Healthy Thinking

Lecture 2

Spiritual requirements to face the future

Stuttgart on 4 March 1920

My dear honourable friends! With a sensitive, unprejudiced judgement of present events, I believe it quite relevant to speak about these events with regard to the coming days.

When I refer to what I was allowed to speak about the day before yesterday, I can perhaps add that such depictions about the frame of mind of present day civilized humanity, express a kind of evening mood. Events of humanity’s evolution over the last three to four hundred years up to the present must be depicted within our present day, and what must be shown is how, in the most varied spheres of life, despite the enormous progress and triumphs – which, however, as has been pointed out, also exists – the horrific events of the last four to five years have befallen humanity. It has not only become possible that these shocking events have befallen humankind, but it has become possible to confront the helplessness in a certain way, with: What now? – Yes, in many connections we must admit: If we want to build only on what has resulted from our knowledge, from our developmental will forces, then we have to reckon with hopelessness. This is like an evening mood. This evening mood is to some extent close to what can be observed from the opposite side: the morning mood, speaking about the coming day.

However, when one wants to speak about the coming day, then it appears that one can’t simply look back at events, how they contributed, how they developed up to the present moment in time, in order to derive reasons for some random things one can only hope for. Out of the foundation of helplessness of the present, there is little chance of finding such hope. For this reason, for those who want to speak about the coming days, they must find another approach rather than the depiction of possible effects of events up to now, or only observe what can emerge from general relationships in culture and civilisation.

No, my dear friends, if someone wants to speak about the coming days, they must speak about what has to be done so that these coming days may come closer. To point to some destiny outside humanity alone will not raise hopes today. It must point to people themselves, to their possibilities for action, what it is which can ignite deeds within them, that they become those who, as the world may be in flames, can bring about the day to come. It is not an initiative to only observe helplessness and hopelessness in destiny of the outer world, it gives in addition the initiative to observe somewhat deeper into the becoming of humanity, which one can certainly see from the point of view of the here-mentioned spiritual science. Most people today are accustomed, when the subject is human evolution, to only follow the line from cause to effect, in such a way as if everything consecutively happens to clarify previous events, which are then called causes.

This is just as little the case in the historical development of mankind as it is the case with single human individuals. We can’t possibly be satisfied in the course of individual human development for which we can state: Now, if we look at a person, when he is thirty years old, we declare that as a thirty year old he is the result of what he was as a twenty nine year old, as a twenty eight year old, as a twenty seven year old. – Such a statement would be external, abstract, and couldn’t enter into the real being of the person. If we want to grasp the real being of the individual, then we must enter into the individual stages of his development. We must be clear that we, as human beings, when we are children, are subject to certain developmental laws which aim at roundabout the time of the change of teeth. Then one has to be clear that after the change of teeth, in the entire human being’s organism, some law is allowing the inner being to ascend, which can’t be explained by simply tracing external facts of evolution from around the 9^th year by referred back to development in his 5^th or 6^th year. One needs to repeatedly look back to the moment of adolescence in the fourteenth or fifteenth year. Here again something rises in the inner being of a person which one must call on to help if one wants to come to an understanding of to total human being. Likewise, in the following periods of human individual development, during these periods the turning points are less clear in human nature; it can emerge quite clearly for someone with insight.

Just as it is with single individual development, so it is with the historical development of the evolution of humanity. It is not enough that one merely, as has become customary, always explains it as a result of a previous event. One must clearly understand that big turning points also appear in the historical evolution of humanity; epochs come about where out of the depths of human development, laws rise up so that the essential, which is expressed in humanity, appears different from that which appeared in the epoch preceding it.

If you now look back at what I called, being under the surface of what I described, regarding three to four hundred years ago and want to work your way up – because it first wants to only work from the depths of the human being upwards – then you must say: Everything indicates the tendency, the goal, for every member of humanity to develop his full awareness, complete full awareness in every area of life. For the expert who knows historical becoming, who does not only consider external history as it is taught today which is basically just an agreed fable, but who goes into inner human development – as one has to enter right into single individual people, into their natures, if you want to understand them – for them it shows that around the 15^th century the first facility of this new kind of humanity came which could lead to understanding, in full consciousness, what was going on in the world. Only one fact about human evolution is available which masks, obliterates, what I have just characterised. From old epochs some developmental forces always remained behind as conservative elements in the whole human evolution – forces which continue working and which actually, for that part of the human becoming which is really the task of the time epoch, do not only let this retreat go into the background, but in a way, fight against it. So in the previous epochs from the 15^th century onwards and in our epoch, what has remained is what I would like to call the unconsciousness in all spheres, first of all the unconsciousness of all things in the realm of spiritual life itself.

