Three Lectures on
THE THREEFOLD SOCIAL ORDER
by
Dr. Rudolf Steiner
Lecture 3
The
Rule of the Initiate, the Priest, the Business Wan;
James I; Thomas Cromwell
Dornach, October 12th, 1919
What I have said during these evenings has been directed to
showing, from the most various points of view, that that aspect
of events which is generally accepted as the history of mankind
is, in many respects, a superficial one. How, for an
understanding of the present condition of affairs, it is
peculiarly necessary that we should not be led into any
illusions as to this superficial way of regarding mankind's
historic evolution in these latter days. We must not on any
account assume that what holds good, and what I am about to
say, of the more or less final phase of the historic evolution
covered by the Fifth post-Atlantean age, — that that
holds good for the whole course of human history. We must have
no such ideas. For this final phase, however, what I am about
to say holds good
From the socialist side, it is always being pointed out that
the whole course of human history is, in actual reality, to be
traced in economic processes alone, — in the processes of
industrial life, in the class-warfare that has resulted from
the processes of economic life. And on the foundation of this
economic matter-of-fact world, as a sort of superstructure upon
it, are supposed to have grown up all those developments that
we see in the way of Law, Moral Conventions, and especially
spiritual life, including, of course, Art, Religion, Science,
etc. As applied to the whole course of human history that is,
of course, nonsense. One cannot but ask oneself: What has led
to this nonsensical idea? V/hat has led to such a
nonsensical idea is that, as a matter of fact, and in
respect of this particular last phase of human evolution in our
own modern times, the thing has a basis of truth in it. Amongst
the events which ushered in this modern age we have to note
those changes in our earthly evolution that I mentioned
yesterday, which were brought about by the discovery of
America, by the discovery of the sea-route to the East Indies.
But, besides this, the latest phase of mankind's evolution must
be marked by us as that of the great spiritual upheaval which
was accomplished at the beginning of the modern age, and which
we call The Reformation.
The
time has come, my dear friends, when this Reformation, too,
must be recognised for what it really was. And when one goes
further into all that we were leading up to yesterday, and
acquires a deeper view of history, not a merely superficial
one, then, indeed, one finds that what is in appearance a
spiritual transition at the beginning of the modern age —
the Reformation — really rests, rests solidly, upon
something that Is, after all, at bottom, economic in character.
And it is just from a perception of this economic basis lying
at the root of the Reformation, and from seeing nothing else,
that the socialist view arose, that all historic
evolution has been simply the outcome of class-warfare and of
economic conditions.
If
we examine, not by the light of illusion, but by the light of
truth, what took place and the things that underwent a
metamorphosis through the Reformation at the beginning of the
modern period of historical development, we can but say: A
tremendous shifting of status undoubtedly took place with
considerable rapidity at this time, when the modern age was
beginning. The way in which the shifting of the population took
place was this; that the land and soil in Western Europe,
particularly, were, before the Reformation set in, possessed by
different peoples from those who possessed it afterwards. For
those people who before the Reformation were the leaders, and
on whom the social structure more or less depended, lost their
position through the Reformation. All landed property before
the Reformation was, to a much greater extent than is commonly
supposed, dependent on the lordship of the priesthood, and in
all manner of ways. Before the Reformation, the lordship of the
priests was remarkably powerful in determining the character,
for instance, of economic conditions. Those who possessed
landed estates possessed them to a very large extent as a sort
of agents and under an obligation of some sort or another in
connection with the offices of the Church.
Now, if one examines the actual course of history from a
perhaps not very idealistic but therefore all the more truthful
point of view, one finds that, with the Reformation, the old
estates of the Church and Spiritual Orders were torn from those
who held them, and transferred to the temporal lords. This was
very largely the case in England. It was also very largely the
case in Germany, — in what later on was Germany. In what
later was Germany, many of the territorial Princes went
over to the Reformation. But this was not Invariably, —
not to put it too aggressively, — this was by no means
invariably out of zeal for Luther or the other Reformers; it
was a hungering for the estates of the Church, a craving to
secularise the estates of the Church. Any number of estates
that belonged to the spiritual power in the Middle Ages passed
actually over to the temporal, the territorial princes. In
England, it happened that a large number of those who had
possessed land and holdings were dispossessed, evicted, and
they emigrated to America. A large number of the American
settlers — the point was alluded to yesterday in a
different connection — were the evicted holders of landed
property.
Economic conditions, then, played a leading part in the
metamorphosis which went on under modern historic evolution,
and which is commonly called the Reformation. On the face of
it, the thing was like this: — Openly, people say that a
new spirit must find Its way into men's hearts, that under the
old church administration the temporal and spiritual have
become too closely combined, that a more spiritual road to
Christ must be sought, etc, etc. Whilst deeper down, less
obviously on the surface, a shifting of economic strata is
taking place through the transference of estates from spiritual
to worldly owners.
