Lecture VI
12th January 1918.
The matters which we are now discussing are connected with a fact
that sounds strange at first hearing but which corresponds to a deep
and significant truth namely, man wanders over the earth but
has in reality no true understanding of himself. One could say that
this statement applies particularly to our own time. We know that
once in ancient Greece the great and significant inscription
‘Know thyself’ stood on Apollo's temple as a challenge to
those who sought for spiritual things. Nor was this inscription on
the Delphic temple ‘Know thyself’ merely a phrase at that
time, as we know from our various studies. For even in this Grecian
age it was still possible to bring about a deeper knowledge of man
than is possible at the present time. This present time, however, is
also a challenge to us to strive again for a real knowledge of man,
for a knowledge of what man on the earth actually is.
Now it seems as if the
things that must be said in connection with this question are
difficult to understand. In reality they are not, in spite of the
fact that they sound as if they were difficult. They are only so for
the present day because people are not accustomed to let their
thinking and feeling flow into such currents as are necessary
for a right understanding of something of this nature. The point is,
that what we call understanding at the present day is actually the
result of our always seeking to understand through abstract
concepts. But one cannot understand everything through abstract
concepts. Above all one cannot understand the human being through
abstract concepts; one requires something different for the
understanding of man. One must put oneself in the position of taking
man as he wanders about over the earth, as a picture, as a picture
which expresses something, which discloses something, which wants to
reveal something to us. One must revive the consciousness that the
human being is a riddle that wants to be solved. We shall not,
however, solve the riddle of man if we are content to continue to be
so indolent, so theoretic in our thinking as we now prefer. For you
see, the human being is this we have stressed again and again
a complicated being. Man is more, vastly more than the
physical form that wanders about before our eyes as man far,
far more is man. But this physical structure that wanders round
before our eyes as man, and all that belongs to it, is none the less
an expression for the whole comprehensive being of man. And one can
say: Not only can one recognize in the human form, in the physical
man that goes about among us, what man is between birth and death
here in the physical word, but, if one only will, one can also
recognize in the human being what he is as immortal, as eternal being
of soul. One must only develop a feeling that this human form is a
complexity. Our modern science, which is made popular and so can
reach everyone, is not fitted to call forth a feeling of what a
miraculous structure this human being actually is, who wanders about
on earth. One must regard man quite differently.
You have assuredly all
seen a human skeleton remember then that the human skeleton
is actually twofold, if one disregards everything else. One
could speak much more exactly, but if one disregards all the rest,
the skeleton is a duality. You can easily lift up the skull from the
skeleton; it is really only set upon it, and then the rest of the
human being remains skull-less. The skull is very easily lifted off.
The rest of the man without the skull is still a very complicated
being, but we will now grasp it as a unit and leave aside its
complexity. But we will first consider the duality which we see when
we look at a human being, as, let us say, head-man, and for the rest
trunk-man. And so too is the complete flesh and blood man a duality,
though it is there less clearly shown.
Now in spiritual
science we need not be so fond of comparisons as to treat them
as absolute, develop them metaphysically that we will not do.
But by employing comparisons we wish to make various things clear.
And so it is very natural, since it actually corresponds to what we
see, to say: man in respect of his head is above all ruled by the
spherical form. If one desires to express in a diagram what the human
head is, we can say: man is ruled by the spherical form (see
diagram).
If we wish to have a
diagrammatic picture for the rest of man, we should naturally have to
pay attention to the complications, only we will not do that today.
You will, however, easily see that disregarding certain
complications, just as schematically one can picture the human head
as a sphere, so one can picture the rest of man in such a form as
this (see diagram: moon form), only, of course, the two circles must
be placed in varied positions according to the corpulence of each
individual.
But we can, as it were,
really conceive of man so as spherical form and as moon-form.
This has a deep inner justification; however we will not discuss
this, but only think of the fact that the human being falls into
these two members.