So strongly has this unconsciousness in the realm of spiritual life remained, that today we have broad spiritual currents which see in the unconsciousness, what the deeper, the essential human being is. For instance we see in America the rise of a spiritual movement connected to the name of William James (1842-1910), which under intellectuals in Europe have quite a few followers, who say: ‘Only a part of what man’s soul contains, comes into full consciousness. Out of the unconsciousness everything rises which for instance is the content of artistic creation; out of the unconscious ideas rise which are then subjected only to the judgement of science. Out of the unconsciousness rises all that en-soul people in religion.’

That which spreads from educated spiritual streams, taking on grotesque forms at times, like psychoanalysis for example, has something different as its counterpart. How often can you still hear it being said today that anyone is well-meaning in relation to the supersensible, to a spiritual world which he presumes, but his good intention stops the moment when spiritual science steps in, which out of the signs of the time want to, in full consciousness, with sight, penetrate the spiritual world. Such a well-meaning person often says: What you can consciously absorb from nature and man, into the soul, beyond that, there must be something. – However, then he is happy to say: That which exists there, is an unknown, it is something which one can’t research; it is something which can’t enter completely into full human consciousness – artistic creators takes fright, has a fear of elevating the impulses of their artistry into consciousness. To do so, they believe, would be to lose the elementary power, the naive power which they require for artistic creativity. Some people also certainly do not want impulses of social life to be brought to full awareness, because they want to refer to something unconscious, unknown, as relevant in their exchanges between one person and another. Out of the unconscious the person is to create impulses of his social relationships, and it will be disturbed in some way, when consciousness is brought into it, in the same way as dew, which is refreshing, is taken away from him.

So in a certain way the unconscious, the unknown is presented in the most varied forms, which you can see even in enlightened circles. The result is that, against the spiritual science which is meant here, reproaches arise again and again, namely what one misses within this spiritual science regarding the spiritual world and its content which really mean something and not merely point to what lies beyond the borders of mankind, as an unknown super sensibility. This is confronted with the so-called “simple, plain faith” which doesn’t insist on the content of spiritual life but only refers to spiritual life out of a certain general feeling, from out of the most primitive part of human nature. This faith, which wants to ignore the signs of the times, which rejects a certain content of spiritual life for which spiritual science strives for, this faith is only the remains, left by what had ruled in human evolution as the unconscious. What is this unconsciousness?

In earlier stages of evolution, humanity was different to what it can be today. This unconsciousness was in earlier evolutionary epochs of humanity, a living elementary thing. The further we go back in human evolution, the more we find how it rose up in people – in any case not in the way which consciousness today must be ours, but in the way of unconscious perception – how it ever more rose up not only as the content of their spiritual life but also enabling them to understand surrounding nature.

One only has to look, my dear friends, at the last foothills of this ancient vision of mankind and what came out of that unconsciousness, and you discover glorious myths, delightful mythologies, through which earlier human beings were enlightened through their unconscious mind about themselves and surrounding nature. We find the spring of artistic creation rise out of this unconsciousness. When we really and not purely through conventional prejudices want to teach, then we also find indications that earlier man searched for impulses in his social will and his social relationships in circles of his fellow men which rise up from the unconscious. It is still inherent, not as everything but as part of what connects people socially out of their unconsciousness, in human language – in this human language through which we become sisters and brothers to other people, in whose circle we live. We take ownership of human speech in our earliest childhood, during a time in which we first dream ourselves into life, in the time in which no full state of awakening can be spoken of. What is this which we carry, this which is born out of the childlike sphere of life, into later life?

