Differentation of
Primeval Wisdom into East, Middle, West
November 14, 1919 Dornach
From our last
lectures you will have seen how man comes to a kind of
illusory idea of the outer world; but as a matter of fact,
what are usually understood as the connections of nature are
inwardly dependent on humanity itself; and we can only gain a
true view of the world when we consider the earth and indeed
the universe, in its entirety — which means when we
regard man as being part of the world — and visualise the
interchange, the inter-relation between man and the world.
Otherwise we always come to an unreal, a mere abstract grasp
of the mineral kingdom; at most understanding something of
the plant and animal worlds, which no longer play any strong
part in the present concept of nature.
When one
speaks of the connections of nature, it is, as a rule, merely
the mineral connections in nature to which one refers. To
these, if one so desires, that short episode which one calls
History, is added; but as a truth of quite a different
nature.
From this
view, which does not extend to man in his real being,
humanity in our present age has to come right away. From
diverse points of view we have brought forward the reason why
humanity must abandon this view of things, a view which, as
you know, has in a sense been necessarily developed in the
last three or four centuries.
To-day I will
only mention that human beings, with reference to their
external knowledge, their external cognition, will become
more and more dependent on the physical body with its
necessities, unless they can rise in their own evolution to
the production of a higher knowledge, through the very effort
of their own Will. And in the future it is a question of
this:- either humanity will simply succumb to a view of the
world gained by remaining just as one was at birth, acquiring
no other concepts than those one has already through being
placed on the earth through birth, and by means of the
ordinary education customary to-day.
That is the
one possibility. The other is this: That humanity will cease
to believe that, simply from being Born as human beings on
earth, they can judge of everything real; and they will then
be able to build up a real evolution of man, such as is
indicated by Spiritual Science. That is the other path;
humanity will have to traverse this latter path,
otherwise the earth simply faces its downfall.
What I have
just said, can also be observed geographically, when it
acquires a quite special significance for the present.
If we only go
far enough back in the evolution of the earth, we find man is
not rooted in earthly existence itself; for before the
evolution of the earth, he had already undergone a long
previous development. You find this evolution described In my
Outline of Occult Science.
You know that man was, in
a sense taken back again into a pure Spiritual existence, and
from this pure Spiritual existence, he has descended to
earthly existence. Now it is a fact that, because of this
descent of man into earthly existence, there has been taken
away from humanity, a comprehensive, one might call
it — an inherited Wisdom — a primeval Wisdom, which
was of such a nature that it was one and the same, uniform,
for the whole of humanity. You will find such things described
in more detail in those lectures which I have called
The Folk-Souls,
a course given in Christiania. So this inherited Wisdom was a
uniform thing. When I naw speak of knowledge, I mean not merely
that which is usually called knowledge in Science to-day, but
everything which man can absorb in his soul life as a view of his
cosmic environment and of his own life.
Now this
primeval knowledge specialised itself in such a way that it
became different according to the different territories of the
earth. You will see this better if you go into those chapters in
Occult Science
dealing with this matter.
But even externally, if you just look at what we call the
civilisation of the different earthly races, you may say:
That what the human beings of the different races upon earth
have known, differed from the beginning. One can distinguish
an Indian civilisation, a Chinese civilisation, a Japanese
civilisation, a European civilisation. And again, in this
European civilisation there is a special culture of its own
for each of the various European territories. Then we have an
American civilisation and so on. But if we ask: How it it
that this primeval or inherited wisdom became specialised,
how did it become ever more and more differentiated? We must
answer: The inner relationships, the inner dispositions of
these races were to blame for this. Indeed we find that there
is always an adaptation of the inner relationship of the
different races to the external conditions of the earth. We
can to some extent get an idea of this differentiation if we
try to find out the connection between, let us say, what
forms the Indian civilisation and the climatic geographical
conditions of the land of India. In the same way we can get
an idea of the special nature of the Russian culture, if we
consider the relationship between the Russian and his earth.
Now we must say, in reference to these relationships, that
humanity to-day — as indeed in many other connections
— has arrived at a kind of crisis. This dependence of
man on his territory gradually, in the course of the 19th
century, increased to the utmost conceivable extent. Of
course, it is true that human beings have emancipated
themselves from their territories. That is true. they
consciously have emancipated themselves from their
territories; but they are nevertheless dependent in a certain
way upon these territories. Te can see that if we compare,
let us say, the attitude of a Greek to ancient Greece, and
say that of a modern Englishman or German to their countries.
