Moral Impulses and Their Results
The
Relationship of the European Peoples to Their Folk-Souls
The
Cultural Impulse of Eurythmy
Nuremberg, 14th March 1915
It
may seem at first and it seems so to many people, as if that
what one calls clairvoyant forces in the true sense of the word
through which the beings and processes of the spiritual worlds
can be recognised, as if the human being does not have these
clairvoyant forces in the everyday life at all, or as if he
develops nothing at all of these forces in his soul in the
everyday life. However, it is not that way. The clairvoyant
forces are not such forces which are quite strange to the human
being living in the everyday life. This is not the case, but
that we have to develop so that we can behold in the spiritual
worlds what we must bring out of the deep subsoil of the soul
in order to find the path into the spiritual worlds, this
already exists in a certain soul activity also for the everyday
life of the human being.
These are the moral impulses of the human being. A really moral
action, a really moral impulse arises from the same abilities
of the soul which lead to clairvoyant abilities by means of a
corresponding development. Indeed, for the everyday life the
matter is different because everything that the human being is
doing comes from his physical nature or from that which he has
acquired for and by means of his physical nature in the course
of life. If the human being develops desires if the human being
does this or that what he is determined by his education or his
other conditions of life, then it is the body from which the
impulse comes. But there are real impulses in the human life
which do not come from the body with which only the soul deals
if the human being grasps these impulses: these are the moral
impulses. A really moral action is that to which the body is
called for help, indeed, so that one gets a mental picture of
the moral action, but the impulse of the moral action is in the
psycho-spiritual which is really independent of the bodily. One
will never be able to define moral with the help of mere
philosophy, and it is just the typical of philosophy, provided
that it wants to be moral philosophy, that it does not come to
a correct, satisfying definition of moral if it does not
position itself on the ground that the human being is able to
experience his psycho-spiritual in himself independently of his
body.
We
know that human life is composed of moral, less moral and
immoral actions and impulses. The difference which exists
between moral and immoral actions appears only to the esoteric
consideration in the true light. The human being goes in his
smallest life cycle, in that time of twenty-four hours, into
the sleeping state. This sleeping state means that the ego and
the astral body go out basically from the physical and etheric
bodies and live then beyond this physical and etheric bodies.
Not yet everything is said with it if I say that the ego and
the astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies. But you
have also to realise that the ego and the astral body, while
they leave the etheric and the physical bodies, are taken up in
the spiritual worlds which prevail in the supersensible around
us. We go into the supersensible worlds with our ego and astral
body. If we have had a moral impulse during the day, during our
waking state and have accomplished a moral action, then the
following is true: we must be taken up with our ego and astral
body by the spirits of the next higher hierarchies, by the
spirits, which we count to the hierarchy of the angels, of the
archangels et cetera. These take us up; we go into them as it
were in the sleeping state.
As
well as we live in the body during the day, we live inside the
beings of the higher hierarchies during sleep. That has to be
clear to us. If we have accomplished a moral action, if we have
had a moral impulse, then it is possible for the beings of the
next higher hierarchies — according to the spiritual
cosmic laws — to take up our ego and our astral body with
our moral impulses or that which of our moral impulses has
remained in our soul. If we have committed an immoral action or
have had an immoral impulse, we cannot come with this rest,
with that which was formed by the immoral impulse in us into
the beings of the higher hierarchies during sleep. That really
remains behind, is pushed back which is immoral in us, it is
pushed down again into the physical nature. The result of the
fact is that everything that we bring as an after-effect of
morality into the spiritual worlds during sleep does not have
an effect on our physical and etheric bodies, because it is
taken away from them.
An
immoral idea, an immoral impulse, an immoral action, however,
becomes something that is pushed back into the etheric and
physical bodies and this has an effect on them. That is why the
results of immoral actions can work in the physical and etheric
bodies during sleep, from falling asleep up to waking. In this
regard, it is really easy to recognise what I have often
emphasised in my talks that language has a miraculous genius
that it works ingeniously. If we speak of guilt, there just
this German word “Schuld” (also meaning
debts) signifies infinitely exactly this what it concerns.
We pay what we owe to the spiritual world with our moral
actions, but we remain guilty to the spiritual world of that
which we must leave behind in our bodies, our immoral thoughts,
our immoral impulses, our immoral actions.
