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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Inner Impulses of Evolution
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Inner Impulses of Evolution
Schmidt Number: S-3262
On-line since: 10th June, 2002
The Rise of Spiritualism. The Need for the Science of the Spirit
Dornach, September 23, 1916
As our friends who are present for the meeting of the Building
Association have not heard the recent lectures held here, I will not
continue today with the subject that has now occupied us for some
time. Instead, I will digress and speak during these days of things
that can contribute to a wider understanding of what has already been
presented but that can also be understood to some extent by itself. I
want to touch quite briefly upon a leading thought that has been brought
forward. It is, indeed, somewhat comprehensible from the whole
character of spiritual science, but it is deepened when one adds to
one's understanding the facts that have been presented in our recent
studies. This thought can be expressed as follows. Human history can
only be considered in its true reality when one learns to know the
individual forms of the actuating spiritual powers that stand behind
it, just as one can only get to know nature when one knows in its true
form what works and lives behind sense perceptions.
We have frequently emphasized that the science of the spirit is
related to what is commonly called science today much in the following
way. Modern science, which has been pursued by mankind — rightly
and for good reasons — for three or four centuries, resembles a
description of single letters that are printed or written on a sheet
of paper. At best, it resembles the phonetic or grammatical rules by
which these letters are grouped into words or united to form
sentences. What we call the laws of nature can be compared with
phonetic or grammatical rules. Thus, if we were to examine a printed
or written page and say that we can see first a stroke upwards to the
right, a stroke going down to the left and so on, and then describe
the other letters and perhaps even the rules pertaining to phonetics
or grammar, this way of relating ourselves to a printed or written
page would resemble what is correctly called science today. But if we
were to do no more than observe in this way, our relation to the
printed or written page would be completely inadequate because we can
also read. Here, we pass on from mere observation and
description of what is on the page to the meaning of the words. We can
only learn to know this meaning when we advance from describing what
meets the eye to what our faculties — our mind and its power
— can make of it. By these means, we unite ourselves with the
spirit that is ruling and working within these little beings that we
call letters.
In contrast to ordinary science, spiritual science seeks to
read the facts of the world, not merely to describe what is
seen. When we have learned to do so, both the facts of nature and
history, inasmuch as they first show themselves to us in forms that we
can describe in movements or inner laws, are, figuratively speaking,
like letters that can be read. In this domain the meaning of existence
is revealed, that is, the meaning of life and all human activity
insofar as the revelation is necessary to man. We also seek in this
way the meaning of historical evolution and the concrete forces that
stand behind it, conjuring it out of itself, as it were, just as a
writer conjures forth from his thoughts what we afterward read from
the dead characters set down on the written or printed page.
Now, we have tried to study the fundamental meaning of this modern
age, which we describe as the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. We
know that it begins approximately in the period that is also described
by external history as the transition from the Middle Ages to modern
times. With the exception perhaps of its very last centuries, but
including the fourteenth and perhaps part of the fifteenth, we look
upon this period of the Middle Ages as belonging to the fourth
post-Atlantean cultural epoch, calling it the Greco-Latin in
accordance with the fundamental character of its spiritual and
material life. It begins in the eighth century before the event of the
Mystery of Golgotha.
If we consider the evolution of humanity only in the way that ordinary
history does — this, too, has often been spoken of here and
elsewhere — we then easily arrive at the idea that human
evolution, to the extent that it can be spoken of at all, has always
consisted of man as we know him today and has always progressed more
or less in the same way. When one looks back, one imagines that one
sees historical evolution in such a way that the human being remains
unchanged and just about the same. Such a view does not hold good for
a real spiritual observation of history, as we know. The truth is that
humanity changes considerably as time passes. The man of the tenth or
twelfth centuries of the Christian era differed more radically from
the man of the present time than is believed today when people are so
little inclined to look into mankind's evolution. If one considers the
whole configuration of the social life of the soul, the way of
thinking and the very manner of life, then this difference becomes
manifest not only among the educated in whom problems of world
conception, science and knowledge play a part, but is also seen in the
simplest, most primitive men. Although the world knows little of it,
the simplest farmer today is, in his whole configuration of soul, an
essentially different being inwardly from the man of the eighth, ninth
and tenth Christian centuries.
Again, we can say of the modern age also, which, as it has evolved
from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, bears essentially the
character of the present, that it completed the first small segment of
its course approximately in the middle of the nineteenth century. As
we have often mentioned, this is an important point in time. I have
frequently drawn attention to a saying that is used incessantly, yet
is completely false when understood in the way it is usually meant.
