LECTURE 5
Dornach, December 21, 1918
“Understand One-Another”
My dear friends,
Once again
there comes to life in our hearts the verse that has
resounded through the centuries, of the Divine Mysteries
manifesting in the Heights and of the peace on Earth for men
of good-will. And at this moment I imagine, especially in our
time, the question will arise within our hearts: What then
does mankind need, over the whole Earth's round, for the
prospering of earthly evolution and of that peace of which
the Gospel tells? Well, my dear friends, we have been
speaking for weeks past of what is needful to mankind all the
Earth over, especially in this our time — questionable
as it is and so fraught with questions. And if we would
gather up into a single sentence what has been passing
through our souls in recent weeks — then we may say: It
is necessary for men to strive ever more and more for a full
mutual understanding.
This quest of a
true mutual understanding among men coincides with what we
explained yesterday as to the fundamental impulse underlying
what we here call Anthroposophical Spiritual Science.
Anthroposophical Spiritual Science strives for an insight
into those things which can only be seen by spiritual vision
in the world and in the evolution of the world. What is it
that shall come to birth in human souls through this cosmic
understanding? It is the true — not the apparent and
illusory, but the true content of the social demands of the
present time, and it consists in calling forth mutual
understanding among men. We must strive for this
understanding of humanity over the whole Earth — strive
for it on the one hand with sincerity and on the other hand
with strength. And this can only be done today with an active
spiritual life, I mean a spiritual life which does not merely
wish to devote itself to the world passively, but seeks to be
inwardly active, partaking in the inner impulses of all
existence and so arriving at an understanding of the world
and man. Yesterday I told you, we are living in an age when
new revelations of the Spirit are penetrating through the
veil of outward phenomena. We cannot take this truth too
earnestly. For he alone who takes it in full earnest will
prove equal to the task which our age requires, of every
single human being who claims to be awake in life.
If you will
think back over many things which we have considered in the
last few weeks, you will realize that this understanding of
man over the whole Earth cannot be attained so easily as many
people think. We have tried to throw light on the
peculiarities of the groupings of peoples in the Western and
Eastern regions of the Earth and in the Middle. Without
letting sympathies or antipathies come into play in the very
least, we have tried to understand what are the deepest
characteristics of the peoples of the West, the Middle and
the East respectively. Why did we do so? To take an example,
we pointed out that our age is characterized especially by
the development of intellectuality, and that in the Western
— especially the English-speaking — peoples, this
intellectuality comes to expression in such a way that it
acts, as it were, instinctively. Whereas in the Middle
peoples, intellect does not work instinctively — in
fact, to begin with, it is not innate in them at all; they
must acquire it by education. This, we showed, is a very
significant difference between the peoples of the West and of
the Middle. Thereafter we pointed to the peoples of the East
and we said: There, the evolution of intellect comes to
expression in such a way that, to begin with, the Eastern
peoples actually recoil from it. They are loath to awaken
this intellectuality to life within them; they want to
preserve it for the knowledge of the Spirit-Self in the
future. We pointed to other differentiations also, over the
earth. Today let us ask ourselves: Why do we indicate these
differentiations? Why do we seek from our point of view to
characterize the different groups of people over the Earth?
We do so, my dear friends, because in future the mere
“Love one-another” will no longer suffice. In
future, men will only attain mutual understanding as to their
several tasks over the whole Earth if they know what is
working in one or in another territory of the Earth. They
must be able to look consciously at the several
characteristics of the different groups of people. Once we
can rise to the inner feeling, which is indeed essential to
such understanding, this understanding will indeed be brought
about. The feeling to which I refer, my dear friends, is
this; the moment we begin to characterize human beings all
the Earth over in this way, we must rid ourselves of the
impulse to judge and value in the way we judge and value an
individual human being as to his moral qualities. In seeking
to characterize the nations it simply will not do to judge of
their worth as we do in the case of a single human being. It
is the very essence of the evolution of the individual human
beings on Earth, that man develops the moral qualities as an
individual being. Morality can only be evolved by the
individual, not by groups of human beings. It would be the
worst of illusions if we continued to believe that groups of
human beings — or, as one likes to call them nowadays,
nations — can enter into a like relationship to one
another as man to man. One who can understand concretely what
groups of human beings (nations, too, therefore) are in
reality, will see the nations guided, as you know from our
lecture cycle on the Folk Souls, by those Beings of the
Hierarchies whom we call Archangels. He will never ascribe to
the mutual relationship of nations that which he must see in
the relation of one human being to another. What the nations
are, they are in face of the Divine Beings. Here there arises
a very different valuation from that which obtains as between
man and man. It is for this very reason that man becomes an
individual in the course of his evolution. He wrests himself
free from the mere folk or nation, so that he may enter fully
into what we call the moral order of the world. This moral
order of the world is a concern of the individual man.
Such things
must be understood by real spiritual knowledge. The true
progress of Christianity itself in our time consists in this.
