Lecture I
Dornach 5th February, 1921
My Dear Friends,
In the November
number of the Roman Catholic Hochland an article has
appeared, entitled “Three Worlds,” bearing the author's name Hei
Lung. It is about the civilisation of our present age and its
impulses, and is written from the Chinese standpoint. It does not
interest us here to inquire how deeply this essay is rooted in
Chinese civilisation or what it signifies as regards that
civilisation; what must interest us far more is the fact that it
appears within our own European world and sets out to consider the
civilisation of our present age from a certain point of view. In
the first place it deals with a division into three worlds
centering round three significant impulses of culture or
civilisation in the present age. The first impulse for civilisation
which the author distinguishes is the modern Western civilisation,
to which he then opposes the second impulse of civilisation, the
Eastern, Asiatic culture. About the third impulse we shall have to
speak later. He considers our modern European civilisation from an
Asiatic point of view, from the point of view innate in a man whose
ideas spring from an ancient civilisation of the Earth and are
expressed in the feeling of a human being who stands in the midst
of what has until to-day been considered as the Asiatic culture, a
civilisation having its source in ancient, gigantic, mighty
treasures of wisdom which have now fallen into decadence.
There is a great deal
in this man's feelings (and it lives there with deep intensity) of
what one may call a devastating criticism of modern European
civilisation. The Asiatic of to-day (as one can see also, for
instance, in Rabindranath Tagore) speaks from a point of view
derived from primeval civilisation; and he speaks from that point
of view about the civilisation of modern Europe, and criticises, in
a purely negative way, all that our modern Europe has to offer.
Listen to the following sentences from the essay and you will see
at once what a critical spirit finds utterance in that which
resounds to us from Asia concerning our modern civilisation.
“Indeed, the modern
European learning has something of a wretched spirit of servility.
It has assumed something of the plodding nature of a technical age.
It pours into the world as a hair-splitting specialisation, clouded
and encircled by thousands of quotations, and steel-clad with
statistics and trivial experiments. It no longer possesses any
depth, any wisdom, or any life! Its results may be highly valuable,
judged by its own standard; but no other valuation is permitted,
and anyone who wishes for another is in danger of being considered
behind the times — even medieval. It is the same in the
economic sphere. There the machine has superseded life, and the
competition of industry fills all the gaps with new needs and new
ways and means to satisfy them; and so the organisation of society
drags on a while longer completely disinherited; and in its midst
the broad masses of the people appear quite docile. Yes, the age of
world-embracing trade, of never-resting machines, of standing
armies, of cinematographs, of machine guns, sky-scrapers,
gramophones, and cosmic riddles — finds utterances in the
breast of man and cries aloud: ‘All this is subject to me.’ But the
angry elements and the human ‘atoms’ echo sinisterly, they give out
a sinister echo which expresses itself in the wars and revolutions
still taking place to-day. In all the restlessness one hears the
cry: ‘All this is tending to destruction.’”
That indeed is a
sharp criticism of what has arisen within modern human evolution as
the European civilisation. Let us attempt for once to put before us
the essential characteristics of this European civilisation. In
reality it is rooted in what has been produced (and often described
in our lectures) in the last three to four centuries, during which
the Natural Sciences have emancipated themselves in a certain sense
from the historical tradition and from the religious life of former
ages. This modern civilisation is also rooted in the world of
modern technics, which has united itself with modern Natural
Science. Everything which has sprung up and developed out of human
depths manifests a certain opposition towards historical tradition.
The personalities who stand at the starting point of our modern
civilisation are a characteristic of our European life in this
sense.
Let us consider, for
instance, such a personality as Copernicus, to whom one has to look
back for a great part of what lives in this European civilisation
in the direction I have characterised. Copernicus was a Roman
Catholic priest, and so he lived in the first place with those
ideas into which he was educated as a Catholic priest; but he lived
in an age in which, side by side with what his education gave him,
something was put into his soul which later developed into the
mechanical perception of the heavens of modern times. From this
same source has also come what has developed into the mechanical
world-conceptions of our recent times, and even the mechanical
world-ordering in political and also in the economic life.
