The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] It cannot be denied that the number of people in Central Europe whose cultural-political creed leads to fatalism is growing. They say: We have to get through further destruction, through even greater chaos, before we can return to a fruitful development of public life. They see from the helplessness, from the confusion into which we are drifting more and more with every week, that nothing fruitful can be created from the opinions of the old party leaders, from the views of those who have so far been pushed into leading positions by the course of events. But this does not cause them to seek refuge in ideas which, recognizing the basic conditions of social life, seek to bring about a new structure, but only leads them to hope for something nebulous and indeterminate, which will come about when the distress and confusion have become even greater.

[ 2 ] They reply to those who put forward such ideas: Redemption cannot come from the thoughts of individual dreamers, it must arise from the depths of the will of the people. It is as if such people want to buy themselves out of the trouble of thinking through fruitful ideas through this call for the "will of the people". They do not see through what is developing from this "will of the people" today. They do not recognize how this will of the people needs to be fertilized by the leading ideas in order not to fragment its power into something insubstantial. They do not want the ideas; that is why they are waiting for the miracle of the will of the people without ideas.

[ 3 ] In recent times, one could hear a differently expressed belief in political miracles. It was noticed that no promising political action could be derived from old party ideas. One recognized the unfruitfulness in the actions, or actually in the inaction, of the leading personalities who rise to leadership from the womb of the party system. This realization has led to calls for "experts" to replace inaction with fruitful creations based on some kind of non-party insight.

[ 4 ] The idea is that such "experts" exist. All you have to do is turn to them and entrust them with your "business". If they steer the wheels of political and social life, uninfluenced by party words from left and right, then it will lead to something. We fail to see that our plight is caused precisely by the fact that the ideas of the old experts have reached a dead end. This "expertise" has led to a complete lack of direction.

[ 5 ] The same error occurs here that is at work in another field, that of popular education. People talk about the need to create enlightenment through "folk high schools". It is assumed that the knowledge which has been brought to the surface of public life by previous developments should only be disseminated. Then they will work the miracle of improvement from the broad masses. One should say to oneself that our bleak situation has resulted from these "insights" and that the bleakness will not diminish but will increase if what has borne no fruit with a leading class is allowed to proliferate in the broad masses. What is needed above all is a renewal of knowledge, a new intellectual construction. We must first think about the change in what is to be taught in the adult education centers before we can approach them ourselves.

[ 6 ] The fact that a change in thought must occur is not something we want to admit. One wants to be content with gaining new forms for the cultivation of old thoughts. It is as if every effort is being made to avoid having to subject the new ideas to scrutiny. Those who are calling for "experts" for the leading positions are probably also saying that we have to look for them in order to restore confidence abroad. It is believed that loans will be granted to us in England and America once such experts can be guarantors for the correct use of these loans.

[ 7 ] Foreign countries will certainly not care whether the personalities who have to negotiate with them from Central Europe are labeled as "experts" based on the old circumstances. It did not care about these "experts" before 1914 and will not do so in 1920 either. Foreign countries will only start to take notice when fruitful ideas emerge from Central Europe. But all this talk today of building confidence abroad is only a consequence of the flight from ideas at home. We do not want to take a stand against the ideas. For this reason, we call for people who are not looked at for what they have to say, but who are labeled as "experts" out of untested circumstances. People do not want to look for ways to bring about a new reconstruction; they want to wait for the redeeming turn of events that is supposed to come like a miracle. We will only see that after some time, the "experts" will reveal the barrenness of their "subjects" and that in the time that has passed by then, the chaos will have become even greater.

[ 8 ] The movement for the threefolding of the social organism has been fighting against this flight and fear of ideas ever since it attempted to enter public life. Its supporters had to say from the beginning that all the experiments attempted in social life on the basis of the ideas that have contributed to our misfortune can lead to nothing. Anyone who wants to see how conditions have developed since the so-called peace treaty should finally be led to the realization that the way in which these bearers of the threefold idea have approached the hopeless attempts at new construction has found a certain confirmation in the facts.

