I
Dornach, August 9, 1919
A RECENT series of lectures and discussions with workmen
and co-workers in Stuttgart has given me deep insight into what
takes place in human souls at the present time, into what
exists as inner tragedy in mankind's evolution. Now I am again
able to spend a few days here in this place which is so closely
bound up with the work we must believe will produce the force
to guide the present tragedy of humanity into more hopeful
channels.
At
no time perhaps has there been less inclination than now to
raise the soul to the spiritual worlds in true fashion, and it
is especially necessary now to do so.
[See Rudolf Steiner's
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment
for what he means by “spiritual worlds.”]
Only from these spiritual worlds
can come the strength modern humanity requires if it is to go
forward in its full humanness. Today there is the most
widespread belief that the problems and tasks of the present
can be resolved by the thoughts and impulses derived from
knowledge based on the external world. How long it will take
until a sufficiently large part of humanity will be convinced
that real salvation is only attainable on the spiritual path,
is extremely difficult to say, for the very reason that
reflecting on this question is not fruitful. It is certain,
however, that progress can only be made if sufficiently large
numbers of people are permeated by the conviction that
salvation can come only from the spiritual worlds.
What occupies people's minds today, in the widest circles, are
the social problems. However, they lack the intellectual
strength to earnestly study these problems, because in the
present age the intellectual power of a great part of mankind
is as though paralyzed. The belief prevails that the social
problems can be mastered by what is called knowledge, but they
can never be mastered if they are not tackled from the
viewpoint of spiritual knowledge.
We
have just passed through a long war. This will be followed by
prolonged, perhaps very prolonged fighting by mankind in
general. Many people have said that this war, which has been
experienced throughout the civilized world, was the most
terrible experience of its kind since the beginning of history.
We cannot say that this judgment is wrong. The battle which
will have to be fought by this or that means, and which will
follow this war — the battle between Orient and Occident,
between Asia, Europe and America — will be the greatest
spiritual battle ever waged by mankind. Everything that has
flowed through the Christian world into humanity as impulses
and forces will pour over civilization in tremendous, elemental
waves of warfare.
It
is possible to state today in a simple formula the great
contrast between the Orient and Occident. But this simple
formula — do not take it as simple. It contains an
enormous quantity of human impulses. You know that in my book
The Threefold Social Order
I drew attention to the fact
that for extensive circles of present-day humanity spiritual
life has become an “ideology”; that what
constitutes men's spiritual properties — rights, customs,
science, art, religion, and so on — is looked upon as
merely a vapor rising from the only true reality, from the
economic means of production, the economic foundation. I spoke
to you about these matters when I took leave of you here
several months ago.
“Ideology.” That is the answer many people give
today when spiritual life is spoken of. It is all something
that is mirrored in the human soul from the only reality, the
economic reality; it is mere “ideology.” There is
much reason to reflect on the real meaning of this word
“ideology” in world culture for it means a great
deal. One can connect this word with no other word more closely
than with the word “maya” of oriental wisdom.
“Maya” — “illusion” —
properly translated into occidental language means
“ideology.” Every other translation of this word is
less exact. Thus, we may say: The same concept that the
Oriental connects with the word maya is connected by a
great part of western humanity with the word ideology.
But what a tremendous difference! What does the Oriental think
when he uses the word maya? He thinks that the external
world is maya; everything that confronts our senses and
the intellect bound up with them is maya, the great
illusion, and the only reality is what arises in the soul. What
a human being achieves in the sphere of soul and spirit, that
constitutes reality. What arises and pours forth from man's
inner life is reality. What presents itself externally to the
senses is maya, illusion, ideology.
The
opposite conviction, that the only reality is what presents
itself to the outer senses, is spread over a great part of
Western humanity. Precisely what the Oriental calls maya
constitutes reality for a great part of Western mankind; and
what the Oriental calls reality, that which blossoms and wells
up in the soul, constitutes ideology, illusion, for a
large segment of Europe and America.
