Lecture 2
Dornach 16th February, 1919
In connection with what
I said yesterday about our Appeal, I should like to emphasise again
that in man's present conditions of life everything depends upon arousing,
in as many people as possible, a right social understanding. You must not
forget that the way the relations in life have recently developed has
brought a great part of the civilised world into a state of chaos such
as is only occasioned by what arises out of human souls. As the situation
is at present, external means cannot greatly help mankind, whether this
is in the form of laws or in the form of outward administration
of the economic life. In individual States it is possible, of course,
that for a time things may go on, but it would be a mistake to think
conditions in these individual States can permanently remain as they
are in the midst of the developing social upheavals encompassing all
mankind. Help can come only when an understanding of the social relations
is cultivated in men's souls.
What I have put in rather
a complicated form can also be said more simply. We may say that what
is now a striving for disorder will first take an orderly direction
when men show themselves capable of producing order. They will be so
only when they arrive at a real social understanding from which man
today — of whatever party — stands very far removed. It
is the most imperative task to spread this understanding. It is a fact
of the utmost importance that what is agitating the souls of many millions
of the proletariat is something very different from what lives in the
souls of their leaders. The leaders have for the greater part inherited
the bourgeois attitude to life, which they try to apply to the conditions
of proletarian life adorned with a few flourishes of the agitator. This
is an essential fact with which we act in accordance only when deciding
to work above all for social understanding. Even when external conditions
of life have to be recognised as being in still greater confusion and
error than formerly, nevertheless the assumption that something can
be attained by muddling through would be false. What modern man lacks
is social understanding. And this lack is due to the whole of human
thinking, feeling and willing having developed in recent times without
being applied to this understanding. It is remarkably limited even in
the many people today whose social impulses are strong.
Do not think that this social
understanding needs some specially comprehensive and far-reaching knowledge
for its development. That is not of any consequence; the point is that
in contemporary mankind there is lacking even the elementary basis for
such an understanding. People's thoughts are very different from those
needed for grasping the most primitive social questions. — It
is quite right today that attention should be given above all to finding
a way to avoid the abstract sentimental concepts at present pacifying
so many. It is widely believed that it is possible today to deal with
the social problem from some kind of ethical or religious standpoint.
This possibility does not exist. Today one cannot just preach religion
or ethics, however excellent. This may just warm the feelings and, in
an egoistic sense, have some effect. Concepts, however, must be made
capable of gripping hold of the everyday affairs of human beings.
Infinitely much depends
today on acquiring this understanding. I have said that men today in
whom social impulses are flashing up have very often only primitive
concepts. Many in leading circles as well as among the proletariat imagine
that a simple reassortment of social levels can bring about real change;
— for example, if those who were at the top, ministers and secretaries
of State were to fall and those who were formerly proletarians were
to rise, in effect, if there were a re-levelling. It would be quite
a mistake to fancy that things could be changed thus. Many have this
idea however much they may protest. Befogged by the outlook of some
party or another they are unconscious of holding these views. It is
a question, however, of coming quite simply to a clear understanding
of the threefold social organism, often dealt with here and also in
many public lectures. It is a question of every detail in social measures
being so developed that they comply with the necessity inherent in the
threefold order. Whether measures have to be taken to build a railway,
either under a private company or the State, or a decision is to be
made about the ways and means for paying an undertaking on some occasion
(I am not speaking of labour-power but of undertakings) it is always
a matter of carrying out the measures in the threefold direction, in
accordance with the independence of the spiritual life, of the political
life of rights and of the economic life. You can of course ask how this
or the other should happen. But at the stage where the matter now stands
those are for the most part the wrong kind of questions. The spirit
living in the threefold order can perhaps be described like this, to
take an example: What is the best system of taxation? Now today the
important thing is not to think out a system of taxation but to work
towards the threefold order. When this threefold membering of the social
organism becomes more and more an actuality the best system of taxation
will arise through this threefold activity. It is a matter of establishing
the conditions under which the best social organisation can originate.
Someone or other ruminating over what would be best is not of importance
and is not in accordance with reality. But imagine that one of you were
a genius, such a genius as has never before been seen in human evolution,
and were therefore in a position to think out the best possible system
of taxation. But what if you were to stand alone with your magnificently
thought-out system and the others refused it, wanting perhaps something
less good but anyhow not yours? You see it is not a matter of thinking
out the best, but of finding what men as a whole would accept as a basis
on which to do their best.
