THE THREE STREAMS IN THE LIFE OF CIVILIZATION
THE MYSTERIES OF LIGHT, OF MAN, AND OF THE EARTH
Stuttgart, 21st December, 1919.
Those of you who heard the last lectures given here will have
understood from what was said in them that it is an absolute necessity
of our time that the Science of Initiation, the real science of the
spiritual life, should permeate the whole evolution of our present
civilized society. I have already said much concerning the obstacles
which hinder the permeation of our civilization, both present and in
the future, by the science of the spiritual worlds. First, above all
things, there is that feeling which I have often characterized as
fear of spiritual knowledge. At the present time one has only
to say such a thing openly for it to be received on all sides as a
kind of insult. According to the views of most people, how can it be
conceivable that in this age in which such splendid progress has been
made, men should be afraid of any kind of knowledge? People today
undoubtedly believe that with their powers of cognition they are in a
position to comprehend everything, practically everything. The fear,
however, of which I am speaking and of which I have so often spoken,
does not lie within the consciousness of mankind. In his consciousness
man persuades himself that he is courageous enough to face any kind of
knowledge. But deep down in that part of the soul of which men know
nothing, and of which indeed they wish today to know nothing, there
lies this unconscious fear. And because men have this unconscious
fear, all kinds of reasons rise up from the depths of their soul which
they call logical, and they give out these reasons as logical
objections to Spiritual Science. These are not logical objections.
They are only the outcome of that fear of the science of the spirit, a
fear which rules unconsciously in human souls. As a matter of fact, in
the hidden depths of his soul-life everyone knows far more than he
thinks, but he does not want this knowledge, which is rooted in the
depths of his soul-life, to come to the surface, because in the
presence of it he is afraid. Above all things man surmises one thing
about the super-sensible worlds; he surmises that in all that he calls
his thinking, in all that he designates as his world of thought, there
is something contained of a super-sensible world. At the present time,
even persons of a materialist turn of mind cannot altogether drive
away the dim feeling that in the life of thought there is something
contained which somehow indicates a super-sensible world. And at the
same time man surmises something else about this thought-world. He
divines that this world of thought relates itself to an actual
reality, just as the image seen in a looking glass relates itself to
the reality reflected by the looking glass. Just as the image in the
looking glass is no reality, so man has to admit that his own world of
thought is no reality. In that moment where man has the courage, the
fearlessness, to admit that the world of thought is not a reality, in
that moment he is also seized with yearning for a knowledge of the
spiritual world. For after all, one would like to know what it is that
is really there, but of which one only sees the reflection.
What I have just said has an important polaric counterpart. When
through the Science of Initiation we cross the threshold of the
super-sensible world, over into the spiritual world, then everything
which man experiences here as sensible reality is transformed to a
mere picture, to an appearance. We mount up into the super-sensible
world and just as, let us say, here on earth the super-sensible world
is a mirror-picture, existing only as a mirror-picture, so in the
super-sensible world the earthly world exists only as a mirror-picture.
He, therefore, who speaks from the Science of Initiation, speaks quite
naturally of the realities of the sense world as of
pictures. Now, human beings feel this; they feel that that
on which they can stand so comfortably, that which they can breathe in
so comfortably, which they can see so comfortably without having to do
anything else than, at most, open their eyes when they get up in the
morning and rub them all this becomes a mere picture. They feel
this and they begin to feel insecure, much as a man might who, taken
for a walk, is led to the edge of an abyss and is then seized by the
dizziness of fear. On the one side therefore, the human being feels
that his thinking in the sense-world is a mere sum-total of pictures.
On the other side he feels and he feels it even if he deceives
himself through that unconscious fear that that which is told
him of the super-sensible world makes this physical world a mere
picture. As I have said, this is felt by men, and therefore they
struggle against that which comes from the Science of Initiation. They
rebel because they think that the secure foundation of existence falls
away from them when their soul-life is, as it were, transformed to a
mere picture.