While all this took
possession more and more of the widest circles of civilisation in
the West, it developed in such a way that according to Eastern
perception it has only a body and no soul. The soul was altogether
lacking. It appeared to the oriental as if everything he sees in
the European is to be traced to this lack of soul, this passing
over into men's thinking of what is purely mechanical. Whenever he
faces a man of the West the Oriental feels himself absolutely
misunderstood by the European in his whole feeling, and in
everything which he calls his wisdom. Characteristic passages could
be quoted again from this article to the effect that Japan has
assimilated something of the Western European civilisation and,
thereby exposed itself, according to the Eastern view, to a certain
danger.
“The Japanese people
have indeed exposed themselves to the danger of exchanging their
deeply-founded patriotism and ancient knightly chivalry for
European piracy and spirit of exploration. Nevertheless that
ancient ferment will not at once prove ineffective, which helps to
preserve the ancient achievements in the East, and joins together
the East of Asia with the South in one Great Unity — I mean,
the ferment of Buddhism.”
So what the Asiatic
perceives in what comes to him from Europe is practical piracy and
the spirit of exploitation. The Asiatic regards the matter in such
a way that, with a mechanical view of the Cosmos, with all that has
poured into the East in opposition to the older tradition the
practical spirit, the tendency to exploitation flows in too. The
Asiatic holds that the Europeans have gradually forgotten to carry
the element of soul into what expresses itself as their culture or
civilisation. The Asiatic has the idea that Europeans no longer
knows to-day the meaning of soul. The following words, for example,
are very characteristic.
“What then has Europe
done?” (He means in recent years.) “Where are now their holiest
treasures? Buried, forgotten, pushed aside, or piled up in museums,
fully docketed.”
What is really
fundamentally true is seen by the Asiatic in very sharp outline. He
sees how the European has reached the point of taking treasures
that were formerly the very life of Europe but which only had
influence on man because they were placed in a suitable
architectural setting so that men felt the same spiritual influence
streaming to them from the paintings on the walls, and speaking to
them our of the architecture — the European has taken these
treasures and shut the away in museums, where they remain piled up
and ticketed, preserved only as antiquities. The Asiatic feels very
strongly that that which was the soul of a former
civilisation has been labeled in this way because the European
fundamentally no longer knows what soul is in the world, in the
Eastern sense. And so the Asiatic sees in Europe pre-eminently lack
of soul.
“These people of the
East, of this second world, had they holy treasures? Could they
dare, when smashed down a dozen times by the combined bombardments
of Europe, to act independently and indeed spiritually?” That might
be dangerous to European civilisation. The Asiatic asks whether it
is worth while to learn this — if one wishes to to be human
in the full sense of the word, and does not consider the world only
from the standpoint of the bodily mechanisation, but from that of
the soul — whether it is really worth while to apply
one's interest to that which is, above all, so important to the
European.
“In full view of the
great walls of the Summer Palace on the Hill of Ten Thousand
Delights, there rested one afternoon the widowed Empress of China,
nearly 70 years of age. Se sat on a throne covered with golden
silk, and it was placed in her favourite spot on the wonderfully
artistic marble ship afloat on the great lake. In the middle of all
the magnificence around her, there were smashed sculptures,
paintings, and glass works of art from the pavilions; and turning
to a new lady of the Court, the Empress Tzi-Hei said: ‘That was
done by the European soldiers (in 1900), and I did not desire to
restore those things and so forget what they teach.’ She was
thinking of all those bitter experiences and of how, almost 40
years ago, a faithful State Councillor had described to her the
spirit of the Europeans in these words: ‘They have concluded some
twenty treaties with China which contain at least 10,000 written
characters. Is there in any one of them even a single word
referring to respect for parents of to fulfillment of one's duties,
a single word which has any reference to the right observing of
ceremonies, of duties, of purity, of the development of a right
feeling of modesty — which are the four basic sentiments on
which our race rests. No, and again no. Everything of which they
speak concerns material advancement.’ (Wu Ko Tzu Hei, 1873.) That
Empress therefore could not possibly have any respect for the
‘ideal’ side of that European explanation, which was the Christian
Missionary's; because as the leader of a State, all her life long,
she had heard only of the material advantages which those European
powers acquired by their protection of the Missionaries. She had a
sharp eye for the whole spiritual backwardness and encroachment of
those Europeans who forced themselves on her, although towards the
end of her life she learned to value their technical methods, their
railways, their mines, their armies and navies; but only as a means
to an end. Although often calumniated, she was really a great
personality. Every day she devoted the morning hours to her
Executive Ministers, listening to advice, asking questions and
hearing reports from the vice-regents, examiners and censors and
frequently she listened to a very freely spoken and at times
uncomfortable judgment.”