Now
this is connected with a fact whose roots stretch wide into the
history of general evolution; and we can only understand these
particular isolated facts of modern history when we glance back
over a somewhat wider range of human evolution. We have only to
glance back at that phase of human evolution which we term the
Egypto-Chaldean age, which, as you know, ended in the middle of
the 8th century before Christ, from which point the
Graeco-Latin age began, lasting down to about the middle of the
15th century.
If
we go back to the ancient Egyptian, the ancient Chaldean
civilisation, — well there, we have as ruling powers
quite a different type from what became the ruling powers later
on. People nowadays take little account of the great upheavals
that have come about in the course of historic growth. The
powers that were peculiarly the ruling ones in that early age
— the age that ended about the middle of the 8th century
before Christ — were the sort of people who, in the
traditional language of Spiritual Science, one would call
“Initiates.” The Egyptian Pharaohs were, down to a
certain date, invariably persons who were initiated. They were
initiated into the secrets of cosmology, and regarded what they
had to do on earth in the light of this cosmology When one says
a thing of this sort to the modern man, he finds a certain
difficulty in understanding it, for the simple reason that the
modern man, from his own special mode of consciousness, thinks
to himself: “It is all very well, but, after all,
those Pharaohs, and the Chaldean initiates, too, — or
so-called initiates — did a great many things that were
highly reprehensible.” Well, one might, of course, argue
that modern rulers, who are not initiates, also do a great many
things that are hardly in accordance with the highest moral
standards, — but that, here, would be obviously
away from the point. One must, however, point out that in the
world that lies beyond the senses the gods are not all good
ones, but that there are also gods whose action is in every way
contrary to men's interests, as commonly understood. So, one is
by no means entitled to believe that anyone who is a real
initiate must necessarily act from virtuous motives. And in
speaking, as I am doing now, of the Pharaohs as
Initiates, all that it must be understood to mean is that they
acted on impulses inspired from the spiritual world. That these
impulse's might often be very bad ones will be contested by
nobody who has become in our sense acquainted with all the many
divine, spiritual powers that lie behind the world of sense,
— powers of a supersensible nature. But the true
initiate, — he who could receive into his will, not
merely receive into his consciousness, but into his will, what
divine spiritual powers bestowed upon him, — he was in
truth the ruler, down to the middle of the 8th century before
Christ. Then began the age when, if one actually divests it of
all the various illusions that pervade popular history, —
when one may say that the real ruler was the Priest. The
temporal ruler, — even when he was a Charlemagne —
was always more or less dependent on the priesthood.
Priest-rule was, to a much greater extent than is commonly
supposed, even in the middle-ages of European civilisation, the
really determining element. It entered into everything, it made
itself felt everywhere, and was for the social structure also
the element which, above all others, was the determining one.
And the people who possessed land and estates held them to a
very large extent of the Priesthood. Such regular soldiers as
there were in old days, before the middle of the 8th century
B.C., were troops in the service of the Initiates. Such regular
soldiers as there were in the 4th post-Atlantean age, in the
Graeco-Latin age down to the middle of the 15th century, were,
taken as a whole, mercenaries of the priest-lords. And all
enterprises, too, such as the Crusades, were, as a whole
essentially military expeditions undertaken, if I may so
express it, on behalf of the ruling priesthood. In one way and
another, everything that was done had some connection with the
rule of the priesthood.
We
may say, then, that in the Egypto-Chaldean age, the Rulers were
of the Initiate type; from the middle of the 8th
pre-Christian century down to the middle of the 15th century
the rulers were of the Priest type. From this time on,
the type that was really the ruling one for actual historic
developments was the Economic man. The economic man was
the one who ruled. It does not really matter by what name he
was called. The farther on one goes in the history of mankind,
the less do names matter. The thing that gave a man a sort of
basis for domination was that he was in a position to play a
part in the world of finance and industry. Just as the
essential feature about the Priest and the Initiate of old days
was that these respective types of ruler could intervene in
economic affairs, — only they did so from higher motives,
— so now the man of the economic type of modern times was
able to intervene in practically every detail of the social
fabric.
Yes, but along with that, there goes something else besides,
something that I have already indicated in connection with the
Initiate type of ruler. The Initiate type of ruler works
through his will, receiving into his will the motive-forces of
the higher worlds. With the Priest type, this is no longer the
case. It was not, at bottom, the spiritual life that was
realised in the priest type, but the intellectual life. And
accordingly, in that civilisation where the priest type were
markedly predominant, the markedly predominant, the essential
element is the intellectual one.