I said the other day: We are living in a time when the
Spirits of Personality rise in a sense to creative activity.
They become Creators. This is exceedingly important, for
inasmuch as they become Creator-Spirits there penetrates
through the veil of phenomena what we described yesterday as
a new revelation. The Spirits of Personality, therefore, are
taking on the character of Creators. They become different in
a sense from what they were before. They in their being take
on a character like that which certain other Spirits (the
Spirits of Form) possessed, for earthly evolution, since
Lemurian times. This means that in a certain sense man will
henceforth confront an altogether changed world-picture. We
must become conscious of this, for this is the great thing in
our time. Man is beginning to confront an altogether changed
world picture, one that comes forth — to use a Goethean
expression — out of the gray depths of the Spirit. If
we look back with Spiritual Science into the historic
evolution of mankind — we may look back into
pre-Christian times — the farther we go back, the more
we find that men possessed in an old instinctive way an
extensive cosmic knowledge, which inspires us with all the
greater reverence the more we learn to know it. For the seer
it becomes a fact that at the outset of earthly evolution an
immense Wisdom was poured out as it were over the earthly
life of man. In course of time this Wisdom gradually filtered
away. And strange as it may sound, my dear friends, yet it is
true, it had reached a kind of zero level at the time when
the Mystery of Golgotha came with a blessing to mankind.
During that time all that humanity had known in former ages
fell into a kind of chaos in the consciousness of man. Those
who have understanding of these matters express themselves
with perfect agreement on this fact. During that time, they
say, the evolution into which man is woven had reached once
more the point of utter ignorance. Yet into this gray
ignorance which overlay mankind there fell the greatest
earthly revelation — the Mystery of Golgotha —
the starting point of new knowledge, new revelations for
humanity.
Nevertheless,
through many centuries, as concerns man himself, the dark
gray ignorance persisted in a sense. It does enlighten us, my
dear friends, in the deepest sense, if, looking back on the
last two thousand years, we ask ourselves with understanding:
What, after all, did men produce out of themselves during
these last two thousand years? All they possessed by way of
Wisdom (independent of the Mystery of Golgotha) was old
tradition — inheritance from old traditions. Let us
understand one another aright. Needless to say, I will not
say humanity has had no Wisdom at all during the last two
thousand years, nor will I cast aspersions on the Wisdom
which they had. The point is this: The Wisdom that was
present in the old pre-Christian times — whose relics
are still observable in the last centuries before the Mystery
of Golgotha — this Wisdom was seen, albeit
instinctively, seen in the Spirit of the olden times. Now
however they had lost the power of relating themselves, with
independent spiritual vision, to the content of the cosmic
Wisdom. What had existed in olden times was preserved, as it
were, in a historic memory. Even the Mystery of Golgotha, as
I said yesterday, was clothed in the old Wisdom, expressed in
the conceptions of the old-remembered Wisdom.
All this went
on through many centuries. An advance-guard — albeit
only an advance guard — for a renewed penetration of
man into Cosmic Wisdom emerged in the mode of thought of
modern Natural Science. True, to begin with it emerges in an
apparently godless form; yet it is so. It is something which
man seeks to acquire by his own activity of soul. Have I not
often emphasized that for the future men must learn to regard
the spiritual world anthroposophically, even [as], since
Copernicus, they have regarded the purely mechanical,
external order of Nature? To learn to behold the Divine just
as men learned to behold the outer mechanical aspect of the
universe since Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno —
this is the task that must permeate us if we would come to a
true understanding of our time.
Of course there
are many things against this true understanding of our time.
Towards such understanding, as you know, such things are
necessary as are said for instance in my book on
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment
where we have shown what ways the soul must take to penetrate
into the spiritual world even as Copernicus, Galileo and
Giordano Bruno sought to penetrate the outward mechanical
order of Nature. Those who have no deeper understanding for
human aspirations may well be astonished that the most
vigorous opposition arises out of the spirit of the old
religious faiths (if we may call them so) against this
endeavor to show what ways the human soul must take to find
the spiritual world. It is especially so when the old spirit
appears in the form of Jesuitism.
Among the many
stupid accusations which have appeared in three articles in
the Stimmen der Zeit this year, the following also
occurs: “The Church,” they say, “forbids
this treatment of the human soul to find the paths into the
spiritual world.” My dear friends, for many a modern
believer in authority this may sound like something new; but
they fail to remember that the very same Church also forbade
the researches of Copernicus and Galileo! The Church dealt
with external scientific research in exactly the same way. We
need not therefore wonder if it metes out the same treatment
to the inner researches of spiritual science. It is only
remaining true to its old habits. Even as the Catholic Church
rebelled until 1827 against the Copernican doctrine, so it
rebels against the conscious penetration into the spiritual
world. This penetration into the spiritual worlds is no mere
talking in abstractions; it is something real and concrete.
