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Good Fortune
Its Reality and Its Semblance
Schmidt Number: S-2491
On-line since: 1st February, 1993
A Lecture By
Rudolf Steiner
Berlin, December 7, 1911
Translated by R. H. Bruce
Bn 61, GA 61, CW 61
A Lecture given in Berlin 7th December, 1911.
Publication by permission of the Rudolf Steiner — Nachlassverwaltung.
Translation, from shorthand reports unrevised by the lecturer, by R. H. Bruce.
Copyright © 1956
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FOREWORD
In his autobiography,
The Course of My Life
(chapters
35 and
36),
Rudolf Steiner speaks as follows concerning the character of this privately
printed matter:
“The contents of this printed matter were intended as oral
communications and not for print ...
“Nothing has ever been said that was not the purest result of
Anthroposophy as it developed ... Whoever reads this privately printed
matter can take it in the fullest sense as that which Anthroposophy has to
say. Therefore it was possible, and moreover without misgivings ... to
depart from the accepted custom of circulating these publications only
among the membership. But it will have to be remembered that faulty
passages occur in the transcripts, which I myself did not revise.
“The right to form a judgment on the content of such privately printed
matter can be admitted only in the case of one who has acquired the
requisite preliminary knowledge. And in respect of all these publications,
this is, at the very least, the knowledge of man and of the cosmos in so far
as it is presented in Anthroposophy, and of what is to be found as
‘anthroposophical history’ in the communications from the spiritual
world.”
GOOD FORTUNE ITS REALITY AND ITS SEMBLANCE
It is without question that among the teachings of spiritual science least
acceptable to many of our contemporaries we may count that of repeated
earth lives, and the echoing-on into a man's later earth-life of causes going
back to a previous life of his on earth. This is what we call the law of
spiritual causation or Karma. It is easy to understand that men of the
present day are bound to adopt a suspicious and adverse attitude towards
this knowledge; it follows from all the habits of thought in modern life and
will doubtless last until a more general recognition is reached of the
enlightening nature of these basic truths of spiritual science. But an
unprejudiced observation of life, an unbiased outlook on the enigmas with
which we meet daily, and which are only explicable on a basis of these
truths, will increasingly lead to a change in the habits of thought, and thus
to a recognition of the enlightening nature of these great truths.
To the phenomena we may include in this field quite certainly belong those
usually comprised under such names as human fortune or misfortune,
words with such manifold meanings. It is only necessary to utter these two
words and immediately the sensitive judgment of man's heart will respond
to the call to observe the boundaries set between his knowledge and the
happenings in the outer world. This verdict sounds as clearly as any other
in the soul, and leads to a fervent desire to know more of those inexplicable
relationships which, though rejected again and again at a certain stage of
enlightenment, must nevertheless be acknowledged by a really unprejudiced
desire for Knowledge. To realize this, we need only call to mind how
enigmatic good fortune or misfortune — especially the latter —
may be in a man's life. This element of enigma can certainly not be solved
by any theoretical answer; it clearly shows that something more than any
theory, more than what may be called abstract science, is needed to answer
it. Who can doubt that in man's soul there is a definite urge to be in a
certain harmony with his environment, with the world? And what an
amount of disharmony may be expressed when sometimes a man must say
of himself, or his fellow-men of him, that throughout his life he is pursued
by ill-luck! With such an admission is linked a “Why?” of deep
significance for all we have to say about the value of human life, about the
value too of the forces forming the foundation of human life.
Robert Hamerling,
the important but alas too little appreciated poet of the nineteenth
century, has included in his Essays a short article on “Fortune”,
beginning with a reminiscence that recurred to him again and again in
connection with this problem. He had heard this story related in Venice —
whether it was legendary or not is of no consequence. A daughter was born
to a married couple. The mother died in child-birth. The same day the
father heard that all his property had been lost at sea. The shock brought on
a stroke, and he, too, died the day the child was born. Hence the infant met
with the misfortune of becoming an orphan on the first day of her earthly
existence. She was first of all adopted by a rich relation, who drew up a will
bequeathing a large fortune to the child. She died, however, while the child
was still young; and when the will was opened it was found to contain a
technical error. The will was contested and the child lost the whole of the
fortune intended for her. Thus she grew up in want and misery and later had
to become a maid-servant. Then a nice, suitable young man whom the girl
liked very much fell in love with her. However, after the friendship had
lasted some time, and when the poor girl, who had been earning her living
under most difficult conditions, was able to think that at last some good
fortune was coming her way, it transpired that her lover was of the Jewish
persuasion and for this reason the marriage could not take place. She
reproached him most bitterly for having deceived her, but she could not
give him up. Her life continued its extraordinary, alternating course. The
youth was equally unwilling to give up the girl, and he promised that after
the death of his father — who had not long to live — he would be
baptized, when the marriage could be celebrated. He was in fact very soon
called to his father's death-bed. Now, to add to the troubles of this
unfortunate girl, she became very ill indeed. In the meantime, the father
of her betrothed had died at a distance, and his son was baptized. When he
came back to her, however, the girl had already died of the mental suffering
she had endured in addition to her physical malady. He found only a lifeless
bride. Now he was overcome by most bitter grief, and he felt that he could
not do otherwise — he must see his beloved again although she was
already buried. Eventually he was successful in having her body exhumed; and
behold, she was lying in a position that clearly showed she had been buried
alive and had turned in the grave when she woke.
