ON
THE ART OF LECTURING
by RUDOLF STEINER
Historical viewpoints concerning the
Threefold Order and the development of speech. Beautiful
speaking, correct speaking, and good speaking.
LECTURE II:
When we set out
today to speak about Anthroposophy and the Threefold Movement
with its various consequences — which indeed arise out
of Anthroposophy, and must really be thought of as arising
out of it, — then we must first of all hold before our
souls that it is difficult to make oneself understood. And,
without this feeling — that it is difficult to make
oneself understood — we shall hardly be able to succeed
as lecturers for anthroposophical Spiritual Science and all
that is connected with it, in a way satisfying to ourselves.
For if there is to be speaking about Anthroposophy which is
appropriate, then this speaking must be entirely different
from what one is accustomed to in accordance with the
traditions of speaking. One has often fallen into the habit
of speaking also about anthroposophical matters in the way
one has become used to speaking in the age of materialism;
but one is more apt thereby to obstruct the understanding for
Anthroposophy, rather than to open up an approach to it.
We shall first
of all have to make quite clear to ourselves what the content
of the matter is that comes towards us in Anthroposophy and
its consequences. And in these lectures I shall deal as I
said yesterday, with the practice of lecturing, but only for
anthroposophical and related matters, so that what I have to
say applies only to these.
We must now
make clear to ourselves that primarily it is the feeling for
the central issue of the threefold order that must at first
be stirred in our present humanity. It must after all be
assumed that an audience of today does not begin to know what
to do with the concept of the threefold order. Our speaking
must slowly lead to the imparting first of a feeling for this
threefold order in the audience.
During the time
in which materialism has held sway, one has become accustomed
to give expression to the things of the outer world through
description. In this one had a kind of guidance in the outer
world itself. Moreover, objects in the outer world are, I
would say, too fixed for one to believe that, in the end, it
makes much difference how one speaks about the things of the
outer world; one need only give people some guidance on the
way for perceiving this outer world. Then, in the end it
comes to this: if, let us say, one delivers somewhere a
popular lecture with experiments, and thereby demonstrates to
people how this or that substance reacts in a retort, then
they see how the substance reacts in the retort. And whether
one then lectures this way or that way — a bit better,
a bit less well, a hit more relevantly, a hit less relevantly
— in the end makes no difference. And gradually it has
tended to come to the point that such lectures and such talks
are attended in order to see the experimenting, and what is
spoken is just taken along as a kind of more or less
agreeable or disagreeable side noise. One must express these
things somewhat radically, just in order to show the exact
direction in which civilization is moving in regard to these
things.
When it is a
matter of what to stimulate in people for doing, for willing,
one is of the opinion that one must just “set up
ideals”. People would have to accustom themselves to
“apprehend ideals”, and thus one gradually glides
more and more over into the utopian, when it is a matter of
such things as the threefold order of the social
organism.
So it has also
happened in many an instance that many people who lecture
about the threefold idea today absolutely call forth the
opinion, through the manner in which they speak, that it is
some utopia or other that should be striven for. And, since
one is always of the opinion that what should be striven for
in most cases cannot be expected to come in less than fifty
or a hundred years — or many extend the time even
further — so one also allows oneself, quite
unconsciously, to approach speaking about things as if they
would first ripen in fifty or a hundred years. One glides
away from the reality very soon, and then talks about it
thus: How will a small shop be set up in the threefold social
organism? What will be the relation of the single person to
the sewing machine in the threefold social organism? —
and so on. Such questions are really put in abundance to any
endeavor such as the threefolding of the social organism. As
regards such an endeavor, which with all of its roots comes
out of reality, one should not at all speak in this utopian
fashion. For one should always evoke at least this feeling:
the threefold order of the social organism is nothing which
can be "made" in the sense that state constitutions can be
made in a parliament — of the kind for example, that the
Weimar National Assembly was. These are made! But one cannot
speak in the same sense of making the threefold social
organism.
Just as little
can one speak of "organizing" in order to produce the
threefold order. That which is an organism, this one does not
organize; this grows. It is just in the nature of an organism
that one does not have to organize it, that it organizes
itself. That which can be organized is no organism. We must
approach things from the start with these feelings, otherwise
we shall not have the possibility of finding the appropriate
expression.
