III
THERE is truly great significance in how certain
men feel impelled to-day to speak about the present situation of
mankind — men who at least try, with the aid of their feelings
and perceptions, to see into the heart of social affairs. In this
connection I would like to read you a few sentences from the address
which Kurt Eisner gave to a gathering of students in Basle, shortly
before his death. Perhaps some of you already know these sentences,
but they are extraordinarily important for anyone who wants to grasp
the symptomatic meaning of certain things to-day.
“Do I not hear
and see clearly” (he says, referring to his earlier remarks),
“that in our life this very longing strives to find expression
— and yet accompanying it is the conviction that our life, as
we are compelled to lead it to-day, is plainly the invention of an
evil spirit! Imagine a great thinker, knowing nothing of our time and
living perhaps two thousand years ago, who might dream of how the
world would look after two thousand years — not with the most
exuberant imagination would he be able to conceive such a world as
that in which we are condemned to live. In truth, existing conditions
are the one great mirage in the world, while the substance of our
desires and the longings of our spirit are the deepest and final
truth — and everything outside them is horrible. We have simply
interchanged dreaming and waking. Our task is to shake off this
ancient illusion about the reality of our present social existence.
One glance at the war: can you imagine a human reason which could
devise anything like it? If this war was not what men call
reality, then perhaps we were dreaming, and now have woken
up.”
Just think of it
— in his efforts to understand the present time, this man was
driven to make use of the concept of a dream, and to ask himself the
question: Is not the reality which surrounds us to-day much
better called a bad dream, than true reality?
So we have the
remarkable case — and consider how typical it is — of a
thoroughly modern man, a man who has felt himself to be a herald of a
new epoch, who regards outwardly perceptible reality as nothing else
than maya — rather as Indian philosophy does — as in fact
a dream; and this man feels impelled by the singular events of the
present to raise the question (no matter in what sense but still to
raise it) whether this reality is not indeed a dream!
Yes, the whole tenor
of Eisner's speech shows that he was using more than a mere phrase
when he said that this present reality could be naught else than
something inflicted on mankind by an evil spirit.
Now let us recall some
of the many things that have passed through our souls in the course
of our anthroposophical endeavours, and above all the fact that in
general we try not to look on outwardly perceptible reality as the
whole of reality, and that over against the perceptible we set the
super-sensible, which alone prevents the perceptible from ranking as
the true, complete reality. This outlook, however, is no more than a
tiny spark in the currents of contemporary thought, for these are
widely permeated by materialistic ideas — and yet we see that
such a man as Kurt Eisner, who is certainly untouched by this spark
(at any rate in his physical life), finds himself driven by the facts
of the present day to make this surprising comparison: he compares
outward reality, at least in its current manifestation, to a dream!
Faced with present-day reality, he is driven to a confession which he
can express only by calling to witness the general truth of the
unreality, the maya-character, of the reality that is outwardly
perceived.
Let us now go rather
more deeply into many of the things which our consideration of the
social problem has brought before our souls in the last few weeks.
Let us observe how the trend of events in the past century has more
and more brought men to the point of denying the reality of the
spiritual or super-sensible world, so that this denial is, one might
say, established in the widest circles. Certainly, in some quarters
— you may object — a great deal is said about the
spiritual world; churches are still numerous, if not always full, and
words which purport to tell of the spirit echo through them. Moreover
— to-day and also yesterday evening — you can listen
almost all the time to bells, which again should be an expression of
something recognised in the world as spiritual life. But in this
connection we experience something else, too. If to-day an attempt is
made to hear what the Christ is saying for our present age, then it
is precisely from the adherents of the old religious communities that
the most vehement attacks come. Real spiritual life, one that relies
not merely on faith or on an old tradition, but on the immediate
spiritual findings of the present — that is something which
very, very few people want to-day.
On the other hand, is
it not as though modern humanity were being impelled — not
perhaps by an evil world-spirit, but by a good
world-spirit — to think again of the spiritual side of
existence — as witness the fact that people are surrounded by a
sense-perceptible reality of such a kind that a man of modern outlook
has to say: It is like a dream... even a great thinker of two
thousand years ago could not have conceived the shape which outer
reality would wear to-day?
