COSMOGONY. FREEDOM. ALTRUISM
Three Lectures on
THE THREEFOLD SOCIAL ORDER
by
Dr. Rudolf Steiner
Lecture 1
Dornach, October 10th, 1919
I
want during the next few evenings to talk to you about various
things in connection with our present civilisation, things
which are necessary to right understanding and action in the
world to-day. It is not very difficult — in view of the
many facts that meet one almost at every turn — to
perceive signs of decline within our civilisation, and that it
contains forces that make for its downfall. Recognising these
forces of decline and fall within our civilisation, we have
then to seek out the quarters from which it may draw fresh
sources of new strength. If we survey our present civilisation
we shall see that there are present in it three main downward
forces, — three forces which gradually and inevitably
must bring about its overthrow. All the distressing phenomena
which we have hitherto experienced in the course of man's
evolution, and all those that we have still to go through,
— for in many respects we are only just at the beginning,
— are all only so many symptoms of a vast process going
on in our age, which, taken as a whole, presents a phenomenon
of decline and fall.
If
we look beyond our own immediate civilisation, beyond what has
taken place in our own times merely, or during the last three
or four hundred years, — if we take a wide survey of the
whole course of man's evolution we may observe that earlier
ages had a groundwork for their civilisation, a foundation for
the habits and thoughts of everyday life, such as we to-day
only believe ourselves to have. These old civilisations,
especially the heathen civilisations, had something of a
scientific character about them, a scientific character of a
sort which made men realise that what lived within their own
souls was part of the life of the whole universe. Just think
what a vivid conception the Greeks still possessed of worlds
extending beyond the bounds of everyday existence, of a world
of gods and spirits behind the world of sense. One has but to
recall how great a part was played in everyday life by whatever
could form any sort of link between the people of those older
civilisations and a spiritual world to which they were no
strangers. In all their daily transactions, these men of the
old civilisations were conscious of forming part of a creation
that was not exhausted within the limits of the everyday world,
but where spiritual beings made their activities felt. The
commonest everyday affairs were carried on under the guidance
of spiritual forces. Thus, in the heathen civilisations
especially, we find when we look back on them, a dominant
scientific character, which is best described by saying: in
those days people — we can put it in that way —
people had a COSMOGONY; that is, they recognised themselves to
be members of the whole universe. They knew that they were not
merely beings that had gone astray and were wandering about
over the face of the green earth like lost sheep, but that they
were part and parcel of the whole wide universe, and had their
own functions in the universe as a whole. The men of old days
possessed a COSMOGONY.
Our
civilisation possesses no instinct for the creation of a
cosmogony in real life. Our mode of conception is not, in the
strict sense of the term, a genuinely scientific one. We have
tabulated isolated facts and have constructed a logical system
of concepts, but we have not got a real science, forming a
practical link between us and the spiritual world. How paltry
is the part played by the science of our day in common life,
compared with what a man of old felt pulsing through him from
forces of the spiritual world! In all his actions, he had a
cosmogony; he knew himself a member of the whole vast universe.
When he looked up at the sun and the moon and the stars, they
were not to him strange worlds; for he knew himself, in his own
deepest nature, akin to the sun and moon and world of stars.
Thus, the old civilisation possessed a Cosmogony; but for our
civilisation this cosmogony is lost. Without a cosmogony in
life, man cannot be strong. — That is one thing, —
what I might call the scientific element, — that is
bringing about the downfall of our civilisation.
Another, the second element that is bringing about its
downfall, is that there is no true impulse for FREEDOM. Our
civilisation lacks the power to ground life upon a broad basis
of general freedom. Only very few people in our day arrive at
any real conception of freedom. There are plenty who talk about
it; but very few to-day arrive at any real conception of what
freedom really is, and fewer still have any real impulse for
it. And so, it comes, that our civilisation is gradually
sinking into something where it can find neither strength nor
support — into fatalism. Either we have religious
fatalism, in which men yield themselves up to religious forces
of some sort or another, make these religious forces their
master, and ask nothing better than to be pulled about by
strings, like puppets at a show; or else we have the fatalism
of natural science. And the effects of such scientific fatalism
are seen in the way people have come to regard everything that
happens as happening by natural necessity, or by economic
necessity, and as leaving no scope for free action on the part
of man. When men feel themselves fettered to the world of
economics or the world of nature, that is, to all intents and
purposes, fatalism. Or else, again, we have that fatalism which
has come in with the more modern forms of religious faith,
— a fatalism that deliberately precludes freedom. Just
ask yourselves how many hearts and souls there are to-day that
consciously yearn to yield themselves up, for Christ, or a
spiritual power of some kind, to do what he pleases with them.
