IV
Dornach,
December 15, 1919
THE tasks assigned to the humanity of the present
and of the immediate future are great, significant, and peremptory;
and it is really necessary to bring forth a strong soul courage in
order to do something toward their accomplishment. Anyone who today
examines these tasks closely, and tries to get a true insight into
the needs of humanity, must often reflect how superficially so-called
public affairs are treated. We might say that people today talk
politics aimlessly. From a few emotions, from a few entirely
egotistic points of view — personal or national — people
form their opinions about life, whereas a real desire to gain the
factual foundations for a sound judgment would be more in conformity
with the seriousness of the present time. In the course of recent
months, and even years, I have inquired into the most varied
subjects, including the history and the demands of the times, and
have given lectures here on such subjects, always with the purpose of
furnishing facts which will enable people to form a judgment for
themselves — not with the purpose of placing the ready-made
judgment before them. The longing to know the realities of life, to
know them more and more fundamentally, in order to have a true basis
for judgment — that is the important thing today. I must say
this especially because the various utterances and written statements
which I have made regarding the so-called social question, and
regarding the threefold structure of the social organism, are really
taken much too lightly, as anyone can clearly see, for the questions
asked about these things are concerned far too little with the
actual, momentous, basic facts. It is so difficult for people of the
present time to arrive at these basic facts, because they are really
theoreticians in all realms of life, although they will not
acknowledge it. The people who today most fancy themselves to be
practical are the most decidedly theoretical, for the reason that
they are usually satisfied to form a few concepts about life, and
from these to insist upon judging life; whereas it is possible today
only by means of a real, universal, and comprehensive penetration
into life to form a relevant judgment about what is necessary. One
can say that in a certain sense it is at least intellectually
frivolous when, without a basis of facts, a man talks politics at
random, or indulges in fanciful views about life. It makes one wish
for a fundamentally serious attitude of soul toward life.
When in the present time the practical side of our
spiritual scientific effort, the Threefold Social Order, is placed
before the world as the other side has been, it is a fact that the
whole mode of thought and conception employed in the elaboration of
this Threefold Social Order is met with prejudices and misgivings.
Where do these prejudices and misgivings originate? Well, a man forms
concepts about truth (I am still speaking of the social life),
concepts about the good, the right, the useful, and so forth, and
when he has formed them, he thinks they have absolute value
everywhere and always. For example, take a man of western, middle, or
eastern Europe with a socialistic bias. He has quite definite
socialistically-formulated ideals; but what kind of fundamental
concepts underlie these ideals? His fundamental concept is that what
satisfies him must satisfy everyone everywhere, and must possess
absolute validity for all future time. The man of today has little
feeling for the fact that every thought that is to be of value to the
social life must be born out of the fundamental character of the time
and the place. Therefore he does not easily come to realize how
necessary it is for the Threefold Social Order to be introduced with
different nuances into our present European culture, with its
American appendage. If it is adopted, then the variations suited to
the peoples of the different regions will come about of themselves.
And besides, when the time comes, on account of the evolution of
humanity, that the ideas and thoughts mentioned by me in
The Threefold Commonwealth are no longer valid, others must again be
found.
It is not a question of absolute thoughts,
but of thoughts for the present and the immediate future of mankind.
In order, however, to comprehend in its full scope how necessary is
this three-membering of the social organism in an independent
spiritual life, an independent rights and political
life, and an independent economic life, one must examine
without prejudice the way in which the interaction of the spiritual,
the political, and the economic has come about in our
European-American civilization. This interweaving of the threads —
the spiritual threads, those of rights or government, and the
economic threads — is by no means an easy matter. Our culture,
our civilization, is like a ball of yarn, something wound up, in
which are entangled three strands of entirely different origins. Our
spiritual life is of essentially different origin from that of our
rights or political life, and entirely different again from that of
our economic life; and these three strands with different origins are
chaotically entangled. I can naturally give only a sketchy idea
to-day, because I shall briefly follow these three streams, I might
say, to their source.