Hamerling says he always remembered this story when talking or thinking
of human misfortune, and of how it sometimes actually seemed as if a
human being were pursued by misfortune from his birth, not only to his
grave but as in this case beyond it. Of course, the story may be a legend,
but that is of no consequence, for everyone of us will say: Whether the
facts are true or not, they are possible, and might have happened even if
they never actually did happen. But the story illustrates very clearly the
disquieting question: How can we answer the “why” when considering
the value of a life thus pursued by misfortune? This at any rate shows us
that it might be quite impossible to speak of fortune or misfortune if a
single human life only were taken into account. Ordinary habits of thought
may at least be challenged to look beyond a single human life, when we have
before us one that is so caught up in the intricacies of the world that no
concept of the value of human life can fit in with what this life went
through between birth and death. In such a case we seem compelled to look
beyond the limits set by birth and death.
When, however, we look more closely at the words fortune or misfortune,
we see at once that after all they can only be applied in a particular sphere,
that apart from mankind there is much outside in the world that may indeed
remind us of man's individual accordance or discordance with it, but that
we shall hardly venture to speak of fortune or misfortune in connection
with analogous occurrences outside mankind. Suppose that the crystal,
which ought to develop regular forms according to definite laws, should be
compelled, through the vicinity of other crystals, or through other forces of
Nature at work near it, to develop one-sidedly and is prevented from
forming its proper angles. There are actually very few crystals in Nature
perfectly formed in accordance with their inner laws. Or, if we study the
plants, we must say that in them, too, an inner law of development seems to
be inborn. We cannot fail to see, however, that very many plants are unable
to bring to perfection the whole force of the inner impulse of their
development in the struggle against wind and weather and other conditions
of their environment. And we can say the same of the animals. Indeed, we may
go still further, we need only keep undeniable facts before our eyes —
how many germs of living beings perish without reaching any real
development, because under existing conditions it is impossible for them to
become that for which they were organized. Think of the vast quantity of
spawn in the sea alone, spawn that might become inhabitants of the sea,
populating this or that ocean, and how few of them actually develop. True,
we might say in a certain sense: We see quite clearly that the beings we
come across in the different kingdoms of Nature have inner forces and laws
of development; but these forces and laws are limited by their environment
and the impossibility of bringing themselves into harmony with it. And
indeed, we cannot deny that we have something similar when we speak of
human fortune or misfortune. There we see that a man's power to live out
his life cannot become a reality because of the many hindrances
continually obstructing him. Or we may see that a man — like a crystal
fortunate enough to develop its angles freely in every direction — may be
so fortunate as to be able to say with the crystal: Nothing hinders me;
external circumstances and the way of the world are so helpful to me that
they set free what is purposed in the inmost core of my being. — And only
in this case does a man usually say that he is fortunate; any other
circumstances either leave him indifferent or impel him to speak directly of
misfortune. But unless we are speaking merely symbolically, we cannot,
without falling into a fantastic vein, speak of the ill-fortune of crystals,
of plants, or even of the amount of spawn that perishes in the sea before it
comes to life. We feel that to be justified in speaking of good or bad
fortune, we must rise to the level of human life. And again, even in
speaking of human life, we soon notice a limit beyond which we can no
longer speak of fortune at all, in spite of the external forces by which man's
life may be directly hindered, frustrated, destroyed. We feel that we cannot
speak of “misfortune” when we see a great martyr who has something
of importance to transmit to the world, condemned to death by hostile
authorities. Are we justified in speaking of misfortune in the case of
Giordano Bruno, for instance, who perished at the stake? We feel that here
there is something in the man himself which makes it impossible to speak
of ill-fortune, or if he is successful, of good fortune. So we see good or
bad fortune definitely relegated to the human sphere — and within that
to a still narrower one.
