III
Dornach,
December 14, 1919
TODAY I should like to discuss a few things,
speaking at times more generally, in connection with what was said
yesterday and the day before. From those two lectures you will have
been able to learn that spiritual science, as conceived here, is to
be born, in our time and for the very near future, out of the deepest
and most serious demands of human evolution. I have often mentioned
that we are not concerned here with those ideals which originate in
man's subjective nature, but rather with what is being
deciphered from the spiritual history of the evolution of humanity;
and from this spiritual history one can clearly see that the science
of initiation, that is, the science which brings over its
knowledge from beyond the threshold of the spiritual world, is
absolutely necessary for the further evolution of mankind. But all
that can be said today concerning a genuine knowledge of the
spiritual world is opposed by those powers which stand for the
antiquated; and the opposition of the people in whom these
powers live must be overcome. The statement of the necessity for a
complete transformation of learning and thinking with regard
to the most important affairs of human evolution must be seriously
and basically understood. Therefore I should like to ask you to
attach special importance to the idea that it must be our purpose to
overcome everything of a merely sectarian nature, still rampant even
in the anthroposophical mind, and really to see the significance for
the world and for humanity of anthroposophically-orientated spiritual
science.
People today are still far from being awakened out of the sleep in
which they were enfolded by that development which I have already
described to you in certain of its fundamental characteristics, and
which began about the middle of the 15th century. Certainly what was
incorporated in the evolution of humanity during that time: namely,
external physical science with its great triumphs, the materialistic
conception of cosmic laws, and with it the mistaken social ideas so
clearly evident today — all that has from this direction
enveloped humanity in sleep continues to have a powerful effect; and
a fruitful advance will not be possible unless mankind is shaken out
of this sleep. Let us never forget that the knowledge of the
spiritual has powerful enemies in all those who wish to be assured
first of all — just from pure mental indolence — of the
continuance of what they have been accustomed to think. We cannot say
that we should take no notice when on the part of such people
hostility and opposition to spiritual science as it is purposed here
become more and more determined as this spiritual science becomes
better known. To be sure, anyone might believe that such things
should be allowed to pass entirely unnoticed; but that would be an
utterly wrong view in our present time. We do not fail to notice
noxious insects which approach us; we try to get rid of them, and
often this must be done in ungentle ways. The mode of procedure must
be decided in each individual case.
These things must also be understood out of the
necessities of the time. Therefore it must be viewed with very
special satisfaction in these times of ours, which are becoming ever
more difficult, if there are nevertheless people who are possessed of
sufficient power of will to stand up for our cause. But there are
alas! still far too few people who fully comprehend the seriousness
of what is now at stake in the evolution of humanity. On the one
hand, there are those who do not intend to stir out of
long-accustomed habits — not for any spiritual reasons, but
from mental laziness and other such considerations; and on the other
hand, there must be those who strongly oppose with their whole being
whatever is ripe for destruction. We must not suppose that any sort
of indulgence toward what is ready to perish can be allowed to hinder
us today. In the last five or six years people could have learned
that things belonging to the old order lead ad absurdum; and
those who have not yet learned it will have abundant opportunity to
do so in the immediate future. There must be in us the zeal for
that which is to be implanted as something new in the evolution of
mankind.
That a violent hatred would be manifest toward that anthroposophical
spiritual science which has now been carried on in Europe for two
decades, could be foreseen — anyone could foresee it who knew
and knows that what we call anthroposophical spiritual science is
intimately connected with the powers which must be summoned in the
present and the very near future for the progress of humanity. This
spiritual science must not be confused with sleepy-headedness, with
that disposition to create for oneself a little sensual
soul-enjoyment by means of spiritual ideas and concepts. We stand at
the beginning. Against us rages the battle of the will to
exterminate. In so far as we have understood the true impulse of our
spiritual science, we have never intended to act aggressively; but we
must not neglect whatever is necessary to meet the opposition of the
aggressive element which will appear more and more from without. Here
our courage must not give way; we must not try to proceed through
indolence. It will not be easy to infuse truth into human evolution,
and indulgence is positively not that with which to gird ourselves.
