X
Moral, Social Life and Religion from the Viewpoint of Anthroposophy
Bern, 11 December 1918
Today I would like to speak about the relation of the
supersensible knowledge to the moral, social, and religious
life of the human being.
The
naturalist Wallace (Arthur Russel W., 1823-1913) who tried to
create a worldview in similar way as Darwin made an important
quotation about the moral development of humanity. Haeckel and
many other researchers also agree to this quotation. Wallace
said, as big the progress of humanity is with reference to the
knowledge of nature and its backgrounds, as little is on the
other side the progress of the moral life. From stage to stage,
one realises the world knowledge developing. If one looks at
the moral development, one cannot say that humanity has made
substantial progress since ancient times.
Indeed, such a quotation is of particular significance. Indeed,
someone who tries to get a deeper insight in the course of the
human development will not be able to agree with this thinker
for ever and ever; but for the recent, by the natural sciences
determined time for which Wallace as a naturalist has a
sharpened eye one will be able to maintain this quotation. In
older times that the mentioned thinker can less survey, it is
not right that the intellectual knowledge hurries forward in
such an essential way compared to the stages of the moral
development.
However, just for our time in which the scientific knowledge
has advanced brilliantly one has to consider what this thinker
states. Someone who looks at the catastrophic events of the
last years with understanding, with empathy will admit that
that which one has experienced does not give evidence of a
special moral progress, which keeps up with the intellectual
progress of humanity.
There seems a very important question to be which is more
urgent because on the other side the desire exists just today
to become aware of the areas of morality. However, someone who
gets to know the real character of the scientific research in
that way, as I have characterised it the day before yesterday
from the spiritual-scientific viewpoint, knows while he
experiences the border of this scientific cognition that it is
not an accidental meeting for the last centuries, but that a
causal connection is to be found. I had explained the day
before yesterday how just the essentials of scientific
knowledge consist of the fact that it finds its way to its
progress, while it takes no account of the capacity for love
which just enables us to produce the right relation to human
beings. However, because this capacity for love continues
having an effect in the human being, it must be retained so
that scientific knowledge can be obtained, that is why the
human being arrives in the scientific cognition at a certain
border.
As
one can easily understand, the development of the capacity for
love is associated with the progressive life. If by contrast
one considers those spiritual abilities that the human being
just applies if he practises natural sciences, one finds that
the forces that play a special role in this research cannot be
directed to the progressive life, but to the dying life. While
we look into life with these scientific forces, we do not look
into life, but into that which dies.
It
is not detrimental to the scientific research if just the
strict naturalists repeatedly argue against concepts like
“vitality” in science. In the course of the
nineteenth century, scientific research has rightly eliminated
what one called “vitality” once. However, some
people believe, it is only a temporary defect that the human
being cannot look into life, but is only able to look at the
dying.
However, it is not in this way. The ability of knowledge that
is directed to nature has to search the dead within the living.
Hence, the trend is to expel life in order to search just that
what does not live. One cannot say that one can also understand
life with the advancing way of scientific thinking. No, this
way of thinking will be great just because it does not
understand life but looks for the dying.
Hence, the understanding of such soul qualities that are
associated with the capacity for love has decreased in that
time in which this way of thinking has reached a special
height. With it, the whole moral life is connected. Love is the
basic force that has to develop, so that moral life exists.
Outer events also prove what I have just explained. One
experiences quite strange things in this area. I have
repeatedly pointed in my talks of the last years to an
excellent book by Oscar Hertwig (1849-1922), The Origin of
Organisms — a Refutation of Darwin's Theory
of Chance (1916). I had to appreciate this book almost as a
brilliant achievement because Oscar Hertwig refutes any hasty
conclusion of the materialistically minded Darwinists with
conscientious scientific methods.
Now
something extremely strange happened. Oscar Hertwig published
another, minor writing that dealt with moral, social, and
political questions. Lo and behold, this writing contains the
purest nonsense. A way of thinking pervades the writing that is
suitable in no way for the solution of the put questions. Thus,
we see a brilliant naturalist completely failing where he wants
to consider social, moral, and political phenomena.