You
see here a great contrast. This makes deep inroads into men's
souls; it shapes them across the earth into two quite distinct
kinds of beings. If you survey what has happened in the
civilized world in recent years you will say — I hope:
Fundamentally speaking, everything that is said about the
reasons for this world catastrophe is just skimming the
surface, is merely superficial opinion. What has expressed
itself in this terrible fighting has arisen with elemental
power from unconscious depths. It can be clearly seen today
that people participated in this fighting without knowing the
reason for it. It is the expression of what this contrast,
which will not be resolved for a long time, has brought to the
surface as elemental forces. The anti-social element at present
is so strong that it has split mankind into these two
essentially different parts.
If
you connect what I have just stated with other things I have
explained to you, you will find that the striving of the West
is for freedom. No matter whether this freedom is
understood or misunderstood, the longing for freedom wells up
as if from dark foundations of the human soul. Turn your gaze
to the East. What is called freedom in the West has no real
meaning for the East; no concepts or feelings are connected
with it. We do not think about what we experience most
intensely. Just consider how little attention people give
to the phenomena of nature surrounding them every day. They do
not think about their immediate experiences. The Oriental, in
pursuing the reality natural to him, the inner reality, lives
in the freedom he derives from the peculiarities of his race,
his folk, and his tribe. He does not think about it. The
further we look toward the West the more we become aware of the
fact that freedom has been lost in the course of the historical
evolution of mankind. Because the Western peoples do not have
it they have to strive for it.
We
could cite many more instances; in every one of them we would
find this fundamental difference between West and East. There
is already a first indication of what perhaps will occur in the
next few years. At the moment this manifests in outer symptoms
taking place in Asia and about which Europe is still silent
today — silent for well-known reasons. The fact, for
instance, that more than half the population of India is near
starvation will bring to birth, out of the spirituality of the
Indian nation, something that will be very different from what
has happened in Europe. These are outer symptoms. But also, in
regard to these outer symptoms mankind is divided today into
two essentially different parts. For the Indian hunger
signifies something totally different from what it means to the
European, because the Indian has behind him a soul development
throughout millennia which is quite different from that of the
European. These facts have to be sharply focused by anyone who
wants to comprehend the course of mankind's evolution. Today we
must be clear that what is usually called the social question
is something much more complicated than is ordinarily imagined.
This social question is an accompanying phenomenon of the
culture that arose after the middle of the fifteenth century. I
have repeatedly spoken to you about this significant incision
in the history of civilized mankind in the middle of the
fifteenth century. Since that time natural science has
gradually arisen in its modern coloring. During that period,
however, industrialism also has arisen in its modern coloring.
Natural science and industrialism have been poured over modern
humanity and have given it its particular spiritual trend.
I
have spoken to you about the special nature of this natural
science and have told you that intelligent people, who today
reflect on what natural science has to offer, say: What it
offers is not the world, it is rather a specter of the world.
Everything scientists have thought out and that has become
popular education, all this — much more so than is
ordinarily imagined — is belief in a spectral world;
actually superstition. And along with this world of specters
there exists the spiritual effect modern industrialism has had
upon men.
We
must give attention now to the spiritual significance of this
industrialism. Consider what primarily controls it — the
machine. A machine is different from everything else man makes
use of in outer life. Just consider the animal. If you turn
your scientific or other thoughts to an animal — I will
not speak today of man in this connection — you can carry
on any amount of research concerning an animal, but something
always remains, something of a deep and divine essence. You
cannot fathom an animal; you cannot discover its secrets. There
is always something behind your thoughts about an animal that
remains unknown. This is no less the case with a plant. Take
even a crystal, the wonderful forms of the crystal world. You
will have to say: Certainly we can grasp the external nature of
the crystal world, its forms and so on, if we are trained in
this respect, but much remains that man can revere and to which
his ordinary, non-clairvoyant intellect does not penetrate.
Now
consider a machine. It is entirely transparent to our thinking.
We know how its power is produced, know the position of its
pistons, the magnitude of friction. We can calculate its
efficiency if we know the various factors; there is nothing
behind the machine which would lead us to say that it cannot be
penetrated by the ordinary, non-clairvoyant intellect. This is
of great significance for the mutuality of man and machine. And
when one has stood once again before many thousands of people
who have to do with machines, one knows what it is that drips
into these souls from the spiritually transparent machine. For
the machine has nothing behind it that can only be divined,
something not surveyable by man's non-clairvoyant intellect.