It means that we transcend in fact once more the state of
dark, gray ignorance and penetrate with knowledge into the
underlying spiritual content of the world. Was it not also
part of this gray ignorance that man looked out upon the
world and saw the nations — the groups of human beings
— and spoke of them as of a formless chaos. They spoke
of the peoples of the West, of the Middle and of the East,
but they did not distinguish nor characterize them. At best
they knew that the leaders of the nations were Archangeloi,
but they did not strive really to know the specific
characters of the several nations — of the Archangeloi
themselves. This belongs to the new revelation: — we
must now observe and understand how the several Archangeloi
are working over the face of the Earth. And this will be a
real enrichment of man's consciousness all the Earth over.
Through the very inability to rise from the dead level of
gray ignorance to real differentiation, the gulf has been
brought about which I described yesterday, between the
subject of the Sunday sermons and what is regarded as the
business of everyday life in the outer world. Within the
sphere of the religious faiths they talk about the Divine
World and its relation to mankind, but all this talking
proves too feeble to penetrate the life and business of men
on Earth. It can say no more to them than “Love one
another,” which is about as sensible as if I were to
say to the stove: Warm the room, that is your duty as a
stove. Such teaching has not power really to take hold of the
hearts of man. They cannot unite their knowledge of everyday
affairs with what is brought down to them in this way as
abstract precepts, customs, dogmas about the spiritual world.
This gulf is there, my dear friends, and the religious faiths
would only like to hold it fast.
The strangest
flowers spring from the presence of this gulf and from the
conscious desire to maintain it. The Jesuits, for instance,
object to anthroposophical Spiritual Science because it looks
for something in the human being which is capable of inner
evolution so as to lead man to the Divine. To do so, they
say, is heretical, for the Church teaches us and forbids us
to say anything different from this — that God in His
Being has nothing to do with the world, nay more, that in
substantial identity He has nothing to do with the soul of
man. He who declares that the soul of man bears something of
the Divine Being within it in any respect whatever, is for
the Catholic Church — as conceived by the Jesuits
— a heretic.
Into such
statements is instilled the inmost tendency of that Church,
which is not to let the human beings reach to the Divine but
to shut them off from it. Dogma itself assumes a form such as
to prevent man from reaching the Divine. No wonder,
therefore, since they have not been permitted to reach to the
Divine, if in the fifth Post-Atlantean age (which
had to bring the Spiritual Soul, once and for all)
World-knowledge has become not a Divine but a pure Ahrimanic
knowledge. For that which is recognized as Natural Science
today is a purely Ahrimanic achievement. We have often
characterized it thus. Strange, that the Catholic Church
should prefer the Ahrimanic Natural Science to the
anthroposophical; for the Ahrimanic Natural Science is no
longer considered heretical today, while the anthroposophical
Natural Science is anathematized.
A truly
enlightened man of today needs to be clear about these
things. He must recognize that the same thing must now need
to be undertaken on the path of the Spirit as has hitherto
been undertaken on the path of Nature. Only so can the path
of Nature be saved from its aberration into a purely
Ahrimanic realm. It has already suffered this aberration,
because in fact the path of the Spirit could only be added to
it at a later stage. But from now onwards and for the future
of mankind, the path of the Spirit must be added to it, so
that Natural Science may be lifted again to its Divine
Spiritual height; so that the life in which we live between
birth and death be reunited with the life of which the
science of the Spirit has to tell, namely that life in which
we live in the time between death and a new birth. Yet this
will only happen in our time if we have the will really to
understand this life all the Earth over, to understand it as
it works in man himself.
Moreover we can
only understand the single human being if we understand the
character of human groupings. Only so shall we be enabled to
see into the true reality.
Not long ago I
drew your attention to a strange fact which may well surprise
many people. I will repeat it briefly. You know that here in
Switzerland there lived a worthy philosopher, Avenarius, who
undoubtedly regarded himself as a good, law-abiding bourgeois
citizen; who did not think himself in the remotest degree a
revolutionary. He founded a school of thought written in so
difficult a language that very few people can read it.
Moreover, writing a rather more popular language, but in a
similar sense, there lived a philosopher in Vienna and in
Prague — Ernst Mach, who equally regarded himself as a
good law-abiding citizen. Truly, neither of them has a vein
of revolution in them. Yet the fact is, these two
philosophers have become the official philosophers of the
Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks have adopted them as their State
Philosophers — so we may put it, if we do not
misunderstand the expression. True, Avenarius and Mach would
turn in their graves if they were to discover that they are
now looked up to by the Bolsheviks as their State
Philosophers. As I said on the former occasion, we only do
not understand such a phenomenon because we confine ourselves
to abstract logic instead of holding fast to the logic of
realities, the logic of facts, the logic of things seen.
Though you may think that this lies far afield from your
point of view, I will nevertheless refer to it again from
another aspect. In particular, I will mention one point in
the philosophy of Avenarius which may help us to answer the
interesting questions: How could it be that Avenarius and
Mach became the State Philosophers of the Bolsheviks? The
very fact is after all significant enough of the utter
confusion of our time.
