Healthy Thinking

The Way to Healthier Thinking

in the Demands on Modern Man

Lecture 1

Spirit and spirit-void working in life

Stuttgart on 2 March 1920

My dear honourable friends! An important phenomenon, within the sphere of our discussion on current public issues, is the book by an Englishman John Maynard Keynes regarding the economic effects of the peace agreement. Mentioning this book in public discussions can be done in the widest circles despite, on the one hand, with all its prejudices — I could define it as written with the prejudices of the English — while on the other hand it is drafted with an extraordinary significant expertise and an overview of contemporary public life. For a long time Keynes was a delegate in the English Treasury during the war. Keynes also represented the English Delegation at the Versailles peace treaty, up to the time he relinquished his appointment because he was most disappointed by the Versailles negotiations in 1919. One must say, when one looks more closely at the content of this work, something quite significant can be found for a judgement on the public circumstances of the present moment. As an introduction I would like to mention some characteristics from this book ahead of our reflections today.

When Keynes went to Paris he came along with a bag full of prejudices, so to speak — above all, prejudices regarding the possible results of this peace treaty, specifically from the point of view of an Englishman, but also with prejudices against the personalities involved in the course of current public affairs. I must say I was particularly interested in the verdict that an assessor at the Versailles negotiations was about that particular man, who the whole world had worshipped a short while before. If I repeatedly keep on coming back, I rebel against this judgement of the whole world — really rebel and not merely within Germany, but, where I have the possibility to do so during the wartime itself and until the end of the days of terror, and do so also in Switzerland — but here such rebellion couldn’t really make an impression. People had to experience, even within Germany it happened briefly, that the majority agreed with the glorification of Woodrow Wilson — that’s what I mean, and that’s what Keynes means — a glorification that took place all over the world. Again and again attention must be drawn out of the observation which I have represented here in Stuttgart for a long time already, that when dealing with someone like Woodrow Wilson you must know that he is a man of phrases, a man whose words lack any real, substantial content.

Now Keynes describes the gestures of this Woodrow Wilson at the peace treaty in Versailles. He describes with what glory this man has been admitted to and with which prejudices he has been met. He describes how this man was far away from any insight into any reality taking place at the meetings he attended. He describes how this man was not once, with his slow thinking, able to follow the thoughts of others, how others already had progressed far with something when Wilson was still pondering on something which had been contributed earlier, or spoken about earlier. You have to admit, with extraordinary plasticity, the complete inadequacy and phraseology of this world famous personality is described here, by a person who really didn’t have insight into the facts from a central European standpoint. Keynes also described other personalities, whose presence at the Versailles peace treaty attained a meaningful influence on the destiny of Europe.

About Clemenceau he said that this old man had completely slept through time since 1871, that it only mattered to him that Europe is to be restored to that state which existed before 1871, and above all, what was necessary was to apply to current world relations, that which the French had gained to ensure their own nationality since 1871.

Keynes described the statesman from his own country, Lloyd George; how this man only thought about immediate results, how with his fine instinct had to a certain extent sensed the views and opinions of those personalities around him, with whom he had contact.

Then Keynes considers what is being traded. In his book he discusses with the skill and methods of an accountant, a strict accountant, which economic results can be achieved for Europe, concocted out of this so-called “peace agreement.” Not out of some or other political ambition, not out of some or other sensation or sensitivity but out of accounting results he now arrives at, so to speak, the conclusion that what economic impulse this peace agreement must indicate would be the economic decline of Europe. Nothing less can be learned from this book, through exact accounting results as I’ve said, than that the authoritative personalities of the European Union met the institutions and that this must necessarily lead to the economic dismantling of the entire Europe.

I could say that if you read the undertones of this book, you’ll notice how the Englishman speaks from an English point of view, how he actually still allows a feeling to work on one’s soul: this decline of Europe will be so fundamental that England will be damaged. One could therefore say: Like so many current western statesmen even this Fellow of Cambridge University has little concern with fear, but the description of the situation and the current relationships one finds right in this book. Something like this quickly brings to light more than the rest of the discussions on the current international situations of the world.

The most important aspect appearing for me in this book is this: after this man with a meticulous accounting point of view has set out his observations and simultaneously in these observations mixed quite creative sketches of character judgements of personalities who took part in the institutions towards which this decline was directed, one doesn’t see anything in this book which would somehow throw a ray of light on what has to be done, in order for the general destruction not to take hold, in order for the destruction to, instead, become constructive. It’s characteristic of just this accountant to say something extraordinary in the last sentence of the last page of his book. He roughly says he couldn’t imagine that out of all the old beliefs, just as they developed out of the Versailles peace treaty, he couldn’t see anything favourable unfolding for the further development of the European civilisation. He said he could only and alone hope that a better time could arise through the combination of all the forces for the development and the imagination — “by setting in motion those forces of instruction and imagination” he termed it. This doesn’t mean anything less, my dear friends, than this precise accountant hoping for nothing more than a transformation of the spiritual mind frame of the European people.