The threefold
order is something which indeed simply follows from the
natural living together of people. One can falsify this
natural living together of people — as has been the
case, for example, in recent history — by extending the
characteristic features of one member, the states-rights
member, to both others. Then these two other members will
simply become corrupted because they cannot prosper, just as
someone cannot get on well in an unsuitable garment, that is
too heavy, or the like.
It is in the
natural relation of people that the threefold order of the
social organism lives, that the independent spiritual life
lives, that the rights or states life, regulated by the
people's majority, lives, that the economic life, shaped
solely out of itself, also lives. One can put strait jackets
on the spiritual life, on the economic life, although one
does not need them; but then its own life asserts itself
continually nevertheless, and what we then experience
outwardly is just this self-assertion. It is hence necessary
to show that the threefolding of the social organism is
implicit in the very nature of both the human being and the
social life.
We see that the
spiritual life in Europe was entirely independent and free
until the 13th or 14th centuries, when, what was the free,
independent spiritual life was first pushed into the
universities. In this time you find the founding of the
universities, and the universities then in turn slip by and
by into the life of state. So that one can say: From about
the 13th to the 16th or 17th century, the universities slip
into the states-life, and with the universities, also the
remaining educational institutions, without people really
noticing it. These other institutions simply followed. This
we have on the one hand.
On the other
hand, until about the same period, we have free economic rule
that found its true, middle-European expression in the free
economic village communities. As the free spiritual life
slipped into the universities, which are localized at first,
and which later find shelter in the state, so does that which
is the economic organization first receive a certain
administration in the “rights” sense, when the
cities emerge more and more. Then the cities, in the first
place, organize this economic life, while earlier, when the
village communities were setting the pace, it had grown
freely. And then we see how increasingly, that which was
centralized in the cities seeks protection in the larger
territories of the states. Thus we see how the tendency of
modern times ends in letting the spiritual life on the one
hand, the economic life on the other, seek the protection of
states which increasingly take on the character of domains
constituted according to Roman law. This was actually the
development in modern times.
We have reached
that point in historical development where things can go no
further like this, where a sense and a feeling for free
spiritual life must once again be developed. When in a strait
jacket, the spirit simply does not advance; because it only
apparently advances, but in truth still remains
behind — can never celebrate real births, but at most
renaissances. It is just the same with the economic life.
Today we simply
stand in the age in which we must absolutely reverse the
movement which has developed in the civilized world of Europe
with its American annex, the age in which the opposite
direction must set in. For what has gone on developing for a
time must reach a point at which something new must set in.
Otherwise one runs into the danger of doing as one would
when, with a growing plant, one were to say it should not be
allowed to come to fruition, it should grow further, it
should keep blooming on and on. — Then it would grow
thus: bring forth a flower; then no seed, but again a flower,
again a flower, and so on. Therefore it is absolutely
necessary to familiarize oneself inwardly with these things,
and to develop a feeling for the historical turning point at
which we stand today.
But, just as in
an organism every detail is necessarily formed as it is, so
is everything in the world in which we live and which we help
to shape, to be formed as it must be in its place in the
sense of the whole. You cannot imagine, if you think
realistically, that your ear lobe could be formed the very
least bit differently from what it is, in conformity with
your whole organism. Were your ear lobe only the least bit
differently formed, then you would also have to have quite a
different nose, different fingertips, and so forth. And just
as the ear lobe is formed in the sense of the whole human
being, so must also the lecture in which something flows be
given — in the sense of the whole subject — that
lecturing which is truly taking on new forms.
Such a lecture
cannot be delivered in the manner which one could perhaps
learn from the sermon-lecture. For the sermon-lecture as we
still have it today, rests on the tradition which really goes
back to the old Orient, — on a special attitude which
the whole human being in the old Orient had toward speech.
This characteristic was continued, so that it lived in a
certain free way in Greece, lived in Rome, and shows its last
spark most clearly in the particular relationship which the
Frenchman has to his language. Not that I want to imply that
every Frenchman preaches when he speaks; but a similar
relationship, such as had to develop out of the oriental
relationship to language still continues to live on in a
definite way in the French handling of speech, only entirely
in a declining movement.
