SOME
CHARACTERISTICS OF TO-DAY
This translation has
been made from the original of
Rudolf Steiner by permission of H. Collison, M.A., Oxon,
by whom all rights are reserved.
E are living at a time when one
can see what anthroposophic Spiritual Science — as it is called
— has really been striving after for years. To a certain extent
the fiery signs of the times can be regarded as proving the necessity
that led to the birth of this movement and has kept it before the
world for some years now. And perhaps the best result of our
anthroposophic strivings would be a conviction of this necessity in
the hearts and souls of those taking part. Though this or that event
in the external world may take on a stormy character, though that
which is striving to develop from out of the depths of human
evolution may have this or that appearance, the essential nature of
what is happening to-day can only be grasped if we look at those
events which escape the ordinary human powers of perception still
usual among us. Such events are only really perceptible when we study
the world from a spiritual point of view.
I should like to start
by mentioning one such phenomenon which almost escapes notice among
the manifold stormy events of to-day. It is regarded as something
insignificant and unimportant, but it is an actual fact for one who,
from spiritual sources, has acquired the ability to study life as it
actually is.
It may sound an
extraordinary statement, but it is nevertheless true, that for
some seven, eight or ten years now a real student of human life can
observe quite a different expression on the faces of new-born babies.
Many people, it is true, do not notice this, for the most important
things of life pass unheeded to-day. But one who has acquired an eye
for such things knows that very many children born during the last
seven to ten years wear a melancholy expression. It is as if
they ‘held back’ from the world. One might say that even
from the first days of life, from the first week onwards, something
different can be seen in the physiognomy of these children. And if we
investigate this remarkable fact that seems so strange to the man of
to-day, we find that the souls entering the world through birth bear
within them from before conception and birth that which gives their
faces this melancholy expression. Hidden though it often be behind
all their smiles, it is nevertheless there in the faces of
these children, almost from birth. It was not there formerly. In
these souls there lives — though it is quite unconscious, of
course — a “reluctance” to enter life. Souls
entering through birth to-day feel a kind of hindrance, a difficulty,
in entering the physical world.
Now it is a fact that
man undergoes an important experience in the spiritual world before
entering the physical world through conception and birth, and the
effects of this experience are active in his coming life. Here on the
earth men die; they pass through the gate of death, laying aside
their physical bodies and taking their souls into the spiritual
world. These souls still bear within them the effects of all they
have experienced in the physical world. After passing through the
gates of death human souls appear, on the whole, as the after-effects
of what they have immediately experienced in earthly life. Now such
souls meet those who are about to descend into a physical body. (This
is actually the case. I can only tell you of it, for these things can
only be brought from the spiritual world through actual experience of
them.) This meeting between those souls who have just passed through
the gate of death and those who are just about to enter the physical
world through the gate of birth is an important event. Its effect is
decisive in many respects. In a certain sense, its function is to
give the descending souls some idea of what they will encounter here.
It is from this meeting that the “impulse” is derived
that stamps the peculiar expression of melancholy on the faces of
children entering the world to-day. They do not want to enter the
world of which they have learnt through this meeting. For they know
how, in a sense, their “spiritual plumage” will be
ruffled by what mankind, immersed in materialistic thoughts and
feelings, views and deeds, is experiencing on the earth
to-day.
This fact (which,
naturally, can only be established spiritually) and other things
beside throw a strong light on our whole age. The present times can
only be understood on such a basis, and we ought to strive for
such an understanding.
I have started from
something which can, of course, only be apprehended through spiritual
perception. But other events of to-day are speaking to us loudly and
clearly and can strike everyone who, though without spiritual vision,
does not go through life half asleep. We have seen the great
catastrophe of the World-War extend over the world during the last
four or five years, causing great harm; we can turn our thoughts
again and again to the outward and visible causes of this terrible
catastrophe (as, I believe, everyone who is not asleep must do); we
can study the course of this catastrophe and, finally, the events
which have followed from it over large areas of the globe. One thing
must be clear to every soul that is really awake. Consider the
peculiar fact that this catastrophe of the world-war burst over
Central Europe, for example, actually without anyone knowing
how it all came about. This was indeed the case. People ask how it
arose, pronounce this or that person guilty — and then, when
they imagine they have laid the blame at somebody's door, repeat
again and again: Yet it cannot be like that; there must have been
some other factor at work.