The Greeks still had much of the ancient wisdom in their
civilisation and education, they were perhaps more physically
dependent upon their land of Greece than the modern human
being on his country. But this stronger dependence was
modified, because the Greeks were inwardly filled with this
ancient wisdom. This wisdom has however gradually faded away
from humanity, and we can point almost exactly to the time in
the middle of the 15th century when the direct understanding
for certain treasures of wisdom ceases, and how even the
traditions of such treasures gradually faded away in the 19th
century. Artificially, as I might say, like plants in a
forcing house, certain of these treasures were still
preserved in all sorts of secret societies, which sometimes
pursued very evil practices with them. But such societies
still preserved a primeval wisdom even in the 19th century.
(In the 19th century it was somewhat different), but in the
19th century they still preserved some things of which one
can say: They are like plants in a forcing house. What have
the symbols of the Freemasons to do with the ancient wisdom
from which they originated? They are like plants raised in
the forcing house, compared with plants growing freely in
nature. Not even so much likeness still remains between the
masonic symbols and that ancient wisdom!
Just because
humanity is losing that inner permeation with this old
wisdom, men are really becoming all the more dependent upon
their territories and unless they can again acquire a
treasure of Spiritual Science which can develop freely, they
will be differentiated all over the earth according to their
territories.
As a matter
of fact, we can distinguish three types which we have studied
already from other points of view. To-day we can say that
unless the impulses of Spiritual Science are spread abroad in
the world, from the West there will come none but economic
truths, which can indeed produce many other things out of
their bosom; none but economic thought and ideas would
prevail in the West. From the East there would come over what
once were essentially Spiritual truths; Asia,, even if in
very decadent ways, would confine itself more and more to
Spiritual truths.
Central
Europe would cultivate the more intellectual sphere; and this
would make itself specially felt in the uniting of something
of the traditions of ancient times with what streams over
from the West as economic truths, and with what streams over
from the East as Spiritual truths. Human beings living in
these three main types of earthly division, would specialise
more and more in this direction.
The tendency
of our present age tends absolutely towards making this
specialisation of humanity a really dominant principle. We
can say, my dear friends — and I beg you to take this
very seriously, that unless a Spiritual Scientific impulse
permeates the world, the East will gradually become
absolutely incapable of managing its own Economic Life, of
developing its own economic thinking. The East would come
into a position of being able to produce only; that means, of
actually cultivating the soil, of working upon the immediate
products of nature with the instruments transmitted from the
West. But all that has to be administered by human reason,
would develop in the West.
From this
point of view the catastrophe of the World War which has just
run its course, is nothing but the beginning of the tendency:
(I will express it in popular phraseology) — to permeate
the East by the West in an economic way. That means making
the East a sphere in which people work, and the West a sphere
in which economic use is made of what is derived from nature
in the East. The boundary between the East and the West need
not be a fixed one; it is moveable.
If this
tendency which is dominant to-day, goes further, if it is not
permeated Spiritually, then without any doubt at all the
following would have to arise. One need simply utter it
hypothetically. The entire East would economically be an
object of booty for the West; and man would regard this
course of development as the proper course laid down for
earthly humanity. It would be regarded as quite justifiable
and obvious. There exists no other means of
introducing into this tendency that which does not
make half of humanity slaves and the other half employers of
these slaves, than by permeating the earth with a common
Spirituality which man must acquire once more.
If one utters
these things to-day most people prefer to reject them. The
man of to-day is only too inclined to wave these things aside
with a movement of his hand, for the simple reason that it is
externally uncomfortable for him to face the true reality. He
says to himself: “Well, even if this economic
permeation of the East does come about, it will not take
place yet awhile, not in my lifetime.” Certainly those
who have children, do think a little more earnestly, because
of their children; but then they like to fog themselves a
little in the hope that better times may come, and so
forth.
But to
realise in their inner being that there exists no other means
of fashioning the future of humanity into a form worthy of
human beings, than by not permeating merely the earth
economically, but also Spiritually is a thought very few
people pursue for themselves to-day, because of a
certain love of ease.
We may say
that humanity has received the present configuration of its
life of civilisation from three sides, and it is extremely
interesting to fix one's mind on these three sides of this
earthly life of civilisation, especially for the task we have
set ourselves in these lectures.