Matters have come to a pretty pass indeed, as the recent events on
the occasion of a lecture by Professor T. in Reutlingen prove. If the
gentlemen who are the official representatives of Christianity are
baffled, then they are ready to say, as a city clergyman did in the
discussion: “Here Christ is mistaken!” Of course
Professor T. is not mistaken; but if what he has to say does not
agree with the revealed text of the Bible, then Christ is wrong, not
Professor T. That is characteristic of the disposition we meet today,
only people will not see it because it is uncomfortable to see it;
and it could be found in all fields if only people were inclined to
look for it.
For those who are able to see the relations in life, it is clear that
the European calamity of recent years, although it has apparently
played an external role, is inwardly connected with what people have
become accustomed to think, and concerning which — please
pardon the somewhat trivial, banal expression — concerning
which people are so fond of saying: What glorious progress we have
made! and smack their lips with satisfaction.
What is necessary is to become inwardly objective.
Under the influence of modern culture people have lost
objectivity. The personal is everywhere in evidence. When sometime
the history of the last five or six years is written, that will be
possible only from spiritual-scientific foundations, and then the
chapters of this world history will show how enormously the personal
element has influenced the great world-historical events. I said that
it will be impossible without spiritual-scientific foundations to
speak of the events of the last five or six years; and in support of
this I need only refer to what I have frequently indicated here. Of
the thirty or forty men in prominent leading positions who
participated in 1914 in what is called the outbreak of the World War
— people love inexact language nowadays, because it is adapted
to cover up the truth; it was neither an “outbreak,” but
something quite different, nor was it a “world war”; it
was something entirely different, which will not come to an end for a
long time yet — of the thirty or forty men who participated at
that time, a large proportion were not entirely compos mentis, the
forces of soul and spirit were not all functioning, and where the
consciousness is clouded, there are doors by which the Ahrimanic
powers have especially easy access to human resolutions and human
intentions.
The Ahrimanic powers played an essential role in the beginning of
those events of 1914. Even today anyone who is so minded could easily
perceive, from following up events in a purely external way, how
necessary it is to infuse spiritual knowledge into the evolution of
humanity. But man is far removed by habits of thought, perception,
and feeling from observing such things with absolute seriousness.
There is on the one hand the fact — and more than that, the
imminent fact — that the time is ripe for people to appear who
are able to bring suitable and capable souls to meet those spiritual
impulses which have been entering our physical world since the last
third of the 19th century. Side by side with the fact that we have
sailed into a materialistic time, there exists the other fact that
the doors between the spiritual world and ours stand open since the
last third of the 19th century, and that people who open their souls
and minds to spiritual impulses can have relations with the spiritual
world. To be sure, the number may be small of those whose
consciousness is touched today by the spiritual world; but it is a
fact that this spiritual world makes itself felt in many a human
spirit. We may say that the next ten, twenty, thirty years, up to the
middle of the century, will be years in which more and more people
will have learned to listen to the still small voice, and so open
their inner being to the impulses of the spiritual world which would
enter.
Those people today who receive such impulses from
the spiritual world, who know about the truths and the knowledge that
must enter into human evolution, know the following also: If what we
call science, and especially what we call art, is not
fructified by the science of initiation practiced by such people,
humanity will face a quick decline, a fearful decline. Let the
kind of teaching that prevails in our universities continue for
another three decades, let social questions be treated as they are
now for thirty years more, and you will have a devastated Europe.
You can set up ideals in this field or that as much as you please, you
can talk yourselves hoarse about individual demands coming from one
group or another, you can talk in the belief that with such urgent
demands something will be done for humanity's future — it
will all be in vain unless the transformation comes from the depths
of human souls, from the thought of the relation of this world
to the spiritual world. If in this regard there is not a change
in learning, a change in thinking, then the moral deluge will
overwhelm Europe!
