Lecture 1 of 3
by Rudolf Steiner
Lecture in
Dornach, Switzerland – February 20, 1920
Unabridged
translation by Frank Thomas Smith
Today's lecture will be episodic, a kind of
interspersion into our considerations, because I would like our
English friends, who will soon be going home, to be able to take as
much as possible with them. Therefore I will structure this lecture
in a way to be as effective as possible. Today I would like, at first
historically, not so much referring to the present — that can
be done tomorrow perhaps — I would like to say something about
imperialism, historically, but in a spiritual-scientific sense.
Imperialism is a much discussed
phenomenon recently, and discussed by those who are more or less
conscious of its relationship to the total phenomena of the present
time. But when such things are discussed, what is not taken into
account, or at least not enough, is that we live within the
historical course of events, that we stand in a very definitive
historical evolutionary epoch and that we can only understand this
evolutionary epoch if we know where the phenomena which surround us,
in which we live, come from.
Basically, what is most effective today and
what will show itself to be an even more effective imperialism in the
future will be its bearer — the Anglo-American people. As far
as its name is concerned, it has shown itself to be something new:
economic imperialism. But most important is the fact that
everything said about this economic imperialism is untrue,
everything, I would say, seems to be hanging in the air, which more
or less consciously leads to untruthfulness. So in order to recognize
how in these times realities are completely different from what is
said about them, a more profound observation of the historical course
of events is necessary.
I only need to mention one item of
present-day phenomena in order to characterize the public's ability
to judge. We have experienced how at first in various parts of Europe
and finally even in Germany,
Woodrow Wilson
has been glorified. Our
Swiss friends know very well that while Woodrow Wilson was being
glorified I always spoke out against him in the sharpest terms here
in Switzerland, for what Woodrow Wilson is today, he was of course
also then when he was being glorified by the whole word. (It is
already being reported — although I can't say if it's the
complete truth — that in America they are thinking of declaring
him unfit to govern, that there are doubts about his judgment.) The
public's capacity for judgment, as it zips around the world today, is
sufficiently characterized by such things.
And one must only remember a second thing.
During the last four of five years, an enormous amount of pretty
things have been talked about: the self-determination of
peoples and so forth. All these things were not
true, for what was behind them was something completely different, it
was of course a question of power. And in order to understand what
it's about, what is said, thought and judged, it is necessary to
return to the realities. And when things such as imperialism are
considered — “Imperial Federation League” is the
official designation in England since the beginning of the twentieth
century — we must realize that they are the recent products of
an evolution and they go back to a remote past, and can only be
explained by a true consideration of history.
We do not want to delve so deeply
into the past as we could when studying the spiritual evolution of
humanity, but we do want to go at least as far back as several
centuries before the Christian era. We find imperialistic empires in
Asia, and a subspecies of such empires in Egypt. Most characteristic
of the Asiatic impulse are, for example, the historically known
Persian empire and, especially, the Assyrian empire. But it is not
sufficient to study this first phase of imperialism only in the last,
historically known stage of the Assyrian empire, simply because the
motivators dominating the Assyrian empire cannot be understood
without reaching back to even earlier oriental conditions. Even in
China, whose whole organization reaches so far back, the organization
of recent times has changed so much that the true character of an
oriental imperialism as it once existed is not recognized. However,
the conditions which are known historically make it possible to see
what the fundamentals are.
We cannot understand the old oriental
imperialism without knowing the conscious relationship between people
of a region, let's say an empire, and what we today would call the
ruler or the rulers of that empire. Because of course our words for
ruler or king and so forth no longer express the feelings about the
ruler or the rulers. It is very difficult to understand the feelings
of people in general of the third to fourth century before the
Christian era because it is difficult nowadays to take account of how
people felt in those ancient times about the relation of the physical
world to the spiritual world. Today most people think, if they even
think about a spiritual world, that it is somewhere in the distant
beyond. And when the spiritual world is spoken about — and in
the future it will again have to be spoken about as being present
among us just as the sense world is — then what results is what
has led for example to the Protestant mentality. But the essential
nature of ancient times is that no distinction was made between the
physical and spiritual worlds.