I
could increase these examples. However, you need only to point
to one thing to show how the modern times have become infertile
concerning the understanding of the moral life. I have to
become somewhat heretic if I characterise these things because
people do not yet want to believe this today, — heretic
in this case not against the church but against quite different
directions.
If
you consider philosophical worldviews that are not superficial
and arise from the mere scientific way of thinking, one likes
to point to Kant and Kantianism. Just Kant was often quoted in
disgusting way in the last time, I would like to say. Since one
could realise that the worst hawks and the most radical
pacifists quoted Kant. There are those who have changed during
the last weeks just from furious hawks into radical pacifists
— such persons do exist —, quoted Kant once and
quote Kant now in the nicest way according to their respective
opinion.
Indeed, Kant is typical in many fields for the form which
modern thinking has assumed. He is also typical for how people
often assume that what faces them in the spiritual life. By his
way of writing, one considers Kant as an author who is somewhat
hard to understand. However, because some people bring
themselves to understand him and consider themselves as very
clever, they find, because Kant said something clever that they
can just still understand that Kant is a particularly great
man.
Well, concerning the moral life Kant put up a principle that
one quotes very often, indeed, it is sometimes only called,
while one says, Kant put up the “categorical
imperative” concerning the moral life. This
“categorical imperative,” put into words, is as
follows: act in such a way that the maxims of your action can
become a guideline for all human beings. — This has
seemed to me always in such a way, as if anybody says, let a
tailor make such a jacket that all human beings can wear it.
— The immediate moral impulses can be grasped only with
the most individual of the human being and can enjoy life only
this way. These are pressed in the empty phrases of extreme
abstraction that should be applied to all human beings in the
same way.
It
is important to realise that one has to strive for abstractions
in the area of physical laws, but this way of imagining leads
away from the field in the human being that wants to be grasped
if one wants to envisage the moral impulses what carries the
human being immediately in the moral life and strengthens him.
Since that by which we are moral human beings has to catch fire
in the immediate living conditions, in the immediate relation
from human being to human being. This is something very
individual in every single case. The human soul must have the
possibility to develop a very individual impulse from himself
that cannot be characterised by the fact that one says, it
should be a maxim for all human beings. No, that what can be a
maxim for all human beings has the least moral impact, does not
carry the human being morally through life, but that what
directly obliges him in the most individual sense to behave one
way or the other.
In
the immediate life, no concept or mental picture carries the
human being in the moral sense but love. I have already tried
25 years ago to found this teaching of individual morality in
my Philosophy of Freedom struggling against the abstract
trend of Kantianism. This is penetrated above all with the
knowledge that the moral action can only arise from such a love
of the concerning action to be done which equals the love for a
single human being. Love must prevail in the action that should
be a moral one, love which is not self-love, but which forces
back the self and replaces it with that what should take place
from pure love. The individual insight that I should carry out
the action, which is up to me, changes the action into a moral
one.
I
have said the day before yesterday that in the characterised
supersensible consciousness just the force of love prevails
which does not prevail in the usual abstract thinking. Of
course, I have not stated with it that the activity of the
spiritual researcher is identical with that what the soul
accomplishes if it feels morally. It is not identical, but it
is of the same kind. As well as the soul works in the usual
life in a certain area, while it feels morally, it is just
active in another area, while it raises a force which normally
slumbers, while it beholds into the spiritual world and
develops the final goal of the supersensible knowledge, the
Intuitive knowledge.
One
ascends from the Imaginative to the Inspired, to the Intuitive
knowledge. The Intuitive knowledge of supersensible beings and
events is not like the love in the moral area, but the
situation is the same in which the soul is as in the physical
area while it feels love morally. The state of the soul is the
same. Hence, spiritual science is allowed to say, within its
own activity just that ability of the soul that is realised in
the moral life is maintained on higher spiritual level.
That is why spiritual science especially cultivates that what
has been eclipsed just by the glorious development of the
scientific knowledge, the trend to that soul force which is
necessary to the moral action. Thus, one may say, if one
considers Kantianism and the scientific ways of thinking, they
have pushed down the former, more instinctive life, which
delivered the moral impulses as it were into the unconscious.