Now, man's head is in
the first place a true apparatus for spiritual activity, for all that
man can produce by way of human thoughts, human feelings. The head,
the apparatus ... but, if we were committed to the thoughts, the
feelings, that the head as apparatus can supply, we should never be
in the position of really understanding the being of man. If we were
committed to use the head alone as an instrument of our spiritual
life, we should never be in the position of really saying ‘I’
to ourselves. For what is this head? This head is in truth, as it
meets us in its globular form, an image of the whole cosmos, as the
cosmos appears to you with all its stars, fixed stars, planets and
comets; even meteors irregularities, as we know make
their appearance in many heads. The human head is an image of the
macrocosm, an image of the whole world. And only the prejudice of our
time I have indicated this in another connection
knows nothing of the fact that the whole world has a share in the
coming about of a human head. But now, if through heredity,
through birth, this human head is transposed to the earth, it can be
no apparatus for comprehending the being of man himself. We have been
given in our head an apparatus, as it were, which is like an extract
of the whole world, but which is not competent to comprehend man.
Why? Well, by reason of the fact that man is more than all that we
can see and can think through our head. Many people say nowadays
‘there are limits to human knowledge, one cannot get beyond
these limits!’ But this is only because they merely reckon with
the wisdom of the head, and the wisdom of the head, it is true, does
not get beyond certain limits. This wisdom of the head, my dear
friends, has also made what a few days ago we described as the Greek
Gods. The Greek Gods have proceeded from the wisdom of the head. They
are the upper Gods; they are therefore only Gods for all that the
head of man can encompass with its wisdom.
Now I have often
brought to your attention that besides this external mythology the
Greeks had their Mysteries. The Greeks revered in the Mysteries other
Gods as well as the celestial Gods, namely, the Chthonic Gods. And of
one who was initiated in the Mysteries one could say with truth: he
learns to know the upper and the lower Gods, the Upper and the
Lower Gods. The upper Gods were those of the Zeus-circle; but
they only have rulership over what is spread out before the senses,
and what the intellect can understand. The human being is more than
this. Man is rooted with his being in the kingdom of the lower Gods,
in the kingdom of the Chthonic Gods.
But it is no good, my
dear friends, if one only looks at the part of man which I have drawn
here in the sketch. If one is to turn one's mind to the rooting of
man in the kingdom of the lower Gods then one must complete this
drawing and make it so: one must also, as it were, include the
unillumined moon. (See drawing below.) In other words, one must
regard the head of man differently from the rest of the organism.
With the rest of the organism one must far more have in mind what is
spiritual, what is super-sensible and invisible. The head of man as it
confronts us is externally complete. All that is spiritual has formed
for itself an image in the head. In the rest of man that is not the
case; the remaining part is only a fragment as physical man, and it
is not enough for the rest of man if one takes this bodily fragment
which wanders visibly about on earth.
Now this already shows
us that we must accept man as complicated. But, does what I have just
said ever come before us in life? What I have just said seems to be
abstract, it seems paradoxical and hard to understand, but yet the
question
must
arise: does it ever come before us in life? That is the important
thing: it appears in life quite clearly. The head is the instrument
of our wisdom; it is so strongly the instrument of our wisdom, that
our immediate wisdom is connected with its development. But even
external anatomical physiological observation look how a
head develops, how a man grows up shows that the head goes
through a quite different development from the rest of the organism.
The head develops quickly, the remaining organism slowly. The
head in a child is relatively already quite finished, it develops
very little further. The rest of the organism is still little
perfected and goes slowly through its stages. This is connected with
the fact that in life as well we are really a duplex being. Not only
does our skeleton show the head and the remaining organism, but life
itself shows this twofold nature: our head develops quickly, the rest
of our organism slowly. At our present time the head develops
practically up to our twenty-eighth or twenty-seventh year, the rest
of the organism needs the whole of life up to death to do this. One
can in fact only experience in a whole lifetime what the head
acquires in a relatively short time. This is connected with many
mysteries.
The spiritual
investigator has a special knowledge of these things if he is able to
observe a fatal accident... again it sounds strange but it expresses
the full truth, in a fatal accident. Imagine that a person is struck
down, dies by an accident. Let us suppose that a man is struck dead
in his thirtieth year. To outer physical observation such a sudden
death is a kind of accident: but from a spiritual science outlook it
is simply absurd to regard such an affair as accidental. For in the
moment when from outside, from any external cause, a man suddenly
meets with death, an immense amount rapidly takes place. Think to
yourselves: this same man who has been killed at the age of thirty
would have become in the ordinary course of things perhaps seventy,
eighty, ninety years old. If he had still lived from thirty to ninety
years he would slowly have gone through, one after another, many life
experiences. What he would thus have experienced during sixty years
of life, he now goes through rapidly, it might even be in
half-a-minute, if he is killed at the age of thirty. When it is a
matter of the spiritual world, time relationships are different from
what they seem to us here on the physical plane. A sudden death
caused by external circumstances one must treat the matter
quite exactly can cause the experience, I say the experience,
the life-wisdom of the whole life that might still have been lived,
to be passed through under certain circumstances very rapidly.