Why, it is even an accusation that one frequently hears made
against Anthroposophy, that it lays too little stress on men
being redeemed by Christ and not by themselves. People prefer
to be led; they prefer to be guided; they would really prefer
fatalism to be true. How often lately, in these troublous
[troubled?] years, has one not heard that kind of talk from one
person or another. They would say: “Why doesn't God, why
doesn't Christ, come to the help of this or that set of people?
There must, after all, be a divine justice somewhere!”
People would like this divine Justice ... They would like to
have it suspended aloft as a fate. They do not want to
get to that ingrained innate strength which comes from the
impulse of Freedom and permeates the whole being. A
civilisation that does not know how to foster the impulse of
Freedom weakens men and dooms itself to downfall.
That is the second thing. Of the forces that are bringing about
the decline of our civilisation, the first is the lack of a
COSMOGONY, and the second is the lack of a genuine impulse for
FREEDOM.
The
third is that our civilisation is incapable of evolving
anything that can give fresh fire to religious feeling and
purpose. Our civilisation, in truth, aims at nothing more than
nursing the old religions and fanning their cold ashes. But to
bring new religious impulses into life, — for that our
civilisation lacks the strength. And lacking this, it lacks
also the strength for true altruistic action in life. That is
why all the processes of our civilisation are so egoistic,
because it has within itself no real, no strong, altruistic
motive-power. There is nothing, friends, that can supply
altruistic motive-power, but a spiritual view of life. Only
when a man comes to recognise himself as a member of the
spiritual world, does he cease to be so tremendously interested
in himself that the whole world revolves round him. When he
does, — then, indeed, egoistic motives cease and
altruistic ones set in. Our age, however, is little given to
cultivating so great an interest in the spiritual world. The
interest in the spiritual world has got to be a good deal
further developed before people really feel themselves members
of it.
And
so, one might say that it was like impulses given from on high
that REINCARNATION and KARMA came amongst us and into our
civilisation. But how were these impulses interpreted? At
bottom it was in a very egoistic way that these ideas of
Reincarnation and Karma were understood, even by those who took
them up. For instance, they would say: “Oh, well! In some
life or other everyone has deserved what he gets.” Even
otherwise quite intelligent people have been known to say that
the ideas of Reincarnation and Karma of themselves sufficiently
warranted the existence of human suffering. There was at bottom
no justification for the social question, — so said many
otherwise intelligent people, — for, if a man was poor,
it was what he had earned in his previous incarnation, and he
has to work off in this incarnation only what he deserved from
a previous one. Even the ideas of reincarnation and karma are
unable to permeate our civilisation in any way except one which
gives no stimulus to the altruistic sense. It is not enough for
us merely to introduce ideas such as those of
reincarnation and Karma, — the question is, in what
way we introduce them. If they become merely an incentive
to egoism, then they do not raise up our civilised life, they
only serve to sink it lower.
There is another way, again, in which reincarnation and karma
become unethical, anti-ethical, ideas; many people say:
“I must be good, so that I may have a good incarnation
next time.” To act from such a motive, to be virtuous in
order that one may have as pleasant a time as possible in one's
next incarnation, — this is not mere simple egoism, it is
double egoism; yet this double egoism is what many people did
actually get out of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. So
that one may say that our civilisation possesses so little of
any altruistic religious impulse that it is incapable of
conceiving even such ideas as those of reincarnation and karma
in the sense that would make them a stimulus to altruistic, not
to egoistic actions and sentiments.
Those are the three things which are acting within our
civilisation as forces of decline and fall: — lack of a
COSMOGONY, lack of a sound foundation of FREEDOM, lack of an
ALTRUISTIC SENSE. But without a cosmogony there is no real
science or system of knowledge, there is no real knowledge;
then all knowledge ultimately becomes a mere game, in which all
the worlds and the civilisation of man are toys. And this is
what knowledge has, in many respects, become in our age,
— in so far as it is not merely a utilitarian incident of
external culture, of external technical culture. Freedom has
become in many respects in our age an empty phrase, because the
force of our civilisation is not that which lays a large
foundation of freedom nor spreads abroad the impulse of
freedom. Neither have we in the economic field the possibility
of progressing further in the social direction, because our
civilisation contains no altruistic motive-force, but only
egoistic, that means anti-social motive-forces, — and one
cannot socialise with antisocial forces. For socialising
means creating a social framework such that each man
lives and works for the rest. But just imagine in our present
civilisation each man trying to live and work for the rest!
Why, the whole order of society is so instituted that each one
can only live and work for himself. All our institutions are
like that.
