not cool, it must remain warm. Then it will achieve everything that can lead humanity along the path it should take. That is why I would like to summarize this reflection, which sought to summarize some of what we have been doing here in recent weeks, in two words. These two words are very old, but modern man must grasp them in a new way, in such a way that he encounters them with the feelings and emotions that arise from spiritual science. And these words are: Learn and work!

We cannot today indulge in the naive belief that we already know everything and that we can draw up programs from what we know. We have to find ideas from life today, but life renews itself every day, and we have to have the confidence to learn something new from life every day. And we must not be cowards who believe that they can only work when they can build on so-called secure ideas, whereby they always mean those ideas that have been handed down from time immemorial. We must have the courage to learn while working and to work while learning. Otherwise, man will not be able to enter the future and its demands. This will also be his new Christianity. Many people today go through a certain conflict. They remind you when you speak in the anthroposophical sense of the Mystery of Golgotha, that according to their opinion, according to the Gospel, Christ died on the cross to redeem souls through his deed, that therefore the souls that only believe in Christ are redeemed without their doing anything. It is certain – you can read about it in my book, “Christianity as Mystical Fact” – that something happened through the Mystery of Golgotha, in which the human being, with his present consciousness, has no direct part, for the present consciousness only begins in the middle of the fifteenth century. But that is not the point today, that we lazily surrender to what takes care of us outside of ourselves. We must not speak today as some Catholic church dignitaries, for example, speak, whether high or low, and say: You will not advance socially unless Christ is at the center of all social activity. — Recently, I have experienced in many a gathering that the Christ was also mentioned in this way. Yes, my dear friends, I used my spiritual ear a little while listening, so that I heard that outwardly resounded through the hall, one does not advance socially without the Christ, but inwardly only the Benedictus resounded, not the Christ. Inwardly it was not about the Christ, but about the Benedictus. I mean the one who now sits on the Roman See. And that is precisely why humanity is not making progress today, because it relies on something other than what connects with its own soul. The Christ must also be understood anew. The external church cannot take the place of Christ. Only what man experiences within himself can help him to progress. Therefore, no one understands the Christ who does not understand that he must be reborn in the soul of every single person. But man must also work on his spiritual formation. Only when we believe that our actual human powers are not born with us, but that our actual human powers for the future will be those that we ourselves develop within us, only then do we stand on truly Christian ground. Not the Christ who is born with us – that is only God the Father – but the Christ whom we experience in ourselves by developing towards him, that is the Christ who must be grasped.

Today there are books by Protestant Christians, for example Harnack's book “The Essence of Christianity”. Cross out the word “Christ” everywhere in this book, and the book changes from a lie to a truth. As it is, it is a lie, because wherever “Christ” is written, it should say: the Father-God. What Harnack writes refers only to the general fatherly nature-god. There is nothing in the book about the Christ. That has been added by way of lies. The Christ can only be found by the transformed, transmuted human nature, by human nature that is engaged in its own activity.

That is what must be overcome today, but with which, unfortunately, instead of thinking of overcoming, the world makes compromises. The compromises that are made outside today are also made within the soul, and if our souls were not so terrible compromisers, then there would be no such terrible compromises in the outer life as the one that now comes from Weimar, the school compromise. Today, people of a compromising nature slink through existence, and they are the ones who experience everything in retrospect, who do not move forward. We can only move forward if we have the will to learn and the courage to incorporate what we have learned into life. Only from this will and courage can the new motto arise:

I want to learn, I want to work.
I want to learn by working.
I want to work by learning.

To what I was able to say to you here, a year ago, more has doubtless been added for all of you, by a very forceful teacher—I mean, as the latest great teacher, those significant events which have taken place since last we gathered here. Those events spoke to you all the more forcibly because they were the fulfillment of what many of you had believed for a long time would come to pass. Truly it is a long way in content, though, seemingly short in time, back to those first days of August 1914, when amid countless hopes, and even more illusions, Germany suddenly marched out with an army that was not yet on a war-footing, that did not yet have its mobilization-order, and accomplished the siege of Louvain; a long way back to those days when because of various illusions people had already grown accustomed to think and to repeat in speech what certain sides were commanding to be thought. It is even a long way back to those days last autumn when the army outside the German boundaries was in danger of being cut off within a few days from all home supplies, a possibility which immediately led through the well-known events to something that, to you at least, is of greatest importance. All this is a long way back, in significance, even though the time embraces only a few years. And for men of deep vision there is the added disillusionment, that not only Germany's external military capitulation but her spiritual capitulation also was brought about by the very man to whom many looked in the autumn of 1918 as a last hope. The events that took place in that autumn of 1918 were very fitting proofs indeed of all those things which in so many connections could only be indicated between the lines, things which in recent years, as you well know, it was quite impossible to express openly inside the boundaries of what was then the German Empire.

Now, my dear friends,—and this must be said today and to you especially in the sense in which it has often been said here—we are confronted, as it were, by a trial that we must undergo, a test of that which has been developed among us and which I should like to call by an expression that sounds strange, perhaps,—“our Anthroposophical conviction”. Again and again, throughout the last year especially, I have emphasized the fact that this Anthroposophical conviction of ours must not confine itself to the taking in of ideas, in order merely to enjoy a kind of mystic feeling of inner well-being: and that is precisely what the present state of affairs teaches us so loudly and so eloquently. Many of us have been content to find in Anthroposophy something that will answer certain soul-questions for us—which, to be sure, is one's privilege. But truly, it is not without reason that the fact has been emphasized again and again in the last year, that our anthroposophical conviction must lead us further; it must lead us to a better understanding of immediate practical life, which for a thoughtful person is penetrated by the spirit; it must lead as to a better understanding than is possible when one does not have the background of this anthroposophical conviction. It is not for nothing that those persona who have been privileged to permeate themselves with an Anthroposophical conviction have been called to think-through the great problem which mankind faces. Now in a certain sense we face a test of whether that which we have been able to assimilate, which as a matter of fact has often accomplished nothing more than the uncovering of a superior kind of egoism,—whether that can really penetrate our understanding, our feelings, our hearts, so thoroughly that we will awake to the tasks of ever greater magnitude which we are bound to encounter in the immediate future. For much that is now crowding down upon us is just in its infancy. We face the beginnings, my dear friends, of many things. We must learn the lessons that events teach. Only think how the whole of life converged in these events. Think now those men who often seemed of all people the most practical, who regarded Spiritual-Science as a frightful whim, turned out, with all their practicalness, to be hardly awake to what came bursting upon mankind with overpowering elemental force. One must recall today the way in which those persons to whom the earthly destinies of mankind were entrusted, spoke immediately before the great world-war catastrophe. Years ago, in this place, I remarked upon the manner in which they spoke. Today I will only recall to your minds those critical sessions of the German Reichstag, when the minister responsible at that time for Germany's foreign policy could say: “The general political expansion has recently gone forward in a gratifying manner”. And in the same speech he could say: “Our relations with Russia are all that could be desired; the cabinet at Petrograd is not troubled by the press agitation, and we will be able to continue our friendly, neighborly, relations.” He could say in the same speech: “Most gratifying negotiations have been entered into with England, which will be consummated in the near future in the interest of world peace; upon the whole the two governments [he meant the English and the German] so stand that relations between them will become ever firmer and firmer”.

Notice, my dear friends, that those things were said by persons who were looked up to as directors of the destinies of mankind. They made those statements at the same time that I was compelled to say what I have since repeated many times—it was in my lecture in Vienna in the spring of 1914: “The tendencies of life prevailing in the present day will become stronger and stronger until finally they will destroy themselves by their own force. He who penetrates social life with spiritual vision sees how everywhere the conditions exist from which are bound to spring frightful social abscesses: that is the great anxiety regarding civilization that one who penetrates into existence must feel. That is the dread that is so oppressive, and that has compelled one to speak of the means that can be employed toward a solution, so that one would like to shout it aloud to the world. If the social organism develops any further in the direction it has been taking up to the present time, then sores will break out in civilization which will be the same for the social organism as cancers are for the human physical organism”.One spoke thus in that spring of 1914, and was regarded by' the so-called practical people as a dreamer. That general expansion of which Herr von Jagow spoke at that time before the enlightened assembly of the German Reichstag,—before men who should have had some judgment, but who heard everything tranquilly and believed that expansion went forward in such a direction that the following year at least ten to twelve million men were killed, and three times as many were crippled. My dear friends, I say this emphatically because it must be said today: It is essential that one gain an insight into human affairs through quite a different kind of thinking than that to which the leading circles were accustomed. It is essential today that one understand over better and more thoroughly what flowed out of the old world-conception. Such old thinking is worthless even for practical life, because practical life produced more and more the most impossible thoughts, which necessarily led to catastrophe. It is not a question of manufacturing thoughts about readjustment, but,of this: of realizing that humanity must learn new lessons in regard to its deepest thinking. That is the reason why one spoke so seriously of the necessity of renewing one's whole conception of the universe, the need for all of mankind to turn to the sources of reality, that lie in the spiritual life alone. For finally it all comes down to this: the necessity of realizing that we do not merely need organizations in this or that field, altered in this or that way, but that above all we need something quite different for the future, and for the very nearest future: what we need is heads in which something quite different pulsates than pulsated in those heads that were shaped by the influence of a worn-out conception of the universe. Before all things we need a new organizing, a new building of thoughts in men's heads. That is what one has wanted to work for during the last twenty years, for the work had become necessary. Heads are what we need, constructed differently from those which plunged mankind into disaster.

So long as this is not realized thoroughly, and so long as it is not realized that the light from Spiritual Science alone can illumine these beclouded heads: so long, whether people think as Conservatives or Radicals or however they think, no improvement of any kind can come about. With any of the trifling means that issue from the old thoughts there will be no salvation insured to mankind. New thoughts above all things are needed, new thoughts that can only spring up from the ground of what has been talked of in this place for years as the greatest need for the present age and for the immediate future.

You are acquainted, my dear friends, with the so-called Appeal to the German People and to the Civilized World which arose out of the necessity of the time: in which is represented quite openly what in recent years I have taken pains to express in narrow circles, where to be sure it found no response, where the desire was only to hear the thunder of cannons, not the Voice of the Spirit. You know that in this Appeal the demand is made definitely for that which lies in the impulse actually present at this time in human evolution itself. For, my dear friends, he who can see the forces that are active in the world of men considers as the greatest unhealthiness those abstract, so-called immortal, ideals which come not out of a real spiritual life but only out of its reflected images, human concepts and ideas that have no reality out are only images in a mirror. One must be especially conscious of that in the present day. Also in the present day there will be countless men who believe they are saying something full of significance when they tell how mankind can be made everlastingly happy, when they talk of ideal conditions that must be gained for mankind. My dear friends, such ideas of everlastingness and such ideal conditions for mankind are not in the thoughts of one who derives his knowledge from actual spiritual spiritual life. As I have always explained it here, evolution has been like this: one definite epoch has peen followed by another; and above all for each big epoch of post-Atlantean time a single concrete Ideal has been present, just as also for our time and the immediate future. It is not a question of creating a government that will last for a thousand years in a chiliastic manner; but of what the spiritual world desires to bring to realization for a short space of time,—and that, one can only see if one really devotes oneself to Spiritual Science. Our time is in serious need of that which the Appeal presented as its fundamental demand: the threefolding of the social organism. The social organism can only become healthy by means of this threefolding, of which you have read in the Appeal, and as you will find it in my book The Threefold Commonwealth Life Necessities of the Present and Future. The present cycle of humanity demands this threefolding.

Think, my dear friends,—all would have been quite different if in the middle of 1917, or even as late as the autumn of 1917, an important nation, either Germany or Austria, had advocated this threefolding as manifesting the impulse of Middle Europe, in contrast to the so-called Fourteen Points of Woodrow Wilson drawn up from an American point of view. At that time it was an historic necessity. I said to Kühlmann then, “You have a choice: one alternative is to listen sensibly to what is proclaiming itself now in the evolution of humanity as something which is to happen for what I am setting forth is not some program, as there are so many today, but something that is read out of the evolution of mankind and that quite certainly will be realized in the next fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five years, but which above all must be realized in Middle Europe. You have these alternatives: either to listen to reason and accomplish sensibly what wants to be accomplished; or else go straight into revolutions and cataclysms.” Instead of listening to reason we got the peace, the so-called peace, of Brest-Litowsk. Think what it would have been (this can be said without boasting) if at that time amid the thunder of cannons, in contrast to the Fourteen Points, the voice of the Spirit could have been heard. All of Eastern Europe would have had an understanding for the threefold social organism in the place of Tsarism (anyone knows this who is acquainted with the forces in Eastern Europe). For that would really have been only what was really obliged to come about.

Those who were sympathetic at the time to the ideas of the Threefold Commonwealth at the most offered their opinion that they should be published in a brochure. Now think what folly that would have been then. It would have remained as literature among all the other things that were not read then. Times change. Today, with the days of October and November 1918 lying between then and now, everything has to be given out wholesale; today the proper way is to adopt a wide publicity about these things. Those people are the greatest menaces to mankind who think that if a thing is right for practical life it must be right at all times in the same way. Things have to be judged at different times from entirely different standpoints.

My dear friends, one must look more deeply into human evolution if one would appreciate the complete far-reaching practicalness of what lies at the foundation of the Threefold Commonwealth. This threefolding—I must emphasize it again and again—is not something that can abruptly come into being. It is what the Spirit of the Time and of the Present demands unconditionally from man, what the Spirit of the Time desires to realize; it is what the Spirit of the Time (and when you hear what follows you will understand this statement which I can now give out) is actually subjectively bringing to pass. And chaos results precisely from the fact that men think and, especially, act differently from the way the Spirit of the Time thinks and acts. As a matter of fact what is contained in this threefolding has been coming into being since the sixtieth year of the 19th century; only, men have talked and maintained an attitude in violent opposition to all that came into existence through events. You know, it is a question of dividing the social organism into three parts—a spiritual part, a real state or political part, and an economic part. I should like to insist before going further that the truth of this fundamental conception can be grasped by mere healthy human understanding, as can everything that is won through Spiritual Science. But I do not believe one can come to it in the right way through present-day thinking—(I beg you not to forget I said: in the right way). There are men who have reached something similar, but the essential thing is that one should accept it on a real, practical basis—a basis that takes into consideration that which is struggling to come into existence in our time, and which actually is beginning to work itself out.