Now when it comes to man himself, to what he feels with regard to fortune
or misfortune in his life, it would seem that when we try to grasp it
conceptually, we very seldom succeed. For just think of the story of
Diogenes (again this may be based upon a legend, but it may also have
happened), when Alexander urged him to ask a favor of him — certainly a
piece of good fortune. Diogenes demanded what very few men would have
asked for — that Alexander should move out of his light. That then was
what he regarded as lacking to his happiness at the moment. How would
most men have interpreted their fortune at such a moment? But let us go
further. Take the pleasure-seeking man, the man who throughout his life
considers himself fortunate only when all the desires arising from his
passions and instincts are satisfied — satisfied often by the most
banal of pleasures. Is there anyone who would believe that what such a man
calls good fortune could also be good fortune for the ascetic, for one who
hopes for the perfecting of his being, and considers life worth living only
when he is denying himself in every possible way, and even subjecting himself
to pain and suffering that would not be inflicted upon him by ordinary fortune
or misfortune? How different the conceptions of fortune and misfortune are
in an ascetic and a sensualist! But we can go still further and show that any
universally accepted conception of good fortune eludes us. We have only to
think of how unhappy a man can be who, without reason, without any
foundation of true reality, becomes fiercely jealous. Take a man who has no
grounds for jealousy at all, but believes that he has every possible ground;
he is unhappy in the deepest sense of the word, yet there is no occasion for
it at all. The extent, the intensity, of the unhappiness depends not on any
external reality but simply on the man's attitude to external reality —
in this case, to a complete illusion.
That good luck as well as bad may be in the highest degree subjective, that
at every turn it projects us, so to speak, from the outer world into the inner
world, is shown by a charming story told by Jean Paul at the beginning of
the first volume of his “Flegeljahre”. In this, a man who lived
habitually in Central Germany pictures to himself how fortunate it would be
for him to be a parson in Sweden. It is a most delightful passage where he
imagines that he would sit in his parsonage and the day would come when by two
o'clock in the afternoon it would be dark. Then people would go to church
each carrying his own light, after which pictures of his childhood would
rise before him — his brothers and sisters, each carrying a light. It
is a charming description of his delight in the people going to church through
the darkness each with his own lantern. Or he dreams himself into other
situations, called up simply by the memory of certain natural scenes
connected together in his mind; for instance, if he imagined himself in Italy
he could almost see the orange trees, and so on. This would throw him into
a mood of most wonderful happiness; but there was no reality in any of it, it
was all only a dream.
Doubtless Jean Paul, with this dream of being a parson in Sweden, is
pointing to a deep connection in questions of good or bad fortune by
showing that the whole problem can be diverted from the outer world to
man's inner being. Strangely enough, it would seem that since good or bad
fortune may be entirely dependent upon the inner being of man, the idea of
good fortune as a general idea disappears. Yet again, if we look at what a
man generally calls good or bad fortune, we see that in countless cases he
refers it, not to his inner being, but to something outside himself, We might
even say: The characteristic quality of man's desire for good fortune is
deeply rooted in his incessant urge not to be alone with his thoughts, his
feelings, his whole inner being, but to be in harmony with all that works
and weaves in his environment. In reality a man speaks of good fortune
when he is unwilling that some result, some effect, should depend on
himself alone; on the contrary, he attaches great importance to its
depending, not on himself but on something else. We need only picture the
luck of the gambler — here no doubt the small and the great have much in
common. However paradoxical it may seem, we can quite well connect a
gambler's luck with the satisfaction a man may have in acquiring an item
of knowledge. For acquiring knowledge evokes in us the feeling that in our
thinking, in our soul-life, we are in harmony with the world. We feel that
what is without in picture-form is also within us in our apprehension of it;
that we do not stand alone with the world staring us in the face like a
riddle, but that the inner corresponds to the outer, that there is living
contact between them, the outer mirrored in, and shining forth again from
the inner. The satisfaction we have in acquiring knowledge is proof of this
harmony. If we analyze the satisfaction of a successful gambler we can only
say — even if he has no thought of whence his satisfaction arises —
that it could not exist at all if he himself could bring about what happens
without his cooperation. His satisfaction is based on the fact that something
outside himself is involved, that the world has “taken him into
consideration”, that it has contributed something for his benefit. This
single shows that he does not stand outside the world, that he has definite
contact, definite connection, with it. And the unhappiness a gambler feels
when he loses is caused by the sensation of standing alone — bad luck
gives him a feeling of being shut out from the world, as if the contact with
it were broken.