In
Asia, in the East, it is not the intellectual which is
the essential thing, but the spiritual life. For even what we
still have as civilisation there to-day, fallen as it is very
greatly into decay, yet it is still the relics of what once was
the civilisation of Initiate of what was a spiritual
civilisation. When the religious impulse of the East was
transplanted to Europe, it became merged in the intellectualist
conception of the priesthood. From the initiation into the real
facts, into the spiritual world, they produced —
Theology, an intellectual extract of the facts of the spiritual
world. But this priest type, which intellectually boiled down
the facts of the spiritual world and made them known in an
intellectual form, so all that the people really got was an
intellectualised religious element, they were in their turn
again replaced in the strict meaning of that term, at the
beginning of the modern age, by the economic type of man. One
can show in detail in many cases exactly how this economic type
of man came to be top. I shall come to that presently. Now the
question naturally arises: How does it come about that the
course of historic evolution undergoes such considerable
changes? How does it really happen? Well, at the bottom of
that, again, there is something which makes it necessary for
one not to rest content with a surface view of historic life,
but to go deeper down. If one studies history at all, —
what passes as history, — one sees at once that the
historians are writing on the assumption, as I said before,
that the psychic evolution of man has undergone no very great
fundamental change whatever in the course of history. In
the view of the materialist thinkers, there was once a time
when the ape, or a creature like an ape, wandered about the
earth; and then, through all sorts of accidents, though of
course very slowly, — science relies a great deal on
length of time nowadays, — this ape-like creature
developed into — Man. But, once there, man has remained
practically unaltered, according to them, in all that relates
to his state of consciousness, to the condition of his soul. A
modern man thinks of the ancient Egyptian as being perhaps
rather more of a child, because he was not yet so
“clever,” he did not know so much as the man of
to-day; but in the general constitution of his soul, the modern
man pictures the ancient Egyptian as being pretty much the same
as himself. And yet, if we go back to the time before the 8th
century B.C., the constitution of man's soul then was quite,
quite different from what it was later on, after the middle of
the 8th century B.C. If one takes the soul of the man of
to-day, in its present conformation, and knows no other, one
can really form no picture to oneself of what went on in the
soul of the sort of man who lived actually before the 8th
century B.C.
The
people of that time were of such a kind as still to be in
living connection with their previous incarnation. These people
were so constituted, — unless, indeed, they belonged to
one of the Hebraic tongues, when it was different, — but
if they belonged to any of the wide-spread heathen nations,
so-called “heathen nations,” then, for them,
everything that went on in their souls was the outcome of
previous incarnations, of previous lives upon earth. And
they were distinctly conscious that what was going on in
their souls was the spiritual fruits of the spiritual
worlds. For people such as this, no doubt whatever existed that
what was the principal part of themselves was not inherited
from their father and mother, but had come down out of
spiritual worlds and united itself with the part which came to
them from their father and mother. The constitution of these
peoples souls was one which rested entirely on a spiritual form
of civilisation. Hence it was possible for social life, as it
existed amongst them, to be guided and directed by their
Initiates, by those who were to a certain degree
initiated into spiritual things in a real, actual way, not
intellectually through their thoughts. In those days, when one
talked to anyone and spoke of spiritual facts, one was speaking
of things with which he was quite familiar. Everybody, in fact,
pictured himself as a centaur. His physical body he looked upon
as having undoubtedly come about through transmission in the
flesh; but, on top of all that, was what had come down out of
the spiritual world. Everybody knew that. Everybody looked on
himself as a sort of centaur.
Then came the age that began with the 8th century before
Christ, — roughly speaking, with the foundation of Rome.
In that age, — it Is a fact that we have already
considered from other points of view, — in that age the
spiritual contact of the real actual kind was lost. People,
however, still retained through their Intelligence a kind of
spiritual touch with the world of spirit. Man, indeed, no
longer pictured himself actually as a centaur, as though a
higher spiritual being came down from above and settled upon
something else that was inherited through the blood; still, he
was clearly conscious that his intelligence, his world of
thought, was not dependent on his blood, not dependent
on his physical body, but that it had a spiritual origin.
One
cannot, for instance, properly understand that great
philosopher, Aristotle, unless one knows that Aristotle, in
calling the highest part of the human soul
“Diagnosticon,” was clearly conscious that
this, the highest part of the human soul, which is an
intellectual part, has been rained down from the worlds of soul
and spirit. Aristotle knew that quite well; indeed, everybody,
even down into the early times of Christianity, knew this quite
well. This consciousness, that the human intelligence is of a
divine spiritual origin, this consciousness was not lost until
the 4th century after Christ. It was in the 4th century after
Christ that men first really ceased to believe that the power
of thought they bear within them comes from above, and is
rained down upon them at their birth out of the worlds of soul
and spirit. It was a great change, that, in men's souls. If we
look back at the first, second and third Christian centuries,
we find the men of that time able to say to themselves: Of
course, I was born of father and mother, but I know, —
not merely, I have puzzled it out, but I know, just as I
know that my eye sees the light, so I know that my intelligence
comes from the gods. It was an immediate consciousness that
people then possessed, just like the consciousness
aroused by a direct perception.