The important thing is to realize what it would
actually mean if a number of persons who look deeply into the
knowledge from beyond the threshold were obliged to recognize that
the confusion, the materialistic tendencies, the social errors, are
going on and on — and people do not wish to alter their
thinking and learning — it is important to realize what it
would signify if these few persons possessing the science of
initiation were compelled to see that humanity is going downwards
because of sheer laziness in thinking and feeling. You should not be
deceived as to the number of motives there are today for such a state
of affairs in the so-called civilized world. There are many ruling
motives — for is it not really natural to expect the
humanity of our time in its pride to reject everything coming from
the direction of the science of initiation? Humanity is so
immensely clever in every single one of its individuals! humanity is
so inclined to sneer at what can be won only by working upon the
development of one's own soul. Humanity believes that without
learning anything it knows everything. In neither the natural nor the
social realm can the problems of the present time be solved without a
fructifying of human thinking, feeling, and willing from the
spiritual world. To many people today it seems positively like a
creation of fancy when we speak of this science of initiation, or
of anything like the threshold of the spiritual world. It is
true, not everyone today can cross the threshold to the spiritual
world; but no one would be prevented from perceiving the truth of
what is said by those who have crossed that threshold. It is false
reasoning when it is said again and again by one or another: How am I
to know that what is presented by anyone as the science of initiation
is correct, when I cannot myself see into the spiritual world? That
is false reasoning. Common sense which is not led astray by the
erroneous ideas of our time in the natural or the social sphere can
decide of itself whether the element of truth rules in what anyone
says. If someone speaks of spiritual worlds, you must take account of
everything: the manner of speaking, the seriousness with
which things are treated, the logic which is developed, and so
on, and then it will be possible to judge whether what is presented
as information about the spiritual world is charlatanism, or whether
it has foundation. Anyone can decide this; and no one is hindered
from making fruitful in the natural and social realms that which is
brought over from the well-spring of spiritual life by those who have
the right to speak of the principle of initiation.
Those forces of humanity's evolution which
have so far guided man unconsciously, so that he has been able to
advance, are becoming exhausted, and will be entirely exhausted by
the middle of the century, approximately speaking. The new forces
must be drawn from depths of souls; and man must come to
understand that in the depths of his soul he is connected with the
roots of spiritual life.
As to crossing over the threshold, naturally not
everyone today can accomplish that, for the human being has become
accustomed in the course of recent centuries to consider everything
he encounters as taking place in time. But the first experience
beyond the threshold is of a world in which time as we understand it
has no significance. The time concept must be abandoned. Hence it is
advantageous for people who wish to prepare themselves for an
understanding of the spiritual world, to begin this training at
least, by trying to picture backwards — let us say a drama,
which outwardly starts, of course, with the first act and proceeds to
the fifth — to picture it as starting at the end and going back
to the beginning of the first act; to imagine and feel a melody, not
in the succession in which it is played, but letting the tones run
backward; to picture the daily experience, not from morning to
evening, but running backward from evening to morning. In this way we
seriously accustom our thinking to the canceling of time. In
our daily life we are accustomed to picture the second event as
occurring after the first, the third following the second, the fourth
following the third, and so on; and our thinking is always an image
of external happenings. If now we begin to think sometimes from the
end toward the beginning, to feel from the end toward the beginning,
we impose an inner compulsion upon ourselves, and this compulsion is
good, for it forces us out of the ordinary sense world. Time runs
one, two, three, four, and so on, in this direction à. If we reverse our thinking, so that it goes from
evening to morning, thus: ß instead
of from morning to evening, then we are thinking against time. We
cancel time.
| Diagram 8 Click image for large view | |
If we are able to continue such thinking, going back in our life as
far as we possibly can, we shall have gained very much; for only one
who escapes from time can enter into the spiritual world.
We say that man is provided with physical body, etheric body, astral
body, and ego. At first only the physical and etheric bodies come
into consideration for the physical sense world. The etheric body
still takes part in time in earth events; the astral body can be
found only when we are freed from time. The physical body is in
space; the ego, the true ego, can be found only when we have escaped
from space, for the world in which the true ego lives is spaceless.
So there are two conditions belonging to the earliest experiences
namely, that we become free from time and free from space when we
cross the threshold to the spiritual world. I have often referred
previously to various ways of attaining concepts which disregard
space, when I have called your attention to the dimensions —
not in such a childish way as four-dimensional space and the like are
often spoken of by spiritists, but in a more serious way. Just
consider how much of the content of your consciousness is lost when
you are no longer in space and time. Your life is completely adjusted
to space and time. The soul life of man, as well, is entirely
accommodated to space and time. If you enter a world to which you are
not adapted, the lack of adaptation implies sensations of pain and
suffering; so that the first entrance into the spiritual world is not
won without the vanquishing of pain and suffering. People fail to
realize this, or else they shrink back in terror from the spiritual
world because they are unwilling to enter the kind of abysmal world
in which space and time do not exist.