In short, we see that it is by no means true that, by good or bad fortune, a
man means only something that can be locked up within himself; on the
contrary, when he speaks of good or bad fortune he means in the deepest
sense what establishes contact between him and the world. Hence there is
hardly anything about which the man of our enlightened age becomes so
easily superstitious, so grotesquely superstitious, as about what is called
luck, what he calls his expectation from certain forces or elements outside
himself which come to his assistance. When this is in question, a man may
become exceedingly superstitious. I once knew a very enlightened German
poet. At the time of which I speak he was writing a play. This play would
not be finished before the end of a certain month — he knew that
beforehand. Yet he had a superstition that the drama could not be
successful unless it were sent in to the manager of the theatre concerned
before the first day of the next month; if it were later, according to his
superstition it could have no success. One day, towards the end of the
month, I happened to be walking in the street when I saw him bicycling in
hot haste to the post office. Through my friendship with him I knew that his
work was far from finished; so I waited for him to come out. “I have sent
my play in to the theatre”, he said. “Is it finished then?”
I asked; and he replied: “There is still some work to do on the last
acts, but I have sent it in now because I believe it can only be successful
if it goes in before the end of this month. I have written, though, that if
the play is accepted, I should like it returned when I can finish it; but it
had to be sent in at this time.” — Here we see how a man expects
help from outside, how he expects that what is to happen will not be effected
by him alone, by his efficiency or his own powers, but that the outer world
will come to his aid, that it has some interest in him so that he does not
stand alone by himself.
This only proves that when all is said the idea of fortune in general eludes
us when we try to grasp it. It eludes us, too, when we look into any
literature that has been written about it; for those who write about such
things are usually men whose business it is to write. Now at the outset
everyone knows that a man can, indeed, speak correctly only of something
with which he has not merely a theoretical but a living relation. The
philosophers or psychologists who write about fortune have a living
relation to good or bad fortune only as they themselves have experienced it.
Now there is one factor that weighs very heavily in the balance, namely,
that cognition as such, as it meets us in the world of man outside, that
knowledge when it is taken in a certain higher sense, signifies at the very
outset a kind of good fortune. This will be admitted by everyone who has
ever felt the inner delight that knowledge can give; and this is substantiated
by the fact that the most eminent philosophers, from
Aristotle
down to our own times, have constantly characterized the possession of
wisdom, of knowledge, as a piece of particularly good fortune. On the other
hand, however, we must ask ourselves: What does such an answer to the question
concerning fortune mean to one who works the whole week long with few
exceptions in the darkness of the mines, or to one who is buried in a mine
and perhaps remains alive for days together under the most horrible
conditions? What has such a philosophical interpretation of fortune to do
with what dwells in the soul of a man who has to perform some menial,
perhaps repulsive, task in life? Life gives a strange answer to the question
of fortune, and we have abundant experience to show that the philosophers'
answers are often grotesquely remote, in this connection, from our
experience in everyday life, provided we consider this life in its true
character. Life, however, teaches us something else with regard to fortune.
For life appears as a noteworthy contradiction to the commonly accepted
conceptions of fortune. One case may serve as an example for many.
Let us suppose that a man with very high ideas, even with the gift of an
exceptional imagination, should have to work in some humble position. He
had perhaps to spend almost all his life as a common soldier. I am speaking
of a case that is indeed no legend, but the life of an exceedingly remarkable
man, Josef Emanuel Hilscher, who was born in Austria in 1804 and died in
1837. It was his fate to serve for the greater part of his life as a common
soldier; in spite of his brilliant gifts he rose to nothing higher than
quartermaster. This man left behind him a great number of poems, not only
perfect in form but permeated by a deep life of soul. He left excellent
translations into German of Byron's poems. He had a rich inner life. We
can picture the complete contrast between what the day brought him in the
way of fortune and his inner experiences. The poems are by no means
steeped in pessimism; they are full of force and exuberance. They show us
that this life — in spite of the many disappointments inherent in it
— rose to a certain level of inner happiness. It is a pity that men so
easily forget such phenomena. For when we set a figure of this kind before
our eyes, we can see — because indeed things are only relatively
different from one another — we can see that perhaps it is possible,
even when the external life seems to be entirely forsaken by fortune, for
a man to create happiness out of his inmost being.