Today let us consider—as a prelude, I might say—just one instance that can help us to a conception of what an exhaustive study of the time reveals in regard to this threefolding. You see, my dear friends, when recently, in the last four centuries, what one calls today the capitalistic economic order and the modern technical order swept over mankind, a new habit of thought, a new conception of the world, came too. If the so-called History in the schools were not a fable convenue then one would learn from history how radically the habits of thought of the entire civilized world changed from the 13th, 14th 15th centuries on into the following centuries. That that has all evolved slowly is a superficial view; for in historical development there are really great and sudden changes. Just such a change lies behind the whole development during, the last 3 or 4 centuries of the spiritual life-habits and thought-habits of mankind. I should like to mention especially something that appeared under our very eyes. I mean always soul-eyes, but which really has hardly been estimated at its true value. It was allowed to go to waste. What small roles in the life of humanity, especially among the Germans, have so-called spiritual personalities really played: How little in the last few centuries has the general schooling at the Universities helped to draw what has unfolded in single spiritual individualities into the general cultural wealth. Take instance of Goethe which I have often mentioned here. Goethe had a great comprehensive conception of the universe; something colossal for the evolution of mankind was taking place during the years from 1749 when Goethe was born to 1832 when he died. Enormous spiritual impulses lay in this Goethe. But let us see what impression Goethe's world-conception, Goetheanism, made on the German people: we obtain an appallingly sad picture. Those very persons who think they know something about Goethe know nothing at all of the deepest impulses of his spiritual being. And perhaps in a still higher degree one could speak in the same way of many others. One must say, my dear friends, that since the spread of technical science and capitalism the spiritual life of single personalities, which was important precisely because of its general human quality, became—one cannot say it in any other way—a parasite, a parasitic growth on the ordinary body of culture. It existed, but fundamentally it existed for naught. As if to prove just that: that the spiritual life of Goethe, for instance, was for naught—that it was thrown back, not absorbed, but merely flirted with theatrically: as if to prove that, we see the Goethe Society itself, which regards itself as the official custodian of Goetheanism, asking from an impulse that became more and more customary—Whom shall we choose as president for our Goethe Society? And the thought was not, who best understands Goetheanism?—but, who can do the best bowing and scraping if the G. S. has to appear at court? And then a minister of finance was chosen as the first president of the Goethe society in Weimar, a man whose spiritual path had never led to Goethe. What might show one the hollowness of the whole thing was the gentleman's surname: Kreutzwendedich von Rheinbaben (English: “Turn thou, oh Cross”). Kreutzwendedich von Rheinbaben was chosen then as by an irony of fate to be the president of the Goethe Society. These seem to be unimportant facts; out just the fact that they can be regarded as unimportant, when in truth they are symptoms of the deepest feelings: that is the horrible thing. Whoever does not comprehend these facts as important symptoms revealing inmost thoughts and feelings shows himself in agreement truly with all that has led mankind into such dire calamity. Now compare this parasitism of the spiritual life, this lack of connection between what is produced on the heights of humanity, and the general life of the people—compare this with earlier ages. It could not have been thought of in earlier ages. Just think what impression a Buddha had, for example, on the general life of the later Indian people. Compare this popularity of Buddha with the popularity that a Goethe had. Perhaps you will say: But by the side of Goethe are so many other spiritual heroes; Buddha was only one. Whoever makes that objection shows that he does no understand anything of the fundamental conditions of the evolution of mankind. For that is the great misfortune, that through natural conditions there has come to be a frightful overproduction of such spiritual persons, such spiritual individualities. So that those who are part of the general working community do not know at all how to find their way about: for look you, there is not merely Goethe but also Herder and Schelling and Schlegel; and not only these but one should read Mabel too, and Wildenbruch. And that's only the beginning; there is every other possible field, and one should concern oneself with everything that belongs to the general world of culture: And then one must think of international figures, etc… Yes, what lies at the bottom of that is of very deep import, something extraordinarily significant. There is a great difference between the men who figure thus next to one another in the history of literature.

But in the course of the last centuries men have lost their reverence for the spiritual life. That fact confronts one in single instances. One must be able to view the evolution of mankind symptomatically, then one finds from the symptoms—what really pulses underground! Look, my dear friends, I spoke once at the beginning of 1890 to a small circle of people who were members of the school examination board. One especially esteemed member of the board, also spoke on that occasion. We remarked how significant it is that so dreadfully little takes place in the school of the present day that will foster the general growth of spiritual impulses, so dreadfully little reaches the young people who are trained spiritually in these places from their tenth to their eighteenth year. Then the examining officer said: “Yes, when we see these camels that we must send out to teach the young, then we cannot nope for anything healthy to come of it.” You see, that is a symptom. Persons such as he, who in recent years were responsible for the spiritual life of the minority, the upper classes, esteemed it of so little worth that they regarded as a matter of course their examining school teachers and then letting them loose like camels among the young. They were convinced that those who handed in the best examinations were the greatest camels. Ah! but men's thoughts, my dear friends, men's thought-habits! everything depends upon them, in spite of all opinions to the contrary. In the end we find that mankind's real happiness and misfortune depend upon these thought-habits; they accumulate finally in such world catastrophes as we have just lived through. One must see into the small things, for they are symptoms of what is taking place in the subconscious sphere, which remains unaccounted for while one is pointing with pride to technical developments, capitalism, etc..

So slightly, then, has the spiritual life been valued that in reality it has become a luxury; men in the most different branches of life could only experience it really as a luxury. But they love this luxury. One might point to many spheres of life where this luxury has taken the place of the spirit. Let as take just one: landscape painting as it has developed in the last century. Do you believe, my dear friends, that outside of a few men who are educated to it, the broad masses of humanity can really have an open heart and taste for this landscape painting? Do you believe, for instance, that the laborer who is enmeshed by the capitalistic order of economic life and technical industry in a truly desperate labyrinth of life,—do you believe that if you throw down to him all the crumbs that you can find in the way of popular lectures, peoples' courses, centres, exhibitions where you show him pictures, do you believe that he can truly with his inmost soul respond to it? Landscape painting—just think—he who is not educated up to it, says: “Ach, why do they paint that? It is much more beautiful outside. Why, honestly, do they paint that?” When you hold popular courses for a palliative, you can persuade him that it is real,—but it does not enter into his subconsciousness. His subconsciousness keeps on saying: Why do they paint that? One shouldn't waste human forces on such nonsense,—And finally from out of these feelings there accumulates that which bursts out today in such eloquent events. That is the crux of the mater. For what, indeed, has not one heard continually in the last ten years, about the noble progress we have made, now human thought speeds like lightning over the widest stretches of country, how we can travel so easily, how spiritual culture has spread, etc. But all that, that has been praised so extravagantly was only possible because under it was a foundation of millions of men who were not able to share in it. None of you would be able to travel by rail, to telephone, to send thoughts out over wide stretches of country, if countless men were not denied the privilege of sharing in any of this culture, if this culture had not meant hunger and need for the body and soul of millions and millions of men. My dear friends, let us look for a moment at a definite point of time, the middle of the 19th century for it was then approximately that what one calls the social question really began. Look at the upper class that gradually arose out of that atmosphere which one cannot otherwise characterise than by pointing to the parasitic condition of the true and good spiritual life—the spiritual life that became parasitic because it was not absorbed; it was meant to penetrate the general culture of the people, but nothing was done about accepting it, the cross had not yet turned. Now look, the people of this upper class were gradually inspired with the idea of getting something for their souls. How often have I remarked what unnatural roads this longing of every soul takes. One could see how the people finally became theosophists in well-heated rooms, as the last rung of the Bourgoisie-ladder, how (and this was the very last phase) they talked about brotherliness, human love, noble ethical ideals, etc. But, my dear friends, in what rooms did these things happen? In what manner of places did all this come about? (I speak of the middle of the 19th century; later it became a little but not much better, and then not by any merit of the upper class.) All this went on in places heated with coal, about which the British government had already in 1840 confirmed the report that 9, 11, and 13 year old children were working in the coal mines, and were not seeing sunlight except on Sunday, for the reason that they were taken into the shafts before the sun rose, and came out again after sundown. Ah, it was easy to speak of love of neighbor, brotherliness, love for all mankind, when one was warmed by coal acquired through such “brotherliness”. It was easy also to talk about improving men's moral sense, when one was kept warm by coal brought out of shafts where, as the British inquiry reported, men and women had to work together the entire day, naked; pregnant women half-naked, men entirely naked; for in the mines it is very hot, etc., etc. I mention these things—they could be added to a hundredfold—in order to show you a picture of what all this is about: a picture of the culture of the last century, the Luxury-culture, a culture that already smelt of decay; and underneath, the foundation without which this culture would not have been possible, millions and millions of men who could not share in it. How people were gradually aroused to improve this 16 hour work in the mines was also reported by the Inquiry. But what was the characteristic of the last half of the century? Thoughtlessness. Preeminently, it was thoughtlessness. And this thoughtlessness is what must be recognized above all things if any improvement is to be worked for. Instead of saying so easily: “Dear stove, fulfil your stove-duty, make the room warm”, one should take wood and make a fire, and stop preaching. There has been so much preaching done, in priest and atheist circles alike: And what has been neglected is thinking: thinking according to reality. It all comes down to that. It is that above all things that must be made clear to the man of today, the fact that it is precisely in the spiritual life that a great change must come about.

The spiritual life cannot flourish unless it is free to manifest itself every day anew. But that will only be possible if it is placed on its own basis. From the lowest school position to the highest, from the established branch of science to creative work in art, in order to endure it must be free, because it can only build on its own strength. He who is acquainted with the spiritual life of mankind knows what unhealthiness has entered into it in the last four centuries through the State, because of the fact that the State spread its wings over this spiritual life, so that all spiritual life should gradually become politicalized, with the exception of some few branches that still remained free and for which also there was danger of subjection. For if affairs had gone any further even free these last branches of free spiritual life would have been politicalized. But men's thought-habits today are not yet broad enough for them to realize that the frightful subjection of the spiritual life to the political state-life must be undone, and that this spiritual life must be sat free. The very goal that men still work toward is this curbing of the freedom of spiritual life and the politicalizing of it, even when so many states have already shown just how state-absorbtion of spiritual life has worked out. It is still very difficult for people to extricate themselves from the great illusion about state-life. I was recently In Berne where the so-called “Peoples' Union” was holding a conference. The people spoke about everything under the sun in the same style as formerly—in May 1914—Herr von Jagow had talked about the future. Just as that which actually came to pass was entirely different from what he expressed by his phrase “the general expansion is making progress”, so is there a difference between that which will actually come to pass and what has been said in Bern. People do not stand at all on the ground of reality. Men who give lectures, who write in German newspapers, made speeches telling what should happen in order to guarantee this Peoples' Union a prosperous existence. How a parliament should be formed, that would now embrace all state relations. The gentleman in question also could not resist saying: “A super-parliament must be created, a super-state”. In a lecture that I was giving at the same time I said that it would be more pertinent to consider what the states ought to leave undone than what they ought to do, in order not to increase further that which led us into the world-catastrophe. The only question one hears is, what should the state do?—in the sense of the old state. One has not learnt from the times to ask: What should the states stop doing? They should before all things stop mixing themselves up in spiritual and economic life. One should hardly be thinking of creating super-parliaments and super-states, when the sub-parliaments and sub-states have had such poor results. Today the question cannot be: What should the State do? but: What should the State give up doing? Only that is appropriate for the present time.

But one must have the courage in one's thinking to look at these things frankly. To see the connection between this spiritual life and what is now going on in the other branches of the social organism, will not be possible to one unless one has filled one's head with something evolved from the thoughts contained in Spiritual Science. Why is Spiritual Science such a horror today to many people? Just because it demands that one think differently from other people. But events have taught us that we can go no further with the thoughts in which mankind has been stuck. Men cannot realize that thy must change their way of thinking, for they cannot see the events. Men find it so difficult today to understand the Threefold Commonwealth because they have not wished to see what has actually occurred.

The evolution of mankind has already brought about a great piece of threefolding in events which escape men's gaze; only men are not aware of the accomplishment. I will give you one instance: if we go pack to 1869 we find the steel-industry in Germany developed to such a point that about 799,000 tons of iron had to be extracted: more than 20,000.were needed to extract these 799,000 tons. By the end of 1880, through the expansion of the industry, through the great demands created on the one hand by the increased railroad trade, and on the other by the great war armament programs—it later rose immeasurably higher, but already at the end of 1880 it had so increased that no longer was it 799,000 tons of raw iron but now 4,500,000 tons were necessary. Now, my dear friends, you can ask: How many workers were needed now? I said, something over 20,000 workers were necessary to extract 799,000 tons. Then there were 4,500,000 tons at the end of 1880. And for that, only 21,300 men were necessary. Now please let these figures speak to you—not as statistics, but comprehend these figures: something over 20,000 men extracted 799,000 tons at the beginning of 1860; 21,000 men, or thereabouts, extracted 4,500,000 tons at the end of 1880. How is that possible? You must indeed ask, How is that possible? It only became possible through enormously fine technical improvements; only because the most inconceivable, immeasurable technical improvements were made, by which it was possible for one man to extract so much more iron. Thus for all the progress that was made in this industry—and one could give similar details for 25 or 30 first-grade industries—for all that developed in them such improvements are the explanation. What does that mean? That is the significance, if just this number of men, because of purely technical improvements, produced that much more? Do you think that has no consequence? Naturally; when the number of workers was not increased much, and production itself was increased to such an enormous extent, the entire economic world that had any connection therewith was revolutionized. Just think what that means for the third part of the decentralized threefold organism. In all the rights-relations, and in all spiritual relations, nothing needed to change; there has only been a change in economic relations. For the change all came to expression in the price of steel and all that is connected with that. It is nothing less an event than this: That independently of the spiritual evolution, of the rights-evolution (for you need no other right, unless you look at the whole) independently of them, the economic life got itself free and transformed itself without men having a hand in the transformation. The things themselves did it, and men took no notice of it. That may be a proof to you that in actual events the threefolding was accomplished. The true economic teaching has progressed far, altogether b: itself; and men did not follow after; they directed their intelligence not to the possibility of following it up, out of staying behind in the old relationships. One may be ever so enthusiastic about the great talent that went into the improvement; that is all right, but for today it is not a question of that. Today the point is, that the economic life has emancipated itself. In the making of prices, and all that is connected with the establishment of prices and values, the economic life has taken its own course. That is the point. The three branches have practically emancipated themselves, and men have artificially welded them together, and have insisted upon welding them together ever more and more closely. That is how we got into the world-catastrophe. The facts lie under the surface of what men want to think today. One must look deep into the relations of things if one wants to judge what the reality is.

I chose such an instance so that one might see how foolish it is to judge the Threefold Commonwealth as senseless. The Threefold Commonwealth has been taken out of existing circumstances, while the men to whom the fate of mankind has been entrusted in the last ten years have altogether failed to adapt themselves to existing circumstances. You can easily prove through a healthy human understanding that this Threefold Commonwealth is the only thing to work for in order to bring about healthy development of the social organism. It does no good today merely to think one should maintain present conditions because this or that cannot be dispensed with. On that score the strangest objections are raised. All kinds of quite crooked e thinking are demonstrated. For instance, lately I was lecturing in Basel on the Threefold Commonwealth. In the discussion that followed, a very clever man got up and said: “Many admirable things have been said about this Threefold Commonwealth and yet one cannot comprehend it, because justice would be maintained by the political state only, thus by only a third of the social organism; and yet justice must exist also in the economic and spiritual life”. I had to reply with a picture. I said: “Now let us take any family in the country, consisting of man and wife, two children, manservants, maidservants, and three cows. The entire family needs milk, just as all three members of the social organism need justice. But is it necessary for all members of the family to give milk? Certainly not, for they will all be well supplied if the three cows provide it. So it is with the threefolding of the social organism. It is essential that all three members have justice. But they will only have it if it is created by the state-organism, the central member, as the milk is provided by the cows.” So crooked is men's thinking that they must needs turn out the wisest sophistries about the simplest conceptions.

Certainly, people are not stupid when they make such objections. One can never say that people are stupid. People who make objections today are, I consider, often very clever. I do not wish to dispute peoples' cleverness but I should like to paraphrase Shakespeare's line: “Honourable men are they all”: and say, Clever people are the: all, all, all—the essential thing however, is not merely to find clever thoughts out to find correct thoughts, that can actually be applied and used. And one comes to a healthy thinking in Spiritual Science, a thinking that can really penetrate to reality. You can have the most distorted thoughts in regard to outer physical affairs, and at the same time with a little elementary mathematics and technical knowledge you can prove that for instance if someone builds a railroad bridge badly, perhaps by the time the third train travels over it the bridge will collapse. But you cannot prove, for instance, let us say out of medical science: if so and so many people are well, and so and so many people die, just what medical science had to do with it. There the facts are not so obvious. And with respect to the social organism, the facts are not obvious at all. There the wildest charlatanism can prevail. There, one cannot help but feel that what was once ridiculed as an old superstition has come right down into recent times, in another field. You all know the place in the second part of Faust where the Middle Age idea of the Homunculus is dealt with. Today many people think it is a superstition, this wanting to construct an homunculus. But it is just as much a superstition to think of creating something out of mere intellectualizing. People do not realize that they have only transplanted the superstition to another field. The social theories of today want to produce a social Homunculus; they want to construct something artificially out of mere intellect. The Threefold Commonwealth is just the opposite of that. It seeks, not to set up an artificial program, but to find how men must meet one another in the three folded organism in order to find out or themselves what is necessary. It goes straight to reality, to the reality in which men stand in the social organism. Because it differs in this way from that Homunculus-idea of which men have become accustomed to think in the last ten years, for that reason it is so difficult to grasp today. For that reason one finds it so incomprehensible, in spite of the fact that it contains not one incomprehensible sentence, or indeed, not one sentence that is not quite easy to understand. It is because men have forgotten how to think accurately; they are satisfied everywhere to think around the edges. They are only content if they can think around the edges, or if they can think what they are told to think by one of the many sides.