When I thus call before your mental vision this
first experience of life beyond the threshold, you become vividly
conscious that there are indeed few people today who have sufficient
inner courage to venture themselves, as it were, into the bottomless
and timeless in actual experience. Certain people,
however, are bound by their destiny to cross over the threshold; and
without the wisdom which can be brought over from beyond the
threshold no further progress is possible. From this you will feel
what is necessary. It is necessary that what we call confidence of
one man in another should be increased in the future. It would be a
fundamental social virtue. In our time of social demands this
virtue is one of the rarest, for although people demand that everyone
shall serve the community, no one has confidence in another; the most
unsocial instincts hold sway. In order that the general education of
humanity shall progress in such a way that human beings may grow into
the spiritual world, it will be necessary that those who may rightly
speak of the science of initiation be given confidence — not
confidence arising from blind belief in authority, but from common
sense; for what is brought as information from beyond the threshold
can always be comprehended if only common sense is really employed.
And then from the viewpoint of common sense, and keeping that in mind
on the one hand, we must, on the other, constantly direct our
attention to what confronts us today. Although not everyone says thus
openly, “There the Christ is mistaken” yet the logic of
the present life is characterized by this kind of talk. And when
people say they cannot distinguish between what is announced with
inner logic from the spiritual worlds and what the university
professors say — then common sense is not in evidence, or at
least there is no intention to use it. When anyone declares that
Christ is mistaken, surely from his common sense a man can say
without further ado that such a person can no longer be taken into
account from this point of view.
We have lost a real science of the soul. We
no longer have any; and I have pointed out — only recently in
public lectures in Basel [On November 10, 1919:
The Spirit as Guide through the Sensible and Supersensible
Worlds.]
and in other places — why we have lost the science of the soul.
The science of the spirit became uncomfortable to the Catholic Church
as early as the 9th century; and, as I have frequently explained, the
spirit was abolished at the Eighth General Ecumenical Council at
Constantinople in 869. At that time the dogma was announced that, if
a man is a true Christian, he must not think that he consists of
body, soul, and spirit, but only of body and soul, and that the soul
has spiritual qualities. Psychology still teaches that today, and
believes that such teaching represents the point
of view of unprejudiced science; but it is only repeating the dogma
of 869. Even all that refers to the soul was monopolized by the
confessional churches in the form of belief, in the form of creed or
dogma. All knowledge pertaining to the soul that should come from man
himself was monopolized by the denominational societies; and only
external nature was left as the object of real knowledge, of free
knowledge. No wonder we have today no science of the soul, for
secular scholarship has devoted itself entirely to the science of
nature, since the science of the soul was monopolized and the science
of the spirit abolished. So we have no science of the soul. If we
build upon the science that is the fashion today, we can make no
progress; for if we build upon the word-psychology of our time (it
really is not much more than that), we cannot come to a real
understanding of what takes place in the soul. You know from my
statement in
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment
that upon crossing over the threshold to the spiritual world,
thinking, feeling, and willing become separated in the consciousness.
In the ordinary present-day consciousness thinking, feeling, and
willing form a sort of chaos; they are intermingled. At the moment
when the threshold to the spiritual world is crossed, at the moment
when one sets about acquiring the science of initiation through
experience, thinking, feeling, and willing become independent powers
in the consciousness. They become independent, and then one learns to
know them.
Only then does one learn really to distinguish thinking from feeling
and from willing.
Especially does one learn to distinguish thinking
from willing. If we consider the thinking which is active in us as
human beings, not according to its content, but as a force — if
we consider the thinking force in us, we find that the very
force with which we think is something like a shining into our life
of that which we experienced in the spiritual world before birth, or
before conception. And the will-nature in man is something
embryonic, something germinal, which will come to complete
development only post mortem after death. So we may say: If
this (see diagram) is the course of human life between birth and
death, then thinking, as it exists in man within the course of this
human life, is only an appearance, for its true being lies in the
time before birth, or before conception; and willing is only a germ,
for what develops from this germ does so only after death.