Take now the following into account: if we spent our life in
such a way that we would only perceive the things of the
outside world and think about them, the processes even in our
physical body would be quite different than they are. Because
we not only think and perceive, but we also remember the
thoughts, perceptions and experiences. What we think, imagine,
feel goes down into our etheric body, but the etheric body
imprints it again into the physical body. And that what the
etheric body creates like impressions in the physical body this
is memory. If we remember something of former experiences in
the later life, this means: we bump our astral body, which is
connected then with the etheric body, on that what like an
impression, as a seal impression has remained in our physical
body. The materialistic idea is childish: as if a recollection
sits in the brain here, another there, as if it is tinned thus.
This is not true, but any recollection has an impression which
corresponds basically to the whole head and still some other
parts of the human figure, and the recollections are in each
other, not side by side as a childish materialistic idea
supposes it.
This activity of remembering is based on the fact that our
astral and etheric bodies can cause impressions in our physical
bodies. It is really the same activity which takes place
externally when we write down something. If we look at the
notes, then that what we have in our soul, of course, does not
have the slightest resemblance to the signs we have on the
paper. On the paper are signs of any form, but by that what we
do then from it, while we are induced to bring back to life
again that in the soul which we have written down, a spiritual
process takes place. It is the same also with memory. What
remains in us does not have more resemblance in principle with
that which appears in the soul while remembering, than that
which stands on the paper, with that what appears in the soul
if we read it again.
Clairvoyantly beheld, the matter is like that: let us suppose
that somebody remembers something that he has gone through
once. What lights up then in his physical body, is a mark which
is a copy of the human figure from the head and a piece below
in any way. These are marks. Every mark is different which
appears in the memory, but these are marks. The soul only makes
with the help of the marks what we experience, while we
remember. This is really a subconscious reading what appears as
memory. If natural sciences progress a little further and
investigate the physical processes, they will be a help to
spiritual science, while they will show that that what remains
in the body must really be submitted by the soul to a process
which is similar to the reading in the soul in principle.
Memory is a real subconscious reading. This is a regular
activity of the human soul, this remembering.
However, if we send down results of immoral impulses, thoughts
or actions into our body while falling asleep, we do not remove
immoral impulses from our physical body. Something similar
thereby happens as it happens usually regularly in memory. The
work on the physical body imprints itself there. If now the
human being wants to fall asleep and his ego and astral body
want to go out from his physical and etheric bodies, this
process begins. What he must leave behind there imprints itself
like memories imprint themselves, and then there come the pangs
of conscience which appear there. This is the real process of
the pangs of conscience. Thus they are reflected from that what
the matters cause as impressions in our physical body and also
in the etheric body. This remains then.
Because these pangs of conscience remain as the regular
memories do and attain strength, they appear then as self
reproaches in the further life. This is the important matter
that we really succeed in seeing that the moral action is a
real process that it is not only something abstract, but that
this moral action is handing up that into the spiritual worlds
what we here act on earth. Because we hand over the results of
our moral behaviour to the higher hierarchies, they also remain
in certain respect in these higher hierarchies. What we cannot
take with us what works then in the physical and etheric bodies
remains here on earth; this is in the earth process. If the
human being has gone through the gate of death, he must always
look back at it, and while he always looks back at it, the
impulse must originate in him to put it away from the earth
process. The working out of karma between death and a new birth
is based on that.
We
take the results of our moral impulses in our karma with us,
but while we bring them into spiritual worlds during sleep,
they also make impressions there. We can say that the angels,
the archangels, also the spirits of personality then have the
moral impulses. What do they do with them? These moral
impulses, which are now in the spiritual world, are the real
fertilising germs for the later earth periods. Not only that we
keep these results in our karma, but we bring the impressions
up, and in the coming earth epochs the spirits of higher
hierarchies bring them down again. These results of the moral
impulses are the fertilising germs for the human inventive
thinking, for the human thinking generally in later earth
epochs. Imagine that an epoch of the earth evolution is quite
immoral, so that no impressions of moral impulses are brought
to the spiritual worlds. Then an epoch would follow in the
earth evolution when the human beings would think of little for
the life on earth when the human beings would have few ideas
and concepts when they have no means to imprint and stimulate
their soul-lives.
So
we stand with our moral impulses in a real process of the
universe. Hence, spiritual science which shows us such a matter
is suitable to increase our responsibility, to make our
responsibility more vigorous, because we thereby notice only
what it means to be moral or immoral in human life. Being
immoral means to take its life germs away from the earth, to
incorporate them into the physical earth process in which they
become then germs of destruction for the next earth epochs,
because they are also preserved there, of course, because
nothing gets lost. Then they extinguish that what should live
vividly as a soul element. Suppose that a bigger crowd of
people would decide that they would live immorally in a certain
epoch. Then a later epoch poor in thoughts would be thereby
caused, and the souls would come down to the earth and find no
ideas there, they would have a desolate life.