If one
surveys the whole earth-sphere from East to West, one must
say: “Everything which man possesses in the way of
ethical truths, of moral truths, has come from the
East”. One can say that the form in which the East,
with its general view of the Cosmos, has developed its
ethical truths, the form of its general cosmology, and so
on, has now been lost; but certain Ethics have remained over
as relics of oriental thought and feeling.
It is
infinitely interesting from this point of view to read the
speeches which Rabindranath Tagore held, which are collected
under the title of Nationalism. You will see if you
read these speeches that there is hardly anything now to be
found in them of that great Cosmic Wisdom teaching, which at
one time, lived in the feelings of men in the East. But one
who can read with understanding these speeches of Tagore
collected under the title Nationalism will say: the
moral pathos which lives in them and which indeed is the
chief essence of these speeches, the ethical will which lives
in them, that bitter moral criticism which exercised against
the individual mechanism of the West, and against all the
still more evil political mechanism of the West, lives as
Ethos in these speeches of Tagore, could not have been
uttered unless there stood behind them the ancient primeval
wisdom of Asia; even though it no longer lives externally in
men's consciousness. With that wisdom, created out of the
stars, the moral truths were permeated which resound from out
of the East, and this comes to us when such people as
Rabindranath Tagore speak.
If, without
prejudice, one investigates everything which has developed in
this way of culture in the West, in Central Europe, one must
say: What lives there, whether it be in philosophers or
non-philosophers, in the simple or most educated — that
which ethically and morally permeates the humanity of the
West has all trickled over from the East, from Asia. The East
is the real home of Ethos, of ethics.
If we now
Look towards the West, the civilisation of which has
transpired before the eye of history, we see how muck enters
into the consideration of the reasoning, intellectual
working-man, of world phenomena. There what rests an the
principle of utility comes into consideration.
There is a
great contrast, of which humanity should become aware,
between what lives as pathos in the speeches of Tagore, and
everything which develops in the West as the stand-point of
utility.
To speak
radically, one might say, that the sort of thing we meet with
in philosophers such as John Stuart Mill, or in national
economists such as Adam Smith or intellectual philosophers
such as Bergson, anything of this nature remains for the
Asiatic, even if he tries to understand it, something which
lies completely outside his being. He can grasp as an
interesting fact that such things are said by human beings,
but he will never be tempted to produce things which relate
simply to external human utility, from out of his own
nature.
The Asiatic
thoroughly despises the European and American nature, because
it always refers him to the standpoint of utility, which can
only be dominated with the intellect, with the understanding.
So it has come about that this way of thinking, which is
connected with the idea of utility, is above all the product
of the West.
As I have
previously drawn your attention to the fact that over the
earth the ancient wisdom, has specialised itself according to
Races, so we can now distinguish these great types. The
ethical type in the Orient, in the East; the intellectual
utilitarian type in the West, the Occident, while in between
there is, always trying to press forward, what I want to call
the third type, the Aesthetic, which is just as much
characteristic of Central Europe, as the ethical type is of
the East and the utilitarian type of the West.
We need
merely remind ourselves of a certain phenomenon, in order to
be able to bring forward a proof drawn from external facts:
how it is that just in Central Europe this Aesthetic type
seeks to make itself felt. While in the West the French
Revolution partially raged and partially bore its
consequences, and the East was still immersed in Spiritual
dreams, we see e.g. Schiller writing his letters concerning
the aesthetic education of man. These are directly concerned
with the French Revolution, but they seek to solve the
problem thrown up politically by the French Revolution, they
seek to solve it humanistically, in a purely human
way. They seek to make man inwardly a free human being. It is
interesting to note that the whole method of observation of
Schiller in those Aesthetic letters rests an this: that on
the one side he rejects the pure utilitarian intellectual
standpoint, and an the other he rejects the merely ethical
standpoint. You see, this ethical standpoint had once already
been rationalised, intellectualised. Everything in the world
goes through different metamorphosis and then reappears in
another form. And so although this ethical standpoint of the
East is certainly not intellectual, yet one can grasp it with
one's intellect, one can intellectualise it, one can
(Königsbergerise) it, and it then becomes Kantian. That
happened; and from Kant there comes this beautiful saying:
“Duty, thou mighty, exalted name, thou hast nothing
within thee of an attractive or insinuating nature, but
requirest solely and simply the subjection of man to
morality”.