Nature, it is said, knows no leaps. In reality, however, we see how
life makes leaps everywhere. It really only progresses through leaps.
Speaking in the Goethean sense, it is a leap when, through
metamorphosis, the leaf of a plant develops from the root, the flower
petal again from the leaf and the organs of the fruit from the petal.
It is, however, conveniently prejudicial to believe that human history
proceeds without leaps. Such is not the case. Human history advances
in great undulating waves that do not simply follow the one upon the
other. Rather, at certain times what comes later places itself
abruptly beside the earlier. Men, however, are not accustomed to
observe things accurately or it would strike them that in the sphere
of evolution powerful forces are to be observed that by means of
breaks and periods, with wave-like depressions and elevations, bring
evolution forward.
One could say that the conclusion of a particular evolutionary process
was reached in the year 1840, that is, in the middle of the nineteenth
century. In the period from the fifteenth century to the middle of the
nineteenth, humanity was evolving quite distinct faculties that were
not present in the same way in an earlier period. One is entirely
mistaken if one believes, for instance, that the Copernican world
conception or the art of printing could just as well have appeared in
human evolution in an earlier century than the one in which they did.
The progress of human evolution is just as organic as individual human
development. Just as the child of twelve or thirteen lacks the
capacity to do things in the world that might be done by a man or
woman of thirty five, just as faculties must evolve in the life of an
individual in accord with his age, it is also the same with humanity.
The special faculties that came to the fore in Copernicus, Galileo and
Kepler and later in the scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, did not formerly exist. In fact, they correspond to a
particular period of human evolution that falls within those
centuries. The Greeks or Romans could not have looked at the world
similarly because the faculties for doing so were simply not in
existence in their time. The individual human would not be perfected
if he did not gradually evolve faculties suited to each period of
life; neither would humanity become complete in its way if faculties,
whose foundations already exist in man's general nature, did not
gradually emerge. That these faculties develop, that mankind gradually
puts forth what lies within its being is the fundamental fact of human
evolution.
Now, what is the nature of these special faculties that evolved in man
from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries? They are mainly the
forces making possible an intellectual grasp of the world through
reason. Nowadays, people on the whole believe that the Ptolemaic world
conception belonged to the Middle Ages. Then came the Copernican. We
believe we have made wonderful progress. Those in the Middle Ages were
really quite foolish to accept anything so imperfect as the Ptolemaic
world conception and now we, at last, have the true view.
As a matter of fact, those people think but little in accord with
reality who are not willing to admit that when we are as far removed
in time from Copernicus as Copernicus was from Ptolemy, men will again
have a different concept of the heavens. The development of humanity
is in constant flux and by that time, the Copernican system will be
regarded just as the Ptolemaic system was regarded by the Copernicans.
Even though it gives the impression today of being pure nonsense when
one says another world conception, which will differ as much from the
Copernican as the Copernican from the Ptolemaic, will replace the
Copernican world conception in future, this truth is nevertheless
quite evident to those who have an inner comprehension of what lives
and weaves in the growth of humanity. The special method of applying
merely the intellect to natural phenomena in an external way, which
has created the natural science of the last three or four centuries,
represents the faculty that belongs to those centuries. It is clear to
those who know how humanity advances that mankind was actually ripe
from the middle of the nineteenth century on for the gradual
development of other faculties. But man must increasingly take his own
affairs in hand. More than in any previous age he is given the task
today of doing something toward adding fresh faculties to those gained
in the last three or four centuries. Why have these faculties arisen
that can keenly, penetratingly and logically master the outer surface
of phenomena so that they can then be expressed in natural laws? For
what purpose have these faculties appeared that penetrate so little
below the surface of things, yet observe so meticulously and
scientifically all that lies on the surface? They have appeared because
only by their means can man go through a certain stage of his
development.