Avenarius, you
see, raises various questions. If we spoke in his technical
language — of “introjections” and the like,
of all the purely epistemological concepts he evolved —
we should be speaking a pretty unintelligible language for
most people. Yet in this unintelligible language he raises a
question which is after all very interesting from the point
of view of Spiritual Science. Avenarius asks: If a man were
all alone in the world, would he still speak of the
distinction between that which is in his own soul and that
which is outside in the world? Would he still distinguish the
subjective and the objective? Richard Avenarius is clever
enough to declare: We are only tempted to speak of the
difference between “subjective” and
“objective” through the fact that we are not
alone in the world. When we stand face to face with another
man, we assume that that which we carry in our brains —
of a table or of any other object — is in him too. By
projecting into his brain the same picture which we carry in
ourselves, the whole thing acquires a picture-like character,
and this leads us to distinguish the things in our soul from
the things outside — the things that we confront.
Avenarius opines that if there were not other people outside
us in the world we should not speak of the differences
between that which is in our own soul and that which is
outside us. We should regard ourselves as one with the
things, merged with the things of the world. We should not
distinguish ourselves from the world.
We may truly
say, my dear friends, from a certain point of view Avenarius
is right in his assertion, but from another point of view
appallingly mistaken. It is indeed of some importance that in
the course of our earliest childhood (though in our conscious
memory we know nothing of that time) we came into touch with
human beings. Our whole ideation — our whole way of
thinking — was influenced by this. It is quite true,
things would be very different if we had not come into touch
with others; but they would not be as Avenarius supposes. He
who can apprehend the underlying facts by spiritual vision
arrives at the real truth. Our whole world-picture would
indeed be different if at the time in life when we cannot yet
think consciously we did not meet with other human beings.
But this is the curious thing, my dear friends. The different
world-picture which we then should have would contain the
spiritual Beings who underlie the world. It would not be as
Avenarius supposes. Incidentally, what a dreadful
abstraction! We should not fail to distinguish ourselves from
the world if we were alone in the world and there were no
other human beings. Behind the minerals and plants (for there
would have to be no animals, they too would disturb the
world-picture by their presence) we should perceive the
Divine-Spiritual World. In other words, my dear friends, our
living-together with other men is the reason why, in the
ordinary way of life, we do not perceive the spiritual world
behind the plants and minerals. Our fellow-men place
themselves before this spiritual world and hide it from us.
Think what this means! At the cost of not perceiving the
Divine world of the Hierarchies, we acquire all that comes to
us through our living together with other men on the physical
Earth. Our fellow-men place themselves before the world of
the Gods and hide it from us, as it were. Naturally,
Avenarius was unaware of this, hence he carried the question
in an entirely wrong direction. He imagined that if no human
being were there we should see ourselves unseparated from the
world — should not distinguish ourselves from the
world. The truth is we should distinguish ourselves
— not indeed from other men or from plants and minerals
— but from the Gods whom we should then have all round
us. That is the truth.
If you consider
this you will realize what is very important to realize in
our time. Strange to say, it is in many respects our destiny
today! Precisely the most penetrating spirits of our time
will often touch on the most vital questions — yet
always so as to lead them in the most wrong direction, so as
to lead away from the perception of the Spirit. It would
indeed be difficult to lead away from the perception of the
Spirit more radically than Avenarius does. His philosophy is
extremely sharp-witted — written with all the
refinement of professorial language — and it is
therefore well-adapted to lead men away from the Spirit in a
state of sleep. And when men are led asleep away from the
Spirit they regard this leading away from the Spirit as a
necessity — a kind of mathematical necessity. So long
as they do not observe that they are being led away from the
Spirit, they take it all as scientifically proven. That is
the one thing, my dear friends.
Here we have a
philosopher (and much the same could be said of Mach) the
inmost nerve of whose thought is to found a system which
shall lead man radically away from the Spirit. In Bolshevism,
my dear friends, the intention is to found a social order to
the exclusion of all things spiritual — to group
mankind in their social life so that the Spiritual plays no
part in it at all. That is the real inner connection of the
two, and it makes itself connection of the two, and it makes
itself felt in the logic of facts. Not for a mere external
reason but by a deep inner kinship, Avenarius and Mach became
the State Philosophers of the Bolsheviks.
You see, it is
quite possible — with judgments that are prevalent
today — to stand more or less fixedly before these
things in blank astonishment. How do the Bolsheviks come to
have Avenarius and Mach as State Philosophers? For us however
it is possible even now to see the real inner connections.
Only to do so, we must look for the underlying spiritual
facts, as we have done in this instance, where we perceive
how it would be in reality if man [were] alone on the
physical Earth without any other men. There are many facts
and phenomena entering into our life today — especially
in the mutual relationships of men — which paralyze
men's minds to contemplate, because they can gain no
understanding of them without Spiritual Science. I have just
given an instance from the spiritual life; quite everyday
facts, however, might also be mentioned in this way.