Thinking and willing in human nature are fundamentally different.
| Diagram 9 Click image for large view | |
If now someone appears possessing the logic of our time, which tends
to classify and arrange everything systematically, he will say: “We
have been told today that thinking is the force which comes from the
life before birth, and that willing is the force which points to the
life after death.” Now one has defined; by definition one has
nicely drawn the line between thinking and willing. But nothing is
accomplished by definitions, though their insufficiency is generally
not observed. Many definitions, especially those which are considered
scientific, appear very clever; but they all have a hitch somewhere —
which recalls that definition once given in ancient Greece to the
question, What is man? “Man is a two-legged creature without
feathers.” Whereupon the next day a pupil brought a plucked
fowl and said: “This is a man, for it is a two-legged creature
without feathers.” Things are not so simple that they can be
treated thus with the ordinary intellectual tools. You see we can say
quite well, we must maintain, that what we experience as thinking has
its true reality before birth, and that only something like a
reflected image of it shines into us. Here a certain difficulty
presents itself, but you will overcome it with a little effort of
thought.
| Diagram 10 Click image for large view | |
If you have a mirror here, and here an object —
for example, a candle — you have here a reflected image. You
can distinguish the image from the object, and will not take the one
for the other. If in some way — let us say with a screen —
you have the candle itself covered, you will see only the reflection
in the mirror. The reflected image will do whatever the candle does,
and so from the reflection you will be able to see what it does. You
are accustomed to think spatially, and you can therefore easily
imagine how the reflection of the candle is related to the reality.
But the thinking force in us, as force, is a reflected
image, and its reality is in the life before birth. The
real force whose image we employ in this life, is in the life before
birth. Therefore the principle of human consciousness which results
from observing one's own consciousness is: I think, therefore I
am not, cogito ergo non sum! That is based on the principle
which must be grasped: that in thinking something of the nature of an
image exists, and that the force of thinking belongs to the life
before birth. Modern development began by setting up the opposite as
the basic axiom of philosophy: Cogito ergo sum: I think,
therefore I am, which is nonsense. You see what tests modern humanity
must go through; but we are at the crossroads, and we must learn to
transform our thinking about the basic factors of the soul life.
Having thus in a certain way traced back thinking
to its essential being, we might now be able to state something
similar with regard to willing. When we regard the will-force
between birth and death and what it becomes after death, we must
conceive willing, not as reality and reflection, but as germ and
completion. This provision: namely, that we have the image of
thinking and the embryo of willing, alone gives us the possibility of
freedom between birth and death. You can read about it in my books,
The Riddle of Man
[Not yet translated. (as of this printing – e.Ed)],
and
Riddles of the Soul
[Not yet translated. (as of this printing – e.Ed)],
as well as in the second edition of
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
[The fourth edition is now available. Published by
Anthroposophic Press, New York.]
where these things are also treated philosophically.
But here is a peculiar fact from which you must see how little the
indolent, everyday thinking suffices for entering into reality. We
have grasped the essential nature of thinking; but when we do grasp
this essential nature of thinking, we must say at the same time: This
thinking is not mere thinking, but in it is also a force of willing.
With the very inner being with which we think we will at the same
time. It is principally thinking and has an undertone of willing; but
in the same way, our willing has an undertone of thinking. We have in
fact two different things in us: something which is chiefly thinking
but has an undertone of willing; and something which is chiefly
willing but has an undertone of thinking (see Diagram No. IX). When
you consider the reality, you will not be able to form pure concepts
which can be arranged systematically, but in a certain sense the one
is always at the same time the other. Only when you come to an
understanding of these things do you begin to perceive certain
relations of man with worlds which are beyond those seen with our
eyes and heard with our ears, but within which we live no less than
in the world of the senses. We cannot say that other worlds than the
sense world do not concern us; we are in their midst. We must realize
that, while we are walking about here on this earth, we walk through
the spiritual worlds exactly as we walk through the physical air.