That fact that a machine is soul-spiritually so completely
transparent that its power and power-relationships lie clearly
open before the human senses and intellect — this fact
makes contact with machines so disastrous for mankind. That is
what sucks out the human heart and soul, making man dry and
inhuman.
Natural science together with the machine threatens civilized
humanity with a terrible threefold destruction. Now what is
this danger threatening modern man if he does not make up his
mind to look to the supersensible? In regard to knowledge, that
ideal presses to gain control which the scientists describe as
follows: One endeavors to arrive at an astronomical way of
thinking about nature; that is, thinking fashioned after the
pattern of astronomy. When the modern chemist thinks about the
content of a molecule he thinks of the atoms within the
molecule as being in a certain force relationship. He conceives
of it in the form of a small planetary and solar system. To
explain the whole world astronomically becomes an ideal. And
astronomy itself, what is its ideal? To conceive of the whole
world-structure as a machine! Now add to this the work people
do by machine!
These are the influences that have become increasingly strong
since the middle of the fifteenth century and rob men of their
humanness. If they were to continue thinking in the way they
think about machine-like astronomy and about the industrialism
in which they work, human spirits would become mechanized;
human souls vegetized, sleepy; and human bodies animalized.
Look toward America, the climax of the mechanization of the
human spirit! Look toward the European East, toward Russia, the
wild and frightful impulses and instincts that run riot there
— the animalization of the body. In the middle, in
Europe, the sleepiness of the soul. Mechanization of the
spirit, vegetizing of the soul, animalization of the body
— this is what we have to face without deceiving
ourselves.
It
is characteristic of humanity's path since the middle of the
fifteenth century that not only two life-elements have been
lost but also a third. Today a powerful party puts forward
“social democracy.” In other words, it welds
together socialism and democracy although they are the opposite
of each other. This party welds them together and leaves out
the spirit. For socialism can only refer to economic life,
democracy only to the sphere of civil rights, and individualism
would refer to spiritual life. Freedom has been omitted from
the phrase “social democracy,” otherwise it would
have to be called “individualistic social
democracy.” Then all three aspects of human concern would
come to expression in such a title. But it is characteristic of
the modern age that the third element has been omitted; that
the spirit has really become maya, the great illusion
for civilized humanity of the West, for Europe and its colonial
outgrowth, America. This is what we have to bear in mind when
we consider spiritual science in the sense of a great cultural
question. What lives in the demands of the present cannot in
reality be a subject for discussion. These are historical
demands. Socialism is an historical demand. But liberalism,
freedom, individualism, these also are an historical demand,
although they have been little noticed by modern men. People
will no longer have anything to say unless they establish the
social organism in the sense of the threefold order: socialism
for economic life, democracy for the life of rights, and
individualism for spiritual life.
This will have to be looked upon as the real, the only
salvation of mankind. But we must not delude ourselves about
the fact that precisely these intensive, unyielding historical
demands of the present age create other demands for one who has
deeper insight into these matters. Adults will have to live in
a social organism which, in regard to the economic aspect, will
be social; in regard to government, democratic; and from the
spiritual aspect, liberal, free. The great problem of the
future will be that of education. How will we have to deal with
children so that they, as adults, can grow into the social,
democratic, and spiritually free areas of living in the most
comprehensive way? Spiritual science has pointed to this
problem of education as present-day humanity will have to
understand it if it wishes to advance. Social demands will
remain chaotic if it is not seen that at their base lies the
most urgent problem of the present time: the problem of
education. If you wish to acquaint yourselves with the broad
guide-lines concerning this problem of education you only need
to study my little book,
Education of The Child From The Point Of View Of Spiritual Science.
Here one of the most important questions of the present time has
been brought to the surface, namely, the social question of
education. The widest circles of modern humanity will have to
learn what spiritual science has to offer in regard to the
three epochs of man's youth and their development.