Do not imagine
that it was so in all ages. Such phenomena also existed in
ancient times, but they were instinctively intelligible to
men — intelligible by the old instinctive clairvoyance.
Then, through the long gray period of ignorance, such
phenomena were absent from the mutual intercourse of men. Now
they are making their appearance once more. Not that the
souls of men are evolving; the world is evolving. The world
itself is changing, and it reveals its change to begin with
in the mutual intercourse of men. In the next epoch it will
also reveal the change in the relation of man to the other
kingdoms of Nature. Life will remain unintelligible to men,
in the present and in the immediate future, so long as they
are unwilling to consider it through Spiritual Science.
Illusion after illusion will take hold of the soul, if man
will not have recourse to the spiritual-scientific concepts.
There are some here present to whom at the outbreak of the
present War-catastrophe I repeated one thing again and again.
It is quite possible, I said, to write of the so-called
world-historic facts of the last few centuries according to
the records in the archives — by looking up the records
and writing histories in the style of Ranks of the rest. But
of the outbreak of this War-catastrophe it is
impossible to write so. However much they delve into the
archives, if they do not observe what was the mood of soul of
those who were concerned in the outbreak of this War, and how
this mood of soul gave entry for the Ahrimanic powers into
the Earth's affairs, and how thereby the causes of this
War-catastrophe came from an Ahrimanic side — if, in a
word, they are willing to observe the starting-point of this
catastrophe with Spiritual Science, it will remain forever
dark. This War-catastrophe, my dear friends, is a real
challenge to mankind, to learn from it. Much can be learned
from what happened during the last four or five years as a
consequence of the preceding events. Above all things, we
should learn to put certain questions, not so one-sidedly as
heretofore, but in keeping with the real needs of the
time.
As I have often
said, we have no reason to comfort ourselves too lightly
about the misfortunes of our time, still less to shut our
eyes to them. But we have also no reason to be pessimistic.
Only consider the following. We can say to ourselves: immense
and terrible events have taken place in the last four or five
years over the Earth. And yet, what is the essential thing in
all these terrors? It is what human souls have experienced
through them. That is the essential thing — what human
souls have experienced through these events, with respect to
their soul's evolution, needless to say throughout all
Earth-existence. Seen in this light, a question fraught with
deep significance emerges. The question is strange and
paradoxical, but so only because it is fraught with such deep
meaning, unaccustomed to our everyday thought. Could we
really desire that mankind should have lived on without any
such catastrophe, in the way they had grown accustomed to
live until the year 1914? Can we really say that that would
have been desirable? In putting this question I may be
permitted once again to point to what I said before the
outbreak of this War, in my lecture cycle at Vienna (April
1914, Cycle XXXII). I said: If we really see what is living
in the world of man today, the mutual relationship of men,
their social life, appears to us like a social carcinoma
— a cancerous growth — eating its way through
mankind. Men had only shut their eyes to this carcinoma of
the social commonweal. They were unwilling to look the real
facts in the face. No one who sees things at their deepest
could say that it would have been good for mankind to go on
in that way. For on the lines which I have indicated they
would have gone more and more downhill, farther and farther
from the Spirit. And as to those to whom we look with souls
full of pain — the millions who have been swept away
from the physical plane by this dread catastrophe and who are
now living on as souls — they it is who ponder most of
all how different now their situation is, inasmuch as they
are spending the rest of their life in the spiritual world;
how different it would have been if their Karma had still
kept them on the physical Earth.
Sub specie
aeterni — from the aspect of eternity —
things after all appear quite different, and this must not be
left unsaid. Only on the other hand we must not take these
things lightly or superficially. True as it is, it is
infinitely sad that this catastrophe has taken place, yet it
is no less true, my dear friends; by this very catastrophe
man has been preserved from an appalling downfall into
materialism and utilitarianism. And though it does not yet
show itself today, yet it will show itself —
above all in the Middle Countries and the East, where, in
place of an order that had been imbued with materialism, a
state of chaos is now developing. Truly we cannot refer to
this chaos without an undertone of pain and suffering. I mean
the social chaos which has overcome the Middle and Eastern
countries, and that shows outwardly little prospect of
transforming into any kind of harmony. And yet there is
another aspect. Wherever this chaos exists, the world in the
near future will give men very, very little through the
purely physical plane. The blessings of the physical plane
will truly not be great in the Middle and the Eastern
countries. Of all that can be given to man so that he feels
his life sustained by external powers — of this there
will be precious little. Man will have to take hold of
himself in his own soul in order to stand fast, and in the
very act of doing so he will be able to set forth along the
path into the spiritual world. He will resolve to go towards
the Spirit, whence alone the salvation of the future can
come. This, my dear friends, will be the essential thing for
the future. Our outer bodily existence will, as it were, be
slipping away from us. The outer bodily nature, as I said
yesterday, will no longer be so sound and healthy as in times
past; it has more death in it than it had in bygone ages. The
content of the World-riddle is not to be found with that with
which our bodily nature is connected; no, we must rise into
the spiritual world to find the necessary impulse, and also
the impulse which we need for the social order. This insight
will arise when men are able to find as little as possible in
the physical world. For the physical world itself will only
be able to assume a form of harmony when it seeks for this
form out of the spiritual life.
