Healthy Thinking

Lecture 10

The Spiritual Crisis of the Present and the Forces for Human Progress

Stuttgart on 10 November 1920

The serious crises which current civilised mankind is undergoing is not only something noticed by everyone, but it is something that is actually being experienced by everyone. Recently there are two of these crises that have emerged, I would like to mention, quite clearly outwardly and explosively.

The one more sneaking crisis has already been noticed and mentioned by many people at present, but its essence is only noticed by very few. This crisis, which initially brought such severe misery and hardship to mankind and which we can describe as a state crisis of the present day, this crisis can probably evaluate 1914 as an explosive year. We know how the most terrible battles took place in the European state system and how mankind is still suffering from the terrible after-effects of these battles today. One can say that within the course of these battles, but especially after these battles, an apparent end was reached in 1918 but it became apparent then, how little of it was basically delved into in order to search for the source, the actual causes of this state-legal human crisis.

From two sides one could hear something like a motto, as it were, which should indicate the direction according to which the terrible crisis should develop. Some said — I do not want to go into the characteristics of the individual parties, this doesn’t belong here, but I just want to mention it — they thought that out of the turmoil of war, another state system should emerge for civilized humanity; at least, so many thought, the existing states would have to change their borders, erect safeguards here or there. Others again, not less numerous, wanted to make for themselves, from the most divergent points of view, the motto: ‘Neither be victors nor vanquished!’ — That would mean the state systems of civilized mankind must emerge from the turmoil in the same form as it was before. It has to be said that both those who thought of conquests through the change of state borders, as well as those who pronounced the slogan ‘Neither victors nor vanquishers be’, actually realized that this terrible confusion in the second decade of the 20th century had arisen simply from the fact that the states, in their mutual relationship, with their borders, could not remain as they were, and also, neither did they contain within themselves the power to reshape themselves in any way so that a tolerable relationship could emerge between them.

That the outcome ‘be neither victors nor vanquished’ could not have been accomplished is shown by the outcome of the war. That it was not done with “victory” either, is shown by what has developed since then because if you look at what has arisen from the way of thinking, from the way of observing of those who are among the victors, then one must say: At Versailles, at Saint-Germain, at Spa and so on, everywhere there were those who thought with the same kind of thinking with which the states were set up, which had become mixed up and created confusion. They wanted to continue with the same way of thinking, the same way of looking at things. They wanted to establish some new state territories, which we have also seen come into being — at first outwardly — but what they hoped for has not happened.

Whoever takes an unbiased look at the conditions of civilized mankind today will have to admit that what has been set up, especially in Europe, already clearly shows that it cannot have an inner existence. From the disorder of all that has come out of the peace treaties, the unprejudiced person must recognize that one simply cannot continue the old way of thinking, the state way of thinking, which has risen up through modern history. It has asserted itself in the peace treaties; it has proved its impossibility by the facts.

The second crisis — one could perhaps more adequately call it the explosion of the second crisis, because it had been in preparation for a long time — is to be registered approximately in the year 1918 and the years that follow. It can be called the economic crisis. Out of the turmoil of war arose that longing of mankind which one might call the aspiration to arrive at such economic conditions which are present instinctively in the needs of many members of today’s civilized humanity. What have we seen emerge from this economic crisis so far? If we look to the West we see the absolute helplessness, we see the continuation of economic activity as it has risen up out of modern history; we see a perpetual experimentation without guiding ideas; we see those who think about this economy until now, in the highest apprehension of the outcome of this experimentation.

When we look to the East, we see that purely economic thinking, insofar as it has asserted itself in the minds of Proletariat, has taken on a strange form. We look in the European East — and we see the same thing continuing deep into Asia — we see the effort to create, one might say a militarized economic state structure. That which has suffered such a shipwreck from the old constitutional states, the purely militaristic principle, we see applied in the East. I would like to say: we see the purely militaristic principle applied to an economic organism that is to be created.

Today, the facts also are sufficiently clear regarding these efforts. Who would claim today that anything else could be accomplished by this militarization of the economic life in the East of Europe, than merely robbery of the old economy, the destruction of the old economic fabric? Illusions are created about what is supposed to come about for mankind, but it crumbles more and more with each day, each week. Then again, we see how thoughts, views, as people formed them, especially in the second half of the 19^th Century, as so-called thoughts of economic reforms, social reforms, how from these thoughts — where one wants to apply them radically — nothing remotely fruitful can emerge.