First, our spiritual life, as it presents itself
to one who regards as real the external things, the obvious, is
acquired by people through the influence of what still persists of
the ancient Greek and Latin cultural life, the Greco-Latin spiritual
life, as it has flowed through what later became our high schools and
universities. All the rest of our so-called humanistic culture, even
down to our elementary schools, is entirely dependent upon that
which, as one stream let us say, flowed in first from the Greek
element (Diagram 13. orange); for our spiritual life, our European
spiritual life, is of Greek origin; it merely passed through the
Latin as a sort of way-station. It is true that in modern times
something else has mingled with the spiritual life which originated
in Greece: namely, that which is derived from what we call technique
in the most varied fields, which was not yet accessible to the Greek,
the technique of mechanics, the technique of commerce, etc., etc. I
might say that the technical colleges, the commercial schools, and so
forth, have been annexed to our universities, adding a more modern
element to what flows into our souls through our humanistic schools,
which reach back to Greece — and by no means flows only into
the souls of the so-called educated class; for the socialistic
theories which haunt the heads even of the proletariat are only a
derivative of that which really had its origin in the Grecian
spiritual life; it has simply gone through various metamorphoses.
This spiritual life reaches back, however, to a more distant origin,
far back in the Orient. What we find in Plato, what we find in
Heraclitus, in Pythagoras, in Empedocles, and especially in
Anaxagoras, all reaches back to the Orient. What we find in
Aeschylus, in Sophocles, in Euripides, in Phidias, reaches back to
the Orient. The entire Greek culture goes back to the Orient, but it
underwent a significant change on its way to Greece. Yonder in the
Orient this spiritual life was decidedly more spiritual than it was
in ancient Greece; and in the Orient it issued from what we may call the
Mysteries of the Spirit — I may also say the
Mysteries of Light (Drawing). The Grecian spiritual life was
already filtered and diluted as compared with that from which it had
its origin: namely, the spiritual life of the Orient, which depended
upon quite special spiritual experiences.
Naturally, we must go back into prehistoric times,
for the Mysteries of Light, or the Mysteries of the Spirit,
are entirely prehistoric phenomena. If I am to represent to you the
character of this spiritual life, the manner of its development, I
must do so in the following way: We know, of course, that if we go
very far back in human evolution, we find increasingly that human
beings of ancient times had an atavistic clairvoyance, a dream-like
clairvoyance, through which the mysteries of the universe were
revealed to them; and we speak with entire correctness when we say
that over the whole civilized Asiatic earth, in the third, fourth,
fifth, sixth, seventh millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha,
there dwelt people to whom spiritual truths were revealed through
clairvoyance — a clairvoyance that was completely bound to
nature, to the blood, and to the bodily organization. This was true
of a widely dispersed population; but this atavistic clairvoyance was
in a state of decline, and became more and more decadent. This
“becoming decadent” of the atavistic clairvoyance is not
merely a cultural-historical phenomenon, but is at the same time a
phenomenon of the social life of mankind.
Why? Because from various centers of this
wide-spread population, but chiefly from a point in Asia, there arose
a special kind of human being, so to speak, a human being with
special faculties. Besides the atavistic clairvoyance, which still
remained to these people in a certain sense — for there still
arose out of their inner soul-life a dream-like comprehension of the
mysteries of the world — besides this they also had what we
call the thinking faculty; and indeed they were the first
in the evolution of humanity to have this power. They were
the first to have dawning intelligence.
That was a significant social phenomenon when the
people of those ancient times, who had only dream-like visions of the
mysteries of the world arising within them, saw immigrants enter
their territories whom they could still understand, because they also
had visions, but who had besides something which they themselves
lacked: the power of thought. That was a special kind of human
being. The Indians regarded that caste which they designated as
Brahman as the descendants of these people who combined the thinking
power with atavistic clairvoyance; and when they came down from the
higher-lying regions of northern Asia into the southern regions, they
were called Aryans. They formed the Aryan population, and
their primal characteristic is that they combined the thinking-power
with — if I may now use the expression of a later time —
with the plebeian faculties of atavistic clairvoyance.