In earlier ages man had other faculties. When we go back in historical
evolution, we find that the further we go the more possible it was for
man to look into the spiritual world. But the faculties he then had
were not such that he could use them in freedom. They were more or
less involuntary. The force enabling him to reach a certain knowledge
came over man in earlier ages somewhat in the way in which the desire
for sleep overtakes a man. It was, however, a force that entered the
spiritual world. In order for man to take a step forward toward
achieving the faculty of making free decisions and developing freedom,
he had to be separated from the forces that, in earlier times, brought
him nearer the spiritual world but also allowed him less freedom. Man
had to pass through a period of development in which he was shut off
as by a veil or sheath from the spiritual world so that he might
become freer. To be sure, this development is still far from complete
but a first stage reached its conclusion in the middle of the
nineteenth century. Those who know something of the spiritual life
behind the sensory life recognize that since that time it is a growing
necessity for other forces to be added to those of observation and
knowledge based on mere intellect. These other forces slumber in the
human soul and must be developed, even as the forces have evolved that
have brought humanity to achieve the great advances of the last three
or four centuries.
Thus, it is for the sake of freedom that humanity has gone through the
intellectual development of the last three or four centuries. This
intellectual development has led to a conception of the world that is
materialistic in a far-reaching sense. It is a materialistic
conception that is still in full force wherever a conception of the
world penetrates extensively or intensively into world affairs.
However much it may be said in scientific circles that materialism has
already receded, those who imagine it to have withdrawn often do not
have the least idea how deeply and firmly they themselves are still
held in materialistic concepts. The materialistic outlook, which is in
its way admirable, has emerged in the last three or four centuries. It
is not to be criticized because man has need of it, but it can,
however, never advance beyond a grasp of the dead and lifeless. Were
the intellectual conception of the world alone to hold sway in human
earthly evolution, man would only understand the dead and lifeless.
All understanding of life and the living, to say nothing of the
spiritual, would be lost. The lifeless alone can be the object of the
kind of scientific study that has made such magnificent progress in
the last three or four centuries. Those individuals, however, who know
what is necessary for humanity have gradually become fewer during this
time. They understand why it is that since the middle of the
nineteenth century a certain longing has arisen, as if through some
inner process in man, to know something about the spiritual worlds.
The peculiar thing is that this longing took a form that was in
harmony with the materialistic feeling of the age. Man wanted to learn
to know the spirit in a materialistic way, since habits are lost far
less rapidly than longings. It was along materialistic lines that man
wished to find the spirit, and this materialistic knowledge of the
spirit was often fostered and generously bestowed even by those who
really know what is necessary for humanity. Hence there arose the
various materialistic branches of science that set out to prove that
spiritual activity lies behind the sense world. All that has been set
going in order to arrive at knowledge of the spiritual through the
hypnotic element, the element of suggestion, and even through
spiritism or spiritualism, as it is called, is nothing but an attempt
to research the spirit by materialistic means.
Humanity had become accustomed to recognize as true only what had been
verified by means of investigation in a laboratory or clinic. Now, in
the same way, through external operations following precisely the
pattern of the natural scientific method, a method was elaborated that
should give manifest proof of the spirit. Important results have
undoubtedly been attained on this path. In addition, of course, there
has been a good deal of charlatanism and swindling. Indeed, we know
that certain learned men and scientists who must be taken seriously
have devoted themselves to these matters because they have felt it
necessary to show man, who must otherwise fall prey to materialism,
that a spiritual world exists, surrounding us just as does what we see
with our eyes and grasp with our hands. So, in the course of human
evolution after the middle of the nineteenth century, we have these
efforts to make men understand that there is a spiritual world around
us just as there is a world that we perceive with our senses.
We have spoken many times of the value of knowledge that is obtained
by dulling the forces of mind and soul that are right for our age, so
that man is made into an instrument in a mediumistic way for letting
all sorts of spiritual realities and facts enter the sense world. As I
say, we have repeatedly spoken of the worth — or lack of it
— of these methods. Today I want to make clear what meaning it
had for historical evolution for men to wish to kill off and cripple
just what it is right for them to possess in this present time; that
is, full conscious insight into the spiritual world, and, turning from
this, to become an instrument through which what is really around us
spiritually emerges in the physical world. It corresponds to a deep
necessity in historical evolution because conscious thinking, through
what it had to become in the last three or four hundred years, had
been one sided in its development. Thought had become attenuated and
consequently also powerless because it had to stop short at the
surface of things in order to create human freedom. But for this
reason thought was quite unable to penetrate below the surface.
