Spiritual Science and the Social Question
Hamburg, 2nd March 1908
With somebody who hears the word “social question”
today, the most different sensations stir according to his
situation and experience and the seriousness with which he is
able to take life. Thus, it must be compared with a question
that should deeper occupy our time, actually, than it occupies
it. Indeed, this seems to be paradoxically expressed. Those who
are touched immediately by that which the word social question
encloses deal indeed enough with it. However, those who are
preserved even today to come into immediate contact with that
which forms the basis of the social question as a cause are not
still convinced thoroughly enough that every thinking human
being should absolutely occupy himself with it.
Those who take each day as it comes and probably blink the
requirements of the day may experience that either they
themselves or their descendants have negative experiences just
because of their ignorance. You hear even today when people
speak of the social question in the sense that our time must
find a way out from the situation in which many human beings
got into because of the form of our social life: there were
always rich and poor people; there was always a social question
as long as humanity lives and strives. Hence, it is not
surprising if in our time those want to express this more or
less distinctly who are not blessed with worldly goods and want
to conquer that in conflict which fortune does not give them.
There were always rich and poor human beings, those who were
depressed and those who were blessed more or less with
possessions.
With these words, one probably wants to wipe away the
peculiarity of the social question, wants to darken it. One
points to the slave revolts of antiquity, to the revolts in the
Middle Ages and to other events where the depressed ones tried
to get their rights, and one consoles himself with such
phenomena.
Today everybody should know, actually that the social question
is really something new in the human life, that it is something
different from similar movements in other times of the
historical life. For those who look for a solution of the
social question today are persons within our social order first
who exist with this character and stand before us since a short
time only. This depressing fact is a result of the last 120 to
130 years at most; this originated due to the present,
infinitely important progress of the human civilisation. We see
this progress coming up at the end of the 18th century, when
those machines etcetera emerged from the heads of our
inventors.
Since life flows together more and more in the industrial
centres and cities, the wageworker, the proletarian appears in
the modern sense of the word. One cannot separate the social
question from this human class actually created due to the
immense progress of civilisation. The slave of antiquity
struggled, actually, only if he felt depressed in particular,
and he did not have the consciousness that his life could be
improved or his oppression could be reduced with any other
social order. It was similar in the Middle Ages, too. However,
the modern proletarian demands more and more that not this or
that single matter is to be combated, but that only a thorough
reform, maybe also a radical change of the conditions, can
generally change his situation. This conviction has found an
immense propagation, a much bigger propagation within the
working class than those believe who close their eyes. It is
sometimes for someone who figures the matters out quite
astonishing that; nevertheless, there are always still people
who do not have seriousness enough to go into these
matters.
It
could seem rather odd if anybody examined such a practical
demand of the day, such a question of life from the point of
view of spiritual science. For the most people have the idea of
it that it is something impractical, the most impractical stuff
of the world that it has arisen from the heads of some dreamers
and deals with all kinds of matters not dealing with reality.
Indeed, people hear that there is the spiritual-scientific
movement, which teaches about various things and beings of a
supersensible world round us and about the supersensible basis
of the human being himself. Indeed, one also hears that this
spiritual research speaks of many facts, for example, of the
repeated lives on earth and of the great principle of the
spiritual causing of our actions and destinies. One hears that
it leads up to all kinds of higher worlds et cetera. Now
someone can simply think, which practical and interesting facts
of such a question of life like the social one can anybody
recognise who occupies himself with such things!
However, life praxis has a particular explanation. We want to
speak once about this subject just to show how spiritual
science has a real significance only if it is able to intervene
in the practical questions of life. At the same time, we ask
ourselves, what have we to direct our attention upon, if there
is talk of the social question? — The social question
exists, the appearance can convince us of it, and this
appearance convinces somebody most urgently who deals with
life. We could show that with the boom of our industry —
just in England — social conditions of the most dreadful
kind have originated. It was for those who wanted to make
industry fertile for what they called their world solely the
question: how does one get labour force the cheapest? —
There we see those excesses then which were often described how
industry also produces strong shadow beside strong light and
how the blessings of our machines, railways, and steamboats
develop during the 19th century. However, we also realise that
in the wake of that the human being must work, now and again
for working hours, which certainly exceed all that is humanly
possible. We know that in the 19th century not only adults had
to work for 12, 16, 18 or even 20 hours. People who are not
immediately touched know nothing about these matters. We also
know that one employed children of the tenderest age in an
almost unbelievable way in factories. We know how people have
become blind to the impossibility of such a thing.