In any case, here is a
modern man led by such a recognition to form conceptions which are
not customary to-day. I know that the conceptions of reality, which
to-day I have pointed to as important, are found rather difficult by
many of our anthroposophical friends. But, my dear friends, you
cannot cope with life to-day unless you have the will to take account
of these difficult conceptions. How do people usually form their
thoughts in a certain realm to-day? They hold a crystal in their
hands: that is a real object. They take a rose, plucked from its
stem, and in just the same way they say: that is a real object. They
call them both real objects in the same sense.
Natural scientists, in
their chancelleries of learning and in every laboratory and clinic,
talk about reality in such a way as to grant it only to things which
have the same kind of reality as the crystal and the plucked rose.
But is there not an obvious and important difference in the fact that
for long ages the crystal retains, quite of itself, its existing
form? The rose, plucked from its stem, loses its form in a very much
shorter time; it dies. It has not the same degree of reality as the
crystal. And the rose-stem itself, if we tear it from the earth, has
no longer the same degree of reality that it had while it was planted
in the earth. This leads us to look at objects in a way quite
different from the superficial observation of the present day. We may
not speak of a rose or a rose-stem as real objects; in order to speak
of reality in the fullest sense we must take the whole earth into
account — and then speak of the rose-stem, and its roses, as a
kind of hair sprouting out of this reality!
So you see —
sense-perceptible reality includes objects which cease to be real, in
the true sense of the word, if they are separated from their
foundation. It is here, in this great illusion, that we have to
search among the appearances of outer reality for what truly is
reality. Mistakes of the kind I have mentioned are common in looking
at nature to-day. But anyone who makes them, and has got used to them
as the result of centuries of habit, will find it extraordinarily
hard to think about social questions in a way that corresponds to
reality. For this is the great difference between human life and
nature: anything in nature which no longer has full reality, such as
the plucked rose, is allowed to die. Now something can have an
appearance of reality which is not reality: the appearance is a lie.
And we can quite well incorporate as a reality in social life
something which is in fact not a reality. Only then it need not
immediately fade away; it will turn into a source of pain and torment
for mankind. Indeed, nothing can bring forth healing for mankind
which is not first experienced and thought out in terms of complete
reality, and then planted in the social organism. It is not merely a
sin against the social order, but a sin against the truth, if —
for example — daily work proceeds on the assumption that human
labour-power (I have often said this here) is a commodity. It can be
made to seem so, indeed: but this seeming results in pain and
suffering for human society, and sets the stage for convulsions and
revolutions in economic life.
In short, what needs
to become a familiar thought for people to-day is this: not
everything which is revealed in the outer appearance of reality
— revealed within certain limits — is bound to be a true
reality; it may be a living lie. And this distinction between living
truths and living lies is something which should be deeply engraved
in human minds to-day. For the more people there are in whom it is
deeply engraved, in so many more will the feeling awake: we must seek
for those things which are not lies, but living truths ... and the
sooner will the social organism be restored to health. What must be
added to this?
Something further is
necessary for discerning the true or merely apparent reality of an
external object. Imagine a being who comes from a planet with a
different organisation from ours, so that this being has never
encountered the distinction between a rose, growing on its stem, and
a crystal — he might well believe, if a crystal and a rose were
placed before him, that their reality was of the same kind. And he
would no doubt be surprised to find the rose soon withering, while
the crystal remained unchanged. Here on earth we know where we are in
face of the realities, because we have followed the course of things
through long periods.
But it is not always
possible to distinguish true reality in the way one can with the
rose. In life we encounter objects which require us to create a
foundation for our judgment if we are to lay hold of the true reality
in them. What sort of foundation is this — with respect
particularly to social life?
Now, in the two
preceding lectures I spoke about this foundation; to-day I will add
something more. You know from my writings the descriptions I have
given of the spiritual world — the world which man lives
through between death and rebirth. You are aware that in referring to
this life in the super-sensible, spiritual world one must be clear as
to the relationships which prevail between soul and soul. For there
the human being is free from his body: he is not subject to the
physical laws of the world we live through between birth and death.
So one speaks of the force or forces which play from soul to soul.