It
was only after the fourth century that the feeling entered more
and more into men's souls that up here, in this bony empty
cavity, — for an empty cavity it is, as I have often had
occasion to explain to you, — here, up here are seated
the organs of intelligence, and this intelligence Is somehow
connected with heredity, with blood-relation- ship. It was only
during this period, when the transition was finally effected
from a belief in the divine nature of the intelligence to a
belief in its transmission along physical paths, — it was
only then that what I may call the intellectualising of
the religious impulse through the rule of the priesthood could
be finally effected. And when the intellectualising process was
very far advanced, and people had come to regard the
intelligence as bound up solely with a man's bodily
constitution, then it was all up with the rule of the priest,
too. Priest-rule could only hold its ground so long as people
could be made to understand the old traditions of the
divinity of the intelligence. The economic type of man emerged
at the moment, the epoch-making moment, when the belief in the
divinity of the intelligence had vanished, and when man's
feelings were leading him ever more and more to the belief that
it was the physical man which is the actual vehicle, the organ
for the evolution of thought. You should only know what a
fight, priest-rule fought, and how it is still fighting even
to-day. Anyone, for instance, who is acquainted with catholic
theological literature, knows how priest- rule is still
fighting — fighting with every conceivable philosophic
argument — to maintain that the intelligence which
has its seat in man is something additional that comes to him
from without. Read any sort of catholic theological literature
that you happen to come across, and you will find them no
longer denying what, indeed, for the present- day man no longer
admits of denial, that all the rest of his attributes are bound
up with his bodily frame, but they cling fast to the
intelligence as an exception, as something that is of a divine
spiritual nature and has nothing to do with man's bodily
frame. And yet, in the general consciousness of mankind it is
not so. In respect of the general consciousness of mankind, a
feeling has grown up ever more and more among men, a sense that
it is our body, too, which enables us to think, which Is the
basis of the intelligence as of other things. And so ever more
and more man has arrived at a consciousness that he is really
only a physical being. And it was only under the sort of
spirituality which proceeds from regarding oneself as a merely
physical being that it was possible for the economic type of
man to make his way to the top.
And
so there exist, you see, spiritual reasons deeper down for the
economic type of man having come to the top. He has, however,
come to the top, and in socialistic theories this fact has been
handled and exploited to the disregard of all others. The
business-man has been the ruling type ever since the
Reformation; and from this you can see, too, what kind of
spirit really is the ruling one in the various religious
denominations that have come up since the Reformation Recognise
quite clearly, without any illusions, what that spirit is, my
dear friends: Temporal science is to permeate with its
technique the whole of our external everyday life, and we do
not mean to have the complete chain of this external science
interrupted by all sorts of religious matter. Faith is to be
kept very nicely in a special little box all to itself, and as
far away from the external affairs of life as possible.
Science, one thing, — a separate banking- account; Faith,
another thing, — a separate banking-account, and they
must never on any account be amalgamated. We want our faith;
indeed, we want to be religious people, says the business type
of man, — the more religious, the better, according to
many of them; and one sees them going off very ostentatiously
to church with their prayer-book under their arm. Oh,
certainly! But then, that banking book, — religion must
not intrude there, with that religion has nothing to do,
except, perhaps, on the first page, where one always sees
written in banking-books, “By the Grace of God,”
but then that is only a little bit of blasphemy, of course. The
complete chain must not be broken. Otherside [Otherwise?]
people might perhaps find out that the Reformation was, in many
respects, only a roundabout way of arriving at the
secularisation and confiscation of Church estates and of
claiming them for the temporal lord. Of course, if one
were a German princeling, for instance, or an English lord, one
could very well say: We are going to create a new historic
epoch by taking away the land and estates from those who have
hitherto held them. That is what the modern socialist says: We
are going to expropriate the owners of landed property. But
naturally people did not say that at the beginning of
the new modern age; they did it, and threw a haze over
it all with: We are founding a new religious faith. So people
do not know their real reason for being religious; but it makes
them feel comfortable to spread this illusion over the real
grounds for their being so religious. That is how the economic
type of man came up.