It
is now possible that we take up not only the contents of moral
in our knowledge. If we do not take up that in our effective
knowledge, we obliterate the earth. But we need and we have the
possibility to take up something different in our soul
development, and this is the knowledge of the supersensible.
Basically, the earth never was completely without supersensible
knowledge. We know that humankind received a certain
inheritance of clairvoyant capacities, also of clairvoyant
knowledge in olden times. It is not long ago that the aftermath
of this clairvoyant knowledge was there on earth. We also know
that we live in the time when this clairvoyant knowledge is
drawing to an end since centuries, but must be replaced by the
clairvoyant knowledge gained consciously. We live in this
important time. We have yesterday made ourselves aware that the
fifth culture-epoch and those who are its bearers have a
vocation to gain clairvoyant knowledge consciously for the
souls. The fifth culture-epoch will not come to an end, before
a certain sum of clairvoyant knowledge has grasped a relatively
big part of humankind. Herder's saying is true that
enlightenment will spread over the earth.
Any
knowledge we acquire from the only sensory outside world, all
the thoughts we have only as after-images of the sensory
outside world cannot be brought directly by us into the
spiritual world, while we sleep. It is true, the thoughts, the
ideas which we have reach to the beings of the higher
hierarchies up to a certain degree — just with the
exception of the immoral impulses. However, that rises up which
we acquire as pictures of the outside world up to a certain
degree into the spiritual world. But it does not rise up very
far, not at all to the sphere of the archangels. So that the
human being — if he fills himself with ideas only which
come from the sensory world — can bring that which he
gains as ideas of the sensory world not very far into the
spiritual worlds. The supersensible ideas we experience in
ourselves are brought far into the spiritual worlds. Just those
beings who belong to the hierarchy of the archangels get, as it
were, the impressions of them and carry them over into later
times. That of supersensible knowledge which the human egos and
astral bodies carry up into the spiritual worlds is used later
for the earth evolution.
It
does not form, like the moral impulses, the fertilising germs,
the stimulating element, but the germs for that which we call
the earth progress. Refusing supersensible ideas by an age
means the condemnation of a coming age to make no progress in
the earth evolution. He who refuses the supersensible ideas
restrains the progress of coming epochs as far as he is
concerned. If any nation became quite materialistic, this
materialism of a whole nation would condemn the earth to a
standstill in its development — of course up to a certain
degree because the other peoples would not have to reject the
supersensible ideas. We see again how the acquisition of
supersensible ideas is significant in the earth process itself.
Causes and effects are connected in the whole earth process
that way. Those human beings who are, as it were, consciously
materialists in our present are ahrimanically enticed beings,
enticed by the ahrimanic spirits, because Ahriman is very
interested in restraining the regular progress.
We
see again how spiritual science is able to increase the feeling
of responsibility of the individual human soul to the world as
a whole. We see spiritual science snatching us from our selves
and making us members of the whole human process, that
spiritual science is basically an unselfish activity of the
human soul.
In
a certain respect, any living in supersensible ideas is a
reproduction of the moral life. Hence, there is nothing more
disturbing for the knowledge of the supersensible worlds than
filling the human soul with immoral impulses. That is why it is
deeply founded to demand a kind of moral thinking in the most
eminent sense as a preparation of the esoteric development. The
fifth epoch has the task to make consciously sure that
spiritual knowledge fills the human beings, so that during the
rest of the post-Atlantean age the progress of humanity is not
restrained, so that really a progress can take place in
humanity. If we have to ascribe the natural ability of
spiritual knowledge in the most eminent sense just to the
Central European peoples after all our discussions during the
last days, it must be clear to us which significance the
further existence, the undisturbed development of the Central
European culture has.
If
we now are able to see the horizon of the European life only a
little bit by means of that which we have mentioned, what does
it present to us? The life of the higher hierarchies is
connected with the life of peoples. You need only to study the
series of talks about the development of the folk-souls which
was held once in Kristiania (= Oslo), which is
especially important to study in our present time. You need
only to call it in your mind and you will see how the
archangels intervene in the national life; how generally this
national life unfolds in the cooperation of the higher
hierarchies with that what happens here on earth. If we look at
an individual human being, we know that his ego-development
takes place only slowly and gradually. Indeed, in the tender
childhood, from the time up to which one remembers, the
ego-consciousness begins. But this ego becomes increasingly
mature, advances in his development. In our time big mistakes
are there concerning this ego-development. There is too little
a consciousness of the fact that such an ego-development takes
place in life. Thus one can experience that today greenhorns
regard themselves to be mature to judge everything because they
do not know that one has to attain a certain age to judge
certain matters, because the ego thereby reaches a certain
maturity only.