However, spiritual science raises these forces again which are
related to the moral feeling. Spiritual science will raise that
into full consciousness what lived once as instinctive moral
sensations in the human being.
Thus, one can understand that just in the time in which
humanity left a more instinctive soul life and developed
unilaterally in the area of intellectual knowledge of nature at
first, the sense withdrew which is immediately directed to that
what lives as moral in the human being. Thus, the conscious
sense for moral impulses is not maintained just during this
scientific age. It will appear if just in the centre of the
soul life that force for the knowledge of higher supersensible
worlds emerges which must live on another level in the normal
moral feeling of the soul.
Spiritual science brings about these mental pictures of the
supersensible worlds. If humanity assumes these
spiritual-scientific mental pictures as well as the scientific
mental pictures, they will have another significance in the
soul life than the scientific mental pictures. These
spiritual-scientific mental pictures are brought from such
areas of the soul where the soul force related with the moral
is maintained. Hence, they react upon the capacity for love and
with it upon the immediately individual impulses of the moral
life. While the age of abstractions could give a general
definition only, spiritual science will be able to intervene
immediately in life, so that the human being faces life
understanding and gets the moral impulse from the intuition of
life. Then another kind of moral influence than from any
abstract moral theory or a sum of moral principles will
originate from spiritual science. That will originate what does
not only make the maxims immediately moral because one can
experience them in life: moral sermons do not help much in
life.
Of
course, some people regard it as a requirement of our time to
stress always again, the human beings should love each other.
— However, this is only pointless rhetoricalness, if not
even nonsense, if not even a mask for the fact that one just
has little love and stresses it, hence, all the more. The less
spiritual science talks about love, the more the special
imaginations arising from the force of love arouse the
understanding and — I would like to say — the
capacity to unfold the moral in the individual situation, while
they settle in the soul. Hence, spiritual science hopes if it
finds the access to the human beings that it does not give
moral maxims only but even moral heating fuel. Hence, spiritual
science will revive that what has withered under the influence
of the scientific knowledge.
Concerning the moral life one will note if one has tried to
implement scientific thinking also in the moral world that this
thinking in the moral area can lead only to concepts of decline
because it considers the dying life only also towards nature.
However, because spiritual science is related in its searching
with the productive force that expresses itself in love, it
will be also able to bring productive morality to humanity
again. It will spread something again among the human beings
that they will not despair of the question: what should I do,
actually? What is my task?-, but it will work among the human
beings that they receive the suggestion from it to do this and
that in life and to be carried morally thereby through life.
The number of those who labour and are heavy laden will
decrease who suffer just from it emotionally and suffer as a
result of it also physically that they cannot use life because
they have nothing in their thinking, in their mental pictures
and ideas that lets the moral task arise.
In
spiritual science just a knowledge, a sum of qualities will
exist which does not betray the human being if he envisages his
life tasks, but fulfils him with moral impulses, so that he can
say to himself at every moment of life, I deal with this or
that. Then he finds no time to ponder with the empty soul and
not to know what he should do with his life, to have to go to
sanitariums, to be stimulated from the outside, so that his
soul is filled, while it can only be filled really if one can
get the life tasks from the depths of the own inside. One can
easily argue, one does not note with some followers of
spiritual science that these fruits of which I have just spoken
appear with them; on the contrary, one realises that with them
often above all selfishness and egoism, sometimes an ingenious
egoism develops that one can find little love just with them.
One should still admit this for today. That what should develop
has to struggle through some obstacles. However, it is inherent
in the nature of the matter that the things develop this way.
It is also very much reasoned that at first something else
appears.
Those are not wrong who say, yes, spiritual science also thinks
that the present life points to former lives on earth and to
future ones and that the human being lives during the intervals
in the spiritual world — that the destiny which now the
human being experiences in spite of his freedom is dependent on
that what he brings with him from former lives and that that
which he accomplishes in this life works again on coming
lives.