In
this book it has been pointed out that between birth and the
seventh year, which is the year when the change of teeth
occurs, a child is an imitative being, he does what he sees in
his surroundings. If you observe him with real understanding
you will find that he is an imitative being who does what the
grownups do. It is of utmost importance for a child that the
people in his surroundings do only what he may imitate; indeed,
that they think and feel only what is wholesome for him to
imitate. When a child enters physical existence he only
continues the experiences he had in the spiritual world prior
to conception. There we live, as human beings, within the
beings of the higher hierarchies; we do what originates as
impulses from the nature of the higher hierarchies. There we
are imitators to a much higher degree because we are united
with the beings we imitate. Then we are placed into the
physical world. In it we continue our habit of being one with
our surroundings. This habit then extends to being one with,
imitating, the people around us who have to take care of a
child's education by doing, thinking, and feeling only what he
may imitate. Benefit for a child is all the greater the more he
is able to live not in his own soul but in those within his
environment.
In
the past when man's life was more instinctive he could also
rely instinctively on this imitation. This will not be the case
in future. Then care will have to be taken that a child be an
imitator. In education the question will have to be answered:
How can we best shape the life of a child so that he may
imitate his surroundings in the best possible way? What has
happened in the past in regard to this imitation will have to
become increasingly intensive and conscious in the future. For
men will have to make clear to themselves that when children
are grown to adulthood in the social organism they will have to
be free human beings, and one can become free only if as a
child one has been a most intensive imitator. This natural
power of a child must be strongly developed precisely for the
time when socialism will break in upon us. People will not
become free beings, in spite of all declaiming and political
wailing about freedom, if the power of imitation is not
implanted in them in the age of childhood. Only if this is done
will they as adults have the basis for social freedom.
From the seventh year of life until puberty, until the
fourteenth and fifteenth year, there lives in a child what may
be called action based on authority. When a child undertakes
what he does because a revered personality in his surroundings
says to him, “This is right, this should be done,”
then it is the greatest blessing that could happen to him.
Nothing is worse than for a child to get accustomed to making
his so-called own judgments too early, prior to puberty. A
feeling for authority between the ages of seven and fourteen
will in future have to be developed more intensively than has
been done in the past. All education in this period of life
will have to be consciously directed toward awaking in a child
a pure, beautiful feeling for authority; for what is to be
implanted in him during these years is to form the foundation
for what the adult is to experience in the social organism as
the equal rights of men. Equal rights among men will not come
into existence in any other way, because people will never
become ripe for these equal rights if in childhood regard for
authority has not been implanted in them. In the past a
lesser degree of feeling for authority might have sufficed; in
future it will not be so. This feeling will have to be strongly
implanted in a child in order to let him mature for that which
is not open to argument but arises as an historical demand.
All
primary school education in our time must be organized in a way
to let people attain this view of the situation. Now I ask you:
How far are people today, how far is modern teacher-training
from an insight into these things? How must we work if this
insight is to be gained? And it must be gained, because
only if this is firmly achieved can salvation come.
If
today one visits those countries which have the first
revolution already behind them, what does one experience in
regard to their programs for so-called “consolidated
schools”? What are their programs? To the person who has
insight into the relationships existing in human nature, their
socialistic educational programs are the most terrifying
imaginable. The most awful, frightening things to be thought
out and placed before mankind today are the school programs,
the curricula, the organized education connected with the name
Lunatscharski, the Russian Minister of Education. The
educational program developed in Russia murders all true
socialism. But also in other regions of Europe the educational
programs are actually cancerous evils, particularly the
socialist programs of education, because they proceed from the
almost unbelievable principle that schools must be established
after the pattern of adult life in the social organism. I have
read school programs whose first principle is the abolition of
head-masters; the teachers should stand in a relationship of
absolute equality with the students, the entire school should
be built up on comradeship. If one speaks against such a
principle today, let us say in South Germany where matters have
not advanced as far as other regions in this respect, then one
is branded as a person who does not understand anything about
social life.
Those people, however, who are in earnest in regard to the
creation of a truly social organism, must above everything else
be clear about the fact that such an organism can never arise
with the socialistic programs for education. Because, if
socialism is introduced into schools it cannot exist in life.