The Bible, my
dear friends, in its first pages, does not tell us that is
was Lucifer or Ahriman who drove man out of Paradise; it was
the Jahve — God Himself who did so. And as we know,
this very expulsion from paradise signifies man's becoming
free — the conscious experience of freedom by mankind.
The possibility, the seed of freedom, was given by the
expulsion from Paradise. Is it then contrary to the Biblical
wisdom if we say: Once more, it was Divine Wisdom which drove
men out of the present age that was leading them down into
materialism and utilitarianism, thus planting seeds, which,
spiritually taken hold of, can really help the world. It
sounds to us out of the painful depths of the last
four-and-a-half years: “Spiritual life is wishing to
reveal itself through the veil of the outward phenomena; men
shall learn through misfortune to turn their eyes to these
revelations of the Spirit, and it will be for their
salvation.”
This too is a
language which will seem paradoxical to many a modern man and
yet, it is the language which Christ Himself is guiding us to
speak. Today it lies inherent in the very progress of
Christianity to grasp the Christian truths in a new way. This
can only be done if they are taken hold of
spiritually. The Mystery of Golgotha, my dear
friends, is a spiritual event which has entered into the
evolution of the Earth. It can only be fully understood by a
spiritual way of knowledge. As in the last resort it was
through misfortune that mankind found the Christ, we too
shall have to seek through our misfortune for the Christ
through the new way of comprehension.
I admit, my
dear friends, this is no ordinary comfort. Yet if we are
ready to put all trivialities aside in the deeper sense of
the word it is after all no little comfort, nay perhaps, it
is the only comfort in our time, worthy of the dignity of
man. It is not the kind of comfort which says to man: Only
wait, and without your cooperation all the divine things will
be vouchsafed to you! Rather does it say: Make use of your
own forces, and you will find that the God is speaking and
abounding in your souls. Then, through this God, you will
also find the God in the great Universe, and — which is
the most important — you yourselves will be able to
work in communion with Him. We must depart from the mere
passive attitude to super-sensible knowledge. Man must bestir
himself within to find himself, and as he does so, recognize
himself as part of the World-Order. Let the religious faiths
rebel, which want to make things nice and comfortable for
lulling a man's spirit to sleep in clouds of incense (I speak
figuratively) so that he may then find his way to the Divine
passively and without active cooperation on his part. Let
them rebel however much against the call that now springs
forth out of the spiritual worlds! — “Man shall
now look for his true worth in inner spiritual activity
— in the active inner development of spiritual
life!”
This, my dear
friends, must be; and it must be so especially if we are to
reckon with the social demands of our time. I have said so
already in these weeks. We are living — at any rate, a
great part of our educated humanity are living — from
the achievements of Greek culture; but we do not always
remember how these achievements, by which we live, were
created. Greek civilization was unfolded on a basis of
slavery. A great proportion of mankind had to live as slaves
in order to bring about at all what we now feel as the
blessings of Greek culture. Let us face the fact fully and
clearly. All that Greek Art, Greek learning signifies —
all this and many other things arose on the foundation of
slavery. Then, my dear friends, we shall ask ourselves with
renewed intensity: What is it that has brought about the
inner change? We today no longer think as did the great
philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, who took slavery as an
absolute matter of course. At that time it went without
saying, even for the wisest of men, that nine-tenths of
mankind must live as slaves. For us today it no longer goes
without saying. On the contrary, we regard it as an offence
against the dignity of man that anyone should think so. What
was it then that brought it about for Western humanity
— this radical change in men's way of thought? It was
Christianity which freed men from slavery and led them to
recognize, at least in principle, that all men are equal
before God, as to their soul. For this was the principle
which uprooted slavery out of the social order of mankind.
But as we know — for we must refer to it again and
again from many points of view — one thing has been
left behind until our day. It is that of which I told you
that it is the salient point in the consciousness of the
modern working man. One thing has been left behind, namely
the possibility — in our social order — for a
part of the human being to be bought as a commodity and sold
by himself as a commodity. Moreover it is a part of man that
takes its course in his very body. The salient point of the
social question — the perpetual irritant, the thing
that continually incites — is the fact that human
labor-power can be paid for. This too creates at the
very foundations of all our social order the character of
Egoism. For egoism cannot but prevail in the social (I say
once more, in the social order — please
understand me aright) if to obtain what he requires for his
own needs a man must get his labor paid for. He is obliged to
earn for himself.
This is the
next and necessary stage — after the overcoming of
slavery — it must be made impossible for any man's
labor to be a commodity. This is the true salient point of
the social question, and it is this which the new
Christianity will solve. In recent lectures I have told you
something of the solving of the social question. For that
three-folding of the social order, of which I told you there,
sets free the commodity from the labor-power of man. In
future, men will only buy and sell commodities — outer
objects, things separate from man himself — which (as I
wrote already in my essay on
Theosophy and the Social Question
which appeared in 1905) one man will work for
another from motives of brotherly love.