People tell themselves
that a great social movement has developed out of the
catastrophe of the world war. Whether they belong to a party or
not they try to understand what ought to be done in the present
social catastrophe. Yet all the thoughts they form about it are only
“thought-mummies” in the face of current events —
thoughts that are powerless before the storm of events and quite
inadequate to their true character. And if we look more closely at
all this — especially now when all kinds of memoirs are being
published by persons who, apparently, were directly concerned in the
outbreak of the world-catastrophe — we have to ask
ourselves: Were these people really “within” the
events of four or five years ago? Did they really know what they were
doing? Had they any conception of the far-reaching consequences of
what their intellects had thought out? People ought more and more to
admit to themselves to-day what the Russian Minister Suchomlinoff
admitted at his trial. Speaking of the three or four hours in which
he made his most important decisions, he said: I must have lost my
reason then; I must, indeed, have been mad!
Such things are very
significant. They point to the wide-spread mental confusion among
those concerned. And one who is really in a position to see through
the terrible nature of present world-events, discovers what people
will come to see more and more, namely: that there was not so very
much moral failure, but all the more intellectual
blundering through sheer incapacity to grasp world-events.
It is just the same
to-day. How helpless, in the main, is the great majority of people in
the face of world-events that have come upon them. A most serious
question is presented here. What really lies at the base of all
this?
At the base of this
lies something which is extraordinarily difficult for our
materialistically-minded age to grasp, namely: that just since
the historical moment in which the wave of materialism rose
especially high, the strongest spiritual force that has ever willed
to enter human life from the spiritual world is now seeking to enter.
It is this that is characteristic of our age. Since the beginning of
the last, third of the 19th century the spirit — the spiritual
world — is willing to reveal itself to men in all strength; yet
men have gradually reached a point in their development when they are
only willing to use their physical bodies as instruments for
receiving anything at all in the world. Their materialistic outlook
has accustomed them to consider — even to maintain on
theoretical grounds that the physical body is the instrument of
thinking and, indeed, of feeling and willing too. Men have persuaded
themselves that the physical body is the instrument of all
spiritual life. They have not persuaded themselves of this
without grounds; they have good reason for this, namely: That man in
the course of his evolution had gradually come to be able to use only
the physical body. It had really come about that only the physical
body could be used as the instrument of spiritual
activity.
So we stand to-day at
the infinitely important juncture in human evolution where, on the
one hand, the spiritual world is willing to reveal itself with great
power, while, on the other, man must find the strength to free
himself from his greatest entanglement in what is material and come
to a new reception of spiritual revelations.
To-day man is
confronted by the greatest trial of his strength — his power to
work his way in freedom to the spirit which is approaching him of
itself, if he does not shut himself off from it. The time is past
when the spiritual could reveal itself to man in all sorts of
subconscious and unconscious processes. The time has come when man
must receive the light of the spirit through a free, inner
deed. All the confusion and want of clarity in which men are
living to-day come from the fact that men must receive
something that they do not yet want to receive: an entirely new
understanding of things.
The old ways of
thought, the old ways of regarding world-events, came to full
expression in the terrible catastrophe of the world-war. Its
infinitely significant warning signs are nothing but a call to
re-model our ways of thinking, to try a new way of regarding the
world, for the old way can only lead again and again to chaos and
confusion. It is time we realised this. It is time we realised that
the leading statesmen in 1914 had come to a point at which nothing
more could be achieved with the old methods of thought. Because of
this they led humanity into misfortune. People must impress this fact
strongly upon themselves, or they will not form a strong resolution
really to meet the spirit and the life of the spirit in freedom and
inwardness of soul.
The lamentable thing
about the time in which we are living is that we see things being
revealed everywhere which cannot be understood with previous points
of view and previous conceptions of life; yet people cling firmly to
these old points of view and conceptions of life and simply do
not want to come to new modes of conception. The anthroposophic view
of the world wanted to prepare mankind for such new modes.
Fundamentally, the anthroposophic view of the world had no real
opponents except inner comfort and laziness of soul. People cannot
rouse themselves to bring the inner forces of their souls to meet the
spiritual wave invading our life so powerfully to-day.