And those mysteries which are called the Mysteries
of the Spirit, or particularly, the mysteries of Light, were founded
by those people who combined atavistic clairvoyance with the first
kindling of intelligence, the inner light of man; and our
spiritual culture derives from that which entered humanity at that
time as an illuminating spark — it is nothing but a derivative
of it.
Much has been preserved in humanity of what was
revealed at that time; but we must consider that even the Greeks —
just the better educated personalities among them — had seen
the ancient gift of atavistic clairvoyance gradually wane and become
extinguished, and the thinking-power remained to them. Among the
Romans the power of thought alone remained. Among the Greeks there
was still a consciousness that this faculty comes from the same
source as the ancient atavistic clairvoyance; and therefore Socrates
still clearly expressed something which he knew as experience when he
spoke of his Daemon as inspiring his truths, which were of
course merely dialectic and intellectual.
In art, as well, the Greeks significantly
represented the pre-eminence of the intelligent human being, or
better, the development of the intelligent human being from the rest
of humanity; for the Greeks have in their sculpture (one need only
study it closely) three types differing sharply from one another.
They have the Aryan type, to which the Apollo head, the Pallas
Athene head, the Zeus head, the Hera head belong. Compare the ears of
the Apollo with those of a Mercury head, the nose of the Apollo with
that of a Mercury head, and you will see what a different type it is.
The Greek wanted to show in the Mercury-type that the ancient
clairvoyance, which still persisted as superstition and was a lower
form of culture, had united with intelligence in the Greek
civilization; that this existed at the bottom of Greek culture; and
that towering above it was the Aryan whose artistic representation
was the Zeus head, the Pallas Athene head, and so forth. And the very
lowest races, those with dim remnants of ancient clairvoyance —
who also still lived in Greece but were especially to be observed
near the borders — are plastically preserved in another type,
the Satyr-type, which in turn is quite different from the
Mercury-type. Compare the Satyr nose with the Mercury nose, the Satyr
ears with the Mercury ears, and so forth. The Greek merged in his art
what he bore in his consciousness concerning his development.
What gradually filtered through Greece at that
time, by means of the Mysteries of the Spirit or of the Light, and
then appeared in modern times, had a certain peculiarity as
spirit-culture. It was possessed of such inner impulsive force that
it could at the same time, out of itself, establish the rights
life of man. Therefore we have on the one hand the revelation of
the gods in the Mysteries bringing the spirit to man, and on the
other, the implanting of this spirit acquired from the gods into the
external social organism, into the theocracies. Everything
goes back to the theocracies; and these were able not only to
permeate themselves with the legal system, the political system, out
of the very nature of the Mysteries, but they were able also to
regulate the economic life out of the spirit. The priests of the
Mysteries of Light were at the same time the economic administrators
of their domains; and they worked according to the rules of the
Mysteries. They constructed houses, canals, bridges, looked after the
cultivation of the soil, and so forth.
In primitive times civilization grew entirely out
of the spiritual life, but it gradually became abstract. From being a
spiritual life it became more and more a sum of ideas. Already in the
Middle Ages it had become theology, that is, a sum of
concepts, instead of the ancient spiritual life, or it had to be
confined to the abstract, legalistic form, because there was no
longer any relation to the spiritual life. When we look back at the
old theocracies we find that the one who ruled received his
commission from the gods in the Mysteries. The last derivative is the
occidental ruler, but he no longer gives any evidence of having
originated from the ruler of the theocracy, with his commission from
the gods of the Mysteries. All that remains is crown and coronation
robe, the outer insignia, which in later times became more like
decorations. If one understands such things it may often be observed
that titles go back to the time of the Mysteries; but everything is
now externalized.