The
question then arises: — How are we going to surmount
these signs of our civilisation's decline and fall? To plaster
over such signs of decline in our civilisation, my dear
friends, is quite impossible. There is nothing for it but to
recognise the facts as they have just been stated, to regard
them dispassionately and without reservations, and to harbour
no illusions. One must say to oneself: There they are, these
forces of decline and fall, and one must not imagine that one
can in any way turn them in another direction, or anything of
that sort. No, they are very powerful forces of decline, and it
is necessary to give them their proper name, and to speak of
them as we are doing now. This being so, what we have got to do
is to turn to where forces can be found for the re-ascent. That
is not to be done by theorising, People in the present day may
invent the most beautiful theories, may have the most beautiful
principles, but with theories one can do nothing. To do
anything in life, it must be by means of the forces that are
actually present in the world; and one must summon them up. If
our civilisation were through and through as I have been
describing it, — I mean, if it were like that through and
through, — then there would be nothing for it but to say
to ourselves: “There is nothing for it, but just to let
our civilisation go to pieces, and ourselves go to pieces along
with it.” For to attempt in any way to redress the signs
of the times by mere theories or conceptions would be an utter
absurdity.
One
can but ask: — Does not the root of the matter perhaps
lie really deeper? It does lie deeper; and in this way: —
People to-day — and I have here often pointed out the
same thing from different aspects, — people to-day are
too much bent upon the absolute. When they ask: “What is
true?” they mean, “What Is true absolutely?”
— not what is true of a particular age. When they ask,
“What is good?” they are asking, “What is
good absolutely?” They are not asking, “What
is good for Europe? What is good for Asia? What is good for the
20th century? What is good for the 25th century?” They
are asking about absolute Goodness and Truth. They are
not asking about what actually exists in the concrete evolution
of mankind. We must put the question to ourselves in a
different way, for we must look at the actuality of things, and
from the point of view of actuality; questions must be
differently put, very often so put that the answers seem
paradoxical compared with what one is inclined to assume from a
surface view of things. We must ask ourselves: Is there no
possibility of arriving once more at a mode of conception which
is cosmogonical, which takes in the universe as a whole? Is
there no possibility of arriving at an impulse of freedom which
shall be an actual influence in social life? Is there no
possibility for an impulse which shall be religious and at the
same time an impulse of brotherhood, and therefore the real
basis for an economic social order? Is there no possibility^ of
arriving at such an impulse? And if we put these questions
before us from a real aspect, then we get real answers. For the
point, we have here to remember is this: that the various types
of people on the earth to-day are not all adapted to the whole
all-comprehensive universal truth, but that the various types
of men are only adapted to particular fields of the true
activity. We must ask ourselves; Where in the life of earth
to-day may there, perhaps, exist the possibility for a
cosmogony to evolve? Where does the possibility exist for a
sweeping impulse of freedom to evolve? And where does the
impulse exist for a communal life among men, which is religious
and also, in a social sense, brotherly?
We
will take the last question first; and if we contemplate the
state of affairs on our earth impartially, we shall come to the
conclusion that the temperament, the mode of thought for an
actual brotherly impulse upon our earth is to be sought amongst
the Asiatic peoples, the peoples of Asia, especially in the
civilisations of Japan and India. Despite the fact that these
civilisations are already fallen into decadence, and despite
the fact that external, superficial appearances are against it,
we find there enshrined in men's hearts those impulses of
generous love towards all living things, which alone can supply
foundations for religious altruism in the first place, and, in
the second, for an actual, altruistic, industrial form of
civilisation.
But
here we are met by a peculiar fact: that the Asiatics have, it
is true, the temperament for altruism, but that they have not
got the kind of human existence which would enable them to
carry their altruism into practice; they have merely got the
temperament but they have no possibility, no gift, for creating
social conditions in which altruism could begin to be
externally realised. For thousands of years the Asiatics have
managed to nurse the instincts of altruism in human nature. And
yet they brought this to a state in which China and India were
devastated by monster famines. That is the peculiar thing about
the Asiatic civilisation, that the temperament is there, and
that this temperament is inwardly perfectly sincere, but
that there exists no gift for realising this temperament in
outward life. That is just the peculiar thing about this
Asiatic civilisation, that it contains a tremendously strong
instinct for altruism in men's inward nature, yet no
possibility for the moment of realising 4t externally. On the
contrary, if Asia were left to herself alone, this very fact,
that she has this capacity for paying the inward basis of
altruism, without any gift for realising it outwardly, would
turn Asia into an appalling desert of civilisation.