This element
which we can observe here in regard to language came to
expression when one still learned speaking from the
professors, as one could later, but now in the declining
phase — professors who really continued to live on as
mummies of ancient times and bore the title, “professor
of elocution”. In former times, at almost every
university, in every school, also in seminaries and so on
there was such a professor of elocution, of rhetoric. The
renowned Curtius
[Note 1]
of Berlin actually still bore the title “professor of
elocution” officially. But the whole affair became too
dull for him, and he did not lecture on elocution, but only demonstrated
himself as a professor of elocution through being sent out by
the faculty council on ceremonial occasions, since that was
always the task of the professor of elocution. Nevertheless,
in this Curtius made it his business to discharge his duties
at such ceremonial occasions by paying as little regard as
possible to the ancient rules of eloquence. For the rest, it
was too dull for him to be a professor of elocution in times
in which professors of elocution did not fit in any more, and
he lectured on art history, on the history of Greek art. But
in the university catalog he was listed as “professor
of elocution”. This refers us back to an element that
was present everywhere in speech in olden times.
Now, when we
consider what is quite especially characteristic in the
training of speech for the middle European languages, for
German, for example, then indeed everything denoted in the
original sense by the word “elocution” has not
the least meaning. For something flowed into these languages
that is entirely different from that which was peculiar to
speaking in the times when elocution had to be taken
seriously. In the Greek and Latin languages there is
elocution. In the German language elocution is something
quite impossible, when one looks inwardly at the
essential.
Today, however,
we are living definitely in a time of transition. That which
was the speech element of the German language cannot continue
to be used. Every attempt must be made to come out of this
speech element and to come into a different speech element.
This also is the task, in a certain sense, to be solved by
him who would speak productively about Anthroposophy or the
threefold idea. For only when a fairly large number of people
are able to speak in this way, will Anthroposophy and the
threefold idea be rightly understood in public, even in
single lectures. Meanwhile, there are not a few who develop
only a pseudo-understanding and pseudo-avowal for these.
If we look back
on the special element in regard to speaking which was
present in the times out of which the handling of elocution
was preserved, we must say: then it was as if language grew
out of the human being in quite a naive way, as his fingers
grow, as his second teeth grow. From the imitation process
speaking resulted, and language with its whole organization.
And only after one had language did one come to the use of
thinking.
And now it
transpired that the human being when speaking to others about
any problem had to see that the inner experience, the thought
experience, to a certain extent clicked
[einschnappte] into the language. The sentence
structure was there. It was in a certain way elastic and
flexible. And, more inward than the language was the thought
element. One experienced the thought element as something
more inward than the language, and let it click into the
language, so that it fitted into it just as one fits the idea
of a statue or the like into marble. It was entirely an
artistic treatment of the language. Even the way in which one
was meant to speak in prose had something similar to the way
in which one was to express oneself in poetry. Rhetoric and
elocution had rules which were not at all unlike the rules of
poetic expression. (So as not to be misunderstood, I should
like to insert here that the development of language does not
exclude poetry. What I now say, I say for older arts of
expression, and I beg you not to interpret it as if I wanted
to assert that there can be no more poetry at all today. We
need but treat the language differently in poetry. But that
does not belong here; I wanted to insert this only in
parenthesis, that I might not be misunderstood.)
And when we now
ask: How was one then supposed to speak in the time in which
the thought and feeling content clicked into the language?
One was supposed to speak beautifully! That was the first
task: to speak beautifully. Hence, one can really only learn
to speak beautifully today when one immerses oneself in the
old way of speaking. There was beautiful speaking. And
speaking beautifully is definitely a gift which comes to man
from the Orient. It might be said: There was speaking
beautifully to the point that one really regarded singing,
the singing of language, as the ideal of speaking. Preaching
is only a form of beautiful speaking stripped of much of the
beautiful speaking. For, wholly beautiful speaking is cultic
speaking. When cultic speaking pours itself into a sermon,
then much is lost. But still, the sermon is a daughter of the
beautiful speaking found in the cult.