This is so much the case that when ancient
times are referred to by people of today they can hardly imagine much
consistency, for the way of thinking was so different then from what
it is today. Rulers, a ruling caste, slaves, ruled people, that was
reality — not something called a physical reality, but it
was the reality, simultaneously the physical and the
spiritual reality. And the ruler of an oriental empire — what
was he? The ruler of the oriental empire was God. And for the people
of those times there was no God beyond the clouds, no choir of
spirits who surrounded the highest God — that view came later
— but rather what we today call ministers or court jesters,
somewhat disrespectfully, were beings of a divine nature. For it was
obvious that because of the mystery schooling they had gone through,
they had become something greater than ordinary people. They were
looked up to, just as the Protestant mentality looks up to its God or
certain more liberal circles look up to their invisible angels and
such. Extra invisible angels or an extra super-sensible invisible God
did not exist for the people of the ancient orient. Everything
spiritual lived in man. In the common man lived a human soul. In
those whom we would today call rulers, lived a divine soul, a God.
The concept of a really existing godly empire,
which at the same time was a physical empire, is no longer taken into
consideration. That a king has real divine power and dignity is
considered absurd today, but was a reality in oriental imperialism.
As I mentioned, a subspecies was found in
Egypt, for there we find a true transition to a later form. If we go
back to the oldest form of imperialism, we find it based on the king
being God who really physically appeared on earth, the son of heaven
who physically appeared on earth, who was even the father of heaven.
This is so paradoxical for the contemporary mind, that it seems
unbelievable, but it is so. We can learn from Assyrian documents how
conquests were justified. They were simply carried out. The
justification was that they had to expand more and more the God's
empire. When a territory was conquered and the inhabitants became
subjects, then they had to worship the conqueror as their god. During
those times no one thought of spreading a certain worldview. Why
would it have been necessary? When the conquered people openly
recognized the conqueror, followed him, then all was in order, they
could believe whatever they wanted. Belief — personal opinion
— wasn't touched in ancient times, nobody cared about it.
That was the first form in which
imperialism appeared. The second form was when the ruler, the one who
was to play a leading role, wasn't the god himself, but the god's
envoy, or inspired by the god, interpenetrated with divinity.
The first imperialism is
characterized by realities. When an oriental ruler of ancient times
appeared before his people, it was in all his splendor, because as a
god he was entitled to wear such clothes. It was the clothing of a
god. That's what a god looked like. It meant nothing more than what
the ruler wore was the fashion of the gods. And his paladins were not
mere bureaucrats, but higher beings who accompanied him and did what
they did with the power of higher beings.
Then came the time, as already
mentioned, when the ruler and his paladins appeared as God's envoys,
as interpenetrated with divinity, as representatives. That is very
clear in
Dionysus
the Areopagite. Read his writings, where he
describes the complete hierarchy, from the deacons, archdeacons,
bishops, archbishops, up to the church's whole hierarchy. How does he
do this? Dionysus the Areopagite presents it as though in this
earthly churchly hierarchy is mirrored what God is with his
archangels and angles, super- sensibly of course. So above we have
the heavenly hierarchy and below it's mirror image, the worldly
hierarchy. The people of the worldly hierarchy, the deacons,
archdeacons, wear certain clothes, and they perform their rituals;
they are symbols. The first phase was characterized by realities, the
second phase was characterized by signs, by symbols. But this has been
more or less forgotten. Even Catholics understand little of the fact
that the deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops are the representatives
of the heavenly hierarchies. This has been mostly forgotten.
With the advancement of
imperialism a division occurred, a real division. On one hand there
were the leaders tending more towards being divine representatives,
priestly, where the priests were kings; on the other hand the
tendency towards the secular, although still by the grace of God.
Basically these were the two forms: the churches and the empires.
During the first imperialism, when all was
physical reality, something like this would have been unthinkable.