It must not be overlooked, however, that the fundamental principles of the Threefold Commonwealth embrace a great many of the one-sided ideas that nave come up here and there. One cannot say that fruitful social ideas nave not also arisen in many heads; but for the most part they are one-sided. I must therefore say: I am for the most part in agreement with the people who have offered me some objection or other, but they are not in agreement with me. What they advance is right from their one-sided point of view, but one does not get a step forward by it, because with one-sided points of view one would accomplish something that then causes mischief on the other side. It is important today that we meet facts in a comprehensive way. That for instance, we do not ask: What should we do with the gold? This question and all others dealing with money standards will be settled within the independent economic life. This is the important point, that one grasp the reality of it. We do not need programs for single cases, programs spun out of the intellect; we need impulses that are related to reality; then, whatever one touches, one will come into contact with the practical. Only, those theorizers who consider themselves practical men are so made that they want to have definite programs everywhere for actual life. It cannot be a question of programs.

That which lies at the bottom, at the foundation, of the Appeal, and of the book elaborating it, is fundamental. It is developed out of that which alone can exist as tie real impulses of social life. In order to make myself better understood I will make a comparison: It has often been said that if one man were to grow up from childhood on an island he would never learn to speak. One learns to speak only in human society. That is correct, speech is a social phenomenon, man speaks because society is necessary to him. That is also true in regard to social impulses in a larger sense. Only within the social organism itself can a man's social life evolve. One man can never set up a social program, for inner individual life goes in quite a different direction from the setting up of social programs. One can only say: Thus and thus must men stand, thus must men be orientated in the field of the+ spiritual life, thus in the political field, and thus in respect to the economic life. Then what is necessary will result. That is the essential. For if a man applies his individuality today in the age of the consciousness soul to develop a social program, when everything is built on individuality, what comes of it? I should like to give you an example: They talk today about Bolshevism, of Lenin and Trotsky; now, I cite a third for you, who by the side of these is a thorough Bolshevist,—only people have not noticed it: Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Fichte, whom we recognize as an ideal thinker, a noble thinker. Read the Self-contained Commonwealth. What Fichte develops as a program is so little different from the Bolshevik program that you could quite easily ascribe Fichte 's Self-contained Commonwealth to Trotsky. How does this happen? That happens when a single man today makes a social program—which is what Fichte did. Only Fichte was still in an age when such a thing as the Self-contained Commonwealth could not yet be comprehended. The war catastrophe had to lead up to it. You see, it will be like that if one man wants to create out of himself a comprehensive social program. Fichte is a proof of it. There will be no social program, any more than the single man on an island will learn to speak. The essential thing therefore is this, that one find the tendencies, the inherent structure of the social organism.

It is not a matter of setting up programs, but of finding the way in which men must live together in order to discover what social impulses they may have. That stands on reality which concerns itself with society and not with the individual. How often in the last few weeks have I had said to me: “Yes, this man and that man are presenting definite programs that regulate the social life in every single point”. But that is of no avail; people nave always done that. Just look how countless the Utopias are. But there should be no Utopia, there should be something that is rooted in practical life. One should have a feeling for this comparison: I have often said: He who does not see the spiritual impulses in outer reality seems to me like someone who has a raw piece of iron. Someone says to him: That is a magnet that attracts other steel. But he says: Ha! that isn't a magnet, that is what one shoes horses with. Which is also true. The relation between them is not that one is right and the other wrong; but he is more deeply right who knows that it is a magnet, and that also it can be used for horseshoes. So it is with reality. They are right who speak of materialism, but the spirit too makes the complete reality.

Therefore it is a question now of coming back to the spirit. But truly, it must not remain a thing of phrases. Nowadays there are all kinds of preachers going about the world. They are like those people who sat in mirrored salons or in well-heated rooms and talked about love or neighbor and brotherliness. As I remarked just now, “stove fulfil thy stove-duty” is what they say. And preachers go about the world saying: Calamity has come to mankind through materialism, men must turn again to the spirit. Yes, the reproach was even made in regard to this Appeal that it contained too little spirit, it devoted too much attention to material life. It is not essential that we do a lot of talking about the spirit, but it is essential that we know how to bring the spirit into actual life. That man is not really standing firmly on the ground of spiritual knowledge who always only talking spirit, spirit, spirit—but he who receives the spirit so deeply into himself that it is able actually to solve the problems of life. That is the point. One could do without men's exhortations to turn again to the spirit. The important thing is that one should strive today to make the spirit living and active in oneself.

But men have gradually forgotten how to do that, precisely because the state has become something to them—what, forsooth? In Faust there is this line—as instruction to a girl, and the philosophers of course have misunderstood it and have sought a deep subtlety therein: “The All-embracer, All-sustainer, Holds and sustains the not thee, me, himself?” That is the way men came gradually to talk spout the State, especially during the war. “The All-embracer, All-sustainer, Holds and sustains the not thee, me, himself?” In the subconscious of people who give such instruction the “me” naturally is emphasized. For they have laid great stress on the fact that they had a somewhat superior, out—characteristically of them—not a very active inner relation to the spirit. What kind of relation have men had to the spirit? They have endeavored to comply for a certain number of years to the state regulations and then have been made into theologists, jurists, or some other kind of person. They have been supposed to grow up in the State, and to do everything that the State desired, and to be specially trained just for that. But where was any inner activity, where was any intense participation in the whole world process—which is the heart of Spiritual Science—where was that? They have said: I want to hold my position in the State for a certain number of years, and then I want the pension that is guaranteed me; in other words, I will work for the State as long as the State prescribes, then the State must see to it that I have a pension the rest of my life. And then at the end of their life they found no active relation to the spirit either, but a passive one—for then the Church was supposed to see about the eternal life of their soul. As a passive man one was, of course, very well taken care of: laid at birth in the State's lap, educated according to its ideas, then working for it, then cared for by it until death; and then after that the Church looked after one's soul without oneself having to make any effort about eternity. One could hardly ask for a more noble life! A life without one's having anything to do about it: that became more and more men's ideal at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. But the possibility for that kind of thinking only existed because of the foundation structure of which I have spoken, where people were not taken care of at all until their death—and even then most insufficiently, through diverse insurance systems. And therefore when it was no longer possible for Rights to blossom out of the world conception of the upper class, the people also lost faith in that after-death age- and invalid-Insurance which the Church distributed for the immortality of the soul.

You see, that is what one must grasp today. But one only grasps some measure of reality if one is able to think practically about what is presented in the Threefold Commonwealth.

Today I should like to introduce as a sort of parenthesis a deeper, Spiritual-Scientific consideration of the subject of our preceding lecture, the threefolding of the social organism. Naturally much of the thought underlying what I want to say, you will yourselves discover gradually from the general world-conception of Spiritual Science. One can hardly present the whole foundation of the Threefold Commonwealth in each single lecture. But today, in order to obtain a deeper view, will consider from the inside, as it were, that which confronts us outwardly as the necessity of threefolding the social organism.

It is really not difficult for one who has lived to some extent with spiritual-scientific conceptions to call up in himself a feeling for the profound differences between those three spheres of life into which it is our intention that the social organism should be divided. As soon as one realizes that the Threefold Commonwealth is something to be taken very seriously, there develops in one's feelings the possibility of strongly differentiating among the three spheres. They are already fairly well known to you. First, that sphere of life which we call the spiritual life, in so far as it manifests itself or has form in what we call the physical world—thus, the entire field of the so-called (I must use a paradox) physical-spiritual life. You know of course what we have to understand by that. It embraces everything that is connected with men's individual faculties and talents. As we shall see directly the spiritual life is much more comprehensive for us than for a person of materialistic mind. We think of the spiritual life as much more material than the materialistic person does, in so far as we speak of the physical-spiritual life. That fact is ingrained already in my lectures. One can only understand the spiritual life if one starts with the realization that all material life is really concretely saturated by the spiritual: so that for us there is never a purely material something; that which reveals itself through the medium of matter is always according to its inner being also—I say also—a spiritual something. Art, science, conceptions of right, the ethical impulses of mankind—all these things, roughly speaking, come within the boundaries or the spiritual life. Above all, It includes everything that belongs to the cultivation of individual talents, thus the whole field of education and individual training.

Next, it is important to distinguish something which is connected in a certain way with the physical-spiritual life but which nevertheless is fundamentally different. That is, everything that one can described as rights-life, political life, state life. Naturally one must employ all one's powers of perception hare to see the important distinction, otherwise one will make the mistake of thinking that the rights-life is practically the same as the sense of right. But we who are accustomed, to careful discrimination must distinguish between phases of ideas of right, between—if I may so express myself—the being-inspired with ideas of right, and right as it is applied in the outer world. We will speak more fully about all these things directly.

The third sphere is the one you can most easily distinguish from the other two, the economic life.

Now, as we have said, man stands in an entirely different relation to each one of these three spheres of life. If you try with a healthy feeling to understand what the physical-spiritual life is, you will feel (try to lead your soul-faculties of perception in the direction I have indicated) that anything rooted in any degree in man's individual talents, individual faculties, leads into the innermost part of human nature, springs from the very depths of human nature. Now if one proceeds quite scientifically in the work of perceiving, then one experiences everything that comes to expression in art and science, in the impulses of education, as a psychic-spiritual something that lives and works in us, when we surrender to its activity, in such a way that we can only experience it properly if we withdraw somewhat from the outer world. Certainly we must give expression to it in the outer world; but that is different from experiencing it inwardly: we cannot as men get a true conception of that something that manifests itself in art and science, in educational impulses, we cannot grasp it inwardly, unless we are able to withdraw a little from life. One does not need, of course, to withdraw to a hermit's cell: One can be taking a walk, as far as that matters; but one must withdraw into one's self, into one's soul-life, one must live in oneself. That fact becomes apparent to the human soul as soon as it cultivates the most simple feeling for the physical- spiritual Spiritual Science must express it in these words: the physical-spiritual life is lived in such a way by our human soul that in unfolding it we do not entirely depend upon our body. In this respect, Spiritual Science—as you can gather from everything that Spiritual Science has already disclosed—takes the very opposite stand to the materialistic analysis of the human being, which nurses the delusion that when one creates within oneself something that belongs to the physical-spiritual life, one accomplishes this creation entirely through the instrument of the brain, the nervous system, etc.. We know that is not true. We know that an independent inner life must be present in man in order that manifestations of this physical-spiritual life may be possible. Something is present in man in this physical-spiritual life without there being any corresponding physical manifestation in the physical body; something transpires solely within the spiritual-psychic being of man.

It is different when we manifest those life impulses which we desire to place on a democratic basis in our Threefold Commonwealth, to which every man rives expression in relation to all other men. They appear when men allow themselves to be instruments of their bodily nature, in order to unite with each other. Not theoretical ideas of right, but impulses of right for life; not inner ethical ideas, but ethical impulses for life, that are active among men, and that are manifested in the way men meet one another, work with one another, in the way men exchange their experiences with one another. Those Rights-impulses are only present when men do business with one another, when men turn their bodily outer nature to one another, when they communicate with one another, see and live with one another in mutual experiences—in short, they can only be cultivated amid the vicissitudes of human intercourse. With respect to everything that is cultivated on the basis of our individual talents, that is, with respect to what in the sense of the above is independent of our body, we live as individual men, each one a separate personality, an entity. Except for slight distinctions that arise through differences in race and people, but which are a small matter as compared with the differences in men caused by individual talents and abilities (if one has any perceptive organ one must know that)—with that exception, we are equal as men with respect to our outer physical humanness, through which we meet men as men; through which we express ethical impulses, impulses of right. We are equal here as men in the physical world precisely through the sameness of our human body, simply through the fact that we all have a human face. This fact makes us develop for ourselves as outer physical man impulses of right, ethical impulses, on a democratic basis,—it makes us equal in this sphere. We are different one another in our individual talents, which belong to our inner nature.

With respect to the third, the economic sphere: truly one does not need to adopt a false asceticism (it is certainly contrary to the prevailing tendency of our day, that is, in the West) in order to perceive how the economic life allows men to be submerged, as it were, here in the physical world, in a stream of life in which to a certain degree they are lost as men. Do you not feel, my dear friends, that in economic life you are immersed in something that does not allow you to be so fully man as in the rights- or state-life? And it is so in still greater contrast to the life that flows out of your individual talents, out of the individual talents of all mankind. Without, as I said, adopting a false ascetic attitude, one feels with respect to the economic life that we cease to be complete men when we engage in economic activity. We are obliged to pay tribute to that part of us which is sub-human when we concern ourselves with economic life. (We have the same processes of economic life, that is, production, circulation, and consumption of commodities in spiritual production that grows out of economic life and has the same character as the circulation of commodities—and we have all of that life because, so to say, we are men and not animals. When its economic aspect comes into consideration, spiritual production has the same character as any economic activity concerned with material goods. The material goods are necessary to satisfy our bodily needs; also, spiritual,activity within the economic life—dentistry, for instance, and the like—in the end leads to this, that through an exchange of commodities the dentist, etc., is able to live physically within the economic life.) At all events, economic life is always connected with physical life, and that brings us into a certain relation with animal life, even though it is on the human plane. It submerges us in experiences which we have instinctively together with the animals. There you have as a beginning a simple healthy feeling for the different relations an individual man has to these three spheres of life.

Now let us approach the subject in a more deeply spiritual-scientific way. Spiritual Science must first of all observe the periods of human life, the evolution of human life between birth, or conception, and death. Whoever allows himself the possibility of perceiving the course of human life will be strongly impressed by the way in which everything that partakes of the nature of a man's individual faculties is unmistakably announced during the early days of childhood. To one who has a spiritual eye for it and who acknowledges his life experience, the special form of the child soul is easily perceptible. In what develops during the first three life-periods, from the 1st to the 7th year, the 7th to the 14th, and the 14th to the 21st year, there lies the prophecy as from an inner elementary force, of the man's future individual gifts. And not only what we are accustomed to think of as a man's individual gifts, but connected with that, whether he will be able to do much or little muscular work. That is where we are obliged to extend the spiritual further into the material than materialistic thinkers do. Through spiritual vision we see a strong connection between the nature of a man's muscular system and his individual talents. For one who can observe the human being, everything is connected with the development of the human head. Even a man's outer form, whether he has strong less or weak legs, whether he can run much: all that is seen by one who has developed his spiritual vision, from the man's head, precisely from his head. Whether a man is skillful or clumsy, one sees from his head. These so-called physical abilities of man, which are closely connected with his fitness for outer physical , manual work, are connected with the form or his head. Now you know what I have often told you about the shape of the head, basing my remarks on the most varied fundamental facts: everything that comes into shape in the human head, that gives the human head its conformation, its form, points to something before birth, to that which man brings through birth into physical life from out of the spiritual worlds—from the spiritual world itself or from previous incarnations on the earth. And so, when one sees the connection between all human individual talents, either spiritual or manual, and the formation of the human head: then one is led further in one's seeing, and one is able to trace back everything that comes from man's individual talents to his life before birth. That, you see, is what gives the spiritual-scientist such important enlightenment as to physical-spiritual life is. Physical-spiritual life, my dear friends, is here in the physical world because we as men bring something with us at birth. Physical-spiritual life, in the sense in which I have spoken of it today, does not arise out or this physical world: all of it arises out of impulses which we bring from the spiritual world through birth into physical existence. Inasmuch as we bring into physical existence echoes of a supersense existence, we create in human society here in the physical world that which comprises the physical-spiritual life. There would be no art, no science—at the most, in science, a recording of experiments—there would be no impulse for education, no education of children at all, if we did not bring impulses through birth into physical life out of our life previous to birth. That, then, is one thing.