We
may say, then, that of these three things: the impulse for
COSMOGONY, the impulse for FREEDOM, the impulse for ALTRUISM,
Asia possesses more especially the inward temperament for the
third. It is, however, but one third of -what is necessary to
bring our civilisation into the ascendant, which Asia
possesses, — the inward temperament for altruism.
What has Europe got? Well, Europe has got the utmost necessity
for solving the social question; but she has not got the
temperament for the social question. To solve the social
question, she would need to have the Asiatic temperament. The
social necessities of Europe are such as to supply all the
conditions requisite for a solution of the social
question; but the Europeans would first need to become
permeated through and through with the way of thought which is
natural to the Asiatic, only the Asiatic has no gift for
actually perceiving social needs as they exist externally.
Often, indeed, he even acquiesces in them. In Europe, there is
every external incentive to do something about the social
question, but the temperament is lacking. On the other hand,
there is in Europe, in the very strongest degree, the talent,
the ability which would provide the soil for Freedom, —
for the impulse of freedom. The strong point of European
talents, specifically European talents, lies in developing in
the very highest degree the inner sentiment, the inner feeling
for freedom. One might say that the gift for getting to a real
idea of Freedom is specifically European; but among these
Europeans there are no people who act freely, who could make
freedom a reality. Of Freedom as an idea, the Europeans can
form the loftiest conception. But just as the Asiatic would be
able to set about doing something, if he possessed the clear
thought of the Europeans without their other failings, if he
could only get the clear-out European idea of Freedom, so the
European can evolve the most beautiful conception of Freedom,
but there is no possibility, politically, of realising this
idea of freedom through the direct agency of the European
peoples, for, of the three essentials to civilisation, —
the impulse for altruism, the impulse for freedom, the impulse
for cosmogony, — the European possesses only one-third,
the impulse for Freedom. The other two he has not got.
So,
the European also has only got one-third of what is necessary
in order really to bring forth a new age. It is very important
that people should at last recognise these things as being the
secrets of our civilisation. In Europe we can, at least, say
that we have all the conditions of thought and feeling
requisite for knowing what freedom is, but, without something
more, there is no possibility for us to actualise this freedom.
I can assure you, for instance, that in Germany the most
beautiful things were written by various individuals about
freedom, at the time when all Germany was groaning under the
tyranny of Ludendorff and Co. Most beautiful things were
written about freedom at the time. Here in Europe, a talent
undoubtedly exists for conceiving the impulse of freedom. That
is one-third, so far, towards the actual upraising of our
civilisation, — one-third, not the whole.
Leaving Europe and going westwards — and I take Great
Britain and America together in this connection, —
passing, then, to the Anglo-American world, we find there
again, one-third of the impulses, just one out of the three
impulses necessary to the upraising of our civilisation, and
that is, the impulse towards a cosmogony. Anyone acquainted
with the spiritual life of the Anglo-American world knows that,
formalistic as Anglo-American spiritual life is in the first
instance, that, materialistic as it is in the first instance,
and though, indeed, it even tries to get what is spiritual in a
materialistic fashion, yet it has got in it the makings of a
cosmogony. Although this cosmogony is to-day being sought along
altogether erroneous paths, yet it lies in Anglo-American
nature to seek for it. Again, a third, the search for a
cosmogony. But there the possibility of bringing this cosmogony
into connection with free altruistic man does not exist. There
is the talent for treating this cosmogony as an ornamental
appendage, for working it out and giving it shape; but no
talent for incorporating the human being in this cosmogony as a
member of it. Even the spiritualist movement, in its early
beginnings in the middle of the 19th century, of which it still
preserves some traces, had, one may say, something of a
cosmogony about it, although it led into the wilderness. What
they were trying to get at were the forces that lay behind the
sense-forces; only they took a materialistic road, a
materialistic method, to find them. But they were not
endeavouring through these means to arrive at a science of the
formalist kind that you get, for instance, among the Europeans;
they were trying to become acquainted with the real actual
super-sensual forces. Only, as I said, they took a wrong road,
what is still known as the “American” way. So here,
again, we have one-third of what will have to be there before
our civilisation can really rise again.
One
cannot to-day arrive at the secrets of our civilisation, my
dear friends, unless one can distinguish how these three
impulses needed for its rise are distributed among the
different parts of our earth's surface; unless one knows that
the tendency towards Cosmogony is an endowment of the
Anglo-American world, that the tendency towards Freedom lies in
the European world, whilst the tendency towards Altruism and
towards that temperament which, properly realised, leads to
socialism is, strictly speaking, peculiar to Asiatic
culture. America, Europe, Asia, each has one- third of what
must be attained for any true regeneration, any real
reconstruction of our civilisation.