But in the second phase of imperialism the division occurred. On one
side more secular, but nevertheless representative of God, on the
other side more church oriented, also representative of God. That
system held until the middle ages and, I would even say, until the
year 1806, but more as a shadow, retained in kings and paladins as
God's representatives. The Roman Catholic Church's propagation tended
more towards the priestly. But where this phenomenon of God's
representative or envoy, which held through the entire middle ages,
was most strongly maintained was in the so-called Holy Roman Empire
of the German Nation, which finally disappeared in 1806. In
“Holy” you have a whiff of what was divine during the
ancient times on earth; “Roman” indicates the provenance,
where it came from; “German Nation” was what it covered,
the more secular element.
Therefore in the second phase of imperialism
we no longer merely have the Church's anointed imperialism, but we
have the tangled web of the divine and the secular anointed in the
empires. That already began in the old Roman Empire during
pre-Christian times and extended into the late Middle Ages. But this
imperial Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation always had a double
character. Remember that it goes back to Karl the Great
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne].
But Karl the Great was crowned by the Pope in Rome.
Therewith royal dignity became a symbol, so that what existed here on
the physical earth was no longer reality. The people of the Middle
Ages did not worship Karl the Great and Otto I as gods, which was the
case in more ancient times, but they saw in them godly
representatives. And that had to be continually confirmed, for of
course it became ever weaker in consciousness. But it still retained
a symbolic reality, a reality of signs. These emperors of the Holy
Roman Empire of the German Nation went to Rome in order for the Pope
to crown them. Istwan I was also crowned king of Hungary by the Pope
in the year 1000. The anointment, and therefore the power, was
bestowed on the world's rulers by the clergy.
It was also thought that there
was justification for other peoples being incorporated into the
empire. Even
Dante
thought that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
was justified in ruling the whole world. So the formula for
imperialism is even to be found in Dante.
In fables and other lore where the events of
history are crystallized in human consciousness, things are expressed
from various viewpoints, not just one. We could say that in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries in Europe the consciousness existed
— not a clear one, more like a feeling — that once in
ancient times in the Orient men lived on the physical earth who were
themselves gods. They didn't think it was a superstition, oh no,
rather they thought that such gods could no longer live on the earth
because the earth had become so bad. That's been lost, what made men
gods, the “Holy Grail” has been lost and now, in Central
Europe, it can only be found in the way Percival found it: one seeks
the way to find god within, whereas earlier god was a reality in the
empire. Now the empire is merely a sum of symbols, of signs, and one
must find the spirit in the symbols.
Of all the things which once existed, only
remnants remain. Reality is deadened. Remnants remain, remnants of
the most diverse kind. Generally, as long as things are real,
definite, they later become ambiguous. And thus in Europe diversity
grew from clear reality. As long as the Holy Roman Empire had meaning
in human consciousness, the representative of the empire was powerful
and competent enough to subdue the individual angel-symbols, the
local princes, for that consciousness included the emperor's right to
do so. But his right rested more or less on something ideal, which
more and more lost its meaning, and the local princes remained. So we
have in the Holy Roman Empire something which gradually had its inner
substance squeezed out until only the exterior remained. The
consciousness that earthly men were representatives of God was lost.
And the expression for the fact that people no longer believed that
certain individuals were representatives of God is Protestantism
— protest against the idea of men as representatives of God.
If the principle of Protestantism had
rigorously penetrated, no prince could have been crowned “by
the Grace of God” again. But such things remained as remnants.
These remnants remained until 1918, then they disappeared. These
remnants, which had already lost all inner meaning, remained as outer
appearances until then. The local German princes were the outer
appearances; they only had meaning in those ancient times when they
were symbols for an inspirational kingdom of heaven.
Other remnants remained. Not so long ago a
pastoral letter was written by a Central-European bishop —
perhaps he was an Archbishop. In that pastoral letter he more or less
claimed that the catholic priest is more powerful than Jesus Christ
for the simple reason that when the Catholic priest performs the
transubstantiation at the altar, Jesus Christ must be present in the
Sanctissimum, in the Host. The transubstantiation must really
take place through the priest's power. It means that the action
performed by the priest forces the Christ Jesus to be present on
the altar. Therefore the more powerful is not the Christ Jesus, but
he who performs the transubstantiation at the altar!