Now anyone can inveigh against fortune, especially from the point of view
of spiritual science — indeed, if he clings to misunderstood or primitive
conceptions he may be fanatical in his protest against the idea of good
fortune or equally fanatical in explaining life one-sidedly from the idea of
reincarnation and karma. A man would be fanatical in his protest against
fortune were he through misunderstanding the principles of spiritual
science to say: All striving after good fortune and contentment is after all
only egoism, and spiritual science makes every effort to lead men away
from egoism. Even Aristotle considered it ridiculous to maintain that the
virtuous man could in any way be content when he was experiencing
unaccountable suffering. Good fortune need not be regarded merely as
satisfied egoism, but even were this so in the first place it could still be
of some value for the whole of mankind. For good fortune can also be
regarded as bringing our soul-forces into a certain harmonious mood, thus
allowing them to develop in every direction; whereas ill-fortune produces
discordant moods in our soul-life, hindering us from making the most of
our efficiency and powers. Thus, even if good luck is sought after in the
first place only as a satisfaction of egoism, yet we can look upon it as the
promoter of inward harmony in the soul-forces, and can hope that those
whose soul-forces achieve inner harmony through good fortune may
gradually overcome their egoism; whereas they would probably find it hard
to do so were they constantly pursued by ill-fortune. On the other hand, it
may be said: If a man strives after good fortune and receives it as the
satisfaction of his egoism, he can — because his forces are harmonized
— work for himself and for others in a beneficial way. So what may be
called good fortune must not be assessed one-sidedly. — Again, many a
man who thinks he has fathomed spiritual science when he has only perceived
something of it from a distance falls into error by saying: Here is a
fortunate man, and there one who is unfortunate; when I think of karma, of
one life determining another, I can easily understand that an unfortunate
man has prepared this bad fortune for himself in a former life, and that in a
former life the fortunate man has prepared his own good fortune. Such an
assertion has something insidious about it because to a certain extent it is
correct. But karma — that is, the law of the determining of one
earth-life by another — must not be accepted in the sense of a merely
explanatory law; it must be regarded as something that penetrates our will,
causing us to live in the sense of this law. And this law is only vindicated
in life if it ennobles and enriches this life. As regards fortune, we have
seen that a man's quest of happiness springs from a desire not to stand
alone, but to be in some way related to the outer world so that it may take
an interest in him. On the other hand, we have seen that good fortune may
— in contradiction to external facts — be brought about solely by
a man's conceptions, by what he experiences from external facts.
Where is there a solution of this apparent contradiction — depending,
not on abstractions and theories but on reality itself?
We can find a solution if we turn our minds to what may be called the
inmost core of man's being. In former lectures (see
Note 1) we have shown how this
works on the outer man, even shaping his body, and also establishing the
man in the place he occupies in the world. If we follow up this conception
of the inner core, and ask ourselves how it can be related to the man's good
or bad fortune, we most easily find the answer if we consider that some
stroke of good fortune may so affect a man that he is bound to say: I
intended this, I willed it, I used my good sense, my wisdom, in such a way
that it should come about, but now I see that the result far exceeds all that
my wisdom planned, all that I determined or was able to see beforehand. —
What man is there, in a responsible position in the world, who would not in
countless cases say something of this kind — that he had indeed used his
powers but that the success that had befallen him far out-weighed the
powers exerted? If we comprehend the inner core of man not as what is
there just for once but as something in the throes of a whole evolution, in
the sense, that is, of spiritual science; if we comprehend it not simply as
shaping one life but many, as something therefore that would shape the one
life as it is in our immediate present, so that when this inner core of man's
being goes through the gate of death and passes into a super-sensible world,
returning when the time comes to be active in physical life in a fresh
existence — what then can such a man, grasping his central being in this
way, understanding himself within a world-conception of this kind — what
attitude can he adopt towards a success that flows to him in the way we have
pictured? Such a man can never say: This has been my good fortune and I am
satisfied; with the powers I set in motion I expected something quite
insignificant, but I am glad that my fortune has brought me something greater.
— Such a man who seriously believes in karma and repeated earth-lives
will never say that, but rather: The success is there but I have shown
myself to be weak in face of such a success. I shall not be content with this
success, I shall learn by it to enhance my powers; I shall sow seeds in the
inmost core of my being which will lead it to higher and higher perfection.
My unmerited success, my windfall, shows me where I am lacking; I must
learn from it. — No other answer can be given by one to whom fortune has
brought success, if he looks upon karma in the right way and believes in it.
How will he deal with such a lucky chance? (The word chance is used here
in the sense of something that comes upon one unexpectedly, it is not
meant in the ordinary way). For him it will be considered not as an end but
as a beginning — a beginning from which he will learn and which will cast
its beams upon his future evolution.