We
only need to point to a fact that once in a parliament one
discussed whether it is not incredible that children are
employed in the industry for eighteen to nineteen hours, as it
was the case, and a doctor countered that this had to be that
way in some cases! One asked the gentleman whether he did not
regard a working time of 24 hours as something impossible. He
replied, I have convinced myself by deep reasons that the
commonplaces that are talked in such matters cannot always be
taken seriously, and I cannot furnish particulars of any
working time below 24 hours, which could be anyhow detrimental
to health. — Such a thing characterises the situation
more than even the fact in which humanity has been brought by
that which is such a blessing for it at the same time. Who has
not realised in life — if he is able to open his eyes
— that now and again human beings of the tenderest age
cannot learn anything if they are sent to school. All attempts
and ideals to make them human beings are of no avail because
they are not equipped — because of the social need
— with those forces which are sufficient to a humane
existence.
It
is impossible to describe the social need in which humanity was
often brought; I had to unroll too many pictures. However, we
can no longer deny that one fact is sure: that big progress of
the human mind, which has constructed the machines etcetera,
which has spun round our whole earth with a matchless traffic
network, this development of the human mind did not keep
abreast of the reflection that is the optimal way of the human
living together. Today nobody would believe that a machine
constructs itself that no intelligence, no mental power must be
applied to bring a machine into being and to create a traffic
system. However, how many are there today who — even if
they do not admit it — take the view in their innermost
feeling that the human co-existence originates completely from
itself that one does not need any mental strength to intervene
in it as one intervenes in a factory.
Indeed, one does not need to go as far as a great naturalist of
the 19th century who said, oh, humanity has made immense
progress of the knowledge and understanding of the world;
however, concerning morality it has not taken a step forward!
— One does not need to go so far, but it is a fact which
nobody can deny that only a very few human beings who are not
immediately touched by the social misery feel the necessity
today to deal with the social question.
However, if we look at those who deal or should deal with the
social question, what about them? There a book appeared, for
example, not so very long ago by the councillor Kolb: As a
Worker in America (1904). The man left his office with
immense unselfishness, with a real devotion for a while and
went to America. He worked hard in a bicycle factory to get to
know the social life. I have to say first — that nobody
may reproach that I judge unfairly — that his action is
an exceptionally meritorious one that one cannot appreciate it
enough. However, we want to look at a single statement of this
book. You read a rather typical sentence in it: “How
often have I asked once seeing a healthy man begging with moral
indignation: why does this beggarly fellow not work? —
Now I knew it.” He adds, “In theory, one looks at
it somewhat different from in practice, and one deals even with
the most joyless categories of economics still quite tolerably
with the study.”
One
would like to say that a whole world of human sensations and
human work speaks from such a sentence. We have a man before us
who got the position of a councillor. He discloses that he has
known life so little that he called everybody a beggarly fellow
who did not work, that he had to leave his office and go far
away to America to get to know the life for which he should
give advice, to which his actions referred. One can study; one
can advance to an excellent position and can be in need of
such! One does not have eyes to see to the left and to the
right; one knows nothing about life. This is possible!
If
we notice such a matter, we may raise the question whether it
could not be that the conditions of certain matters are bad
because anybody on whom it depends disdains to get to know
life. One talks about a lot of improvements, proposals, and
matters that one should establish. Human beings must establish
them. May there not be a little difference between things,
which persons have established who understand something of
life, and things, which such persons have established who admit
so brilliantly that they understand nothing? What is the use of
all talking if one does not see that it depends on somebody who
talks about it and knows something about it? How much of that
which whirrs through life may be quite empty gossip and how
much could be really accomplished and come into being?