We stand under the influence of the genius of language. Language gives us so much. It connects us socially with others, but the social driving force which permeates language is hidden even in earliest childhood; this is not born out of consciousness but born out of unconsciousness. So we can say: social life is often developed out of the unconscious. The state of unconsciousness had given humanity something other than what it had, up to the time of human evolution, up to the 15^th century, than what it gives today. Just as little as developmental forces in single individuals are present before they reach puberty, in the same way in which they must appear after puberty in a different relation and power, just so in human development, in the place of earlier unconsciousness, it must now become consciousness in our time. The element to which I drew your attention the day before yesterday, which permeates our present day civilisation, the Phrase, is what intensively prevents full consciousness form coming out of the depths of the human being. What had been penetrated in all liveliness rising out of the unconscious is no longer living today: it has been killed by the Phrase.

I also had to draw attention to this the day before yesterday, that the glorious scientific worldview hasn't found a way to tell people about something other than the outer human being, and about what is present in inanimate nature. I must point out that whoever wants to include everything which comes as scientific knowledge and is confronted with the question: Who is the human being actually? – will remain perplexed. About the question: Who is man actually - practiced science of today gives no solution. Why does this happen?

It is the result of science not having been created out of full consciousness, because this science, despite its glorious results, is the continuation of what during that epoch of unconsciousness came from quite other sources than those existing today. So you see this science is in quite a strange situation.

Recently I received a, not quite a worthless brochure regarding general social concepts and ideas. I must stress that I saw a lot of value inside it. However, in conclusion something was expressed which, for such an observation, is extraordinarily characteristic today. There, in conclusion, it states that the author has considered the social condition purely scientifically, that is, in accordance with the scientific conventions of the present. While the writer wanted to be scientific, he could not somehow make any scientific ideas draw a conclusion of any kind regarding the moral, the artistic or the political, or cultural life, because science doesn’t have the job of drawing any conclusions for these different branches of life. Whether that which he depicts purely scientifically – so says the creator – whether they treat ulcers or disturb suns, that is completely indifferent to science – that is not what science is interested in.

Don’t we see, by us looking at an expression of such a view – which doesn’t only stand by itself but is typical for what is often today called “scientific” or “scientific knowledge” – don’t we see the continuation of a certain life asceticism before us, which doesn’t recognise itself as a sequel; don’t we see this again as the asceticism which in earlier centuries had a contempt for outer life, which had withdrawn into mankind’s inner soul, which doesn’t care about what is in the outer ethical, moral or social world of facts but only, to a certain extent, to the affairs of the soul’s inner state, alone? Other forms were taken on through this ascetic striving, but it appeared again in this scientific mindset which is admirable in its strict and conscientious methodology, but whose greatness is precisely in what it confesses: I have nothing for the moral, artistic, political or cultural life which I present out of myself as an impulse or drive.- Against this sentiment which not only occurs in scientific life, but which – because scientific life is controlled by education – spreads over our entire public lives, against this sentiment is spiritual science which wants to rise in its fullest protest.

The moment the great question about the future arises today in the sad relationships of our present civilisation, then there must come about – as if by implication - out of spiritual science, the true spiritual science as it is meant here, the inner human being kindled by its flame, then insight about social life, about the continuation of social life will come about. It is not through a whim or arbitrariness of single personalities that this Three Fold Social organism has been added to what has already been represented here for decades as Anthroposophically orientated spiritual science – that has come about as a matter of course. It has come about in such a way that people had to feel the lack of truth, sense dishonesty, and pretend to strive with their souls towards spiritual science but have no heart for what shakes all of humanity as a social question, or what at least should shock and shake them all. So there is no longer a search according to outer natural wisdom but according to spiritual wisdom, which, through it being experienced in the human soul, offer direct power also to social will.