The
consciousness that one is living out a spiritual life within
one has gradually disappeared. That is the deeper-seated,
spiritual root of the matter. If we go further hack still,
before the third post-Atlantean age, which ended about
the middle of the 8th pre-Christian century, — beginning
in the 3rd to the 4th millennium B.C., we come again to a quite
different conformation. Paradoxical as it may seem to the men
of to-day, in the 4th or, 5th millennium B.C. there was not a
man on earth who believed that what was transmitted from his
father and mother was the essential part of him. At that time
men were absolutely convinced that they were wholly, in respect
of all essentials, descended from heaven, If I may so express
it. That was men's rooted belief. They did not look on
themselves as being of earthly origin; they looked on
themselves as spiritual beings, sprung from a spiritual origin.
And the period when men first began to feel themselves to be
physical human beings in the body was designated by the Jews,
“The Fall,” at the beginning of things, when
Original Sin first overtook man. As a matter of fact, however,
Original Sin has overtaken man more than once. It overtook him
first at the beginning of the 3rd post-Atlantean age, when he
ascribed one part of himself to his father and mother, to his
blood, and merely believed that a spiritual something had come
down on top of that. It overtook him for the second time when
he began to regard his Intellectual part as more or less
hereditary. That second “Fall” came about in the
4th century after Christ; for from that time on, intellectual
capacity was regarded as something hereditary, as something
bound up with the bodily nature. And there will be other
“Falls” in the time to come.
Our
task to-day is to return to spirituality by a different route.
And, to do this, we must have the possibility, before
anything else, of getting back to a spiritual form of
intellectual life. We must have the possibility of attaching a
sense to this existence on earth such that this sense itself is
once more the revelation of a spiritual reality. Take, for
instance, the things in my “Occult Science.” It
cannot be said that the kind of intellectuality with which
these are apprehended has a bodily origin; for it is not with
the physical understanding that one arrives at what is there
said about the universe and about man. It is a re-education of
man back to that conception of his intellectual nature which is
a spiritual one. And for this, modern mankind must first of all
be willing to regain the faculty of looking on their
Intellectual nature as something divinely spiritual.
Then, Indeed, will it be possible to start on the road back to
spiritualisation. It is a task upon which mankind must enter
with full consciousness, — to return again to
spiritualisation, and, first of all, to a thorough
spiritualising of the intelligence. People must learn once more
to think in such a way that their thought is permeated with
spirituality. The best way to begin is by considering ethical
concepts, and bringing them back to the moral imagination, to
the moral intuitions, as I did in my “Philosophy of
Freedom.” If in the moral sense one sees something
which, as I expressed it in the “Philosophy of
Freedom,” derives its impulses directly from the
spiritual world, then that is a first beginning towards the
spiritualisation of the intellect. I did this in my
“Philosophy of Freedom” very cautiously and gently,
for in the 19th century there was truly not much to be looked
for as regards the spiritualising of anything. But this Is the
road that will have to be taken.
The
Economic type of man, who came up at the Reformation, regarded
it as his special mission to make all intellectuality a matter
merely of the body. What this business type of man really did
during the Reformation period was to tear himself violently
loose from the spiritual foundation of man's life on earth. One
can see it illustrated in individual cases. At the beginning
and during the first half of the 15th century, there was a man
in England, Thomas Cromwell, — not Oliver Cromwell, but
Thomas Cromwell, quite a different person, — who played a
very important part in introducing the principles of the
Reformation into England. There was one person, James I, who
still made an effort to save the old dominion of the
priesthood; and one best understands James I if one looks on
him as a Conservator, — a man who was trying to conserve
the rule of the priesthood. Only, his plans were thwarted
by others. And amongst the people who came to the top at that
time, and who were, so to speak, the earliest type of economic
man, was Thomas Cromwell. It is impossible to understand Thomas
Cromwell unless one recognises that he was one of those people
who have a very short life between death and rebirth, before
taking on a body here on earth again. And it is just those
people who are unusually numerous among the ruling types coming
to the top in modern times, who have had but a short life in the
spiritual world before their present life here on earth.
As
you know, I have often said here that one of the most
significant phenomena in latter-day history is that for the
ruling types it is the selection of the worst
that takes place. You know that for years past I have taken
occasion to tell you so repeatedly. Those who are, in reality,
the rulers, the governors, are a selection of not the
best. It has come about with the times that those who are
really the best in this modern age have remained below, and
those who have been selected for the top, for the leading
positions, that is, are not infrequently anything but the best.