People become mature for a socially just life together only if
during their school years their life has been built upon true
authority. We must realize today how far removed from any sense
of reality is what people do and think.
After puberty, between the fourteenth and twenty-first years,
not only the life of sexual love develops in man; this develops
merely as a special manifestation of universal human love. This
power of universal human love should be specially fostered when
children leave the primary school and go to trade schools or
other institutions. For the configuration of economic life,
which is a demand of history, will never be warmed through as
it should be by brotherly love — that is, universal human
love — if this is not developed during the years between
fourteen and twenty-one.
Brotherliness, fraternity, in economic life as it has to be
striven for in future, can only arise in human souls if
education after the fifteenth year works consciously toward
universal human love. That is, if all concepts regarding
the world and education itself are based on human love, love
toward the outer world.
Upon this threefold educational basis must be erected what is
to flourish for mankind's future. If we do not know that the
physical body must become an imitator in the right way we shall
merely implant animal instincts in this body. If we are not
aware that between the seventh and fourteenth year the ether
body passes through a special development that must be based on
authority, there will develop in man merely a universal,
cultural drowsiness, and the force needed for the rights
organism will not be present. If from the fifteenth year onward
we do not infuse all education in a sensible way with the power
of love that is bound to the astral body, men will never be
able to develop their astral bodies into independent beings.
These things intertwine. Therefore, I must say:
Proper imitation develops freedom;
Authority develops the rights life;
Brotherliness, love, develops the economic life.
But
turned about it is also true. When love is not developed in the
right way, freedom is lacking; and when imitation is not
developed in the right way, animal instincts grow rampant.
Thus, in dealing with this problem you see that spiritual
science is the proper basis for what must become the content of
culture precisely because of the great historical demands that
arise today for mankind. Without this content of culture, which
can flow only from spiritual science, we cannot make any
progress. That is to say, the questions confronting us must be
brought into a spiritual atmosphere; this, as a conviction,
must enter human souls. I should like to emphasize once more
that the length of time it will take for such a conviction to
take root may be debated, but in any case, what people
unconsciously strive for can in no way be reached unless this
conviction lays hold of them. I believe you can see from this
the connection between what has been carried on in various
fields through our spiritual science and what arises from the
distress of the age as the great historical necessities for
mankind in the present and immediate future. This was the
reason for my statement that spiritual science must be
considered in its relationship to the great historical tasks of
the present. Of course, people are far, far from judging
matters in the way I have characterized. There must first arise
in them a tension of dissatisfaction, so that out of the very
opposite, purely materialistic striving there may arise the
striving for spirituality. Otherwise, how are people to tackle
the problem that has led them to use the expressions
maya, and ideology, so adversely?
What has resulted from this? You will realize that the impulses
behind Oriental and Occidental thinking are very different; but
the peculiar thing is that they have produced the same feeling
throughout both. This soul orientation has to be considered.
That the people of the East described the outer world as
maya is of ancient origin. This mystical concept of the
world had its great significance then, but it is not
significant at present. Because in a sense it has become
outmoded the Orient has been overtaken by a certain passive
surrender to it; by a false fatalism which, through the Turkish
element, has influenced Europe in the crudest manner. Fatalism,
an attitude of let-happen-what-may, signifies the passivity of
the human will.
In
the most precise way the Occidental concept of ideology
arose in the same sphere of fatalism through Marx and Engels.
This concept is the modern socialistic doctrine that everything
of a soul-spirit nature originates in the one and only reality,
the economic process, and so is maya, ideology.
How
did this doctrine arise? By bringing something fatalistic into
the world. Up to the catastrophe of the World War what then was
the outer expression of the socialistic doctrine? It was:
Capital accumulates, concentrates; bigger and bigger groups of
capitalists arise, trusts, monopolies, etc. The economic
process of increased concentration of capitalistic groups will
run its course quite by itself until the moment arrives when,
of itself, the control of capital passes to the proletariat.
Nothing has to be done to bring it about, it is an objective,
purely economic process. Fatalism.