Scarcely less externalized is that which moves
through our secondary schools and universities as spiritual culture,
the final echo of the divine message of the Mysteries. The spiritual
has flowed into our life, but this has now become utterly abstract, a
life of mere ideas. It has become what the socialistically-orientated
groups latterly call an ideology, that is, a sum of thoughts
that are only thoughts. That is what our spiritual life has
really become.
Under its influence the social chaos of our time
has developed, because the spiritual life that is so diluted and
abstract has lost all impulsive force. We have no choice but to place
it again on its own foundation, for only so can it thrive. We must
find the way again from the merely rational to the creative
spirit, and we shall be able to do so only if we seek to develop
out of the spiritual life prescribed by the State the free
spiritual life, [The human being is essentially a
spiritual being. When he is engaged in art, science, and religion, he
is active spiritually; this activity is his spiritual life. —
Editor.] which will then have the power to awake to life
again. For neither a spiritual life controlled by the Church, nor one
maintained and protected by the State, nor a spiritual life panting
under economic burdens, can be fruitful for humanity, but only an
independent spiritual life.
Indeed the time has come for us to find the
courage in our souls to proclaim quite frankly before the world that
the spiritual life must be placed on its own foundation. Many people
are asking: Well, what are we to do? The first thing of importance is
to inform people about what is needed: to get as many people as
possible to comprehend the necessity, for example, of establishing
the spiritual life on its own foundation; to comprehend that what the
pedagogy of the 19th century has become can no longer suffice for the
welfare of mankind, but that it must be built anew out of a free
spiritual life. There is as yet little courage in souls to
present this demand in a really radical way; and it can be thus
presented only by trying to bring to as many people as possible a
comprehension of these conditions. All other social work today is
provisional. The most important task is this: to see that it is made
possible for more and more people to gain insight into the social
requirements, one of which has just been characterized. To provide
enlightenment concerning these things through all the means at our
disposal — that is now the matter of importance.
We have not yet become productive with regard to
the spiritual life, and we must first become productive in
this field. Beginnings have been made in this direction, of which I
shall speak presently — but we have not yet become productive
with regard to the spiritual life; and we must become productive
by making the spiritual life independent.
Everything that comes into being on earth leaves remnants behind it.
The Mysteries of Light in the present-day oriental culture, the
oriental spiritual life, are less diluted than in the Occident, but
of course they no longer have anything like the form they had at the
time I have described. Yet if we study what the Hindus, the oriental
Buddhists, still have today, we shall be much more likely to perceive
the echo of that from which our own spiritual life has come; only in
Asia it has remained at another stage of existence. We, however, are
unproductive; we are highly unproductive. When the tidings of the
Mystery of Golgotha spread in the West, whence did the Greek and
Latin scholars get the concepts for the understanding of it? They got
them from the oriental wisdom. The West did not produce Christianity.
It was taken from the Orient. And further: When in English-speaking
regions the spiritual culture was felt to be very unfruitful, and
people were sighing for its fructification, the Theosophists went to
the subjugated Indians to seek the wellsprings for their modern
Theosophy. No fruitful source existed among themselves for the means
to improve their spiritual life: so they went to the Orient. In
addition to this significant fact, you could find many proofs of the
unfruitfulness of the spiritual life of the West; and each such proof
is at the same time a proof of the necessity for making the spiritual
life an independent member in the threefold social organism.
A second strand in the tangled ball is the
political or rights current.
There is the crux of the cultural problem, this second current. If we
look for it today in the external world, we see it when our honorable
judges sit on their benches of justice with the jurors and pass
judgment upon crime or offence against the law, or when the
magistrates in their offices rule throughout the civilized world —
to the despair of those thus ruled. All that we call jurisprudence or
government, and all that results as politics from the interaction of
jurisprudence and government, constitutes this current (see drawing,
white). I call that (orange) the current of the spiritual life, and
this (white) the current of rights, or government.
| Diagram 13 Click image for large view | |
Where does this come from? As a matter of fact
this too goes back to the Mystery-culture. It goes back to the
Egyptian Mystery-culture, which passed through the southern European
regions, then through the prosaic, unimaginative Roman life, where it
united with a side branch of the oriental life, and became Roman
Catholic Christianity, that is, Roman Catholic ecclesiasticism.