As
it is in the individual life of the human being, it is also in
the life of peoples. We must only take the following into
consideration if we want to understand the life of peoples in
relation to the individual human life on the physical plane.
The individual human being matures concerning to his
ego-development. Because he grows increasingly mature, he also
learns to take a better overview of the outside world. What we
know about the outside world if we have attained twenty,
twenty-five years, and what we can know if we spend life
substantially if we have worked through ten years more. For
such matters just the spiritual scientist has to get a feeling.
There is the ego in its relation to the external world, to its
surroundings.
The
beings of the higher hierarchies behave differently. These
beings of the higher hierarchies have the same relationship to
our egos as we have to the matters of the outside world. The
matters and beings of the mineral, plant and animal realms are
objects for us. For the beings of the higher hierarchies, for
example, our egos are objects. The relationship of the beings
of the higher hierarchies to our egos is not that of perception
as we have it to the outside world. Their volition rather
penetrates our egos, their volition works on our egos.
Those archangels who have to lead the peoples have the same
relationship to the egos, to the individual human beings of the
people as we have concerning the perception of matters of the
outside world. We are the objects for these archangels. What is
an outside world for us, we are as human beings for the
archangels, only that it is more a process of perception with
us and more a process of will with the archangels. But
concerning this process of will the archangel also experiences
a development. This archangel goes through a maturation of his
soul exactly the same way, now not concerning his ego, but
concerning deeper forces of his soul. He experiences a
development through which he attains another relation to the
individual human beings of his nation; as well as we attain
another relation to our environment with a more mature ego.
Let
us take, for example, the archangel to whom the guidance of the
Italian people has been transferred in the course of history.
This archangel has had such a relation to the Italian people
for a long time that he has, actually, worked with his will
basically on the higher parts of the soul. In the further
course this archangel had an effect not only on the higher
parts of the soul, but also on the lower ones, on the passions,
on the impulses of the soul which are still connected with the
body. Thus the development of the archangel goes on: at first,
he has more an effect on the soul as such, in the later course
he becomes more and more powerful and works on those parts of
the soul which are more connected with the body.
We
can give for the Italian people that the archangel experienced
a condition of his development in 1530 which can be
characterised in such a way that one can say: he has worked
more on the real soul, now he starts impregnating the soul more
with his will, in so far as it penetrates the body. The Italian
people, really, starts now to let itself go concerning its
appearance, to develop its national character so surely. Study
the history of the Italian people before the mentioned time
— about the middle of the 16th century, — then you
see that there the archangel still worked on the internal soul
qualities of the Italian people; that then the external
national character formed in the most remarkable sense, as we
know it today. Before this point in time — and such a
point in time exists for any people — the whole soul-life
of a people is still alive. It is still possible then that the
soul-life of the people can take on this or that quality. The
qualities are not yet coined so strongly. After this point in
time, when the archangel has developed his will relations to
the deeper qualities of the soul, the people's character
becomes rigid; it penetrates the bodily qualities. The time
begins when one can hardly approach the people with anything
that does not correspond to the national character. It becomes
nervous at once if anybody comes with anything that does not
lie completely in the national line or current.
One
can really give this point in time in the historical
development of the French people correctly. All these
statements are approximate, of course, but this time is for the
French people about 1600, in the beginning of the 17th century,
and for the English people in the middle of the 17th century,
in 1650.
If
you go back before this time, to the Middle Ages, you see how
much the peoples of Europe still have in common, and how with
the single peoples the development of the national character
begins at the points in time which I have given. The archangel
experiences a development so that one can say: his forces were
even weaker before that, so that he was only able to work on
the soul, on the inside. The forces grow stronger after that,
he can stretch his forces up to the physical. He thereby causes
the sharply distinctive national character. Single phenomena
appear quite comprehensible to you if you have such matters for
the historical consideration. Imagine that in the time in which
the English people had their Shakespeare the national character
had not yet been enclosed in this way, so that just the English
people are no longer able to understand Shakespeare. This comes
from the fact that the archangel enclosed it with a distinctive
national character. This will give a real historical
consideration of the future when one does no longer start, as
it was the case so often in the 19th century, from the
assumption that ideas have an effect in history. A human being
can have ideas, but ideas cannot work as forces in history. The
angels, archangels and archai can have ideas, but ideas must
always come from beings. The whole historical consideration of
the 19th century, in so far as it speaks of ideas in history,
is a spook, because it is based on the faith that ideas
develop, can freely move in the continuous current of time.