To all of this it can already be said: two crises, the governmental crisis and the economic crisis, stand before civilized mankind today, without any prospect of a way out. One does not have to develop lengthy spins to recognise that this is what it is, as I mentioned here in my introduction, one merely needs to devote oneself to the observation, in an unbiased way, of what is happening. Out of these observations, which one could already have made for decades, if one links the spiritual attention to the way in which these two crises were clearly preparing themselves, out of these observations, is what gave rise recently in Dornach to the undertaking of anthroposophical university courses. Certainly, these anthroposophical university courses, held in September and October of this year in Dornach by thirty lecturers from the various branches of science — their importance for today may not be overestimated; they are the very first and perhaps a weak beginning, but a beginning driven by a definite, purposeful intention. In Dornach, these thirty lecturers were to show that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which I have been presenting in Stuttgart for almost two decades, has the inner strength and the inner scientific methodology to enrich a wide variety of subjects so that they can take on a form corresponding to the demands of the present, and life in the future.

In any case, in order for something like this to be undertaken in a purposeful way at all — what is necessary? It is necessary to see through what is most important in the third crisis, a crisis which is basically only the outer expression of the other two crises mentioned before. This third crisis is not yet considered, in its essence, by nearly the whole of mankind: it is the crisis of our entire spiritual life.

I know, my dear friends, that this is an expression of something that is being met with the most serious doubts in the widest circles today. I also know that this is uncomfortable to hear. It shows in the example that many admit to the governmental crisis and many admit to the economic crisis, and that this admission has led them to demand fundamental changes in the conception and institutions of state and economic life, but that extremely few are convinced that spiritual life must bring about a transformation right into the individual sciences. In many circles today, it is thought that spiritual life must provide the sources for further prosperous progress of mankind, to get out of hardship, misery and social turmoil. But people think of the participation of the spiritual life in such a way that they simply take only those “spiritual goods” that have been so-called “safe sciences” which are now being disseminated into the widest possible circles through the most diverse channels, through national and adult education centres and so on.

However — I have mentioned this here before — people are not impartial enough to thoroughly consider the following fact: When it is recognised that particularly in those circles which have so far participated in the spiritual life as it has developed in modern times in mankind’s evolution, and that these educated circles are the very circles which have essentially become the bearers of the turmoil, if one recognised this, then one must admit that the same confusion cannot be eliminated by popularizing those thoughts which have led to disaster and which were brought up by this spiritual movement, because the same confusion would then have to emerge from the widest circles which has already emerged from the narrow circle of the bearers of this spiritual life.

Therefore, the aim of Dornach, where these anthroposophical adult courses have taken place, is not merely to popularize extensively, in a conservative way, that which we now have in so-called ‘safe science’ or in other spiritual goods, within which the confusions have asserted themselves, but to fertilize this spiritual property anew, to give it an impact by which it can be the carrier of a different government, a different economic life. The renewal of spiritual life, not the spreading of spiritual life, is the goal of the anthroposophically orientated spiritual movement. The impulses, the thoughts, the views which have led to the confusion of government and the confusion of the economy, already existing in the old spirituality, is to be recognised within the anthroposophically orientated spiritual movement. However, few people today make the effort to really look at the origins of our misery and our life, at the crisis in our spiritual life. That is uncomfortable. Surely something must be “safe” somewhere or other; one must be able to stand on firm ground. It is believed that everything would falter if one were to work with reform on spiritual life oneself. That is the reason why anthroposophically orientated spiritual science has such difficulties to speak to people of the present day because basically, the interest that they derive from their inner world historical sense of duty must be asserted in the broadest circles which are not at all active. The sources of the crises are sought everywhere, in the economy, in the state, but one is afraid to look for them in the spiritual life. Until they are sought in spiritual life, nothing at all will improve — not even in economic life, not even in state life.

What is external reality in the life of the state, even if people today don’t want to realize it, is only the expression of what people think, what they have learned to think through the spiritual life that has emerged in the developmental history of mankind in the last three to four centuries, especially in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. The state and economic crises are too noticeable to be denied, that it should not be concluded that both the state and the economic development must be given new impetus. That something must also happen in spiritual life, many admit to. That just such a thing has to happen, as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants, is very often opposed by those people of the present who also often admit to the former.

Today there are enough examples to use — examples that can be taken in the present time both from world areas suffering from terrible cultural pressure, which belong to the defeated ones, and from those cultural areas that belong to the victors.

After the warlike turmoil had found a temporary, but only apparent end, after the revolutionary spirit had dawned, we noticed within Germany the call to separate the ecclesiastical, the religious element from the state. I would like to say, taken in an abstract way, this is the first of all the dawning calls for a part of what the threefold social organism wants: It wants to detach the entire spiritual life from the state and economic life and place it in its own self-administration, built only on its own principles. Today only the most inner part of spiritual life is understood so that one can only in a purely abstract sense strive for its separation from the life of the state.