Very often it has been a selection of the least fitted. And
this selection of the least fitted has been founded, in so far
as relates to their human nature, in the fact that they were
fulfilling an earth-life which had only a very short space of
time between the last life on earth and this one. It is a fact
which one finds stamped upon many of the leading personages of
modern times, that they have had a quick return to earth after a
brief life in the spirit. In their preceding life between death
and new birth they have received into them but little of
spiritual impulse; but they are all the more impregnated with
that which this earth alone can give. The Economic type,
especially, have been men whose preceding spiritual life
was a short one, who were permeated through and through with
what the earth, as such, alone can give. I do not mean to say
that there have not also In modern times been people who have
passed a fairly long stage of time between death and birth and
who are notable in modern times; but they have been thrust into
the background. So the course of man's historic evolution fated
it to be; such was the common karma of mankind.
And
man's modern life was played out under these conditions. It is
really pitiful, how frequently a phenomenon it is in modern
times to see men who in their inward natures are far superior,
looking up to men who are far, far worse than themselves, as
special authorities. It is a common phenomenon. And these
revered authorities are truly not people who in any way
represent picked men of the best type. The time has indeed come
when people must stop so naively chanting the praises of modern
civilisation, and examine the plain, unadorned facts. Men must
acquire the habit of considering life not in its more
superficial aspect, but of considering it according to the
inner configuration of men's souls. And this is just one of the
facts that has to be considered, that one has to distinguish
between the kind of men whose life in the spirit, between birth
and deaths is a comparatively long one, and those whose life in
the spirit has been comparatively short. One must consider
people from their spiritual aspect. It is only by thus
considering people from their spiritual aspect, that it becomes
possible with clear consciousness to bring order into the
social structure. Any really deep understanding of what is
socially requisite to-day will only be acquired when such an
understanding is sought for in a groundwork of spiritual
knowledge.
In
the last three days, I have made it my task to show you in what
way the civilisation of our times must be regarded in respect
of the possibility for mankind's further evolution. Our earth,
as an earth with all that is upon It, has already entered on
its downward stage, on the stage of its decline. I have
often told you that keen-sighted geologists themselves have
already noted this fact. It is even now possible to demonstrate
by purely external physical science, and according to the most
exact geology, that the earth has already begun to crumble
away, that the ascending phase of its evolution is at an end,
and that the solid ground we tread on is actually breaking up
beneath us. But it is not only the mineral kingdom of the earth
that Is breaking up; all organic life that moves upon the earth
is more or less in a state of decomposition, of falling away.
The bodies of plants, of animals, of men, these, too, are no
longer in their ascending stage of evolution, but are going
downhill. Our physical organisation is not now what it was, for
instance, before the fourth century after Christ, or what it
was in the times of ancient Greece. Our organisation is a
perishable one, and along with us the earth is in its
decadence. V/hat Is physical about the earth is in its
decadence. I called attention to this phenomenon for the first
time some years ago in a lecture at Bonn; but as a rule, not
sufficient importance is attached to these things. The bodies
we live in are crumbling away. But, as a set-off against this,
we must reflect:
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Our bodies are crumbling away; but it is just out of these
crumbling bodies of ours that what is spiritual can best
develop, if only we give ourselves up to it. In the old
bodies, you see, it was like this, supposing I make a diagram:
Here is the body (Diagram I black) and, all through, the body
is permeated with its spiritual element; here is the spiritual
element, all over It like this (red).
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Now
to-day it is like this (diagram II): our body, if we draw it
diagrammatically, Is crumbling away in many places. It is
crumbling, it is falling away; and everywhere the spiritual
element is spurting out of it, escaping from the body. If we
only set ourselves to do so, we can inwardly within our souls
lay hold everywhere of the spiritual element, because of this
crumbling away of our bodies. But it is absolutely necessary
that we should not rely upon the physical. It is, on the
contrary, absolutely necessary for us, because of this, our
crumbling condition, to turn to the spiritual. Everything
physical is breaking up; everything physical on earth has begun
to go to ruin, and one dare not rely any longer on the physical
nature. The only thing we have to look to Is just what, to use
a homely phrase, is spurting out from the spiritual
soul-element, — spurting out because the physical element
is in ruin.
There is one thing to be learnt from this, my dear friends. We
are connected through our bodies with the physical conditions
of the earth; and the earth's conditions express themselves
socially in economic conditions. Now, as everything is
crumbling away, as everything is in decadence, so also, in a
certain respect, economic conditions are in a state of
decadence; and only a fool could believe that It Is possible
to-day to regenerate economic conditions simply by means o
economic conditions alone. Anyone to-day who dreams of bringing
about an economic paradise on earth by purely economic
measures, is much the same as someone who has a corpse in front
of him and believes that he can galvanise it back into
life, wake it up again. So you can take all the theories that
are based on pure economics to-day, listen to people telling
you how the economic life can be adjusted so as to work by
itself according to its own laws, listen to them telling you
about the conditions under which production Is to be carried
on, how the transition is to be effected from private
ownership to communal ownership, etc., — it is all
founded on the false belief that one can, regenerate the
economic life out of the resources of the economic life itself.