It is true that you may
say here: One must begin somewhere. The threefold State must be set
up even though men appear unwilling to accept it. That is something
different, for there it is not a matter of what men can wish for or
not, such as a system of taxation, but of what fundamentally all men
would want were they to understand it. If you find the right way you
can make it intelligible to them, for subconsciously men want it to
be realised during the coming decades throughout the civilised world.
That is not merely thought-out, but seen to be what men are wanting.
And it is not because they lack the desire that countless men reject
it, but because being still full of prejudices, they work in opposition
to this matter, which in future will be fully realised. The essential
thing is to pay heed to what is primary. The primary is that for which,
in a longer or shorter period, understanding can be awakened when once
the hindrances to this understanding have been removed. Naturally there
are always leading personalities who stand in the way. These personalities
are not to be convinced; they must first break their heads against the
obstacles they meet. And there will be many such obstacles. On this
account if at first the affair does not go as one had imagined, it need
not be labeled a failure. Things of this sort must be prepared for.
Something must be there when what is now brought about in a mistaken
way will have led to an absurd situation, when much that now appears
in the world is no longer there — just as the German princes are
no longer there, who in 1913 never dreamed they would have disappeared
by 1919 — when what so many people now applaud is gone, then something
on which they can fall back must at least be there in people is heads
and hearts. Preparation must be made, the ground must be ready. When
once you have penetrated long and deeply enough into this threefold
membering of the spiritual life, the economic life and the political
life, then the need will arise in you to have a more fundamental understanding
of all this. This understanding is absolutely essential, otherwise even
when spoken with all possible goodwill what is said will have no connection
with reality. The social organism is subject to definite laws in the
same way as the natural human organism. You gain nothing by acting against
these laws even on grounds of principle. You can at best lead men into
a blind alley.
Now do not say: Where is
human freedom when man finds himself in a social organism with fixed
laws? You might as well ask whether a man can be free when daily he
has to eat. It does not make him free to refrain from eating. Things
subject to certain laws — even men themselves — have nothing
at all to do with the problem of freedom, just as little as our not
being able to grasp the moon has to do with our freedom.
To gain a social understanding
it is advisable for us to be in the position to go back to fundamentals,
to primaries, rather than let our understanding remain bogged in secondaries
or tertiaries, which are subsequent phenomena. We may give this example
from a certain condition of life — a man needs a definite minimum,
let us say in money — since we have converted our values into
money — in order to support life. This subsistence minimum can
be spoken of as referring to some special condition of life. But we
can so speak of it that we say something apparently extremely obvious
on the one hand, on the other, what is complete nonsense. I will try
to make this clear to you by an example. Taking given conditions of
life in any part of the world you may perhaps say with feeling that
a manual worker needs so and so much as a subsistence minimum, otherwise
he would be unable to live in the particular community. This can seem
quite an obvious idea. But how is it then, in accordance with what has
been assumed here, when this is not realisable within a certain social
organism? The question that must first of all be answered is: What then
if the realisation of this is impossible?
To reflect upon the matter
thus is not the primary thinking I have represented. Thought out in
the abstract, the subsistence minimum demanded does not lead us to fundamentals
but ties us down to what is secondary, what appears as a mere consequence.
To attain social understanding we have to be in a position to enter
into fundamental things. It is fundamental to cultivate a practical
view as to how there can be a subsistence minimum in accordance with
conditions of life in the social organism. In this case I mean by ‘practical’
such a view that would result in humanly possible social conditions
and social community life. This is the primary.
And now one comes to certain
conceptions very unpopular with a great part of present-day mankind,
because the basic teaching that should work towards such things, and
really guide them in this direction, has been neglected. Men need to
realise that even to be half-educated one should not merely know that
three times nine is twenty-seven; one should also know, for example,
what it is that we call ground-rent. I ask you, how many people today
have any clear idea of what ground-rent is? But without considering
the social organism in connection with such things, no human progress
can be made.