One is in this way
enabled to see how a man assimilates life-wisdom, life-experience all
his life through. And one can study through it the relation between
what the head can provide with its short development, and what the
rest of the human being can furnish with its long development in the
social life. It is really true that during his young days a man takes
in certain ideas and concepts that he learns; but he then only learns
them. They are then head-knowledge. The rest of life that runs more
slowly, is destined to transform the head-knowledge gradually into
heart-knowledge I now call the other man not the head-man, I
call him the heart-man to transform head-knowledge into
heart-knowledge, knowledge in which the whole man shares, not only
the head.
We need much longer to
transform head-knowledge into heart-knowledge than to assimilate the
head-knowledge. Even if the head-knowledge is an especially clever
knowledge, one needs today the time into the twenties, is it not so?
then one is a quite clever person, academically quite clever. But in
order to unite this knowledge fully with the whole man, one must keep
flexible one's whole life through. And one needs just as much longer
to change head-knowledge into heart-knowledge as one lives longer
than to the twenty-seventh or twenty-sixth year. In so far is the
human being also of a twofold nature. One quickly acquires the
head-knowledge and can then in the course of life change it into
heart-knowledge.
It is not quite easy to
know what this actually signifies. And, perhaps I may venture to
instance an experience of the spiritual investigator through which
something may be more easily known concerning these things than
through other results of spiritual research. If one makes oneself
acquainted with the speech which the human souls speak who have gone
through the gate of death, who live in the spiritual world after
death, one understands to some degree the speech of the dead, the
so-called dead, one can then make the experience that the dead
express themselves in a very special way upon many things connected
with human life. The dead have a speech today that we who are living
cannot yet quite understand. The comprehensions of the dead and the
living lie somewhat far apart from one another today. The dead have a
thorough consciousness of how man develops quickly as headman
and slowly as heart-man. And if the dead wish to express what really
happens when the quickly gained head-knowledge lives itself into the
slower course of the heart-knowledge, they say there wisdom-knowledge
is transformed through what ascends from man as heart-warmth or love.
Wisdom is fructified in man by love. So say the dead. [See
also ‘The Inner Nature of Man and Life between Death and
Rebirth’.]
And that is in fact a
profound and significant law of life. One can acquire head-knowledge
rapidly, one can know a tremendous amount precisely in our age,
for natural science not the natural-scientist natural
science has made very great advances in our time and has a rich
content. But this content has remained head-knowledge, it has not
been transformed into heart-knowledge because people I
pointed this out yesterday no longer pay attention to what
approaches in life after the twenty-seventh year, because people do
not understand how to become old or I could say, to remain
young in growing old. Because men do not keep the inner livingness
their heart grows cold; the heart warmth does not stream up to the
head; love, which comes from the rest of the organism, does not
fructify the head. The head-knowledge remains cold theory. There is
no necessity for it to remain cold theory, all head-knowledge can be
transformed into heart-knowledge. And that is precisely the task
of the future; that head-knowledge shall gradually be
transformed into heart-knowledge. A real miracle will happen if
head-knowledge is transformed into heart-knowledge! One is completely
right if one vigorously declaims today against the materialistic
natural science, or, really, natural-philosophy one is
completely right, but all the same, something else is true. If this
natural science which has remained mere head-knowledge in Haeckel,
Spencer, Huxley, etc. and is therefore materialism, became
heart-knowledge, if it were absorbed by the whole man, if
humanity were to understand how to become old, or younger in old age
as I showed yesterday, this science of today would become really
spiritual, the true pursuit for the spirit and its existence. There
is no better foundation than the natural science of the present day,
if it is transformed into what can flow to the head from the rest of
man's organism, that is to say from the spiritual part of the
organism. The miracle will be accomplished when men also learn to
feel the rejuvenation of their etheric body so that the
materialistic natural science of today will become spirituality.
It will the sooner become spirituality the greater the number of
people who reproach it with its present materialism, its
materialistic folly.