To mention one more thing – I could also glance at other areas of life but want to mention one more thing. In our building in Dornach we have created something which does not count on some or other old building style, but that the forms of the building, the artistic element, consistently, right into the smallest detail, have emerged from the forces of our spiritual insight, resulting from our spiritual vision itself. That it would be right to allow the artistic element to be unconscious, not to lift it up into consciousness, that is what this spiritual science, which is meant here, objects against. Just as spiritual science itself wants to be perceived in full consciousness in the spiritual worlds, so it also wants to appear here as a new style of building, leading to new artistic forms, lifted out of what works in spiritual worlds. Because spiritual science wants to show the spirit itself, which people are acquainted with in their innermost being, it comes to the fore in the inner being of man in such a way that it touches the very kernel of humanity – there where the moral will germinates, where the moral will rises up. Spiritual science can’t say it isn’t concerned about what happens in moral will, but it can only be held responsible for – by its penetration of knowledge from the widths of worlds to the depths, most intimate soul realms – at the same time giving birth to the moral impulses out of which man shapes his will, his actions. This spiritual science can’t say it isn’t concerned with ulcers being healed or suns being extinguished. You can say it is concerned with its knowledge creating power for people, healing power to the outer course of world events which causes damage; it is concerned with introducing something which can be a sun to people and contribute to the well-meaning forces in human evolution. Doing things together, acting together, having combined intentions in the entire course of human beings’ life historically, into a social becoming; that’s what makes spiritual science not an abstract goal, but what it gives, from out of its own nature and being. It can’t act in any other way than continuing in full consciousness with what earlier mankind had in a certain way, unconsciously.

Out of this unconsciousness, people of earlier times had quite definite experiences regarding the continuation of human development. This was that the entire human race, if it would be left to itself, would continuously degenerate, continuously be gripped by harm, continuously steer towards a kind of death, be continuously diseased. People have the idea that if they intervene in human evolution, then they become, by relying on what enlightens them out of the nature of the unconscious, the healer of illnesses, of what damages. During the times of unconscious development, humankind experienced all of knowledge and wisdom as a healing power, because mankind didn’t want to stop in a corner and not participate in the outer cultural processes – on the contrary, mankind wanted to participate as healers in this cultural process.

The word which resounds to us from Greek wisdom, characterising one of the deepest artistic creations, called the tragedy, is the word “catharsis” which resounds out of the Greek culture and wants to say what actually is involved in the process of a tragedy. This process depends on the following effect: to create images of passions in people so that these passions seen in the tragic acting of the tragedy can be healed – emotionally, in the soul. Through the expression “catharsis” being sounded out as what rules tragedy, we are made aware of how the artistic aspect of life stood so close to Greek culture; that it is to be considered as a healing process in life. “Catharsis” is a word – we can merely translate it with the abstract word “purification” – which is also needed in a crisis appearing as a result of an illness; and when this crisis leads to the deliverance from what is harmful, then it leads to healing. The Greeks took the individual healing process as a task of the tragedy. They didn’t think artistic form as being separated from the rest of culture, but that it existed within it.

In the same way, right inside living will and action, this spiritual science we have long been talked about here, wants to stand, and today in the face of perplexity – which has arisen from other areas in the glorious science of recent times – must stand as the most serious spiritual demand in the coming days. However, for it to be considered and recognised, many a harsh prejudice needs to be cleared away. As long as the belief persists, that serious science is only to be described through what is observed through a microscope or a telescope, what is stated in the physical cabinet, what happens in clinics, so long will this spiritual science be met with prejudices. If a person perceives that through everything that can be researched in this outer manner – if also in other relationships which are so valuable for humanity - it says nothing about the inner being of the human being itself, then the human being becomes, out of an inner drive - because he can’t in any other way, if he wants to find enlightenment about himself – he is driven to knowledge about the spirit.

Just as one today listens to what is stated in the physical cabinet, in the clinics, you come – especially about acknowledging the essence of man – to listen to what the spiritual researcher undertakes in his soul by strengthening his thinking in such a way that this self- strengthened thinking no longer, like ordinary thinking, depends on physicality, but makes itself independent of physicality.

What today is jeered at the most, regarded as phantasmagoria, will in future be regarded as the strict, exact method which takes its course within the soul. People will admit that through the so-called meditative life – not however through the old, mystical meditative life which only alienates man from the world, but through an inner active meditative life – that thinking can become so strong, particularly when the strong willingness is added to it, as I describe in my book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its attainment”. One is any case involved with a kind of thinking about which one knows: You think, but this now has become a purely soul-spiritual process, no longer with the help of a brain.- Then one rises up to supersensible knowledge through this inner strengthened thinking. Just like one has from a certain moment realised what one has seen magnified through the microscope, so one will come to realise, through the strengthened thinking, what is given as the results of supersensible research, through our intellectual soul content, which can’t be fully grasped intellectually.