Schiller an
the other hand, said, “I gladly serve my friends, yet
unfortunately I do so with inclination. Therefore I reproach
myself that I am not virtuous”. Schiller as a real
Central-European man, could not take into himself this
Kantian, this Königsbergian intellectualising of ethics.
For him no man was a complete human being who had first to
subject himself to duty in order to fulfil his duty. For
Schiller a man was only a complete human being who felt in
himself the desire to do what was of moral value. Therefore
Schiller rejected the ethical rigourism of a Kant. But he
also rejected the purely intellectual principle of authority,
and he saw in the production and enjoyment of Beauty, (thus
in the Aesthetic behavior of man), the highest, free
expression of human nature. He wrote his Aesthetic letters,
one might say, as a personal description of Goethe. Schiller
had only with difficulty struggled to acquire an appreciation
of Goethe. He had started with jealousy, with inner antipathy
to Goethe; and one may say that there was a time in
Schiller's youth when any talk of Goethe left a bitter taste
in his mouth. Then they became acquainted; and they learnt
not only to honour each other, but to understand each other.
Then Schiller wrote one might say as a kind of Spiritual
biography, a Spiritual description of Goethe, his letters
upon the Aesthetic education of man. Nothing which stands in
these Aesthetic letters could have been written unless Goethe
had previously lived a life which was to Schiller an example
of what stands in them. Schiller wrote a letter to Goethe at
the beginning of their friendship which I have often quoted:
“For a long time I have followed the path of your life,
although from a far distance.” And now he described
Goethe, according to his spirit, which was really that of a
reincarnated Greek; and we see how the first dawn of the
Aesthetic spirit of Central Europe is united with Greece.
And now as
regards Goethe, we see how he works his way up from an
intellectual element, to a recognition of truth,
which can be just as well understood through art as through
science. If you follow how Goethe with Herder studied the
Ethics of Spinoza, how Goethe then went to Italy and wrote
home that, in the works of art which he sees proceeding out
of the Greek spirit, he sees Necessity, he sees God.
— then one must say, the intellectualism of Spinoza
becomes Aesthetic in Goethe, on his Italian journey, in the
contemplation of those works of art. Goethe bears testimony
that the Greeks created their works of art according to the
same laws which nature herself follows, laws which Goethe
believed he was now on the track of. That means, Goethe is
not of the opinion that when a man creates a work of art he
is merely creating a thing of phantasy. Science is strictly
true. No, Goethe was of the opinion that what lies in a true
work of art absolutely gives the deeper, true, content of the
life of Nature. Now that is an Aesthetic view of the world,
and so we must say: Occident, West — intellectualistic
utilitarian; Central earth-regions — Aesthetic; the
East — ethical, moral. It is absolutely true, my dear
friends, that wherever it be, whether in the past or in the
Centre or in the lest, wherever ethical truths have
appeared — they have originally sprung up from the East.
It is no matter whether utilitarian truths spring up in the
Centre, or in the East they all originally spring from the
West. Beauty arises from the Central region.
One can
follow everywhere the path of these three elements in the
life of man in this way, down to the very details.
You see, my
dear friends, when through one's karma one is destined to
found Anthroposophy in Central Europe, then in this
Anthroposophy something must live of that Goethe-faith, which
is after all, the same element that lives in art; that is,
the element of truth. That same element which is expressed in
painting, in sculpture, and even in architecture must live
also in the thought structure of truth. One must come to say,
what I attempted to say in the first chapter of my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
— that the philosopher, the man who founds a World-conception,
must be an artist in ideas. One usually rejects the concepts of
an artist of ideas. In that book I had to accept it; it all
sprang from one and the same spirit.
When one
produces something of this kind, all the ideas one expresses
have a definite character, which bear the colourings of what
I have just described. Books are written, form instance, much
as that bit Aime Blech, which recently appeared as a
Pamphlet, containing all kinds of evil, consciously evil
calumnies. Books are written in which, for instance, it is
stated that in what is brought forward from this side as
Anthroposophy, there are, of course many beautiful things,
but they are opposed to the clarity of the French mind!
Certainly
Anthroposophy contradicts intellectuality, the barren,
rhetorical grasp of ideas; such minds would much prefer the
coarse, material ideas which can be grasped in sharp
outlines, so as one can follow these things down to the
minutest details. I could bring forward many an example,
entering into details which would make clear what I have
shown you in general outline; but I will rest content with
the example I have already given you, which is a very
interesting one.