The wrong-headed conceptions
men hold today are due to confusion in this sphere. Ground-rent, which
can be reckoned according to the productivity of a piece of land in
a certain district, yields a certain sum for a State-bounded area. The
land tapes its value according to its productivity, that is, in accordance
with the way or the degree in which it is put to rational use in relation
to the whole economy. It is very difficult today for anyone to gain
a clear concept of this simple land value, since in the modern capitalistic
economic life interest on capital, or capital in any form, has confused
the whole picture of ground-rent, and the true concept of its economic
value for the people has been blurred by phantoms in the form of mortgage
law and the system of stocks and shares. Strictly speaking, everything
has been forced into conceptions that are impossible and false. Naturally
a true conception of ground-rent cannot be acquired in the twinkling
of an eye. But think of it simply as the economic value of the land
in some territory, with regard to its productivity. Now there exists
a necessary relation between this ground-rent and subsistence what I
have referred to as a subsistence minimum. There are many social reformers
and social revolutionaries today who dream of the wholesale abolition
of ground-rent, who believe, for example, that ground-rent will be done
away with by all land being nationalised or communalised. Essentials,
however, are never changed by a mere change of form. Whether a whole
community owns the land or it is owned by a number of individuals makes
no difference to the existence of ground-rent. It is simply obscured
and takes on other forms. Ground-rent as I have defined it is always
there. Take the ground-rent of a certain district and divide it up among
the individual inhabitants, then you will get as quotient the only possible
subsistence minimum. This is a law as definite and unalterable as a
law of Physics. It is a primary fact, something fundamental, that in
a social organism in reality no one deserves more than is yielded by
the ground-rent being divided among the total population. What can be
earned further arises through coalitions and associations in which conditions
are established where one individual can acquire more value than another.
But not a whit more can pass into the movable property of an individual
man than what I have here indicated. From this minimum, which really
exists everywhere even though the real conditions are obscured, arises
all economic life in so for as it applies to an individual's movable
property. It must have arisen from this basic fact. Hence it is that
one starts not from something secondary but from this primary fact.
This primary fact may be compared to any other, for example to a primary
fact also valid for the economic life, that on a certain territory there
is only a certain amount of raw product. Naturally you may think it
desirable to have more of this raw product and to be able just to reckon
how much more might be had from this land. But the raw product does
not allow of any arbitrary increase; that is a primary fact. And it
is a primary fact in the same way that, in a social organism, in reality
nothing more can be earned through work — however hard this work
may be — than can be yielded by the quotient I mentioned. As I
said, all surplus is acquired through human coalition.
The social and political
administration can be in contradiction to these facts. Therefore it
is necessary to bring all organising thought into the direction that
facts take. Man can find satisfaction only when these things are thoroughly
understood. Then the organising factor, the thinking that has taken
on reality, is brought into line with what the nature of the social
organism demands, and other thinking adjusts itself to it, so that it
cannot happen that one thinking considers itself prejudiced by the other.
That is what lies as a law at the basis of the true life of the social
organism. Right thinking, realistic concepts on such matters can be
gained — as I showed by the example of the relation of a subsistence
minimum to ground-rent — only when you make your start on the
basic principles of the threefold order. For only under its influence
is it possible for men to create measures by which human life in common
on any given territory can be developed really productively. Life will
develop most productively when it goes in a direction that accords with
law and not in the opposite direction. Thus it is a matter of living
in time with the social organism.
It is necessary to be quite
clear about this — that you will never gain insight into the fundamentals
of the Threefold Order by observing life externally, any more than observation
of any number of right-angled triangles will give you the Pythagorean
theorem. But once known it can be applied to any real right-angled triangle.