However, other phenomena have also emerged in this domain in Germany. From one particular side, a decidedly anti-religious, anti-Christian sentiment was making itself felt, and that which asserted itself was associated with the war cry: separate of the Church from the State. It became particularly difficult for Protestantism to find its way into what had come about as a result of the war and the revolution. On the one hand one had to see how the Catholic Church, through their ancient constitution, would not lose much by separation from the state, for it has so many political and administrative and also traditional impulses within itself that it could indeed only gain by this separation from the state, especially if it still intriguingly circumvents the separation from the state. On the other hand, the connection of the Protestant churches with the powers of the state was so close — the Protestant churches were designed to see ecclesiastical power exercised by state powers — that they felt as if they were at the mercy of the state because of their separation from it. This became a certain mood that led to the emergence of a kind of battle cry for the gathering of all who could still direct their gaze from the religious point of view towards the spiritual. The different confessions need to be organised so that they don’t achieve a separation but a unity through a kind of self-government.

Something else appeared which is highly characteristic. Those who were the bearers of this “gathering” of the various ecclesiastical confessions, they openly said that it was good that the separation of ecclesiastical, religious affairs of the state should be as trustworthy as possible vis-à-vis the state authorities, that the detachment — as they put it — should take place “benevolently,” so to speak. They said openly that at least religious education is to be still provided by the state and so on, that the church is not simply dismissed from the power of the state, but be compensated in a certain way — well, and what can be more than a “benevolent detachment from the state.”

One can clearly see that religious denominations are accustomed to being directed by the state: they can’t find their way into a certain independence from the state. This is not based on economic circumstances only; it also comes from the way people think. So we see how the churches, which are supposed to achieve independence, in a certain sense, even if half-heartedly, still look towards the state for leadership, to which they have become accustomed through centuries. This is what we can say, roughly, about Central Europe.

Let’s look abroad. It is extremely interesting that in Switzerland, for example, we can now hear speakers from America who are ecclesiastical representatives of religious confessions. What do they have to say? In their speeches they say something like the following — I can only briefly summarize in a few sentences what is set forth in detail — they say something like, from the American point of view, of course: Mankind is striving, they say, for the League of Nations. The League of Nations is to lead mankind out of the old, militaristic conditions; it is to bring the longed-for peace and a newness of human culture and human civilization. What statesmen have achieved so far, they say, what they have accomplished so far, can’t bring about a viable League of Nations — and they attach Woodrow Wilson, whom they describe as a good-natured, but actually somewhat foolish idealist. For such a League of Nations would be forged together by external, state relations which have actually outlived their usefulness, which no longer have any load-bearing capacity for human civilization. That which is the true League of Nations — so say these American pastors — must be rooted in the hearts of the people. But, they say, this could only be rooted in the hearts of the people, if Christian feeling, religious vows are found all over the world. So these American speakers would actually like to join the Europeans in constituting the League of Nations from the religious point of view; they want to win the hearts of mankind religiously.

What I’m telling you, dear friends, is something that arises from spiritual life. Whoever hears the speeches of such American pastors, says to himself, when he is able to see without bias what is now raging economically over Europe: No matter how beautiful the words may be — they are at times very beautiful, these words that are spoken there — no matter how beautiful the words may be, they do not find the way to the hearts of men; they are powerless to constitute an inner League of Nations. From those people whose drives and instinctive battle cries sound as social battle cries, they no longer have an ear for these beautifully spoken words; they demand something else, because their hearts are not open for these words.

Here it shows — how from the very basis from which the call is sounded, to detach oneself benevolently from the state, to gather together that which is scattered — everywhere it is evident that one can already notice the insidious spiritual crisis of the present. One must be really quite biased if one can believe that on the one hand through the beautiful words of the American pastors, the World Federation can be established in the hearts of the people, or that, on the other hand, that spiritual renewal can be brought about through an assembly of the various confessions existing in Central Europe — a spiritual renewal that is now really powerful enough to bring forth strength for the social progress of mankind, strength to bring forth power that can reform in the state and economic spheres.

Only if one is biased, one can believe this. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, studies from its insights, from its way of looking at things, what is actually taking place, and it observes: Yes, the will is there to make spiritual life powerful again among people, so that the state and the economic life can emerge from thoughts rooted in a fruitful spiritual life — there is no other way to reform the economic and state life. The will is there, but something is missing: it lacks creative power. Today it does not matter that American pastors repeat the old-fashioned words — no matter how beautifully they are forged, they have lost their value for the hearts of men. Today, it is not important to collect the confessions from the past; today, it is important that a new spiritual life comes among people through a new creation. Someone who actually understands the spiritual crisis is someone who does not merely want to repeat the old but who develops a will for a new spiritual creation.

We need to ask ourselves: Why do the most beautiful words turn out to be powerless? Why does a collection of religious confessions lead nowhere? We notice that in the course of the last three to four centuries throughout civilized mankind, what we call the state life and what we call the economic life, have become more powerful. These two have so completely taken spiritual life in tow, that those in Central Europe who are to be separated from the state in regard to their religious creeds, are in turn longing for the state and its leadership. Spiritual life has been taken in tow to such an extent that today the most beautiful words that can be spoken out of this old spiritual life can no longer find their way to the hearts in which the inkling for today's reforms arises. This proves from external historical facts that we need not merely a new fertilization of the old, stimulation for the old, but we need a complete new creation. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science supports these standpoints. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to fertilise individual sciences which will give ideas to the state and to the economic life of mankind. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should also fertilize state life itself and economic life in such a way that both receive new impulses which are created in spiritual life itself.