Relations — I say — with the spiritual
worlds result when one sees into these delicate details of human
soul-life. Through that which is more thinking and has only an
undertone of willing we are connected with a certain kind of
spiritual existence of the spiritual worlds. And with another kind of
spiritual worlds we are connected through that which is more willing
and less thinking. That has indeed its deeper significance; for what
we discover in this way manifests itself in human life; and the
differentiations which exist in the world arise because the one or
the other force of human nature is always developed more in one
direction or another. Those forces, for example, existing in the
willing which has an undertone of thinking were pre-eminently
developed in the ancient Hebraic culture; and those forces of
the human soul-being which are based essentially in the thinking
which has an undertone of willing were developed in what is called
the ancient pagan culture. At the present time we have the two
streams flowing side by side; we have in the civilized world the two
streams intermingling: one, a continuation of ancient paganism, in
the conception of nature; and the other, which comes from the
ancient Hebrews, we have in the social viewpoint of the present,
in our ethical and religious concepts.
This dualism also exists today in the individual human being himself.
On the one hand, man worships nature in a pagan fashion; and on the
other — without finding a proper basis in nature, except that
he carries over his habits of thought into so-called social science,
or sociology — he ponders on the social life, even the ethical
life. And when he philosophizes, he says that in one realm he finds
freedom and in the other natural necessity, between which there is
supposed to be no bridge; he finds himself in a ghostlike region
between the two, and the confusion is terrible.
But in many respects this confusion is the content
of the life of the present time, of the life that is perishing. What
is lacking in this present life of ours? We have a conception of
nature: it is merely the continuation of ancient paganism; we have a
moral social conception: it is merely the continuation of the Old
Testament. Christianity was an episode which was at first
historically understood; but today it has fallen through the sieve of
human culture, so to speak. In reality, Christianity does not
exist; for with the people who frequently speak of Christ you can
do as I recommended in connection with Harnack's Nature of
Christianity. Wherever Harnack writes “Christ” in
this book, you can strike out the word “Christ”, and
substitute “God the Father,” or you can even replace it
with a merely pantheistic “God,” or anything of the kind,
and generally speaking there will be no essential contradiction.
Where there is contradiction, he is talking nonsense, with predicates
unrelated to subjects. All these things must be said today, for it
must be thoroughly understood here what the content of the future
consciousness must be.
Likewise, you see what the present theory of
evolution is: that man has evolved from lower beings, and so forth;
that these lower beings have developed themselves up to him.
Certainly you need only to refer to my
Occult Science
to see that in one sense that must be said even by us. The fact is, however,
that when we consider the human head, we see that this human head as
we carry it on our shoulders today is already devolving, not
evolving. If our entire organism (please understand me clearly now) —
if our entire organism were to have the same organization as our
head, we should have to be continually dying. We live only by means
of the vital force in the rest of our organism, which is constantly
being sent up into the head. The forces through which we finally die
have their being in our head — are in our head. The head
is an organism that is perpetually perishing; it is in retrogression.
For this reason that which pertains to soul and spirit can attain its
development in the head. If you represent the head in a sketch, you
must do it thus: its ascending evolution has already passed over into
a retrograde process; here is a void (see illus.).
| Diagram 11 Click image for large view | |
Into this void, into what is being continuously destroyed, the soul
and spirit enter. That is literally true: it is owing to our head
that we have soul and spirit, because our head is already perishing.
That is to say, in our head we are perpetually dying; and the
undertone of willing, which is a quality of our thinking, lies in our
head; but this undertone of willing is a continuous stimulus, a
constant impulse to dying, to the overcoming of matter.
Now when we die, this willing really begins; and when our body is
given over to the earth, that which played its role in our head
between birth and death is carried on through our whole body, even
physically in the earth-body. You carry your head on your shoulders,
my dear friends, and in it the process goes on automatically which is
accomplished when you are committed to the earth by fire or
decomposition, only in life this process is constantly being revived,
and hence obstructed, by what is sent up from the rest of the
organism. After death the same process continues which you carry on
in your body between birth and death. It is continued in the earth:
the earth thinks according to the same principles as the thinking you
do with your human head, owing to the fact that your body becomes
decomposed in the earth, that corpses are put into it. When we pass
through the gate of death, we carry into the physical earth, by means
of our decomposing corpse, the process which we seize for ourselves
during our life between birth and death. That is a truth of modern
science, and people must know such truths in the future. The science
of the present time is childish regarding such things, for it does
not even think about them, investigate them.