You can read in my
Theosophy
how one must speak in this connection of the
forces of sympathy and antipathy, playing between soul and soul in
the soul-world. In a quite inward way these forces play from soul to
soul. Antipathy sets soul against soul; through sympathy, souls are
made gentler towards each other. Harmonies and disharmonies arise
from the inmost experiences of souls. And this inward experience by
one soul of the inmost experience of another is what determines the
true relationship of the super-sensible to the sense-perceptible
world. It is only a reflection — a sort of lingering remnant
— of this super-sensible experience, the experience which
establishes a true connection with the sense-world, that can be
experienced here in the physical world during life.
This
reflection, however, must be seen in its true significance. We
can ask: How, from a social point of view, is our life here between
birth and death related to our super-sensible life? From here we are
at once led — as we often have been in studying the necessary
threefolding of the social organism — to the middle member,
frequently described: in fact to the political State. People who in
our epoch have reflected on the political State, have always been
concerned to understand exactly what it is. Moreover, the various
class-interests of modern times have led to everything being jumbled
up together in the State, so that without further knowledge it is
pretty well impossible to tell whether the State is a reality, or a
living lie.
It is a far remove
from the outlook of the German philosopher, Hegel, to the very
different outlook which Fritz Mauthner, the author of a philosophical
dictionary, has lately proclaimed. Hegel regards the State more or
less as the realisation of God on earth. Fritz Mauthner says: the
State is a necessary evil. He regards the State as an evil, but one
men cannot do without — as something required by social life.
So are the findings of two modern spirits radically opposed.
Owing to the fact that
a great deal which was formerly instinctive is now rising into the
light of consciousness, the most variously-minded people have tried
to form conceptions of how the State should be constituted and what
sort of entity it ought to be. And these conceptions have taken the
most manifold forms. On the one hand we have the pious sheep who
refuse to grasp what the State really is, but want to portray it in
such a way that there is not much to say about it, but a great deal
to bewail. And there are the others, who want to change the State
radically, so that men may derive from the State itself a satisfying
form of existence. Hence the question arises: How can we gain a
perception of what the State really is?
If one observes
impartially what can be woven between man and man within the context
of the State, and compares it with what can be woven between soul and
soul in the life after death (as I described it just now), then and
only then can one gain a perception of the reality of the State
— of its potential reality. For, just as every
relationship which arises from the fundamental forces of sympathy and
antipathy in the human soul after death lives in the inmost depths of
the soul, so everything built between man and man through political
State-life is a pure externality, based on law, on the wholly
external ways in which men confront one another.
And if you follow this
thought right through, you come to see that the State represents the
exact opposite of super-sensible life. And it is the more complete in
its own way, this State, the more fully it fills this opposite role:
the less it claims to incorporate in its own structure anything that
belongs to super-sensible life, the more it merely embodies purely
external relationships between man and man — those wherein all
men are equal in the sight of the law. More and more deeply is one
penetrated by this truth: that the fulfilment of the State consists
precisely in it’s seeking to comprise only what belongs to our
life between birth and death, only what belongs to our most external
relationships.
But then we must ask:
If the State reflects super-sensible life only by standing for its
opposite, how does the super-sensible find its way into all the rest
of our sense-life? In the last lecture I spoke of this from another
point of view. To-day I must add that the antipathies which unfold in
the super-sensible world between death and birth leave certain
remnants, and we bring these with us into physical existence. Working
against them in physical life is everything which lives in so-called
spiritual life, in spiritual culture. This is what draws men together
in religious communities, and in other spiritual societies, so that
they may create a counterpart of the antipathies which have lingered
on from the life before birth.
All our spiritual
culture should be justified on its own ground, for it reflects our
pre-earthly life and in a certain sense equips mankind for life in
the sense-world, and at the same time it should be a kind of remedy
for the antipathies which remain over from the super-sensible world.
That is why it is so dreadful when people bring about schisms in
spiritual life, instead of working for unity — in spiritual
life above all. The remaining antipathies are surging in the depths
of the human soul and prevent the achievement of what should be the
essential aim: true spiritual harmony, true spiritual collaboration.
Just where this should prevail, we find sects springing up. These
schisms and sectarianisms are in fact the reflections on earth of the
antipathies which are bound up with the origins of all spiritual
life, and for which spiritual life should really come to serve as a
remedy.