Now the point
in question is that we should clearly realise that e.g. in
the West morality, art and intellectualism are simply not
being produced. No! Art, is taken over from the Central
regions, and Ethics, from the East; and they are then
inserted into the intellectual-utility-element, just as in
the Centre a kind of ethical element is cultivated, and
everything which has been taken up, especially in the 19th
century into the Aesthetic element has come over from the
West. It would be interesting to follow for once the path of
biology from this point of view. If you read Goethe's
Theory of Metamorphosis to-day, you can find in that
a grand theory of evolution, but the West would always
consider that theory spoilt by its Aestheticism. In the 19th
century, over the entire earth which is dependent an the
West, the Darwinistic element penetrated into the theory of
evolution, and brought in the Utilitarian-standpoint, the
doctrine of purpose, of aim. You find that doctrine of
“purpose” entirely excluded in Goethe, because he
is everywhere permeated by Aestheticism.
It must not
be the case in the future, that men are thus economically
differentiated, as it were, to such an extreme degree that
they will not learn from each other. Because that would mean
that there would gradually spread over Asia a certain Ethos,
such as one finds advocated in the fire-sounding words of
Rabindranath Tagore. In Central Europe there would sp read in
another form — that which certain Nietzsche-fops
have already advocated — a certain
“Beyond-ness” of good and evil, a certain
Aestheticism, even in moral ideas. We see here the triumphant
march of this Aestheticising making itself felt, especially
towards the end of the 19th century. And then the merely
utilitarian standpoint would pour out over the West,
cleverness in the utilitarian standpoint, a caricature of the
Spiritual element from the utilitarian standpoint, etc., etc.
The
permeation of humanity by a real Spiritual element can alone
help mankind. We assume, of course, that this Spiritual
element shall be taken in full earnestness — that men
shall develop the will to regard things as they present
themselves to-day to one who is really prepared to be
unprejudiced. This War-Catastrophe has brought many
extraordinary things to the surface, amongst which are
phenomena, which are in part uncomfortable to the highest
degree, but which can teach us much, I will mention one such
phenomenon.
In the German
literature of the day there appear — one simply cannot
keep pace with what comes out in this way — but almost
every week there appear slimy excretions, as I must call
them — the explanations of different men concerning their
share in the course of the War and of political
events — and we can read what such heads — I say
expressly such heads — as Iagow Bethmann (Michaelis has,
I think, still spared us), Tirpitz, Ludendorf, and a whole
row of others which one can name. It is unpleasant, in one
way,to read this stuff, but from another point of view, it is
interesting to the highest degree.
You see, one
can read such books as those written by Bethmann or Tirpitz,
from quite opposite points of view. But their points of view
depend very often an whether the author has been treated with
the toe or the heel of the boot for a certain time. Bethmann
was favoured for a time by the “All Highest”,
whereas Tirpitz was treated with the heel of the boot. Hence
their different points of view!
And so we
will enter further into the view-point; it is not so much a
question of that, but of seeing what spirit lives in the
writings.
Now one can
experience the following: I once made the following
experiment. After allowing myself to be saturated with the
dreamy writings of Bethmann and Tirpitz, I turned back to
certain utterances (very dear to me;, of Herman Grimm, which
indeed have been found chauvinistic by non-Germans. But again
that is just a point of view. It is simply a question with me
of the spirit which lives in them.
At the first
view one can put this question: How does the spirit, the way
of thinking, the inner soul-constitution of the Bethmann and
Tirpitz writings compare with what lives in Herman Grimm's
political observations? Here we must say: Herman Grimm felt
that Goethe had lived and had not lived in vain; to him he
was a living presence. To, Bethmann and Tirpitz Goethe was
not there. I will not say they had not read him, it might
have been better if they had left him unread; but as far as
they were concerned he was not there. And at first I had to
say to myself; what stands in these books sounds as if it
were written by a medieval serf — with the logic of a
medieval Serf.
Especially
interesting, for instance, is the logic of Ludendorf. He is
the one who was so greatly praised for the idea of having
Lenin transported in a sealed wagon, through Germany to
Russia! Ludendorf is the real importer of Bolehevism into
Russia! Now he simply had not the cheek to deny that
in his book, although he had cheek enough for many things. So
he says, that to send Lenin to Russia was a military
necessity, and that the political government should have
avoided the evil consequences, but did not do so. Such is the
logic of these gentlemen. But I do not wish to assert that
Clemenceau has better logic; and I beg you not to think that
I take sides with any Party. Neither Lloyd George nor Wilson
have any better logic. This, however, is not so easy to
substantiate.