This is something which sounds like a paradox today but which, however, through the earnest demands of the coming days will be realised, as no longer sounding like a paradox. It will become clear that nature within itself is far richer in its processes than what can be grasped as laws of nature which only the human mind can grasp, what can be humanly extracted from an experiment. Much can be said about the inner human tendency which says: only what the human mind with an intellectually observed judgement can grasp, can be seen as an inner experience. – If however one stops at this point, considering natural laws to only be valid through intellectual kinds of experiments - then one must renounce the real knowledge of nature. What is the use of forever claiming: The only clarity that can be reached is through intellectual judgement – when everything that is the essence of nature can’t be grasped by nature’s laws. Nature is so that it doesn’t reveal its laws but only images, images which we can recognise imaginatively, when our thoughts are so strengthened that they are independent of the body and we make them the content of our soul.

In any case, what is presented in this way as the actual motivation and nucleus of spiritual scientific research is not enough to be theoretically accepted. It isn’t enough that a person’s interests are for selfish results of his own inner soul and for the imagination of thoughts in this kind of world view, but it is necessary that an inner mood and human soul disposition, born from such observation, can follow from such a vision, penetrating into our own social life, infiltrated little by little – but preparatory to the horrors of the last four to five years – of this mere scientific, intellectual way of thinking.

Training people will have to start. This training must finally break away from what is today still considered the main issue of all school systems: that the school system is dependent on supervision by state authorities. The state authorities will out of themselves, since they have the task of organizing the state, always want to shape the goals of the school system in such a way that the individual becomes an instrument in the state organization. In the future, it will not be a question of preparing people for this or that, but it's going to come down to the fact that one has a sense for education, by observing the soul-spiritual in the human being, which has, from the earliest childhood, wanted to develop as spirit in the bodily nature. It will involve the school, from the lowest level to the highest level, having its foundation only and alone in the requirements of spiritual life itself.

Today in our public relationships we are in a position of only being able to make isolated attempts to establish such an educational system as is being done for example here under the aegis of Mr Molt with the Waldorf School. In the Waldorf School the foundation from the outset is that people work out of the deeply mysterious nature of childhood, which can with spiritual sight, week after week, year by year, be observed as it unfolds. The method of education is directed in such a way that a person becomes a full human being, that the pupils from the earliest childhood develop forces which will last a lifetime, making it possible that people in their latest years can retrieve what had been developed within them. It must proceed in quite a different way than the way the educational goal has been from the scientific and materialistic point of view, with its prejudices in our more modern times.

Above all, it must come from the awareness: If I can assess all that is in the human being and bring it out, as to how he will be situated later in his social life, so that he chooses the arrangement and not let the institutions violate him, as is the case today where he is made into a machine in his profession, an imprint of the essence of his profession. Future human beings who are to be aspired through this school, must put the seal on external life, but not allow external life to put a seal on them. If this is expressed then one first of all recognises the Phrase which is so often needed for educational purposes. However, this remains a phrase, as many a phrase does in life today, when it is not connected to a real spiritual observation. This will first come through strengthened thinking delving into the depths of the human soul, driven by self-discipline of the will to the method required for spiritual observation.

It is the earnest demand of the coming days that among external research done in laboratories, in clinics, there will also be recognition for revelations resulting from strict soul methods of the individual, true, real being of the human being, which at the same time is the supersensible, eternal, within human beings. It’s a misjudgement of all the signs of the times to dismiss such endeavours with prejudice and reduce that which man wants to make, out of his very own strength of will. It is a bad thing that some religious confessions tell people again and again that it is a mistake or dangerous if a person wants to develop himself inwardly in such a way that supersensible observation arrives; that the supersensible should be accepted out of what instinctively arises out of the faith of the simplest minds.