Of course, it is not everybody in our present age who, quite
unprepared, can go through that which has to be gone through by one
who actually directly enters the world of Initiation. For anyone who
enters the world of Initiation must not only know in it what every
human being today should strive to know, but he has to live in it as
well. He has to live in it, just as a man lives with his body in the
physical sense world. That means he has to go through, as it were, by
proxy what is only to be gone through in the physical sense-world at
the moment of death. He has to gain the power to live in a world for
which the physical, sensible part of him is not adapted. If we cut our
finger we feel a certain pain, a discomfort. Why do we feel discomfort
when we cut our finger? For the simple reason that the knife cuts the
skin and muscle and nerve, but does not cut the super-sensible etheric
body. If we have an uninjured finger, our super-sensible etheric body
is adapted to it. If we cut the finger (and we cannot cut the etheric
body) the super-sensible uncut etheric body is not adapted to it. That
is the reason why the astral body then feels pain. The pain comes from
non-adaptability to the sensible corporality. But when man crosses the
threshold and enters the super-sensible world, then in his whole body
he is no longer adapted to the sensible body. He gradually feels
something similar to what he felt locally when he cut his finger. And
this, my dear friends, this has to be thought of as enhanced to an
unlimited degree.
Naturally, then, one cannot imagine what would come over human beings
of the present-day, who often are so brave in their consciousness, and
so sorry for themselves in their souls, if they suddenly received the
power to live in the super-sensible world, if they had to experience
everything which comes from non-adaptability to the super-sensible
world.
But not only are human beings today so far advanced that with their
healthy human understanding they can comprehend everything related by
those who know the life in the super-sensible, but this knowledge of
the super-sensible, this receptivity towards the science of the
super-sensible, is an absolute, an unconditional, necessity for the
healthy human understanding of the present age. Only this knowledge of
the super-sensible can throw light upon all that is so chaotic, so
destructive, in our modern surroundings. We are living in a world in
which things are making their appearance, in which things are working
themselves out, of which we must say: They cannot go on like
this, they must undergo transformation. But human beings today
have absolutely no insight into that which lives around them. To see
through that which lives around man today is only possible through the
Science of Initiation, is only possible when all the life of our
present age can be compared with all the phenomena of life which have
marked the evolution of mankind in the course of centuries, of
millennia.
There has come a time when it must be said publicly that if any
fruitful impulse is to be brought into life, into life with its modern
destructive phenomena, it can be no other than the principle of the
Three-fold Division of the Social Organism. By this means the eyes of
men's souls will be directed to the three basic streams of our present
life of civilization.
These three basic streams, as most of you today are fully aware, are
the stream of the Spiritual Life (in the full meaning of the word
spiritual), and that of the Political Life of Rights, and that of the
external Life of Economy and Industry.
When these three basic streams of life are placed before the soul of
man, when the name for each of these streams is uttered, in each case
a great sum-total of the phenomena of Life is really included.
Let us now pass briefly before our spiritual vision these three
streams in their sequence. We have today a Spiritual Life. In one way
or another each individual has a part in this spiritual life: One,
perhaps because his way of life is conditioned by economic
circumstances or civic status, goes only to an elementary school;
another perhaps is taken further on in our educational institutions.
And that which is learnt in this way by human beings lives on at work
amongst us in our social life. By this means we are linked to our
fellow man.
Today the time has come when the question has to be put searchingly:
Where has this whole spiritual life come from, and what was it
in the course of its descent, in the course of its evolution, which
gave to it the character which it bears today? If we go back to
the real origin of this spiritual life, we must pass through certain
stages on the way. That which characterizes the life of our schools,
elementary and higher I am leaving out the intermediate stages
for the present all goes back to a far-distant past. People
usually do not know how far it goes back, e.g., in the case of
the elementary school, that that goes back to the time of ancient
Greece. Fundamentally our spiritual life today is nourished by
impulses which existed in ancient Greece in a somewhat different form,
and which have only been changed since then. But these impulses did
not originate even in ancient Greece. They originated far away in the
East. Thousands of years ago at their source in the East they had
certainly another form than they had in ancient Greece. In the East
these impulses belonged to the Wisdom of the Mysteries. If we leave
aside our legal-political life, which is entangled chaotically as in a
knot with the spiritual life, and also leave aside the life of
industry, of economics; if we separate, abstract from these our
spiritual life, then we can go back, mounting the path to certain
Mysteries of the East, the origin of which lies undoubtedly thousands
of years ago. That, however, which for us today in educational
institutions is a dry barren abstraction, devoid of life, was then
something altogether living. And if we transport ourselves in spirit
back to those Mysteries of the East to which I am now referring, we
meet as the leaders of these Mysteries men who may be designated as a
kind of union of priest, of king, and at the same time, strange as it
may sound to people today, of industrialists, economists. For in those
Mysteries I shall call them the Mysteries of Light or of
the Spirit- an all-embracing knowledge of life was pursued, a
knowledge which, in the first place, aimed at directing the study of
the nature of man by means of the facts of the world of the Heavens,
and the world of the Stars. But this knowledge was also a wisdom which
aimed at regulating the rights of man's communal life in accordance
with the knowledge thus acquired. Thus from these Mystery centres
instruction was given for the tending of the cattle, for ploughing the
fields, for laying the water courses, and so on. This Science of
Initiation of hoary antiquity had an impelling power for social life;
it was something which gave scope to the whole man. It was in a
position not merely to say lovely things about the good and the true,
but also by the Spirit itself it could rule practical life, could
organize it and give it form.