Now, what is the opposite of the instance we have given? Let us place it
clearly before us. Because a man who believes in repeated earth-lives and
karma, or spiritual causation, receives a stroke of good fortune as a spur to
his growing forces, he regards it as a beginning, as a cause of his further
development. And the converse of this would be if, when we were struck
by some misfortune, by some misadventure that might happen to us, we
were to take it not simply as a blow, as the reverse of the success, but
looking beyond the single earthly life, we were to see it as an end, as what
comes last, as something the cause of which has to be sought in the past,
just as the consequence when appearing as success has to seek its effects in
the future — the future of our own evolution. We regard ill-fortune as an
effect of our own evolution. How so?
This we can make clear by a comparison showing that we are not always good
judges of what has occasioned the course of a life. Let us suppose someone
has lived as an idler on his father's money up to his eighteenth year,
enjoying from his own point of view a very happy life. Then when he is
eighteen years old his father loses his property; and the son can no longer
live in idleness but is obliged to train for a proper job. This will at first
cause him all sorts of trouble and suffering. “Alas!” he will say,
“a great misfortune has overtaken me.” It is a question, however,
whether in this case he is the best judge of his destiny. If he learns
something useful now, perhaps when he is fifty he will be able to say: Yes,
at that time I looked upon it as a great misfortune that my father had lost
his wealth; now I can only see it as a misfortune for my father and not for
myself; for I might have remained a ne'er-do-well all my life had I not met
with this misfortune. As it happens, however, I have become a useful member
of society. I have grown into what I now am.
So let us ask ourselves: When was this man a correct judge of his destiny?
In his eighteenth year when he met with misfortune, or at fifty when he
looked back on this misfortune? Now suppose he thinks still further, and
enquires concerning the cause of this misfortune. Then he might say: There
was really no need for me to consider myself unfortunate at that time.
Externally it seemed at first as if misfortune had befallen me because my
father had lost his income. But suppose that from my earliest childhood I
had been zealous in my desire for knowledge, suppose that I had already
done great things without any external compulsion, so that the loss of my
father's money would not have inconvenienced me, then the transition
would have been quite a different matter, the misfortune would not have
affected me. The cause of my misfortune appeared to lie outside myself,
but in reality I can say that the deeper cause lay within me. For it was my
nature that brought it upon me that my life at that time was unfortunate and
beset with pain and suffering. I attracted the ill-fortune to myself.
When such a man says this, he has already begun to understand that in fact
all that approaches us from outside is attracted from within, and that the
attraction is caused through our own evolution. Every misfortune can be
represented as the result of some imperfection in ourselves; it indicates that
something within us is not as well developed as it should be. Here we have
misfortune as opposed to success, misfortune regarded as an end, as an
effect, of something occasioned by ourselves at an earlier stage of our
evolution. Now if, instead of moaning over our ill-luck, and throwing the
whole blame upon the outside world, we look at the core of our inner being
and seriously believe in karma, that is, the causation working through one
earth-life to another, then ill-luck becomes a challenge to regard life as a
school in which we learn to make ourselves more and more perfect. If we
look at the matter thus, karma and what we call the law of repeated earth-
lives will become a force for all that makes life richer and increases its
significance.
The question, however, may certainly arise: Can mere knowledge of the
law of karma enhance life in a definite way, making it richer and more
significant? Can it perhaps bring good fortune out of bad? — However
strange it may seem to many people now-a-days, I should like to make a
remark that may be significant for a full comprehension of good fortune
from the point of view of spiritual science. Let us recall Hamerling's
legend of the girl pursued by ill-fortune up to her death, and even beyond
the grave since she was buried alive. No doubt anyone not deeply
permeated by the forces knowledge can give, will find this strange. But let
us suppose that this unfortunate girl had been placed in an environment
where the outlook of spiritual science was accepted, where this outlook
would prompt the individual to say: In me there dwells a central core of
spiritual being transcending birth and death, showing to the outer world the
effects of past lives, and preparing the forces for subsequent earth-lives. It
is conceivable that this knowledge might become strength of soul in the
girl, intensifying belief in such an inner core. It may perhaps be said: As
the force issuing from spirit and soul may be consciously felt working into
the bodily nature, it might well have worked into the girl's state of health;
and the strength of this belief might have sustained her until the man
returned after his father's death. This may appear odd to many who are not
aware of the power of knowledge based on true reality — knowledge not
abstract and merely theoretical but working as a growing force in the soul.