This sounds, because of human egotistic comforts, very nice to many. It sounds decidedly objectionable when spiritual science appears and speaks about the simple facts of the supersensible worlds, just like outer science speaks about outer sensory facts of life. It is objectionable when a claim is made about knowledge of the spiritual world for the individual who as a human being is connected to it and to describe it in the same way as when describing something in the sensory world. People would like to grasp everything possible as “the divine” from a completely indeterminate feeling as if in the twinkling of an eye; he doesn’t want to get involved in conquering this divine within himself through laborious inner paths. People will however, because they don’t want to get involved with a laborious inner path to conquer the soul, but rather cling to abstractions of feeling, they will ever more distance themselves from real life. What they will say about nature will be powerless to entering it into social life, intervene in political life, in ritual, even in moral life. Finally it will be powerless in maintaining religion itself, because people in the present age are used to strive for what is concrete, because people are accustomed to recognise science and not merely believe. The education they have acquired will also apply its powers in this area. If people are not presented with spiritual science, if spiritual sight is not spoken about, then they fight it and they lose the old, traditional religious confessions that stem from the age of unconsciousness. Their souls become atrophied.

Religious confessions, which oppose a living grasp of the spiritual world, are the ones which work against true religiosity for mankind. This knowledge itself is a serious spiritual demand of the days ahead of us. When people say today that religion must emerge out of the darkest urge, then it certainly supports the oldest facts, which say religion is to remain in the unconscious realm, it may not rise up into full consciousness.

What I have presented to you in this are as characteristic of today’s actual spiritual striving, will reveal how to direct humanity towards a conscious experience of the spiritual world. To acquire a conscious experience of the spiritual world will only be possible if in public life, through the independent sharing of all spiritual striving and through the principle of all education of human spiritual powers, they remain independent from state-legal powers, independent from all economic powers – you may read about this in my book “Key points of the Social Question”. A spiritual life which exists on its own, purely working from what the spirit says out of the innermost soul, independent of all authority, only such a spiritual life will also awaken in humanity, a consciousness of the spirit. This consciousness is needed in order to awaken to the connection of one’s own spirit with the spirit encompassing the entire world. So, in the area of knowledge, humanity has acquired the necessity of finding the transition from the old unconscious demands to the newer, more and more conscious and aware demands which will have to appear stronger and stronger. In other areas of life, earnest demands are appearing in the coming days.

When we look at a second area in human life, the public life – this area which presents community life between one person and another, of mature persons, having come of age, how at the same time they develop support for aspiring childhood and youth which would mature in the following age – if this life is glanced at in earlier epochs of evolution, we return to the unconsciousness; yet this life also demands a transition to consciousness.

Out of what has law developed? From where did the origins come about which eventually crystallized into state legislations and legal regulations? I can indicate that here briefly. In olden times law developed out of an unconscious human evolution of habits which people had in relations to one another. Unconsciously a person developed a way of looking at another person; out of this, relationships developed. Unconsciously one person developed a feeling for the way another person behaved to them, in a certain way. This gave rise to legal customs. Customs, the law, developed out of the unconscious. Also in these areas, in the age of consciousness, something has been retained which only had authority in unconscious times. Into the age of consciousness, an adherence to remnants of the old habits has been preserved. Up to today little has been shown to have changed from one transition to another in the view of the legal- and state systems in particular, in a transition towards the observation, in full awareness, which grasps what the relationship between one person to another is in outer, social life. Just as a pure knowledge of the transition must be gained from unconsciousness to consciousness, so also in the sphere of legal- or state life, must the transition be found from unconsciousness to consciousness. This must be reborn out of what a person experiences through what he has learnt from his spiritual vision within the spirit. It must be reborn out of the knowledge of the supersensible in the way one person, in his legal-state, stands to another, in the social order. It must be reborn out of a human awareness from the supersensible into the conscious awareness: By you standing there as a human being facing another human being, we are not only one physical body facing another physical body; we are both carriers of the soul-spirit. Our communication is from one soul-spirit to another soul-spirit. – This soul content can’t be gained through theoretical observation. It can only come about when soul content is experienced from the earliest childhood through an education which naturally links everything to the spiritual, that everything natural is also permeated with the spirit.