But together with this
will be linked a complete transforming which can be felt by one who
has but a slight feeling for what is taking place at the present
time: linked with it will be a complete transforming of the nature of
education and instruction. Who could deny, if he has an open eye
for the social, moral, historical conditions of the present, who
could deny that mankind as a whole is not in a position
though it sounds grotesque to give children an adequate
education, especially an adequate instruction? We can, to be sure,
make children officials, industrialists, we can even make them
pastors, etc. etc., but we are but little in a position to make
children today into complete human beings, into all-round developed
men. For it is a deep demand of the time that if man is to be a
complete all-round developed organism of soul and spirit, he must be
in the position to transform all his life through what he took in
quickly, rapidly as a child. The whole life through must the human
being remain fresh in order to transform what he has absorbed.
For what do we really
do today in later life? (These things are not looked on
unprejudicedly [?] enough). We have learnt a certain amount in youth,
the one more, the other less; we are proud, are we not, that we have
no more illiterates in Western Europe? One learns much, another less,
but all have learnt something in youth. And what do we do in later
life with what we learnt, no matter whether it was much or little? It
is all of such a nature that one only remembers what one has learnt,
it is present in man in such a way that one can remember it. But what
do men work on there? It is not conveyed to the human soul so as to
work in the soul, so that heart-contents may arise from
head-knowledge. It is in no way fitted for that. Much water must
still flow down the Rhine, if what we can give to youth today
(let us observe it only in one field, but it is applicable in all
fields) is to be something that is fitted really to be transformed
into heart-knowledge. What must that be? We have in fact today no
possibility at all of giving our children anything that could really
become heart-knowledge. For that we lack two conditions, and only
Spiritual Science rightly understood can bring about these two
conditions.
Two conditions are
lacking for really giving to children today something that refreshes
life, something which throughout life can be a source of joy in life
and a supporting of life. Two things are lacking. The one is that,
from all the current ideas that we have today, that modern culture
can give us, man can gain no conception of how he stands in relation
to the universe. Just think of all that is conveyed to one in school.
It is imparted even to the smallest children at least, what
they are told is put into such words as contain what I am now
expressing to you. Reflect that the human being grows up today under
these ideas: there is the earth, it swings with such and such a
velocity through universal space, and beyond the earth there are the
sun, planets, fixed stars. And then what is said of the sun, the
planets, the fixed stars, is at most a kind of cosmic physics
it is no more cosmic mechanics, cosmic physics. What the
astronomer says today, what our general culture today says about the
structure of the universe, has that anything to do with this human
being who walks about here below upon the earth? Most certainly not!
Is it not true that for the natural scientific idea of the world, man
goes about as a somewhat more highly developed animal; he is born,
dies, is buried, another comes, is born, dies, is buried, etc. etc.
and so it goes from generation to generation. Out in the great cosmic
space events take place which are calculated purely mathematically
as in a great world machine. But for the modern clever men what has
all that takes place out there in the universe to do with the fact
that here on earth this somewhat more highly evolved animal is born
and dies? Priests, pastors, know no other wisdom to put in place of
this comfortless wisdom. And since they do not know that, they say
that they do not occupy themselves in any way with science, but that
faith must have an entirely different origin.
Well, we need not
enlarge on this. But they are two utterly different things that are
spoken of by atheistic science and by the so-called religious faith
of this or that Confession at Church, feebly upholding the theistic
element. It was essential that for a certain time in humanity's
evolution the present world conception should take the place of
the earlier ideas. We need not go back very far only people
don't think of it today and men were then still aware that
they did not wander on the earth as higher animals who were just born
and buried. Rather did they bring themselves into connection with the
star-world, with the whole universe, and knew in their own way, in a
different way from that in which it must be striven for now, of the
connection with the universe. But one must therefore also conceive of
the universe differently.
You see, such a world
conception as is imparted even to children today would be unthinkable
in the twelfth, thirteenth centuries; they could not in the least
imagine having such an opinion of the world of the stars. They looked
up to the stars, to the planets as we do today, but they did not
merely calculate, as the modern mathematical astronomer does, the
orbits of the planets, and believe that up there is a globe which
passes through world space the science of the Middle Ages saw
in each globe the body of a spiritual being. It would have been
simply a piece of folly to represent a planet as a mere material
globe. Read about it in Thomas Aquinas. [Compare
‘The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas’.] You will find
everywhere that in each planet he sees an Angelic Intelligence. And
so in the other stars. Such a universe as modern astronomy fabricates
was not imagined. But for a certain length of time, in order to
progress, one must drive the soul, as it were, out of the
universe, in order to conceive the skeleton, the pure machinery of
the universe. The Copernicus, the Galileo, the Kepler world
conceptions had to come. But only the foolish see them as something
valid for all time. They are a beginning, but a beginning that must
evolve further.