One may say
that at first sight, but the matter goes further. One finds
on comparing things that one must go further back still. An
extraordinary similarity exists between the Tirpitz and
Ludendorf way of thinking, and those human beings who guided
the so-called civilisation of Rome in the 1st and 2nd
pre-Christian centuries. And if we wish to establish an
intimate community of soul between these, we may say that it
is as if the old method of thought of the ancient
pre-Christian Rome again appeared, and as if everything which
has happened since then, including Christianity itself, (even
if these gentlemen externally speak of Christ, and so on),
had never taken place.
You see, it
is often supposed, when one says of the Luciferic that it
remained behind in humanity — that one means something
only external to the world. But this principle of remaining
behind, expresses itself quite strongly within the world. One
can say the pre-Caesar greatness of old Rome has re-arisen in
such people, and everything which has happened in Europe
since that time is really non-existent for them.
My dear
friends, this phenomenon must be observed in an unprejudiced
way to-day. It must be kept in mind; because only by so doing
can one win a strong standpoint for judging the present. This
present age makes great demands on man's capacity for
judgment. All this must be said, if one speaks of how
necessary it is that the present age should be permeated by
Spiritual impulses. Superficially considered it is easy to
say the present age must be permeated Spiritually; but, my
dear friends, the matter is not quite so simple as this. You
need only investigate where Spiritual Impulses found their
way to some extent into humanity to see whether they have
always borne the right fruit. One must in conclusion also say
the following. Let us consider certain brochures, certain
pamphlets which have been written, some written indeed by
members of long standing. There are such written, wherein
what figures here as Spiritual Science, is really placed
before the world, but inverted, turned upside down, as it
were. These are plants which have grown on the soil on which
we attempt to give Spiritual treasure to humanity to-day. And
anyone who thinks that this process, has run its
course — of our so-called followers into its opposite
what is transmitted as Spiritual Science to-day, must be a
simpleton. For it most certainly is not yet finished. It is
by no means so easy to reckon with this fact, that Spiritual
truths must be brought to humanity, because as humanity is
to-day it tends above all to differentiate into the three
types which I have characterised: the Ethical, the Aesthetic,
the intellectual; and further differentiations again within
these.
Now Spiritual
truths are not adapted to be taken up in their purity by
human beings who approach them with such differentiations.
Just think how on all sides to-day human beings tend to shut
themselves off in their national chauvinism, and if you try
to take up generally human and spiritual truths with national
chauvinism, you transform them thereby into the opposite. It
is impossible simply to impart what is now desirable from a
certain point of view, for human beings tend to such
differentiations as I have described. Therefore it is
necessary above all that the interest of man should be
awakened from the side which already exists. It is necessary
that, in a certain sense, one should link on to what is
already there, continually bearing in mind the tendency men
have to turn away from that ancient treasure of wisdom and
put nothing else in its place except the territorial
differentiation on this earth. It does not do to spread
Spiritual truths among humanity, without also spreading a
certain Ethos.
Many people have read
How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.
These books have been read considerably for some
time. They have objected that the first counsels given there
are ethical, and that they must be in ethical agreement with
them. They are right. right The first counsels given
must be ethical and form an extract of the best
Ethos of earthly civilisation. But, on the other hand, it is
also necessary to cultivate a certain artistic element, and
that has made quite special difficulties in the
Anthroposophical Movement; for without the Anthroposophical
Movement there existed a certain disinclination at first
towards artistic things. An abstract, Aesthetically
indifferent, symbolism was striven for. There still exists
to-day, movements which call themselves Theosophical which
rejects everything artistic. Therefore it was a good fate, a
good Karma, of our Movement that we were able to make
artistic experiments here in Dornach, and that we could work
them out away from the abstract symbolic element. Perhaps if
things had gone according to the desires of many, we should
see many a black cross with red roses or something like
roses, as the deep symbol of our building. We have of course,
to beware of this symbolism, and strive to create from out of
the artistic element. That had to be linked an to the best
traditions, of human civilisation — if I may call
impulses traditions. Above all one thing must be considered,
that these are deep and earnest truths, and they must run
somewhat as follows: whoever wishes to attain true knowledge
must cultivate in himself a sense for truth! When one speaks
radically about this question, my dear friends, one comes in
touch with something which sounds repellent to many to-day,
because this rigorous striving everywhere for the truth is
something which is extraordinarily unpleasant to many people
to-day, truth being something which they want at least to
touch-up in life. But untruth, even if untrue from
sentimentality, does not go with that strong sense for truth,
demanded e.g. by a real devotion to these truths which
Anthroposophy wishes
to place in the world.