With the larger part of the sciences we have at least for a beginning, succeeded — we can emphasize this after our successes, after our results during the Dornach higher education courses. Historical, physical, chemical, biological, legal, even mathematical, philosophical, psychological — all these fields have already taken shape through our higher education courses, through which it becomes clear what these branches of science will become when they are methodologically, strictly and scientifically imbued with what the spiritually scientific research intend, as they also have been represented here in Stuttgart for more than one and a half decades. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to specifically point out the necessity for new spiritual creation in this crisis.

Why, I say, do the most beautiful words turn out to be powerless? Why do people long for state leadership to return? Because, in essence, one has gradually achieved a spiritual life which was completely and utterly only an appendage of the state life or economic life, which was completely and entirely established in accordance with the educational and teaching institutions through the will of the state which was completely supported by obsolete economic forms. What the state and economic life in the last centuries have made up out of old creeds, has today become something powerless if it wants to assert itself in the way the American pastors want to establish a League of Nations.

Yes, my dear friends, this is the powerlessness by which spiritual life has been educated by the government supervision, by the economic superpower. The spiritual life which anthroposophical orientated spiritual science aims for, must, as I’ve often explained here, arise from the innermost soul experience of the human being itself. This experience of the soul, however, cannot be under any supervision or supreme power, but it can only be developed in full freedom, through the completely free development of the human individualities, in the free self-administration of this spiritual life itself. When this spiritual life is under self-administration, if it can bring forth precisely the kind of science that has been shown in Dornach and shown every day in the Waldorf School in relation to pedagogy; when this freely administered spiritual life can really unfold individuals’ abilities, born or conceived in every human being, brought from the spiritual worlds into the physical world, then the fruits of such a free spiritual life can blossom and augment state and economic life. The life of the state and the economy came into crises because they were deprived of what must be supplied to them from a free spiritual life. By taking the spiritual life into their own hands, state life and economic life have suppressed the fertilizing effect which can only become theirs if they release the spiritual life, so that from this freedom the spiritual life can work over into the territory of the state and into the economic sphere.

What I am suggesting here can certainly also be substantiated by an unbiased observation of the course of the history of civilization. I only want to point to this evidence in a broad outline. We see how since the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, especially since the 18th century, economic life has become more and more complicated and intricate. We see how the necessity to develop this economic life which in former times had been more instinctive even into the city culture, into the guild system, now must be redirected out of unconscious thinking. One only has to look at people who are to be named among the intellectual founders of the newer economic sciences, at minds like the Frenchman François Quesnay and the Englishman Adam Smith, and one will find, how, in the period of world history in which it has become necessary to grasp the economy from a spiritual point of view, scientific thought itself has become powerless to express any points of view about economic life.

Both Quesnay, the Frenchman who founded a theory of economics, who wanted to establish a theory of economics based more on political economy, as well as Smith, the Englishman, who founded a similar theory of economics, they both basically developed a few axiomatic principles such as “the validity of private property” and “the economic freedom of the individual” upon which to construct the whole economy.

If one looks in particular at the founder of modern economics, at Adam Smith — and his thinking is only the outflow of the thinking of his whole age, of the 17^th and 18th century — one finds that this thinking of Adam Smith, which haunts economic life, is basically a faithful reproduction of the thinking which at that time asserted itself as scientific thinking, especially in the West of civilisation. It is very interesting to follow how, for example with Newton, using the physical-astronomical thinking as a method, as a way of looking at things, how that entered in a general way into science as the way of dealing with problems which one then encounters again with Smith in his treatment of economic tasks.

As mathematical physics wants to derive everything from a few principles, so, a man like Adam Smith would like to derive the entire national economy from a few principles that can be grasped abstractly by the intellect. It is interesting to follow how unbiased minds, even Bulwer in a novel, scoff at that which now asserted itself as thinking in economics. Bulwer says in his scoffing: ‘In the past, it was believed that anyone who wanted to get involved in the national economy had to have extensive knowledge of what people were doing between one another in their business relationships. Today, you only need abstract principles, and the whole economy is derived from them.’ — Before that, Young, an unbiased thinker, already said: ‘Until now, he had thought that a person who wants to talk about economics must know the virtues and vices of people, the way people communicate in economic life, what they do there — in short, that such a person must have extensive knowledge.’ Adam Smith showed him, Young said, that all you needed were a few thoughts, and that with a few strokes of the pen you could assemble from experience all the economic knowledge that you have, into a few abstract thoughts.