We see, however, that as regards the question of good fortune this belief
may offer no consolation to those who are definitely fixed for their whole
life in work that can never satisfy them, those whose claims upon life are
permanently rejected. Yet we see that firm faith in the central core of man's
being, and the knowledge that this single human life is one among many,
can certainly give awakening strength. All that in the outer world at first
appeared to me as my ill-fortune, as the evil destiny of my life, becomes
explicable to my spiritual understanding through my relation to the
universal cosmos in which I am placed. No commonplace consolation can
help us to overcome what in our own conception is a real misfortune. We
can only be helped by the possibility of regarding a direct blow as a link in
the chain of destiny. Then we see that to consider the single life by itself,
is to look upon the semblance and not the reality. An example of this is the
youth who idled away his time until his eighteenth year and then, when
misfortune befell him and he was obliged to work, regarded it as sheer ill-
luck and not as the occasion of his later happiness. Thus, if we look more
deeply into the matter we see clearly that study of a life from one point of
view alone can give only an apparent result, and that what strikes us as
good or bad fortune appears merely in its semblance if we study it in a
circumscribed way. It will only show us its true nature and meaning if we
study it in its proper place in the man's whole life. Even so, if we look at
this whole human life as exhausted within the boundaries of birth and
death, a life that can find no satisfaction in ordinary human relations and
the usual work will never seem comprehensible to us. To become
comprehensible — comprehensible according to the reality we have often
expressed in those terms to which, however, where real human destiny is
concerned, only spiritual science can give life-this can become
comprehensible only when we know that what we find intelligible no
longer has power over us. And to him for whose central being good fortune
is only an incentive to higher development, ill-fortune is also a challenge to
further evolution. Thus the apparent contradiction is solved for us when, in
observing life, we see the conception of good or bad fortune approaching
us merely from the outside, converted into the conception of how we
transform the experiences within ourselves and what we make of them. If
we have learnt from the law of karma not only to derive satisfaction from
success but to take it as an incentive to further development, we also arrive
at regarding failure and misfortune in the same way. Everything undergoes
change in the human soul, and what is a semblance of good or bad fortune
becomes reality there. This, however, implies much that is immensely
important. For instance, let us think of a man who rejects outright the idea
of repeated earth-lives. Suppose, then, that he sees a man suffering from
jealousy founded on an entirely imaginary picture created by himself; or
another pursuing a visionary happiness; or on the other hand he may see
someone who develops a definite inner reality merely out of his
imagination, develops something most real for the inner life — that is,
out of mere semblance, not out of the world of real facts. Thus he might say
to himself — Would it not be the most incredible incongruity as regards
the connection of man's inner nature with the outer world, if the matter ended
with this one fact occurring in the one earth-life? There is no doubt that,
when a man passes through the gate of death, any illusion of fortune or of
jealousy which he has looked on as a reality will be wiped out. But what he
has united with his soul as pleasure and pain, the effect which has arisen in
the stirrings of his feelings, becomes a power living its own life in his soul
and connected with his further evolution in the universe. Thus we see, by
means of the transformation described, that man is actually called upon to
develop a reality out of the semblance.
With this, however, we have also arrived at an explanation of what was said
at the beginning. It becomes clear to us now why it is impossible for a man
to connect his fortune with his ego, with his individuality. Yet, even if he
cannot directly connect it with his ego as external happenings that
approach him and raise his existence, he can, nevertheless, so transform it
within himself, that what was originally external semblance becomes inner
reality. Thereby man becomes the transformer of outward semblance into
being, into reality. But when we look around upon the world about us, we
see how the crystals, the plants and animals are hindered by external
circumstances so that they cannot live out fully the inner laws of their
growth; we see how countless seeds must perish without coming into true
existence. What is it that fails to happen? Why can we not speak here of good
or bad fortune as we have stated it? — The reason is that these are not
examples of an outer becoming an inner, so that in fact an outer is mirrored
in the inner and a semblance transformed into real being. It is only because
man has this central core of being within him that he can free himself from
the immediate external reality and experience a new reality. This reality
experienced within him lifts his ordinary existence above external life so
that he can say: On the one hand, I live in the line of heredity, since I bear
within me what I have inherited from my parents, grandparents, and so on;
but I also live in what is only a spiritual line of causation, and yet can
give me something besides the fortune that may come to me from the outside
world. — Through this alone it is clear that man is indeed a member of
two worlds, an outer and an inner. You may call it dualism, but the very way
that man transforms semblance into reality shows us that this dualism is
itself merely semblance, since in man outer semblance is continually being
transformed into inner reality. And life shows us, too, that what we
experience in imagination when we call an actual fact false becomes reality
within us.