Now the path which these Mystery leaders took and, which so far as was
possible to them, showed to the people who belonged to such a Mystery,
was a path leading from above downwards. First, these Mystery leaders
strove for a revelation of the spiritual world, then grasping the
spirit in the concrete in accordance with the basic principles of
atavistic clairvoyance, they worked down to the political life, to the
political shaping of the social organism, then down to economy and
industry. That was Wisdom, with impelling force for life itself. By
what road did this wisdom with its impelling life-force actually come
among mankind?
If we go back to the ages before the Mysteries to which I am now
referring became authoritative, we find in the regions of civilized
humanity people with a primeval atavistic clairvoyance, human beings
who, if they spoke of the needs of life, could invoke the impressions
of their heart, of their soul, of their inner vision. These people
were spread over the regions now called India, Persia, Armenia, North
Africa, South Europe, etc. One thing, however, we do not find in the
souls of these human beings. It is that which today we consider our
proudest soul-treasure Intellect, Reason. The inhabitants of
the civilized world of that time did not yet need reason. What our
reason does today, was done by those human beings out of the
promptings of their souls, and these promptings were guided and
directed by the leaders whom these men had. Later there came into
these regions another human race, quite a different race from the
earlier population. In the Sagas and Myths, and indeed also in
history, we are told that from the highlands of Asia certain people
came down in very ancient times who brought a form of civilization to
the south and south-west. Spiritual Science is required to establish
what kind of men these were who came down upon those earlier human
beings, who simply from their own inner promptings received the
guiding powers for daily life. Through investigation by Spiritual
Science we find that those who brought in a new population-element
combined two qualities, one of which the earlier people did not
possess. The original inhabitants had atavistic clairvoyance without
reason, without intelligence. Those who came down amongst them also
had something of the clairvoyant power, but at the same time in their
souls they had received the first germ of intelligence, of reason.
They brought, therefore, into the civilization of that time, a
clairvoyance impregnated with reason. These were the first Aryans, of
whom history tells us, and out of the mutual opposition of the ancient
early people living by atavistic powers of the soul, and those who
impregnated the ancient soul-powers with reason, out of that
opposition there arose the first distinction into Caste, external,
physical and empirical, which still works on in Asia, and of which
Tagore, for instance, speaks.
The most prominent members of the race, who possessed at the same time
ancient soul-vision and the intellect which was dawning in humanity,
were the leaders of those Mysteries of which I have just spoken, the
Mysteries of Oriental Light. From these proceeded the Mysteries of
Greece. Thus we may say: From the Mysteries of the East there went
forth later the stream of the Spirit, that living wisdom with its
living practical impulse of which I have just spoken. In the course of
time it came over to Greece. Its influence is still to be traced in
the most ancient Greek civilization. But in the progress of Greek
civilization the influence became weakened, the leaders lost their
ancient soul-vision, and reason more and more freed itself from the
old clairvoyance. Thereby the leadership of this civilization lost its
meaning, because this once only had meaning as long as the leaders
were endowed with spiritual soul-vision as well as intelligence.