It may be a
long way to go to attain this end. Yet this and this alone
will solve the social question. Whoever will not believe
today that this must come about in the world-order is like a
man who would have said, at the time of the origin of
Christianity: “Slaves there must always be.” Even
as he would have been wrong at that time, so likewise today
the man is wrong who says: “Labor must always be paid
for.” At that time it seems unimaginable that a certain
number of men should not be slaves. Not even Plato or
Aristotle could conceive it. Today the cleverest of men
cannot conceive a social order wherein Labor would have quite
another value — quite another meaning than of being
paid for. Needless to say, even then the product will proceed
from the labor, but the product alone will be able to be
bought and sold. Socially, this very fact will be the
salvation of men.
To realize
these things it is indeed necessary to have the knowledge of
spiritual vision, the logic of things seen. Without it
humanity will not go forward. The logic of spiritual vision
is the fuel to create what must arise among mankind in
future, namely that human love which springs from the
understanding between man and man. Strange as it sounds, my
dear friends, today, when all manner of atavistic remnants
are still there in men in one way or another — today
everything is still regarded with sympathies and antipathies.
So it is, for instance, when we explain such distinctions as
I here did a little while ago. I said that of the three
members of human nature the Western peoples are called
especially to develop the abdominal nature, the Middle
peoples the heart-nature and the Eastern peoples the head
nature. Nowadays, such things are nearly always treated as
judgments of relative value, in one way or another. At least,
somewhere inside him every man still has a little pigeon-hole
where he does so. Such valuation must absolutely cease, for
this very vision of the differentiations of mankind over the
whole Earth's sphere will become the basis of sympathetic,
understanding love. From understanding, not from ignorance,
true human love — reaching over the whole Earth —
will spring, during this age of the Spiritual Soul. Then will
men know, over the whole Earth, how to find themselves in
Christ. Christ is no concern of one nation or another. He
concerns all mankind; but to recognize this, many an illusion
must first give way.
Men must be
able to raise themselves, to look without illusions into the
true nature of things. Today, in many spheres of life, they
are unwilling to do so. And yet, I know I am speaking in the
spirit of the true Christmas peace in placing the following
paradox before you. My dear friends, you know well that I am
not speaking of the individual human beings but of the
nations as a whole when I refer to these differentiations. It
is so easy to misunderstand these things unless one has good
will. As I have pointed out so often, the single human
individuality who grows out of the nation is not intended;
only nations as such. I beg you to bear this in mind when I
now say the following: —
You see, my
dear friends, let us consider the one or other of the
judgments which have been passed during the last four years
on the countries, or States, of the Middle of Europe. I can
thoroughly understand such feelings. I do not want to say
anything in the least against those who are filled with
enthusiasm for the Entente. Far be it from me —
everyone has his opinion, and that is justified from a
certain point of view. But, my dear friends, suppose we now
look away from the opinion which prevailed in the past few
years and consider its prolongation in the present time. Then
after all, perhaps we may find something rather hard for
understanding. For we may ask ourselves: Is it necessary for
the judgments which were passed, while the potentates of the
middle countries held the reins of power, to be continued
now? Nay is it necessary to do all that one can — and
by the most refined of methods — so as to be able to
prolong these judgments? Is it necessary? Is it equally
explicable? Superficially considered, it is certainly not so
easy to explain as many such things were before. More deeply
considered however, it is still explicable, my dear friends.
More deeply considered we can understand it — albeit
not out of the character of the individuals (for the
individuals themselves in Western countries will want to
bring about a healing of these matters). Those, however,
whose judgments merely spring from their respective
nationalities, or rather, national prejudices — they
have in their subconsciousness something which we may
characterize as follows: —
Some weeks ago
I explained that in our conception of the world and notably
our way of thinking at the present time much that belongs to
the Old Testament is still alive, while the essential nerve
of Christianity has only entered to a slight extent as yet.
Now it is characteristic of Jahve-worship that it concerns
all those things to which we do not bring ourselves up
between our birth and death, but which are given to us as an
inheritance — i.e., the things which lie inherent in
our blood, which in the normal course only have influence on
us while we sleep, while we ourselves are outside the body.
This Jahve-conception still lives and throbs in our time to a
very large extent, and it can only rise into the
Christ-conception if we turn in this intellectualistic age
with all our power to the conquest of the spiritual world,
not through birth, not through what is inspired into us with
our birth, but through our own self-education in this life.
Now by nature the West is not predestined to pass from the
service of Jahve to that of Christ. Such predestination only
begins in the Middle of Europe and goes towards the East.