It is the same with these fundamental laws. Once grasped correctly in
accordance with reality, they can be of universal application. And in
addition you have from the basis of Spiritual Science the opportunity
to grasp the necessity of the Threefold Order. Consider what can be
given through it — the life of earthly spirituality, if I may
so call it, art, science, religion and also, as already mentioned, civil
and criminal law; that is one sphere. The second is the political association
of men and is concerned with man's relation to his fellows. And the
third is the economic life, concerned with man's relation to the lower
man, what man needs in order to raise himself to his true manhood. The
Threefold Order has to do with these three spheres. Man should be established
in the social organism in accordance with these three members; he must
be so established. For the three members have each a quite distinct
origin in regard to the human being as such. All life of the spirit
on earth — and what I now say counts for our own age — is
a kind of echo of what man lived through in the life before his descent
through birth into physical existence. In that life the human being
lived as a spiritual individual in a spiritual relation to the higher
hierarchies, with those disembodied souls who were in the spiritual
world and not at the time incarnated on earth. What man develops here
as spiritual life, be it in devotion to religious practice or life in
a religious community, be it in activity in the arts, or as a judge
passing sentence on those of his fellowmen found guilty, everything
lived out in this spiritual life has its origin in the forces acquired
by man when, before he entered physical existence through birth, he
lived with the higher hierarchies in the spiritual worlds. Here you
must distinguish between life lived in common with other men in accordance
with individual destiny, and that lived with others in accordance with
what I have just described. In earthly existence we come into individual
relations with one or other of our fellow-men. These relations depend
upon our individual karma, and either trace back to earlier lives on
earth or point to those coming later. But among these individual relations
between human beings you must distinguish those, for example, that arise
from belonging to a certain religious community. For in a religious
community you think or feel as a number of other men do. Or suppose
a book is published. Men read the book, take up thoughts from the book,
and thus enter into a community. Spiritual life on earth, whether having
to do with the bringing-up of children, education, or anything else
of the kind, consists in our coming into relation with people and developing
a life in common with them, in order thereby oneself to make spiritual
progress. All that, however, is experiencing relationships in which,
before descending into spiritual life on earth, we were in a quite different
form. It has nothing to do with individual karma but with what was prepared
during life in the spiritual world in the time lived through between
death and a new birth. Thus, one has to seek the source of what I have
called the spiritual sphere, in the life passed through by man before
he prepared to descend. through birth into earthly existence.
Then there comes what is
experienced simply by living on earth between birth and death. We grow
into this life by degrees. When as an infant we enter into this existence
through birth, we still bear — if I may make a foolish comparison
— much of the egg-shell of the spiritual world around us, though
it is not hard. The child is very spiritual in spite of its main task
being the development of its physical body. In its aura there is much
of the spiritual; what it brings with it is very nearly akin to the
spiritual life on earth. Gradually, however, it enters more and more
deeply into the life that belongs entirely to the time between birth
and death.
Now the sources of the life
of the political state are found in this life not chiefly concerned
with the spiritual. The political state has to do only with what man
experiences between birth and death. Therefore nothing should be involved
in it save what concerns us as beings between birth and death in our
mutual relations as man to man. If the state involved itself in anything
other than what concerns the public life of rights between birth and
death, if it spread its wings over Church and School, for example, well
— in the places where there were people with a faculty for judging
such things it used to be said: “There the Prince of this world
holds his unjust sway!” Nothing belongs to all that is the object
of state-organisation except what has to do with the life between birth
and death.
The third member is the
economic. This economic life, which we are obliged to lead because we
eat and drink, clothe ourselves and so on, forces us as human beings
to descend into the subhuman. It chains us to something beneath the
level of our full humanity. By having to concern ourselves with life
economically, by having to dive down into economic life, we experience
something which, when observed socially, has more in it than is usually
thought. In so far as we stand in the economic life we cannot live in
the spiritual nor in the life of rights, but must plunge below the human
level. But just by this plunging into the subhuman we take into ourselves
something that thus has an opportunity to develop. Whereas in the economic
life we are active and higher thoughts must be silent and even the human
mutual relations play in only from another sphere, there is worked in
our subconscious then what we then carry with us into the spiritual
world through the gate of death. Whereas in the spiritual life on earth
we experience the echo of what we lived through before our descent to
earth, and in the life of rights of the political state experience only
what lies between birth and death, in the economic life, into which
we cannot enter with our higher self, something is being prepared that
is also spiritual and carried by us through the gate of death. People
would like the economic life to exist only for the earth. But this is
not so. Just through our plunging down into the economic life something
is prepared for us as human beings that is again connected with the
supersensible world. Therefore no one should think of holding the economic
life too lightly. However strange and paradoxical it may seem, this
external materialistic life has a certain connection with the life after
death. So that in actual fact, for anyone who knows man, the three spheres
fall asunder — the purely spiritual sphere points to life before
birth; the political sphere of the State points to life between birth
and death; the economic life points to life after death. It is not in
vain that we cultivate fraternity in the economic life. In all that
we develop as brotherliness in the economic sphere lie the foundations
and preliminary conditions of life after death. I am giving you only
a first brief indication of how the threefold membering of the nature
of the human being gives the spiritual scientist in these three distinct
spheres the differentiation necessary for social life.
It is a particular characteristic
of Spiritual Science that, when we come to deal with it, we find it
directly practical. It sheds light on the life around us, and at the
present time men have no other possibility of getting light on the real
relationships of life than by in some way accepting spiritual knowledge.