Now let take everything in my book Theosophy, or in Occult Science, that describes the supersense world. Take especially what is said in those books about the relation that exists between human souls when they are disembodied, when they are living between death and a new birth. You know that we have to speak of quite other relations existing between souls there than those which exist here in tae physical world. You remember how I described what is experienced there from soul to soul as being reflected here in shadowy images. You remember the description in Theosophy of life in the soul-world: when I wanted to describe the disembodied life of the supersensible world between death and a new birth I had to speak of certain reciprocal influences, of soul forces and astral forces, that do not exist in the physical world. There, souls have an inner relation to one another, a relation of soul to soul which is called out by the inner force of the soul itself. Now if one is thoroughly imbued with the idea of what relation exists in the supersensible world between souls, if one fixes one's vision upon the relation quite objectively, then one makes a remarkable discovery if one draws a comparison to it in the right way. You know it depends very much on the tendency to such inner activity as this, whether one is led to knowledge of the supersense world, or even to knowledge of the connections between the supersensible world and the sense world. If one turns directly to the Rights-, State-, or political life, one finds that there is no greater contrast to the particular form of supersense life than the political or Rights-life here on the physical plane. They are the two great opposites, my dear friends, that one experiences when one ready learns to know the supersense life. Supersense life has nothing at all that can be regulated bylaws of right or outer ethical impulses; there, everything is regulated through inner soul impulses. It is just the opposite here in the physical world where everywhere state-life has to be established because through birth into the physical world we lose those deep impulses that are alive in the soul in the supersense world and that make the relations there between souls. Here, we make laws of right that will create what must be created: relations of Right—because man has lost that which in the supersense world makes the relation between souls. Those are the two opposite poles: supersense relation of soul to soul, and state-relation here on the physical plane.

In the physical-spiritual cultural life we carry from man to man something that stays with us after birth as a reflection from the supersense world. We spread, as it were, a lustre over life here by letting in the light from the supersense world, and seeking to reflect it here in art, science, and education. It is quite different with the Rights life: we have to establish that on the physical earth as a substitute for what we lose of supersense relations when we enter through birth into physical existence. That gives you an idea, too, of what certain religious documents mean (and you know how far religious documents are always penetrated by this or that absolute truth) when they speak of the authorized “Kingdom of this world”. They mean by that, that the state should not presume to any right to control that which man brings with him as a reflection of the supersense world when he comes through birth into the physical world. It should confine itself to ruling the kingdom of Rights, which is the life we need here because by our physical birth we have lost the impulses of the spiritual world. The task of the state life is to create what is necessary for human intercourse in the physical world. It has meaning only for our life between birth and death.

Let us look at the third, the economic life. Something must be said about it that is quite paradoxical: expressing it crudely, we are submerged in a sub-humanness, in engaging in an economic life. At the same time, however, something is going on in our soul when we concern ourselves with the subhuman. And that, you can experience. Think how very actively you must struggle within yourselves when you give yourselves up to spiritual culture; and on the other hand, how thoughtless men can be in purely economic life, often following mere impulses and instincts. Economic activity proceeds, on the whole, without much truly active inner thought. And in that case, we sink into a subhumanness. Our soul stays hidden in the background. Spiritual Science would say that our body is more exerted when we are engaged in a material activity than one ordinarily believes. Consider the end members of the economic process, eating and drinking: we can realize that there is not a complete balance there between bodily and spiritual activity, that the body outweighs the spiritual-psychic in activity. But then this spiritual-psychic carries on a strong unconscious activity. And within this unconscious activity a seed is hidden. We carry this seed through the gate of death. The soul can rest, as it were, when we are busy with economic life; but in what appears to outer consciousness as rest, a seed is developing which we carry through the gate of death. And if we cultivate brotherliness in economic life, as I always describe it, then we carry a good seed through the gate of death—precisely by virtue of what we cultivate in our relations with men in the economic life. It may seem materialistic to you when I say: Precisely in the brotherliness of economic life man is planting the seed in his soul for his life after death; in his spiritual culture, he is spending his inheritance from his life before birth. It may appear materialistic to you, but it is true, simply true to the spiritual-scientific investigator. However materialistic this may seem to you it is true when I say: when you are submerged in animalness take care of your humanness, for you are planting supersensible seeds for time after death.

Man is a threefold being. He has in the first place an inheritance from time before birth; then, he evolves something here that has value only for the time between birth and death; finally, he develops here in the physical world something by which he links his physical life here with lire after death. That which is manifested here as the lustre of life and the promise and interest of life, in the physical-spiritual culture, is an inheritance from the spiritual world that we bring with us into this physical world. In possessing this spiritual wealth we show ourselves as belonging to the spiritual world; we bring into the physical world a reflection of the supersense world through which we passed before our conception and birth.

You see, abstract science, even abstract philosophy, talks—naturally—always in abstractions. They talk about proving the eternity of substance, how the human substance present at birth remains and then lasts on through death. Such proofs can never be gained out of mere thinking. The philosophers have always sought them, but no proof has ever held against inner logical knowing, because the thing simply is not so. Something much more spiritual is connected with immortality. Nothing at all material, much less anything substantial, is present in any such way. What is present after death is consciousness: consciousness that looks back into this world. That is what we have to consider when we are considering immortality. We must be much less materialistic than the abstract philosophers themselves when we talk of these higher things. It is like this: we use up what I have characterized as a reflection of the supersense world , which we reveal as the ornament, the polished surface of life here—we use that up, and must make here, during our life, a new link for the chain of our eternal existence, to carry through death. Anyone who only thinks of what goes forward in this life, must conclude, if he is consistent, that the thread wears out; only when he knows that he makes here a new part of the chain that goes out beyond death, only then has he come to immortality.

And so man is this threefold being. He cultivates talents in himself that bring a reflection of the supersense world into this life. He develops a life that forms the bridge between life before death and life after death, that expresses itself in all that which has its roots only in the time between birth and death, the outward Rights, or State-impulses, etc. And in that he is submerged in economic life and is able to plant something moral in this economic life—brotherliness—he develops the seed for his life after death. That is the threefold man.

Now think of this threefold man in such a phase of evolution ever since the 15th century that he must now cultivate consciously everything that formerly was instinctive. For that reason it is necessary today that his outer social life should afford him the opportunity of standing with his threefold human nature in a threefold organism. We unite in ourselves three very distinct members of one being, the pre-birthly, the one that is active on the earth, and the after-death member; therefore, we can only stand in the social organism properly in three parts. Otherwise we come as conscious men into disharmony with the rest of the world; and we will come into more and more disharmony unless we will consider shaping this world that lies around us into a threefold social organism.

There, you see, you have the question from the inside. I am trying to show how spiritual-scientific research points out the way to the threefold social organism: how it must be wrested out of human nature itself.

Many persons nave thoughts about what I have evolved. But in open lectures and also on other occasions I have always warned you that these thoughts to which I give expression should not be confused with the thoughts of the elder Schäffle in his book On the Structure of the Social Organism, or with the dilettantism of Merey's most recent book Concerning World-mutations, and similar works. The spiritual scientist cannot be concerned with mere play of analogy, such as these books offer; it is at most unfruitful. What I should like when speaking about the social organism is that men should train their thinking.

The general training of thought today is not even adequate for natural science to be able to grasp facts that I investigated at 35, and that I presented in my book Riddles of the Soul, showing that a human being consists of three members: nerve-sense-life, rhythmic life, and metabolic life. The nerve-sense-life can also be called the head life; the rhythmic life can be called the breathing life, or blood life; and the metabolic life includes all the rest of the organism as a kind of structure. Just as this human organism consists of three members, each centred in itself, so in the social organism each of the three members works for the whole because of the very fact that it is centred in itself. The physiology and biology of today believe that man is a centralized, unified being. That is not true. Even in regard to his communication with the outer world man is a threefold being: the head life is in independent connection with the outer world through the senses; the breathing life is connected with the outer world through the air; the metabolic life is in connection with the outer world through independent outlets. The social organism also must be threefold, with each part centred in itself. Just as the head cannot breathe but nevertheless receives what is communicated by the breathing through the rhythmic system, so the social organism should not itself develop a Rights-life, but should receive bights from its State-member.
However, I said that one must not mistake what is presented here for a mere play of analogy, such as arises when one works from all kinds of hypotheses. Spiritual Science is real investigation, and does not stop short at appearances. People believe that a Spiritual Scientist just thinks something out. Before one is a real spiritual investigator one has to learn to observe the spiritual world. One has to give up thinking; that has value only for the physical world. Naturally one does not give it up for the whole of life, only for spiritual research.

I have told you one usually comes to things upside down if one sets out to describe the spiritual world by using analogies from the sense world. Spiritual research shows, for instance, that the earth is really an organism; that what geology and mineralogy find is only a bone system; that the earth is living, it sleeps and wakes like man. But one cannot go farther in the analogy. If ordinarily you ask a man: When is the earth awake and when is it asleep? he will undoubtedly answer: The earth is awake in summer and asleep in winter. And that is the opposite of what is actually the truth. The truth is, the earth is asleep in summer and awake in winter. Naturally one only finds that out if one actually investigates in the spiritual world. That is the puzzle that makes spiritual research so liable to error, the fact that when one goes with some inquiry from the physical into the spiritual world one gets perhaps the very opposite of the physical fact, or perhaps quarter-truths. One has to investigate every single case.

So it is also with the surface analogy that people draw between the three members or the human, and the three members of the social, organism. that will a man say, using this analogy? He has to say: On the outside is a spiritual life, art, science. He will draw a parallel between that and the human head system, the nerve-sense-life. How could he do otherwise? Then, when he establishes that, he will compare the metabolic life , to which I have referred in my Riddles of the Soul as the most material, with economic life. Nothing could be more upside down than that. And nothing whatever is accomplished by looking at it in that way. One must give up toying with analogies if one wants to reach the truth. People outside of Spiritual Science believe that these ideas have been obtained by a thought game of analogies. That is the greatest illusion. It is to no purpose to parallel outer physical-spiritual life with the head system. It is to no purpose to relate economic life to the metabolic system. All that is of no avail if one wants to fathom the question.

When one makes a real investigation one gets a very paradoxical result. Comparing the social organism to the human organism one comes to the truth only if one stands upside down in the social organism. One must compare economic life with the nerve-sense-life, state-life with the rhythmic system,and physical-spiritual life with the metabolic system for the laws obtaining in them are similar. That which is present in economic life as natural conditions is of exactly the same significance for the social organism as are for man the individual talents that ne brings with him at birth. As man in his individual life is dependent upon what he brings into life with him, so the economic organism is dependent upon what Nature bequeaths it in the way of existing conditions. The preliminary natural conditions of economic life—land, etc.,—are the same as the individual talents that man brings into individual life. How much coal, now much metal is in the earth, whether land is fertile or not, are as it were the talents of the social organism. And as man's metabolic system is related to the human organism and its functions, human spiritual production is related to the social organism. The social organism eats and drinks what we give it in the form of art, science, technical ideas, etc. That is its nourishment. That is its metabolism. A country that has unfavorable natural conditions for its economic life is like a man who is poorly gifted. And a country in which the people produce nothing in the way of art, science, or technical ideas, is like a man who must go hungry because he has nothing to eat. That is the reality, the truth! The social organism is our angry spiritual child. And the natural conditions of the social organism are its capacities, its talents. A comparison of the spiritual life with the human head system has meaning perhaps for one who is playing with analogies; out one reaches the correct and helpful truth only if one knows that the laws stand as I have presented them. One can know that these are the laws of human metabolism; but one must direct the same thinking to them as one directs to the social organism and then one easily gets a larger result. To tamper with spiritual things without such guiding threads is extraordinarily difficult and wearisome. Because of the fact that today analogies are often merely toyed with, on account of which there is a prejudice against this drawing of parallels between the social and the human organism, I have only just touched upon it in my book, but I tried at least to indicate it because it can be a great help to those who think healthily about it.

And so you see that today men are in a peculiar position. Natural science which has made this great progress, which has so influenced men's minds that at bottom-even though it is not conscious of social thinking orientates itself in the direction of natural science,—this Natural Science is not capable of analyzing man correctly. For instance; it says the greatest nonsense about feeling being transmitted through the nervous system. That is pure nonsense. Feeling is transmitted directly through the breathing system, the rhythmic system, and thought through the nerve-sense-system. And the will is made possible through the metabolic system, not through the nervous system in any elementary way. The thought or willing is transmitted through the nervous system. Only when you have as men a real consciousness or willing does the nervous system take any part. When you think along with your willing then the nervous system is concerned in it. It is because this is not known that the physiology and anatomy of today have made that frightful error of distinguishing between sensory nerves and motor nerves. There is no greater falsity than this differentiation of sensory and motor nerves in the human body. The anatomists are always in a dilemma when they get to their chanter on nerves and they don't get out of it. They are in a frightful dilemma because there is no difference anatomically between these two kinds of nerves. It is pure speculation. And everything that is deduced by examining the nerves is absolutely without support. The reason that the motor nerves are not distinguishable from the sensory nerves is that there aren't any motor nerves there. The muscles are set in motion by the metabolic system. And as you perceive the outer world through the senses with the so-called sensory nerves, with other nerves you perceive your own movements, your muscular movements. The Physiology of today is wrong when it calls them motor nerves. Frightful mistakes such as this exist in science, and corrupt what goes into the popular consciousness—and they have a much more, corrupt influence than one would ordinarily think.

Thus Natural Science is not so far advanced as to perceive this threefold man. We can wait for theoretical views of Natural Science to become popular; a year sooner or later will not affect men's happiness. But the thinking does not exist for comprehending this threefold man. The same quality of thinking must however exist to comprehend the threefold nature of the social organism. And there the thing is serious. We are today at the point of time when it must be comprehended. Therefore a change of thought, a new method of thinking, is essential not only for the simple man, but, truly, most of all for the learned man. Simple men at least know nothing about all those things that have been advanced in natural science in order unconsciously to conceal man's threefold nature. But the learned men are stuck full of all those concepts that today make this threefolding seem like nonsense. To the physiologist of today it is pure folderol. If one tells him that there are no motor nerves and that feelings are not transmitted in the same way as thoughts—through the nervous system—but only the thought connected with a feeling, in other words the consciousness of it—not the feeling as such as he will object strenuously. His objections are well known. Men can naturally say: Now look, you perceive music; you perceive that through your senses. No, experience of music is much more complicated than that. It is like this: The breathing rhythm meets with the sense perception in our brain, and in the contact of the breathing rhythm with the outer sense perception arises the musical-aesthetic experience. Even there, the fundamental thing is in the rhythmic system. And what brings this fundamental thing to consciousness is in the nervous system.

However, this all shows you, my dear friends, that in regard to many things we are living in a time of transitions. Every period is indeed a transition from the past to the future. That is so if one speaks abstractly and one can see that every period is more or less a time of transition. I want rather to say in what particular respect our time is a transition. it is a time of very important inner transition, in regard to important inner human impulses. To men capable of perception this shows itself clearly in a certain way. Men today are not very apt to consider incidental symptoms with sufficient earnestness.