The
Orient arrived at fatalism: the Occident proceeds from
fatalism, the majority of the people supporting it. Most of the
people are fatalistic. To submit to what the world process is
to bring has become the principle of the Orient. It is also the
principle of the Occident. For the Orient, however, it is
submission to something spiritual; for the Occident it is
submission to the material, economic process. In both cases
human evolution is seen in a one-sided way. But if we survey
evolution as it is today, resulting from former conditions, we
find in it a spiritual element that has become ideology,
as I have described. This spiritual element is based on Greek
culture. The deepest impulse of our souls has a Greek
character. Therefore, we have the classical school
(Gymnasium), which is an imitation of the Greek soul
structure in education. In Greece this soul structure was
natural to the growing child up to puberty, for the great mass
of the people were the poor people, the slaves, the helots, who
were excluded from such education. The conquerors were of
different blood. They were the bearers of spiritual life,
justifiably so. You can see this expressed in Greek sculpture.
Look at a Mercury head (I have often mentioned this) with the
special position of the ears, nose, and eyes. In this head the
Greeks pointed to that part of the population they had
conquered and to whose care they left the outer life of trade,
the economy. The spirit had been bestowed by cosmic powers upon
the Aryan, characterized by the head of Zeus, of Hera, of
Athene.
Do
not believe that the Greek soul structure comes only to
expression in the general soul constitution. It also expresses
itself in the formation of word and sentence in the Greek
language. This rests upon an aristocratic soul structure. We
have this still in our spiritual life. When the middle of the
fifteenth century approached, we did not experience a renewal
of spiritual life but only a Renaissance or a Reformation, a
refurbishing of the old.
We
educate our youth in the classical schools estranged from life.
It was self-evident for the Greeks to educate their youth as we
do in our Gymnasium, because that was their life. They
educated their children and their youth in accordance with
their life; we educate youth in our classical schools according
to Greek life. For that reason our spiritual life has become
world-estranged and is considered to be ideology. Its thoughts
are too short-sighted to take hold of life, and, above
everything else, to intervene actively in life through
deeds.
Beside this element of spiritual education there lives in us a
strange education in the field of law. It can be shown in all
spheres of life that the middle of the fifteenth century
constitutes a mighty incision in humanity's evolution. Grain is
expensive today, and everything produced from grain is
expensive. It is excessively expensive! If one investigates
when it was excessively cheap in European countries one comes
to the ninth and tenth centuries. At that time, it was just as
much too cheap as today it is too expensive. But in the middle
of the fifteenth century it had a normal price.
It
is interesting to see how, right down to the price of grain,
the fifteenth century shows this great incision in history. At
that time when the price of grain was fair over a great part of
Europe, the ancient serfdom gradually ceased to exist. But
then, in order to destroy this beginning of freedom, Roman law
started to become dominant. Today, in the sphere of politics,
of rights, we are permeated by Roman law, just as we are
permeated in the sphere of spiritual life by the spirit and
soul structure of the Greeks. In the sphere of rights, we have
been unable to produce anything but a renaissance of Roman law.
So, in our social organism we have the Greek spiritual
structure and the Roman State structure.
Economic life cannot be shaped as a renaissance. Of course, it
is possible to live according to Roman law, and we can educate
our children according to the spiritual structure of the
Greeks; but we cannot eat what the Greeks ate because this
would not satisfy our hunger. Economic life must arise as a
part of the present time. Thus, we have the European life of
economics as the third element. Since these three areas of
living are chaotically intermingled, it is necessary that we
bring order into them. This can only be done through the
threefold social organism.
In
a most one-sided manner people like Marx and Engels have
realized that, for they recognized that it will no longer do to
govern with a spiritual life that originates in ancient Greece;
nor will it do to live with a government that has been derived
from Roman law. Nothing remains but economic life, they said,
so they concentrated exclusively upon that. Engels said: In
future only commodities and the processes of production must be
administered and directed; human beings must no longer be
governed. This is just as one-sided as it is correct; correct,
but terribly one-sided.
Economic life must rest on its own basis. Within the economic
member of the social organism only goods — commodities
— must be managed and the processes of production
directed. This must become independent. But if one eliminates
from the social organism the life of rights and the spiritual
life in their old form, one must establish them in a new form.