Many things are known
already to Spiritual Science which official astronomy does not yet
know. But it is important that just these things which Spiritual
Science knows and official astronomy does not yet know, should pass
over into the general consciousness of humanity. And although these
concepts may seem difficult today they will become something that one
can impart to the children, they will be an important possession for
the children, to keep the soul full of life. We still have to speak
of these things, however, in difficult concepts. For as long as
Spiritual Science is received, as it is at present by the external
world, it has no opportunity of pouring things into such concepts
and such pictures as are needed if they are to become the subject of
children's education.
There is something, for
instance, of which modern astronomy knows nothing. It knows nothing
of the fact that the earth speeding through the universe, speeds too
fast. She rushes too fast, the earth! And since she rushes too fast,
since the earth moves quickly, we also have our head-development
quicker than we should have if the earth were to move as slowly as to
correspond with our whole life's duration. The rapidity of our
head-development simply depends on the fact that the earth races too
quickly through universal space. Our head takes part in this speed of
the earth, the rest of our organism takes no part in it, the rest of
our organism withdraws itself from cosmic events. Our head which, as
a sphere, is an image of the heavens, must also participate in what
the earth performs in celestial space. Our remaining organism which
is not formed on the model of the whole universe, does not
participate, it makes its development more slowly. Were our whole
organism to participate today in the speed of the earth, were it
to develop in correspondence to the speed of the earth, then
none of us could ever be older than twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven
years would be the average life of man. For in fact our head is
finished when we are twenty-seven years old; if it depended on the
head, man would die at the age of twenty-seven. Only because the rest
of man is planned for a longer life time, and continually sends its
forces to the head after the twenty-seventh year, do we live as long
as we do. It is the spiritual part of the remaining organism which
sends its forces to the head. It is the heart portion that exchanges
its forces with the head.
If humanity knows some
day that it has a twofold nature, a head-nature and a heart-nature,
then it will know too that the head obeys quite other cosmic laws
than the rest of the organism. Then the human being takes his
place again within the whole macrocosm, then man can do no other than
form concepts that lead him to say ‘I do not stand here
upon earth as merely a higher animal, to be born and to die, but I am
a being formed from out the whole universe. My head is built up for
me out of the whole universe, the earth has attached to me the rest
of my organization, and this does not follow the movements of the
cosmos as my head does.’ Thus, when we do not look at man
abstractly, as modern science does, but regard him as picture in his
duality, as head-man and heart-man in connection with the universe,
then the human being is placed again into the cosmos. And I know, my
dear friends, and others who can judge such things know it also: if
man can make heart-warm concepts of the fact that when one looks at
the human head it is seen to be an image of the whole star-strewn
space of the world with its wonders, then there will enter the human
soul all the pictures of the connection of man with the wide, wide
universe. And these pictures become forms of narrative which we have
not yet got, and which will bring to expression, not abstractly, but
linked with feeling, what we can pour into the hearts of the youngest
children. Then these hearts of young children will feel: here upon
earth I stand as human being, but as man I am the expression of the
whole star-strewn universal space: the whole world expresses itself
in me. It will be possible to train the human being to feel himself a
member of the whole cosmos. That is the one condition.
The other condition is
the following: when we are able to arrange the whole of education and
instruction so that man knows that he is an image of the universe in
his head, and in the remaining organism is withdrawn from the
universe, that with his remaining organism he must so work upon what
falls down like a rain of the soul the whole universe
that it becomes independent in man here upon earth, then this
will be a particular inner experience. Think of this two-fold human
being, whom I will now draw in this curious fashion.