When a person stands right in truth within his innermost experience, then in his exchange from one person to another, he would develop feelings that he stands as such, as a spiritual being, in front of another spiritual being. Then, in the state-legal order he sees it initially as a result of the behaviour of people, but in a deeper sense he acknowledges that the whole of humanity is permeated with spirit. Because still for this sphere, the remnants of the unconscious from old times protrude into our time, for this reason that which had earlier come unconsciously in feelings for law, for the state, is transformed into mere convention. Convention must once again take up something which is alive, which can work in an elementary way between people. This again can only come about when people really find a foundation – independent of the rest of other human life – which develops from one human soul to another, as law. The old unconsciousness, which had an authority in a certain relation for past ages, has kept itself pure into our age, but has lost its meaning. The law has been preserved according to the outer wording, according to outer custom; the inner meaning has been lost. It could therefore not be practiced out of an inner life of the soul; it could only be practiced out of a physical power.

And so we see how today, initially still half unconscious, rose the appeal out of humanity – but an appeal which is today too strongly lifted out of the phrase, the phrase which needs to be clothed in reality – an appeal is raised up which exists only under the influence of outer commandments of power and which is to be replaced with a real law, transformed into a real law. What lives as power in our outer institutions on the basis of law or the state, simply originated as a result of what had appeared out of the unconscious beforehand, adhered to without meaning so that now it is not adhered to by the human soul but held by an outside power. It must be transformed – in a way which can only be sought in the transition from unconscious feelings between one person and another, to conscious feelings of an individual for the real soul-spiritual being of others.

Just as in the age of unconsciousness, cognition developed, and how custom and law developed out of the most elementary from that which is not included in the known, manageable customs, the rules of conduct - so likewise also customs and behavioural rules, of the outer life, developed. They developed out of the adaptation of people to their dealings, through their associations with outer things, through trying, through scraping, scratching and grinding at outer life, in other words. So the skills of the business world developed. In the age where unconscious old residues have remained, not filled with the new inner soul experiences which had before been filled with the unconscious soul elements in association with the outer world in relation to people, it has become empty, has become mere routine. The spirit must be understood, grasped. The supersensible need to grow in consciousness, then people will again penetrate the outer economic life with the fire of their enthusiasm. Then the outer world will again attain meaning. Then his profession will not shape a person but he will shape his profession. Then it will also become necessary that a person is not simply placed in some or other profession to which he must become accustomed, but it will be necessary that he is raised out of the requirements and forces of human nature. He will be able to fit into the structure of economic life, in which manageable associations will come about, associations between people of the same or similar professions, or adjacent professions in which associations would exist between those who produce and those who consume.

Such associations would only reach a size in which the entire scope of relationships between people will be manageable, that these manageable associations will have a free circulation of economic exchange with others. As a result economic life made of intuition will develop, gained through experience. It would be impossible – when people are locked in manageable associations – it will be impossible for one to offer another something, of which the other doesn’t know its origin, where it comes from. Here one could build on the power of the organisation, which has created the associations. Then one will know with whom one is involved because it will be obvious how individuals enter into the association through economic and social associations. There will truly, in economic life, instead of the spirit-void, the spirit, rule. So, one can say that through associations - by people getting to know one another through commerce and business – consciousness will draw into economic life. Simply by being in the associations, a conscious economic life will be developed.

The transition from the unconscious to the conscious is something which people must understand in individual, narrow circles of public, external life, and that needs to be done on a large scale. We can see today how the unconsciousness works in great areas of the world. One could ask: How few are able to see this?

We have seen how, under the influence of events of the last four to five years, a world coalition has arisen against Central Europe, as the sad events of these years have highlighted the predominance of the English speaking population all over the world. In relation to this, humanity still has a great deal to experience. For those who can observe these issues with unbiased judgement, a very harsh future lies ahead. If one wants to look into the great world events, one also has to pose the question from the following viewpoint: What characteristic does the power in the public political life have, known as the English speaking power which strives for world domination today? What fundamental characteristic do the English-American politics have? It is hardly ever spoken about; nearly the whole world is subjected to these politics today and its foundations are hardly ever mentioned. One can see how certain phenomena in politics reappear repeatedly but one can’t characterise these phenomena in the right way. One could have listened to what, in the last third of the 19^th Century, people who were familiar in England with what they were actually striving for, could basically be predicted, for instance the destiny of today’s European East, which predicted for instance that a big world war had to come. This policy acted under the influence of these drives.