History tells us that that which had a meaning in ancient times is
preserved into a much later epoch. Thus we find humanity in the later
Greek civilization still grouped in a way which had a meaning for that
ancient time, when the leaders of the Mysteries were actually
messengers of the Gods. That which once was wisdom with an impulse for
life, was transformed into Greek logic and dialectic, into the wisdom
of the Greeks, wisdom which is already strained thin compared with its
old Oriental origin. In the old Oriental times every one knew why
there were people who obeyed when the leaders gave them directions in
economics. In Greece we find the division into masters and slaves. The
division of mankind was still there, but the meaning had been
gradually lost. And that which for the Greeks still had much meaning,
for at least they knew that it came from the ancient Mysteries, was
still more weakened as it passed into our modern life of education. In
our modern life of education, everything has become devoid of living
connection. We pursue today an abstract science. We find no longer a
connection between this abstract science and external life. The stream
from Greece has gone into our Colleges, into our elementary and
secondary schools, into the whole popular cultural life of modern
humanity. One curious thing may be observed today. We meet among the
men with whom we are surrounded some whom we call
noblemen, aristocrats. We try in vain to find
the reason why one person is an aristocrat and another is not, for
mankind has long stripped off that which distinguishes the aristocrat
from the non-aristocrat. The aristocrat was the leader in the old
Oriental Mysteries of Light. He could be the aristocrat, because from
him came everything which had a real living impulse in political and
economic affairs. The wisdom has become watered thin, the divisions
into which it made groups of people have become an external
abstraction without meaning for those whose lives are cast in it. From
that stream proceeded what we call Feudalism. In external social life
this Feudalism lives on, tolerated by some, perhaps vexatious to
others, meaningless. No one thinks any more about the meaning, because
it is not to be found in life today, but in our modern age of chaos
the feudal origin of our abstract science and knowledge shows itself
pretty clearly. And when our modern Spiritual life became entirely the
spiritual life of the journalistic world, a term was invented which
really is a verbal atrocity. Through this term men sought to bring
about a transformation of our life, but it was merely the expression
of an utterly rickety spiritual life they invented the term,
spiritual aristocracy. If anyone tried to explain exactly
what is meant by this term he could only say: It is that which
now squeezed dry to the uttermost had once upon a time in the
Mysteries of the East, an impelling force which worked down into the
furthest limits of practical life. The term in those days had a
meaning, but today it has lost all meaning. And if anyone wishes to
describe our Spiritual life, he has to think of a desperately tangled
coil of wool where all the threads are twisted together. There are
three threads in particular which are entangled. One of them I have
just described to you. Our essential task is to unravel the tangle.
Let us now turn the eyes of our soul to the second stream. This second
stream had another origin, which also lies far back in the evolution
of mankind; it, too, was essentially united with the Mysteries, and in
particular with the Mysteries of Egypt. I called the first stream
the Mysteries of the East or the Mysteries of
Light. I shall call this second stream the Mysteries of
Man. These Mysteries were directed above all to obtaining at the
Egyptian source, that Wisdom which gives the power to organize human
communal life, to establish a relation between one human being and
another. This stream from the Mysteries spread through the South of
Europe, and then, just as the first stream went through the life of
Greece, this second stream found its way to the people of Rome, a
people lacking in imagination. I might call it the stream of
Rights. It took its path through Rome. All that which, bit by
bit, in the course of human evolution has been inoculated as
Jurisprudence, as legal distinctions in Equity, is the attenuated
remnant of knowledge of these Mysteries of Man.
The second thread in our tangle of civilization has come to us in this
way, but very much changed, transformed after having passed through
the unimaginative mind of Rome. We shall not understand modern life,
until we know that men even today are still unproductive both in the
life of Spirit and in the life of Rights; until we know that both of
these have been received by us from outside the first after it
had traveled the long way from the Mysteries of the East through the
Mysteries of Greece, the second, the long way from the Mysteries of
Egypt through Rome. Present-day humanity has been sterile with regard
to both the life of Spirit and the life of Rights. We could bring
forward many cases to prove this assertion, but it will suffice if I
point out paths taken by Christianity.
When Christianity sought to enter the world, where had Christ Jesus to
appear so that what He had to give to the world could find a foothold?
He had to appear in the East. It was in that which lived in the East
that He had to place what He had to give to humanity. The Mystery of
Golgotha is a fact. What mankind knows about it is in process
of evolving. What people first had to say about the Mystery of
Golgotha was clothed in that which was still left to them from the
Mysteries of the East. They surrounded the Mystery of Golgotha with
the Science and Wisdom of the Mysteries of the East, and with that
Wisdom they tried to understand it. In the early Greek Fathers of the
Church we find there is still something of this Christianity.
To point to another manifestation of the same kind, when the
civilization of the West had spiritually become utterly sterile, and a
spiritual restorative was sought for, through one of its
representatives, what happened? In England and America a few people
came together and borrowed the Wisdom from the conquered and enslaved
people of India. That is to say, they went once more to the East to
seek there the spiritual stream, to seek in the East what remained of
that ancient spiritual stream. From this arose Theosophy of the
English-American dye, which sought to draw water from this source, but
in the form it has assumed at the present day. It is the sterility of
modern Spiritual life which strikes one most forcibly, especially in
Western lands.