I have just said that
people are no longer accustomed to use anything but their physical
bodies for thinking. It is this that had led to the materialistic
view of the world. Now there is one thing that simply must be
understood to-day. Nature, as studied by natural science to-day
— that science which has achieved so many triumphs — can
be understood with the instrument of the physical brain or of the
physical body in general. But one cannot understand human life with
this instrument of the physical body. We can only understand human
life if we can rise to a thinking that is not produced by the
physical body alone. It is this thinking that should be
cultivated through the anthroposophic view of the world. Of course
people say they do not understand the anthroposophic outlook —
what is given in our books or presented in lectures. And we can quite
believe them. But what does this mean? It only means that they want
to se their physical brains for understanding. They do not want to
learn another kind of thinking than that which can lazily find
support in the physical brain. The anthroposophic view of the
world cannot, of course, be understood with such thinking. It is not
that one would have to be clairvoyant in order to understand it. But
one must train oneself to a thinking that is not bound to the
physical brain. What is to be found in anthroposophic literature and
can be acquired with the healthy human understanding —
for the healthy human understanding is not bound to the brain
— gradually develops a thinking, a feeling and a willing that
are adequate to the needs of to-day. It is a fact that what the
present requires of us cannot be understood by the instrument of the
physical body; it must be apprehended, through the instrument of the
etheric body, i.e., with the body of formative forces
underlying the physical body.
The spiritual world
which is striving to reveal itself to men, only finds expression in
their deeply unconscious feelings. Men are dominated by an
unconquerable fear of the spiritual world. When they say they do not
understand spiritual science this is really only an excuse. The truth
is, they are afraid of the revelations of the spiritual world. It is
only because they will not admit this fear that they say they do not
understand spiritual science, or that it is not logical — or
they make other excuses. In truth, they are afraid and therefore seek
all possible excuses in order to escape from the great problems. How
glad people are when they can escape the great tasks and riddles of
present day life! When one spoke, maybe from this or that angle, of
important problems of our age, people grew uncomfortable. Then
perhaps they went to see the plays of Ibsen in which some of the
great problems of the age find partial expression. But they did not
need to take these seriously; all that is “merely”
dramatic art. People grew uncomfortable when one spoke to them
directly of the penetration of the physical world by the spiritual.
Now Björnson had treated of this in his dramas, but one had no
need to believe it; it was “only” art. People felt an
unconquerable fear of taking these things seriously.
Again, class
differences became greater and greater, the gulf between the
governing and proletarian classes became wider and wider. The social
question produced riddles; one talked of these but felt uncomfortable
about them. Yet people went to the theatre to see Hauptmann's
“Weavers,” though they felt no need to take a serious
attitude to the problems it presented. One let oneself be stirred a
little by the abysmal depths in human life, but there was no need to
take it seriously, for it was “just” art. People took
refuge in something that they did not need to take seriously. This is
a phenomenon that is characteristic of the psychology of the age.
What lies behind this?
Behind this lies the
fact that men, in accordance with the will on the part of the
spiritual world to reveal itself to them, ought to have striven to
take seriously certain things which cannot be grasped through the
instrumentality of the physical body, but only through
“imaginative” forces — just as art itself can only
be grasped by “imaginative” forces. Man's physical
body is built up like a natural product; it is a work of nature.
Man's etheric body is built up like a work of art; it is a real work
of plastic art — only, it is in constant motion. And what man
receives (for his enjoyment) from understanding a work of art, must
be intensified and clarified, must become perception which he
takes seriously, i.e., “Imagination,”
“Inspiration” and “Intuition.” Man then
understands what is willing to reveal itself to him to-day. For
behind present events waits concealed what can only be understood
spiritually. One should feel deeply that the spiritual revelation
trying to enter our present world can only be grasped through
spiritual science itself i.e., through that thinking and
feeling, through those inner impulses of will which can be trained by
spiritual science and belong to the same region of soul as artistic
perceptions — though these are not taken seriously and remain
mere mirror-images.
At one time I tried to
draw attention to something that is urgently needed by the present
age. Naturally it was not understood because of the philistine
character of our science — that terrible monster of official,
academic science. My book
“Philosophie der Freiheit,”
[Translated into English as
‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.’
3rd Edition, publ. 1932.] which appeared
in 1892, contains a chapter entitled “Die Moralische
Phantasie” (Moral Imagination). In terms of Spiritual Science
one could say “imaginative moral impulses.” I
wanted to point out that the domain usually reached only in artistic
fantasy must now be grasped by mankind in all earnestness, for it
represents a stage that man must attain in order to receive the
super-sensible which cannot be grasped by the brain.