From this position the possibility is often mentioned regarding the transformation of European people’s spiritual mind frame. It is no longer possible when addressing economic questions, to simply speak as a continuation of what took place in old relationships, in considering economic life today. Today one can’t speak about the transformation of state relationships out of the imagination which was the traditional way of thinking in the 19^th to the beginning of the 20^th century. In addition, one can’t speak about any of this if one doesn’t point out how necessary it is for the move into inwardness in European humanity as a new way of thinking about public affairs. What has turned out to be a terrible disaster is not the result of some or other faulty institution but the result of the entire state of mind which has arrived in the European people from the beginning of the 20^th century. What has been happening in the areas of legal life or state life, what has happened in the area of economic life — is nothing other than the spirit, rather I must call it the spirit-void (Ungeist) which in the course of this evening I want to emphasise, whose working is expressed in the living conditions of European people, the spirit-void which was brought in from the spiritual life, out of the so-called spiritual life, into the legal, or state life and into economic life.

This non-spirit needs to be grasped in its most significant symptoms. It must be grasped there where it has asserted itself within spiritual life itself. It is necessary, in order to attain a clear view of these relationships, to at least for once look around to what has been developing since the beginning of the so-called newer spiritual life, since the last three to four centuries. It is necessary to gain knowledge about it, how it has slipped into this spiritual life in human experience and feeling life. We must gain further knowledge about how our economic relationships have gradually become an outer expression of our spiritual life.

However, what is the most important characteristic of this spiritual life? Again and again one must say that actually a right judgement about the spiritual life which had unfolded in the course of the last three up to fourth centuries, could only be one that is in the position to sufficiently appreciate the light side of this spiritual life, that is able to see through what namely science of the last centuries developed for humanity, that has been achieved by civilised humanity. Again and again it must be pointed out how the weaving of nature is grasped according to scientific ideas. Here one has to refer to how, by embracing the area of nature, the maxims, the drives and the impulses have been found to be great achievements of modern technology, which they are indeed, which have completely transformed economic life in the course of the latest history of human development.

Let’s imagine that — and this hardly happens today — someone takes the trouble to hold his gaze on the usual branches of the scientific world view, while they were developing during the last centuries. Let’s imagine that someone holds their gaze on the most important achievements in the processes of mechanics, physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. Let’s imagine that someone like this was also in the position to judge the way of thinking, way of imagining, who have trained themselves in the admirable methods of physics, chemistry, biology, mechanics, which have been achieved for the knowledge of the anthropological in the development of humanity. Let’s imagine how a person, from the basis of a scientific education, has been able to research how people have developed out of the original primitive conditions, to higher cultural conditions, how they gradually developed the social relationships up to now. Let’s imagine how people, equipped with a scientific schooling, have endeavoured to gain sociological views about people’s living conditions. When we take such a person of this universality of scientific knowledge, who, as we said, no longer actually really exists any longer; if we imagine such a person we still have to ask ourselves: how does such a person stand before the great human question of existence? How, above all, does he stand in front of the fundamental question which repeatedly rises out of hopeful people, to the question: What is man actually within the areas of the earthly-cosmic, the soul-spiritual world order?

The most extraordinary thing is the way in which this question has been answered by the scientific world view. This scientific world view accomplished a great feat, as it were, by its conclusion of the evolution doctrine and showed you how to imagine that the simplest to the most complicated organisms developed and at the pivotal point of this evolution, kind of like a summary of the living beings on earth, man itself stands there. What can be accomplished by this? One could answer this question by saying: How does man stand in relation to the animal? What is man's attitude to those beings who he must look at in the universe as subordinated to his own organization? — This question could be answered in an exemplary way from external sense perceptible facts. The moment the great human question arises: Who are you really, as a human being? — this approach fails.

I believe that those of you, my dear listeners, who have heard entire series of lectures I’ve given over the years, will have hundreds of proofs of what I’m saying. If one summarises all that has been achieved in this area, and finally pose the question: What is this human being actually, who you are yourselves in connection with the earthly-cosmic, in relation to the soul-spiritual universal beings? — then one must say to oneself, especially if one takes into account the achievements of the modern natural science which knows how to appreciate worldview sufficiently: As much as one can know in this direction, as much knowledge as one can have about Nature, all these findings say nothing about man himself. Because the minds of people were more and more steered by the spiritual — I could also call it an un-spiritual — scientifically opinionated authority as being in force, what had been conceived in thought about nature was stretched into the feeling life, into the life of will. The human doesn’t really only want to get to know nature intellectually. The human being needs to experience, to feel what it is. The human being wants to be able to pour into his will, into deeds of will, his entire outer life and its effect that comes out of his own deepest being, letting it flow into the being of the world. He gets the feeling that he can’t relate merely instinctively to his decisions of will, to his will actions; he needs to take something up which would create goals towards which he could direct his actions, his will.