The second stream, then, is that which is concerned with Politics and
Rights, and which passed through Rome. In it we find the origin of our
life of Politics and Rights. This stream which has flowed into, and is
still active in our life of Rights, only came by the side-channel of
the Roman world. Hence, in our civilization, that which passed into
our Spiritual life also has been received by way of the Roman
political-legal system. This accounts for so many anomalies. Even
Christianity, which spread in the West on Roman lines, took on a form
conditioned by this fact. What did the religious element become on its
passage through the Roman world? It became that great System of Law
which we call the Roman Catholic religion. There, God with his
attendant gods, is essentially a Being who rules according to the
Roman conception of justice, only He is in the super-sensible world.
Here we find established the ideas of debt, of default, which are
really only legal ideas, ideas which never existed in the Mysteries of
the East or in the Greek philosophy of life. In this Christianity the
juristic concepts of Rome are established. It is a religious stream
saturated with legalities. Everything which finds expression in life
can assume a form of beauty, but we must confess that even that
juristic-political scene in which the God of the World becomes the
Judge of the World, and winds up the whole evolution of the earth by a
legal Act, even that magnificent painting of Michelangelo in the
Sistine Chapel, is only a glorious expression of Christianity
saturated by legalism. It is just this Christianity saturated by
legalism, which finds its culmination in the Last
Judgment.
We must unwind the tangle of our spiritual, political, and industrial
life so that we may see what is really contained inside it. For we
live in a chaotic civilization. Three streams are working in it; we
must separate them from one another.
The third stream which has come into our chaotic civilization,
originated more in the North. Much has filtered into it also, but in
another way. This stream has been preserved till today, especially in
the social organization of England and America. I shall speak of this
stream as the Mysteries of the Earth, the Mysteries of the
North or of the Earth. Now this stream which developed first as
primitive spirituality out of the Mysteries of the Earth, took a
different course from that of the essentially Spiritual life of the
East. I have said that in the East the path led from above downwards,
first revealing itself as the Mysteries of the Heavens and of the
Light, then passing down into Politics and Economics. Here, in the
North things rose out of Economics, out of the life of Industry. The
origin has, of course, vanished from ordinary modern life. We notice
it at most in ancient customs which still survive here and there; such
customs as are described in accounts of ancient Nordic civilization,
of which the English civilization is a branch, e.g.,
processions through the villages at a certain season of the year, with
the bull, which has to fertilize the herd of cows, crowned with
wreaths. That is to say, from below upwards there arose a longing
after the Spiritual life. The path leads from below upwards.
Everything, even that which existed as primitive spirituality, was
taken from the industrial-economic life. All the festivals originally
were connected with the life of Economy, of Industry, all expressed
something of the meaning of the life of Economy. Just as in the
Oriental civilization the path led from above downwards, so here, in
the North, the path had to lead from below upwards. Mankind had to be
raised from below, out of Economics, through the life of Rights, into
the Mysteries of the Spirit. Mankind has not as yet advanced very far
on this path from below upwards.
If we investigate the Legal life, the life of law and justice, as it
has developed in the regions of Western Europe, we find it completely
orientated to Rome. If we investigate the Spiritual life, we do not
find it so plainly orientated to the East as that Indian Theosophy is
of which I have just spoken. But we do find that that which has
survived as innate Spiritual life which was not taken from the East,
nor saturated with legalities from Rome, we do often find this
original Spiritual life struggling to release itself from the Economic
life, and with hard labour working itself free.
Let us take a characteristic example. Such philosophers, such students
of natural science as Newton, Darwin, Hume, Mill, Spencer, can only be
understood if we see how they developed out of the Economic life, how
they endeavoured to take an upward path. Mill, for example, as a
national economist, can only be understood if we understand the
economic conditions surrounding him. We can only understand the
English philosophers if we clearly grasp the economic basis of their
environment. That basis is something inseparable from the third
stream, the stream of the Mysteries of the Earth, the
stream which works its way from below upwards. This, the third stream,
is as yet quite unrefined.