Now, that is an
Asiatic criticism, and a criticism which would always be given in
like manner if we heard it from the mouth of any person who stands
to-day in what has remained in Asia as the relics of the old
Wisdom. Every Asiatic would naturally contrast the world he sees in
Europe with the second world, which is the world he himself
possesses and to which he still looks, — not seeing that it
is a world which has fallen into decadence; for it is indeed a
world which had its starting-point in an Imagination, Inspiration
and Intuition incomprehensible to the European, but which has now
fallen into decadence. The Asiatic who is an educated man in our
sense of the word, always speaks — as Asiatic — in such
a way as to make it plain that his feeling is like this: The Earth
is the dwelling place of mankind; on this Earth there once dwelt
higher beings than those we call man, and they founded a
civilisation which human beings took over and lived in. And the
Asiatic believes he is still living in that divine civilisation.
The Earth has taken over, as it were, the inheritance of a primeval
treasure of wisdom which spoke to the whole man, not merely to the
intellect, as the Modern European mechanistic culture does. The
Asiatic has no interest in what might come of the Earth, apart from
the fact that it is the bearer of what has remained as an ancient
inherited treasure of wisdom.
Now my dear friends,
it must be admitted, the modern European is absolutely lacking in
understanding for this whole method of thinking and feeling; that
must be admitted.
The modern European
reads his Homer and his Aeschylus, and values them in a certain
sense; but he cannot take even the very opening words in earnest.
He cannot do this, because he is the outcome of our modern
civilisation. How can the European of to-day take seriously
what resounds from ancient European times? He reads his Homer, and
in the very first lines he finds these words: “Sing to me, O Muse,
of the wrath of Achilles!” Homer does not say he is relating
the story, but the Muse, which means that a Spiritual Being
in his own inner being is relating it. The Europeans does not take
this very first line seriously, he takes it as a phrase. He regards
it, well, just as something that is said. He has no real feeling of
how the Greek knew his soul to be used by Divine Beings, who really
spoke in his soul; so that when his mouth spoke, it uttered not
what his intellect imprinted on his mind, but what a Divine Being
was speaking within him. Who is there to-day who understands deeply
and earnestly that the Greek, when he sang, felt himself to be the
vessel of a Divine Being? How then did the Greek feel? He
saw in that Divine Being something which once upon a time fashioned
on the Earth a civilisation, formed for beings one has to call men,
though of course they were not human in the sense of to-day. The
Greek believed that that Divine Spiritual Being still lives amongst
mankind and is able to inspire men; but it must not be supposed
that it is only a voice in the inner being. Hence that deep
opposition that meets us to-day whenever we compare Homer with
Aeschylus. Homer sings while letting the Muse sing, Homer sings as
the composer of Epic; he sings as a narrating poet. That is
connected with the perception that ancient Beings, who once
descended from spiritual worlds to the Earth, were still active in
man and could sing of what had been and of that whence the Earth
proceeded and whence developed everything within which we live. If
one is to relate in this very way in narrative form,
describing what has produced our present civilisation, one must go
back to those divine Spiritual Beings who once descended from
higher spiritual worlds and can still inspire men. Herein for the
Greek lay the nature of the Epic &mdash the Epic was uttered by
Beings who had come over to this Earth from previous incarnations
of the Earth.