We must recognise this
spiritual life as something which has an inner connection with our
life before birth — indeed, a certain kinship with it. We
should therefore never try to organise spiritual-cultural life except
as a free life, outside the realm of politics, which in this sense is
not a reflection but a counter-image of super-sensible life. And we
shall gain a conception of what is real in the State, and in
spiritual-cultural life, only if we take super-sensible life into
account, as well as the life of the senses. Both together make up
true reality, while the life of senses alone is nothing more than a
dream.
Economic life has a
quite different character. In economic life the single man works for
others. He works for others because he, just as much as the others,
finds it to his advantage to do so. Economic life springs from needs,
and consists in all kinds of work which go to satisfy the ordinary
natural needs of human beings on the physical plane — including
the finer but more instinctive needs of the soul. And within economic
life there is an unconscious unfolding of something whose influence
continues on the far side of death.
Men work for one
another out of the egoistic needs of economic life, and from the
depths of this work come the seeds of certain sympathies which are
destined to flower in our souls during the life after death. And so,
just as spiritual-cultural life is a kind of remedy for the remains
of antipathies which we bring into earthly existence from the life
before birth, so are the depths of economic life a seed-ground for
sympathies which will develop after death.
Here is a further
aspect of the way in which we learn from the super-sensible world to
recognise the necessity of a threefold ordering of the social
organism. Most certainly, no one can reach this point of view unless
he strives to become familiar with the spiritual-scientific
foundation of world-knowledge. But for anyone who does this it will
become more and more obvious that a healthy social organism must be
membered into these three realms, for the three realms are related in
quite distinctive ways to the super-sensible world, which — as I
have said — is the complement of the sense-world and together
with it makes up true reality.
But now observe
— in recent centuries no one has spoken any longer of these
interconnections of outward physical existence, as it manifests in
cultural life, political life, and economic life. People have gone on
spinning out the old traditions, but with no understanding for them.
They have lost the practice of taking a direct way, through an active
soul-life, into the world of the spirit, in order there to seek for
the light that is able to illuminate physical reality, so that this
reality comes then to be rightly known for the first time. The
leading circles of mankind have set the tone of this unspiritual
life. And in this way a deep gulf has arisen between the social
classes — a gulf which lies at the root of our life to-day and
is not to be drowsily ignored.
Perhaps I may again
recall how, before the time of July and August, 1914, drew on, people
who belonged to the leading classes — the former leading
classes — were accustomed to praise the stage which our
civilisation, as they called it, had at last reached. They spoke of
how thought could be carried like an arrow over great distances by
the telegraph and telephone, and of the other fabulous achievements
of modern technique which culture and civilisation had carried to
such an advanced stage. But this culture, this civilisation, was
already rushing towards the abyss, out of which have come the
frightful catastrophes of to-day. Before July and August, 1914, the
statesmen of Europe, especially those of Central Europe — this
can be established from the documents — declared times without
number: Under present conditions, peace in Europe is assured for a
long time. That is literally what was said, by the statesmen of
Central Europe especially, in their party speeches. I could show you
speeches made as late as May, 1914, when it was said: Through our
diplomacy, the relationships between countries have been brought to a
point which permits us to believe in enduring peace. That, in May,
1914! But anyone who at that time saw through those relationships,
had to speak in a different vein. In lectures I gave then in Vienna,
[See:
The Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth.]
I repeated, before the war, what I
have often said in the course of recent years: We are living in the
midst of something which can be called only a cancerous social
disease, a carcinoma of the social organism. This
carcinoma, this ulcer, duly broke out, and became what people call
the World War.
At that time, of
course, the statement — we live in a carcinoma, a social ulcer
— was for most people a mere way of talking, a phrase, for the
World War was still in the future. People had no notion that they
were dancing on a volcano! For many it is just the same to-day, if
attention is now called to the other volcano — and it certainly
is one — which lies in all that is now coming to expression out
of the social question, as it has long been called. Because people
are so fond of sleeping in face of reality, they fail to recognise in
this reality the forces which alone turn it into true reality.
You see, that is why
it is so hard to bring home to people to-day what is so necessary
— to bring home the point of the threefold ordering of a
healthy social organism, and the necessity of working towards this
threefold ordering! What is it, then, that distinguishes this way of
thinking, which comes to expression in the demand for a threefold
social order, from other ways of thinking? You see, these other ways
spring from trying to work out what would be the best social order
for the world, and what must be done in order to reach it. Now
observe how different is the way of thinking which is founded on a
threefold ordering of the social organism! There is no question here
of asking: What is the best way of arranging the social organism? We
start from reality by asking: How must human beings themselves be
interrelated, so that they will be free members of the social
organism and be able to work together for what is right and just?