I want to tell you of a purely spiritual-scientific perception. Naturally I can as little prove this perception to you as the man who has seen a wallfish can prove to you that it exists. He can only tell you about it. Then one has developed one's power of spiritual vision so far as to be able to have communication with human souls that are evolving between death and a new birth, then one makes indeed very surprising discoveries. This communication can only be had in thought; and when we think here in the physical body some element of speech is always present in our thoughts. Something of speech always vibrates with the thoughts. We think in words. I had the experience once of declaring energetically: “I am fully conscious of the fact that I can think without words resounding simultaneously”, and of having Hartmann answer: “That is nonsense! That is not possible; man cannot think unless he thinks in words”. Thus there are very spiritual philosophers who do not believe that one can think without an inner forming of words. One can. But in ordinary everyday thinking man thinks in words, especially when he would develop some spiritual intercourse with the dead. For you know intercourse with the dead cannot be carried on in abstractions—any more than we can think in blue. It has to be concrete, this intercourse with the dead. That is why I have said: definite pictures that are formed very concretely reach the dead, but not abstract thoughts. Because this is so we are especially apt to let speech sound innerly in our thought communication with the dead. Then we make the most peculiar discovery ( you may believe it or not, but it is a fact) that, for instance, the dead do not hear substantives. Substantives are like holes in our sentences when we communicate with the dead.

Adjectives are better, but still very weak; but verbs, words of activity, is what their understanding grasps. One learns that slowly at first. One cannot think why so much of the communication goes badly; and one gradually realizes that it is the nouns. One cannot use many nouns. And you see one comes to realize this: that in using words of activity, verbs, one cannot help but be within the words oneself. There is something personal in verbs—one lives in the activity; while a noun always becomes something quite abstract.

Therein lies the basis of the symptom of which I wanted to speak. You see that speech is something that unites us with the super-sense world only in a very limited measure; and the fact that the whole tendency of speech is more and more toward substantives brings about the possibility of our separating ourselves from the spiritual world. The more we think in substantives the more we break our connection with the spiritual world. I only wanted this fact to indicate to you that speech has a great significance for our supersense life, a fundamental significance. But speech evolves within human evolution itself. And the characteristic of the evolution of speech is that it brings men more and more to abstractions, that it takes them farther and farther away from living inner thought-life. You can become aware of this outwardly by asking yourselves, How are the Western languages formed as compared to the Eastern? Take the language that outwardly on the physical plane has progressed the furthest, the English language: it almost spends itself in words, it has least thought content. That is the progress of speech from East to West. That is an important distinction to make in connection with social folk-life.

Now there is a man of our time who has developed great acuteness in his observation of human speech. This man is so clever that already he is stupid again. There is, in other words, a degree of cleverness where one begins again to be a bit stupid in the face of colossal cleverness. It is true. One may have a great respect for this cleverness but one should not value it too highly in face of the corresponding truth. This man is Fritz Mauthner, who has out-Kanted Kant in his Critique of Speech, and also in his Dictionary: observations, however, made undeniably out of the impulses of the time. Mauthner has reached something quite definite that must especially strike the spiritual-scientist: it is this, that in reality human inner soul-activity has, as it were, three stages. The first is ordinary sense perception as it is reflected in art. Mauthner believes in this as something that is real, something that is a reality. Now through sense perception one can arouse inner experiences, that lead over into the supersensible; Fritz Mauthner allows such inner experience. He calls it “Mystic experience,” “religious experience.” Beautiful; but he says:•;When man has this mystic experience he can only be dreaming. One is permitted to dream, out one is outside of reality them. Mauthner altogether doubts the possibility or reaching reality then; the only reality to him is sense perception—at most, art can reach it. As soon as one gets so far away from sense perception as to be experiencing something in mystic religious life, then one is merely dreaming about reality; one has already let reality go by. And then one can go still further, according to Mauthner.

He comes to all these convictions through a consideration of speech. He makes an analysis, a criticism of speech, especially in his philosophical Dictionary. It makes terrible reading. I have already on another occasion drawn your attention to the torture one undergoes reading these articles—and they go all the way from A to Z. One begins to read one or another of the articles; something is said. Then another sentence in which what has just been said is just a little bit qualified. Then a third sentence, and that which was just qualified is again qualified, so that one comes back a little to the first sentence again. One hedges around and around and around, and in the end—one has got nothing, even though one has read the whole article to the end. The article entitled “Christianity” is awful. A frightful torture. But it is proper, in Mauthner's sense, that it should be so. Mauthner thinks that, and he really condemns his reader to the torture; he has gone through it himself. He does not believe that man is capable, when he wants to know something, of getting anything else than just such hedging. He is an absolute skeptic. He finds nowhere in speech any other content than the speech itself. It has only an incidental value to him.

And so to him, inner mystic experience is only a dream. As soon as one gets out of speech one is inwardly dreaming. But according to Mauthner there is a third stage: one can believe that one is thinking but one is only speaking inwardly. Whether one uses this or that language, the language, the words, originated once in outer sense things. I have spoken to you before of the various opinions of learned men of how speech originated. You know that their opinions can be divided into two main classes: the Bimbam theory and the Wan-wan theory (those are the technical terms). Now Mauthner finds that everything has evolved from outer sense perception; real thoughts do not exist for man. In science he strives for real thoughts, when ne reaches the third stage. But he does not succeed there in knowing anything real. In mysticism he is still dreaming; when he in search of thought reality, for instance to natural laws, then ne is no longer dreaming, then he is fast asleep. Therefore for Mauthner all science is Docta ignorantia (learned ignorance). Those are his three stages.

Now my dear friends, as I told you, one can have a certain respect for such observation for it is not altogether incorrect—that, is, not incorrect for today. Something to which mankind tends today has been felt correctly by Mauthner. It is this: when the man of today wants to come to mysticism it is something quite different than with men formerly. The man of earlier times was still inwardly pound up with reality. The man of today has not that possibility; as a mystic he really is dreaming. And the natural laws that man finds today—well, one cannot quite endorse such crude points of view as those of certain theorizers who have analyzed the matter similarly to Mauthner, as for example the French thinker Boutroux, or Ernst Mach. But nevertheless one must say: if one sounds the content of the so-called natural laws today there are fundamentally no thoughts there; one only believes they ate thoughts; they are only combinations of facts. They are really only records. These things have been noticed by individuals, Mach, for example. Mauthner has observed thoroughly—therefore he speaks of Docta ignorantia, of a learned unknowing, of an ignorant learnedness. Yes, as human evolution is today, that is quite true. Today, in mysticism and in science alike, man has become sterile. Only, in his pride, he is not yet aware of it as having any significance. But that is not generally characteristic of humanity. Mauthner and the others believe that it is, because in reality they do not consider human evolution; they think: as the soul is today, so it was always. But really, it is only a characteristic of the present time. Their observation only has significance for the soul life of today; we do come to dreaming and to learned ignorance today, when we want to rise in these stages.,

But one must not conclude that human nature is such that it is obliged to sink either into mystic dreaming or into learned ignorance (as those do who think as Mauthner does). One must come to this conclusion: what the ancients reached in old ways must therefore be found now in new ways. That means, we must seek a new mysticism, we must not get into old mysticism. This new mysticism is sought in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. must rise to this new Imagination, to a new Inspiration, but we must rise of new methods. I have elaborated that in my book "Riddles of Humanity". Because we dream in mysticism and sleep in science the necessity is before us today of waking up. Therefore I have described the phenomenon of present day knowledge in this book as an "awakening". We must put in the place of mystic dreams a wide-awake Imagination; in the place of Docta ignorantia, Inspiration; in the sense in which I have talked of it in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. We live today in a transition period in respect to the human soul; we must evolve out of the deepest foundation of this human soul active power that leads to the spiritual. We will not find our way through the chaos of the present age unless we develop the will to evolve active inner soul powers. The spiritualists do the opposite. They perceive that nothing springs up unconsciously from within, and so they allow themselves to project spirits in outer manifestation, outer sense vision.

And a tragic phenomenon makes its appearance in the present day. We have the experience today of seeing men who a short time ago still believed that materialism could satisfy their souls become alarmed in their advancing years about materialism. That is nothing else than what the healthy soul should feel, in spite of the biology of today, or the sociology: a smell of decay, a smell of the corpse of one's soul, that one only prevents by an inner soul activity. Many do not want that activity today. And therefore the tragedy of men growing old who will not have anything to do with spiritual scientific research and who go back to Catholicism. That allows the soul to remain passive, and gives it something that it can believe is a spiritual content. It is a great danger.

That points from another angle to the transition-humanity is making in the present age. Quite secretly the human soul is going through an important stage of development. And with this transition through an important stage of development is intimately connected the necessity of learning to think anew in many other respects concerning man. Read how the individual man, when entering the supersense world, begins to divide into three parts. Read it in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Thinking, feeling, and willing that here in the sense world are fused as the natural condition for man—read the chapter on the “Guardian of the Threshold”: thinking, feeling, and willing become separate from one another when one gets into the supersense world. Mankind is going through that process today secretly in the subconscious. A threshold is being crossed there. Man divides inwardly into a threefold man in a different way than was formerly the case. Observation of this passing of men over a certain threshold teaches one that the threefolding of the social organism is dictated to us out of the spiritual foundations of existence itself. If in the future we want to find a picture of ourselves in the outside world so that we shall agree with it, then we shall have had to threefold the social organism.

You see the signs that spiritual science gives for the Threefold Commonwealth. But I again emphasize the point: once the Threefold Commonwealth is found it can, like all occult truths, be comprehended by a healthy human understanding. To find it, spiritual scientific research is necessary; but once it is found, healthy human, understanding proclaims its truth. That is also something that we must recall at every opportunity.

I have tried today to give you a deeper consideration of what in service to our time must be said today about the Threefold Commonwealth. Next Sunday we will extend this consideration and conclude it, and perhaps bring it to full inner completeness.

The last time we gathered here I was able to speak to you of the deep foundations underlying the ideas of the Threefold Commonwealth. I was able to carry the lecture far enough for us to see in what sense one may say that we are living at the present time in a definite period of transition. You will not misunderstand that remark, for I have often told you that when I talk of a transition it is not meant in the trivial sense in which people often speak when they talk about living in a period of transition. Naturally as I have often said, every period is a period of transition from what went before to what is to follow. The essential thing is to direct our attention to what is changing. And from that point of view there are more important and less important moments in the great world evolution of mankind. And it is clear that beneath the surface, as it were, of outer events something is happening in our time with respect to enormously important impulses of human evolution. In my last lecture I drew your attention to the fact that one must see into the so-called unconscious, or subconscious, of the human being if one would recognize what is really vitally involved in the transition mankind is undergoing today. Not much in our consciousness today tells us about the evolution of mankind in general, although we are living precisely in that world-age in which a development of the consciousness-soul is normal for the individual. Mankind as a whole, as distinguished from the individual, is in this age passing through a development of inner soul and spiritual forces, and for that reason the development is more in the subconscious. For mankind as a whole we must look for the most important forces of transition in the subconscious; while for the individual, we will find the most important forces today in the tendency to develop complete consciousness. In the individual an instinctive, more naive soul-life is changing more and more to a conscious soul-life; in mankind as a whole, however, an important change is taking place unconsciously, without the individual often being aware of it unless he has deepened his vision by work in spiritual science.

This vital change, this most important happening, is not so easy to describe, for our language has been made fundamentally for the purpose of reproducing outer sense reality in the soul. This makes it difficult for us to describe precisely, or adequately, something that does not belong to sense reality, but to supersense existence. Often one has to make use of comparisons—not abstract ones but such as you are well acquainted with in spiritual science, where one phenomenon of life is placed by the aide of another so that one will throw light on another. If such comparisons are used it must at the same time be made very clear that only flexible thinking, thinking that does not stamp the concepts, the words, into a set shape, in really compatible with the sense of what is presented. If I want to characterize the most important thing that is happening to mankind as a whole at the present moment of world evolution (I have already pointed it out) I must compare it with the experience that an individual has (consciously, however) when he crosses the threshold, as it is called, into the supersense world. You all know from the description I have given of this individual experience in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment that the crossing of the threshold is an event of deepest significance for the human being. On this side of the threshold is the sense world for man's consciousness, and on the other, the supersense world. Truly, on that other side everything is different from things of the sense world here. And man experiences something there that is named by those who went through the same experience in the manner of former ages in the significant words, “passing through the gate of death”. Indeed, he who crosses the threshold has to learn to know death in its reality. He has to become acquainted with death in its meaning for humanity.

Now you know from the description which I have given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds that in this crossing of the threshold the entire soul being of man goes through a transformation—but only, of course, for those times in which one remains consciously in the supersense world. The constitution of soul that one has here in the sense world, that is suited to life, to work and action, in the sense world: one cannot come into the supersense world with that. Here in the sense world our soul forces are as it were melted together, so that we never have the experience in our sense life of these soul forces being separated. Anyone who did not have a certain amount of willing in his soul at the same time that he was thinking, even though in a latent form, would not be really healthy physically. We are not in a position in our sense life to separate these three soul forces one from another, so that really we never develop a pure isolated thought, or a pure isolated feeling, or a pure isolated willing. In our conceptions, feelings, actions, and will, these three soul forces are still interwoven always, mixed up with one another. But as soon as we cross the threshold into the supersense world—that is, as soon as we get our soul to the stage where we are actually surrounded by supersense beings, by supersense deeds of these beings, just as formerly we were surrounded by a world of sense things and sense happenings—then, my friends, then there takes place in our soul an absolute separation of thinking, feeling, and willing. As you hove been able to gather from the description in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, a man must have so schooled himself that he is able then to summon sufficient power to hold together with his ego these three elements of the soul life, thinking, feeling, and willing:—otherwise he would split up into three persons.

Yes, my dear friends, one meets with a significant experience of inner activity when one has crossed the threshold; this finding oneself within in the most enhanced activity of the ego, in the highest manifestation of the ego, for the purpose of holding together the separated soul forces, thinking, feeling, and willing. And that accounts for the fear that a faint- hearted man today feels: fear of actual supersense knowledge, fear before the highest kind of inner soul activity. He would like all of his activity to be of such a kind as is aroused by the outer world and has effect in the outer world. Inner activity is not yet natural to him; more and more it must be developed by him for the future. And so, because at first this development is a task, because it is not actually already inherent, man is afraid, man is cautious about entering the supersense world. Unconsciously he is afraid of himself (if I may so express it) in face of the exertion necessary there to hold the separated soul forces together.

I am picturing this inner experience of the individual in order to have some way by which to characterize for you that which is happening in this age inside the soul life—and you know that one can speak of such a thing—of mankind as a whole. That which I have just described as an individual's experience when crossing the threshold into the supersense world is naturally a fully conscious experience for him, much more so then any conscious experience of his ordinary waking day consciousness. It is a heightened consciousness in which one crosses the threshold and in which one perceives in the supersense world the threefold nature of the human soul being. Something similar to that—but now not consciously—the whole of mankind is going through in the present age as a cosmic historical experience. It is not noticed, this unconscious process that is going on in all mankind, unless one in studying consciously in spiritual science. You know our age is the fifth since the great Atlantean catastrophe which made the configuration of our earth surface as it now exists. We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean period; and in this period mankind must go through in its evolution as a whole something similar to what the crossing of the threshold into the supersense world is for an individual. Mankind as a whole, I said, in its cosmic—or we can say if we like terrestrial—evolution, is crossing a threshold on one side of which, or in other words, for the time preceding which, an entirely different kind of world conception and knowledge was necessary for mankind as a whole than is necessary on the other side, or in other words, for the time afterward.

This process going on in the unconscious of all mankind today is what one must discover through spiritual science. It shows also how necessary spiritual science is to mankind today. For the crossing of this threshold must truly not remain in the unconscious. Men must become aware of it, otherwise they will sleep right through, or at least dream right through, an event that is very important for them. And this fifth post-Atlantean period is the very period in which we should be extending consciousness. But we cannot extend our consciousness of the most vital thing that is happening to mankind in any other way then by rising out of mere sense-science into spiritual science.

If you think about this, my dear friends, you will perhaps remember something that has been said again and again in the course of spiritual scientific, lectures which have been held now for such a long time in Stuttgart.