On the other hand,
the Greek felt that something else lived in man, which would only
find its real development in the future, something which is, at yet
sub-human in man. This the Greek felt to be Dionysian, and through
those forms of the Gods he introduced, however lightly, in the
Dionysian something of the animal characteristics. That which spoke
from the depths of the impulses of human emotion, of human
will-power, was felt by the Greek as something which is still
chaotic in man; only in future worlds in which the Earth will
incarnate, will there be found as tranquil an expression for its
being as man now has in his epic, where he can relate in quiet
contemplation and observation.
Now that which is the
Dionysian element and still forces itself out of man in and animal
way, — that the Greek inscribes in his Drama.
Therefore we see shining in Aeschylus the God Dionysus, who in a
primeval dream of Greece was at first the chief person there;
— and round him the chorus developed and sang of all that
related to Dionysus. When the Greek looked within himself he could
say: “In me there lives something higher than man, something which
has come from primeval worlds to the Earth. If I give myself to
that, I give myself to something superhuman and I say: ‘Sing to me,
O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles.’” Then the Greek turned to the
spiritual past from which man has come, and wrote Epics.
Then the Greek turned to the future, he saw that which would
only develop into man in the future, when the Earth shall be, as it
were, superseded by other worlds; he saw that in the Dionysian
animal-spiritual form, and he saw it in a state of dramatic
agitation and dramatic movement. When he looked at man from
outside, he did not speak of the Muse, but of Dionysus, and then he
became not epic but dramatic. The really human element the Greek
only perceived in Poetry, the superhuman he saw in the
Epic, and the sub-human in the Drama, creating the
germ for the future. That which was really the human element,
rhythmically ebbing to and fro in human nature itself, — that
the Greek saw in Poetry. Such was the position assumed by the Greek
in this spiritual-physical world, thus did he feel himself related
to his spiritual-physical world. On the one hand, the invocation to
the Muse must be taken seriously if we really desire to present the
thought-life of the Greeks. On the other hand the fact that their
original drama did not actually present human events, but the
working of Dionysus in man — that again we must take in all
earnestness; for we must point out that the Greek spoke somewhat as
follows: “If one wishes to regard man not inwardly, but only from
without, one must meet the form of Dionysus. Apollo and Dionysus
— Apollo the leader of the Muses, the preserver of that which
incorporates itself from the past into the present of the Earth;
and Dionysus, the agitating desolating germ, which will only attain
to clarity in the future.” Those are the two great opposites
— Apollo and Dionysus. And between them in the middle the
lyric element of the Greeks.
We must therefore, my
dear friends, look back to such conditions of the primeval culture
of Europe if we are to unite the right feeling with what we see
around us to-day, when this feeling of self in the Cosmos contrasts
with the Gods of the Past and the Gods of the Future; we must set
over against each other this ancient epoch of European civilisation
with what lives to-day as the mechanical view of the Cosmos, which
the Asiatic so sharply criticises. We must have a feeling for how
much such a modern as Goethe was placed, not of course in such a
mechanism as we live in now, but in an age nevertheless in which
the germ of this mechanism was already developing. We see how
Goethe, with every fibre of his soul, longs to turn from this
European life to what European civilisation once was. That is what
lay in the feeling of Goethe when, in the 80's of the 18th century,
he longed for Italy and for what was still there in Italy although
in decadence, in order to have a feeling for that out of which
European civilisation had sprung.