These goals do not come about in order to satisfy his will in a penetrating way, if knowledge about the world and humanity is nothing other than what is presented by science. Just through the great achievements of the scientific world view, a desolation of human feeling, a helplessness of the human will has come about. People who wouldn’t participate in a certain soul egoism presented by the achievements of science, leant on old religious or other such traditions. They basically made themselves blind to the fact that they no longer could live according to these achievements made in the knowledge of nature. Out of some kind of soul egoism they say to one another: I fill my inner being with one or other confession, I don’t worry about whether this confession, today, can still give something to people who want to go along with the demands of their time, in contrast to the statements of scientific thought.

Current public life can be understood by a symptom pointing to the scientific foundations of today’s thinking; it should be no more than a symptom regarding what I’m about to say. You must not forget that what one generation thinks becomes the disposition of the next generation in the impulses of feeling and willing. You may perhaps today still refer with legitimacy to certain extraordinary individuals who had spoken out around the first half of the (19th) century. There was someone, you can really call him a blusterer, who pronounced so many things back in the 19^th century that he can be called a blusterer. I’m referring to Johannes Scherr. By calling him a blusterer, no one will suspect that I overestimate the man. Yet I must mention the following. This man had a heart, a sense for what was being prepared for the civilization of Europe, and in his blustering speech one finds some extraordinary remarkable observations, in any case some observations which the sleeping souls among the people could perhaps only really judge today — if the works of such a chap will again be taken up; these turn to dust in libraries. At that time Johannes Scherr said how every way of thinking reached a specific culminating point which, although great and mighty things can be said about knowledge regarding nature, it is unable to tell man what he actually is — a way of thinking which was unable to give him feelings about the fact that he himself has his inner soul- spiritual being and that it is integrated into his will, to put mental and spiritual powers into it.

Johannes Scherr had seen enough to ask himself: How does a way of thinking flow if it is only about matter and not about people, how does such thinking flow into humanity if the focus is not merely on the present — in that time in the sixties and seventies — but what you will see in the following generation? He thought to himself: What happens when, one might say a “silent scholar,” proclaims certain sensations and feelings from his lectern in a certain epoch, and when these proclaimed feelings turn over and penetrate offices, factories, banks and stock exchanges? He asked himself, what would happen if one would take his way of imagination as applied in the knowledge of nature, and assert this way of imagination in a dominant way in relation to the shaping of the financial and economic world?

Such questions aren’t usually asked. One believes that what people think about in the economic sphere, what is speculated on the stock exchange, what is traded in the banks, is independent from what the quiet scholar proclaims from his lectern below. In life everything is closely related. This intimate connection is only hidden because a somewhat theoretic way of thinking can exist in a generation whose followers have the drive for outer action, the drive for a public sensory world. Under the impression of such thoughts, Johannes Scherr said the most extraordinary beautiful sentence. He said: When the spirit-void of materialism, which rules in all the circles, takes his course in the civilized world, when it asserts everything that it is predisposed to, in the financial economy of Europe, in Europe’s economic constitution, then a time will come in which we will have to say: ‘Nonsense, you have won!’

These words were spoken at the time. What lies behind these words? Behind these words lie all the hymns of praise for the economic upswing, for the way we have brought it so far, for the glorious achievements of modern life which has taken us from the 19^th into the 20^th century. So much could be heard from these kinds of hymns of praise. However, under the surface of these songs of praise something sprouted of which Johannes Scherr said: It must express itself in such a way that one must say: ‘Nonsense, you have won!’ — And nonsense has won!

Let’s look back at the last five to six years. What, my dear friends, is the destiny of those who know how to calculate, out of the present, with an inner vision, an inner understanding of future circumstances? One hears what they say, largely as sensational, but don’t take it seriously. We let go of the things, as one does by giving them to the sleeping soul, and we come to that attitude which we hardly notice, that with each week going by these things sink ever more into the abyss, yet we repeatedly say: Tomorrow it should be better already.

Something or other happens today and then tomorrow, again — yes, I don’t know what — but we arrive at something. Where does this way of thinking come from? Where is the origin of what the blunderer Johannes Scherr called the spirit-void at that time? The origin lies precisely in the fact that a worldview has emerged in the course of the last three to four centuries, which is unable to say anything about man himself, or to make him feel anything, out of the ideas which are derived from this world view. What is the point of being compelled when one has been brought up with a world view that says nothing about people themselves, what they sense or feel? What are we then compelled to do? We are compelled to speak about the human being. Yes, we are compelled to speak about the human being, one can’t avoid it, because actually everyone is in public life and since in public life people act and have to talk to one another about their affairs, we have to talk about the whole world. One can’t avoid speaking about people.

What are the consequences if we have to talk about people, if we have to talk about what is to be treated as a legal state, as a spiritual cultural state, as an economic institution among people? What is necessary if one still wants to talk about people but has no documentation, because precisely that which comes with such a world view has no records — what does one need then? Today, with what is in the sphere of spiritual life, of public spiritual life controlling the world, what you need- because you are not in the position to put spiritual substance into your words from the inner experience of the spirit — what you need is: the phrase!