Whereas the truth is that in the economic life, as elsewhere,
everything physical is of itself going to ruin.
When anything is going to ruin of itself, then all one can do
is to keep putting it right from time to time. That means that
we want a remedy from this economic life, which of Itself is in
a constant state of break-down, if the economic life were left
to itself; if one did what Lenin and Trotsky want to do with
it, it would be continually breaking down, continually falling
sick. And therefore, one must have the remedy constantly at
hand, too, as a counteractant to the economic life. That is,
one must have, beside it, the independent spiritual life. If
you have a sick man, or someone who is continually liable
to fall sick, then, alongside, you must continually have the
doctor. If you have an economic life which, owing to the
earth's evolution, is constantly ripe for its fall, when left
to itself, then you need to counteract it with the continually
healing power of the spiritual life. That is the inward
connection. It is part of a sound cosmogony that we should
acquire an independent spiritual life. Without this independent
spiritual life, to act as a perpetual source of healing wisdom,
alongside an economic life that is constantly liable to break
down, — without this, mankind will never get further. To
attempt to regenerate the economic life out of its own
resources is sheer folly. We must establish a healing source in
the form of an independent spiritual life beside this economic
life, and bridge them both over with the neutral Life of
Rights. We shall never arrive at any adequate understanding of
what is necessary in the present day, unless we have learnt to
perceive that the earth's physical life is already sinking to
ruin. It is because this is not perceived that there are so
many people to-day who believe that the economic life can be
regenerated by all sorts of remedies conjured up out of the
life of economics itself. They do not exist. The only
possibility that does exist is continuously and
unceasingly to keep the economic life going by means of the
independent spiritual life established alongside it. And only
those can trace all the mysterious interweaving of these
threads in our life who have learnt to read it by the light of
a really modern cosmogony.
Just reflect how serious the whole situation is, how one must
look on and see men rushing to destruction, if they still
persist in believing that the economic life can be regenerated
out of itself, — if they will not acknowledge and turn to
that which is spurting forth from the crumbling physical world,
which is able to stand alone and to be a continual source of
healing. People ask: What is the remedy for revolutions? Well,
when the downward forces have accumulated in cries in quantity
sufficient to make a revolution, then the revolution comes. The
only way to counteract revolution is continuously and
unceasingly to apply the counteracting force. And unless a
spiritual life is established as a continual healing force to
withstand the economic life, then the economic life comes to a
head and breaks out in revolutions.
It
is high time, indeed, my dear friends, that the things we are
here dealing with should be taken In all their gravity, in
their full weight, and that people should not have the idea
that Spiritual Science is a thing to play with. It will
not be played with. You cannot dish up real Spiritual
Science as a Sunday afternoon sermon. What people are used to
making out of the old religious creeds, — taking all
sorts of teachings about reincarnation and karma to regale
themselves with in the privacy of their own souls,
— that cannot be got out of this teaching, not if it is
taken seriously. This teaching means to lay hold upon actual
life. This teaching is bent upon becoming deeds, by the very
force of what it is. And so it is not in accordance with some
private personal whim that what is living within our Spiritual
Science must now find expression in all manner of social ideas
as well. It is really a matter of course. It is all part of the
same thing. Naturally, anyone who talks of development and
evolution in the modern natural-science sense, and has not a
glimmering notion that Evolution is first an ascent and then a
descent, will not be ready either to understand that we are
living in a downward stage with respect to the earth's
evolution; and such a person will take what is on its downward
path, and try to wring from it forces for a regeneration,
— That is no longer possible.
What I have, above all, had at heart in the course of these
three lectures, my dear friends, is that you might see
in all its extent and reality the deep seriousness of Spiritual
Science and all that is connected with it. With the things of
Spiritual Science there can be no playing. it can only be
played with when it is watered down to all sorts of mystical,
eclectic stuff, — then you can play with the things of
Spiritual Science. Those people do very wrong who go and think
that they can play with it, for all that. The things of
Spiritual Science cannot be played with,
There is a great deal of opposition from various quarters to
whit this Spiritual Science of Anthroposophy stands for. it
will meet with opposition from almost all those people who want
to play, to “mysticise,” I should like to call it,
— who want to mysticise with the life of Spiritual
Science, — “mysticism,”
“mysticise”. Those people who want to mysticise
will not, in the long run, get on very well with Spiritual
Science, because they do not like to be reminded of the
seriousness of life. That is why Spiritual Science has so many
opponents. To-day, especially, there are numbers of opponents;
and to-day, especially, there are numbers of opponents, turning
out to oppose it from every sort of mysticising hole and
corner. There is now to be a renewed attack made on this
Spiritual Science on the ground that it is scientific in
character, and that all genuine experiences of the
spirit-worlds must come through direct spiritual communication,
— that nothing of a scientific nature, no sort of
scientific concept, must enter into it, and so forth; there is
a fresh attack on foot from the corner where we have done a
good bit of work, but which still keeps on pouring out a
succession of slimy stuff, — mysticising stuff, in this
very direction. Another book has appeared from the Munich
quarter, — though possibly from different publishers,
— which is at bottom intended as an attack of this sort,
— mystical book, called “The Living God.”