Indeed, I have heard, how full persons if one has made them
aware of starving and miserable people who believed, however,
to be rather good followers of any spiritual-scientific
direction, said, well, this is okay, we have deserved that in
the former life, and he has deserved his hunger in his former
life. — This is only a radical expression of that which
often appears while people use what they receive from spiritual
science to justify their materialist sensations. Of course, if
one has to extend the human individuality beyond this single
life if one has to point to that what develops as something
transpersonal in the human individuality in his lives on earth,
egoism can be thereby stirred up, as the theoretical egoism is
often stirred up with the numerous supporters of spiritual
science who are concerned with nothing more important than to
invent who they were in their previous lives on earth. There
are often such people. However, what forms the basis there is
the following.
The
human being experiences two levels if he is concerned with
spiritual science. The first level consists of the fact that he
accepts that what he receives from spiritual science for his
own satisfaction. He is happy to find out something with which
he can live. This is the first level.
The
second level is that where one exceeds what generates just a
subtle egoism where one goes over to that point where the will,
the whole human being is stimulated in his relation to life
from that what spiritual science can give.
Then egoism stops, then the worlds are woken in the human being
that carry him beyond his narrow vicinity, which consist of
pondering in his soul. Then the human being is directed away
from himself just to other human beings. An individual-moral
feeling changes into the social feeling from which then the
moral action arises.
With it, we touch something that deeply penetrates into the
crisis of our time. At the same time, we touch an area, in
which, although it is so burning, the biggest ambiguity
prevails. While I go over to the social area, I would like to
point introductorily to the most important. One has the
impression very easily if one speaks how the human being
attains such supersensible knowledge: this is something very
remote; this is something that is very strange to the usual
life on earth.
That is not completely true. If one does not misuse the
expression, one may say, the owner of supersensible knowledge
is just a seer. Then one can have the opinion, he is proud to
have acquired something that, otherwise, all other human beings
do not have. However, this is not true. Every human being is in
one area always — save that one does not know it in the
usual life that one cannot even connect a sense with it if it
is stated —, in the spiritual condition, which one can
appropriate for the other areas of spiritual science only
laboriously as I have characterised it the day before
yesterday, so that you get to the supersensible knowledge. You
are in one area always in this spiritual condition; else, you
would be simply blind in this area. This is the one area if you
enter just into a loving relationship to your fellow human
beings. One considers the other human being from the same soul
viewpoint — but just only the human being — from
which you have to look if you want to have supersensible
knowledge. However, you must develop the capacity first to
cause the same situation in your soul concerning the other
things, which the instinct or life simply causes if you face
another human being with understanding love, with interest. In
this case, you become clairvoyant in the usual life. It is just
assigned to the human being in the usual life to become
clairvoyant in this one case; for the other cases he has to
appropriate the suitable abilities laboriously and
methodically.
The
ability to face the fellow human with understanding, with
interest, to become engrossed in the characteristic of the
other human being forms the basis of the true social life in
spite of all objections. Because the ability must be there
instinctive in the human being if he wants to establish a
relationship to the fellow human because it is the ability with
which one manages just the most significant investigations of
spiritual science, just spiritual science works on the social
life. That knowledge, which one must appropriate for the
supersensible world, reacts upon the social feeling and wakes
real understanding for the fellow human. This is
significant.
Hence, just in that time the social demands originated in which
on the other side scientific thinking celebrated the biggest
triumphs with its intellectuality. Before the sixteenth
century, we do not realise that the human being thought
thoroughly, in particular not scientifically, about any social
demand. The entire social life was instinctive.
With the emergence of the scientific habitual ways of thinking,
it becomes necessary to appropriate social concepts, to assert
conscious social sensations. If we see where in the most
radical way the social demands appear, in the industrial
proletariat, we find that this proletariat has developed its
habitual ways of thinking with the help of natural
sciences.
What the proletariat has experienced in the externally realised
scientific way of thinking has generated the special way of
dealing intellectually with the social demands. While just the
position of the human being to his fellow humans that is
related to clairvoyance was forced back, the social element
withdrew substantially during the last centuries. Because it
has withdrawn, because the social instincts did no longer
exist, the intellectual social demands originated.
If
we consider the human being not only concerning his physical
body but if we become aware by spiritual science that he is as
a soul in spiritual surroundings about which he knows nothing
with his usual consciousness, then the whole human being splits
up in the physical world and the spiritual world. He splits up
in a peculiar way.