If we wish to understand such a
thing which, as I said, appeared in a pastoral letter a few years
ago, we must go back, not to the times of the second imperialism, but
to the times of the first imperialism, many elements of which are
retained in the Catholic Church and its institutions. Therein lies
the remnant of the consciousness that those who rule on the earth are
the gods, whereas the Christ Jesus is only the son of God. What was
written in that pastoral letter is of course an impossibility for the
Protestant mentality, just as for today it is almost impossible to
believe that thousands of years ago people actually saw the ruler as
God. But these are all real historical factors, real facts which
played a role historically and are still present today.
These earlier realities play strongly into
later events. Just look at how Mohammedanism [Islam] has spread.
Certainly Mohammed never said: Mohammed is your God — as it
would have been said thousands of years earlier by an oriental ruler.
He limited himself to what corresponded more to the times: There is a
God , and Mohammed is his prophet. In people's consciousness he was
God's representative — the second phase of imperialism. The
manner in which Islam spread, however, corresponded to the first
phase. For Muslims have never been intolerant towards other beliefs
the way some others were. The Muslims were content to defeat the
others and make them their subjects, just as it was in older times
when a profession of faith was not required, for it was a matter of
indifference what they believed if they just recognized God.
And something also remained of the first
phase of imperialism — strongly influenced by the second
— in Russian despotism, in tsarism. The way in which he was
recognized by his subjects goes back, at least partially, to the
first phase of imperialism. It was not so much a question of what was
in the consciousness of the Russian people, for the rulership of the
tsars rested on the Germanic and the Mongolian elements rather than
that of the Russian peasantry itself.
Now we come to the third phase of
imperialism. It has been formulated since the beginning of the
twentieth century, since Chamberlain and his people coined the
expression “Imperial Federation League,” but the causes
go back to the second half of the seventeenth century, when that
great upheaval occurred in England as a result of which everywhere in
the west that the Anglo-American people lived, the king, who earlier
had been God, then an anointed one, became a kind of mere shadow
— one cannot say a decoration exactly, but rather something
more tolerated than taken seriously.
The English speaking peoples bring other
preconditions to what we may call the people's will, the voting
system, than, say, the French — the Latin peoples in general.
The Latin peoples, especially the French, certainly carried out the
revolution of the eighteenth century, but the French people today are
more royal than any other. To be royal doesn't only mean to have a
king at the top. Naturally a person whose head has been cut off
cannot run around; but the French as a people are royal,
imperialistic, without having a king. It has to do with the mood of
soul. This “all are one” feeling, the national
consciousness, is a real remnant of the Louis IV mentality.
But the English-speaking peoples
brought other preconditions to what we may call the people's will.
And little by little this became what the elected parliaments
decided, and thus the third form of imperialism developed, which was
formulated by Chamberlain and others. But today we want to consider
this third imperialism psychologically.
The first imperialism had
realities: One person was the God for the mentality of the other
people. His paladins were the gods who surrounded him, sub-gods. The
second form of imperialism: What was on the earth was the sign, the
symbol. God acted within men. Third form of imperialism: Just as the
previous evolution was from realities to signs and symbols, now the
development is from symbols to platitudes.
This is an objective description of the
facts, without being emotionally tinged. Since the seventeenth
century what has been called the will of the people in the public
life of the Anglo-American peoples in the law books — of course
categorized according to classes — is no more than empty
platitudes. Between what is said and reality there is not even the
relation which existed between the symbol and reality. So the
psychological path is this: from reality to symbol and then to
platitudes — to words which have been squeezed out, dried out,
empty words. This is the reality of the third imperialism: squeezed
out, empty words. And nobody imagines that they are divine, at least
not where they originated.