You see my dear friends, what firstly is meant by spiritual science is for people to once again arrive, in their conversations, in their words, that to which only words, and words exclusively, can provide authority: spiritual substance! Spiritual substance becomes words which are spoken, not out of scientific knowledge; spiritual substance is not conveniently found as ploughed in chemistry, in physics, in botany, or biology. Spiritual substance must so to say be gained in the way which is described as less convenient by spiritual science, than it is depicted here. Spiritual substance will be gained through the true insight of the most inner being of man. That is of course only possible when one has developed the already mentioned characteristic intellectual modesty. This is only possible if one arrives at being able to say: the great achievements of science shows me precisely that if I remain as if I’ve been born into a purely physical world, facing the great achievements of humanity will look like a five year old child confronted with a manuscript of Goethe’s poetry: he rips up the manuscript in front of him. However, a child can develop so that what had earlier been something quite different can then take on its true essence. To apply this to the grownup, this is not something modern man likes. He doesn’t want to say to himself: I must take my inner soul development in hand; I must go beyond what I’ve become purely due to my physical birth, through my own inner soul work; I must develop my soul towards heights other than what it might be, if I hadn’t added my input.

When spiritual researchers say to people: in order to really recognise the spiritual, which is also within people, it is necessary to apply inner, spiritual methods, that thinking is transformed through soul exercises, as is depicted in my book “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and their attainment” or in the second half of “Occult Science” or in other books, then people come and say: Oh, that’s a fantasist talking. — When he says that there is a need for disciplining the will which does not otherwise occur in ordinary, outer life, in order to lift the soul out of the situation in which it had come through a mere physical birth, to develop it in such a way that man can achieve his own, inner management of his soul, then people come and say: Oh, that’s a fantasist talking; that’s someone speaking who wants to capitalize on the disappointments, the destroyed hopes of modern mankind, who pretends to make people believe in the possibility of supernatural knowledge!

No, my dear friends, a true spiritual researcher doesn’t speak out of such records today. He really doesn’t speak out of dilettantism regarding science, but he speaks out of a true knowledge of scientific achievements. He knows that scientific methods are necessary because science has a great deal to say, but not however, about what the being of man really is. He knows that clarification about the being of man can only be acquired through knowledge, through slow, tiring inner soul work and that this human knowledge must be reworked in order for the sense perceptible to really be lifted up to the supersensible. May the philistines regard this lifting up to the supersensible as something fantastic — for human knowledge this rising up to the supersensible is necessary, because sense perceptible knowledge point to that area which never can provide information about the nature of man. What is wanted by this spiritual science is an inner renewal from man’s deepest being; this is the striving towards a possibility for gaining human knowledge which truly relates to experience, which indicates real goals and ideals which can flow out into the will, right into the reality of economic life. What kind of effects arise in a person’s life who doesn’t strive towards this spirit which is so unsympathetic for modern humanity, but strives for the spirit-void (Ungeist), which only wants to have a world view which gives information about the non-human, the alien — what kind of life processes does this result in?

The first of these effects on life appears over the entire civilized world, already rules the civilized world in the areas of spiritual life — people don’t want to take notice of this, they close their eyes to it — as the first of these effects on life is the world domination of the phrase. If one doesn’t have a spiritual view that the world flows as a living substance, then words remain empty. Words are then spoken which have meaning only as a phrase, which means they have no sense.

During the course of recent years while the non- spirits themselves had ad absurdum moved through outer world events, we can really observe the triumph of the phrase over the entire civilised world. Phrases have words so that there is no need to think about realistic foundations — characteristic appearances is all that’s needed for remembering, like for instance the two British parties up to the middle of the 19^th century called the “Whigs” and the “Tories.” These words are used with of course no longer an inkling of the original meaning they had at one time. “Whigs,” when the word first came up, was a swearword for Scottish revolutionaries against English institutions, and “Tories” was the derisive name for the Irish Papists. Just as these words in the English language of Parliament relate to their origin in the real world, so today the dominant statements of people relate to their real origins in life. As if over life, over reality, there wafts something which we, one can’t call it think, but what we in words express out of ourselves.

The world domination of the phrase will become clear to people. Those people who do not want it to be made clear out of the observation of relationships, for them it will become clear that through an economic life which develops without a pervasive spiritual impulse, such an economic life will let them starve to death. Starving to death will present the real truth that our economic life is not controlled by the spirit but by the spirit-void because the spirit is no longer looked for in reality, because we adhere to the spirit-void which in the area of so-called spiritual life, is only uttered as a phrase about the human being.