We
can now put the question: what about the German people? Was
there a point in time at which the archangel attained a certain
level? — Yes, such a point in time happened. But the
German people differ from the other peoples to a certain
degree. We know that the soul of the human being consists of
sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, and
consciousness-soul. You can gather this from the talks on the
folk-souls that the archangel of the Italian people preferably
wants to gain power in the sentient soul, that of the French
people in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, that of the
British people in the consciousness-soul, and that of the
German people in the ego which extends its power to the three
soul members. Hence, the relation of the archangel to the
individual egos of the German people is also another than with
the western peoples.
There was already a point in time when the archangel of the
German people intervened in the physical life or in the lower
soul-life, in so far as it seizes the physical. This is the
time approximately between 1750 and 1830. If one studies the
matters once quite rationally, one will get wonderful
explanations about the course of the national development. If
anybody got involved only to look at the really great,
magnificent difference which is there in the German life in the
human beings of the 19th and 20th centuries and the human
beings living two hundred years ago, then he would see how
immense this difference is. In those days, the archangel
intervened in the national character of the German people, as
well as the archangels intervened in the other peoples at the
points in time which I have given. But, one would like to say,
he stopped again, he did not transform the physical
constitution so vigorously, as thoroughly as it happened with
the other peoples. Hence, it has even happened that the second
half of the 19th century took such a course that this German
people have really taken up everything imaginable from the
other peoples unconsciously.
This has led to tragic conflicts in our days. Think only once
that Ernst Haeckel is an Englishman in his whole world view, in
so far as he has based his world view on science. He is
completely an Englishman, because he has taken up English
thought-forms. Everything that he thinks is influenced by the
English being. He starts from Darwin, from Huxley. He regards
Spencer as his philosophical God. While one cannot really
translate a book of Hegel or a book of spiritual science into
English, one can translate Haeckel very easily into English, of
course. You may be surprised about me saying this, because you
know that spiritual-scientific books are translated into
English. But what you read in the books, you read this only
approximately in the English translations. One can never really
translate, for example, the sentence which is essentially
German, which is connected with the sensation of Master Eckhart
[Master Eckhart: ~1260–1327, mystic]
and with everything that developed in the German being
following Master Eckhart. You cannot translate this sentence
correctly into English: “In dem Gemüte
lebt das Fünklein, in dem sich in der Menschenseele
die Weltseele offenbart.” “The little spark
lives in man's feeling nature in which the world-soul reveals
itself to the human soul.” It is impossible to translate
it really into English, because for that what is experienced in
the word “Gemüt” does no translation
exist. Also the original dictum by Hegel cannot be translated
into English which is almost the foundation stone of German
idealistic philosophy: “Sein und Nicht-Sein
vereinigen sich zur höheren Einheit im
Werden.” “Being and Not-Being coalesce to
Becoming as the higher unity.” Of course, one can
translate everything, but the translation cannot report what is
experienced in such a sentence.
The
German language has the special peculiarity that it still
allows certain liquidness. Imagine how infinitely easy it is to
say if anything is translated into English or French: this is
wrong; one does not say this that way! — We Germans must
not develop the bad habit to say that something is wrong, but
we must keep our language liquid — this is spoken
radically, of course. Study our cycles, there you will see how
I always struggled to form new words, also forms which
formulate the words from within. This comes, for example, from
the fact that the archangel of the German people stopped the
sharp stamping again. He has only made an attempt, as it were,
to sharply coin the national character during almost one
century, and has then released the people again.
That means a lot. But this must be that way, because the German
people have a vocation to transform their idealism to lively
spiritual knowledge. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, who are attacked
today, created a thinking which is indeed not already
spiritualism, nor spiritual science which is, however, the seed
of spiritual science which guides you really to spiritual
science, so to speak, if you meditate it thoroughly. However,
the German national character must still remain liquid, must
make really possible that one says: somebody is an Italian,
somebody is a Frenchman, and somebody is an Englishman.
However, somebody becomes a German! The archangel has only made
an attempt with the German people to form the national
character. In the same way to be national or chauvinistic as
the West-European peoples are, this would be an untruth with
the German; he is not able to do this at all — one is
able to do everything, of course, but then it is not
commensurate with the real being of the German.