This way of thinking
makes its appeal, not to theories or social dogmas, but to human
beings. It says: Let people find themselves in the environment of a
threefold social order, and they will themselves say how it should be
organised. This way of thinking makes its appeal to actual human
beings, not to abstract theories or social dogmas.
Anyone who lived
entirely alone would never develop human speech — human speech
arises only in a social community. In the same way, anyone who lives
alone cannot arrive at a social way of thinking; he will have no
social perceptions and no social instincts. Only in a rightly formed
community is it possible to build up social life in face of the
happenings of the present time.
But a great deal
stands in contradiction to that. Because of the rise of materialism
in recent centuries, men have moved away from the true reality. They
have become estranged from it, and lonely in their inner lives. And
most lonely of all are those who have been torn out of the context of
their lives and are connected with nothing but the dreary machine
— on the one hand, the factory; on the other, soulless
capitalism. The human soul has indeed become a desert. But out of the
desert there struggles up whatever can proceed from the single
individual. And this consists of inner thoughts, inner visions of the
super-sensible world, and also visions which throw light on external
nature.
Now it is just when we
are quite alone, when we are thrown back entirely on ourselves, that
we are best disposed in soul for all the knowledge that can be gained
by the single individual concerning his relationships with the worlds
of nature and of spirit. In contradistinction to that, we have
everything that should flow from social thinking. Only if we reflect
on this can we form a right judgment of the momentous hour of history
in which we are now living. It was necessary, once in the course of
world evolution, that men should have this experience of loneliness,
in order that out of their loneliness of soul they should develop a
life of the spirit. And the loneliest of all were the great thinkers,
who to all appearance lived in abstract heights, and sought from
there the way to the super-sensible world.
But of course men must
not seek only the way to the super-sensible world and to the world of
nature; they must also find a way that unites their thinking with
social life. Social life, however, cannot be developed in loneliness,
but only through genuine living together with other men; and so the
lonely individual who emerged in our modern epoch was not well fitted
for social thinking. Just when he rightly wanted to make something
worth while out of his inner life, the fruits of his inner life
turned out to be anti-social, not social thinking at all! The
present-day inclinations and cravings of mankind are the outcome of
spiritual forces which are bound up with loneliness, and are given a
false direction by the overwhelming influence of Ahrimanic
materialism.
The importance of this
fact comes out clearly if one asks about something which many people
find terrible. Suppose one asks: What do you mean by
“bolshevistic”? Most people will say: “Lenin,
Trotsky.” Now, I can tell you of a Bolshevist who is no longer
alive to-day, and he is none other than the German philosopher Johann
Gottlieb Fichte. You will have heard and learnt a great deal about
Fichte's idealistic, spiritual way of thinking. But you will not know
much about the sort of man Fichte was unless you are familiar with
the outlook he expressed in his Geschlossenen Handelstaat (A
Closed National Economy), which can be bought very cheaply in the
Reclam Library. Read how Fichte conceives the social ordering of the
masses of mankind, and compare it with the writings of Lenin and
Trotsky — you will find a remarkable agreement. Then you will
become critical of merely external representations and judgments, and
you will be impelled to ask: What really lies at the bottom of all
this? And if you try to enter into it more closely and to get clear
about its foundations, you will come to the following.
Suppose you try to
make out the particular spiritual orientation of the most radical men
of the present day, and endeavour perhaps to penetrate into the souls
of the Trotsky’s and Lenin’s, their ways of thinking and
forms of thought, and then you ask: How are we to think of such men?
And you get this answer: One can imagine them first in a different
social setting, and then again in our own social order, in this
social order of ours which has developed in the light — or,
more truly, in the darkness, the gloom — of the materialism of
recent centuries. Now consider, if Lenin and Trotsky had lived in a
different social order — what might they have become, with
their spiritual forces unfolding in a quite different way? Deep
mystics! For in a religious atmosphere the content of such souls
might have developed into the deepest mysticism. In the atmosphere of
modern materialism it has become what you know it to be.