Against this there is only one remedy, one remedy alone can overcome the rulership of the phrase: to emancipate the spiritual life from under this pressure that it had to become a phrase. A spiritual life which is not to be created out of its own foundations, a spiritual life which allows institutions to prepare its care from the economic life or allows boarding up the state life, a spiritual life that will follow and comply with the state guidelines or forces of the economic life — such a spiritual life can’t unfold freely. A spiritual life can only unfold freely and through this unfolding really come to the spirit and thus beyond the phrase, if its own institutions are created out of its own foundations. There is only one remedy against the ever stronger triumphal march of the world phrase which is the independent development of spiritual life. Like the harvest of the fields perish under a locust swarm, so spiritual life becomes desolate when this spiritual life is dependent on factors other than itself, and that which is revealed to people from spiritual life, only becomes a phrase. The world dominance of the phrase will only cease when bearers of spiritual life order spiritual life, it will only cease when in the lowest to the highest schools, and all other areas of spiritual life, that those who are active in the spirit bring spiritual life into institutions, and when the principle of teaching is for the spreading of spiritual life, and also make spiritual life active in outer institutions. Only a self created spiritual life will be able to be in the position to oppose the triumph of the phrase which works so erroneously, which has led itself to absurdity in the terrifying events of the last five to six years.

My dear friends, we can, when we honestly and sincerely take the evolution of spiritual life, the so-called spiritual life of the last years, and then look at what the last years have brought, find remarkable examples of how this spiritual life has gradually passed out when faced with the realities of life. It is most strange what you meet when you consider a personality who you have revered to the highest degree, a personality who is characterised for the highest achievements in spiritual life, towards the end of the 19^th century. Such a personality I see in Herman Grimm, the great art historian. Then again, I only want to speak about Herman Grimm as a symptom regarding the newer spiritual life. Greatness, real greatness was achieved by this art historian. When I look around among his rich essays which are available, I have to say: Something, so saturated with an rich inner spirit of the end of the 19^th century such as both his essays on Iphigenia and the one about Tasso — these are real spiritual revelations which shows to the highest degree what a man at the height of spiritual life of modern times can achieve. They are characteristic, these intellectual achievements, for the kind of spiritual creation of someone who was actually the best. About Iphigenia and about Tasso of Goethe, Herman Grimm wrote treatises which show points of view of spiritual life which simply penetrate deeply, admirably, into the human being itself. However, he was writing about what already existed in spirit. He needed something like Iphigenia, like Tasso, which were already there. I've been looking into what such a symptom actually means, and I could find nothing other than the most beautiful, the greatest of achievements of our spiritual heroes at the end of the 19^th century, which are exactly those things which are written about full of spirit, brilliantly written about what was taking place in the minds of those at the turn of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Very characteristic, very meaningful. These observations can be made by anyone who is awake and doesn’t look with a sleeping soul at the newer spiritual life.

Now this very same Herman Grimm produced a book on Goethe. This doesn’t deal with Iphigenia, not with Tasso, not with the spiritual creations of man but with Goethe himself, the living person, Goethe. I read chapter after chapter — I have repeatedly and publicly spoken about what I thought about this book on Goethe — I read chapter after chapter; I tried to be objective about how this brilliant man, who was so great about Iphigenia, about Tasso, now wrote about Goethe, about who living people were speaking between themselves. Chapter after chapter I failed to find a depiction of a living being, I found shadow images which scurry over the walls, shadow images without depth, shadow images of Goethe, the living human being. What could have been produced as spirit was something Herman Grimm could do. The moment he stood in front of a depiction of a living person, the depiction was not about a living being but presented in shadow images which had no depth, only surfaces which scurry along which one can’t touch, which you can’t grasp when it comes to reality. This is quite characteristic in the life processes of the spiritual morale at the end of the 19^th century. This spiritual frame of mind was strong enough the moment it was about judging spiritual output of human beings and to put that down, even with numerous side glances regarding human life, but it fails the moment the reality of the spirit which is before us, is to be penetrated.

This is what is meant by what spiritual science is really striving for: linking up the human soul condition to the real spirit, so that we are again in the position to find spirit in reality. It strives for, not shadow images being painted of reality, but for really grasping the spirit in reality. This way we will not have these abstractions, this intellectualism with rises today in knowledge of nature, but we really gain a true insight also in the weaving and being of nature. Continuing from this point as a start we acquire an attitude towards the human being’s true being, the human being’s own dignity, that corresponds to the human being’s own significance in the earthy-cosmic, soul-spiritual context, that this being, this dignity of the human being really corresponds with. Only by penetrating reality with the spirit in such a way, can we defeat the phrase, can we again establish the living word which empowers actions, during encounters with people, giving power again to the economic life. Whoever believes today that he succeeds better in economic life through the mere improvement of old institutions, who does not want to convert to a complete renewed way of thinking, indulges in insubstantial illusions. Today we don’t stand in front of small, but today we stand within the biggest thinkable questions of mankind.

Just when it comes to establishing outer social relationships from one person to another, then it is necessary for each person to encounter his neighbour in such a way that the person sees the spirit within the other. It is necessary that with each encountered person you can see what a special case this soul-spiritual being is; it is necessary to penetrate into each encounter with another person with all the feeling and sensation which can only come about through impulses, internally empowered, through a spiritual world view.