The
relations of the Russian people are quite different. Its
archangel is connected with the individual egos of the people
in a different way than with the West-European and Central
European peoples. The archangels of the West-European peoples
work with their rays of will, with the Italian people on the
sentient soul, with the French people on the intellectual soul
or mind-soul, with the British people on the
consciousness-soul, with the German people on the ego. However,
the folk-soul of the Russian people does not work on the souls
at all. It hovers as it were over the people like a cloud, and
the soul can only have a premonition of it and long for it. It
has still remained a group soul as it were. There is no
intimate interaction of the folk-soul with the individual human
egos. You can get no more tragic, more serious impression than
when you are present at a Russian-orthodox service, in which
the human egos of those, who take part in it as believers, are
almost completely eliminated.
There is something impersonally universal that does not seize
the individual personality. There is nothing in this service
that appeals to the human nature. This is an immediate
expression of the fact that the Russian soul has not awoken at
all to that stimulation which is due to the interchange of the
individual ego with the folk-soul. Everything is a little bit
rigid and stereotyped, as if spirituality comes from unknown
worlds and turns to something rigid and stereotyped, in the
performances just as in the icon painting. There we stand
before something quite different as it is the case in Western
Europe. There we stand before the fact that the archangel has
not got ready at all to intervene in the national element.
Hence, the national element is for the Russian more a soul
dream. The Russian always talks of the “really Russian
human being,” and the Russian writers talk of it. But it
is a soul dream which is emphasised in particular, because the
folk-soul is not incorporated into the human beings, because
the Russian has a longing for a super-personal folk-soul.
You
have to look into these deep secrets, and then you understand
how the European cultural regions stand facing each other. I
never think, of course, to see the cause of the present events
directly in this facing each other of the cultural regions.
Nevertheless, you must do that indirectly. In particular, you
must be aware of the fact that the torch of the current war is
a powerful mark to familiarise ourselves with that which weaves
and reigns within the spiritual life of Europe.
We
look up to beings of the higher hierarchies; we see these
beings of the higher hierarchies also developing. Whereas we
develop our egos as individual human beings, we see these
developing in such a way that they get more and more power to
penetrate the ego with their will. First they still keep far
away from this ego, overshadow it from above like in the case
of the Russian people. Then there is a more intimate
overshadowing and living together at the same time as it is
with the German people. Then they add the intransigent national
character to the individual human beings like it is the case of
the three characterised West-European peoples. You can derive
from that in which condition this modern life of the human
development is. Have a look only once at the Central European
history and you will find — if you refrain from Russia
where the relations are quite different, — you will find
that the life of the West-European peoples and in certain way
also of the Central European peoples is similar, that a
European internationalism is there. Then we see a new time
dawning in the individual peoples from the 14th century on.
With this dawning we see the peoples being seized by
distinctive national characters. At the turn of the 18th to the
19th century, we see the German people getting just as much of
national character that the German feels as it were what a
national character is, but not so much that he is taken up in
the solidified national character. One will find that that lies
in the disposition of the German nature that the German does
not need to be taken up in the national character; that it
really has a deep sense when Fichte
[seventh address in
Addresses to the German Nation]
says: everything that wants
freedom of the human soul-being, everything that strives for
the universally human, that belongs to us.
There is a possibility of free development of the Central
European or German character. However, something is contained
in that which leads immediately to the insight that the
West-European peoples have to take this national character
— or fluid national character — of the German
people into account. I say, something like the fluid national
character of the German can lead to the tragic just in our
time. Think of Ernst Haeckel once again. We have seen that he
was influenced by the English so deeply in the second half of
the 19th century — because the development of the
national character was released again. And today? The man who
bears, actually, the whole English nature in himself has thrown
words of the strongest hatred against the English people. He
stood at the head of those who sent back their English
certificates, medals and honourings. It would be so much more
important that they would send back the materialistic
Darwinism, the materialistic Newtonism, everything that came
from them. In this regard, we have to learn to really
understand us, to see the matters objectively and without
national hatred.
It
was a kind of a spiritual prelude when some years ago the
splitting had to take place between our anthroposophical
movement and the Anglo-Indian coloured theosophical movement.
It had to take place. Those who have a vocation to develop the
spiritual element cannot go along with the materialistic view
of a Christ re-embodied in the flesh. It had to come out among
us that the return of Christ will really be the return of the
etheric Christ. It has often been said that and could also be
heard out of Theodora's mouth in my first mystery drama
[
The Portal of Initiation
].