At the beginning of
the nineties I wanted to point out, at least in regard to man's moral
perceptions, that the super-sensible must now be grasped in all
earnestness. One should realise all this to-day; one should feel that
the thoughts, the inner impulses of soul that were carried over into
the catastrophe of the world-war and into the present period of
social upheaval are no longer of any use. We need new
“impulses” (or springs of action). If one comes to-day
with a new “impulse,” it is the last thing that people
understand. For if one brings a new “impulse,” whose
source is entirely within the spiritual world, and presents it as a
remedy for the evils of our age, complaints are heard on all sides,
from the extreme right to the extreme left, that it is all
incomprehensible. Of course one does not understand it if
one wants to retain the old forms of thinking. But to-day it is
necessary to overcome these old forms, re-modelling one's whole soul
inwardly. All external revolutions, no matter how agreeable to this
or that party or class, lead into the worst of blind alleys and will
bring the greatest misery to mankind if not illuminated by the inner
revolution of the soul. This means throwing off one's absorption in
the purely materialistic view of the world and preparing actively to
receive the spiritual wave that is willing to invade human evolution
as a new revelation. The revolution from matter to spirit is
the only salutary revolution; all others are only like diseases of
childhood — scarlet-fever or measles — afflicting the
early stages of what is trying to come to healthy expression in the
emergence of the spirit at the present time.
A strong inner
resolution is necessary to-day if we are to be equal to the demands
made upon us by our present age. Let us consider in all earnestness
that it is a spiritual world that is trying to invade our life.
Spiritual forces are there and we should make our decisions, our
deeds, our whole thinking dependent on them. This is demanded of us
to-day! Much is changing in the present time. Let me point to
something symptomatic which also sounds strange when spoken of,
but appears of the greatest importance when viewed
spiritually.
I have just spoken to
you of the etheric body as a necessary instrument for a certain
spiritual understanding of what in art need only remain a
mirror-image. Now we know from Spiritual Science that in addition to
the physical body and “etheric body” we possess an
“astral body” — or whatever you like to call it. It
is the psychic element proper and is essentially more spiritual than
the “etheric body.” At the time of his physical
development man was naturally more “remote” from this
than from his “etheric body.” For the “etheric
body,” underlying, as it does, the physical body, has a kind of
“form” [Bildgestalt] even though it is a
“form” in constant motion. The “astral body,”
however, is really formless. When we speak of it, we are speaking of
an “image” or “picture” which, we know, is
only intended to “represent” the “astral
body,” for this is really formless. The “astral
body” has been changing during the last three to four centuries
and is very different in modern man. The human beings of the past had
“astral bodies” that were, comparatively speaking,
permeated with all kinds of spiritual forces; the spiritual feelings
and impulses at work in their lives were due to this spiritual
element in their “astral bodies.” To-day our
“astral bodies” have becomeempty. They are remarkably
empty, and this is because, at the present time, when the power of
the spiritual world is striving to reveal itself from without (to a
certain extent), man is to receive this external spiritual world.
Hence his “astral body” has gradually become empty. He
ought to fill himself again with what is revealing itself from
without. This has a quite definite effect on man. And now I am coming
to a fact which, as I have already said, sounds so very strange when
one speaks of it just as strange as when one speaks of the child's
melancholy countenance. Nevertheless it is a fact.
The most important
event in the series that led to the outbreak of the catastrophe of
the world-war fell — so far as Berlin was concerned — on
the 1st [of] August, at some time between a quarter past three in the
afternoon and eleven or twelve o'clock at night. Various people were
concerned — people belonging, of course, to our materialistic
age. Now for the materialistically-minded man of to-day that is the
most unfavourable time for making decisions. For we have come to a
very, very important point in human evolution. The man of
to-day cannot form sensible decisions at all if he does not wake up
with them in the morning. This is true, however strange it may sound,
and men will recognise it more and more from external acts. It is not
necessary that we should be conscious of these decisions; in our
sub-consciousness we live through in the night what we can
experience on the following day. Man has not yet got so far as to be
able to survey it prophetically, but that is not the point. If you
harbour a thought at 3:30 or 6 o'clock, it may be a thought that you
have already had in the night and now arises in you again. If,
however, a thought arises that you have not already formed in the
night but which is produced from out of the events of the day, it
cannot be a reasonable thought in the case of the man of to-day. The
man of to-day has to draw his most important impulses from the
spiritual world. These do not come from the physical world at all.