Because we have no independent spiritual life, we develop materialism on a large scale; we develop in the area of spiritual life the world domination of the phrase, which is still hidden from many people whose souls are asleep. When the spirit-void penetrates into the areas of feeling life, of sentient life — not the good spirit which fructifies everything coming out of human beings — when feelings and sensations are immersed by the spirit-void, what happens then? No living relationship comes about between one person and another which can provide the foundation of a structure for the social organism; what then comes about in the non-spirit’s input into relationships between one person and another, is convention. I would like to say, we Germans can be lucky because if we want to describe the present domination of spiritual life, we must say ‘phrase’ because we don’t have a real word for it in German. Once again we are in an awkward situation to use a German word for something which in this newer time has come from the spirit-void controlling the life of feeling; we have to say “convention.” Convention is something which has been determined purely from outside; it is what we can only see outwardly, which is not grasped by the inner being and inner experience. However, in those people in whom there is no flow of thinking, of the awareness of how the phrase can be permeated with spirit, in those who also can’t penetrate sensations and feeling being permeated with spirit, no social interaction, no social relationships can develop which could be worthy of human dignity and human value. Under the influence of convention, under the influence of outward appearances they have developed in two areas, which have become the modern state life and political life. Just as spiritual life is ruled today by the world domination of the phrase, so state life is completely and utterly ruled by convention.

Only when true democracy is revealed among men, a democracy actually founded on the living relationships of one person to another, then convention will be replaced by something which develops in a lively way between one person and another. This depends on one mature person standing opposite another mature person when those human conditions come into consideration which are independent from the more powerful capacity, the ability of the mind, and are independent, because these are legal relationships of the strength of economic power. When it is freed from economic life on the one hand, from spiritual life on the other hand, and the legal or state territory and the legal or territory of law or the State, only what is asserted comes from the equality of all persons who have come of age, then when thus freed from the economic life on the one hand and spiritual life on the other hand, the legal or state territory then in the place of world domination of convention, will arrive at what has been developing in a lively way within people. Today people stride towards the phrase habituated world which they don’t understand: the right that can only be born out of the lively feeling, the enlivened experience in exchanges between people, the right which never again can be born out of convention. However, we live in this area under the world domination of convention. Convention is everything which is asserted as sensation, as disposition during public relationships through the spirit-void, just like the phrase asserts itself in public relations when in the areas of spiritual life not the spirit, but the spirit-void determines the realities of life.

Now let’s look at the third area of public life. Because there really was no humanly inclusive, human experience and feeling engendering spiritual life in this age of materialism, economic affairs could not be saturated with goals enkindled by the spirit. Out of the economic life no real living practice could develop because a real living practice can only unfold when people, as bearers of this living practice, carry into every grip of the hand, into every accomplishment, that which they gain from the context of their soul with the soul-spiritual essence of the world. Something different develops in the area of living practice when instead of the spirit, the spirit-void rules. When the spirit-void reigns then a person falls into a Routine (he uses the English word for routine) on the base of outer, economic life because if the economic measures are not imbued with what comes from the spirit, the person falls into a Routine. I notice again, that I’m not using a German word. People fall into a Routine. This is characteristic in the economic sphere, that we have increasingly, as real living beings, aware of goals, having been born only out of the spirit, have arrived at a Routine.

Just like we have in the sphere of spiritual life arrived at the phrase, like in the area of state and legal live arrived at convention, so in the area of economic life we have arrived at Routine.

Today, as economic people, we stand in a Routine! How proud we are of our Routine! How come he only asks afterwards: how do you do that? How do you endeavour to educate everything in this business of economics so things will happen mechanically? How can you regard the economic life as something great for not containing people who have ideas, but rather to have people who are capable of gradually continuing their life’s practice in the most mechanical way? Out of this it has come about that people — while stuck in a Routine and finding no creative satisfaction in it — want to be released, as soon as possible, from what they have in outer practical life and then strive after sensations which are as different as possible from what they are professionally involved in.

Does spirit exist in outer economic life? Are people welcomed in economic life who uphold something, because something occurs to them? They are more uncomfortable towards economic life than those in a routine. However, when people, who can think of something, are welcome, then economic careers will blossom, and they will not adopt egotistic characters but will become altruistic, of humanitarian character. Why is this so? Now, when a person merely follows a routine, then it provides no other drive than selfishness, than the satisfaction of instincts. When you insert something into outer life which has come from someone under the influence of a spiritual education, then this, what is introduced in this way, because it originates in the spirit, has a very special peculiarity. It has the peculiarity that it isn’t applicable to each individual person but that it basically applies to all, what the one may think or the other one may think; it has the peculiarity that it works as a fact which brings something about, which all people can bring into the realities of life.

All of this, my dear honourable friends, is now really not said to be disrespectful, to go from above down to the spiritual void of the modern world; it is said with a completely different goal. This is said so that a sense can develop for perusing those foundations formed from what is inextinguishable in human nature and yet still leads from the spirit-void to the spirit. This is said to bring the soul’s present sleepiness to wakefulness, so that those depths of human life can be searched for in the reality of mankind, from which alone we can help the dismantling and arrive at construction.