The
question is probably justified. Many people think about the
social question; too many, if we consider the question more
seriously if we consider what is necessary to understand
something useful of this question. Today there are many people
who say: at the moment when the conditions become better when
the conditions are changed, the life of the human beings and
their situation will be better, too. — We know that above
all the most comprehensive social theory in the present,
socialism, also positions itself on this point of view. We know
that it always stresses, do not give us all kinds of proposals
how the human beings should become better how the human beings
should behave! Do not give us all kinds of moral demands! What
it depends on, is merely — they stress this — to
improve the conditions.
Symptomatically you can face such a starry-eyed idealist who
represents his social theories at different places of Germany
and says repeatedly, yes, people state that the human beings
had to become better first if the conditions should become
better. However, he says, everything depends on the fact that
humanity is transported to the right conditions. — He
also tells that one limited the pubs here and there once and
that then less drunkards were there, and, therefore, some
people were doing better. Then he preaches to the workers that
charity, mutual brotherliness is an empty phrase. Everything
would depend on causing such conditions of employment and life
that everybody has his sufficient existence, and then the moral
condition would already become better by itself, too.
You
know that socialism develops such a view extensively. This is
nothing else than a result of the materialism in our time, that
materialism which cannot look, like spiritual science, into the
inside of the human being and cannot recognise that any social
condition is created by human beings, is the result of human
thoughts and feelings. Socialism, however, believes that the
human being is a product of the external conditions. This
belief paralyses the fruitful consideration of the social life
in the highest degree. It is paralysing, and we do not want to
state any theoretical proof of it, but we want to adduce a
historical evidence.
If
anybody was suited for a social reformer, it was Robert Owen
(1771-1854) living around the turn of 18th to the 19th
centuries. He had two virtues that enabled him to intervene in
the social life from his point of view: a candid look for the
industrial progress and for the damages, for human welfare and
human luck, which this progress brings. He had a candid look
and an open heart for human grief, and on the other side, he
had a good will and initiative to give at least a number of
human beings a worthy existence. He lived in a materialistic
time at first and, therefore, he was, like so many, depending
on the theory that one needed to cause suitable conditions only
to develop a thoroughly moral humanity.
Therefore, he founded a little colony in America, which one
could call a model in every respect if the condition had been
right. He had guaranteed a humane existence by means of
external facilities to the people. Among diligent and keen
people, he had neglected ones whom the example of the first
should inspire to become decent human beings. An exemplary
economy developed that induced the idea in him to try the same
in a bigger scale. Then there came the second colony, which was
formed as practically and humanely as the first. However, he
who had put up not only the theory that the improvement of the
conditions must cause the improvement of the human destinies
had to experience the disillusion which we characterise with
his own words. Because the human beings were not ripe for the
conditions he wrote, what does any improvement of the
conditions help if not the general moral and knowledge are
raised before? First, it depends on informing the human being
about his inner life, above all, about his soul forces; then
only one can envisage to solve the social question rather
worthily.
A
practitioner, no theorist judges that way, and it is typical in
certain respect how little humanity learns from facts that one
maintains the same theories in spite of this repeatedly.
However, someone who is able to see a little deeper into the
human souls knows that such an individual case is generally
connected with the development of the human souls in the
present. Whether the one or the other admits it or not, it is
the basic conviction that everything can be done if one changes
the external conditions, and finds a remedy quickly with the
damages which threaten humanity. These are the basic
convictions in our time. If we see, for example, repeatedly
that laws are justified saying: one is not allowed to deliver
the inexperienced humanity to these or those people, and then
one does not notice at all that one would have another task
than to make laws, that one should teach the inexperienced
humanity, so that it could determine their actions itself.
One
does not easily look from the conditions to the human beings.