Indeed, now we read in an English-theosophical magazine —
I tell no fairy tales to you, the president of the society
herself expressed it — that the warfare of the Germans
shows now what was, actually, behind the theosophical German
undertaking at that time, because it appears now that we would
have taken amiss, actually, on theosophical field that the
president Annie Besant has always stood up for the peace
prince, who did his best for Europe, Eduard VII. We would have
looked at this already with immense aversion, and, therefore,
we would have sent our agents to England who should there talk
about theosophy in our sense to get the theosophists in our
hands. If we had succeeded, the president tells in the English
theosophical magazine, to penetrate at that time so far that we
would have got the complete, as she says, “rich
administrative machinery” of the Anglo-Indian theosophy
— never have we wanted this, of course, — our
intention would have been carried out to bring the poison of
our views to India and to gain influence on the British
government from there. Then our intention would have been
executed to induce the British people to acknowledge the German
supremacy over England on this way! — This is the
representation which is given now in English-theosophical
magazines to the theosophists there.
Now
look at the truth. We have to realise it, because we cannot
think about these matters in a dreaming way. The truth is, for
example, that that which I wrote in my book
Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Life
is written out of the kind as
spiritualism lives in the Central European cultural current.
The book was translated into English straight away, and at that
time one said to us there — to me at least — that
the whole theosophy is contained in this book. Now we could
say: well, if people think in London that the whole theosophy
is contained in this book, they can go along with us. —
But each step we undertook was nothing but an expression of the
Central European developing spiritualism.
Some months before the outbreak of this war, it touched me
still peculiarly — today I am allowed to mention this
— that some of our ladies who do eurythmy drove to London
to give there a course. The eurythmy has pleased. This is all
right, it shall please human beings. But one does not notice
that this eurythmy is the spiritual counter pole of the
materialistic sport; the fact that on one side Europe is
flooded completely by materialism and sport brings materialism
into the movement of human beings, which serves the amusement
of the people, the addiction to make oneself healthy which is
quite materialistic, whereas with us each movement is the
expression of the spiritual, corresponds exactly to that which
is Central European spirituality. We work on this ground and
let grow up the fruits of the spiritual development from this
ground. How did just the sport intervene in the second half of
the 19th century in Germany! How finer sport activities have
then also — I believe, a method was especially that of
Dalcroze
[Emile Dalcroze (1865–1950),
he founded a kind of rhythmic gymnastics]
— how these matters have intervened! Now one
will not like him particularly because he also belongs to those
who insult “German barbarism” so violently. But
that what belongs to the German being this is the eurythmic by
means of which the spiritual is expressed in the movements of
the external physical body. It lives in the movements of the
etheric body, is natural to the etheric body which works on the
supersensible human being.
This eurythmy is based on the following principles: we have an
organ through which the etheric body acts immediately, so that
the physical becomes an image of the etheric. This is the case
when we are speaking. Not the whole physical, but the air
becomes an image of the etheric. The sounding word in the air,
the kind how the air swings, is a direct expression of the
etheric. If one seizes that what lives in the sound, in the
word and spreads it over the whole etheric body and lets the
hands and feet and everything of the human being be moved, like
in speaking and singing the air is moved in the etheric body,
then one has eurythmy. Since eurythmy is a speaking of the
whole human being, so that one makes use not only of the moving
air but of the human organs.
Such a matter shows you that the intervention of spiritual
science in the modern civilisation is intended as something
universal and extensive. To understand the nerve of the thing
we have just heard something of which one does not think today.
I have given these both talks within this small circle by means
of which I wanted to stimulate the sensation in you to look at
that what spiritual science intends for the whole human life
universally. If I succeeded in doing so, it would be already
enough. Since the task of spiritual science is not really
fulfilled if we learn single theoretical concepts. The task of
spiritual science is fulfilled if it intervenes in everything,
in every life, and spiritualises this life. It is inevitable in
our fifth culture-epoch within that nation to which this task
is assigned to cause spiritualisation, to understand these
matters, to cause a sense of responsibility concerning
development. It is easy to criticise the human development,
rather easy. However, this does not concern, because the
matters which happen happen with necessity, even if they
counter that which as it were the good progress intends with
the human beings. In a certain respect, we must have and let
have something in our culture that counters this good progress,
actually.