When he comes to know
that from the whole universe there flow unconsciously into his head,
stimulating its forces, the secrets of the stars, but that all this
must be worked upon his whole life through by the rest of his
organism, so that he may conserve it on earth, carry it through death
back again into the spiritual world when this becomes a
living experience, then man will know his twofold nature, he will
know himself as head-man and heart-man. For what I am now saying
means that man will learn to solve his own riddle, to say to himself:
inasmuch as I become more and more heart-man, inasmuch as I remain
young, I view in later years through what my heart gives me, that
which in childhood and youth I learnt through my head. The heart
gazes
up to
the head and will see there an image of the whole starry heavens. The
head however will look to the heart and will find there the mysteries
of the human riddle, will learn to fathom in the heart the actual
being of man. The human being will feel as regards his education: To
be sure, I can learn all sorts of things with my head. But as I go on
living, as I live on towards death that is to bear me into the
spiritual world, what I learn through the head is fructified in the
future through the love ascending from the rest of the organism and
becomes something quite different. There is something in me as man
that is only to be found in me as man; I have to await something.
Very much lies in these words and it means very much when man is so
educated that he says: I have something to await. I shall be thirty,
forty, fifty, sixty years old, and as I grow older from decade to
decade, there comes towards me through growing older something of the
mystery of man. I have something to await from the fact that I live
on.
Imagine if that were
not mere theory, if it were life-wisdom, social life-wisdom. Then the
child is educated in such a way that he knows ‘I can learn
something; but he who teaches me possesses something that I cannot
learn; I must first be as old as he before I can find it in myself.
If he relates it to me, he gives me something which must be a sacred
mystery for me, since I can hear it from his mouth, but cannot find
it in myself.’ Just think what a relationship is created again
between children and their elders, which is entirely lost in our age
if man knows that age offers something that is to be awaited.
If I am not yet forty years old, that sum of mysteries cannot lie in
me that can lie in one who is already forty years old. And if he
imparts it to me, I receive it just as information, I cannot know it
through myself. What a bond of human fellowship would be formed, if
in this way a new earnestness, a new profundity came into life!
This earnestness, this
depth, is precisely what is lacking to our life, what our life does
not possess. Our present life only values head-knowledge. But true
social life will in this way die out, approach dissolution, for here
on earth men wander about who have no idea what they are, who really
only take seriously what there is up to the age of twenty-seven, and
then employ the remainder of life in carrying about the corpse in
them, but not in transforming the whole man into something which can
still carry youthfulness through death.
Because people do not
understand this, my dear friends, because an age has come that could
not understand this, everything that refers to spiritual things
remains so unsatisfying, as I had to say yesterday concerning
Friedrich Schlegel. He was a gifted man, he had understood much, but
he did not know that a new revelation of the spirit was necessary, he
thought that one could simply take the old Christianity. In many
respects he could even express right ideas with ringing words
I will read you a passage from the last lecture by Friedrich Schlegel
in the year 1828. He sought to prove, as he said, ‘that in the
course of world-history a divine guiding hand and disposition is to
be recognized, that not merely earthly visible forces are
co-operating in this evolution, or opposing and hindering it,
but that the conflict is in part directed under divine assistance
against invisible powers. I hope to have established a conviction of
this, even I though it is not proved mathematically, which would here
be neither proper nor applicable, and that it will nevertheless
remain active and vigorous.’
He had a presentiment,
but not a living consciousness that man, by living through history,
has to become familiar in history with divine forces, and together
with these divine forces fights against opposing spiritual powers
he says expressly, ‘opposing spiritual powers’. For in
certain respects people flee from the real science of the spirit.
Since the third century of our era, when in the West the prejudice as
it was called, arose against the persuasion of the false gnosis
(so they called it: the persuasion of the false gnosis!) people have
gradually begun to turn aside from all that can be known of the
spiritual worlds. And so it came about that even religious impulses
prepared materialism, and that these religious impulses could not
prevent the fact that we have really nothing to give to youth. Our
science does not serve the young; in later life one can only remember
it, it cannot become heart-wisdom.
In the religious field
it is just the same. Man has finally come, one might say, to two
extremes. He seems to have forgotten how to conceive of the
super-sensible Christ and desires to know nothing of that cosmic power
of which spiritual science must speak again as the power of
Christ-Jesus. On the other hand there is the quite delightful, really
lovely and charming picture which developed in the course of the
Middle Ages and modern times through poets and musicians a
charming poetic picture which has developed round the Infant-Jesus.