Speaking somewhat radically, this Roman Catholic ecclesiasticism is
also fundamentally a jurisprudence; for from single dogmas to that
great and mighty Judgment, always represented as the Last Judgment
throughout the Middle Ages, the utterly different spiritual life
of the Orient, which had received the Egyptian impulse from the
Mysteries of Space (see drawing), was really transformed into
a society of world-magistrates with world-judgments and
world-punishments, and sinners, and the good and the evil: it is a
jurisprudence. That is the second element existing in our
spiritual tangle which we call civilization, and it has been by no
means organically combined with the other. That this is the case
anyone can learn who goes to a university and hears one after the
other, let us say a juridical discourse on political law, and then a
theological discourse even on canonical law, if you like, for these
are found side by side. Such things have shaped mankind; even in
later times, when their origins have been forgotten, they are still
shaping human minds. The rights life caused the later spiritual life
to become abstract; but externally it influenced human customs, human
habits, human systems.
What is the last social offshoot in the decadent
oriental spiritual current, whose origin has been forgotten? It is
feudal aristocracy. You could no longer recognize that the
aristocrat had his origin in the oriental, theocratic spiritual life,
for he has stripped off all that; only the social configuration
remains (drawing). The journalistic intelligence often has very
strange nightmarish visions. One such it had recently when it
invented a curious phrase of which it was especially proud:
“spiritual aristocracy” — this could be heard now
and then. What is that which passed through the Roman Church system,
through theocratising jurisprudence, juridical theocracy, became
secularized in the civic systems of the Middle Ages, and completely
secularized in modern times — what is it in its ultimate
derivative? It is the bourgeoisie (drawing). And thus are these
spiritual forces in their ultimate derivatives actually jumbled up
among men.
And now still a third stream unites itself with
the other two. If you would observe it today in the external world,
where does this third current appear in an especially characteristic
way? Well, there actually was in Central Europe a method of
demonstrating to certain people where these final remnants of
something originally different were to be found. It happened when the
man of Central Europe sent his son to an office in London or New York
to learn the methods of the economic system. In the methods of the
economic life, whose roots are to be found in the popular customs of
the Anglo-American world, the final consequence is to be seen of that
which has been developed as outgrowths from what I might call the
Mysteries of the Earth, of which, for example, the Druid
Mysteries are only a special variety. In the times of the primitive
European people the Mysteries of the Earth still contained a peculiar
kind of wisdom-filled life. That European population, which was quite
barbaric, which knew nothing regarding the revelations of oriental
wisdom, or of the Mysteries of Space, or of what later became Roman
Catholicism — that population which advanced to meet the
spreading Christianity possessed a strange kind of
life-steeped-in-wisdom, peculiar to it, which was entirely physical
wisdom. Of this one can at best study only the most external usages,
which are recorded in the history of this current: namely, the
festivals of those people from whom have come the customs and habits
of England and America. The festivals were here brought into entirely
different relations from those in Egypt, where the harvest was
connected with the stars. Here the harvest as such was the
festive occasion; and the highest solemn festivals of the year were
connected with other things than was the case in Egypt: namely, with
things that belong entirely to the economic life. We have here
without doubt something which goes back to the economic life.
If we wish to comprehend the whole spirit of this matter, we must say
to ourselves: Over from Asia and up from the South men transplanted a
spiritual life and a rights life which they had received from above
and brought down to earth. Then, in the third current, an economic
life sprang up which had to develop of itself and work its way up,
which really was originally so completely economic in its legal
customs and in its spiritual adaptations that, for example, one of
the yearly festivals consisted in the celebration of the
fructification of the herds as a special festival in honor of the
gods; and there were similar festivals all derived from the economic
aspect of life. If we go through the regions of northern Russia,
middle Russia, Sweden, Norway, or into those regions which until a
short time ago were parts of Germany, or to France, at least northern
France, and to what is now Great Britain — if we go through
these regions, we find dispersed everywhere a population which,
before the spread of Christianity in ancient times, undoubtedly had a
pronounced economic life. And what ancient customs can still be
found, such as festivals of legal practices and festivals in honor of
the gods, are an echo of this ancient economic culture.