Thus we see that what may be called good and bad fortune is closely
associated with what is within man. But we see, too, how closely
associated it is with the conception of spiritual science, that man stands
in a succession of repeated earth-lives. If we look at the matter in this
way we may say: Do we not then base our inner happiness on an outer
semblance and reckon with this happiness as something permanent in our
evolution? All external good fortune that falls to our share is characterized
in what, according to legend, Solon said to Croesus: Call no man happy till
you know his end. — All good fortune that comes to us from outside may
change; good fortune may turn into bad. But what is there in the realm of
fortune that can never be taken from us? What we make of the fortune that
falls to us whether it comes from success or failure. Fundamentally the
following true and excellent folk-saying can be applied to the whole of a
man's relation to his fortune: Everyone is the smith of his own fortune.
— Simple country people have coined many beautiful and extraordinarily
apposite sayings about fortune, and from these we can see what profound
philosophy there is in the simplest man's outlook. In this respect those
who call themselves the most enlightened could learn very much from them.
To be sure these truths are often presented to us in a very crude form.
There is even a proverb that says: Against a certain human quality the Gods
themselves contend in vain. There is, however, also a noteworthy proverb
that connects this particular human quality — against which the Gods are
said to contend in vain — with good fortune, saying: Fools have the most
luck. We need not conclude from this that the Gods seek to reward such
men with good fortune to make up for their stupidity. Nevertheless, this
proverb shows us a distinct consciousness of the inner depths and of the
necessity for deepening what we must call the interdependence in the
world of man and fortune. For as long as our wisdom is applicable to
external matters alone, it will help us very little; it can help us only
when it is changed into something within ourselves, that is, when it again
acquires the quality, originally possessed by primitive man, of building
on the strong central core that transcends birth and death, the central
core that is explicable only in the light of repeated earth-lives. Thus
what a man experiences as the mere semblance of fortune in the outer world
is distinguished from what we may call the true essence of fortune. This
comes into being the moment a man can make something of the external facts
of his life, can transform them and assimilate them with the evolving core
of his being which goes on from life to life. And when a sick man —
Herder — in the most severe physical pain says to his son: “Give
me a sublime and beautiful thought, and I will refresh myself with it”,
we see clearly that in an afflicted life Herder awaits the illumination of a
beautiful thought as refreshment — that is, as a stroke of good fortune.
Hence it is easy to say that man with his inner being must be the smith of
his own fortune. But let us fix our minds on the powerful influence of that
world-conception of spiritual science that we have been able to touch upon
to-day, where it is not merely theoretical knowledge but knowledge that
stirs the core of our souls, since it is filled with what transcends good or
bad fortune. If we grasp this world-outlook thus, it will furnish us with
more sublime thoughts than almost any other, thoughts that make it possible
for a man — even at the moment when he must succumb to misfortune
— to say: “But this is only a part of the whole of life.”
This question of fortune has been raised to-day to show how everyday existence
is ennobled and enriched by the real thoughts concerning life's totality which
spiritual science can give us, thoughts that do not merely touch upon life as
theories but that bring with them the forces of life. And this is the
essential. We must not only have external grounds of consolation for one who
is to learn to bear misfortune through the awakening of those inner forces,
rather must we be able to give him the real inner forces that lead beyond the
sphere of misfortune to a sphere to which — although life seems to
contradict this — he actually belongs. This, however, can only be given
by a science which shows that human life extends beyond birth and death, and
yet is linked with the whole beneficent foundation of our world-order. If we
can count upon this in a world-conception, then we may say that this
conception fulfills the hopes of even the best of men; we may say that with
such a conviction a man can look at life as one who though his ship is tossed
to and fro by surging waves yet finds courage to rely on nothing in the outer
world, but on his own inner strength and character. And perhaps the
observations of to-day may serve to set before men an ideal that
Goethe
in a certain way sketched for
us, but that we may interpret beyond Goethe's hopes as an ideal for every
man. True, it does not stand as something to be immediately achieved in the
single human life, but as an ideal for man's life as a totality — if a
man, tossed to and fro in his life between good and bad fortune, feels like a
sailor buffeted by stormy waves, who can rely on his own inner power. This
must lead to a point of view which, with a slight adaptation of Goethe's
words, we may describe thus: —
Man stands with courage at the helm
By wind and waves the ship is driven —
The wind and waves do not affect him.
Controlling them he looks in the green depths
And trusts, no matter wrecked or safe in port,
The forces of his inner being.
- Note 1:
- The Hidden Depths of Soul Life. Berlin, 23rd November, 1911.
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