These are the fundamental ideas which must inspire thought and
feeling to-day for anyone who is in earnest and sincere about
working for a reconstruction of our civilisation. One cannot
to-day shut oneself up in one's study and ponder over which is
the best programme for the coming times. One has got to-day to
go out into the world and search out the impulses already
existing there. As I said, if one looks at our civilisation and
at all that is hurrying it to its fall, one cannot avoid an
impression that it is impossible to save it. And it cannot be
saved unless people come to see that one thing is to he found
amongst one people, and the second amongst another, the third
amongst a third, — unless people all over the earth come
together and set to work on big lines to give practical
recognition to what none of them, singly, can of himself
achieve, in the absolute sense, but which must be achieved by
that one who is marked out, so to speak, by destiny for that
particular work. If the American to-day, besides a cosmogony,
wants also to evolve freedom and socialism, he cannot do it. If
to-day the European, besides founding the impulse for freedom,
wants to supply cosmogony and altruism, he cannot do it. No
more can the Asiatic realise anything save his long- engrained
altruism. Let this altruism be once taken over by the other
groups of the earth's inhabitants, and saturated with that for
which each has a special talent, then, and then only, we shall
really get on.
We
have got once for all to admit to ourselves that our
civilisation has grown feeble, and must again find strength. I
have expressed this in a rather abstract way, and to make it
more concrete will put it as follows: — The old
pre-Christian civilisations of the East produced, as you
know, great cities. Great cities existed in them. We can look
back over a wide spread range of civilisations in the East,
which all produced great cities. But the great cities they
produced had, as well, a certain character about them. All the
civilisations of the East had this speciality for creating,
along with the life of great cities, the conception that, after
all, man's life is a void, a nothing, unless he penetrates
beyond the merely physical into the super-physical. And so,
great cities such as Babylon, Nineveh, and the rest, were able
to develop a real growth, because men were not led by these
cities to regard what the cities themselves brought forth as
being itself the actual reality, but, rather, what is behind it
all. It was in Rome that people came to make the civilisation
of cities a gauge of what was to be regarded as real. The Greek
cities are inconceivable without the country round them. If
history, as we have it, were not such a conventional fiction,
— a “fable convenue,” — and would only
revive past times in their time aspect, it would show us the
Greek cities rooted in the country. But Rome no longer had her
roots in the country. Indeed, the whole history of Rome
consists in the conversion of an imaginary world into a real
world, the conversion of a world which is unreal into one which
is real. It was in Rome that the Citizen was first invented,
— that ghastly mock-figure alongside the living being,
Man. For man is a human being; and if he is a citizen besides,
that is a fiction. His being a citizen is something that is
entered in the church register, or the town register, or
somewhere of the sort. That besides being a human being,
endowed with particular faculties, he is also the owner of
assessed property, duly entered in the land register, —
that is a fiction alongside the reality. That is
thoroughly Roman thought. But Rome achieved a great deal
more than that. Rome managed to take all that results from the
separation of the town from the country, — the real,
actual country, — and to give it a fictitious reality.
Rome, for instance, took the old religious concepts and
introduced into them the Roman legal concepts. If we go back to
the old religious concepts with an open mind, we do not find
the Roman legal concepts contained in the old religious ones.
Roman jurisprudence simply invaded religious ethics. All
through religious ethics, thanks to what Rome has made of them,
there is, at bottom, a notion of the supersensible world as of
a place with judges sitting, passing judgment on human actions,
just as they do on the Benches of our law-courts, that are
modelled on the Roman pattern.
Yes, so persistent is the influence of these Roman legal
concepts, that when there is any talk of Karma, one actually
finds that the majority of people to-day who accept the
doctrine of Karma picture it working, as though Justice were
sitting over there beyond, meting out rewards and
punishments according to our earthly notions, a reward for a
good deed, and a punishment for a bad one, — exactly the
Roman conception of law. All the saints and supernatural
beings exist after the fashion of these Roman legal concepts
which have crept into the supernatural world.