However, this is the task of spiritual science. It completely
turns away from the conditions and completely to the human
beings. We ask ourselves, where from do the conditions round us
come? — In so far as they are not imposed by nature, they
are the results of the human feeling and thinking. The
conditions of today were thoughts and intentions of human
beings who have lived once. The conditions are in such a way
because human beings have thought them that way. If we want to
improve conditions, we have to learn above all to develop
better thoughts, feelings, and intentions. However, if we look
around among the social theorists, even among the most radical
ones, the social democrats if you like, then these theories
mostly do not go beyond that which the human beings have always
thought. They have originated from the same thoughts and
impulses from which our conditions have arisen and have led to
our situation. We must be able to have human beings who know
life and know what is about the forces that work behind
life.
What did Robert Owen lack? He himself had to admit: knowledge
of human nature! — One never gets to know the human being
if one puts up a worldview that is directed only to the
external appearance. As long as the human being does not know
what is hidden behind this physical corporeality and he thereby
does not attain the ability to look, so to speak, behind the
scenes, he is able by no means to understand something about
the forces controlling life. However, this is just the task of
spiritual science. One may admit that it does not fulfil its
task everywhere sufficiently; one has to admit that within the
circles looking for it one often plays with the highest
questions of existence. That does not matter, but it matters
what the spiritual investigation can mean to us. It can be not
only something that teaches us that gives us dogmas, but it can
be a powerful education of our innermost soul forces. This is
the best that one can gain from spiritual science if we
consider the spiritual-scientific worldview from the point of
view how it transforms the human being. Then the picture
presents itself this way.
We
speak here about views that the spiritual investigation has
about the various fields of life. We were able to speak about
this and that of its teachings. However, we will not speak
about that. Someone who familiarises himself with spiritual
science will notice one thing: concerning one important point
it distinguishes itself from everything that is, otherwise,
theory today. This is important. In most cases, the human being
soon finishes if he should develop a worldview, and he likes it
very much if he can have a rounded off worldview as soon as
possible. It is clear to experts of the conditions that many a
materialist is a materialist only because he does not go far
with his thoughts because he falls short. Materialism makes it
easy for its followers, very easy. One can oversee the
construction of the world from purely material facts easily and
see — particularly if it is still illustrated with photos
— how the human being has developed. One needs only to
stare at them and can pursue the whole way of the world
evolution using the usual ideas of life. It is simple to follow
what the materialists say about the riddles of the world
because the thoughts do not tangle up because no particular
requirements are imposed.
The
matter is not so easy with spiritual science. It does not make
it easy for the human being, because it starts from the real
and the true requirement that the secrets of the world are deep
and that you must dig up deeply into the basis of the things if
you want to understand the world. What spiritual science
teaches about the development of the universe and the human
being gets the thoughts in manifold tangles. That forces the
human being sometimes to deal with details and, on the other
side, he is led to the greatest perspectives. However, that has
a certain result, and about this result, I want to speak
openly. It trains and prepares thinking there where we face
this complex human life in the single case to understand this
life. Someone will say, the worlds that spiritual science
describes have made me quite dizzy.
Is
this a bad sign of spiritual science? It would be better if
this approach did not make the human being dizzy, but
strengthened him, and then he would be ready to understand life
with strong soul forces. However, the practical ideas about the
world and life are such ones: if a human being thinks about the
riddles of the world in short thoughts, he also thinks about
the social order in short thoughts. Thus, we see that that
which famous people think about social questions is a rather
precise picture of that which is offered to us as a materialist
worldview unable to penetrate into the depths of life. Besides,
everybody has the uncertain feeling that that which causes
difficulty for him is a fantastic, dreamlike stuff, and that
spiritual science would have to be a fantastic, dreamlike, at
least rather idealistic stuff, in any case, unsuitable for
practical purposes in life. Indeed, Fichte (Johann Gottlieb F.,
1762-1814, philosopher) said more than hundred years ago to his
Jena students: those practical people to whom comprehensive
ideas always seem impractical because ideas and ideals are not
always applicable in life prove only that in the plan of
creation one did not count on them. May a benevolent providence
give them sunshine, food, and clever thoughts! — Fichte
also spoke about the incapability of some people to imagine the
spiritual aspect of the ego: “One could most people
convince to regard themselves as pieces of lava on the moon
than as egos.” However, it is a necessity of life to
imagine the ego.