If
we consider our view of nature, natural sciences and that what
is associated with them at first, what holds true? It is
peculiar that all questions for that what natural sciences give
originate from the spiritual. The questions come from the
spirit; indeed, one can get them from the spirit as it was done
in old times, or as in recent times the naturalists do, they
can be taken as heritage from the times when they settled down
instinctively in the human mind. What we observe experimenting
is answer only in the area of natural sciences. Questions arise
from the spirit. The answers are here in the physical realm.
This is a very interesting connection.
Because in old times an atavistic, instinctive spiritual life
existed, scientific questions arose instinctively from the
human soul. These questions were much more comprehensive than
that what with scientific observations and experiments the
human beings could obtain as answer. This ability to feel
questions instinctively withdrew. The insight into the
supersensible worlds did not yet exist; hence, one only had the
heritage in the scientific questions just in the age in which
one developed the methods of observing and experimenting et
cetera.
Someone who looks with understanding at natural sciences, finds
out for himself that all the questions are handed down from old
times and become paler and paler what impairs the answers. If
spiritual science did not appear that can deliver new questions
for natural sciences from the spiritual world, so that that
which the observation finds experimentally can be lighted up
properly, one would have gradually to experience an entire
paralysis of the scientific life in spite of any external
methodical activity as you can already experience it very
clearly today if you only have sense of it.
This holds true with reference to the view of nature. With
reference to the social and moral life, the reverse holds true.
The questions, the demands manifest within the physical world;
and only within the spiritual world, the answers arise. There
the reverse holds true.
The
human being had an instinctive spiritual life once that gave
the answers from the spirit to the demands, which the social
moral life puts here in the physical world. He produced the
moral and social maxims instinctively. The time of that is
over. We live in the age where the human being has to change
into the consciousness where the human being has progressed
concerning intellectuality. However, this intellect works in
its initial naivety in an instinctive way, I would like to
say.
Thus, the social questions, the social demands appeared at
first. One can find the answers only, while one ascends to the
world of the supersensible from which the answers can only
come. For a real social science, we need the
spiritual-scientific deepening because it will be able only to
give these answers. Our age proves what I had just to say in
this direction.
We
saw a dreadful disaster passing by during the last four and a
half years. Today we see in vast areas of the earth spread what
has arisen from that dreadful disaster which still contains
something in its bosom that lets us look with concern at the
next future. Somebody who observes these conditions impartially
does not put a question in such a way as it is normally put in
the abstract: what has this warlike disaster brought to the
whole world, actually? — Someone who thinks
spiritual-scientifically does not think in theories, not in
abstractions, but points everywhere to realities. The results
of this dreadful disaster appear in that what has remained now.
The temporary outcome of this disaster has removed a veil, and
now the truth appears naked in Eastern Europe and Central
Europe and probably also in other areas. What appears now as
social chaos, was also there before, it was only covered. The
disaster has only removed the veil. We see that what exists as
social demands and what cries for answers. Those who go forward
after the pattern of scientific concepts just from the sensory
life will not give these answers, but only the sources of
spiritual life can give these answers.
This also results from the immediate observation if one studies
conscientiously and carefully what comes to light so hopeless
in this or that point, with these or those leaders of the
today's social chaos because they are only robbing. What can
these leaders of the today's social chaos have only in mind?
They believe to overcome old classes; however, they have only
borrowed the thoughts of these classes. They believe to create
a new human life, but they are able to do that only with the
thoughts that they have borrowed from the old human life. Karl
Marx himself said mocking about the philosophers, they would
always have been busy only to arrange life with thoughts;
however, it would matter to transform life with thoughts.
If
he had thought that through to the end, if he had done the step
from the physical life to the supersensible, he would still
have had to say something else. Then, however, something quite
different would have resulted. Then he would have had to say,
the previous thoughts are only suitable to let the physical
life in such a way as it is; if one wants to transform this
life and find answers to the questions that originate from the
social chaos, then one needs other thoughts; since the old ones
show that they cannot transform life.
Such a spirit like Karl Marx may rail against bourgeoisie or
criticise it for long. It is evident to the proletarian of
course. One must have experienced how it is evident to the
proletarian. For years, I worked as a teacher at a school of
the social-democratic party for workers. I know what makes
sense to the today's proletarian; I had opportunity to get to
know what lives in these souls. Big parts of the population do
not have any idea of that today.