Take Johann Gottlieb
Fichte's Geschlossenen Handelstaat: we have here the social
ideal of a man who in truth sought most earnestly to tread the
highest path of knowledge who put forth a way of thinking which was
constantly inclined towards the super-sensible world. When he
conceived the wish to work out for himself a social ideal also, this
was indeed a pure impulse of the heart, the human heart. But the very
thing which fits us to pursue inwardly the highest ideals of
knowledge is a handicap if we want to apply it to social life; it
unfits us for developing a social way of thinking. Along the
spiritual path taken by Fichte, a man has to make his way
alone. Social thinking has to be developed in the community of
other human beings. And then the social thinker's task is above all
to consider how the social order must be laid out if men are to work
together rightly at the task of founding social life on the direct
experience of social fellowship. Therefore I never say to people:
this is how you should organise private property as a means of
production, or public property as a means of production. I am bound
to say, rather: Try to work towards a threefold ordering of the
social organism; then the operations of capital will be regulated
from the spiritual realm, and infused with human rights from the
political realm. Then spiritual life and the life of rights will flow
together with economic life in an orderly way. And then will come in
that socialisation which, in accordance with certain concepts of
justice, will see to it that whatever a man acquires, beyond his own
needs as a consumer, shall continually pass over into the spiritual
realm. It returns once more to the spiritual realm.
At the present time
this arrangement applies only to spiritual property, where it shocks
nobody. A man cannot preserve his spiritual property for his
descendants for more than a certain period — thirty years after
his death at most. Then it becomes public property. We have only to
take this as a possible model for the return flow of everything that
is produced by individual effort, and indeed of everything embraced
by the capitalist system — a model for the leading back of all
this into the social organism. The question then is simply —
how is it all to be divided up? In such parts as will do justice to
the immediate spiritual and individual abilities, and also the former
individual abilities, of the human beings concerned: it will be a
question for the spiritual realm. Men will arrange it like that, if
they are rightly situated within the social order. That is what this
way of thinking assumes.
In every century, I
daresay, these things would be done differently; in such matters no
arrangements are valid for all time. But our epoch is accustomed to
judging everything from a materialistic standpoint, and so nothing is
seen any longer in the right light. I have often pointed out how in
modern times labour-power has become a commodity. Ordinary wage
contracts are based on that; they derive from the assumption that
labour-power is a commodity, and they are determined by the amount of
labour which the workman renders to the employer. A healthy
relationship will arise only under the following conditions: the
contract must by no means be settled in terms of so much labour; the
labour must be treated as a rights-question, to be fixed by the
political State; and the contract must be based on a division of the
goods produced between the manual workers and the spiritual workers.
Such a contract can be based only on the goods produced, not
on the relationship between workmen and employer. That is the only
way to put the thing on a healthy footing.
People ask: whence
come the social evils which are associated with capitalism? They say,
these evils come from the capitalist economic system. But no evils
can arise from an economic system: they arise first of all because we
have no real labour laws to protect labour; and further because we
fail to notice that the way in which the worker is denied his due
share amounts to a living lie. But what does this denial depend on?
Not on the organisation of economic life, but on the fact that the
social order permits the individual capacities of the employer to be
unjustly rewarded, at the worker's expense. The division of proceeds
ought to be made in terms of goods, for these are the joint products
of the spiritual and the manual workers. But if you use your
individual capacities to take from someone something which ought not
to be taken, what are you doing? You are cheating him, taking
advantage of him! One need only look these circumstances straight in
the face to realise that the trouble does not he in capitalism, but
in the misuse of spiritual capacities.
There you have the
connection with the spiritual world. First make the realm of society
healthy, so that spiritual capacities are no longer enabled to take
advantage of the workers: then you will bring health into the social
organism as a whole. It all turns on perceiving everywhere what is
right and just.
In order to perceive
this, one needs a principle of justice. To-day we have reached a
stage when principles of justice can be derived only from the
spiritual world. And again and again it must be pointed out that
nowadays it is not enough to keep on and on declaring: People must
recover belief in the spirit. Oh, there are plenty of prophets ready
to speak of the necessity of belief in the spirit! But it gets
nowhere for people merely to say: “In order to bring healing
into the unhealthy conditions of our time, men must turn from
materialism to the spirit.” ... No, mere belief in the spirit
brings no healing to-day! Any number of celebrated prophets may go
round the country saying over and over again: “People must turn
inwardly” ... or, “The Christ used to be the concern of a
man's personal life only; now He must be brought into social
life”... with such phrases absolutely nothing is accomplished!