If
we consider life and the social question from this point of
view, we must say that we consider spiritual science as the
great school of life. It makes it impossible that one goes
through life, receives a certain position, even becomes a
councillor and becomes a life coach, and has to go far, far
away to get to know life once during a vacation in order to be
convinced of the fact that not everybody who does not work is a
beggarly fellow. Such a thing becomes impossible by spiritual
science.
Hence, we do not speak only about a spiritual point of view,
about any spiritual-scientific views concerning socialism, but
we talk about something else. We consider spiritual science as
a real thing, not only as a sum of dogmas, but as something
that gives knowledge and wisdom, which flows directly in the
immediate life at every moment and opens our eyes, so that we
cope with this life. Thus, spiritual science is the general
basis of any judgment whether we judge in the field of the
social life or that of education.
Our
judgment becomes sounder because it arises from the true human
nature, if we start from spiritual-scientific points of view.
We say that someone himself, who is infiltrated with that which
spiritual science is able to give, gets to a correct judgment.
Anybody may ask, how does a follower of spiritual science think
in which way this or that parliamentarian has to judge about a
question if he has judged wrongly according to his view?
— This is no correct question from the spiritual point of
view, but one has to say, it does not concern of saying how
this or that should think, but one is convinced that he has
— if he is filled with basic truth — a clear
judgment on every post. We do not dictate his judgment to him,
but he finds the correct judgment. In this respect, spiritual
science is the most liberal life principle that can be there.
It is not dogmatic, but it gives the human being the
possibility to have his own, sound free judgment always and
everywhere.
Conditions — we have started from it — are often
regarded as that which can change the human being, and one
thinks in the abstract how conditions can be changed. Spiritual
science is solely concerned with the real human soul, with the
relations from human being to human being. It is quite
impossible today to go into single concrete matters of the
social question. However, I want to point to this or that to
find the components that show us the way where we are in life
to intervene correctly. For it is our task to intervene. If we
want to find the components, we ask ourselves, which is,
actually, the basic fact, the basic phenomenon on which all
misery, all social grief may generally depend in the world?
— Spiritual science can show us this basic fact, putting
us before a fact that most people do not understand and
acknowledge today. This fact is connected with a basic
phenomenon of any development. I would like to say, speaking
dryly, it shows us by deeper views on life that poverty, grief
and misery not only — and least of all if one finds the
underlying cause of the things — depend on external
conditions, but on a certain soul constitution and in the
connection with it on its external effects.
The
practitioner who regards himself as much cleverer thinks that
this is ridiculous. However, one can only stress that it is the
most practical in life. It is the sentence of which you
persuade yourselves more and more that need, misery and grief
are nothing else than the results of egoism. Like a physical
law we have to understand this sentence, not in such a way that
possibly with a single human being need and grief happen if he
is always selfish, but that this grief is connected with this
egoism — maybe at another place. Like cause and effect,
egoism is connected with the need and grief. Egoism leads to
the struggle of existence in the human life, in the social
human order. The struggle for existence is the real starting
point of need and grief, if they are social. Because of our
modern way of thinking there is a conviction to which appears
absurd what I have just stated. Why? Because one is persuaded
today that a big part, by far the biggest part of the human
life must be built on egoism. Indeed, with words and theories,
one does not want to admit it, but in practice, one will soon
admit it. One admits it in the following way. One says, it is
quite natural that the human being is paid for his job that he
receives the yield of his work personally — and,
nevertheless, that is nothing but the implementation of egoism
in the economic life. Egoism controls us as soon as we live by
the principle: we have to be paid personally; one has to pay to
me what I work. — Truth is a long way from this thought
so that it seems quite senseless. Who wants to convince himself
of the truth about egoism has to go more intimately into
various universal principles. He would have to abandon himself
thoughtfully to the question whether the work that is paid
personally is really life-sustaining, whether it depends on
this work? — It is curious to put this question. However,
not sooner than one thinks about it, one is able to inform
about the social question.