However, humanity, the proletariat too, has to get to know that
what it really concerns, at first. Since we live in an age that
can no longer get along with the old instincts from which the
moral and social life originated that must change rather into a
clear supersensible knowledge of the answers to the social and
moral questions.
With it, one arrives again at that viewpoint of reality that
got lost to humanity, which believes today just to be in
reality. Humanity appears sometimes as someone who sees a
horseshoe-shaped iron and to whom someone says. that
horseshoe-shaped iron is a magnet. — Oh, says the first
one, this is only iron, with it I shoe my horse. — He
does not believe in the reality of that what he does not see
with his eyes. Thus, it is the same as with the materialist
thinking. One believes in something abstract if one just
believes to look into reality. One is far away from reality
because that belongs to reality what forms the basis of the
things, the processes and the beings as a spiritual
supersensible life. One diverges from reality with his habitual
ways of thinking, sensations, and will impulses; one diverges
from the moral and social life if one does not allow to be
impregnated with spirit.
While with instinctive faith people lived in clear conditions
that showed them how everything is connected with reality,
today they live in a world order that has been complicated in
which in many regards they do not even search the immediate
relationship to reality. The human being knows at first what a
farm product is what cabbage or wheat are, and which weight
cabbage or wheat carry as products with the human being. He
still knows what human work means from human being to human
being; he still knows what a spiritual achievement means
because he wants to accept spiritual achievements to satisfy
his soul needs. As long as the human being is within the
vicinity of such things, he connects the mental pictures which
he obtains and that what he makes of life as a result of these
mental pictures, with the immediate reality.
However, life has become more complex, and today there are many
things in the outer life for which the human being hardly has
the possibility to remember even how these things are connected
with the immediate reality. As odd as it sounds, it holds true
for the most important things. What does the human being know
how capital, interest, annuity, money or even loan are
associated with that what goes forward by capital, by annuity,
by interest, by loan, by money in the life in which he
lives?
The
human being gives piece of money from one hand to the other; he
uses the bank transfer, the annuity for his life. Where does he
have the possibility today to remember, what it means: passing
money from one hand to another that one thereby lets pass an
amount of labour power from one hand to the other.
One
needs only to remind of something else to realise how people
have lost the connection with reality. The official economists
are often so helpless if they want to find social impulses;
they can answer to the question just as little what money is in
the social process. There are so-called “metalists”
(gold standard) and “nominalists” (paper
money) in the economics concerning money. The metalists
state that the metal value comes into question. The nominalists
state that only the assessment which the state or other
corporations ascribe to the concerning piece of money is
important in the social life without considering the metal
value. Science does not know at all how these things are
connected with reality.
Just on this field, it becomes apparent how time urges to find
reality again. Spiritual science can give the human beings
another kind of mental mobility and spiritual necessity. It is
true that many people regard spiritual science as difficult
because they have to exert themselves; today one does not like
to exert himself mentally. If one observes scientifically, does
experiments, one observes the processes, and the thinking is
only something like a concomitant. This proceeds parallel to
the outer processes. One likes this generally today in the time
of cinemas where one likes something to be shown that one only
accompanies with thinking; where one does not need to think
very much.
Indeed, spiritual science already demands efforts, soul
activity. That is why it is hard put to become established, why
it finds so many opponents. However, there is also the
counter-image. Spiritual science makes the concepts nimble, so
that they penetrate into reality.
Hence, spiritual science can establish order just in those
fields of knowledge that lead by the only accompanying thinking
to nothing right, in particular in the economics, in the social
science and in the social life. It will be able to go the long
ways that lead from such things like money, capital, interest,
annuity, loan to reality.
Indeed, there are many people who say, spiritual science should
deal with spiritual things and not aim at such materialist
things like capital, interest, annuity, loan et cetera. One has
to overcome just this if one soars spiritual heights. This may
be quite right on one side, nevertheless, it satisfies, at
least for this life on earth, selfish instincts of the human
being only. It matters that spiritual science can be just the
most practical for this human life.