The practical Keynes, with whom I started, said: what people don’t know, what they can’t give a solution to, is what depends on combining all the hidden forces — he calls these forces “instruction” and “imagination” — to come to a new opinion of the world. —

Spiritual science wants to give this in an all inclusive sense; spiritual science wants to bring what precisely the insightful people are crying out for, but which they consider to be a fantasy the very moment it comes before their souls. Today it’s preferable to say to people: There is once again someone who speaks about the astral body, who speaks about spirit and immortality — than it is to say they need to really deepen themselves, sink into that which in the area of spiritual science the exact methods can be said to be used as in the way which scientific knowledge itself is acquired.

If one notices however, on which grounds the here indicated spiritual science rests, then, my dear friends, one is also made aware that this spiritual science has a particular stamp: it doesn’t only work through that which man knows as a result of it, but it changes the manner and way in which people think. It brings people to another conception of themselves. It brings people to a different feeling about themselves and as a result a different feeling about their neighbours. Spiritual science enables people to fructify economic affairs again from out of the spirit. It leads to demands being made: The economic life must stand as an independent third member within the social organism in such a way that economic affairs form an economic objectivity and economic expertise is ordered only by personalities who have grown into this economic life. All economic life institutions must be established on the facts of economic life being based on expertise and knowledge, not through parliamentary decisions, nor through majority decisions. Decisions of the majority make no sense when the issue involves human interactions, mature people being equal.

In the area of economic life, expert knowledge, expertise and experience are decisive. In the area of spiritual life, facilities and skills are decisive. Both these areas promote their independence. In the middle of it all, is a third member of the social organism with its independence, and all that happens in public relationships in minds, experiences and feelings, need to be kindled by the spirit, not the spirit-void. Everything depends upon the spirit, and not the spirit-void, taking place. Spirit in spiritual life will itself vanquish the rulership of the phrase. Spirit will penetrate the sensory and emotional life so that we really gain a state life, a legal life. Spirit would fructify economic life in such a way that this independent life can really unfold differently than under the influence of the spirit-void, under the influence of tricky, abstract Marxist or other theories. To make these theories a reality, what will happen is what has happened in Eastern Europe as the most outer, most radical phase of destruction — destruction, not construction.

In a tripled way people have to face, not by exercising criticism, but by really searching in a threefold way into the depths of human beings and their humanity, which can really lead towards constructiveness. These three things are: the phrase, convention and routine. To take the place of the phrase, would be to take care of a true spiritual life. To take the place of convention has to be living sensation which can only exist when we, kindled by spiritual imaginations, as people encounter people in the legal and state life; otherwise we end up, while the spiritual life is still the most fruitful of them all, also in the area of legal life, with the mere phrase. Otherwise we get into the position like a person who is worshipped by the whole world and says strange things, for example, about the law. I’m referring to Woodrow Wilson, at whom I took a closer look so that I don’t speak about him like a blind man about colour. There I found, for instance, in his thick book about the state, the actual compendium of modern phraseology, the definitive phrase: ‘The Law is the Will of the state towards the bourgeois conduct of those who stands under its authority’.

Now, my dear honourable friends, those who are used to reality and knows how the living will proceeds out of a living person — I would like to know, what he has to think when this historian of the state argues: ‘The law is the will of the State’. — In the time in which people are nothing more to the state than an outer institution of economic life, it is argued, without one really knowing about the will of the State — in serious books for the truly serious, are inclined spirit compendia in the modern life of phrases. Now, when we regard the modern economic life, we find there is much discussion about it. However, this life of economics itself is still basically not being controlled by what is being said about it. Also here the phrase goes over it like a breath, while below it the real economic life takes place. So much do phrases smother it that the phraseology of Marxist socialist teaching experiences it in a phrase called “ideology.” To a certain extent they sense that the spirit-void controls economic life, but they don’t realise that instead of replacing the spirit with the spirit-void, they replace an ideal, and in place of the spirit-void which has ruled up to now, another spirit-void replaces it which will rule in future.

Truly, whoever wants to consider what can become constructive must know precisely what the threesome rule of phrase, convention and routine have brought about, yes, what horrors of the last five to six years they have brought about. What we need to find out, in order to look in a healthy way at this threesome rulership, I will try to speak about the day after tomorrow. However, this lecture today had to precede others for the reason that then only can one see what is necessary for the coming days, to be able to realize exactly what this destruction has brought about. It is really not enough today to merely indicate that somehow the forces must evolve into a new “instruction,” a new “imagination.” It is today already necessary that reference is made to living fountains of spirit.

Now, because I’ve already been talking for some time, I would like to add perhaps in the next few minutes, a small addition to what I’ve said today. It is something that shows in an obvious example, how today’s humanity has to take up what they strive for by observing simultaneously the conditions which could lead to excluding destruction and strive towards some kind of construction instead. If I go into detail about this, which I want to say in a few words, then I’ll have to give a long lecture because there is very much to say.