This economic culture met what came from the other
side. At first it did not succeed in developing an independent rights
life and spiritual life. The primitive legal customs were discarded
because Roman law flowed in, and the primitive spiritual customs were
cast aside because the Greek spiritual life had entered. And so this
economic life becomes sterile at first, and only gradually works its
way out of this sterility; it can succeed in this, however, only by
overcoming the chaotic condition created by the introduction of the
spiritual life and rights life from outside. Consider the present
Anglo-American spiritual life. In this you have two things very
sharply differentiated from one another. First, you have everywhere
in the Anglo-American spiritual life, more than anywhere else on
earth, the so-called secret societies, which have considerable
influence, much more than people know. They are undoubtedly the
keepers — and are proud to be the keepers — of the
ancient spiritual life, of the Egyptian or oriental spiritual
life, which is completely diluted and evaporated into mere symbols, —
symbols no longer understood but having a certain great power among
those in authority. That, however, is ancient spiritual life, not
spiritual life grown in its own soil. Side by side with this there is
a spiritual life which does grow entirely in economic soil, but
hitherto it has produced only very small blossoms, and these in
abundance.
| Diagram 14 Click image for large view | |
Anyone who studies such things and is able to understand them knows
very well that Locke, Hume, Mill, Spencer, Darwin, and others, are
nothing but these little blossoms springing from the economic life.
You can get quite exactly the thoughts of a Mill or a Spencer from
the economic life. Social democracy has elevated this to a theory,
and considers the spiritual life as a derivative of the economic
life. That is what we encounter first: everything is brought forth
from the so-called practical — actually from life's
routine, not from its real practice. So that going along side by side
are such things as Darwinism, Spencerism, Millism, Humeism —
and the diluted Mystery teachings, which are perpetuated in the
various sectarian developments, such as the Theosophical Society, the
Quakers, and so forth. The economic life has the will to rise, but
has not yet made much progress, having produced thus far only these
small blossoms. The spiritual life and the rights life are exotic
plants and — I beg you to note this well — they are more
and more exotic the farther we go toward the West in the European
civilization.
There has always been in Central Europe something
— I might say like a resistance, a struggling against the Greek
spiritual life on the one hand and against the Roman Catholic rights
life on the other. An opposition has always been there. An
illustration of it is the Central European philosophy, of which
really nothing is known in England. Actually, Hegel cannot be
translated into the English language; it is impossible. Hence,
nothing is known of him in England, where German philosophy is called
Germanism, by which is meant something an intelligent person cannot
be bothered with. In just this German philosophy, however —
with the exception of one incident, namely, when Kant was completely
ruined by Hume, and there divas brought into German philosophy that
abominable Kant-Hume element, which has really caused such
devastation in the heads of Central European humanity — with
the exception of this incident, we have later, after all, the second
blossoming of this struggle in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; and we
already have the search for a free spiritual life in Goethe,
who would have nothing to do with the final echo of the Roman
Catholic jurisprudence in what is called the law of nature. Just
feel the legal element in the shabby robes and the strange caps which
the judges still have from ancient times, and feel it likewise in the
science of nature, the law of nature — the legal element is
still there! The expression “law of nature” has no
sense in connection, for example, with the Goethean science of
nature, which deals only with the primordial phenomenon, the
primordial fact.
There for the first time is radical protest made;
but naturally it remained only a beginning. That was the first
advance toward the free spiritual life: the Goethean science of
nature; and in Central Europe there already exists the first
impulse even toward the independent rights life, or political life.