It was the intention to drive out thought and to guide the human soul
back to its primitive constitution, in this way meeting the difficulty
of the thinking that had become powerless in the new age and could no
longer find strength to penetrate into the spiritual world. As a
result, something arose that is far more widespread than the ordinary
person imagines, that is, the search for the spirit along
materialistic paths. With the expulsion of conscious knowledge in
which, regarding the spiritual world, they had lost confidence, men
wished to dip down into the spiritual world through a subconscious
knowledge and a lowering of consciousness. There were always, however,
other persons who did not enter into this phenomenon of the time
merely instinctively as did the ordinary scientists and most
spiritists or spiritualists, but who knew, nevertheless, what was
going on. Such persons have always existed. They had great
expectations of the movement just described. In general, one can say
that those persons who have preserved an exact knowledge of the
spiritual world during the last three or four centuries, and even up
to today, fall into different groups. There are those who expected
nothing from such a materialistic way of research into the spiritual
world; but there are also those who hoped that from it men would come
to the conviction that a spiritual world does exist in our
environment. Nevertheless, none of this group was sufficiently
knowledgeable to be able to see why this approach must be in vain.
Those students of spiritual science who expected nothing from this
materialistic approach had good reasons for this, which have been
justified by the consequences that have arisen from this entrance
— rather, this hoped for entrance — into the spiritual
world. Take all that has come about on this path, go through all that
has come to light from the most primitive beginnings of amateur
mediums and mediumistic seances to the subtlest things that certain
scholars have brought about in this sphere — go through all this
and you will find that by far the greatest part of what has happened
consists in the fact that experiences have been gathered of which
those through whom the experiences were gained said they had received
them from the spirits of the dead. Far and away the greater number of
the experiences were described as emanating from the spirits of men
who had died. Little is to be found that has not been described as
originating in this way. This was certainly a great surprise to those
acquainted with spiritual knowledge who had looked on this development
with good will. That the mediums should say that what they brought to
light was obtained from the spirits of the dead was something that
must have caused the greatest surprise because it was the last thing
one would expect when one really considered the evolution of humanity.
Something quite different would have been expected.
What was to be expected was that by these means a knowledge would come
about of the spiritual world that, at the present time, surrounds us
while we are alive. That is what one might have expected to find by
making experiments, for example, as to how one man affects another,
how the men of the present are linked together by secret threads
invisible to ordinary science, how in one soul things arise that
originate from quite another soul. In reality, a network of spiritual
connections is drawn from soul to soul. Inasmuch as we stand within
the world — if, for instance, we are standing here, then we do
not merely see the light, the surroundings, people as they are
externally and physically, but inasmuch as we are in the world,
spiritual threads or currents pass every moment from soul to soul in
the most varied manner. One gets nowhere if one speaks in general
terms of some sort of connection between souls that is distinguishable
by the senses. The solution is to be found by thinking of individual
threads or streams between all the different souls. We are actually
surrounded by a spiritual world just as we are by a physical one. That
this should emerge is what might have been expected, but little indeed
has come out concerning this. Throughout the sixty or seventy years
during which attempts have been made to enter the spiritual world by
materialistic paths, least of all has been learned about the living
connections linking men with one another. The mediumistic
manifestations and revelations have always referred to the spirits of
the departed. Nor, in truth, could anything else happen by this
method. Why? What, then, had actually been happening through this
attempt to enter the spiritual world?
As a matter of fact, nothing had been achieved other than the
knowledge of what comes to light if one expels the best qualities of
the new age from human consciousness and leads man back to earlier
times, to subconscious conditions of soul. The remains of this
subconscious condition that had carried over into the new age were now
laid bare. It was this that was revealed. Just consider, then, that a
quite definite consciousness had been prepared and developed in the
last three centuries. This consciousness had veiled the spiritual
world and by so doing had taken away the power of direct connection
with it. But nothing had been done toward developing new forces for
new connections with the spiritual world. Nothing had come out but the
old connections, which went in the direction of that to which they had
been linked earlier. They did not unite with what was living in the
contemporary environment but with death, with the lifeless. This was
so because the direction of man's evolution in the last three or four
centuries and more has so determined the character of his soul that it
is really particularly adapted for the knowledge of the dead and
lifeless. Here in the material world, through the kind of knowledge
that belongs to modern times, one learns about the lifeless. Through
the forces that one draws up from the deep underground of the soul,
one does not know about the living but the dead. Thus, all these
experiments did not open up a path to the living men of the spiritual,
but to what is dead, to what one finds as dead in the spiritual world.