And inversely, what we have in our head as
evolution through destruction, is the continuation of that which
existed before birth, or before conception. The destruction begins
only with birth, for only then do we have a head — before that
there was no destruction. Here we are really touching the edge of an
extraordinarily significant mystery of cosmic existence. What exists
in our head, through which we come into relation with other people
and with external nature, is the continuation of something which
exists in the spiritual worlds before we enter into the physical
body. If anyone understands that perfectly, then he comes to
comprehend how forces play into this physical world from the
spiritual worlds. That is most clearly seen when these things are
considered concretely, rather than in the abstract. Let me give an
example:
In 1832 Goethe died. The period belonging to the first generation
after his death, that is, up to 1865, was not such that many forces
from his spirit influenced it. (This is merely a representative
example; of course the forces of other men are active also.) Thus, up
to the year 1865 anyone who directed his attention to Goethe's
soul would have noticed little influence coming from his forces to
the earth. Then after the first thirty-three years the forces began
to come from him out of the spiritual worlds into our earth
evolution; and they became stronger and stronger up to the year 1898.
If we follow it further, beyond this period, we can say: The first
period of influence of Goethe's super-sensible forces upon our
earth civilization is, then, 1865 to 1898 (as I have said, up to 1865
it was insignificant, then it began). After thirty-three years we
have in 1931 the end of a further period, which would be the second;
and 1964 would be the end of the third period.
| Diagram 12 Click image for large view | |
From such an example it can really be learned how
relatively soon after a man has passed through the gate of death the
forces which he then develops take part in what is going on here on
earth. Only we must know how these forces take part. Anyone
who works spiritually — really spiritually — knows
how the forces of the spiritual worlds cooperate with the forces he
uses. When I said day before yesterday that the middle of this
century will be an important point of time, the statement was made —
as in the example just given — on the basis of observations
from which it can be seen how forces from the spiritual world pervade
the physical world.
The middle of this century, however, will coincide with that point of
time when the atavistic forces still remaining from before the middle
of the 15th century will have fallen into the worst decadence; hence
humanity must resolve before the middle of this century to turn
toward the spiritual. We still meet many people today who say: “Why
does misfortune come? Why do the Gods not help?” The fact is,
we are in the period of humanity's evolution in which the Gods
will immediately help if men turn to them, but in which the Gods are
compelled by their laws to deal with free men, not with puppets.
Now I have reached the point to which I referred
yesterday. When, let us say, a man with vision — even in the
Greek epoch and up to the middle of the 15th century — alluded
to the phenomena of birth and death, he could point to the divine
world, he could point out that man's destiny between birth and
death is woven out of the divine worlds. Today we must speak
differently: we must say that man's destiny is determined by
his previous earth-lives; and through the manner in which he is
conditioned by his destiny he creates the forces through which
the divine worlds can approach him. Our thinking must be the opposite
of that of earlier times regarding the relation of man to the
divine-spiritual worlds: we must learn to seek in man the
sources from which the powers are developed which will enable one or
another divine being to approach him. We have now reached this
momentous point of time in earth-evolution. What takes place
outwardly must today be understood as an expression of inner
occurrence, which can be comprehended only from the point of view of
spiritual-scientific insight. You see it is possible today for every
person to observe, I might say the ultimate consequences of events.
There have been plenty of people murdered in the last four or five
years — at least ten or twelve million in the civilized world,
probably more; three times as many have been made cripples in the
different countries — our civilization has certainly done a
grand job! But we must gradually come to recognize these things as
the mouth of the stream, as it were, and we shall have to seek
the source in what is going on in human souls in connection
with that opposition to the will of the spiritual world to break into
our world, — the spiritual world which would bear the being of
man into the future. In our time everything must be observed from
this point of view; that is, must be treated profoundly.
We might say that many events might perhaps be more correctly
evaluated if we were to alter the viewpoint. Roughly speaking —
and I say this now as something intended to give this lecture an
entirely appropriate conclusion, as indeed the nuance has been given
to these three lectures by the gratifying presence among us of a
number of our English friends — we can speak today of victors
and vanquished. It is an obvious point of view, but perhaps not the
most important one. Perhaps there is another, a much more important
point of view, which might be taken from the following.