As economic life became complicated — what happened to economic thinking? My dear friends, something has happened to this economic thinking, which first asserted itself in the West, which originated in the newer economic life and is modelled on modern economic life and which, in its final consequences, whether one admits it or not, now appears in the few abstract thoughts of Lenin and Trotsky as the last consequence in the East of Europe. This is what you need to consider. What it is about will only be understood if one doesn’t only adopt a few abstract thoughts about it — which people today love very much — but if one gets a thorough overview of the course of mankind’s development over many centuries, as I have indicated several times already, and as I will now indicate in a few words from another point of view.

My dear friends, just like the kind of view initiated by Newton was taken up by other thinkers as a soul doctrine and through this human doctrine of the soul it has become mechanised just like Newton mechanised astronomy, just as this mechanical-mathematical science was drawn into the national economy of Adam Smith, likewise, even the popular world views have adapted to it. Today, in the time of the newspapers, the popularising of science, basically there is hardly anyone who is not in some way, even if they don’t know anything about it, seized by the spirit of this scientific direction. This kind of science lives on the one hand in mathematics; mathematics is the only thing which rises from within the human being because all of mathematics can’t be accessed through observation as it is something which springs up from within the human being. In this scientific direction which has mathematical thinking, as with Smith for example, also with Ricardo, the later editor of the National Economy, it is clearly noticeable — this mathematical thinking is one side of modern science. The other side is the sensual observation of the external world and the formation of all kinds of abstract theories, of atomistic or other materialistic theories about this sensual external world.

These two currents actually exist: sensual observation of the external world and mathematized thinking. One has to be fair to what appears on the one hand as mathematical thinking, even in the field of national economy, and on the other hand, as conscientious observation of experimentation in the outside world. One must be fair to that, because that has brought up the great triumphs of modern, Western science. I have also emphasized it many times: From anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, these triumphs of modern science are by no means opposed, but fully acknowledged. However, one has to recognise that within mankind’s development there was a time when this kind of scientific attitude was not present at all. Today only the last decadent remains of what existed in this field of mankind are there.

Now I’ll refer to the Orient. If you want to see the things that matter in their actual form, you must not look towards the Orient of today, where everything is already in decline, in deterioration; what was once a primordial wisdom of mankind, what was even greater than it has later become — you can read about this in my book “Occult Science.” It was even greater in the time before the Vedas, before the Vedanta philosophy came into being; but what still shines out artistically from the Vedas, from the Vedanta-philosophy only in last echoes; the unbiased discoverer can still see in the whole oriental development. There's a lot of greatness, a lot of powerful wisdom in there. There is nothing in it of the special way in which the western science of more recent times works. The way of thinking, the way of looking at the world, was quite different there.

The scientific methods which we venerate so much today, and rightly so, which we must emulate, they were not found in the ancient oriental thought. For this the old oriental wisdom had, what I would like to call, a world-view — in contrast to science: a world-view without science. This was basically the characteristic essence of the ancient Orient in its wisdom.

This worldview is meaningful because it stretches over the whole human being; it is significant because through this worldview the human being grasps himself as spirit, soul and body. However, this worldview appeared in the ancient Orient in such a way that little attention was paid to the body and to what belonged to the external, physical world. This life was more an understanding between soul and spirit, in which man knew himself rooted, but it was a worldview. That means that what a person thought and experienced, he established for himself in his situation firmly, through his relationship to the world of his senses and to the world of the spirit. He didn’t do this scientifically but through soul intuition. What the soul acquired through spiritual perception lived in its original form in the ancient times of the Orient. But the legacy of it lived on and basically one senses this oriental worldview of life right up into our recent times.

This worldview of life, it has given up that by which, for example, the first Christianity — in which this ancient Oriental wisdom and worldview was still alive — understood the mystery of Golgotha as giving meaning to the earth. Instead of looking in the way the ancient Orient had, the intellectualistic element became more and more established and since then remained as an inheritance. In our more modern time, before the non-ideological science of the West arose, which also gave shape to soul doctrine and the national economy, as I’ve mentioned, there formed in the middle, already beginning with ancient Greece, clearly developing in ancient Rome, then establishing itself over central Europe, that which, I would like to express it as: putting man into an inner struggle. He grasped an event that can only be grasped with the spirit, the Christ event, still through the inherited echoes of ancient, oriental wisdom. Besides this, more and more, through the special dispositions of Western mankind, that which is mere human intellectuality, which is the entire cosmos, shimmered into this Central Europe as well, above all our earthly environment and the human himself, basically wanting understanding only through mathematics and observation of the outside world.

So, on the one hand, there lived in Central Europe precisely that which one could call a leaning towards the old Oriental heritage. Everything that lived in the Middle Ages and more recent times in the content of the Christian doctrine and still lives in it today, everything that lives in it in terms of worldview — even if it has almost faded away, even if pure rationalism has taken hold of modern theology — is for the most part old oriental heritage, because only a few approaches are present towards new creation. Connected with this is what man first of all creates out of himself, through mathematics and observation of nature, but which he does not bring to a worldview. So in the Middle Ages, in the time when Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas were active, we see occurring in a conscious way this dichotomy between what human reason can achieve through observation and through mathematics, what is limited to the outer sensual world, and what is to be revelation, the Mystery of Golgotha, which was not called that at that time, but which according to its content, not according to the fact, was ancient oriental heritage. Basically this dichotomy is still alive today in all pubic life, in Central Europe, even in the state and economic life, arising from the Middle Ages — this dichotomy between non-idealistic, scientific thinking and the old, inherited worldview without science.