We must quite clearly
realise that although the Asiatic lives in the decadence of that
ancient civilisation, yet in spite of the decadence of his own
civiisation, he has a clear feeling for what it once was and what
it has become. Hence his sharp criticism which works with such
intensive shadows; all the time exalting those lights which,
according to his view, are still to be seen in the East; for even
if they are externally clouded, yet, according to his view, they
still have soul. And when he turns to his own soul he feels no need
for interests which spring from an admiration of railways,
steamboats, cinemas, gramophones, Haeckel's Riddle of the
Universe, and so on. No, such thinking about World Riddles is
absolutely foreign to the Asiatic, because it all rests simply on
the combining of what one's sense organs perceive, whereas the
Asiatic still knows as a reality that humanity once received from
mighty Spirits that which lived in the soul and made man a human
being.
In this connection,
my dear friends, man has become very trivial to-day; for it is
trivial to believe that what lived earlier in European civilisation
was part of an age of childhood, and that that alone is great which
European humanity has produced in recent times, especially in the
19th century. To-day when we are living in the age of great
decisions, people really ought to transcend that triviality, and
raise themselves to the possibility of seeing that it means
something that over there in the East, there still are human beings
who have in their soul something of the consciousness of Spirit
and Soul, and who with a destructive, sharp, biting criticism,
look at all those things which to the European comprise his
greatness. We ought to realise that this is of significance, as we
ought to say: That which lives thus in the Asiatic souls will one
day be capable of leading to a European catastrophe, — for,
my dear friends, it has a strong impulse for souls. It possesses a
strong fascination for souls, because they have been devastated in
a mechanical civilisation and cannot raise themselves up to
construct something themselves out of the soul and spirit. Those
human beings who feel the desolation of the European mechanical
life to-day — rather than look to that which could be built
up here, they would much prefer to take over from the decadent East
the spirituality which has again become necessary to them. Hence
they do not want to listen when the words ring across to us from
Asia: “What has Europe done? What has become of its old holy
treasures? Buried, forgotten, pushed aside, or labeled and piled up
in museums. As far as the eye can reach, the Asiatic can only see
bad taste in the West. And when Europe recovers and pulls itself
together again out of the desert of hate and destruction, and the
desert of force that leads to distress and privation, it will
probably go on manufacturing, striking, colonising, militarising,
gaining more andmore of the entire world, but losing more and more
of its own soul.”
And now he goes on to
point to something which a European has said. The European who is
quoted only carries what he has to say to what I must call a very
lazy criticism. Let us hear further: “Or must we expect a new
salvation from America? Such a qualified judge as Kühnmann
comes to the following conclusion (Germany and America.
Chapter 8.) ‘Before 1914 no one knew what America really is, now at
last we know. American signifies no progress and no teaching for
the moral world. It gives us no new thought of any higher humanity.
On the contrary, those sins which cling to modern Europe
civilisation appear nowhere so terribly naked and unbounded as in
America. That consciousless, blind, self-seeking of gold is the
dominating thought. Nowhere does it wear more openly and
destructively the garment of hatred, in the hypocrisy which talks
of the service of humanity, when all the time what thinks and acts
is the cold sense for self-seeking.’”
That was what the
Asiatic quoted; nevertheless it is something which — when one
feels it, one must say it — springs fundamentally from the
triviality of his understanding. Here I must speak sharply. It is
simply a bit of professional barking at something which, of course,
lies obvious on the surface. Of course it is absolutely justified.
It is justified ten times over. But behind his barking there is not
that spiritual background which lies behind the Asiatic criticism
of modern Europe. That which stands behind the Asiatic criticism of
modern civilisation is something which speaks now in just the same
way as once Homer spoke of the Muse. It is, moreover, something
which gives a power such as once upon a time the Greek dramatist
had when, on looking at man from outside, he dramatised his
Dionysian emotions. When the Asiatic criticises European
civilisation, something from out of the Cosmos speaks in him
That, my dear
friends, is what a European should say for himself to-day; and with
great intensity he ought to put that contrast before him, which we
should be able to feel to-day if we take what lives in our
literature, writings, and so-called education, and compare it with
an age which believed that earthly-cosmic relationships are
declared and related by divine spiritual souls.