What is the nature of this dead element? It is not human beings, that
is to say, the souls who, speaking spiritually, are our
contemporaries. So, if we take such an experiment as has been
described, undertaken in 1870, let us say, it would not, through
laying bare the subconscious soul forces, have given a connection with
the living present. In fact, it would not have made a connection with
the living souls of 1870, but only with what had remained behind from
these living, progressing souls — in other words, with the
loosened remnants that were gradually disintegrating in earthly
existence but that were still active. To be sure, the mediums always
interpreted things in such a way that they claimed relationship to the
dead who were spiritually still living. That was, however, a
misinterpretation. In reality, it was not a matter of the souls as
they then were, but of what they had been in ages past, or,
respectively, what they had become after these remnants had been long
ago loosened from the souls. Recollect how I have explained what
Goethe represents in the Lemurs scene and you will know that much of
what is released from the soul at death continues to exist. It was
only with what is really dead and does not live on with the living
soul that one could connect oneself with the spiritual world through
that materials [materialistic] pathway.
If, through contemporary science, one reached a knowledge of the
material, the lifeless, the dead, so also through this spiritual
longing that had to be satisfied along materialistic paths one reached
nothing but a knowledge of the dead though, to be sure, it was a
knowledge of the super-sensible. Contemporary materialistic science
found only the external dead. This apparently spiritual but, from
their methods, actually materialistic science found the super-sensible
dead. From this one could learn something immensely significant, that
in the middle of the nineteenth century an age had closed; that
humanity needed new forces of development if it would enter the truly
living; that for a period of time only those forces had been brought
to their zenith that lead to the dead, lead in all fields to the
lifeless and to knowledge and worship of the lifeless.
One only gives such things their rightful place if one does not merely
let them work on the soul abstractly and intellectually, but when one
receives them in their deep moral significance and lets them make a
sort of moral impression on the soul. Indeed, we are shown that
although these intellectual powers with which man has made such
splendid progress have brought him to a certain summit of attainment.
Yet, they are only fitted for approaching the lifeless. The content of
human soul life could gradually only be directed to what is dead. To
him who can perceive the course of man's evolution, it is
unquestionably clear how the foremost currents of modern thought lead
more or less directly to a cult and worship of the lifeless; the
working that is felt in respect of the outer material natural order
where such wonderful progress has been made is but a cult and worship
of the dead. Why are people so gripped by the last cantos of
Hamerling's Homunculus? Because, after Hamerling has shown how
modern mankind is really hastening into a sort of homunculus era, he
shows what it signifies for man, in respect of the great cosmic
mysteries, to try to lift himself above gravitation through purely
mechanical forces. His last canto shows us the dirigible, the Zeppelin
before it existed, and all that was still in the future. At the same
time, he makes us aware of what is linked with this extreme
mechanizing, which is to say, the killing, the homunculizing, of life
in the development of human civilization.
Spiritual knowledge, however, has never died out; it is always
safeguarded somewhere, and there are individuals in every age who are
able to obtain it. It was saved even through the period in which it
counted for least, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries,
being preserved like a fine thread. Those of whom I spoke as holding
no expectations from the materialistic path into the spiritual world
perceived something else as well. They were of the opinion that our
modern way of feeling and thinking, as it has developed in the last
centuries, can be further trained and developed so that out of
clear-headed materialistic methods a knowledge then can develop
gradually that which can even work in a sufficiently penetrating way
to get under the surface of things and into the spirit. That is what
the real method of spiritual science ought to be — to enter into
the spiritual world along the same path that man has entered into
nature during the last three or four centuries. All that is necessary
is a further development of the scientific habits that mankind has
evolved in this period. The point is that in a corresponding way,
through a real exertion and effort, avoiding indolence, man has to
develop further the thinking habits already evolved.
But now it may be asked why there are so many who, in spite of knowing
something of the spiritual world, have remained silent concerning it.
It must be repeatedly emphasized that spiritual knowledge was always
there. Although it had to be developed in different ways in different
ages, it has always existed. Why, then, have so many people been
afraid to impart this spiritual knowledge? It has been disseminated in
our circle because the recognition of the need to do so outweighs
everything. In fact, however, only certain portions of spiritual
knowledge can be imparted, as you know, and that only on quite
definite grounds. You see, spiritual knowledge was also in existence
in another and more unconscious or subconscious form before the
Mystery of Golgotha. Then, man was connected with the spiritual world
in a more instinctive way than is possible for him without injury
today. Moreover, a great portion of mankind was omitted because the
way to the spiritual world was only open to those who received fitting
preparation. These individuals were prepared in a way that would not
occur to those who speak of a preparation for science consisting of
intellectual knowledge.