Read such a work as that of Wilhelm van Humboldt, who was even
Prussian minister of public instruction — read The Sphere
and Duties of Government, [Translated by Joseph
Coulthard, London, 1845.] and you will see the first beginning
toward the construction of an independent rights life, or political
life, of the independence of the true political realm. It is true it
has never gone beyond beginnings, and these are found as far back as
the first half of the 19th century, even at the end of the 18th
century. It must be borne in mind, however, that there are
nevertheless in Central Europe important impulses in this very
direction, impulses which can be carried on, which must not be left
unconsidered, and which may flow into the impulse of the Threefold
Social Organism.
In his first book Nietzsche wrote that passage
that I have quoted in my book on Nietzsche [“Extirpation
des deutschen Geistes zu Gunsten des deutschen Reiches,”
Extirpation of the German Spirit in favor of the German Empire —
quoted in Friedrich Nietzsche, ein Kampfer gegen seine Zeit (not
translated).] in the very first pages, a premonition of
something tragic in the German spiritual life. Nietzsche tried at
that time in the foreword to his work,
The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music,
to characterize the events of 1870–71, the
founding of the German Empire. Since then this strangulation of the
German spirit has been thoroughly accomplished; and when in the last
five or six years three-fourths of the world fell upon this former
Germany (I do not wish to speak about the causes or the guilty, but
only to sketch the configuration, the world situation), it was really
then already the corpse of the German spiritual life. But when anyone
speaks as I did yesterday, characterizing the facts without
prejudice, no one should infer that there is not still in this German
spiritual life much that must come forth, that must be considered,
that intends to be considered, in spite of the future gypsy-like
condition. For what was the real cause of the ruin of the German
people? This question must also be answered without prejudice. They
were ruined because they too wanted to share in materialism, and they
have no talent for materialism. The others have good talents for it.
The Germans have in general that quality which Herman Grimm
characterized excellently when he said: The Germans as a rule retreat
when it would be beneficial for them to go boldly forward, and they
storm ahead with terrific energy when it would be better for them to
hold back. That is a very good description of an inner quality of
character of this German people; for the Germans have had propulsive
force throughout the centuries, but not the ability to sustain this
force. Goethe was able to present the primordial phenomenon, but he
could not reach the beginnings of spiritual science. He could develop
a spirituality, as, for example, in his Faust, or in his
Wilhelm Meister, which could have revolutionized the world if
the right means had been found; but the outer personality of this
gifted man achieved nothing more than that in Weimar he put on fat
and had a double chin, became a stout privy counselor, who was also
uncommonly industrious as minister, but still was obliged at times to
wink at certain things, especially in political life.
The world ought to understand that such phenomena
as Goethe and Humboldt represent everywhere beginnings, and
that it would really be a loss to the world and not a profit, to fail
to take into account what lives in the German evolution in an
unfinished state, but to which must come forth.
For after all, the Germans do not have the predisposition which the
others have in such remarkable degree the farther we go toward the
West: namely, to rise on all occasions to ultimate abstractions. What
the Germans have in their spiritual life is called “abstractions”
only by those who are unable to experience it; and because they
themselves have squeezed out the life, they believe others lack it
too. The Germans have not the talent for pressing on to ultimate
abstractions. This was shown in their political life, in their most
unfortunate political life! If the Germans had had from the beginning
the great talent for monarchy which the French have preserved so
brilliantly to this day, they would never have become the victims of
“Wilhelmism”; they would neither have countenanced this
strange caricature of a monarch, nor have needed him. It is true that
the French call themselves republicans, but they have among them a
secret monarch who firmly holds together the structure of the state,
who keeps a terribly tight rein on the people's minds; for in
reality the spirit of Louis XIV is everywhere present. Naturally,
only a decadent form remains, but it is there. There is no
doubt that a secret monarch is there among the French people; for it
is really shown in every one of their cultural manifestations. And
the talent for abstraction demonstrated in Woodrow Wilson is the
ultimate talent for abstraction in the political field. Those
fourteen points of the world's schoolmaster, which in every
word bear the stamp of the impractical and unachievable, could only
originate in a mind wholly formed for the abstract, with no
discernment whatever for true realities.