Imagine — this is a paradoxical comparison — a man
transported to an island. He has only to supply himself. You
say, he must work! — However, he must not only work, this
is not the point, but something must be added to his work. If
the work is only work, it can eventually be useless for his
life. Think once that the man on the island would do nothing
but to throw stones during fourteen days. This would be a
strenuous work, and according to usual human concepts, he could
earn quite a lot of wage. Nevertheless, this work is not at all
connected with life. Work is life-sustaining and has value only
if anything else is added. If this work consists of the
cultivation of the soil and one receives the products of the
earth, then work has something to do with life. We see even
with lower beings that work is separated from production. Thus,
we see a possibility to get to the tremendously important
sentence that work as such has no meaning for life, but only
that work which is guided wisely. What is to be produced using
human wisdom serves the human being. The modern social thinking
offends against this sentence because it does not understand in
the least.
It
does not depend on the fact that anybody invents beautiful
abstract theories, but the real progress depends on the fact
that every single human being learns to think socially. Modern
thinking is often antisocial. It is antisocial, for example, if
anybody is on Sunday afternoon outdoors and says, animated by
occasion: I write twenty postcards. It is correct and socially
intended to know and to feel that these twenty cards cause so
many postmen climbing so and so many stairs. It is social
thinking to know that any action, which one does, has an effect
in life. Now, however, somebody comes and says that he thinks
socially inasmuch as he understands that more postmen must be
employed and get their bread because of this card writing.
— This is, as if one thinks of anything that one wants to
build in order to employ unemployed workers. However, it does
not depend on job creation, but that the work of the human
beings is used solely to create valuable goods.
If
one thinks that through to the last consequences, it does no
longer seem so strange if the ancient sentence of spiritual
science is pronounced which sounds today as incomprehensible as
possible: in a social living together, the impulse of working
must never be in the own personality of the human being, but
only in the dedication to the community. This is also often
emphasised, but it is never understood in such a way that
misery and need originate from the fact that the single human
being wants to have paid what he has worked for. However, it is
true that real social progress is only possible if I do that
which I work for in the service of the community, and if the
community gives me what I need, if, with other words, what I
work for does not serve me. The social progress depends solely
on the recognition of this sentence that someone does not want
to get the yield of his work as a personal remuneration.
Somebody leads an enterprise to quite different purposes who
knows that he should have nothing for himself from that which
he works for, but that he owes work to the social community,
and that, vice versa, he should claim nothing for himself, but
limits his existence to that which the social community gives
him. As absurd this is for many people today, as true it is.
The opposite fact influences our life today: by the claim of
the worker to get the full yield of his work more and more. As
long as the thinking moves in this direction, one comes into
worse and worse situations.
This antisocial thinking tempts to shift all concepts. Think
once how within the widespread socialism one speaks of
exploiters and exploited. Who is the exploiter, and who is the
exploited from the view of clear thinking? Let us look at a
worker who produces a garment for starvation wages. Who is his
exploiter? Perhaps, the man who buys the garment and pays a
very low price for it. Does only the rich man buy this garment?
Does the same worker who complains about exploitation not buy
this cheap garment? Does he not require today, within the
social order, that it should be as cheap as possible? You see
the working woman who works with bloody fingers during the week
can wear the dress for a cheap price on Sunday because the
human labour of another person is exploited!
That has nothing to do with wealth or poverty in front of the
clear thinking, but solely with our idea of human relations in
the world. Anybody could easily say, if you demand that the
existence of the human being should be independent of his
performance, then an official complies with the ideal most
nicely. The modern official is independent. The measure of his
existence is not depending on the product, which he produces,
but from that which one regards as necessary to his existence.
— Indeed, but such an objection has a very big mistake.
It depends on the fact that everybody is able to respect this
principle and to implement it in life freely. It does not
matter that this principle is carried out by general power.
This principle has to penetrate every single human life to make
the personally acquired independent from that which one works
for the community. How does it assert itself?