That is to say, alongside economic life, which manages goods
and directs the processes of production, we need the democratic
life of the state, which is based on the equality of men. We
need not a mere renaissance of Roman law but a new birth of the
life of the state on the basis of the equality of men. We need
no mere renaissance of spiritual life as it existed at the
beginning of the modern era. We need a new form, a new creation
of spiritual life. We must become conscious of the fact that we
are really confronted now with the task of creating spiritual
life anew.
What has been stated by the demand for the threefold order of
the social organism is connected with that which in the deepest
sense lives in the development of modern humanity. This idea is
not the result of a brainstorm, it is something born of the
deepest needs of our age, something that corresponds in the
highest degree to our present time. There are many people who
say they do not understand this, that it is very difficult. In
Germany, when people said over and over that these things are
difficult to understand, I said to them that I certainly do
make a distinction between these ideas and what one has become
accustomed to understand during the last four or five years.
There one thought it easy to understand things I could not
understand — so I said — things that merely had to
be commanded to be understood. The Supreme Headquarters or
another place of authority commanded that matters had to be
understood, then they certainly were crammed into one's head.
They were understood because one was commanded to understand.
What is of importance now is to understand something out of
one's free human soul. To that end it is necessary for people
to wake up. For this, however, there is very little
inclination, yet events will depend upon it. Difficulties do
not arise from a subject being incomprehensible, but from a
lack of will. It is courage that is lacking, courage to look
into this reality. It is self-evident that what must speak in a
new tone to humanity must be formulated in sentences different
from those which men have been accustomed to thus far. For we
have been taken hold of by three things that are different from
what this threefold order of the social organism requires.
In
this threefold order a renewal of spiritual life is demanded in
a way that lets people feel a vital connection of their soul
with objective spiritual life. They do not now have this
connection. When people speak today they speak in hollow
phrases. They do this because they have no relationship to what
these hollow phrases are supposed to express. Men have lost
their connection with the life of the spirit, therefore their
words have become empty talk.
Much has been said about rights in recent years, about the
establishment of rights among civilized mankind. The events of
the present time demonstrate sufficiently how far removed from
reality men are today in regard to human rights. They have not
fought for rights, only for power, but they have talked about
rights.
Now
how is it with economic life? There have been no thoughts that
would have encompassed economic life, therefore events have
taken place of themselves. The characteristic factor in
economic life has been continuous production, as I described it
in Vienna in the spring of 1914 when I called this continuous
producing of goods a social cancer. Commodities were produced
and thrown on the market at random; the whole economic process
was to take place of itself, not thoughtfully directed. A
chaotic economic life without direction; a life of rights
become a mere striving for power; a spiritual life degraded to
hollow phrases: this is the threefold character of social life
we have had and of which we must rid ourselves. We can only get
rid of it if we know how to take seriously what is meant by the
threefold order of the social organism.
But
this can only be understood if we relate it back to
anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. People were
annoyed when in a public lecture some weeks ago I made a
statement which, however, is a fundamental truth. I said: The
leading circles of the present time must no longer rely on
their brain, which has become decadent. They must rise to a
comprehension that does not need the brain, but the ether body.
For the thoughts that must be laid hold of in our spiritual
science do not need the brain. The leading circles, the middle
class of today, the bourgeoisie, just because of their
physiological development, must submit to the development of
spiritual knowledge that can be fostered even with decadent
brains.
The
proletariat, the working class, strives upward. It still has
unused brains. The lemon hasn't yet been completely squeezed
dry; something of an atavistic character still comes out of the
brain. Therefore, the proletariat still understands what is
said in the sense of the new order of things. The situation
today is such that the entire proletariat would be receptive to
these things, but not their leaders, for they have become
bourgeois. They have become greater philistines than the real
philistines. They have taken over philistinism and have
developed it into a high culture. But on the other hand there
exists a terrible penchant for obedience. This obedience will
first have to be broken, otherwise there will be no salvation
here either.