Thus it is desirable that those who are interested in the Anthroposophical
Movement should let the light of their understanding ray out to others;
for the Anthroposophist it is relatively easier to penetrate these things
with insight. He knows something of life both before and after birth,
for example, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, and this shows
him the necessity for the threefoldness in life from this point of view.
This necessity can indeed be seen today. But we shall gain a deeper,
more comprehensive insight if we have the anthroposophical basis of
which I have been speaking here.
In the course of the last
centuries how much has been spoken in a sentimental way, when men have
held forth, for instance, about universal moral teaching and the like,
and religion has been kept as far as possible apart from external daily
life. We are now at a point of time when we have to develop concepts
that can penetrate right into daily life and do not just extend to the
promise of salvation or to the demand “Children love one another”.
They do not do it in any case when they do not have to or when other
business is on hand. The concepts we develop must have sufficient driving
force to enable us really to understand our present-day complicated
economic life. Thus, simply through knowledge of the nature of man we
are shown the necessity for the sound social organism to be threefold.
It must become clear to
as many people as possible today that this is the very foundation-stone
of a new structure. just to prate about the spirit is, as I was saying
yesterday, perhaps more harmful just now than the materialism which,
beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, has up to now continued
to spread. For mere talk of the spirit, mere sighing after the spirit,
mere worship of the spirit, no longer meet the needs of our epoch. In
our epoch it is fitting that we realise the spirit, that we give the
spirit the possibility of living in our midst. Today it does not suffice
just to believe in the Christ; it is essential that men should now manifest
the Christ in their deeds, in their work. This is the important thing.
If man develops sound thinking and perceiving in this sphere, these
sound thoughts and perceptions will flow into another sphere as well.
Consider how a great many of the present official representatives of
one or other of the Christian faiths speak today of Christ. But if asked:
Why is He whom you call Christ, the Christ? they can give only a fictitious
answer, what is indeed an inner lie. Many modern theologians talk of
Christ, but were you to ask them: How does your concept of the Christ-being
differ from your concept of the Jahve-God, the one God, weaving and
creating throughout the universe? they would have no answer to give.
The great theologian Harnack,
in Berlin, has written a book on
The Being of Christianity.
What he describes as the Being of Christianity is the Jehovah of the
Old Testament, with all Jehovah's characteristics. It is inwardly a
lie to describe Jehovah as Christ, And it is thus with hundreds, nay
thousands, of those preaching Christianity today; they are simply preaching
God in general, the God of Whom we can say ex Deo nascimur.
Christ is discovered only when one has experienced a kind of new birth.
We need only be healthy human beings to have to recognise the God of
Whom we say ex Deo nascimur; for to be an atheist is in reality
to be ill. But one can speak of the Christ only when in the life of
soul one has experienced a kind of re-birth, in the way this happens
in the present cycle of human evolution. For this, it is not enough
that man is simply born as a human being.
Man as he is born today
is necessarily full of prejudices; that is the nature of present-day
man. And if we remain as we are born we carry these prejudices with
us through life; we live in one-sidedness. We can save ourselves only
by having inner tolerance, by being able to enter into the opinions
of others even when we think them wrong. If we can bring a deep understanding
for the opinions of other souls even when considering them mistaken,
if we can take what the other thinks and feels in the same way as we
take what we think and feel ourself, if we adopt this faculty of inner
tolerance, we may overcome these prejudices due to the human cycle in
which we were born. We then learn to say: What you have understood in
this the least of my brethren, you have understood of me. For Christ
did not speak to men in this way only at the time when Christianity
began, but has made good His word “Lo, I am with you always even
unto the end of earthly time”. He still continues to reveal Himself.
Once Be said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least
of these my brethren ye have done it unto Me”. Today He tells
men: What you understand with inward tolerance in the least of your
brothers, even when he is mistaken, you have understood of Me, and I
will let you overcome your prejudices when you convert those prejudices
into tolerant reception of what others think and feel. — That
is one thing; that, in regard to thinking, is the way to come to Christ.
Then Christ can so permeate us that we not only have thoughts about
Him but Christ can live in our thoughts. This, however, is only achieved
in the way I have just described.