Who
to-day, for instance, comprehends the grand idea of the Greek
“Fate”? The concepts of Roman jurisprudence do not
help us much to-day, do they, towards the understanding of the
“Oedipus.” Indeed, men seem altogether to have lost
the capacity for comprehending tragic grandeur, owing to
the influence of Roman legal concepts. And these Roman legal
concepts have crept into our modern civilisation; they
live in every part of it; they have become in their very
essence a fictitious reality, something imaginary, — not
something one imagines, but something that is imaginary. It is
absolutely necessary for us clearly to see that, in our whole
way of conceiving things, we have lost touch with reality, and
that what we need is to impregnate our conceptions afresh with
reality. It is because men's concepts are, at bottom, hollow,
that our civilisation still remains unconscious of the need for
the common co-operation of men all over the round earth. We are
never really willing to go to the root of what is taking place
under our eyes; we are always more or less anxious to keep on
the surface of things. Just to give you another example of
this. You know how in the various parliaments throughout the
world in former days, — say, the first half of the 16th
century, or a little later, — party tendencies took shape
in two definite directions, the one Conservative the other
Liberal, — which for a long time enjoyed considerable
respect. The various other parties that have come up since were
later accessions to these two main original ones. There was the
party of a conservative tendency, and the party of a liberal
tendency. But, my dear friends, it is so very necessary that
one should nowadays get beyond the words to the real thing
behind, and there are many matters about which one must ask,
not what people, who stand for a certain thing, say about it,
but what is going on subconsciously within the people
themselves. If you do so, you will find that the people who
attach themselves to one or other of the parties of a
conservative tone are people who in some way are chiefly
connected with agrarian interests, with the care of land and
cultivation of the soil; that is to say, with the primal
element of human civilisation. In some way or other this will
be the ease. Of course, on the surface, there may be all sorts
of other circumstances entering in as well. I do not say that
every conservative is necessarily directly connected with
agriculture. Of course there is here, as everywhere else, a
fringe of people who adhere to the catchwords of a cause. It is
the main feature that one has to consider; and the main feature
is that that part of the population which has an interest in
preserving certain forms of social structure and in keeping
things from moving too fast, is agrarian.
On
the other hand, the more industrial element, drawn from labour
that has been detached from the soil, is liberal, progressive.
So that these two-party tendencies have their source in
something that lies deeper; and one must, in every case, try to
lift such things out of the mere phrases into which they have
fallen, — to get through the words to the real thing
behind them.
But
ultimately, it all tells the same tale, — that the form
of civilisation in which we have been living is one whose
strength lies in words. We must push forward to a civilisation
built upon real things, to a civilisation of real things. We
must cease to be imposed upon by phrases, by programmes, by
verbal ideals, and must get to the clear perception of
realities. Above all, we must get to a clear perception of
realities of a kind that lie deeper than forms of civilisation
in city or country, agricultural or industrial. And much deeper
than these are those impulses which to-day are at work in the
various members of the body human distributed over the
globe, — of which the American is making towards
Cosmogony, the European towards Freedom, and the Asiatic
towards Socialism.
At
present, this certainly comes out, has and does come out, in a
curious way. Anglo-American civilisation is conquering the
world, But, in conquering the world, it will need to absorb
what the conquered parts of the world have to give; the impulse
to Freedom and the impulse to Altruism; for in itself it has
only the impulse to Cosmogony. Indeed, Anglo-American
civilisation owes its success to a cosmogonic impulse. It owes
it to the circumstance that people are able to think in
world-thoughts. We have often and often talked about this
during the war, and how the successes of that side proceeded
from supersensible impulses of a particular kind, which the
others refused to recognise. The cosmogonic element cannot and
must not be left thus isolated; it must be permeated from the
domain of freedom.
Yes, my dear friends, but then, to see the full meaning of
this, it is, I need hardly say, necessary to get right, right
away from phrases, and pierce to the realities. For anyone who
is tied to phrases would naturally think; Well, but who of late
has stood out as the representatives of Freedom, if not the
Anglo- American world? — Why, of course, in words,
yes, to any extent, but what matters about a thing is not how
it is represented in words, but what it is in reality. We have
had over and over again, as you know, occasion to refer to -the
language of “Wilsonism.” Phraseology of the Wilson
type has been gaining ground in Western countries for a
long-time past. In October 1918, it even for a time laid hold
of Central Europe. And over and over again here, — I
remember there was always quite a little commotion here when,
over and over again, as the years went on, one had to point out
the futility of all that Woodrow Wilson's name stood for, how
utterly hollow and abstract it all was, for which Woodrow
Wilson's name stood. But now, you see, people even in America
are apparently beginning to see through Wilsonism, and hour
hollow and abstract it all is. Here, there was no question of
any national feeling of hostility towards Wilson, there was no
question of antagonism proceeding from Europe. It was an
antagonism arising from the whole conception of our
civilisation and its forces. It was a question of showing
Wilsonism for what it is, — the type of all that is
abstract, all that is most unreal in human thought. It is the
Wilson type of thought which has had such one-sided results,
because it has absorbed the American impulse without really
possessing the impulse of freedom (for talking about freedom is
by no means a proof that the impulse of freedom itself is
really there), and because it had not the impulse for really
practical Altruism.