You remember I have had to emphasize this fact again and again: that Spiritual Science, as it is meant here, is not just something as it were to satisfy an individual's subjective thirst for knowledge. Spiritual Science is something that is connected with the taking up in thought, feeling, and will, of the fundamental impulse of mankind for our time. Therefore activity in spiritual science should not be a mere satisfying of an individual's longing for the newest thing, nor a mere satisfying of his desire, for knowledge. Spiritual Science should be the fulfilling of a certain duty that one has toward mankind as a whole, in order that it shall realize what is going on precisely at this moment in the depths of its evolution.

I showed you when I spoke to you last time that certain individuals who have a degree of external cleverness developed by the scientific training of the present day, are definitely aware of a phenomenon that is present in mankind in this epoch and that corresponds to something in the depths of mankind of which they are not aware. I showed you how such individuals as for example Fritz Mauthner, say that first and foremost in man is his sense perception; and that that is the only true reality of which one can speak. He reflects this reality in its highest form by his creation in art of the beautiful and the sublime. But it does not permit him to arrive at any satisfaction. He wants to penetrate things more deeply. If he tries to penetrate into the being of things through his inner self, then—Mauthner says—he does not arrive at a real contact with the true being of the world, but only comes to dreaming—dreaming which may be pleasing because he imagines it is connected with the central forces of the world, but which nevertheless, so far as knowing is concerned, is after all just dreams, just mysticism. Mysticism then is, for these persons, the second stage of man's inner soul-striving. Then they assert that mysticism is, from their point of view, dream knowledge, they are right, because they deny a supersense knowledge. The third stage, for Fritz Mauthner, is man's struggle to attain knowledge by busying himself with natural laws, historical laws, etc.; and he describes all that as docta ignorantia, on the ground that when we think we know something through science we are not merely dreaming, as in mysticism, but sleeping—sleeping as compared with what would be a real contact with the central forces of the world. Thus persons like Fritz Mauthner think that at the most man has a waking sense perception and can ennoble it through art; that he is doomed to dream when he attempts to connect himself with true reality in religion or mysticism through his inner nature; and that he is doomed to sleep when he believes he is connecting himself with things in any way through science and wisdom.

My dear friends, speaking in an absolute sense, that is all a mistake. But speaking relatively of the special soul-condition that mankind has evolved through the 19th century into the 20th century, speaking quite specifically of this mankind and not of mankind in general, it is a truth. With the means that natural scientific knowledge has made great, by which we have come to such a shipwreck of the social older, with those means the only possible soul life is what Fritz Mauthner has described; that is, the three stages—waking, in sense perception; dreaming, in mysticism; and sleeping, in science.

Such a man as Fritz Mauthner feels the crossing of the threshold by mankind as a whole. Whoever has read his Critique of Speech in which he criticizes not only concepts but speech itself -- or the two thick volumes of his Philosophical Dictionary, or even one or two of the articles in it (it is arranged alphabetically)—that person knows the soul condition he gets into as a result of this very work of Mauthner. I suggest especially—you will perhaps only be grateful for my suggestion from one point of view—that you read the article on “Christianity” in this Dictionary of Philosophy—or the article “Res Publican”, or “Goethe's Wisdom”, or “Immortality”. Everywhere you will have the feeling: first one reads a sentence; in the second sentence what one has just read is modified; in the third the modified statement is again modified; in the fourth one gets back to the first; in the fifth the entire thing is picked up again with all the assertions and modifications included. One undergoes a twisting of one's whole intellectual, rational, and soul system, and it is frightful what one experiences after such a reading. It is a frightful inner soul torture. And if one describes the inner soul torture that a man experiences after such reading—man, that is, who has sufficient courage to admit the final outcome of the present day condition of soul (there are many who have not that courage)—then in the exposing criticism that one would make, and such as I have just made, one will not be censuring Fritz Mauthner, for his very article is a confession that he suffers from the same condition of soul himself. For he says: With human knowledge one can come to nothing else than a kind of “spirit dance” in which one does not discover oneself. He mistakes the lack of knowledge that became necessary in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century for a supposed absolute incapacity for knowledge in all mankind.

What actually is the truth? Something quite different from what Mauthner believes.

In former ages, as you know, in the clairvoyance of Atlantean times, man did not dream in mysticism but had contact through mystic knowledge with reality. Also, he did not merely sleep in wisdom. We realize from what still remains of older wisdom, Plato, for instance—that they knew things to tell mankind. In Aristotle, that is already no longer true. Mankind of former ages did not have just a docta ignorantia; it had a wisdom in which it was connected with the central forces of he world, that are at the same time the central forces of the human being. But these faculties ebbed away. They had to, in order that man might then seek within himself for those strong powers that were previously given him by spiritual beings without any effort on his part. Today we are crossing the threshold, mankind as a whole; and we must develop out of our inner self the power with which to awaken mysticism, which otherwise by its very nature sleeps within us—by our own power to call mysticism from its dreaming to an experience of the spirit; and also by our inner activity, inner force, to raise what is otherwise dead abstract science to actual experience of supersense spiritual reality. Today, my dear friends, this is in our power. We must undertake the necessary training.

And men who are are willing to accept spiritual science will, like Fritz Mauthner, be obliged to experience the tragic soul condition that has been a necessary accompaniment to the evolving of man's inner forces. Men like Mauthner, who do feel such things and yet are not willing to accept spiritual science, will indeed have to despair of all possibility of contact with the central forces of existence which are at the same time the central forces of the human being. Therefore they will have to despair of the possibility of any knowledge of life. My dear friends, if you think earnestly of what I have just said, will you not have to say to yourselves: Man is confronted today in his evolution, through the fact of his unconscious crossing of the threshold, by a mighty test. It is that indeed. For if he will not develop activity of soul, intense activity of soul, then he is condemned to sink into inactivity, passiveness, and thereby into unbelief in existence—at the very least into some degree of uncertainty—when he considers his place in the whole current of world evolution. That is approximately the soul-condition of men of whom Mauthner is a type.

There are many such men in the present day; but Mauthner had sufficient inner courage to acknowledge it in many writings, while others are in the same condition of soul and do not acknowledge it. He finally had sufficient resignation to retire to Southern Bavaria after he had spent his whole life in journalism as a profession; and there he thought out the Critique of Speech, his book of bitter doubt of human knowledge; then afterwards he wrote his Philosophical Dictionary. He has withdrawn, but he still writes all kinds of articles that truly no more than his book tend to lead to a positive, forceful position within human evolution. They always show a kind of despair of the possibility of one's really comprehending existence, because as a matter of fact one cannot comprehend existence through knowledge. He has finally accepted the consequence, he has given in and withdrawn to a profession that to him is equivalent to journalism, and in which one can be a skeptic, a pessimist.

But there are pupils of Fritz Mauthner who have not been so resigned. Let us ask, what will become definitely, what will become of these pupils who subscribe wholeheartedly to Mauthner's conception of life? They will never be able to arrive at a living comprehension of reality at any comprehension that can penetrate reality fruitfully. They are unable to adapt themselves to life when they are placed in it. Fritz Mauthner got out of it. They only comprehend the sense life, and they believe that anything that goes on outside of that is only a dream or sleep. Look at one of these pupils of Mauthner—Gustav Landauer, for instance—noble, upright, but altogether useless or the social life of the present day. He is a real pupil of Fritz Mauthner. It is not enough today merely to judge life from the surface. We are confronted with tasks that can only be master- edit we are willing to go down into the foundations of life. We may not seek thought impulses today for a new social order—as do such men as I have described—out of whet the time has already brought. No we must seek even social impulses out of the age that is dawning, out of the impulses that are just arising, the impulses of spiritual knowledge. Otherwise we will not arrive at real social impulses. Then when they are found, they can be comprehended, like all spiritual scientific knowledge by a healthy human understanding. It is in such a sense that I wanted to speak of the Threefold Commonwealth.

Today it is essential that men learn to speak in all things with deepest earnestness, first for true self knowledge, secondly for true world knowledge.

Consider Spiritual Science, as it is meant here, from the most varied points of view. Certainly the need for self knowledge and the need for world knowledge are emphasized by it, just as in abstract mysticism and in much abstract occultism. But they are spoken of in a different way. And in that way I should like to write the very heart of our time: One can never attain real self knowledge without seeking this self knowledge through world knowledge. Brooding within oneself does not bring self knowledge. World knowledge must first discipline one so that one can then come to self knowledge. Also, one cannot attain world knowledge without making the way through one's self. World knowledge is not possible without self knowledge. The two things seem to contradict each other, perhaps, but this contradiction is living and fruitful. No world knowledge without self knowledge, no self knowledge without world knowledge. It is like the swinging of a pendulum back and forth. Man must seek continually in his life the swing of the pendulum from self experience to world experience, from world experience to self experience. That will give the strength of soul, that inner activity of soul, which becomes today, and in the future will become, ever more and more necessary to all mankind. Because it is so very easy today for men to brood within themselves, out of a certain egoism that is natural in this age of the development of the consciousness-soul; for that reason they have fallen in love with abstractions. They themselves cannot really judge correctly how strong their love is, in this age, for mere abstractions. For that reason it is all-important—in order to cross the threshold which I have described in the right way—that we arouse ourselves from a mere abstraction-necessity, a mere thought-necessity, to fact. From mere abstract knowledge to an experiencing of fact. To a thinking within ourselves that is not mere thoughts but that sinks us into the things, that thinks with the things and events of the world. Only then can we wake to the present.

I will give you an example of what I mean. But first I would say that, you should not interpret what I am going to say as if, when I have to characterize this or that world conception, I wanted also to take a stand against them. I only want to characterize, not criticize. What one calls “the natural scientific world conception”, or thinking orientated in the direction of natural science, has evolved in a way that I have characterized for you from most varied points of view. It has finally reached such an outlook as Mauthner's; and it has expressed itself in other variations. I wonder whether you remember a man whom I mentioned here once years ago in another connection: the man who wanted to describe the difficulty of self knowledge in one of his books called An Analysis of Experience. He wants to describe the external difficulty of self knowledge, and for that purpose gives two instances of his having been thoroughly illusioned with respect to knowledge of his own external self. Once, he says, he was walking up the street and suddenly someone was approaching him (the writer was a professor), and he thought to himself, “What a strange looking school master that is coming toward me! The person was very unattractive to him, he says. Then he noticed what actually had occurred: he cam in front of a show window and found he was facing himself in the glass. On another occasion he got into an onmibus. Opposite the door by which he entered was a mirror. He was extremely tired. He sw the image and said to himself:“What a funny looking tramp that is coming in the opposite door!” It took him a long time to realize that it was himself. There is the tale, and you will be able to judge that after all here is a man to be taken seriously: Ernst Mach, who from a natural researcher became a philosopher. He has various pupils. His world conception is not unlike Mauthner's except that he came less to uncertainty, less to skepticism; he simply believes in the play-quality of thought. The ego itself is merely a myth to him, as also to Mauthner, only Mach is content. One must study Ernst Mach, and then become acquainted with his life and his whole personality. I remember when I saw him for the first time, in the Vienna Academy of Science, where he was giving a special lecture on the Economy of Thinking, in the course of which he explained all thinking as merely an arrangement according to the principle of the smallest amount of force. I was greatly enraged at the time by this presentation of the thought process. Afterwards he elaborated the theory and wrote his books, and they had a great influence over many people. One who knows his life knows that he was undoubtedly a very excellent citizen, obedient to the city he served throughout his teaching career, and in his teachings a typical example of the thinking that has evolved in recent times.

I might name another similar thinker. Mach himself did not teach in Zurich, but a pupil of his, Adler—the same Adler who shot the Austrian minister Stürgkle. But there was even a much more abstract thinker in Zurich, and his world conception was very similar to the philosophy of Mach—Richard Avenarius. I shall not recommend that you read his books; You would throw them away after the second page. They are written in unintelligible language. And the most unintelligible thing for you would be, how it happens that so very many people have wormed their way into Avenarius's books and have formed a world conception out of his philosophy.

You see, these are extreme cases to show you the difference between a logic of mere abstract thoughts and a logic of fact. Avenarius was also in his life a good middle-class citizen, an excellent citizen of the state in the best sense of the word. But such people as Ernst Mach, his pupil Adler, in whom it was even more apparent, and Avenarius—let us take just Mach and Avenarius—they feel nothing of that logic of fact within which they stand through their on actions. For, look you, what became of the world-conception of this Ernst Mach, solid Bourgeois teacher? What became of it? It became the political philosophy of the Bolshevists; it is the world-conception that lies at the bottom of Bolshevism. Only it went through other human temperaments, through other human soul conditions. That is the actual consequence! The consequence according to fact-logic, of what Ernst Mach and Avenarius taught. It was not just by external chance that some gifted young Russians studied with Avenarius and then with Adler in Zurich; and that then this philosophy happened to be carried over into Russia. No, there is an inner spiritual connection there. It can only be grasped by one who does not think about things, but who thinks in things; he then knows that no system of abstract logical consequences leads from Avenarius and Mach to Lenin and Trotsky, but only a very living logic leads from one to the other. Those are the things upon which so much depends today. They are only comprehensible to one who has sufficient earnestness to study fro the inside how things become, how things metamorphose. We have come to a time when inner life is complicated: when anyone can believe, just as Mach and Avenarius did, that he is a law-abiding man who lives only “on the heights in spiritual serenity”, and does not for a moment suspect that his teachings are capable of becoming political dynamite when they are passed on to other minds.

The great call to men today is to develop in themselves a sense for the deeper connections of life. Without that sense we can go no further. If we want to arrive at fruitful social, ideas then we must not search, as Mach and Avenarius did, for the dead ruins of old self-annihilated world-conceptions. We must turn to the new structure, the world-conception that can only be found in Spiritual Science and that alone understands how to ask: That kind of social order must come, since from now on man, as he passes through the world, will be ever more and more threefolded in his inner nature—for that is how he is crossing the threshold. The external social order must also be threefold. Then outer and inner fact will correspond. This threefolding, if one will really examine it earnestly through Spiritual Science, is not something invented; it is something, that has been learnt from listening to the actual inner metamorphosis of mankind as it moves from the present into the future.

Among all the necessities confronting the man of the present day, is this one: that he develop the willingness to concern himself with the spiritual world; that he develop first of all the willingness so to observe himself—that he is able to see the spiritual man that is underneath. The materialism of natural science has not been worthless. It has been significant and useful even in the form of Haeckelism. That is all a test that must be undergone. It classes man with the animals, because with respect to practically everything that it considers important, man appears to be nothing more than a highly developed animal. However, as soon as we begin to consider man in his relation to the world with respect to self knowledge, then at once the thing is different. Then facts which before were of no importance become important, and vice versa. From a certain perspective a new light streams upon the whole being of man. We know it is a fact (and the exceptions only teach more bout the fact) that the animal walks about the earth with his backbone parallel to the earth's surface. Man makes himself erect in the very first period of his life; he places his body, or his backbone, at right angles with the earth's surface, and thereby forms a cross with the earth's surface and also a cross with the position of the animal's backbone. That fact expresses clearly man's relation to the outside world. It is different from the animal's relation. Of course you can read in Haeckel: Man has just as many bones and muscles as the higher animals. But there are other things to he compared which in an intuitive, or, better, an imaginative grasp of various relations between them, demonstrate the common form of the cosmos and the earth; and this manner of comprehension of the human form is more important than counting bones and muscles, more important than what comparative morphology has to say about man.

I could say a great deal in this connection that would show you,that where the old world conception which has ripened such thought-habits in man as have plunged him into his present misfortune—that where this thinking and these thought-habits end, now a new world conception must begin which, for instance, will comprehend the human form. Then it will give a spiritual view of the world that will fructify the independent spiritual member of the social organism. And at a still higher stage one will have a living knowledge of that existence which is always around us, the “open secret”, as Goethe called it. From there one will rise to an “awakening” such as I have described in my books, Human Riddles and Soul Riddles; one will rise beyond mere comprehension of the relation of the human form to the cosmos to the stage that is actual participation in the great rhythmic swing of the cosmos.