Just think about the basis of that
imperialism, the ruling elements of which are empty platitudes:
during the first imperialism the kings, in the second imperialism the
anointed, now the empty platitudes. From majority decisions of course
nothing real results, only a dominant empty platitude. The reality
remains hidden. And now we come to an important factor upon which
reality is based: the colonization system. Colonization played an
important role in the development of this third imperialism. The
“Imperial Federation League” summarizes the means of
spreading imperialism to the colonies. But how do the colonies become
part of the empire? Think back on real cases. Adventurers who no
longer rightly fit into the empire, who are somewhat down at heel,
go to the colonies, become rich, then spend their riches at home, but
that doesn't make them respectable, they are still adventurers,
bohemians. That's how the colonial empire is created. That is the
reality behind the empty platitudes. But remnants remain. Just as
symbols and empty platitudes remain as remnants of the original
realities, or symbolic crowns on princes and tsars, also from the
enterprises of the somewhat foul smelling colonists, realities
remain. The adventurer's son is not so foul smelling, right? He
already smells better. The grandson smells even better and a time
comes when everything smells very good. The empty platitudes are now
possessed by what smells good. The empty platitudes are now
identified with the true reality. Now the state can spread its wings,
it becomes the protector and everything has been made honest.
It is necessary to call things by their real
names — although the names seldom describe the reality. It's
necessary because only thus can we understand what tasks and what
responsibilities confront humanity in these times. Only in this way
is it possible to realize what a fable convenue so called
history really is, meaning that history which is taught in
the schools and universities. That history does not call things by
their real names. On the contrary, its effect is that the names
describe what is false.
What I have just described is something
terrible, isn't it. But you see, it's a question of guiding the
feelings towards responsibilities. Let's now consider the other side.
Let's consider such an ancient empire. In people's minds it was an
earthly reality; the priest-king came from the mysteries. The second
was no longer earthly reality, it was symbolic. It is a long way from
the godly jewelry the rulers and their paladins in the ancient
oriental empires wore and the “Roter Adler” [Red Eagle]
medals hung around people's necks long afterward. But that's how
things evolved. It went from reality to nothing, not even a sign or
symbol, but basically the expression of the empty platitude. Finally
this empty platitude system, which has spread from the west to the
rest of the world, has penetrated public affairs. I have even met
court councilors — who anyway have little counseling to do
— but what about the titular court councilors? Just
an empty platitude hung on certain people and everything remains
as before.
Whereas in the first phase the
physical reality was thought to be spiritual, in the future this
physical reality may no longer be thought of as spiritual.
Nevertheless, the spiritual must be present here in the physical
world. That means that spiritual reality must exist alongside
physical reality. The human being must move around here within the
physical reality, and recognize a spiritual reality, must speak of it
as something real, super-sensible, invisible, but which exists,
which must be established among us.
I have spoken about something
quite terrible: about the platitude. But if the world had not become
so platitude oriented, there would be no room for the introduction of
a spiritual empire. Precisely because everything old has now become
platitudes, a space has come into being in which the spiritual
empire can enter. Especially in the west, in the Anglo-American world
people will continue to speak in the usual terminology, things that
come from the past. It will continue to roll on like a bowling ball.
It will roll on in the words. You can find innumerable expressions
especially in the west which have lost all meaning, but are still
used. But not only in these expressions, but in everything described
by the old words the empty platitude lives, in which there is no
reality, for it has been squeezed out. That is where the spiritual,
which has nothing of the old in it, can find room. The old must first
become empty platitude, everything that continues to roll on in
speech thrown overboard, and something completely new must enter,
which can only propagate as a world of the spirit.
Only then can there be a kingdom of Christ
on earth. For in that empire a reality must exist: “My kingdom
is not of this world.” In the kingdom of this world, in which
the kingdom of Christ will propagate, there will exist much that has
not become empty platitude. But in the western world, everything
originating in ancient times is destined to become platitude. Yes, in
the west, in the Anglo-American world, all human tradition will
become platitude. Therefore the responsibility exists to fill the
empty vessel with spirit, about which can be said: “This
kingdom is not of this world!” That is the great
responsibility. It's not important how something came about, but what
we do with what has come about. That is the situation.
Tomorrow we will speak about what can be
done, for under the surface, especially in the western countries, the
secret societies are most active, trying to insert the second phase
of imperialism into the third. For in the Anglo-American people you
have two imperialisms pushed together, the economic one of a
Chamberlain and the symbolic imperialism of the secret societies,
which play a very effective role, but which are kept secret from the
people.
|