Today men are of the opinion that the moral qualities of one who is to
receive instruction are of secondary importance and that knowledge
does not depend on moral qualities. In ancient times, this was
absolutely different. Then, when knowledge was communicated through
the mysteries, it was imparted only to those who had undergone a
special and strict moral discipline. Nothing beyond at most
mathematical knowledge, with which one can do but little harm, or
literary knowledge could be reached without undergoing strict moral
discipline. Things were only imparted to those deemed to be fitted for
them after they had undergone a certain severe moral test. First came
the training toward virtue and then the communication of wisdom.
Training in virtue and, in particular, the training of moral courage
was an absolute necessity and it was held to be of paramount
importance. Owing to lack of time, I cannot enlarge upon this today,
but there was a conviction that knowledge can only benefit the world
when what can be done by a man who knows, is done only by one who is
good. However improbable it seems to people who look on earlier ages
as barbaric and think that nowadays we have made such wonderful
progress — so wonderful, in fact, that thousands are bathed in
blood every week — in those earlier ages there was a conviction
that no one should be allowed to make use of knowledge in what they
did until he had undergone the strictest moral discipline. Those who
had not were to live merely instinctively, led by those who had
undergone the moral training and discipline.
The modern age is not adapted for directly applying such a principle.
Just imagine how such a principle might be realized today when
everyone says what he knows as soon as possible — or even has it
published — and no one can prevent it. It would be illusory to
think that anything, social institution or whatever, could stop it.
Today is the day of publicity. What, then, must replace this older
principle of only allowing men who had undergone moral discipline to
attain Knowledge? It must be replaced with the assurance that the
imparted knowledge itself must contain a certain force that brings
forth good through itself, actually and really to bring forth of
itself what is good.
The entire spiritual scientific movement must aim at achieving this.
All knowledge entering the world through the science of the spirit
must be so ordered that it engenders the good through itself and its
own force. You will say that the efforts that have been made in modern
times with the treasures of knowledge inherent in the science of the
spirit have not yet completely realized this goal. No, because
everything has to work its way through its various hindrances. The
hidden feeling of the good in spiritual science has, however, been the
reason that it has been fought not only with logic but also hatred.
You will ask, “But do not all reasonable people really desire the
good?” As it is generally understood nowadays, one could say,
“Yes, all reasoning people desire the good.” But what really
counts is not that someone thinks he would like the good or that he
desires it, but that he wills it, that he absolutely
will have it. That is the point. If one considers the
achievements of modern civilization from the point of view of their
moral defects, those moral defects that work in the lifeless, one will
find that the world needs a wisdom that, along with being wisdom, also
causes good. Materialistic science, however, is indifferent to good
and evil. It uses what it creates from matter just as well for good as
for evil, serving one just as willingly as the other.
Here, again, we have a point where, if we look at the world as a whole
and its course of development, we can perhaps see the necessity for
the science of the spirit. It is not enough to shut ourselves away in
a little circle and form a world conception. The smallest circles are
surrounded on every side by the great network of human evolution. Let
us look at the manifest results of European civilization in the last
three years. If we do not follow an ostrich policy but with truly
throbbing hearts enter lovingly into our surroundings, we shall see
these results and grasp what they are bringing us. Because the one or
other of us is protected from what rages against Europe today is no
reason for turning away from the terrible state into which modern
civilization has been hurled. It is there, as present fact.
It may be useful at this point to comment on a new publication. A
book, good of its kind, has lately been written that endeavors to
judge from the standpoint of human feeling and moral perception the
problems that have agitated the world during the last two years. It is
a good book, recently published, that tries to show with a certain all
embracing survey how man can escape from the evil network of blood and
hate in which modern civilization finds itself. It was written by a
Chinese author whom I mentioned to some of our friends four or five
years ago as an important personality when his first book on European
conditions was published. This new book by Ku Hung Ming, a highly
cultured Chinese, is good and contains much that is objective. It
reveals a man who avoids the mistakes that many make; a man who stands
aloof from these errors.
Many people have opinions today; many give vent to one or another
opinion about the conditions of our age. The greater part of what is
presented, however, is not said in order to give expression to what
people really think but to deafen themselves to what actually exists.
We see streams of hatred flow over the world. Why are they set going?