And now we can turn
to many people who begin, from the spirit of our modern European
civiisation, to feel something of what lies within this
civiisation. In the same number of this periodical, a number which
is composed in a masterly way with reference to what is intended,
with reference to something which most human beings cannot as yet
see to-day, but which is nonetheless being put into practice by
small and mostly demonical coteries, in this same number which, as
regards this point, is composed in a masterly fashion, there is
also to be found the discussion of a book by Hans Ehrenberg. The
essay discussing this book is called Ways and Wrong Ways to
Rome. We can see that Hans Ehrenberg in his book The
Homecoming of the Heretic: A Guide by Hans Ehrenberg, being a
University teacher of the present day, it is in a certain sense a
representative personality, and possesses all the characteristics
of a University Professor. I myself have learned that, through my
own experience of him. Here we see how indignant he became with the
desolating barrenness which lives in modern science and modern
education. He sees the hopelessness, the unredeemedness of modern
science and education. He sharply rejects everything which has
appeared in the last of the whole of modern civilisation, and he
would like a really religious spirit again to enter into that which
comprises our modern civiisation; and he points out the path to
Rome. He draws attention to the fact that besides the
Epistle of St. Peter, there is the Epistle of St. John, and that to
St. John is ascribed the words: “Little children, love one
another.” It is very characteristic that the writer who is
criticising the book puts by the side of “Little children, live one
another” another saying of St. John. He says to Ehrenberg: I know
another quotation from St. John: “If there come any unto you and
bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither
bid him God speed.” There you have a learned man, who is deeply and
religiously in Roman Catholicism; and he speaks entirely our of the
spirit of Rome, whereas Ehrenberg merely trifles with the Roman
spirit. The man who adds the above words to St. John's words
“Little children, love one another,” — here I must express
myself allegorically — knows that man needs muscles and
bones, that he needs not merely muscles and sinews and tendons,
but bones. And so, not now speaking allegorically, but in truth,
man needs a doctrine, a teaching, a life of ideation which can
support him and, on the basis of this life of ideation and of
thought — as it were, attached to this life of thought just
as muscles and sinews are attached to the bones — he needs
love. Love must be attached to that which is the bony skeleton in
man's spiritual life, namely the doctrine, the content. It is
characteristic of many modern people of the type of Hans Ehrenberg,
that they say: “Science contains nothing, science dries us up, it
is unredeemed, science leaves our souls cold and dry; what we must
cultivate is love.” But, my dear friends, that would mean: We must
not look in the human organism for a healthy bony formation, for we
cannot see why man needs bones; he would be far softer, more
pliable, more adaptable in all relationships if he were rickety.
Thus, on the one side we see the mechanism, and on the other that
which tries with a certain justice to transcend this mechanism, but
which strives for a “rickety” education. For love remains a mere
phrase if it wishes to stand in this way, without the background of
a spiritual doctrine. In that case it simply springs from the
despair of those who, not having the courage for bony system of our
civilisation, wish to remain stationary in a rickety
civilisation.
In such spirits as
the European who longs for the rickets of culture, and the Asiatic
in whom still lives something of the strong skeleton of old
oriental Wisdom, we can see nothing certain for the future.
The Asiatic looks
towards Europe. On the one hand he finds there a mechanical
culture, the ethical expression of which, for him, is piracy and
exploitation; and on the other hand he finds an expression of what
has to link itself on to this, just as the muscles have to be
linked on to the solid bones.
When the Asiatic
contemplates that, he comes to an extraordinary conclusion, which
however in certain circles is propagated with great joy, because
— and I must lay stress on this — these circles know
what they want. At this point, where I want you to see the tendency
towards which all these instructions are running. I prefer to read
it word for word. The essay, The Three Worlds, which is
written from the Asiatic Chinese standpoint, characterises, as I
have explained, the world of the newer European civilisation, the
world of the Asiatic civilisation, and it then puts a third world
there, which is characterised in the following way, —
looking, and calling out, as it were, to Europe what the Asiatic
thinks, and what still lives for the future outside Europe. “If
Europe is not to die, what must it do?” That is what the Asiatic is
asking; and he answers it as follows.