This is what is so seldom understood. This is what must be understood if one wants to have progress in the practical shaping of life, if one wants to reach a practical position in today’s public life. Then you have to say, however: Does English politics not actually appear to make forward steps, only to withdraw them again, and so on? We can research English politics in comparison to those of Egypt and Russia right up to today, and will see how in Lloyd George’s behaviour a few months ago, how he took a few steps forward and how he took them back again. What is involved in all of this? A very certain goal is involved, which is related to the English speaking earth population. This goal is as much within, as in earlier ages human evolution came out of the unconsciousness, when people created goals. Then it moved into the outer expression, for instance in economic life, in probing and adapting to the environment.

If you look from the one side at what came out of the unconscious birthing of the English political ideal for world domination and observe these forward and backward steps, see what is tried and done by individuals, then you discover the one real indication of politics: It has created its great goals out of the unconscious, and in relation to single actions is experimental politics. It is so strongly experimental politics, tentative politics determined from unconscious goal policies that one should not be discouraged when one or the other does not succeed. One merely then searches for another way. One always has the unconscious base, and experiments on the basis of consciousness, and when this doesn’t take you far enough, so one tries to find another way which goes far enough. Here we have in the sphere of great world being, the world actions of main players of the unconscious, which merely tries and makes experiments, here you have also what has to be conquered for the demands of the coming days.

If this is understood, you will agree, my dear friends, what today mainly happens in the world, I would like to say, thank God, it is not for the coming days, but the twilight. The real coming day however would come out of the requirements which can only happen through an inner development of the human soul itself. This development has its goal to take what has quite rightly developed in humanity as unconscious, and lift it into consciousness. Admittedly this development must penetrate into the most intimate, inner forces of the human soul.

You have been told today that after my last lecture, pamphlets would have been distributed. In these pamphlets all kinds of things are written. Among other things, old fairy tales have been warmed up, that this spiritual science involves a mocking view of Christianity, mainly the mockery of Christ himself.

Now, my dear friends, that which has entered into human evolution on earth through Jesus Christ is a fact – a fact which stands within the entire human evolution. This fact must be understood in its own new way in each epoch in which mankind progresses. Depressing it must be, for those who believe one can be on a Christian basis only if old images remain valid and one must reject what appears out of new evolutionary stages of human soul life as an understanding of Christianity.

People who condemn what spiritual science has to say about Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, are hardly inclined towards Paul’s beautiful words: ‘Not I, but Christ in me’.

Spiritual science very clearly shows that Christ descended from supersensible heights into this world evolution and that He is so connected to earth evolution that people today can’t live with a passive hope into the coming days, but that they must develop their own inner power as human beings, that will bring about this coming day. Because the power of Christ through the Mystery of Golgotha has entered in such a way into human evolution that those, who unite themselves with the power of Christ, no longer just see Christ as the “Saviour of sinful man” and passively wait for their Saviour, but they become helpers in bringing about the coming days. In truth it must be said: ‘Not I but Christ in me’ – but not with Christ as only a saviour but Christ as the instigator and enlivener of all the powers that will then be able, in the following time, to emerge as powers of human progress.

Those who believe that they must push against such knowledge, who perhaps misunderstand the most elementary requirements for the coming days, do not understand anything about the true meaning of Paul’s words. ‘Christ in me’ is no mere passive belief but an active power which is brought forwards within us. ‘Not I but Christ in me’ – this is said by spiritual science.

The others however, who fight against spiritual science do not say: ‘Not I but Christ in me’ but say: ‘Not I but my old habitual opinions in me, my old habitual imaginings of Christ in me.’ – The true understanding of Paul’s words is such that an earnest requirement also for Christian progress, is being fulfilled.

With this I have today tried to characterise some of the requirements of the coming days, and I believe I want to close with just these first considerations: When human power is to be gained from the spirit, then there must also be a new grasp of the true, the real Christian nature coming from a spiritual source. And that is really not the last, not even the most modest request of the coming days.