But pictures and ideas related to the dear Jesus-Babe cannot satisfy
a man religiously his whole life through! It is in fact
characteristic that a really paradoxical love for the sweet little
Jesus is expressed in countless songs and so on. There is nothing to
be objected to in this, but it cannot remain the only thing.
That is the one aspect,
where man, in order to have at least something, has clung to the
smallest, since he cannot raise himself to the great. But it
cannot fill up life. And on the other hand the ‘bon Dieu
citoyen’, as at Christmas we learnt to know him in Heinrich
Heine's words, the ‘bon citoyen’ Jesus, who is divested
of all divinity, the God of the liberal pastors and liberal priests.
Now do you believe that he can really grip life? Do you believe in
particular that he can take youth captive? He is from the outset
a dead theology-product, not even a theology-product, but a
theology-history-product. In this sphere, however, mankind is far
removed from directing its gaze to what is spiritual power in
history.
Why is this so? Simply
because for a time mankind must go through a stage of gazing into the
world purely from a materialistic standpoint. The time has also
come when modern natural science which is so fitted for spirituality
must be transformed into heart-knowledge. Our natural science is
either execrable, if it remains as it is, or it is something quite
extraordinarily grand, if it changes into heart-knowledge. For then
it becomes spiritual science. The older science which is involved in
all sorts of traditions had already transformed head-science into
heart-science; the modern age has had no gift for transforming into
heart-science the science it has acquired up to the present, and so
it has come about that head-science, especially in the social field,
has performed the only real work, and has thus brought about the most
one-sided product it is possible to have.
You see, man's head can
know nothing at all of the being of man. Hence when man's head
ponders over the being of man and his connection with the social
life, it has to bring something quite foreign into the social common
life. And that is the modern socialism, expressed as
social-democratic theory. There is nothing that is such pure
head-knowledge as the Marxist social-democracy. This is only because
the rest of mankind has shirked any concern in world problems,
and in the Marxist circles they have only occupied themselves with
social theories. The others have only no, I will be polite
let themselves be prompted by professorial-thoughts, which are purely
traditional. But head-wisdom has become social theory. That is to
say, people have tried to establish a social theory with an
instrument which is least of all capable of knowing anything about
the human being. This is a fundamental error of present-day mankind,
which can only be fully disclosed when people know about
head-knowledge and heart-knowledge. The head will never be able to
refute socialism, Marxist socialism, because in our times the
head's task is to think out and devise. It will only be refuted
through Spiritual Science, since Spiritual Science is head wisdom
transformed through the heart.
It is extraordinarily
important that one should realize these things. You see why even such
a man as Schlegel suggested unsuitable means since he was
willing to accept the old, although he realized that man must
re-acquire vision for the invisible that goes about amongst us. But
our age is a challenge to direct the gaze to what is thus invisible.
Invisible powers were always at hand as Schlegel divined: unseen
powers have taken part in working upon what is being accomplished in
mankind. Humanity, however, must evolve. Up to a certain degree it
did not matter so much if people in the last few centuries gave no
thought to the super-sensible, invisible forces, for instance, in
social life. That will not do in the future. In the future, in face
of the real conditions, that won't do! I could quote many examples to
show this; I will bring forward one.
In the course of the
last decade and a half I have spoken of this from other points of
view. Anyone who observes the social state of Europe, as it has
developed since the 8th, 9th centuries, knows that many different
things have worked into the structure of European life, into this
complicated European life. In the West it has retained the Athanasian
Christianity, it has thrust back eastwards (as I said here a few
weeks ago) an older Christianity, originally linked with Asiatic
traditions, the Russian Christianity, the Orthodox Christianity.
It has developed in the West the various European members of this
European social totality inasmuch as it has gradually created
a member out of the preserved Roman element with the newly revived
German and Slav elements in Europe altogether a complicated
organism. One could find one's way about in it up to now, if one
disregarded what lives there unseen; for the configuration of Europe
has much force in its structure. But an essential and important force
in this structure is, among others, the relation in which France has
stood to the rest of Europe. I do not now mean merely the political
relation, I mean the whole relation of France to the rest of Europe,
and by this I mean all that any European could feel in the course of
centuries, since the 8th, 9th centuries, with regard to anyone
belonging to the French nation. There is this peculiarity, my dear
friends, that, so far as the relation of the rest of Europe to France
is concerned, it comes to expression in feelings of sympathy and
antipathy. We have to do with sympathy and antipathy, and hence
purely with a phenomenon of the physical plane. One can understand
the human relationship coming into play between France and the rest
of Europe if one studies what hearts, what human souls live out on
the physical plane. What has developed for France, at any rate
outside France, is to be understood through physical plane
conditions. Hence it did no harm there were similar
relationships in Europe in the last centuries it did no harm
if people neglected to see the super-sensible powers playing into
things, since the sympathies and antipathies were caused by relations
of the physical plane.