There are two things which the cultural history of
civilization will doubtless find it difficult to understand. One I
have often characterized in the words of Herman Grimm — the
Kant-Laplace theory, in which many people still believe. Herman Grimm
said so finely in his Goethe: People will some day have
difficulty in comprehending that malady now called science, which
makes its appearance in the Kant-Laplace theory, according to which
all that we have around us today arose through agglomeration, out of
a universal world-mist; and this is supposed to continue until the
whole thing falls back again into the sun. A putrid bone around which
a hungry dog circles is a more appetizing morsel than these fanciful
ideas, this fantastic concept of world-evolution. So thinks Herman
Grimm. Naturally, there will some day be great difficulty in
explaining this Kant-Laplace theory from the standpoint of the
scientific insanity of the 19th and 20th centuries!
The second thing will be the explanation of the unbelievable fact
that there ever could be a large number of people to take seriously
the humbug of the fourteen points of Woodrow Wilson — in an age
that is socially so serious.
If we study the things that stand side by side in the world we find
in what a peculiar way the economic life, the political rights life,
and the spiritual life are entangled. If we do not wish to perish
because of the extreme degeneration which has come into the spiritual
life and the rights life, we must turn to the Threefold Social Order,
which from independent roots will build an economic life now
struggling to emerge, but unable to do so unless a rights life and a
spiritual life, developed in freedom, come to meet it. These things
have their deep roots in the whole of humanity's evolution and
in human social life; and these roots must be sought. People must now
be made to realize that way down at the bottom, on the ground I might
say, crawls the economic life, managed by Anglo-American habits of
thought; and that it will be able to climb up only when it works in
harmony with the whole world, with that for which others also are
qualified, for which others also are gifted. Otherwise the gaining of
world dominion will become a fatality for it.
If the world continues in the course it has been
taking under the influence of the degenerating spiritual life derived
from the Orient, then this spiritual life, although at one end it was
the most sublime truth, will at the other rush into the most fearful
lies. Nietzsche was impelled to describe how even the Greeks had to
guard themselves from the lies of life through their art. And in
reality art is the divine child which keeps men from being swallowed
up in lies. If this first branch of civilization is pursued only
one-sidedly, then this stream empties into lies. In the last five or
six years more lies have been told among civilized humanity than in
any other period of world history; in public life the truth has
scarcely been spoken at all; hardly a word that has passed through
the world was true. While this stream empties into lies (see
drawing), the middle stream empties into self-seeking; and an
economic life like the Anglo-American, which should end in
world-dominion — if the effort is not made to bring about its
permeation by the independent spiritual life and the independent
political life, it will flow into the third of the abysses of human
life, into the third of these three. The first abyss is lies, the
degeneration of humanity through Ahriman; the second is self-seeking,
the degeneration of humanity through Lucifer; the third is, in
the physical realm, illness and death; in the cultural realm,
the illness and death of culture.
The Anglo-American world may gain world dominion; but without the
Threefold Social Order it will, through this dominion, pour out
cultural death and cultural illness over the whole earth; for these
are just as much a gift of the Azuras as lies are a gift of Ahriman,
and self-seeking, of Lucifer. So the third, a worthy companion of the
other two, is a gift of the Azuric powers!
We must get the enthusiasm from these things which will fire us now
really to seek ways of enlightening as many people as possible. Today
the mission of those with insight is the enlightenment of humanity.
We must do as much as possible to oppose to that foolishness which
fancies itself to be wisdom, and which thinks it has made such
marvellous progress — to oppose to that foolishness what we can
gain from the practical aspect of anthroposophically-orientated
spiritual science.
My dear friends, if I have been able to arouse in you in some measure
the feeling that these things must be taken with profound
seriousness, then I have attained a part of what I should very much
like to have attained through these words.
When we meet again in a week or two, we shall
speak further of similar things. Today I wished only to call forth in
you a feeling that at the present time the really most important work
is to enlighten people in the widest circles.
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