The
life of Central Europe, with all that it was, lies in the dust.
What lived in Central Europe is, to a great extent, sunk in a
fearful sleep. At the present moment, the German is, one might
say, forced to think of freedom, not as they talked of it in
all manner of fine phrases at the time when they were groaning
under the yoke of Ludendorff, — when constraint of itself
engendered an understanding of the idea of freedom. Mow
they think of it, but with crippled powers of soul and body, in
total inability to summon up the energy for real intense
thought. We have in Germany all sorts of attempts at democratic
forms, but no democracy. We have a republic, but no
republicans. And this is in every way a symptom that has
especially manifested itself in Central Europe, but it is
characteristic of the European world in general.
And
Eastern Europe? — For years and years, the proletariat of
the whole world have been boasting of all that Marxianism was
going to do. Lenin and Trotsky were in a position to put
Marxianism into practice; and it is turning into the wholesale
plunder of civilisation, which is identical with the ruin of
civilisation. And these things are only just beginning. Yet for
all that, there does exist in Europe the capacity for founding
freedom, ideally, spiritually. Only, Europe must supplement
this in an actual practical sense, through the co-operation of
the other people on the earth.
In
Asia, we can see the old Asiatic spirit lighting up again in
recent years. Those people who are spiritual leaders in Asia
(take, for example, the one I have already alluded to,
Rabindranath Tagore),--the leading spirits of Asia show by
their very way of speaking that the altruistic spirit is
anything but dead. But there is still less possibility now than
there was even in old days, of achieving a civilisation through
this one third only of the impulses that go to the making of a
civilisation.
All
this is the reason why to-day there is so much talk about
things which are peculiar to the civilisation that is dying,
but which people talk about as though they stood for something
that could be effective as an ideal. For years, we have had it
proclaimed that “Every nation must have the
possibility of ...” well, I don't quite know of what,
living its own life in its own way, or something of that sort.
Now, I ask you: For the man of to-day, if he is frank and
honest about it, what is a “nation”? —
Practically just a form of words, certainly nothing real. If
one talks about the Spirit of a Nation, in the sense in which
we speak of it in Anthroposophy, then one can talk about a
Nation, for then there is a reality at the back of it; but not
when it merely signifies an abstraction. And it is an
abstraction that people have in mind today when they talk
of the “freedom” of nationalities, and so forth.
For they certainly don't believe in the reality of any sort of
national Being. And herein lies the profound inward falsity to
which men to-day do homage. They don't believe in the reality
of the national Being, yet they talk of the “Freedom of
the Nation,” as if to the materialist man of our day, the
“nation” meant anything at all. What is the German
nation? Just ninety millions of persons, who can be added
together and summed up, A plus A plus A. That is not a National
Being — a self-contained entity — for men to
believe in. And it is just the same with the other nations. Yet
people talk about these things and believe that they are
talking about realities, and all the while are lying to
themselves in the depths of their souls.
But
it is with Realities we are dealing when we say; The Anglo-
American Being — a striving towards cosmogony; the
European Being — a striving towards freedom; the Asiatic
Being — a striving towards altruism. When we then try to
comprehend these three divided forces in a consciousness that
embraces the universe as a whole, — when, from out of
this consciousness of the universal whole, we say to ourselves:
“The old civilisation is bursting through its partitions,
it is doomed,” to try to save it -would be to work
against one's age, not with it. We need a new
civilisation upon the ruins of the old one. The ruins of the
old civilisation will get ever smaller and smaller; and that
man alone understands the present times who has will and
courage for one that shall be really new. But the new must be
grounded, neither in a sense of country as among the Greeks and
Romans, nor in a sense of the Earth, as with men of modern
times. It must proceed from a sense of the Universe, the
world-consciousness of future man, that world-consciousness
which once more turns its eyes away from the earth here, and
looks up to the Cosmos. Only, we must arrive at a view of this
Cosmos which shall carry us in practice beyond the Schools of
Copernicus and Galileo.