Much of what has thus
played its part for centuries will become different. We are standing
before mighty revolutions, even in regard to innermost relations that
are coming over the European social structure. One need not believe
it to have been lightly spoken if I have once again stressed the fact
that things are to be taken more earnestly than men nowadays are
inclined to take them. We are standing before mighty revolutions
and it will be necessary in the future for men to turn their eyes
the eyes of the mind to spiritual relationships; for it will
no longer be possible merely from physical plane relations to
understand what is going on. It can only be understood if one can
take spiritual relations into consideration.
What took place in
March the fall of the Czar has a metaphysical
character. One can only understand it if one has in mind its
metaphysical character. Why then was there a Czar at all? The
question can be grasped in a higher sense than in the external
trivial-historical sense. Why was there a Czar at all? If one
disregards individual pacifist cranks who have seen something serious
in the tomfoolery of the Czar's Peace-Manifesto, then one must say:
even those who from all sorts of reasons have ranged themselves with
the Russian realm have not loved Czardom. And in those who loved it,
the love was certainly not very genuine. But why was there a Czardom?
There was a Czardom my dear friends, I will now express it
paradoxically, somewhat extremely: so that Europe had
something to hate. It was necessary to provoke those forces of
hatred. There was a Czardom, and the Czardom behaved as it did, so
that Europe had something to hate. Europe needed this hate as a sort
of fresh impetus to something else. The Czar must be there in order
in the first place to serve as the point on which the hatred
concentrated; for a wave of hatred was prepared, as may now even be
seen externally. What is now taking place will be transformed into
powerful feelings of hatred. It will no longer be possible to
understand these, as the sympathy and antipathy of former times were
to be understood from the aspect of the physical plane. For,
my dear friends, not mere human beings will hate. Central and Eastern
Europe will be hated, not by men, but by certain demons which will
dwell in men. The time will certainly come when Eastern Europe will
perhaps be hated even more than Central Europe.
These things must be
understood and they must not be taken lightly. They can only be
understood if men lift themselves to seek a connection with the
spiritual world. For what has already been to some extent divined by
such spirits as Friedrich Schlegel, will certainly come to pass,
though they have not seen the foundations and the roots. Things
must be grasped without prejudice in the eye of the soul, so that man
can look back over the last centuries and what they have brought ...
and then they will be able to co-operate in what must be founded.
Among the fine passages
that occur from time to time in Schlegel's addresses there is this:
‘In the evolution of mankind all depends on the inner being of
the soul and on the sincerity in the soul, and harmful above all is
every kind of political idolatry.’ That is a fine passage of
Friedrich Schlegel's. This political idolatry, how it has laid hold
of our time! How it rules our time! And the political idolatry has
created a fine symptom for itself, by which one is able to recognize
what is there.
But one must look
through circumstances! Yes, my dear friends, one must perceive what
is living in our times. We have no possibility today, if we do not
deepen knowledge through the heart, of giving children what they need
in order to keep young and fitted for life all their life through. We
have not yet this possibility [The
first of over eighty Waldorf Schools was not founded until 1919.]
and we understand that as soon as we look at the true nature
of the head-man and heart-man. It must be established, it must come.
If we want to put things in a few words we can say: Schoolmastering
is utterly and entirely unable to fulfil its mission today. What
ranks as Schoolmastering is completely foreign to the true being of
man. But the world threatens to be ruled by a schoolmaster, [Woodrow
Wilson.] revered through political idolatry. Schoolmastering,
the least of all fitted for guiding men in the modern epoch, is
supposed to be high politics.
At least some few
people ought to realize these things. For they are things which are
profoundly connected with the deep knowledge which man can only gain
if he seeks a little to penetrate the secrets of humanity. The
world today can neither be grasped nor in any way governed through
desires and instincts, through Chauvinism and nationalism, but solely
through the good will which tries to penetrate into true reality.
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