And secondly, in regard
to the will. In youth the human being is sometimes idealistic. This
is an inherent idealism and we have it simply by being born as human
beings. Today, in this era, this idealism belonging to mankind is not
enough. We now need a quite different kind — an idealism to which
we educate ourselves; we do not have it simply by becoming human beings
but by making an effort. It is this kind of idealism we need. We need
the idealism we have ourselves acquired. It then becomes the idealism
that will not vanish with youth, it will keep us young and idealistic
throughout our life. If through training we make an idealism our own,
then, on the basis not of logical law but of the law of reality, we
bring to bear the driving force to place ourselves actively into the
social organism in accordance with the very purport of this organism,
instead of acting egoistically as an individual man. No one today who
does not train himself to this self-acquired idealism will gain a true
social understanding. The ex Deo nascimur is innate. The way
to Christ is found on the one hand through supersensible thought, on
the other hand through the will. It comes through the thought by our
being convinced beforehand that nowadays we are born as men full of
prejudice and must overcame our prejudice by tolerantly listening to
the opinions of others, thus gaining right judgment. Where the way of
the will is concerned, this will only be fired socially in the right
way today when we have this self-acquired idealism, the idealism we
drive into ourselves through our own activity. That is re-birth. And
what we have found when we as men have gained it for ourselves leads us
to the Christ. Not the God of Whom we say Ex Deo nascimur may we
describe as Christ, for that is inwardly untrue. That God was known in
the Old Testament. When we as men shall have transformed ourselves in
life in the two directions mentioned, we shall clearly see the distinction
between the God Who is pure Father and the God Who will then speak to
us. For this God is the Christ.
Modern Theology actually
speaks very little about this Christ. This Christ must eater men as
a social impulse. What many people say today of Christ is intrinsically
untrue. Now such things are not to be looked into as people today subtly
present them, taking them logically, point by point. As I once told you
recently, there is an understanding in accordance with reality different
from one that is merely external and logical. But when man has developed
in himself what I have called a re-birth, then human thinking will be
brought near Christ, and we shall learn to think and feel as we must
think and feel if, for the benefit and salvation of man, we are to place
ourselves into human society. We shall also learn to think and feel
rightly in other matters by thinking and feeling rightly on these fundamental
things. From this, however, the spiritual life of modern mankind has
travelled terribly far. And the reason is that this spiritual life has
been absorbed by the political State. Man's spiritual life must be freed
from the political State to become fruitful and full of impulse for
human evolution. Otherwise all thinking will be dislocated and from
this dislocation false realities will be created.
I have already referred
to Wilson's definition of freedom. For anyone who has some understanding
of philosophy it is not very important how a statesman of the day defines
freedom. It is important, however, as symptom of what lives in a men
when he has thoughts about freedom. Now Wilson says: We call free what
adapts itself to certain conditions so that it can still move freely.
Thus we say when in a machine the piston can move freely, when it does
not knock against anything but can move without impediment — we
say the piston runs free. Or a ship moves forward freely which is so
built that it runs before the wind. If it run against the wind it is
hampered and not free. So man is free when he fits in with the conditions
of the social mechanism. There, then one can only speak of the social
mechanism.
It is not very important
that thoughts such as these live in a head and are realised; the importance
lies in what is realised being experienced in such thoughts. Then one
knows whether this is sound or the opposite of sound. The thinking is
quite dislocated; and why? Now you need only reflect on the following
with the experience you have gained from Spiritual Science: when you
fit into the external conditions of your life, when your life is running
according to this adapting oneself to conditions without impediment,
then you are free, free as a ship is free when running with the wind.
But man does not stand thus in the whole world: For if indeed the ship
running before the wind does run freely, it must, however, sometimes
also be able to stop. And that is just what is very important for man
— that he can sometimes turn round and take his stand against
the wind, so that he not only fits in with circumstances but can also
adapt himself to what is within him. One cannot think of anything more
foolish, more absurd, than Wilson's definition of freedom, for it is
opposed to human nature and the very reverse of what lies at the basis of
true freedom. If we compare a man with a ship running freely before the
wind, we must also compare him with a ship that having run in a certain
direction and not needing to go further, can turn to face the wind. For
if a man has to proceed only in accordance with external conditions,
he is naturally free in them but not in himself. We have completely
lost sight of the human being today in our observation of the world
and of life. He has dropped out of our considerations concerning life
and the world. But he must once more be given a place in the world.