[ 9 ] Not waiting for a miracle that - no one knows where from - is supposed to come, but only the will for guiding ideas can lead us further. The fatalism we have arrived at is the most alarming sign of the times. For it paralyzes the will to the guiding ideas. And if this paralysis continues, then destructive instincts take the place of constructive reason. And this paralysis of the will can only lead to complete destruction. We are already further along the path of destructive instincts than many admit. There is a point on this path of destruction where the "miracle" will not occur, but where so many ears will be deaf to reason that it will no longer be able to make itself heard. Today the ears are not yet deaf, but the will does not allow the power of hearing to come into its own. That is why it must always be emphasized anew: Salvation can only come if a sufficiently large number of people are seized by the will to cooperate in the transformation of the way of thinking. Those who shy away from this work cannot consider what is necessary for the development of humanity in the present.

[ 1 ] There is no doubt that among the so-called intellectuals of Europe there is a sufficiently large number of people who would see something fruitful in the path that is to be attempted from social chaos to a reorganization through the threefold structure of the social organism, if only they would first allow themselves to adopt the basic ideas of this attempt. It has often been said here that those who support these ideas cannot believe that what has been presented so far contains irrefutable truths down to the last detail. Certainly, some things will prove to be in need of improvement once more circles of competent and knowledgeable people work together seriously and with practical sense. But the social school of thought that expresses itself in the demand of the threefold structure is formed from the unbiased developmental necessities of humanity in our time, so that what is currently needed lives in it and through the neglect of which the problems in which we live have arisen.

[ 2 ] Whoever as an intellectual compares what was before the onset of the world catastrophe with what is demanded for recovery by the idea of threefolding, must realize how this idea is a reproduction of what the facts themselves express. But only a few are able to make this comparison and to consider this idea in any depth.

[ 3 ] The reason for this fact lies in the way our schools have educated these intellectuals. In the course of recent times, the pursuit of science has taken on a form that has virtually undermined independent, comprehensive thinking. Those who have been forced to pursue a profession that requires higher education have been forced to acquire specialized knowledge that does not give them any stimulus to consider their "subject" in the context of real life. As a recipient of knowledge in a specialized field, one can even become an important inventor, a trailblazer, without acquiring the ability through this field to see through a larger area of reality in sustainable thoughts. Those who learn to think through chemistry are led to understand the significance of the thoughts that live in this subject for the whole of human life. For the thoughts of all areas of reality are connected; and if one has those of one area, they awaken an understanding of life in its entirety. If one is merely a chemist without having learned to think in chemistry, one can be as incapable of judgment as a child in the face of the demands of life.

[ 4 ] The understanding of the basic ideas of the threefold structure depends on the ability to penetrate social facts by thinking. You can do this at the same time, whether you have learned to think in a summarizing way in chemistry, biology or politics. But you will not achieve this understanding if you have only practiced politics as a voter or even as a statesman in the same way that people have become accustomed to practicing chemistry or biology in schools in more recent times.

[ 5 ] Whoever sees through these circumstances will recognize the part played by the misguided intellectual life in the decline of European civilization. And he will only be able to expect recovery from a transformation of this spiritual life.

[ 6 ] But this is least thought of. For in the circle of intellectuals, the present lack should be felt above all. For example, there should be an urge to grasp the way of thinking through which the threefold structure arrives at its ideas, instead of simply superficially comparing these ideas with one's own opinion and, if they do not agree with it, rejecting them. If one has not trained oneself to think in a summarizing way, this is, however, the only position one can take towards a system of ideas that owes its origin to such summarizing thinking about genuine realities.

[ 7 ] There are probably people who say that those intellectuals who are of mature age today will no longer find themselves ready for the necessary self-knowledge. They are too accustomed to thoughtless specialization. We have to wait for the youth. But a large part of this youth bears the fruits of misguided spirituality in the state of its soul. This part of the youth will only be persuaded to repent when it will see from the complete disintegration of social life how necessary it would have been in the past to think in a summarizing way that draws on reality. And the part of the youth that does not need such proof is small.