To-day we cannot but be “unreasonable” if we do not
bring our decisions with us, if we do not appeal to this life in the
spiritual world. When our “astral body” is free at night,
i.e., outside the physical and “etheric” bodies
and together with the spiritual world, that which is most essential
takes place; it is prepared for the Reason of the day (and more so
than in the case of our ancestors). The moment of waking should be
sacred for the modern man. He should feel: I come from the spiritual
world and enter the physical; all that is good, all that makes me
capable of being a reasonable man, I have experienced between falling
asleep and waking up, through intercourse with the spiritual world,
through intercourse with the dead I have known in life and who have
died before me — in short, through intercourse with those who
are no longer in a physical body. I experience it when I am with them
in the purely spiritual world. From this experience I ought to draw
the fundamental mood of sacred regard for the moment of waking; this
fundamental feeling will then make it possible for me throughout the
day to say in one case “Here I am helped by a spiritual
impulse” and in another case “Here I receive no help;
this must not be decided before to-morrow.”
That is a way of
conducting one's life spiritually, really reckoning with spiritual
factors. Of course, in a materialistic age men do not reckon with
spiritual factors for they are always so “clever.” They
believe that nothing more than the instrument of the physical body is
required in order to be clever. They do not appeal to what can be
revealed to them when they are separated from their physical body and
are together with the spiritual world in their “astral
body.” Nothing but the will to conduct life spiritually, the
will to allow spiritual decisions, spiritual impulses, to play a part
in what we do in the physical world can make humanity healthy
again.
This is what man
should really consider thoroughly to-day. The anthroposophic view of
the world cannot consist in a number of abstract concepts which we
receive, studying them and resting content that we have a
different view of the world from that of others. No; our whole
thinking and our whole feeling must become different, so that we
realise that we must let our life be penetrated by the light of
the spirit. Humanity's present misfortunes have come from its refusal
to entertain the spiritual — an attitude that has been
cultivated to the utmost. The catastrophe of the world-war has, more
than any previous event, arisen from external, purely material
causes. It has therefore been the most terrible catastrophe of all.
Man should learn from it that he was driven into it by his previous
thinking, feeling and willing; he will not come out of it —
though it will assume other forms — until he boldly determines
to undertake the inner transformation of his soul.
The facts which I have
put before you are indeed facts: the melancholy expression on the
faces of children, the necessity of using our etheric body for
gaining an understanding of the world, and the necessity of
appealing to the moment of waking, to what remains of the previous
sleep and glows on, as it were, in us.. It will be more and more
necessary for man's future evolution that he should let the spirit
play an active part.
One should understand
that the anthroposophic view of the world is not intended as
something sensational for “psychic idlers” — and
many of our present day mystics are just that. One should see in it
not a kind of dessert supplementing life's external, physical
enjoyments, but something connected with the deepest impulses of our
cultural life. The latter cannot become healthy unless fructified by
the anthroposophic view of the world. We should engrave this
fact deeply upon our souls when we have learnt to know this
anthroposophic view.
With the above words I
wanted to describe, from a certain point of view, the present
decisive moment in human evolution. Of course it is quite easy, if we
judge with the thoughts of the age, to condemn as mere foolishness
the important things that are most in need of being said to-day.
People believe themselves Christians but have not even understood the
saying that what is wisdom with man is often foolishness unto God,
and that all foolishness — perhaps folly and madness —
before men can yet be wisdom unto God. Indeed, people to-day forget
so easily the inner impulses and like to cling to the empty phrase.
When one speaks to men to-day and utters the word
“Christian” or “Christ” or
“Jesus” after every fifth word, one is considered to be
speaking in a Christian sense, even if what one is saying may be very
unchristian. But if we hold we are making known what the Christ is
revealing to our souls to-day, and if in doing so we take
account of the commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of
the Lord thy God in vain” — a saying that has been
carried over into Christianity — people find it unchristian.