Here then, in the tangle of our so-called civilization, we have the
three threads chaotically at work. Always in a certain sense there has
been a revolt against this tangle, in the West at least. In America,
where the Economic life is derived from the Mysteries of the North, we
find theories built up scientifically, but devoid of Spirit, alien to
Spirit. America obtained her Legal-Political life by way of Rome.
Spiritual concerns were borrowed from the East. In Central Europe,
too, there was a good deal of revolt, and various endeavours were made
to grasp these things in their primitive clarity; in the Spiritual
life with most penetration in what I must call Goetheanism. Goethe,
who sought to get rid of a Law-code in the sphere of natural science,
Goethe is characteristic of this revolt against the purely Oriental
life of Spirit. For the legal element has entered into natural science
too. We speak of Laws of Nature. The Oriental would never
have spoken of the Laws of Nature, but of the Rule of Cosmic Will. The
term Natural Law was derived from the side-stream of
Jurisprudence. It crept into nature knowledge as through a window and
became natural law. Goethe wanted to grasp the pure
phenomenon, the pure fact, the primal phenomenon. Until we purge our
Natural Science from its dependence on Jurisprudence, we can never
reach a purified cultural life. For this reason Spiritual Science
everywhere lays hold on facts, and indicates so-called
laws as secondary phenomena only.
We find also a certain revolt against the Roman system of Rights, a
revolt which is still in the minds of many persons inclined to
socialism. For instance, a Prussian minister, Wilhelm van Humbold, in
his fine treatise on The Limits of State Action, shows
stirring within him something of this impulse to free the Cultural
life and the life of Economics from the mere life of the State. In
that little book there lives the impulse to strip off the political
from the other directing forces. Thus in German philosophy, too, there
lives this revolt against that which is merely old. But
only through a healthy insight into that which the Science of
Initiation can give concerning the origin of our present cultural
life, can man gain a sure foot-hold; only through such insight can
healing, can health, come into the evolution of human civilization.
In the East of Europe especially, there has always been a feeling for
the necessity of a right co-operation of the three elements in our
present life of culture. Of these three streams the one most
characteristic in expression is that which came from the North to the
West. In the West everything is overpowered by the Economic-industrial
life. Of the legal element there is much in Central Europe, whilst
much of that which arose from the Mysteries of the East, the Mysteries
of Light, is to be found in Eastern Europe and Asia. There, where the
caste system still prevails, we find something of the meaning of that
old Feudalism which came forth from the Spirit. The life permeated
with legalities has bred the modern Bourgeoisie. The Bourgeoisie is
the outcome of the stream of Rights. These things have to be seen with
perfect clarity now; and the impulse towards this clear recognition
lies already in the unconscious part of man, but it is only Spiritual
Science which can bring this longing, this impulse, to real clarity.
In the nineteenth century, again and again, we can see how men strove
amid all the confusion of very indefinite impulses, to reach ideals
for the future. Men wanted especially to put an end to the abstract
relations which prevail today between man and man. The life of the
Spirit has been watered down so that it lives in us as an abstraction;
and the life of Economics is grasping and struggling to find the way
upward from below.
In Eastern Europe, where things of such disturbing, devastating
significance are now working themselves out, it was shown for the
first time in the much-confused nineteenth century how men attempted
to prepare for the revolt against this chaos of civilization. The
Russian revolutionaries of the second and last third of the nineteenth
century, attempted in particular to fertilize the remnant still left
in the East of an early stage of Spiritual life, with that element in
Central Europe which had already revolted against tradition. We find
among such Russians in their correspondence with each other, how they
point out that already in Central Europe, the intellect, the pure
abstract life of reason has endeavoured to permeate itself with a
certain spirituality. Again and again there appears some such sentence
as the following: In German philosophy the attempt has been made
once more to raise the intellect, which has lost its ancient
soul-vision, to a certain spirituality. In Eastern Europe they
wanted to make themselves intimately acquainted with this attempt in
Central Europe, and this intimate knowledge reflects itself in the way
these Russian revolutionaries write to one another. They greatly
esteemed the philosopher Ivan Petrovitch. They spoke much of his
philosophy, how he had raised himself to pure thought, attempting to
bring Spirit again into the dialectic play of thought of Western
Culture. They tried to draw conclusions from his philosophy. The
better to mark their own feeling of relationship to him, they called
him not Hegel, but Ivan Petrovitch. In their
endeavours we see foreshadowed that which later on had to work so
destructively.
In our age, clear thinking must spread over the whole earth.