The last time I travelled away from Stuttgart I heard, at my leaving, all kinds of slander in circulation about me personally and about those who are connected in their objective work with me. It soon became apparent that this slander was being spread with extraordinary refinement by informers at a particular chosen moment in time. I was able to then learn that this denunciation, this slander was thus created in letters which were fake, which could be conceived as if they had been written by myself; with these letters they wanted to prove things came from me or from those people of the Federation for the Threefold Social Order initiative. Yes, they didn’t even once feel ashamed of the slander that was to claim that one of my measures contributed to delivering the Germans to the Entente, referring to letters written by me.

My dear friends, for me personally this is only an example how people are treated today who earnestly strive towards the search of truth and are not frightened away, that is to say, what today leads from destruction to construction. It is of course inevitable that such filthy finches who put such things into the world, ought in some way to be put in their place. But, you can’t get to them. There are no legal means; refutations are valueless because people themselves know that they are spreading lies. They don’t spread lies out of the foundation of coming to the truth, but in order to get, what causes them discomfort, out of the way. It does not involve people claiming something in which they believe, but to raise something which is as close as possible to the person in question, who will be harmed in the eyes of those who have no judgement. I have experienced this for many years, even without this refinement which has come to the fore in recent years. I have no pleasure in getting involved with such dirty people and to handle their dirty laundry.

I also don’t like when from a certain clerical side — this certainly among people who do not base it on the truth — I am a priest originating from the Catholic church. Such people then had, after telling such big fat untruths, no other words that those which the gentleman in question had written in a respected clerical journal: The claim that Dr Steiner had once been a priest, can no longer hold, due to recent inquiries. — With this people believed that what had caused damage to numerous souls could now be put right. You can’t make it good this way. The fact of the matter is that in the face of such conduct, the attitude is what happened years ago in the Austrian parliament when Graf Walterskirchen countered the government by saying: ‘Once a person has lied, no one believes him again, even if he says the truth a hundred times over.’

So, this is an example. Those people who place such things in the world are nothing other than representatives of objective lies, according to my suspicions — because I believe, you know as well — they are liars. One day it has to be announced publically: All this slander is nothing other than a complete bogus from start to finish.

The second thing which is being peddled over and over again today is warming up the Jesuit lie, which started many years ago. I certainly don’t want to say something for or against anti-Semitism. I don’t want to say anything about his world view. However, over and over again, certain people, because they know that they are getting their money’s worth, spread the lie that I am Jewish; in some way or other it is again mentioned from some corner. I had my baptism certificate photographed at the time, when this system was still practiced by Jesuits, and today still I have a very small photo of my baptism certificate which I can show anyone who wants to see it. However I don’t believe that such a document can oppose the relevant party.

Among those people who have created this silly story about my Jewish origin, there was also the “Literary Lexicon.” My whole biography is so cooked up that it is supposed to show that I am somehow of Jewish descent. The only ancestors I’m able to research are those of my mother’s and father’s sides which came about from the Lower Austrian peasantry. My father served a truly non-Jewish institute, namely the monastery and diocese of Geras in Lower Austria, which is a Premonstratensian diocese. The people of the Premonstratensian diocese liked him very much and even gave him a scholarship to do the training of the first classes of the grammar school. Later he became an Austrian railway official, not a state official but a private official. Just as well as it can be proven that these paternal ancestors were hardly Jewish, or servants of a Catholic monastery, just so can it be proven on the side of the maternal forefathers, as far as they are accessible to me. I don’t for a moment think that one can make a difference with such things against these parties who work with such lies. Among these personalities who are listed under the “Literary Lexicon” as Jews, there is a personality who recently did approach Jesuitism, namely Hermann Bahr. His biography is also so cooked up that one can just about believe he somehow is from Jewish descent. Now he could come up with the fact that twelve of his ancestors were real Upper Austrian farmers, not Jewish or something like that. When this possibility was proved with documentation, the editorial staff of the “Literary Lexicon,” which is definitely the series from which such things come, turned on it by saying: Well, yes, good, we want to believe that the twelve ancestors consistently were far from Judaism. Then we also believe in reincarnation and we believe that Hermann Bahr was a Jew in an earlier physical incarnation.

You see, with thoughts, with refutations you can’t come to terms with this party. Quite different ways must be found. I don’t believe, however, that another, really goal orientated way can be found other than that the number of rational and decent thinking people will constantly grow in contrast to those who want to slander their contemporaries, to wade in dirt. I don’t believe that indecency can be defeated by anything other than decent thinking people. Neither with court hearings, nor with counter refutations will you win, but only through finding many people who have a sense of decency.

It has often been said in public: such things which I have now presented also belong to what comes about through the penetration into the realities of life, of the spirit-void instead of the spirit. With everything that’s going on today as terribly destructive to humanity, it can be summarised with the words: Mankind is much in need, but particularly the German spirit is in need of putting the spirit in the place of the spirit-void, in the place of the materialistic spirit-void, because the spirit-void must be conquered, if we want to become constructive, if we want humanity to progress. The spirit-void can only become spirit through the spirit defeating it.