[ 8 ] Should we therefore let the work rest? No, it must be regarded as an iron duty in the present emergency. Powerfully call out into the world those ideas from which we expect recovery. Perhaps at first there will only be a few who will meet them with understanding. But these few must exist. They will preach to deaf ears as long as complete disintegration has not yet arrived. But the closer it approaches, the more of the others will reveal their helplessness; the more the day will come when it will be seen that the few are needed. Until then, many politicians will still be pushed into leading positions with the old party slogans; many old "practitioners" will stumble along the well-trodden tracks through the disrupted economic life; many editorialists will rave about the disunity of foreign countries, which the home country should exploit, or also about the fact that the war would not have come about if relations with this or that country had been established in the way they were - after the war.

[ 9 ] Unperturbed by all this, those who are able to recognize the fruitfulness of the threefold idea must work to spread it. For only through this work will it be possible to ensure that enough spiritually enlightened people are available at the right moment. Spiritual enlightenment in all areas, which leads to comprehensive thinking, which leads to insight into the real power of this thinking: this is necessary. It alone can be built upon; but it can also be built upon.

[ 1 ] Few people today still strive for a clear insight into the changes that have taken place in all public affairs since 1914. People experience the hardship of the times. People hope for this and that. But we are far removed from any real reflection on what is happening before our eyes. There is an insurrectionary movement behind us in Germany. We fear new similar movements. - But can anyone say clearly what those behind such a movement actually want? They call it a movement of right-wing parties. Well, not so long ago, the word "right-wing party" had a reasonable meaning. This party had a precisely defined program. It was contrasted with the program of the left-wing parties.

[ 2 ] One should finally admit to oneself that these programs have become completely meaningless since 1914. Those who once stood on the right can no longer seriously speak of their program in the face of changing facts. If he has a sense of reality in him, he must realize that he can no longer want what was the content of his program only a short time ago. Nor can the leftist. For decades he has expressed his hopes for the future in his program. He must now see that this program could be talked about politically as long as one wanted to oppose another; but that it proves to be a phrase, since one is supposed to shape a social reality out of it. Do parties still fight against each other today in the spirit of their old programs? No. The programs have become phrases and only the people who once had something to do with these programs remain. There are no longer any "right-wing" or "left-wing" parties, only their shadows. Because parties are void without party programs.

[ 3 ] People who only a short time ago were united under the factual content of a certain direction of will still stand together out of old habit. They form groups. But their cohesion is basically only personal. The former reactionary has lost the content of his will, but he still holds together with those who were also reactionaries. He hopes that he will come to power together with them. He who was a Marxist a short time ago still clings to his Marxism because he has to talk about something in order to express himself. He does not draw any rational meaning from his Marxism. But he comes together, more or less radically, with others who were also Marxists; he forms groups with them that are held together merely by the personal kinship that stems from their earlier Marxism. The people in these groups also hope that they will come to power with people who have such personal kinship with them.

[ 4 ] The struggles of public life today have the same character. The judgments that assert themselves in these struggles also bear this character. Certain people get excited when they talk about the "militarist coup". They don't even realize how much nebulousness flows into their ideas. Basically, if the putschists came to power, they would know as little today about what to do as their opponents would know in the same case. One cannot really be afraid of any particular will of such a group; one can only have an indeterminate fear of the people who once had a particular will.

[ 5 ] When viewed correctly, the situation is substantially different from how it is usually viewed at present. The people who once exercised power are characterized by the fact that they acted out of a direction of will that was rendered impossible by the years of horror that Europe has gone through. The other people who want to replace them have not yet found ideas from the life situations in which they have been so far, which could provide possible social conditions in the realization.

[ 6 ] Groups of people, held together by old habits, by sympathies and antipathies, are fighting for power today. What both have in common is that they cannot do anything with power when they have it, because they lack an objective that has grown out of the facts.

[ 7 ] This situation is taking on ever greater dimensions. Public battles are increasingly losing their intellectual content. Democracy, conservatism, liberalism, socialism are words that used to have content but have lost it. Under these circumstances, life becomes directionless and barbarized.