My dear
friends, in this connection the religious confessions have
sinned especially, because they have inserted something which
can no longer be united with a pure sense for truth. Certain
kinds of piety are carried out into the world which satisfy
human egoism far more than human feeling for truth. Therefore
it is quite specially necessary that real attention should be
paid to the cultivation of inner truthfulness, as is so often
pointed out in our Anthroposophical writings. As you know,
life itself demands from human beings to-day many untrue
things, and we may say there exists to-day two distinct
tendencies, which evoke in man a certain disinclination to
look at facts in their true light. To-day the tendency exists
to characterise things from personal preference and not
according to the facts. To-day a man is called practical who
is in a certain sense a man of routine; one who with a
certain brute force works within his own sphere regardless of
any consideration, and puts aside everything which does not
serve to promote his own particular objects. From this
standpoint one distinguishes “practical” men and
“visionaries”; and with a certain world-historic
untruth, the consequences of these things have shown
themselves in a terrible way, in the course of the 19th
century, and up to our own day. Indeed it was difficult
before this great testing came over humanity through
the catastrophe of the World War, to say something of what
ruthlessly characterises these things. I am shortly
publishing a collection of a few of my more important early
writings — articles written in the eighties and nineties,
in order to show how, as it were through small slits, I even
then attempted to utter many truths. Among these articles
there is one on
Bismarck, the Man of Political Successes,
in which I attempted to show that the success
of this personality depended upon the fact that he could
never see much further than his nose! But, as you know, it is
no use to cast these things in the face of the world if no
one is there who can take them up. Now, however, we
must start from this basis, that the World-War Catastrophe
can teach us many things. Of course, for most men, nothing is
to be learnt from these facts. They have a certain fund of
opinions, and do not alter them. They are not able to
understand what underlies the statement that we must learn
from the facts.
I always tell
each person whom I conduct round the Goetheanum, that if I
had to design such a building a second time, I would do so
quite differently. I would certainly never make it in the
same way again. There is nothing, of course, against the
present building, but I myself would not make it in the same
way again, because obviously, one has learnt something from
what one has made, and which stands there as an accomplished
fact.
To-day I read
with astonishment that Field-Marshal Hindenburg said, if he
had to conduct the World-War over again he would do it in
exactly the same way.
Indeed these
things are read, but they are read carelessly; and people do
not notice that one must gain an understanding of the age
from the teachings which are given in such a bitter way
through this world catastrophe. Whatever one reads and what
constantly resounds in one's ears from the world to-day,
should be taken with the corresponding background, and one
should always be able to say: In important things a revision
of judgment is essentially and constantly necessary. It was
right as far as could be seen externally, to call Bismarck a
practical man, until the World-Catastrophe came. Hermann
Grimm regarded Bismarck as a tower of practical excellence.
But the World War catastrophe has taught us that Bismarck was
a visionary, and the opinions of his judgment have had to be
altered; for his idea of the creation of an Empire was
naturally only a phantasy.
You see, I
just want to make you see clearly that it is life itself, and
must be life, which teaches us to discover illusions, even in
the sphere of moral history. I have shown you how one must
substantiate these illusions in the sphere of natural
connections, noting how in nature things stand side by side,
and that is how natural investigators describe them. Thus we
must say that humanity shares in the occurrences of nature,
and that what natural science says about this is simply a web
of illusions.
To-day I
wanted to make comprehensible to you how we must learn the
very facts of history and of life to correct things; because,
often for long periods, they only show themselves outwardly
as illusion. Men who were naturally regarded by many as
practical, must now of necessity be regarded as visionaries.
One must accustom oneself to-day to revise one's judgment in
this manner. At each step in life, there is not only
opportunity enough but also a necessity for revising one's
judgment. And one is only in the right mood, the mood the
Anthroposophical Movement seeks to acquire, when one says to
oneself: “I must revise my opinions, perhaps even about
the most important things in life.” Opinions about
natural connections, can as a rule, be revised through the
study of Spiritual Science. Judgments about life one can only
revise when one really develops in oneself the mood necessary
for the Anthroposophical Movement.
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