Among these various matters which belong to it, for example,
this is that we start to maltreat our children from tender age
on because of our present cultural point of view, as one says,
for the sake of progress. One does not know it, but one
maltreats them. Since there is basically nothing more
countering the human nature than to let start the children from
the seventh year already learning the school objects and to
teach them as pupils as one does it presently. One would really
experience something especially advantageous if one grew up
quite differently and such matters that are taught already in
the seventh year would be taught only in the ninth or tenth
years. Mind you, that I do not say this intending that it
should not happen, because the general cultural progress
demands it, it must be like that. But the counter pole must be
created. And particularly while we maltreat the etheric bodies
of the children terribly on one side because we have certain
types of school lessons because we stamp something into them
for which they are good in no way during these years, we must
create eurythmy as a counter pole and supply just that what is
eurythmy for the children, so that their etheric bodies have
the balance in these movements indigenous to them.
Eurythmy will become something that is quite general, since the
development does not arrive at its destination advancing
unilaterally, but advancing in contrasts. One must always
create the counter pole, assert the counter pole. Development
moves in contrasts. And against the maltreating of the etheric
body as a result of the present-day school lessons a counter
pole must be created, in making the etheric body malleable,
causing natural movements of it in the sense, as it is
attempted in the first rudiments of our eurythmy. Thus
something is connected that many call even today “our
eurythmy” with that which I have to call the universal
character of our spiritual movement.
If
we see, on one side, how that intervenes in the ramifications
of the external life how deeply it can penetrate us, on the
other side, that the depths of the Christ Impulse combine with
that which we gather in spiritual science, then we have the
universal character of spiritual science from the highest
knowledge down to the lowest. And even more than on some other
things it depends on the fact that we get a sensation of this
universal character of spiritual science. I must say, it
belongs to the provisionally most serious sensations and
feelings that the present destiny-burdened events are not felt
as something more significant that they do not make stronger
impressions on our contemporaries. Since apart from all that
which one can notice externally these destiny-burdened events
is a warning sign, a warning sign not to keep to that which the
last centuries have brought up as materialism in humankind, a
warning sign to turn on the developmental way of humankind.
What is experienced in blood and death should be felt, as if it
was sent from the gods to earth, so that it teaches us how
necessary spirituality is for the further development of
humankind.
It
is really a pity, for example, when we experience in these
times that people hold talks, also write articles in which they
say: may it come soon again, the time when again the free
interchange of the peoples takes place, as it has taken place
before. Otherwise, the Germans could labour under the delusion
to come back again to the metaphysics of Fichte and Hegel, to
develop metaphysical impulses again. — Even in these
destiny-burdened days one fears that in the longings of the
human beings something of metaphysical impulses could come in
again. The metaphysical impulses shall be aroused in these
months again. Since in how many cases we see — to the
grievous experience of the mothers, fathers, sons, daughters,
sisters, brothers and other human connections -an unaware
confidence in the significance of the supersensible going like
a magic breath through our world. Shall thousands and thousands
go through death willing to make sacrifices, and the human
beings will then keep on preaching that the human life is
enclosed between birth and death when peace is on our earth
again? Then the sacrificial deaths would be offered for
nothing, because these sacrificial deaths arise — even if
for many not clearly — from the steady confidence that
these deaths is the aurora of a new time. He who goes into
death on the battlefield wants to confirm something different
by his death than this: my body ends here. — Which
futility would it be to fill the European earth with corpses in
our time if the materialistic world view even had a grain of
justification? We have to write this into our souls above all.
Those, who survive this time who live in the time when peace is
there again, betray the dead if they do not work on the
spiritualisation of the human development. Not to work on the
spiritualisation of humankind signifies nothing but to say to
those who have gone through blood and death: you died for
nothing. — If materialism is right, they all died for
nothing.
The
spiritual scientist has to penetrate himself completely with
this sensation. I read just during these days again that there
are people today — and in the 19th century these people
became more and more numerous — who state: it was a
prejudice of St Paul that he said, if Christ did not rise, then
our words and our faith would be “null and void.”
But this saying by Paul
[St. Paul:
1 Corinthians 15:14]
is true. Since through that what
happened as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha, the human soul
was appointed again to have forces, which lead it to the
spiritual world. We have spoken of these forces. But our time
calls to us clearly: the deaths of so many people would be null
and void if materialism were right. If materialism were right,
they all would have died in vain.
If
we penetrate ourselves with such thoughts, those who offered to
give up their forces to the big human progress in a death which
occurred at the blossoming human age will receive their forces
increasingly from the thoughts which go up from our souls. If
human souls turn that what they can have of spiritual thoughts
and sensations, the collected forces from above, the unused
etheric forces will meet, as I also said yesterday at the end,
the human spiritual thoughts and cause a new age. That is why I
close with the words today which gave us the feeling sense of
standing in our time as spiritual scientists:
From
the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.
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