My
dear friends, the Europeans have known how to express the
earth's environment in terms of mathematics; but they have not
known how, from the earth's environment, to extract a real
science. For the times in which he lived, Giordano Bruno was a
remarkable figure, a great personality; but to-day we need to
realise that where he could only perceive a mathematical order,
there a spiritual order reigns, reality reigns. The American
does not really believe in this purely mathematical world, in
the purely mathematical cosmos. His particular civilisation
leads him to reach out to a knowledge of the supersensible
forces beyond, even though he is, as yet, on the wrong road. In
Europe, there was no sort of knowledge that they did not
pursue; and yet when Goethe, in his own way, really put the
question: “What is scientific knowledge?” there was
no getting any further; for Europe had not got the power to
take what can be learnt from the study, say, of Man, and widen
it into a cosmogony, a science of the universe. Goethe
discovered metamorphosis, the metamorphosis of plants, the
metamorphosis of animals, the metamorphosis of man. The
head, in respect of its system of bones, is a vertebral column
and spinal marrow, transformed. So far, so good; but you need
to follow it up and develop it, until you realise that this
head is the transformed man of the previous incarnation, and
that the trunk and limbs are the man in the initial stage of
the coming incarnation. Real science must be cosmic, otherwise
it is not science. It must be cosmic, must be a cosmogony,
otherwise this science is not something that can. give inward
human impulses which will carry man on through life. The man of
modern times cannot live instinctively; he must live
consciously. He needs a cosmogony; and he needs a freedom that
is real. He needs more than a lot of vague talk about freedom;
he needs more than the mere verbiage of freedom; he needs that
freedom should actually grow into his immediate life and
surroundings. This is only possible along paths that lead to
ethical individualism.
There is a characteristic incident in connection with this. At
the time when my Philosophy of Freedom appeared, Edouard
von Hartmann was one of the first to receive a copy of
the book, and he wrote me: “The book ought not to be
called The Philosophy of Freedom,” but “A Study in
Phenomena connected with the Theory of Cognition, and in
Ethical Individualism.” Well, for a title that would have
been rather long-winded; but it would no# have been bad to have
called it “Ethical Individualism,” for ethical
individualism is nothing but the personal realisation of
freedom. The best people were totally unable to perceive how
the actual impulses of the age were calling for the thing that
is discussed in that book, The Philosophy of
Freedom.
Turning now to Asia, — indeed, my dear friends, Asia and
Europe must learn to understand each other. But if things go on
as they have in the past, then they will never understand each
other, especially as Asia and America have to understand each
other as well The Asiatics look at America and see that what
they have there is really nothing more than the machinery of
external life, of the State, of Politics, etc, The Asiatic has
no taste for all this machinery; his understanding is all for
the things that arise from the inmost impulses of the human
soul. The Europeans have, it is true, dabbled in this same
Asiatic spirit, the spiritual life of Asia; but it must be
confessed that they have not, so far, given proof of. any very
great understanding of it. Nor have they been in very perfect
agreement, and the kind of disagreement that arose plainly
showed that they had very little understanding of how to
introduce into European culture what are the real actuating
impulses of Asiatic culture. Just think of Mme. Blavatsky; she
wanted to introduce into the civilisation of Europe every kind
of thing out of the civilisation of India, of Thibet. Much of
it was very dubious, that she tried to introduce. Max
Müller tried another way of bringing Asiatic
civilisation into Europe. One finds a good deal in Blavatsky
that is not in Max Müller; and there is a good deal
in Max Müller that is not in Blavatsky. But from the
criticism Max Müller passed on Blavatsky it is plain
how little insight there was into the subject. In Max
Müller's opinion, it was not the real substance of
the Indian spirit that Blavatsky had brought over to England,
but a spurious imitation, and he expressed his opinion in a
simile, by saying: That if people met a pig that was grunting,
they would not be astonished; but if they met a pig talking
like a man, then they would be astonished. Well, in the way Max
Müller used the simile he can only have meant that
he, with his Asiatic culture, was the pig that grunted, and
that Blavatsky was as if a pig should start talking like a man!
To me it certainly seems that there is nothing remarkably
interesting about a pig grunting; but one would begin to feel
rather interested if a pig were suddenly to start running about
and talking like a man Here the simile of itself shows that the
analogy they found was a very thin one and lies chiefly in the
words. But people do not notice that nowadays; and if one does
make bold to point out the absurd side of the matter, then
people think one ought not to treat “recognised
authorities” like Max Müller in that kind of
way, it is not at all proper!
That is just where it is, my dear friends, the time is at hand
when one must speak out honestly and straightforwardly. And if
one ie to be honest and straightforward, one must speak out
quite plainly about the occult facts of our civilisation in the
present day, — such facts as these: That the
Anglo-American world has the gift for Cosmogony, that Europe
has the gift for Freedom, Asia the gift for Altruism, for
religion, for a social-economic order.
These three temperaments must be fused together for a complete
humanity. We must become men of all the worlds, and act from
that standpoint, as inhabitants of the universe. Then, and then
only, can that come about which the age really demands.
We
will talk more about this to-morrow. To-morrow we meet at 7
o'clock. First there will be the Eurhythmic performance, then a
break, and after that the lecture.
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