The Middle European is since the time of the Greek epoch called to this inner battle. This inner struggle in particular produced the highest spiritual blossoming of the mind in the period of German culture around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. What lived in Herder, Schiller, Goethe, in philosophers of German idealism, in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, was only alive in all these minds, because the spirits of these souls had deeply, inwardly condensed the struggle that exists between science without a worldview and the inherited worldview without science. One can see in Goethe’s individual sayings how he tried to bring together that which science gives on the one hand, and that which lived in him according to feelings, imaginatively as an old heritage of the Orient. Yes, in Goethe's case it goes even further; he experienced this dichotomy within himself until the eighties of the 18th century. This drove him to the south, because in the south he could at least feel the echoes of what had remained in the south of Europe, of what had been the ancient oriental worldview without science, which, however, was very, very much on the wane in Greece. From this worldview void of science, what has come from the Arabs and spread across the European south, into the West, is nothing other than mathematics, dry mathematics. It is basically Europe's last remnant of that which, as comprehensively universal, emerged from the science-less worldview of the Orient. There, everything that was available as wisdom was rising from within the human being just as with us, in our civilization, it is only found to be the case with mathematics. It is basically Europe’s last remnant, albeit a lasting remnant of what had originated in the Orient as comprehensive universal worldview void of science. There, everything present in wisdom was welling up in the human being, whereas in our case, in our civilization, only mathematics does this in us. This is what Novalis in particular felt towards mathematics and expressed it in a stammering way.

The civilization of the West has newly acquired what I would like to call the observation and experimental system, from which the actual science of the West has emerged, from which everything that man does not initially gain from his inner being, but rather what he obtains by letting the world of the senses act on the senses. What first became of the scientific spirit is what has become the scientific spirit through which all leaders have obtained their education, their scientific character, and which, my dear friends, has revealed its powerlessness in the face of economic life, in the face of state life, in the minds which I have mentioned and to which many other names could be added.

This is how we see our modern life approaching us. I would like to express in symbolic terms what has actually asserted itself in the last three to four centuries as our emerging modern life. Outwardly it is characterised by what we notice, on the one hand, from what is developing in terms of the essential spirit of science dominating schools and universities. We see that what is done in schools and universities as something partly leading to an existence estranged from the world. We see how the universities stand as lonely islands of education. We can see, however, how something else is happening, how the new scientific approach, the unworldly scientific approach, stops at the human being. Characteristic of this is the Darwinian doctrine, which with such scientific conscientiousness researches the development of the living beings from the simplest being to the most perfect, which, however, places the human being, so to speak, at the head of this animal organization and only comes to explain the human being, in so far as he is animal. From this and many other things one could show how the mathematizing and purely externally observing science stops with its findings before it comes to the human being. So we have a scientifically orientated education system without a world-view, an education system which lives in abstractions and doesn’t attribute to human beings what the science-free worldview of the Orient had — a sense of one’s position to the world — which only satisfies the head, the intellect, and doesn’t grasp the whole human being. That’s on the one hand.

On the other hand something comes up that I would like to symbolize by using the example of the factory with the modern practitioner. What is the relationship between the factory and the college? Yes, there is a relationship, but this relationship has taken on a very one-sided character. What shines from the modern universities into the factory is mechanical science. This illumination by mechanical science has brought about for the factory, and for everything that belongs to it, that great formation of technology which has founded modern civilization. Up to the formation of the technology in the highest sense that science could work, it stops with its cognition before it gets to the human being.

In the factory as well, the practitioner stops at the human being. He extends his routine — because it is nothing other than routine — only into the technical and into that which is connected with the technical. He cannot establish a human relationship between himself as an entrepreneur, as a leader, and those who work on modern civilization out of the broad mass of people.

Science stops with its knowledge when it is faced with the human being; practice stops short of the human being in action, in social design. A boundary indicates this stopping. One has taken into the area, which has this boundary, all that could come out of the modern mathematical science into the technology which could also stimulate commerce, trade, traffic and so on. But from science, which stops at the knowledge of the human being, from this science no social life could be obtained which could have satisfied the great demands of the newer times on this purely human side.

So, beyond the boundary stood all of mankind, which now demanded its human dignity in recent times; so stood that humanity to which one had not found the way in practice, just like the human being himself and his essence had not found the way in the modern worldview-less scientific knowledge. This is the tragedy that has led to the modern crises, because what is written in the books of modern practical life, what is written in the ledger, in the cash book, has nothing to do with what lives outside in the souls of those who stand beyond the boundary, in front of whose humanity one has come to a stop. They appeared with their mental demands and out of these mental demands the counter-image of the present mental crisis arose in the present.