Everything must be done to help forward the victory of clear thinking.
But we must be quite conscious of all that is against us when we make
the attempt to reach this clear thinking, and that, amongst many other
things, we have against us man's love of ease. We must wean ourselves
from the habit of regard for the comfort of men. For mankind needs the
Spirit, and the triumph of the Spirit is not brought about by the
comfortable paths so often trodden today. Today men fight against the
coming in of Initiation with the most significant weapons.
I was recently informed of something which is significant in historic
culture. You will correct me if I make a mistake, for I was not there
myself. At a meeting where a Protestant clergyman was in the chair,
one of our friends made some quotations from the Bible. The truth of
these did not please the chairman, who then used the expression,
Here Christ is wrong! Have I repeated that correctly?
(Assent.) Today when one can no longer justify one's own view, it is
man who is infallible, and the Christ who is wrong! We have come as
far as this.
All these things bear witness to the true character of that which is
stirring as Spiritual life in mankind today. Where Spiritual life has
reached the most utter abstraction, it can no longer keep within the
sphere of truth. But we must become aware of what really exists.
The periodical, The Threefold Social Organism, recently
published a notice of a gathering held here at Stuttgart, where from
the Roman Catholic side, but in harmony with the Protestant,
opposition was made to the teaching given as Spiritual Science. And
the leading cleric is reported to have said that no discussion was
necessary because people can inform themselves concerning the
doctrines of Dr. Steiner from the writings of his opponents, but the
writings of Dr. Steiner himself may not be read because the Pope has
forbidden it. In fact, this is the latest decree from the Holy
Congregation, and it applies especially to Catholics the decree
that it is forbidden to Catholics to read Anthroposophical writings.
Roman Catholics, therefore, are officially bound to seek information
upon what I teach from the writings of my opponents, but they are not
allowed to read what I write myself. Anyone on the other side who
knows the whole constitution of the Roman Catholic Church, how the
individual is so dovetailed into it that he is only a representative
of the whole organization, must in all earnestness, out of the depths
of his soul, bring forward the question regarding the moral aspect of
such a procedure. Is such a procedure to be reconciled in any way with
human morality? Is it not profoundly immoral? Such questions must be
put bravely today, without any leniency. We are living in a serious
time, and may not go on sleeping in the easy comfort-loving, lazy way.
We must express ourselves unreservedly about these things. If we show
the immorality of modern untruth in the right light, it will bring
about a healing.
Recently an article by a doctor in Sociology was brought to me. It
began somewhat as follows: What a distance there is between the
clear thoughts of Waxweiler and the obscure thoughts of Dr. Steiner!
But then, this Dr. Steiner was the intimate of William II, and it has
been suggested that he helped William II with important advice,
especially in recent years. So one can even call this man the Rasputin
of William II. His next sentence runs: We will not make
ourselves the transmitters of such a rumour. And there are today
many people with this mentality, people forsaken by every spirit of
truthfulness, and whatever they say is beyond the sphere of truth.
We see two things here. First, the moral degradation of a man who
makes himself the bearer of this rumour, and then his fine logic when
he says, Because I spread this rumour among my readers, I do not
make myself a spreader of this rumour. Countless people think in
this way. What they say has no reality in it. I cannot say, I
say something because I do not say it. This is what Monsieur
Ferriere says, the man who wrote the article from which I have just
read. We cannot enter into relationship with such morally degenerate
individuals. I can only maintain, and I hope that it will be brought
before this writer's notice, that I have had the following
relationships with William II. Once about 1897, I was sitting in a
theatre in Berlin, in the middle of the front row, above, and William
II sat in the Royal Box, and I saw him, as far away as from here to
the end of this room. The second time was when he walked behind the
coffin of the Grand Duchess of Weimar, and that was quite far away.
The third time was in the Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, where, with his
following, with the Marshal's baton in his hand, he rode through the
streets, all the people shouting Hurrah! after him. These
are all the relationships with William II, I have ever had. I have
never had any others nor sought them. Thus assertions arise today, and
much of what you read on paper in printer's ink is of no more value
than that dirty rumour which is used to make Anthroposophy a heresy in
Latin countries. Today such things have to be traced to their origin.
It is not enough to take them as mere parlance. People must accustom
themselves to go to the origin of what is affirmed.
A sense for the true origin of facts in the external world will only
develop in mankind out of a deepening in real Spiritual Science.
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