Thus, I would especially like to point to one thing because
time presses. Someone who knows the proletarian thinking knows
that one statement of Marxism particularly makes sense to
proletarians. Karl Marx could make plausible to the people that
there are goods on the world market, which are bought after
supply and demand. There is a certain law. However, there is
also a special commodity because of the modern social order,
the human labour power, which the enterpriser buys. Other
people have other goods that they bring to the market and sell,
objects that satisfy human needs.
The
proletarian cannot sell such things; he can sell his labour
power only. He carries that to the market, it is bought from
him only for so much money as it is just necessary to support
himself and his family. He receives only so much that he can
carve out his existence, while the enterprisers pocket the
surplus value — this is the Marxist term — or it is
transferred into the remaining social circulation. The
sensation that he has to carry his labour power to market lives
in the proletarian, this is that what he just wants to abolish
by the so-called socialisation of the means of production.
This idea will cause big moral detrimental effects. It must be
pointed to it with that mental capacity, which is attained by
the sense of reality which spiritual science gives that not in
the way, as it appears with Auguste Comte (1798-1857, French
philosopher, sociologist), but in a quite different way
something is as trend in the development of humanity that
demands the reorganisation of something particular. This is in
such a way: we can look back at the Greek culture that was
connected with slavery. Slavery disappeared gradually. What was
transferred to the other person by slavery? The whole human
being. This also applies to serfage where almost the whole
human being was transferred to the other.
This was contained in the human development and corresponded to
the instincts of that time. If one knows on one side that Plato
regarded slavery as necessary, one has to imagine as
compensation what is always connected with it that the slave
did not regard slavery out of his instincts, his patriarchal
feeling as that which we feel in the retrospect today. At that
time, slavery was a normal phenomenon of the human
evolution.
The
trend of the development is that the human being gives away
less and less from himself; as a slave he gave away himself,
then the time came where his labour power is bought from him
like a commodity. It will be also overcome that the human being
gives away only a part of his being, his labour power.
This feeling that this has to be overcome expresses itself
while the proletarian appreciates the Marxist theory of labour
power as a commodity et cetera. However, it holds true that
first the whole human being, then his labour power, and now as
a third, something else is transferred from one human being to
the other. The social life will be abolished, but something
else replaces it. If one understands the social reality once in
such a way that one can speak of this other, then one will find
understanding if one has the new thoughts that are coming up to
meet the social life.
The
spiritual-scientific Intuition says to us, we live in the time
in which the social structure of humanity wants to change in
such a way that one cannot exchange the labour power for any
means which one also gives away for an objective commodity, but
that the labour power is freely used while the human being is
put in a certain social position which the human society
assigns to him, and he also provides his time to the human
society. At first, it was the whole human being who had to sell
himself or who was sold; then the human labour power; and as
the third, it is time and place. In certain areas, it is
already this way. It is not in such a way that we can say, we
ourselves who we are in other life positions than a proletarian
and give away our labour power, our achievements or anything
else. We are not paid for our labour power, but we are paid at
most for the fact that we work at a certain place and sacrifice
our power to humanity for some time. That what does no longer
belong to the human being himself, his social position which
today more or less is determined by the social structure only
with the officials — but that leads to other detrimental
effects — this will replace payment and labour power
which changes into a commodity.
You
realise that if you observe the future human development from
the spiritual impulses. If you understand that, you will work
in such a way — if one speaks from authoritative place
and works in the institutions of the public life — that
one aims, for example, at such social principle, and then one
will be coming up to meet what lives as a social demand today
in humanity. Time presses, and I cannot state more from the
spiritual-scientific viewpoint.
One
may well say, in the proletarians' heads something else lives
now, just the Marxist ideas; one is concerned with these
people. No! I myself who taught for years among these people
was not expelled by these people, but by their leaders against
the will of the students. These leaders, however, will not be
leaders for long. That what remained as a desert after this war
disaster and on which these leaders can work for a while will
see these leaders disappearing. Since they will be able to do
nothing with their ideas. With the trust in the leaders' the
trust in the old ideas will get lost.