When one sees these things in the present
day, in an age when the social situation is so critical, it
shows how spiritual frivolity and cynicism of a spiritual kind
have taken possession of men's lives. All that must be got rid
of.
This is, indeed, the time when we must set
ourselves in all seriousness to examine the most important
question in life, and ask ourselves: What can we do, what can
we do with all our might and main, to lay hold of those forces
which are actually in accordance with the age?
My dear friends, here stands this Building
of ours, here it stands, waiting for the world to take it
seriously, with such seriousness as really to perceive that it
has been built in the consciousness of a perishing age, and in
order to receive and take up the spiritual essence out of this
age as it falls. Here we must be swayed by no belief that it is
possible to preserve what is old what is ripe to perish and
fall away. The faith that must inspire us here is that out of
the on-rushing ruin it is possible to save and bring forth the
spiritual essence, — one which must be quite
unlike the old. A little transformation of
our civilisation cannot do it. We have to recognise, and boldly
face the recognition, that it is only with the great
impulses of civilisation that we can
accomplish what will take mankind the necessary step forward
towards the future. And we must take counsel with our own
selves, how to find strength really to take up these new
impulses. We must have courage to make plain to people, as well
as we can, what is meant by the earth being in decadence, and
that what has lasted on down into our days as civilisation, and
which we have grown up with and become used to, — that
this, too, is passing away in the ruin; but that out of this
ruin we must rescue and bring forth a new spirituality, a
spirituality that can be carried on with us into other worlds,
when this earth has finally sunk and passed away.
To
work with clear consciousness towards a regeneration of
Art, of Science, of Freedom, that is a work that should centre
round this Building. In erecting this Building an attempt has
been made to bid in a sort of way, defiance to the Past, in the
shapes and lines of it, and so forth. And in the same way,
practically, we must have the courage to grasp all that can be
got from the fact that the Building actually stands here. We
shall never get right, my dear friends, if we go on clinging to
little remedies. We shall only get right by resolutely and
consciously keeping before men's eyes the necessity for a new
form of spiritual civilisation, for that alone can be the true
starting-point for a new form of social civilisation. For the
social order cannot any longer be evolved out of the economic
order, but only out of a spiritual element that shall have sunk
into the economic one. And we must clearly realise that the
Economic type of man is played out, and that another type must
come to the top, — the type of man who is a World-man,
one who is conscious that there lives within him not only what
he has inherited through earthly descent, but who is conscious
that there live within him, also, forces of the sun and the
heaven of stars, forces of the world above the senses. In such
forms as people can understand, we must bring this to their
consciousness; and then alone shall we be doing something
towards the real progress of mankind. By merely
transmitting all sorts of mystical teachings we can do no
good whatever. Our mysticism must be actual spiritual life
— active spiritual life.
That is what I wanted to make you realise to-day. This Building
at Dornach ought to be regarded as being, without undue
pretensions, the actual starting-point for a great world
— movement, a world-movement which Is altogether
international, a world-movement which embraces every kind of
branch of spiritual life. This Building at Dornach should be
the starting-point from which -to cast off all fondness for
what is perishing and to receive the impulse of that force
which is making for an actual renewal of man's
consciousness. If we could establish something of this
sort in the world, which should form a starting-point from
whence to take up the spiritual essence out of the ruin of the
physical earth, — if we could say: We put up the Building
at Dornach to be the monument of this starting-point, to
attract people's eyes to our purpose there, — if only
we could create something of this kind, then we should
be fulfilling what lies in the very impulse of the Spiritual
Science of Anthroposophy. But we need to summon up our energies
and create what shall speak to mankind in actual facts, —
speak by facts in such a way as to make them see: “Look!
We are aiming here at something that lies in the direction of
actual progressive evolution in human consciousness, in science
and art as well as in religion.” If we are in a position
to speak from positive facts in this way, then we shall
accomplish far more than by trying to throw ourselves into all
sorts of things at which other people are aiming. We should
realise that what we have to aim at is a new thing. If
we are able to do this, then we shall be accomplishing a worthy
task. But there we must commune with our souls, my dear
friends, and try to set our hands in this way to the task of
Anthroposophy.
More on this subject, then, next Friday at 7 o'clock.
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