Thus we see these universities, these colleges, schools of education which reach into the technical — I could call it, reaching into what is free in the human — opening the way to the factory, to industry, to modern money economy but which will not penetrate as far as man himself.

So, on the other hand we have the emergence from imperfect sense observation which at first was the cognitive, unworldly science, the experimentation sense of modern practitioners who are not interested in leading ideas but who limit themselves to the experimentation of the mathematical-mechanical-technical, engaging people in work without caring about the social structure of mankind. We have seen the advent of the practitioner who today has a prim hatred against all leading ideas, a formal hatred against everything scientific, of everything cognitive, who, however, is right on the one hand, that this modern, unworldly science has nothing of what can shine in practice where the human heart is involved. However these practitioners are wrong when they attribute this scientific direction to all spiritual life. So they remain in their routine, this is how they want to continue, I could call it in a spiritless, merely experimental management.

This is what makes it so difficult for the bridge to be drawn which could reach from anthroposophically orientated spiritual science into the most practical aspects of life. The only thing to blame for this is the reluctance of the practitioners, who want to remain in routines towards what for example is an impulse for the three-folding of the social organism emanating from spiritual science. We increasingly see this rise of hatred for practice in all that is spiritual life. So in the West today we see a confused bustle of experimental economic activity, of experimental state activity. In the East, we see this economic activity, this state activity, culminating in a militarized economic state, which must paralyze everything human.

So we can see how in fact, out of the spiritual crises, the state crisis and economic crises have arisen. From this clear insight, what has been represented here for more than one and a half decades as anthroposophically orientated spiritual science, the forces of progress for humanity can develop. The anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would like to develop out of the same scientific spirit that has developed in the West without a worldview, from the innermost knowledge of the innermost experience of the human soul — knowledge that in turn becomes a worldview that does not rehash the old words — the words that no longer find their way to the hearts of the people; knowledge that does not merely collate the old confessions, that also wants to spread light over an outlook that opens up when looking at the most powerful event of the development of the earth, the Mystery of Golgotha.

There’s opposition against such a renewal of the spiritual life, which wants to look at the basic fact of Christianity, which can be rightly grasped and looked at only in the spirit, from the spirit of modern mankind. We can’t return to the Orient. We can no longer strive for a worldview that is not scientific. We are beyond the time when a science-less worldview could be sufficient for mankind. Today we are faced with the great task of developing a worldview through science and with the inner development of human beings. This we will be able to do if we really see into the true character of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. As long as there are still people who claim that what is achieved through the method of cognition — an inner, but strictly scientific method, even modelled on the strictest mathematical methods — is gained by the spiritual-scientific method, that it could be as much vision as any vision or hallucination, as long as there are people who claim such, because they for example, in fact could not read at all what is written in my books “Occult Science” or “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds”; as long as there are such people and as long as people believe that, spiritual science will have a difficult way to go. I will still have more to say about this. Such people do not see that what is understood with spiritual perception, what is grasped through it is that the human being awakens himself inwardly to spiritual sight and that it teaches him to distinguish between fantasy and reality. It is basically a very simple factual logic which underlies this distinction that our opponents are unable to grasp.

How do I know that when I lift a kilogram of weight, for example, I’m not subject to a hallucination but that it is an external reality? How do I recognize that? I can tell by the fact that I simply have to strengthen my sense of self when I lift the weight. I need to strengthen myself inwardly. If I have a mere vision or hallucination my sense of self remains unchanged in its intensity: I am absorbed in the vision, because I don’t have the experience of having to make my sense of self more intense. I notice the resistance by the fact that when I lift the kilogram of weight, I have to use the strength that is in me, which I don’t do when absorbed in a vision. Neither do I, when I have spiritual experiences, hallucinations in fantasy, in which the sense of self is not increased.

You will find everywhere in spiritual-scientific writings it is described that those experiences, through which one enters the world in which man is before birth or conception, in which he will be after death, in which his eternity is rooted, that those experiences through which one enters the world of the supersensible presuppose that the soul must be made more awake than it is in ordinary life, that is to say, it must be made inwardly more intense, inwardly more strongly experiential.

In this, however, is expressed exactly that which guarantees the scientific nature of that which is asserted as spiritual perception. And if one asserts what I have only hinted at here, what I have often discussed in lectures here in Stuttgart for many years, if one asserts this, then, yes, only then one attains the correct view of what has seized modern humanity like a crisis in spiritual life. One can see, for example, how mathematics came to the West as an ancient inheritance via Arabia, but how it was powerless to conquer the complicated economic and state life of the West, as it is shown, for example, by Adam Smith. One makes the observation that this mathematical thinking, this mathematical view is acquired entirely from within the human being and by awakening the soul inwardly, one develops precisely that which is inherent in this mathematical thinking. Precisely that which lives in the spirit of mathematical thinking, is what prepares man for a higher perfection towards inner, spiritual methods. This way one acquires quite a particular spiritual perspective.