You know that man consists of these three members: nerve-sense system, rhythmic system, and metabolic system. He stands within his nerve-system in such a way as to be able to comprehend the relation of his form to the cosmos. With respect to his feelings—his rhythmics or breathings or breast-system—he stands with this rhythm within the rhythm of the whole world. We can only just touch upon this rhythm now from one angle—we could naturally do much more, but we have mentioned it often in the course of these years from the most varied points of view. I will only repeat what I have often said.

Look at our breathing. Normally, we take 18,breathe a minute. That makes about 25,920 breaths a day. So that in a day we breathe in and out alternately 25,920 times. That is the average number of breaths that a man takes. Now you know that the Old Testament puts the age of a patriarch at 70 years. Naturally one can grow older or die younger, but that is the average age of man. How many days of life is that? An average of 25,920 days. Now if you count that huge breath that we take when we enter in the morning with our ego and astral body into our etheric and physical bodies, so that in the morning we breathe in our spiritual psychic being, and in the evening we breathe it out again—if we count that as a a breath that is drawn every day, then our life-day which consists on the average of 71 years, draws 25,920 breathe. In other words, that great spirit that breathes when we are born and when we die, breathes in his life-day which includes our whole human life, the same number of inhalations and exhalations as we do in our day of 24 hours. So we are related with our human breath to that breathing of the the product of his breath in our waking and sleeping life. And the sun—which you can at least suspect to have some relation to our life—men observe how its rising moves back in the Zodiac a certain number of degrees every year, in such a way that if spring comes at a certain place in a certain constellation one year, the next year it shifts back a few degrees. So the rising of the sun circles around the whole ellipse in what is called a Platonic world-year, which consists of 25,920 years. A life-day for and death consists of 25,920 life-years. A life-day for us consists of 25,920 breaths; our life between birth and death consists of 25, 920 life-days; a great sun-year consists of 25,920 of our life-years. Thus we are brought to what is breathed in the whole sun-earth-process through a Platonic world-year. There you see into a world rhythm of which is a part within the cosmos.

Without at least the willingness to gain an active knowledge of man's relation to the cosmos you can attain no knowledge of man. You can comprehend nothing more through the natural science of today—however strangely this sounds—than man's life up to birth. After man is born something enters into his lie that natural science can no longer comprehend. Therefore natural science has to stay dallying in the method it especially loves, embryology. That is especially apparent today in the fact that the entire teaching of evolution is only an elaboration of embryology. All the rest is phantasy. As soon as man begins to live on earth the necessity immediately arises of contemplating him in imaginative and inspired knowledge. For that is the only means by which one can perceive what man experiences at death, and what death is. At the highest stage of knowledge, true Intuition, which you find described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, one attains to that insight into being which is wonderfully indicated in the German language, for one says when a man dies—with a certain fitness—he verwest. (perishes) If today one could still feel something in words, one would truly feel that verwesen means ins Wesen übergehen, ins Wesen hineingehen, mit dem Wesen eine werden. (To go over into being, to go into being, to become one with being) When the language speaks of verwesen it truly is not talking of vergehen (to pass away) [Translator's Note: Although in English one says “pass away”, the German word vergehen which means that, is apparently never used in connection with death; verwesen is the word in common use.] And that mysterious process the deep knowledge of which will create a natural science of the future, the process that is only completed when the human body apparently perishes or is reduced to ashes, is not a destructing; it is a significant constructive part of the event.

Through this kind of consideration I should like to arouse a feeling for the inner connection that lies between what is the dying world-conception and scientific tendency of the old time, and the Spiritual Science that is still in the seed today, really just emerging, in the sense of what it will be in the future. But now the two things are roughly pushed together, and that is the deep tragedy of modern life which we must overcome by inner human power. What I call—one may perhaps be offended by it—the dying bourgeois conception of the world and of life, is at an end; it has brought about its on ruin. What is emerging today as proletarian longing—although still very far from what it will be—has other human foundations. While the bourgeois world-conception is dying in the ether body, what is evolving out of the proletarian world is springing to in the astral body. An extraordinarily significant symbol of the dying world-conception was the egoism of Max Stirner. You will find it described in my book Riddles of Philosophy. We live in an age when we must always try not to judge the thing that is just arising by its outside. However many mistakes it may be making here and there, we must be able to see that the social movement is evolving today among the proletariat out of man's spiritual outlook as the seed of the future. We must be able to see that mankind is passing over a threshold and has to enter into supersense knowledge. And the key that reveals this tendency to one who has supersense—spiritual—knowledge, is precisely the fact that the proletarian world is behaving itself very materialistically indeed, in this or that leader, this or that political boss, fighting against that which it will be someday. It fights against it. It has accepted the bourgeois way of thinking as a final bequest; but it is called in human evolution to cross the threshold consciously, to work its way out of materialistic delusion to real knowledge of the supersensible.

These things that we are considering must be studied by observing their spiritual foundations, so that they do not merely become abstract knowledge but, become an inner impulse for our will. Then we will be able to establish our position within this present social order at the right time and in the right way, with full consciousness.

Considering the seriousness of the times, it seems to me that if I were to speak about Pentecost today in the way it is ordinarily spoken of, it would be unchristian—although such unchristian performances are quite the accepted thing. All who have been speaking here for the renewal of our education and school life, have spoken in the real spirit of Pentecost—endorsing as they have, so earnestly, our movement for the threefolding of the social organism. For in the liberation of the spiritual life, in the emancipation of the schools, lies the truest spirit of Pentecost for our present day—that Pentecost spirit which has entirely disappeared from the ordinary so-called religious and confessional streams of this age.

It is our sincere hope that an emancipation of the spiritual life, such as we are striving to achieve, will bring about its renewal—a thing of which mankind is so sorely in need. But one will only be able to comprehend what must be done to our schools and to our education in order to bring about a renewal of the spirit, a pouring out of the true Pentecost spirit, if one realizes how deeply the anti-Pentecost spirit has trickled into public life, into men's so-called spiritual intercourse with one another.

If one speaks in these times as one must on an anthroposophical basis, then one even—I underline it three times—even hears this reproof: that the word “German” and the word “Christian” or “Christ” are never mentioned in the course of one's remarks.

My dear friends, if we cannot find within ourselves the answer to such foolish chatter we have not yet get to the heart of the anthroposophical world-conception! It is the direct result of our distorted pedagogy; it illustrates what absurdities have trickled into our souls through our education. We must above all things gain a knowledge of the connection between the perverted chatter of our age and our perverted educational life; this knowledge must pour down in manifold fiery tongues upon the heads of our contemporaries.

A great deal is being said in our time about the unimportance of the word, and that “in the beginning was the deed”. My dear friends, an age like ours will even find a false use for the Gospel; the word has become mere chattered phrase and the deed, thoughtless brutality. An age like ours turns away from the Word with reason, because in the word that it knows it can only find phrase—and the deed that it knows is only thoughtless brutality.

There is a deep connection between our educational life and this fact which I have mentioned. We bear within us two sources of perverted humanity: a perverted Hellenic and a perverted Romanism. We do not understand Hellenism as it related to its own time and place. We can, hardly comprehend why the noble Socrates and Plato tried with such courage to cure the Greeks of their unconquerable love of illusion. The Greeks always wanted to escape from the seriousness of life, and sought their satisfaction in illusions. Socrates and Plato, the Greek lawgivers, had to point with great severity to the reality of the spirit, to save the Greeks from falling more and more into the failing of their race, that of withdrawing comfortably by means of illusions from the seriousness of life. The Greeks allowed “the loafer Socrates” to go on talking about the seriousness of life as long as he seemed harmless. But as soon an they realized what was really contained in his words they gave him hemlock to drink.

Socrates spirit of earnestness is not the spirit of this age. We inherit rather that spirit of Hellenism that poisoned Socrates; and we revel in it. We even consent to the poisoning of the pearl of world-literature, the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, when we allow the word “Word”—of which the Old Testament said that when man lets it become one of his illusions heaven and earth will fall—we allow it to be taken literally. St. John's Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word”. The man of today is content to take the word “Word” as a mere phrase. But something stands written there that is destined to scatter all his illusions which he drags into the phrase. The heaven end earth of our illusions would collapse if we were earnestly willing to understand the “Logos” that shines forth from this sentence, and that should be experienced in it.

Thus our culture has tried to ameliorate the severities of life either by mystic comfort or by brutal action. That is what we must see today, what we must realize above all things. Today we must drive out of men's souls from the first moment of education up through the highest schools, what Socrates and Plato sought to expel from Hellenism when they said to the Greeks: “Beware of illusions; the spirit alone has reality! There is living reality in ideas, which is not what you, with your elusive phrases, want to see in thee?”

We will get no further if we keep chattering about ethics and religion! For the Gospel is itself a fact in the evolution of the world. It has become today mere babble; and therefore it is accompanied by thoughtless, brutal action. We must fill our souls with what can really inspirit us when we speak. We must find a way to make the heart speak behind the lips. We must find a way to penetrate our words with our entire being; otherwise the word becomes a seducer, tempting us with illusion, alluring us from the earnestness of reality. We must put away forever the spirit which lures us to go church in order to be lifted there out of the earnestness of life, and to hear this gratifying phrase trickled out to us: that the Lord God will make it all right, He will deliver us from our evils. We must look within ourselves, within our own souls, for forces which are divine forces, which have been implanted in us during the evolution of the world in order that we shall use them, in order that we shall he able to receive God into our individual souls. We should not be listening to all this preaching about an external God, which allows our souls to lie in indolent repose on Philistine sofas, of which we are so fond when it is a question of spiritual life. Our education must find away out of the “Greek Phrase”, as one may call it today. It must also find a way out beyond the “Roman phrase”.

The “spirit of law” which our age still worships today was right for the Romans. For what was this spirit of law? A deep meaning lies hidden in the legend of the founding of Rome. Brutes were held together in order to combat the worst animal-human instincts. That is what the Roman laws were for, to herd wild animals together. But we should realize that we have become men, and we should not worship that spirit of law which arose from a legitimate Roman instinct to tame brutish human passions. The Roman spirit that still prevails in us today as our “spirit of right” is universally of such a character as to intend that wild human passions shall not rule in freedom, but shall be held in full restraint.

Christian! the complaint is that that word is not used in the lectures we are giving. But we continually forget a very Christian saying of Paul that reads as follows: “Sin came through law, not law through sin. “If there were no law, sin would be dead”. Of course that may be worth nothing for our time, because men have become unchristian. But it is a saying of which one must learn the dear significance. This is the true Christian spirit: to take out of the State—which men regard today as All-containing, All-embracing, and which is our inheritance from Rome—to take out of it the spiritual life and the economic life, and to make them free. But men do not want the Christian spirit, and therefore they want to make themselves feel comfortable by using “Christ” and “Christian” as often as possible as phrases.

Likewise they want to hear the word “German” as a mere phrase as often as possible. A true German spirit prevails in Goethe. The recent un-German spirit of middle Europe has in its enlightened representative, the Berlin Academy of Science, coined a phrase which I have mentioned here before: the glory of these men, the spiritual leaders of today, consists in this, they regard themselves as “the scientific bodyguard of the Hohenzollerns”! The man who coined that phrase has also given a lecture, in the scientific phraseology of the present day, entitled “Goethe and no End”, in which he endeavored to trample to the ground Goethe's whole natural-scientific spirit. He took great pleasure in saying: “Goethe's Faust character might better be inventing an air pump to keep Gretchen upright, than all the silly things he does in that book”. That is in the spirit of the time—trampling on the true German spirit which never takes the word “German” in vain—just as the “modern” Christian spirit (and that means unchristian spirit) has been always to require the words “Christ” and “Christian”, and to disregard this other saying; “Thou shalt not speak the word God is vain”. One should have a feeling for what is Christian, and not be constantly wanting to have one's ears filled with chatter about Christianity.

That is “the spirit of Whitsuntide” today. One can hardly say that if it were not cherished and cultivated it would find much fruitful ground upon which to fall. One has plenty of opportunity to see how this Whitsuntide spirit is everywhere misunderstood. The following fact, for instance, that has actually come to light, in a remarkable illustration of the spirit of our time (if I may descend for a moment to an everyday matter): Our Union for the Threefolding of the social organism started forth to make seed-words grow into deeds, and in order to be understood snatched up the words of a certain person for quotation. Then this person talked also on his side, about socialization, using words which could very well be used if socialization was being talked about, and which at the same time could very well be quoted by our Union for the Threefolding of the social organism, because as words, if they were the thought-seeds of actions, then would actually mean what we want to say. But then, what happened? From the side from which these words originally came, the course of action which should naturally follow these words was violently attacked. What, does this indicate, was under the surface of the man's thought? It was this: Woe to you if you regard our words as anything else but chatter and phrase! The moment you take our words seriously, we are your enemies! That is the outcome of on educational system that has grown up in this age under the wing of the State. That on the one side. On the other hand is this pleasing denunciation: We are in complete agreement with what Steiner says, his whole ides for fighting existing capitalism; we agree with his Threefold Commonwealth; but we are fighting him because we will not be preached to by a spirit-seer!

It does not seem unreasonable to ask ourselves: What can be attempted in an age that wants nothing else but phrases or thoughtless brutal action, that refuses everything else, but that nevertheless bears within it the seed out of which real men can be developed? People do not want to have to think; they prefer thoughtless class war. They utter beautiful phrases and do not want their thoughts to become deeds. And if someone takes their phrases seriously he is violently attacked.

We must ask ourselves noel, seriously: ! Have men who are born in the midst of such a spirit the right to pour out phrases—oily phrases—about the Pentecost wonder? My dear friends, the slime that is poured out today about the Pentecost wonder comes from the dame glands as the poison with which some want to choke everything today that comes from the spirit, poison by which they encourage in themselves on the one hand unreal phrase, and on the other hand thoughtless, brutal action. The unreel phrase is the religious chatter of the world; the brutal unspiritual act is militarism, the fundamental evil of our time. Until one realizes how thoroughly these two things are ingrained in our perverted educational life, one cannot think fruitfully about what ought to be done. Everything else is simply a quack remedy.

What must be done, my friends, must be done out or reality. For reality carries the spirit within it; whereas a denial of the spirit makes everything an absurdity. And if in our time anyone tries to indicate spiritual realities, he is branded a “visionary”, and “spirit-seer”. It is because a feeling for reality is universally lacking.

The comparison of the social organism with the human or any other organism, has also become a phrase, in our time, and avery cheap one at that. If one wants to use a comparison without resorting to phrases, one must present the fundamental knowledge for it as it is given in my book Riddles of the Soul. What sense is there today in speaking of the threefold social organism until its spiritual foundation, the threefold nature of the human organism, consisting of nerve-sense faculties, rhythmic faculties, and metabolic faculties, is presented to men as real natural-scientific knowledge? But men are so indolent that they will not allow the conceptions they have acquired from their perverted school-training of the present day to be corrected by that which originates in true reality.

Our official science, that is, the science that is accepted everywhere as authoritative, cherishes another hoary conception. Even modern science kneels in idolatrous worship before everything that is thrust forward as highest culture. To what else, then, should it have recourse when it wants to explain something especially mysterious, than to something to which just at this time kneels the lowest? Thus, the human nervous system has become for science a collection of “telegraphic lines”; it sees the whole nervous activity of men as a remarkably complicated telegraph system. The eye perceives; the skin perceives. Then what has been perceived on the outside is carried to the telegraph station called “the brain”. And sitting in the brain is some being or other—of course modern science would not have anything to do with a spiritual being—anyway, through some kind or being that has become a phrase because one acknowledges no reality there, the perception announced by the sensory nerves is transformed through the motor nerves into movements of will. And this distinction between sensory and motor nerves is stuffed into our young people, and upon it the whole conception of man is built.