[ Note 01 ]
This has its exceedingly
serious side; here it is seen only as a symptom but it has a most serious
side. For today the human being is placed into the social organism in
such a way that really he is only running with the wind, and the capitalist
ordering of economy has particularly destined the proletariat only to
run with the wind, never to be able, as a rest, to stop and face the
wind. In a public lecture in Basle I said that within the capitalist.
economic system the capitalist uses only the labour of the workers;
in a healthy social organism the capitalist must use the workers' leisure
also. Abstract capitalistic capital needs only labour-power. Capital
that, under the threefold order, will give back to men their purely
human driving force will also use the leisure of the workers, the leisure
indeed of all mankind. For that, capital must be placed into the social
organism, it will know how it is to be sustained by the social organism
and how it must in return sustain the organism.
It is a question of the
proletariat being able to save their labour-power so as to be capable
of taking part in the spiritual life; and it is a question of the will
being there to allow the worker sufficient leisure, to leave him sufficient
labour-power, that of himself he can join in this spiritual life. The
bourgeois economic order has allowed a deep cleft gradually to arise.
What it produces spiritually is valid only for this bourgeois order
and is out of touch with proletarian life.
Capitalism has brought things
to the point where only labour-power is considered and not the leisure
of the proletariat. Today these matters still seem abstract. It should
be so no longer, for upon understanding these things rightly depends
the sound human evolution both of the present and the future.
Now I have once again given
a few indications as to the relation to social life of some of the fundamental
tenets of Anthroposophy. It would be very desirable if such a spiritual
movement as ours should, as a little social organism in itself, cease
this unhealthy separation — developed to man's hurt by appalling
bourgeois concepts — of the economic life from the spiritual,
and should seek health by permeating the concepts of practical life
with the concepts of Spiritual Science. The social organism must so
organise its different members that there will no longer be men who
cut off coupons and in this coupon-cutting become nothing less than
slave-drivers, since for the coupons they cut off, a number of people,
with whom they have no connection, have to perform hard work. Afterwards
the coupon-cutters go to Church and pray God to be saved, or they go
to a meeting and talk theoretically about all sorts of beautiful things;
but they have no conception of the foolishness of living such an abstract
spiritual life that they can seek, on the one hand, a connection with
a God, and on the other hand share in slave ownership and the exploitation
of labour by this coupon-cutting. They separate these things in a way
that is not salutary by not attempting to discover the salutary. This
is what is in question, what has been neglected and what must be changed:
this separation between the religion and ethics that float in a cloud-cuckoo-land,
and the external life thoughtlessly pursued in the form given it today
by an unsound social organism. Above all it must be recognised that
the misfortunes of the present-day have come about through this separation
by the bourgeoisie of the abstract from the concrete. If efforts are
made to drive out all that shows itself in an unsound and sectarian
form, it is in just such a movement as ours that there can be a first
setting-up of a kind of small social organism that is sound. In our
Anthroposophical Movement there is nothing from which we have had to
suffer more than the repeated appearance of a tendency towards sectarianism.
Without noticing it people strive towards some kind of separation. But
Anthroposophy must be the reverse of sectarian. It will then meet the
subconscious and unconscious contemporary demands which truly do not
run to creating sects, but cultivate something that develops out of
the whole man for all men and out of all men for the whole man.
Just consider how you, in
your own souls, can get away from sectarianism. In countless souls today
sectarianism lives like something atavistic, an unhealthy inheritance,
because the will does not exist to carry the true life of the spirit
into the conditions of external life. Only through such sectarian sentimentality
could it happen that the Appeal of which I spoke yesterday should meet
with the reproach that it was just from this direction that mention
of the spiritual had been expected! But I have never been able to refer
to the spiritual in the sense of these enthusiasts. When, in the beginning
of the nineties, there spread in America the Adler-Unold Ethical Movement,
I opposed it with all my might, because a movement for ethical culture
was to be founded based on nothing, and connected with nothing in life,
but a desire to give out ethical maxims. The understanding of life, life
in its fundamentals, is what contemporary men need, not the fashioning of
phrases as to how things should be done. In regard to the social organism,
the threefold order is above all something to be studied fundamentally,
investigated and given consideration, something to be taken deeply to
heart, so that it may be mastered in the same way as the multiplication
table is mastered.
Notes:
1.
See lecture 13.1.23 (Anthr.Qtly VI.1.)
|