[ 8 ] The idea of the threefold structure of the social organism takes this situation into account. It speaks of impulses that originate from the essence of humanity itself; impulses that want to shape themselves into social reality from the depths of human nature. It speaks again of a reality, one that reveals itself quite clearly in the facts of present life. For this idea it is obvious that the old party programs have lost their content and that only the memories of them remain in the people who had previously committed themselves to them. "Right-wing and left-wing" does not mean a reality today; the idea of the threefold structure seeks such a reality. We can strive to understand them, regardless of whether we still carry around an insubstantial "right-wing" or an insubstantial "left-wing" in our bodies from old habits, like a dead foreign body in a living organism. The bearers of the threefold idea have to fight with old habits, with the shadows of the past. In the midst of public instinctive actions that increasingly degenerate into striving for personal power, they want to set the direction of the will borne by the idea. They want to give life direction not in the sense of old shadowy phrases, but in the sense of the reality demanded by the times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ 1 ] In 1917, I spoke in close circles with a number of personalities about the threefolding of the social organism. My intention was to persuade political thinkers to oppose Wilson's policy with another. Wilson's ideas seemed to me to be no way out of the confusion in which the world found itself. By making these thoughts widely audible as slogans, one could set armies in motion, one could send warships across the world's oceans, but they contained nothing of what was unconsciously struggling in contemporary humanity to get out of the old conditions, and what, because it could not express itself rationally, had discharged itself in the irrationality of the world war.

[ 2 ] Wilson's fourteen points were abstract and unrealistic. One can give such ideas an illusory reality, because people can also carry out what proves to be impossible in execution. These fourteen points could never lead to true peace. For civilized mankind has reached a point in its development where what had emerged from the spheres of the traditional states as spiritual life, as legal relations in the broadest sense and as economic conditions of existence could no longer be carried forward within the framework of these states. Until the present day, the unified state formations were needed in order to cultivate the spiritual life and give birth to the newer economic forms through the legal coexistence of people. But both intellectual life and the world economy have reached forms that cannot be advanced by these state formations. Without prejudice, the world war was nothing other than the expression of the fact that the states clashed because those forces were looking for an unreasonable way out whose true nature was to seek new forms for intellectual life and the economy.

[ 3 ] They could not bring themselves to realize this true nature, and so they let the disastrous happen. Wilson's policy was only an abstract summary of the old ideas of the state. The people were to form themselves into a certain kind of state. In this way the causes of war were to be eliminated. But this was the kind that had produced the causes of war. My intention in 1917 was to oppose Wilson's fourteen points with that which replaces this kind with another which gives self-government to the forces of intellectual and economic life, the non-existence of which has led to confusion. Without this species becoming the soul of the foreign policy of nations, no true way out of this confusion can be found.

[ 4 ] The world war has led to Versailles, to Spa. But the unconscious striving of mankind has not found the sensible way to create the necessary forms for intellectual life and the world economy. And that is why the continuation of the world war is the devastating Bolshevism in Russia and that which, like it, goes through humanity in order to further destroy what the war has left behind.

[ 5 ] Just as in 1917 one had to point to the threefold structure of the social organism in order to counter Wilson's impotent fourteen points with something that could lead to a real way out for peace, so now one must point to the same threefold structure in order to counter the spectre that threatens civilization. How impotent the "Fourteen Points" were was demonstrated by the helplessness of their promoter at Versailles. John Maynard Keynes, who was present at the Versailles negotiations, stated this clearly enough in his book on the economic consequences of the war.

[ 6 ] But as powerless as Wilson proved to be at Versailles, all those who confront the international social upheavals with the old ways of thinking will prove to be just as powerless. One is glad when something is revealed somewhere on the basis of which one can say: Bolshevism is on the wane; it will soon suffer its collapse. Have we no idea how such things only seem to go down in order to revive in other forms? Those who cling to such evasive phrases should remember how often "statesmen" before 1914 spoke of the political situation having "eased".

[ 7 ] The movement for the threefolding of the social organism will lead to what it must lead to if a sufficiently large number of people free themselves in their judgment from those who do not want to look at what is necessary for humanity, but who only look into this or that corner of the world to see whether something is "relaxing" here or there, so that they do not need to ponder ideas that do not "relax" what will later collide wildly, but that develop what wants to be developed according to the course of development of humanity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ 4 ] They want to serve this spiritual life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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