For what matters to-day is not merely to believe in the spirit, but
to be so filled with the spirit that through us the spirit is carried
directly into material existence. It is useless to-day to say.
Believe in the spirit ... what is necessary is to speak of a spirit
which is in truth able to master external reality, and can truly
declare how the membering of the social organism is to be
accomplished. For the cause of the unspiritual character of the
present day is not that men do not believe in the spirit, but that
they cannot reach such a relationship with the spirit as would enable
the spirit to seize hold of matter in real life.
How many men there are
to-day who think it extraordinarily fine to say: “Oh, there is
nothing spiritual in mere material existence — one ought to
withdraw from it: our duty is to turn away from material existence to
the set-apart life of the spirit.” Here is material reality:
you clip your coupons ... and then you sit down in the room reserved
for meditation, and off you go to the spiritual world. Two
beautifully distinct ways of living, kept gracefully apart! That
leads nowhere to-day. What is wanted to-day is that the spirit should
wax so strong in human souls that it does not merely find expression
in talk about how men are to be blessed or redeemed, but penetrates
right into what we have to do in material existence — so that
we enable the spirit to flow into and penetrate external reality. To
talk habitually about the spirit comes very easily to human beings.
And in this connection many people slip into strange contradictions.
The character in Anzengruber's play, who denies God, illustrates
this; it is specially emphasised that he denies God by saying:
“As truly as there is a God in heaven, so am I an
atheist.” This type of self-contradicting person, even though
it may not take so crass a form as in Anzengruber's play, is far from
rare to-day. For it is very common to talk in this style: As truly as
there is a God in heaven, so am I an atheist!
All this gives us
further warning not to think merely of belief in the spirit, but to
try above all to make such an encounter with the spirit that it gives
us strength to see through the reality of the material, external
world. Then indeed people will stop using the word spirit, spirit,
spirit... in every sentence. Then a man will prove by the way he
looks at things, that he is seeing them in the light of the spirit.
This is what matters to-day: that people should see things in the
light of the spirit, and not merely keep on talking about the
spirit.
This is what needs to
be grasped, so that anthroposophical spiritual science may not be
constantly confused with all the talking about the spirit which is so
popular nowadays. Again and again, when some Sunday afternoon
preacher of the worldly sort has merely spoken in a better style than
usual, one hears that someone has said: “He speaks quite in the
spirit of Anthroposophy!” Usually, in such cases, he is doing
the very opposite! This is the point that needs attention; this is
what counts.
Whoever recognises
this is not far from perceiving that such a well-intentioned remark
— I might say, a remark spoken from a presentiment of tragic
death — as the one I quoted from Kurt Eisner, is particularly
valuable, because it strikes one like the confession of a man who
might say: “To be honest, I don't believe seriously in the
super-sensible — at least I have no wish to give it any active
attention. Those who speak about the super-sensible have certainly
always said: the reality we perceive here with our senses is only a
half-reality; it is like a dream! But I am bound to scrutinise the
form which this sense-perceptible reality has assumed in the social
life of the present — and then it does look to me very like a
dream! The effect is that one is forced to say: this reality is
clearly the invention of some kind of evil spirit ...”
Certainly a noteworthy
confession! But might it not be otherwise? This tragic, terrible
guise in which present-day reality presents itself to humanity, could
it not be the educative work of a good spirit, urging us to
seek in what looks like an evil nightmare for the true reality, which
is compounded of the sense-perceptible and the super-sensible? We must
not take an exclusively pessimistic view of the present; we can also
draw from it the strength to achieve a kind of vindication of
contemporary existence.
Then we shall never
again allow ourselves to stop at the sense-perceptible: we shall feel
impelled to find the way out of it to the super-sensible. Anyone who
refuses to seek for this way will indeed be unable to think far
without saying: this reality is the invention of an evil spirit! But
whoever develops the resolve to rise from this reality to a
spiritual reality, will be able to speak also of education by a good
spirit. And in spite of everything we see around us to-day, we should
remain convinced that humanity will find a way out of the tragic
destiny of the present. But, of course, we must attend to the clear
injunction that bids us work together for social healing.
This I wished to add
to what I have said recently.
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