There is only one possibility to assert itself, which will seem
rather impractical to the so-called practitioner. There must be
reasons why the human being works; nevertheless, namely rather
diligently and devotedly if no longer the self-interest is the
impulse of his work. Somebody does not create anything real
concerning the social life in truth, who takes out a patent of
any achievement and shows this way that he regards the
self-interest as significant in life. However, somebody works
really for life who is led by his forces to right achievements
merely by love, by love to the whole humanity, which he gives
his work with pleasure and willing. Thus, the impulse of work
must be in anything else than in remuneration. This is the
solution of the social question: separation of remuneration
from work. For this is a worldview which aims at the spirit to
wake such impulses in the human being that he does no longer
say: if my income is secure, I can be lazy. — A spiritual
worldview can only achieve that he does not say this. Any
materialism solely leads to its opposite in the long run.
Anyone may now say: this is a nice little test of the social
question; this is rather cute! Have we not always preached
this, the one may say, that the human beings are selfish, and
that one must count on their egoism? Now there comes the
spiritual worldview and says that this can change. —
Indeed, one has always preached that this could not be
different and one was very proud of it and said, someone is a
true practitioner who counts on the human egoism. —
Indeed, but here the thinking of the people does not turn the
tables. For those who blame everything for conditions, for
facilities must admit that at least — because just the
conditions were in such a way as they have developed up to now
— that also this desire and impulse came into the human
being. However, there the thinking becomes too short. For,
otherwise, they would have to say, yes, quite different
surroundings are created at any rate, if the idea becomes
established that it is indecent to found everything on personal
self-interest. Materialism becomes inconsistent there even
compared with its own requirements.
We
must understand that the impulses of spiritual science could
never be given to the human development up to now. In this
respect, it is a new spiritual movement, and it will have the
strength to work on the innermost soul because it penetrates
into the innermost world. Only a worldview that penetrates the
core and fetches truth there can show us the true face of the
world. It is never right that we can become bad by true
knowledge if we see the true face of the world. Nevertheless,
it is true that the bad in the human being can come only from
mistake and error. Hence, spiritual science bases because of
its knowledge of the human nature on the fact that it will
achieve that with which just the noble Owen deceived himself so
much.
He
says, it is necessary that the human beings are enlightened
first so that moral is improved. — Spiritual science,
however, says, it is not sufficient to emphasise this
principle, but the means must be given by which the soul can be
improved. If a spiritual worldview improves and strengthens the
souls, the conditions and external relations will follow
because they are always reflections of that which the human
beings think. The human beings are not determined by
conditions, but the human beings make these conditions, as far
as the conditions are social. If the human being suffers from
conditions, he suffers in truth from that which his fellow men
bring on him. Any misery that has come with the industrial
development came only from the fact that the human beings did
not bother to apply the same strength of mind, which they had
applied to the beneficial external progress, to the improvement
of the destinies of those persons who are needed for the
transformation of this progress.
Whatever you have studied in the external life, study the laws
of the human living together equally busily! If, however, human
beings live together, not only bodies, but also souls, minds
live together. Hence, only spiritual science can be the basis
of any social worldview. Thus, we see that, indeed, the
deepening of the mind can enable us to assist from our low
posts within our sphere in the big social progress. For this
progress is not achieved by an abstract rule, but it is a sum
of that which the single soul does. Only a worldview like
spiritual science approaches the single soul in such a way that
it really raises this soul above it. If our social misery has
its reason in the personal self-interest, in the position in
our social orders, then only a worldview can help which raises
the ego out of the personal self-interest. As peculiar as it
appears, food originates not only from our work; food
originates also from the spiritual-scientific deepening instead
of need, grief, and misery. Spiritual science is a means to
give the human being food and prosperity, in the true sense of
the word.
Thus, it is really justified, even concerning our changed
conditions, what Goethe said about the real liberation from all
obstacles and misfortune of life. Goethe says in the poem
The Secrets: “From the power that ties all beings
that human being frees himself who overcomes
himself.”
That sentence that Goethe said about the single human being
also applies to humanity in as much as this human being is a
social being: those human beings who overcome themselves free
the world from the power that ties all beings.
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