They repeat, in parrot fashion, the Ten Commandments, but take the
name of their God in vain every moment and believe themselves to be
specially Christian in consequence. So, too, one is not
regarded as a true German if one has not always the word
“German” on one's lips; though to-day the important thing
is to see that the deepest forces of the German people have been, as
it were, trampled under foot during the last thirty years and must be
raised again by a spiritual deepening. We look to the West and find a
civilization that strives to become completely materialistic, though
it has, at least, a certain inner surety of instinct and on this
account cannot completely drown in materialism. We look to the East
and find a cultural life that despises the West and us too, for the
Eastern culture still clings to an ancient spirituality and is
renewing it in a certain way. We stand between these and are called
to find the right path between Western materialism, and Eastern
spirituality (which is not suitable for us). We in Central Europe
should become conscious of our great responsibility and conscious,
too, how much our sense of responsibility for this position has been
lost in the last decades. What has our spiritual life become? An
appendage to the political life and to the economic life. The state
as trustee of the spiritual [cultural] life, especially of education,
has destroyed the spiritual life. The economic life on which we
depend for our daily bread has further destroyed us. We require a
free spiritual life, for only into such can we introduce that
which the spiritual world would reveal to mankind. This stream of
spiritual life must descend! But it will never reveal itself
to the servant of the state, the state professor; and it will never
reveal itself to one who, in the spiritual life, is the coolie of the
economic life. It will only reveal itself to him who has daily to
struggle with the spiritual life and stands within the free life of
the spirit. Our age requires the life of the spirit to be set free
from the shackles of the state and of economics.
These things which are
being made known to-day in another form through our “Threefold
State” proposals, are the Christianity of to-day; they are,
spiritual revelations clothed in external forms. They are what men
need; they alone offer men a real basis and a real possibility for
learning anew to transform their thinking. It is this that is so
necessary for mankind to-day. We have had to wage war with a country
that possesses an instinctive political life of great perfection and
has long possessed many colonies with which it has industrial ties.
We have fought as a country with an industrialism that was only
developing and which wanted to possess colonies. For these strivings
we required “spirit” [Geist] — and no one had
committed the sin against the Spirit more than those who took a
leading part in the economic life of Germany during the last three
decades. For their programme was: rejection of the spiritual life,
surrender to mere chance, blind chance. It is as if the World Spirit
had wished to give the German people the greatest lesson by imposing
the greatest test. This nation was to be shown the Spirit cannot be
ignored. But it appears as if this is being learnt with difficulty,
for this nation is still inclined to condemn everything else rather
than lack of consciousness of responsibility towards the spirit. The
lamentable events occurring in this domain to-day show that men's
souls are still asleep. There is a total lack of conscious
realisation how ill-fitted for their task are the men who guide the
destiny of the German people and have to represent it before the
West. There is simply no realisation that the whole
delegation, to Versailles is senseless because of the men
taking part. The will not to see events as they are is still a
witness to the fact that men's souls are asleep; otherwise they would
have said long ago: The delegates to Versailles whom we have sent are
as unfitted as possible to understand the present moment of world
history. One will only judge these things correctly when one becomes
conscious of responsibility towards the spirit — when one
recognises that we are living in a very important moment of the
world's history and that it is our duty to take things very
seriously. In certain fields there is much talk about this, that and
the other, and it is more comfortable to say: those who hold the
responsible positions will manage somehow. But nothing good can come
if those who hold responsible positions to-day still harbour the old
thoughts. Whether they be old-fashioned aristocrats, or decadent
aristocrats, or Marxian Socialists who know nothing about the world
but, at most, have absorbed something of Marx' “Kapital”
— whoever they be nothing good can come if they do not develop
the will to turn their souls from the old to new thoughts. The
revolution of the 9th [of] November, 1918, was no revolution, for
what has changed is only the external stucco. But what is trying to
change can be seen most clearly in those who now wear the outward
stucco instead of those who wore it previously. It is necessary to
see what lies at the base of all this. But thoughts are
necessary, and for these one must have the will; and this will can
only come when trained through active intercourse with the
spiritual world. On this account active intercourse with the
spiritual world is the sole real balsam that humanity
needs.
This is what I wanted
to put before you in a form in which it must appear to one to-day in
face of contemporary events. I wanted, as the opportunity was given
us to speak together again, to put this before your souls so that
ever more and more and in ever wider and wider circles within our
Anthroposophic Movement a striving might arise which can not only
give the single individual an inner feeling of comfort but can bear
fruits for the cultural life of the whole of humanity.
It is a deep
satisfaction to me to see how many more friends of our Anthroposophic
Movement are present to-day than a year ago. May the Spirit now
quickening the development of the world and of humanity bring it
about that in another year there may be as great, or even a much
greater, increase in our numbers. For the more human souls there are
who become convinced by this Spirit of the need for the new thinking,
feeling and willing, and for a new sense of responsibility, the
better it will be.
Printed in Great Britain by
Henderson and Spalding Ltd London S E 15
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