For years I have been fighting this absurd distinction between sensory and motor nerves, first of all because the distinction is nonsense. For, the so-called motor nerves exist for no other reason than that for which the sensory nerves exist. A sensory nerve, a sense-nerve, is the means by which we are to perceive what is going on in our sense-organization. And a so-called motor nerve is not a “motor” nerve but is also a sensory nerve; it only exists so that I shall perceive my own movements, which originate in something quite other than the motor nerves. Motor nerves are inner sensory nerves for the perception of my own will-impulse. The sensory nerves exist in order that I may perceive the external things that are happening to my sense apparatus. And in order that I may not be merely an unconscious being walking, hitting, grasping, without myself knowing anything about it, the so-called motor nerves exist thus not for the exertion of will, but for the perception of what my will is doing. The whole idea of a distinction has been invented by modern science out of the distorted intellectual knowledge of our time, and it is truly scientific nonsense. That is one reason why I have been fighting it for years.

But there is another reason why this nonsense must be uprooted, this superstition about motor and sensory nerves, between which there is no other difference than that one is sensitive to what is outside the body and the other to what is inside the body. This is the other reason.

No one in any kind of social science can acquire a correct understanding of man in his relation to work if he builds up concepts on this false differentiation between sensory and motor nerves. For one will get most curious notions of what human work is, of what happens in man then he works, when he brings his muscles into movement, if one does not know that the man's bringing his muscles into movement does not depend upon his so-called motor nerves but upon the immediate connection of his soul with the outer world. I can do no more then just indicate this fact to you, because today men do not yet have the slightest understanding for it. Education has not yet produced even a primitive capacity for the understanding of such things because it still works on the basis of this mad distinction between sensory and motor nerves. When I confront a machine I must confront it as a whole man; I must set up a relation above all things between my muscles and this machine. This relation is all that a man's work really depends upon. It is this relation that one must understand if one wants to know the social significance of work,—this very special relation of men to work. What is our concept of work today?

The process that goes on in man when he is, as we say, “working” is no different, whether he is exerting himself at a machine, or chopping wood, or engaging in sport for pleasure. He can wear himself out just as thoroughly, he can consume just as much working-power, in some sport that is a social superfluity as in chopping wood which is social necessity. And the illusion of a difference between sensory and motor nerves is the origin psychologically of man's conception of work today—while in reality one can only gain a true conception of work if one considers, not how a man exerts himself in work, but in what sort of relation to his social environment he is placed by his work. I believe you do not really comprehend that, because the concepts one might have today of these things are so distorted by our education that it will be a long time before one can find any transition from the concept of work that is socially absurd and from the concept of sensory and motor nerves that is scientifically absurd. It is in these very things that we must look for the reason why our thinking in so impractical. How can humanity think practically about practical things when it is a victim of this absurd concept: that we have a telegraphic apparatus strung up in us by which wires go to someplace or other in the brain and are then switched on to other wires—sensory and motor nerves! It is from this unscientific science of ours, which arises from a distorted school system, and to which people are intrigued into pinning their faith—it is from this that the impossibility arises of thinking socially.

That is what we should recognize today as the Pentecost spirit. It would be wiser to pour that out in single streams on the men of the present day, than to use the kind of quack ointment that it is thought today will better this thing or that. When one says today that mankind must learn anew and think anew, people believe at most that one is employing that same phrase that they themselves employ—and that is easy to understand because people at once translate what one says into phrases and utopias. But does it not make a difference whether some popular orator says “Mankind must learn new lessons”, or whether someone says it who knows that through the habit of artificial thinking mankind has created such depths of false thoughts that they even reach down into the structure of the human nervous system, so that today men have a deeply rooted superstition about sensory and motor nerves because their authorities impose it upon them. It must be made clear to the world that one is speaking from a basis of reality—and saying very different things about this reality—when one talks on the ground of the anthroposophical movement about “thinking anew” and “learning anew”; it should be the task of the Anthroposophical Society to make that clear. For today the phrase has won such power that as far as the words themselves are concerned anyone who is unable to distinguish between reality and phrase can refer you, for instance, to the editorial of today's Stuttgart Daily and say: Look there, there is also preaching about “learning anew”. But it is not a question of comparing words, for then we fall into word-idolatry; today we must see what the reality is, and protect ourselves fro the danger of falling into phrase idolatry. How many times have I regretfully had to disagree when such phrases as this have been uttered: Look there, someone has again spoken from the pulpit “quite theosophically”—as people say. These things are so bad because they show how little capacity exists today for differentiating between a knowledge of reality and a smug use of phrases. With the Pentecost festival this admonition should pour down upon human souls: “Away from you phrases back to reality!” We talk today in the field of science, the field of art, the field of religion—in fact, we talk everywhere—in phrases which stick in the throat and do not include the whole man; just as man's belief today is that his sense impressions stay somewhere up in his brain and do not also register his motor activities. Everything is connected in the most intimate way, and until there is a change in those thought habits which official science has created in our time, which scientific popery has imposed upon us, there will be o real Pentecostal renewal—for all other renewal is only on the surface and does not pour forth, as it must, from real inner depths. If our school life and education are really to experience a renewal we must become awake to such things as have been discussed here, and protect mankind from the diseases which so easily can arise in it today, because of its inheritance from Romanism.

The love of illusion that is so widespread today must be fought against. The man of today feels comfortable when he can delude himself about reality, when he can say to himself: Not Christ in me, Who arouses my strength, Who liberates powerful forces within me—not that do I profess; but the Christ Who is external to me, and Who mercifully frees me from my sins without my having to do anything about it out of my own earnestness or my own powers!

My dear friends, again and again in numerous letter I have had this Christ-Jesus creed held up to me, in contract to what Anthroposophy must do and wants to do. And again and again I have been confronted by the request to “popularize” in trivial phrases, “so that people can understand it”, that which today must be stamped with severe accuracy out of the reality of the spirit because the time demands it. But the moment anthroposophical truths were cut up into trivial phrases they would become just phrases, such as all the phrases that are so cheap in the present day; they would be brought down either to trivialities of the street or to the Philistinism of modern science. Again and again I have found the courage not to do either—either to reduce anthroposophical teaching to the trivial phrases of the street (which is called “popularizing”) or to talk so that the scientific people would understand me. I have received these two admonitions many times. My dear friends, I should then have to talk so that I would find an echo in the scientific senselessness of the present day. It would be especially agreeable to me when people behave as a professor in Tübingen did recently out of the scientific conviction of the present time. It seems to me, truth reigns in external events, for that affair is the best proof of how necessary it is for the spiritual life to be completely transformed. Especially, if one wants to find a transition to the true Pentecost spirit, from babbling words to seed-bearing words, then one must earnestly again and again examine one's old habitual concepts in order to see what it is that one does not want to make new concepts for—what it is that can be chattered about perhaps while still clinging to one's old concepts, but not comprehended by them.

Apropos of' the value or words today, there is no great sense in pointing out that in certain circles the proletariat has sufficient goodwill to understand the Threefold Commonwealth ideas even better then the middle-class understands them. If the middle class would only have the same “goodwill” is what many would like to say today. The proletariat laughs at this urging the middle-class to have “goodwill”—and he is justified in laughing. He is better prepared to understand than a man of the middle-class. But it is on quite a different basis that he is prepared to understand these things, and he laughs when when anyone says one appeal to the goodwill of the middle-class in order to set understanding; he laughs especially when one says one could expect a result from this appeal. For he knows quite well that his better understanding comes from something quite different: that in the morning if he does not work he finds himself in the street: he is bound up with the social order, I might say, at points only—not throughout a straight line as is the middle-class citizen of today: he understands out of his humanness because the present social order has brought it about that he has other than human interests, for he is nothing else the morning he is thrown out on the street, but just a man. That is what his better understanding springs from.

As to the middle-class citizen, especially the state-official: the state takes him in hand as soon as possible—not too early, because then it is still considered indelicate, and so the state leaves him to mothers and wet-nurses. But as soon as he gets beyond this first indelicate period he is taken at once into the care of the state and trained, prepared—not to be a man, but to be a state-official. Then the strings are tied, so that he is connected with the social order not at points, like the proletarian, but by a long line; through strings on all his interests, he is fastened up to the social order that exists through the state and that is supported by the state. He is trained in all his behavior to be the correct expression of the social order. Then he is fed, and he is satisfied. He is not only fed, but he is so taken care of that he does not have to take care of himself. And then, when he is no longer able to work, the state sees that he gets a pension so that without having to do anything about himself he is properly supported by the Powers that trained him in the first place to be their loyal expression. This lasts until death. Then he is still taken care of, this time by a religion which gets its salvation not from the inner forces of the soul, but from a mercy that comes in from the outside; this religion sees to it that his soul is “pensioned” after death. That is the precise content of state wisdom and religious wisdom. No wonder that a man of the middle-class, citizen of both state and heaven, hangs on to that with which he is bound up so thoroughly.

There is the contrast: personal interest on the one side, but then also personal interest on the nearest corner of the other side. It is in opposition to the personal interest on the other side that that a number of men attain today that which mankind must attain in this age of the consciousness soul, and of which I have often spoken: establishing oneself as an individual human being. The proletarian has only an opportunity of doing that, of establishing the fact that he is first of all an individual, when he has not been drawn into a contract with all the others. The more he is drawn in, the worse it is for him.For here on this side are men who similarly are set up in their positions by the proletarist: they are the the men who have any kind of official position in the labor unions. Even if their positions are called by other names, they succumb easily to the same grand manners as the middle-class citizens, and they fight whatever arises as a possible hindrance to these airs. And so they gradually acquire the habits of the middle-class.

One talks today in the proletarian world of labor unions. In England about a fifth of the whole laboring population is economically organized. That is relatively many. Thus the present English laboring class, in the modern spirit of organizing, has grown quite neatly into the middle-class way of thinking. In Germany only an eighth are organized, the others are unorganized workers. And it is the unorganized workers today who stand on the ground of personality; they are the real driving powers, it is they who have preserved the consciousness of what it means to remain just a man, without the pensions—without even, the pension which I have rationed for one's later spiritual life. These men who stand in the external economic sphere upon their own individuality are, I might say, the psychic channel for that which must arise today as an historical necessity, for that which makes the proletarian demand of today at the same time a world-historical demand.

The modern economic order has harnessed the proletariat to factories and capitalism, where it is easier for them to understand what the demand of the time is, than for the middle-class man who hangs on with all his strings to his maintenance and his pension, and who does not want to think. If he were to think, if he were to analyze the age correctly, it would not be possible to speak as a Tübingen professor did recently, who brought up this argument during the discussion after one of my lectures: It has just been said that the proletarian's “existence worthy of a man” is undermined because the proletarian is paid wages for his work; is not Caruso paid wages when he sings, and at the end of the evening is given 30 or 40 thousand marks for his work? Or—the selfless gentleman continued—do I not also receive wages?—I feel none of this “unworthy of a man” business when I pocket my salary! Nor does Caruso feel it when he collects his 30 or 40 thousand marks… That is the gist of what he said. And he went on to say: the only difference is this, that in one case the wages are more, in the other, lees, but that is of no importance—in reality it is all the same!

My dear friends, that is the spirit which blossoms out of the educational life of today! It is the same spirit that says: We are becoming a poor nation , we will not be able to pay for schools and educations, the state will have to step in and pay for them. Now, to one who thinks so shortsightedly, one will have to reply: But what does the state do when everybody is poor, and it must suddenly become the Croesus who will pay the debts that all of, us cannot pay? First, the state takes away in the form of taxes whatever everybody has: it seems to me it can hardly manufacture as a Croesus what the people themselves do not have. That is what these classes of people have to learn. It is also what those persons must learn to understand who are supported by the state out of the pockets of those who stand economically on the basis of their human individuality. As long as they have not learnt to understand it through the necessity of life, it is impossible to put it into their minds. And so it seems to me, a great number of people today want to conjure up an age in which one can also be thrown on the street if one is not willing to bring about another social order through an impulse of thought. It could very easily happen that the state pensions of which I have spoken could no longer be paid—in which event, I believe, the people would not so much, either, of those other spiritual pensions that are paid today to the soul after death by the religious community that has become so dependent upon the material powers.

But now when something arises that is not willing to be mere phrase, but insists upon being seed-thoughts for action, people cannot accept it as anything other than phrase. They cannot perceive that a real concept of work depends upon actual knowledge of life, even of single details such as the scientific absurdity existing in the distinction between motor and sensory nerves.

It is necessary today that at least a few men see into these depths. Today it is absolutely necessary that individuals should not let themselves be fooled into saying: We will socialize the outer economic life, but we will not touch the schools, especially the high schools and colleges. They must remain as they are. That is the very worst thing that could happen, for the state of affairs that has prevailed until now will, if it remains as it is, will only become worse. Socialize economic life, and leave the spiritual life as it is, and in a short time out of your apparent socialization you will have a much greater tyranny and much worse conditions of life than ever before. Today of course the economic pressure which exists is the cause of frightful eruptions in the social organism. Is this now to be succeeded by place-hunting, by the worst kind of bureaucracy? Do men who have now (although a little late) finally learnt that they cannot depend upon “throne and alter”, actually believe that it would be any safer to depend in the same way upon the state treasury and state budget? Capitalism has known how to bring the altar around gradually to a respect for power that really no longer exists but that lives on in phrase, into corporation idolatry and corporation place-hunting.

What mankind needs for a renewal of the spirit is the courage to realize that the spiritual life of humanity has become today religious chatter on the one hand , and on the other , thoughtless, brutal action, militarism. The typical man of this modern capitalistic age feels most himself when he is engaged in cutting his coupons, averting his eyes while he does it from what really takes place through that action. On the one hand the gospel made into chatter about love of neighbor and brotherliness, and he sits there comfortably with his scissors, cutting it all to pieces: he does not need to see the reality of what he is doing, because on the other hand he knows that he does not have to protect his business himself: the state does that by manufacturing swords. We have experienced this covenant between business life and state life in modern times: it is precisely what brought the world catastrophe upon us. This “state” of which men have been so proud: what has it been else then the great Protector of economic life as it is carried on under capitalism? My dear friends, one would like to hope that the patriots of the past, whose patriotism in their sense one would not question, ( for they were “good” patriots, they coined the word from a patriotic phrase, and it was very disastrous in the age just past to point out that this patriotic phrase had a very real foundation, that the state reverenced by patriots was after all just a protector of banknotes?)—one would like to hope that these patriots do not suddenly “unpatriotize” themselves and now that their gold is probably bettor protected by the Entente powers, speedily trim their patriotism! I will not say anything in particular about such a possibility, but I should like to draw your attention to the ease with which the patriotic phrase can be transformed into its opposite. There are plenty of examples about us.

These are the things that must be said today, while celebrating Whitsuntide, in regard to the necessity of renewing school and educational life. For the unctuous talk that has been given to mankind should he poured out no longer. Men must accustom themselves to words that point to the realities of the present day. Then it will be possible for the real Pentecost spirit to descend among us, for little tongues of fire to reach into all that arises in the future out of the emancipated spiritual life, into the lowest school as well as the highest, so that in the future the liberated spirit, which is the real Holy Spirit, can bring about the spiritual evolution of mankind.

One is talking perhaps of something that the religious chatterer of today does not think of as exactly “Christian”. But mankind will have to decide whether the Christian talk of the man of today originates in that spirit which Peter denied his Lord three times, or whether it crises out of the spirit that said, “What I have revealed to you is not merely confined to one age, but will stand through all ages. And I will not cease to declare the truth to you; I will be with you until the end of the earth, time.” Those who can hear only the spirit of the past today even in Christianity, will be the phrase makers, the chatterers. Those who accept the living spirit today even for the transformation and rebuilding of the social order,' will be those perhaps in whom one will able to see the true Christ.

May this age grow out of a truly comprehended Pentecost spirit.