“In reality the
synthesis must be the third thing, a third world; and this third
world places itself above and between the others, indeed right in
the middle of the others without losing its own characteristics, or
at least without losing its power for education. It is itself the
very oldest, coming from the super-nature of the inspired spiritual
world, which has maintained itself for thousands of years in the
tiny kingdom of a special people often in bondage, in the midst of
a gigantic civilisation, and then as a Christian leaven,
transforming antiquity and growing as a mighty tree under which the
peoples dwell. That is the world of the Roman Catholic Church, in
which that magnificent medieval human being was developed who, in
reality, is the one and only harmonious European. The Catholic
Church it is which has maintained herself in spite of all attacks;
her voice has never been dumb even in the tumult of modern decay,
and, as a matter of fact, it resounded as the one and only noble
human voice in our age even as the deep tones of the bells resound
over the noise and lewdness of the great cities. Where else is to
be found the much-questioned judge of world-history? Where else is
to be found the world-conscience, where else the guardian of
morality? This world alone, the third world — that of the
Roman Catholic Church — has seen everything come and go; she
alone is the world of authority. Against the world of the East she
will take again the conquering path of Francis Xavier and his
disciples, which leads to salvation. In defiance of everything
modern, she shows that there is more force and self-determination
in humility than in all the consciousness of rulers. She knows how
to clothe the beggar with kingly worth! She is the religion of
magnificence and renunciation, of the harmony of affirmation and
denial, of freedom in piety and of bondage in dogma, of
Philosophia Perennis, of strict rites, of ceremonies and
discipline, combined with a large-hearted understanding of
adaptation, the religion that takes care for the social order, the
religion of art, the religion of depths of feeling.” Should this
world (the third world of catholicism) be anxious as to how it can
maintain itself in the modern world? Even children of this Church
have been afraid and ask with each Non possumus of
Authority: “How can we go on?” “Oh ye of little faith! Have trust,
for I have overcome the world!” — not “I have made an
agreement with the world.” The harmony is to be sought higher,
beyond the first and second world, in the supernatural, in the true
super-human of the Divine Son and His Kingdom.
“The less vague the
tones, the purer and more liberating will be finally the music of
the song, after all dissonaces have come to an end. Oh Felix Culpa!
Therefore it is well to work out sharply Thesis, Antithesis, and
Synthesis. A full and rich humanity will then result. In life,
everything is interwoven, and all these three worlds exist
together.”
Thus, my dear
friends, what this Asiatic puts forward from the Chinese standpoint
as the one and only hope for Europe is the Roman Catholic Church;
and in a periodical which, as I have said, is composed in a
masterly fashion and springs from people who well know the trend of
present tendencies, we find this view advocated, — a fact
which of course interests us far more than the actual content as
such. We find it said that there exist three worlds in modern
times. First there is the world of modern European civilisation
which contains no soul. Then there is the old Asiatic civilisation.
Europe as it is to-day cannot receive that because these two worlds
do not understand each other. But in Europe there also lives the
third thing; and that, we are told, is Rome, the Eternal Catholic
Church. On that we must build, and to-day one can see many, many
Europeans moving towards that goal.
What stands behind
all these things is simply not seen by a great number of human
beings, because these people are not ready to take their part in
what is really working and weaving in our modern world. On the one
hand they do not see the demand put upon them by a modern
mechanical civilisation that is void of soul. On the other hand
they do not see what a gigantic force of destruction streams out of
what makes itself felt in Asia, and with what infinite power Rome
works at the present times; they do not see with what purposeful
forces both these are working. They do not want to see it, because
it is too uncomfortable, and because, if they really see the matter
clearly it will become necessary to adopt a certain point of view
and then to work energetically with body, soul and spirit, in this
sphere
We will speak of this
tomorrow.
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