One
would like to long that — if the possibility is there
— ears will be there to hear the real social ideas that
then enough people will be there who are inclined to bring in
such social ideas really in humanity instead of those who are
robbing today — like Lenin (1870-1924), Trotsky (Leon T.,
1879-1940) and others — and bring destruction and death
on humanity. One has to regard this above all. I wanted only to
indicate what one could elaborate for other fields of the
social life, I wanted to indicate it only, so that one
understands fundamentally that spiritual science is coming up
to meet the most important demands of the present social
life.
At
the end, I would still like to point out that spiritual science
also wants to find in the third area, in the religious life
what just a goal in this field is. One can easily hear the
objection: this is a sectarian movement, it wants to found a
new religion — and the like. Spiritual science wants to
form neither a sect nor any new religion. It wants to be the
science that is demanded from the impulse of time itself. It is
not in contrast to natural sciences, but it takes the view that
has been inaugurated just by the scientific direction.
However, something else holds true. Spiritual science tries to
understand the religious needs in the way according to the
demands of the present how they will have to be understood now
considering the changed conditions. Spiritual science wants to
be a science. Science leads always away from the human
individuality even if it puts the individual across in moral
and social area. However, as a science, as a knowledge, it
makes the human being unselfish, leads to the universal.
However, for his full person-hood the human being always needs
an immediately individual relationship to the supersensible
that he can realise immediately subjectively. The human being
needs not only the connection with the supersensible world, as
well as spiritual science can offer it, the human being needs
the connection with the religious founders by the cult, the
sacraments et cetera and with the outer sense-perceptible
development of decades and centuries which are connected with
the religious founders and the outer manifestations. Spiritual
science will deepen this spiritually and show how the
supersensible manifesting in the sense-perceptible world
appears if one penetrates it with supersensible knowledge.
Spiritual science will prepare the human being in modern sense
to have religious needs. Nevertheless, these religious needs
can only be satisfied while one looks at the old religions.
It
was strangely enough a Catholic cardinal, Newman (John Henry
N., 1801-1890), who said at his investiture in Rome, he sees no
other salvation for the Catholic Church than a new revelation.
— The Catholic cardinal showed with it only that he could
not take the previous position of the human being to the old
revelation because he announced just what should come up by
spiritual science. It takes the world in its reality, and it
knows that laws appear in the whole human development as well
as in the single human being. These development laws are in
such a way that that which the human being experienced at the
age of 50 years cannot be a repetition of that what he
experienced, for example, at the age of 25 years. One cannot
experience the same at the age of 50 years in the same
spiritual condition what one has experienced at the age of 25
years. To every age something else appertains and in other
form.
Well, the development in the course of humanity is something
else. It is not the same as with the single human being, and it
is amateurish and wrong to search the analogies between the
single human being and the historical development. However,
spiritual science finds such laws after which the entire
humanity develops and knows that the religions were founded in
particular ages which are far behind us that that was
summarised in Christianity what was distributed in the other
religions that Christianity as a religion is in certain sense
the end of the religious forms that one has not to wait for a
new revelation in the sense of Cardinal Newman, but that one
can understand only that revelation transformed in higher sense
which appeared in Christianity as a religion among other
religious revelations. Just because spiritual science thinks in
the sense of reality, it does not want to found a new religion.
It would do the same with it, as if it wanted to make a
50-year-old human being again 30 years old. Since the kind to
position itself to the religious revelation changes with time,
so that new inner bases have to be created.
Spiritual science creates these new inner bases for the modern
human being and his demands that remain unaware to many people.
The official representatives fear or fear supposedly that
spiritual science could make the human being irreligious, they
should ask themselves above all whether they themselves do not
contribute more to irreligion than spiritual science does which
will lead the human beings back again to the religious life in
the right way.
Somebody who wants to retain the religious life as religious
confession on a certain level does not want that that pushes
its way through which has to push its way through necessarily
from the new spiritual condition of the human beings. He is
rather an opponent of religion, even if he appears as a priest,
than someone who asks himself, how can the human being with his
deepened inside also develop that trait again in his soul that
makes him understand the religious life?
Spiritual science is no religion but science of the
supersensible life. Therefore, it leads the human being also to
deepening those instincts with which the religious life that
has decreased under the influence of the knowledge of nature
becomes again living and fertile.
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