Why is this or that said? Do you imagine that those who say, “The
Pope should excommunicate a whole nation,” and energetically
demand it, think that they have really reached this conclusion from
objective events? Do you believe that these people possess the calm of
objective knowledge? They say it to deafen themselves so as not to
have to admit to themselves what should be admitted. A great part of
what is said today is intended to close one's ears. Some people will
not admit to themselves what they really ought to admit. They say one
thing or another merely to avoid saying what they ought to say.
This Chinese, Ku Hung Ming, does not proceed in this way. He says,
“When one sees what has developed in Europe, what has happened
there and the forces that are at work, one can do nothing but admit
that things had to come about as they have. In its one sided
cultivation the materialism that developed in the nineteenth century
was bound to lead to these consequences and it is bound to lead even
further, ending in the final downfall of European culture.” Ku
Hung Ming is quite convinced that European culture must go under if
Europeans refuse to become like the Chinese and if Chinese conditions
do not spread over Europe. The only salvation for European culture, so
he says, is for Europeans to become Chinese, that is, become Chinese
in their souls. Much of what he says is deeply impressive. One should
not take it lightly that a wise man of today can find no way out for
European culture other than finally merging it all — everything in it
that has led it ad absurdum — in good Chinese principles.
I will not elaborate Ku Hung Ming's ideas on the methods for making
Europe Chinese. Of course, we should see at once that we cannot become
Chinese or return to the position of Chinese culture, but if there
were no other way out than the one Ku Hung Ming sees, then that would
be better than to continue on the path that European culture has
taken. It would definitely be better. It would be better to become
Chinese than to proceed further on the course that materialistic
civilization has pursued thus far, because disintegration would be
inevitable. Do not believe, however, that it can be prevented by any
of the old means and methods.
As a matter of fact, spiritual science has always been somewhat in
agreement with the opinion of Ku Hung Ming — not regarding
Chinese civilization but rather the first part of his statement. It
therefore fosters, as its great ideal, drawing knowledge from the
spiritual world that leads back into it, and that also can make men
good through its own force; that is, a knowledge working morally
through its own force and engendering moral impulses. So, as
scientists of the spirit our answer would not be, like Ku Hung Ming's,
to “become Chinese,” but rather to seek by paths of
spiritual science to bring about the fructification of European
culture because that is actually the only way it can be brought about.
This striving toward new sources of human knowledge and activity is
absolutely necessary for European humanity. The bitterest tears could
be shed over much that meets one today when a book such as that of Ku
Hung Ming is read, for these times of ours are more grave than many
believe. There are many things in human life that separate man from
man, and it is from this separation of souls that all the frightful
conditions we are experiencing come. This separation will only be
overcome through a knowledge that conceives of the human being beyond
all divisiveness, through a knowledge that is for every single human
being. All those divisions upon which men build their feelings today
are actually only valid here in the physical world. When one sees the
sympathy and antipathy poured out today, and when one sees that they
come only from the unspiritual, then in all this outpouring of
sympathy and antipathy one also recognizes the denial of the spirit.
All racial hatred, for instance, is really also a fight against the
spirit. Because this age of ours is so strongly inclined to fight
against the spirit, it therefore possesses this talent for racial
hatred. Here is one of the deepest secrets of our present spiritual
culture; the only way out is through the living grasp of the spirit.
Just think how, the moment we fall asleep and our ego and astral body
leave behind our physical and etheric bodies, we are in a world where
all that leads to sympathy and antipathy simply does not exist. In the
moment that follows falling asleep we are united with those whom we
look upon from the consciousness of our time with the deepest
antipathy. We must pass through their souls in the realm of
interpenetrability. We can rage as we will and hurl tirades of hatred
against this man or that, but as soon as we fall asleep and enter the
realm where all interpenetrates, we must pass through the souls of
those we hate. The facts concerning such actual realities must now be
made known. What I have just said is elementary, but if one enters
more and more into the knowledge of actual reality, then the very
entering possesses the force to create the impulse of the good. One
only learns to know the real significance of hatred and unfounded
antipathy in the world when one sees their effects in the spiritual
world. He who knows what hate is in the spiritual world ceases to hate
lest he put himself straight into the service of certain evil powers.
Since a larger number of friends than usual is gathered here for the
meeting of the Building Association, I especially wished to speak
about these earnest matters today. Those who have heard my last
lectures will be able to connect what has now been said with what we
studied before. Even if it has been no more than a digression, it can
nevertheless throw light on many impulses that are being enacted in
the world historical evolution of the present time.
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Last Modified: 07-Oct-2024
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