This applies once more, needless to say, not to the
individual but to the nation. Hence, my dear friends, the
characteristic form of Wilsonian thought, steeped as it is
entirely in Old Testament conceptions. However much it may
deny the fact, the form of thought stands out as though it
would fain exterminate what is trying spiritually to emerge
in the Middle Countries and in the East. Hence it is
outwardly so hard to understand. Under all manner of
pretexts, these people still prolong the same hostile spirit,
though they have swept away what they professed they wanted
to sweep away, and only the peoples themselves are left,
against whom — so they assured us — they had no
ill intentions. They do so because in reality they are
resisting what has arisen in spiritual evolution in the
Middle Countries and in the East during the last few
centuries, which, nonetheless, is necessary to mankind.
Subconsciously, they want to expunge it. They do not want to
enter into these things.
We are now
living in a most important crisis of the world. I have often
heard people ask; how is it that the men of the West
especially the English and the French — have such a
dreadful hatred of the Germans? There is a very simple
answer, my dear friends, and yet it is an exhaustive answer.
Man always sees himself differently (especially himself as
member of a nationality) than he sees his fellow men. I can
assure you, my dear friends, such thoughts as Mach had when
he got into the bus or walked along the street are very often
there in the subconscious lives of men. You know how Mach
himself relates the story. Once, very tired, he got into a
bus and did not notice that there was a mirror on the side
opposite the door. Someone else, he thought, got in at the
same time from the other side, and he said to himself: What a
horrid old schoolmaster that is! He knew himself very little
in his outward person and when he saw himself he did not like
it at all.
Now, my dear
friends, observe the spiritual history of Middle Europe
— not in its more intimate features but as a whole.
Down to Lessing, far down into the last third of the 18th
century, the Germans took pains to be like the French. You
could see it in everything. From a certain moment onward
(approximately in the 12th century) till far beyond the
middle of the 18th century, the Germans endeavored to be like
the French — to behave in such a way that they also
might become Frenchmen. What the French could not see in
themselves — or, if they saw it, were inclined to rate
it highly — all this they hated with a dreadful hatred
when they saw it in the imitation. Unconsciously, man does
indeed practice a strange form of self-knowledge. At bottom,
in their deepest being, the Germans were never hated by the
French. The French only hated themselves when they saw their
mirrored image in the German soul.
Since then a
very remarkable English influence has arisen, the extent of
which is by no means adequately realized. The English
naturally see themselves just as little as Mach did;
but they notice themselves well enough when they see
themselves in this mirrored image which has entered so
strongly into the German soul since the 18th century. It is
the Englishman whom they now judge in the German. There is
the simple psychological solution, my dear friends. If the
world-crisis had not arisen, this state of affairs would have
gone on for a long time, and we should have a great mixture,
as it were a broth, out of which single individualities would
nevertheless have arisen, possessing the intimate qualities
of the true German. Now, however, out of the world-crisis,
chaos and misfortune will cause to arise what must arise:
that which was always present, though under the power of the
West it was unable to unfold. These are the real facts. There
is no ground for pessimism, even in Middle Europe. We must
only dive to the deeper foundations which underlie the
process of evolution.
My dear
friends, what the Entente Powers are doing today may appear
thus, or thus. It matters very little how it appears, for at
the bottom of their hearts they are wanting what is quite
impossible. They are wanting to prevent the rise of something
which absolutely must unfold in the Middle of Europe and in
the East, for it is connected with the spiritual progress of
mankind; it cannot be prevented. But it must also call forth
this, my dear friends: — If man is to take the future
of the Earth in earnest he must truly have faith in the
Spirit; only out of the power of the Spirit will there come
what must come, even for the solving of the burning
social needs of our time. In the machine age it was necessary
for these 50 million invisible human beings — that is
to say, human beings visible as machines — to arise, so
that men might gradually learn to feel that they
must not be paid like machines are paid. And it was also
necessary for this appalling catastrophe to arise, wherein
the machine age has celebrated its greatest triumphs. Out of
this catastrophe man will begin to unfold his real strength,
and as he does so, he will gain a certain power once more to
unite himself with the Divine and Spiritual. If we may now
compare what many people have rightly called the most
appalling event in the Earth's history with the beginning of
Earth-evolution we may say: just as it was no mere misfortune
for men to be driven out of Paradise, so too it is no mere
misfortune that such a catastrophe has overtaken mankind.
In the end, my
dear friends, the most valuable truths are paradoxes today,
as I have often pointed out, we may well say: Men were so
infamous as to nail to the Cross the greatest Being Who ever
appeared on the Earth — Jesus Christ. They killed Him.
We may well say that it was infamous of them. And yet this
Death, my dear friends, is the very content of Christianity;
for through this Death there took place what we call the
Mystery of Golgotha. Without it there would be no
Christianity. This Death is the good fortune of men; this
Death is the abounding strength of earthly man. So
paradoxical are things in their reality. For on the one hand
we may say: how infamous it was of men to nail Christ to the
Cross; and yet, with this Death — this nailing to the
Cross — the greatest event on Earth is brought about. A
misfortune is not always merely a misfortune; often it is the
starting-point for the achievement of human greatness and of
human strength.
|