I once read aloud here from this same platform a
thesis of Fercher von Steinwand, [Compare:
Entwickelungsgeschichtliche Unterlagen zur Bildung eines sozialen
Urteils (not yet translated).] that German-Austrian poet,
who in the sixth decade of the 19th century expressed his opinion
about the future of the German people. The lecture is noteworthy
because it was given before the ruling King of Saxony and his
ministers. In this sixth decade — those who were there at the
time heard it — Fercher van Steinwand said that his German
people is predestined some time in the future to play a role somewhat
like that which the Gypsies were playing then. It was a deep glimpse
into the evolution of humanity which Fercher van Steinwand had. These
things can be looked in the eye with complete objectivity; and if
this is done, perhaps another point of view will be chosen than the
one frequently taken today. It will be asked: What is to be said
about the changed conditions — changed among the so-called
vanquished, changed among the so-called victors? Well, the actual
victor is Anglo-Americanism; and this Anglo-Americanism, through the
forces which I have publicly characterized here is destined for
world-dominion.
Now we can ask: Since the German people will be
excluded from sharing the things by means of which the external
world will be ruled in the future, what really happens in that
case? The responsibility — not that of the individual,
naturally — the people's responsibility for events
concerning the whole of human society ceases. Not that of the
individual, but the people's responsibility ceases among those
who are down-trodden — for they are that. The responsibility
ends, and it becomes all the greater on the other side; that is where
the actual responsibility will rest. The outer dominion will be
easily won; it is won by means of forces for which the victors can
take no credit. The external passing over of the external dominion is
accomplished as the final natural necessity; but the
responsibility will be something of deep significance for souls. For
the question is already written down in humanity's book of
destiny: Will there be found among those upon whom the external
dominion devolves as by an external necessity, a sufficiently great
number of people who feel the responsibility, so that into this
external, materialistic dominion, into this culmination of
materialistic dominion, may be transplanted the impulses of the
spiritual life? And that must not happen too slowly! The middle
of this century will be a very significant point of time. The whole
weight of the responsibility should be felt, if one is chosen,
as it were by outer natural destiny, to enter upon the dominion of
materialism in the external world, — for that is what it will
be. For this dominion of materialism bears within it at the same time
the seed of destruction. The destruction which has begun will not
cease; and “entering upon external dominion” means taking
over the forces of destruction, the forces of human illness, and
living in them. That which will bear humanity into the future will
come forth from the new seed of the spirit, and will have to
be fostered. Therefore, the responsibility rests directly upon that
side to which falls world-dominion.
Our thinking today must not be superficial concerning these things,
but thorough; neither must we merely seem to be spiritual while in
reality we are materialistic. Two things are very frequently heard in
our time: One is, “Why talk of social ideas; no bread comes
from ideas!” It is a cheap objection that is very often made.
And the other is, “When the people are working again then
everything will be all right; then the social question will have a
different appearance.” Both statements are disguised
materialism, for both have the purpose of denying the spiritual life.
In the first place, what differentiates us from
the animal world? The animals go around and get their food, so far as
there is any, according to their implanted instincts. If there is not
enough, they must starve. In what way is man better off? He works
on the production of food. At the moment he begins to work,
thought begins; and only when thought begins, does the social
question begin also. If a man is to work, he must have an incentive
for it; and the incentives that have existed up to the present time
will no longer exist in the future. New incentives will be
required for work; and the question is not at all a matter of
everything's being all right when the people work again —
no; but when, arising from a feeling of world-responsibility, men
shall have thoughts which sustain their souls, then the forces
proceeding from these thoughts will be carried over from hand to
will, and work will result. Everything depends upon thoughts, and
thoughts themselves depend upon our opening our hearts to the
impulses of the spiritual world. Of responsibility and of the
significance of thoughts much must be said in our time. Therefore I
wished in this lecture to lay stress upon just this aspect.
Since destiny is now such, my dear friends, that
one really cannot get away when one wishes to travel, we shall still
be here tomorrow. Therefore, at eight o'clock tomorrow night I
will speak to you especially about the anthroposophical
foundation, the spiritual-scientific, occult foundation of the
social question. Thus I shall be able before leaving to speak
to our friends on the social question, but I shall explain its deeper
foundations from the spiritual-scientific point of view.
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