Through the inner experience of mathematics which is limited only to the world between birth and death, through inwardly enlivened methods of spiritual science applied to mathematics, one can learn to recognise that which enters the soul through inspiration. It comes in such a way that it opens up our outlook for what the human being experienced supersensibly in spiritual worlds before birth or conception. Mathematics is that which has scientifically preserved for us a last point of departure to get to observe our prenatal human life.

What the western worldview-less science acquires in its external observation, if it is developed here (spirit-scientifically), it first of all provides something that doesn’t remain abstract observation — for the worldview-less science it remains an abstract observation — but what rises also to the moral, as I have proved in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” what rises to the moral imagination thus arises in the foundation of the moral life of the human being. Everything that we gain from the outside world in terms of thoughts, leads to images, to imaginations, which finally connect with inspiration. This we experience. And as imperfect as that is which we can observe from the outside world between birth and death, if we process it inwardly, if we also experience what we observe externally in the soul by means of the method of spiritual science, then from our imaginations we can also see the life we enter after our death. From the mathematizing, from the observing and experimenting of science, when the spiritual science is applied to this science, it will in turn give rise to a worldview — but now a worldview that can give modern civilization the power for the progress of mankind.

The worldview has the characteristic — it shows in the oriental, science-less worldview — that it has an effect on the mind and will of the human being, that it has such an effect that man establishes a legal life according to these particular views and through which he brings about an understanding for what happens between one person and another in the human community, in other words, he builds a state life for himself. A worldview stimulates the will that determines economic life. A science without a worldview merely speaks to the head, to the intellect; it leaves the mind and the will uninfluenced. While intellectual science in the beginning of the 20^th century reached its highest blossoming, we see feelings remain uninfluential in an attempt to give warmth to the state, and the will, unable to shape economic life. Feeling and will are given over more and more to the animal instincts with a grand training of the intellect — we would be heading for this barbarization if head and intellect were to train the instinctive life more and more and leave mind and will untended, as is already so terribly evident in the East of today's civilization.

To seize the feeling and the will in turn and thus generate a new force for the progress of mankind, this can be done by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which in turn elevates itself to a worldview — this could not be done by the Science which has no worldview. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science penetrates into feeling, that means into the life of the state; it penetrates into the will, that means into the economic life. In this crisis and in the healing of this crisis it is necessary to notice which the two other crises are.

Science without a worldview only grasps the intellect, my dear friends. The emotional life is unaffected which should lead to the legal understanding between one person and another, which is the decisive thing in the state, and it leaves likewise the will uninfluenced, which is supposed to have a formative effect in economic life.

So we see how the threefold crises have come about in recent times. We see how people thirst for a renewal of the spiritual life, but how they do not want to admit that this renewal of spiritual life can only come from a new creation. As a result we see in the idea of the “collection” the impotence of the old spiritual life, in the beautiful words of the American speakers who address the Swiss and speak to the Europeans in general. The necessity of a renewed creation of the spiritual life must be pointed out.

Only through a recreation of the spiritual life can something new emerge, something that was not there before, which does not prove its impracticality like the modern state system which in 1914 entered into a catastrophe, not merely into a crisis, because it had no free spiritual life beside it to prove its impracticality as it did in the economic life, which turned into a catastrophe in recent times because it was not fertilized by a free spiritual life.

In recent times we see the rise of an intellectualistic science which can’t induce people who have grown up in the life of the state and in the life of the economy, to find fruitful ideas for the state or economic life. We see people in state institutions, who, instead of creating an understanding for the feeling of relations between one person and another, their feelings are only for the satisfaction of their egoism and thus they gradually undermine the structure of these state institutions. We can observe how through the merely intellectual science which involves only the head, the will is uncared for in the purely instinctive life which also flows into the deeds of egoism. We can see from the worldview-less science the rise of un-brotherliness, which aims only at the elevation of the existence of one’s own being.

New forces for the progress of humanity we will find in anthroposophically orientated spiritual science, and from this modern science we will once again find a worldview. It will engender the kind of thinking which is not merely intellectual thinking, a thinking illumined through feeling, the kind of thinking that empowers the will. We will see people of action springing from this thinking, people who, instead of mere satisfaction of their egoism, will seek human understanding in a community orientated state. We will see people who through their associations, connect with others with different economic needs, with various economic abilities. Out of the will, fructified by true spiritual thinking, we will see the creation of a sense of fraternity that works in associative community in such a way that a person, together with others, will work with the understanding for all and thus also for himself. We will see the emergence from the thinking person of action, a person with a feeling for the law, a brotherhood minded person with an economy orientated will, and thus from an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science a new power for the progress of humanity can emerge out of the spiritual crisis.