You
see, matters are more complicated in the present age than we
ordinarily imagine, and only the science of initiation can lead
to a real taking hold of the social problems of our time. There
are three concepts you may also find in my book,
The Threefold Social Order,
which I have written not only for
anthroposophists but for the general public. You will find
three important concepts in present-day social life: (1) the
concept of commodity, the product, the goods in economic life;
(2) the concept of labor; (3) the concept of capital. The
social thinking of the present adheres to these three
concepts.
How
much has been proclaimed in social science in order to
comprehend these three concepts! Whoever knows what has arisen
in the second half of the nineteenth century on the subject of
a scientific national economy, trying to penetrate these
concepts of commodity, labor, and capital, knows the impossible
science the economists have achieved. It is totally inadequate.
I have recently quoted a neat example of this. The famous
Professor Lujo Brentano, the luminary of national economic
science in middle Europe at the present time, has recently
written an article entitled, The Entrepreneur, in which
he develops three marks of distinction for the enterpriser. I
shall only mention the third one, the use of the means of
production at one's own risk. The enterpriser is the owner of
the means of production and undertakes production for the
market at his own risk. Now, Brentano so formulates his concept
in that article that he is able to designate a further
enterpriser beside the manufacturer and industrialist, namely,
the modern laborer. The workman is an enterpriser because he
has the means of production, that is, his own labor-force, and
this he offers on the market at his own risk. Mr. Brentano's
concept of the enterpriser is crystal clear as it includes the
laborer among the enterprisers. This shows how clever modern
economic science is! It is ridiculous. But people are not
willing to ridicule such matters because the universities still
take the leading positions in spiritual life. Yet this is what
universities produce in the field of national economy. People
do not have the courage to confess that what is produced in
this field is ridiculous. Matters are really dreadful.
Our
attention, however, must be focused upon such things, therefore
we must ask: Why is it that precisely in regard to social
concepts, which at present become burning questions of the day,
all science is inadequate? It would give me great satisfaction
if I could speak to you more in detail about this question
during my present stay here. Today I shall only give a short
report.
Although the concept “commodity” is merely economic
it can never be formulated with ordinary science. You will not
arrive at the concept of “commodity” if you do not
base it upon imaginative knowledge. You cannot grasp
“labor” in the social, economic life if you do not
base it upon inspired Knowledge. And you cannot define
“capital” if you do not base it upon intuitive
knowledge.
The
concept of commodity demands imagination;
The
concept of labor demands inspiration;
The
concept of capital demands intuition.
[Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.]
If
you do not form these concepts in this manner only confusion
results.
You
can see in detail why such confusion must result. Why does
Brentano define the concept of “capital,” which
coincides with the concept “enterpriser,” in a way
to designate the laborer a capitalist? Because he is a very
clever man of the present day but has no idea that, in order to
gain a real concept of capital, intuitive knowledge is
needed!
In
a certain roundabout way, the Bible points to this when it
speaks of capitalism as “mammonism.” It connects
capital with a certain kind of spirituality, but spirituality
can only be recognized by intuition. If we wish to recognize
the spirituality active in capitalism — mammonism —
we need intuition. We find this already in the Bible. But today
we need a world conception that raises this to the modern
level.
These matters, which today may still be considered queer, must
be penetrated by expert knowledge. Real, expert knowledge in
this sphere will result in the demand for a penetration of
social concepts by genuine, true, spiritual science. This
forces itself today upon the unbiased observer of life. If you
were present, you will remember the memorable question that was
asked at the end of my lecture at the Bernoullianum in Basel,
delivered before my journey. In the following discussion a man
asked: “How can it be brought about that Lenin become the
ruler of the world?” For, in that man's opinion there is
no hope unless Lenin rules the world.
Just consider the confusion! Those men who today behave most
radically are the most reactionary. They want socialism. Above
everything else one ought to begin by socializing rulership,
but they start their socialism with the universal economic
monarchy of Lenin! Not even a beginning is made to socialize
the relationships of rulership. This is how grotesque things
are today. The real situation should be kept in mind if someone
says to you that Lenin ought to become world ruler. Those who
believe they have the most enlightened concepts have the most
perverted ones, and clarity in this sphere cannot be attained
if there is no will to seek this clarity in the science of the
spirit.
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