The second form
which has come into evidence, especially in German and in
similar languages, is that in which it is no longer possible
to distinguish properly between the word and the grasping of
the thought conveyed — the word and the thought
experience; the word has become abstract, so that it exempts
itself, like a kind of thought. It is the element where the
understanding for language itself is stripped off. It can no
longer have something click into it, because one feels at the
very outset that what is to be clicked in and the word
vehicle into which something is to click are one.
For who today
is clear, for example in German, when he writes down
“Begriff” [concept], that this is the
noun form of begreifen [to grasp; to comprehend]
be-greifen (greifen with a prefix) is thus
das Greifen an etwas ausfuehren [the carrying out of
the grasping of something] — that
“Begriff” is thus nothing other than the
noun form for objective perceiving? The concept
“Begriff” was formed at a time when
there was still a living perception of the ether body, which
grasps things. Therefore one could then truly form the
concept of Begriff, because grasping with the
physical body is merely an image of grasping with the ether
body.
But, in order
to hear Begreifen in the word Begriff it is
necessary to feel speech as an organism of one's own. In the
element of speaking which I am now giving an account of,
language and concept always swim through one another. There
is not at all that sharp separation which was once present in
the Orient, where the language was an organism, was more
external, and that which declared itself lived inwardly. What
lived inwardly had to click into the linguistic form in
speaking; that is, click in so that what lives inwardly is
the content, and that into which it clicked was the outer
form. And this clicking-in had to happen in the sense of the
beautiful, so that one was thus a true speech artist when one
wanted to speak.
This is no
longer the case when, for example, one has no feeling any
more for differentiating between Gehen [to go] and
Laufen [to run] in relation to language as such.
Gehen: two e's — one walks thither without
straining oneself thereby; e is always the feeling
expression for the slight participation one has in one's own
activity. If there is an au in the word, this
participation is enhanced. From running (Laufen)
comes panting (Schnaufen) which has the same vowel
sound in it. With this one's insides come into tumult. There
must be a sound there that intimates this modification of the
inner being. But all this is indeed no longer there today;
language has become abstract. It is like our onward-flowing
thoughts themselves — for the whole middle region, and
especially also for the western region of civilization.
It is possible
to behold a picture, an imagination in every single word; and
one can live in this picture as in something relatively
objective. He who faced language in earlier times considered
it as something objective into which the subjective was
poured. He would as little not have regarded it so, as he
would have lost sight of the fact that his coat is something
objective, and is not grown together with his body as another
skin.
As against
this, the second stage of language takes the whole organism
of language as another son' skin, whereas formerly language
was much more loosely there, I should like to say, like a
garment. I am speaking now of the stage of language in which
speaking beautifully is no longer taken into first
consideration, but rather speaking correctly. In
this it is not a question of rhetoric and elocution, but of
logic. With this stage, which has come up slowly since
Aristotle's time, grammar itself became logical to the point
that the logical forms were simply developed out of the
grammatical forms — one abstracted the logical from the
grammatical. Here all has swum together: thought and word.
The sentence is that out of which one evolves the judgment.
But the judgment is in truth so laid into the sentence that
one no longer experiences it as inherently independent.
Correct speaking, this has become the criterion.
Further, we see
a new element in speaking arising, only used everywhere at
the wrong point — carried over to a quite wrong domain.
Beautiful speaking humanity owes to the Orient. Correct
speaking lies in the middle region of civilization. And we
must look to the West when seeking the third element.
But in the West
it arises first of all quite corrupted. How does it arise?
Well, in the first place, language has become abstract. That
which is the word organism is already almost
thought-organism. And this has gradually increased so much in
the West, that there it would perhaps even be regarded as
facetious to discuss such things. But, in a completely wrong
domain, the advance already exists.
* * *
Humanism and pragmatism.
The need for developing a true ethics of speaking.
You see, in
America, just in the last third of the 19th century, a
philosophical trend called “pragmatism” has
appeared. In England it has been called “humanism.”
James
[Note 2]
is its representative in America,
Schiller
[Note 3]
in England. Then there are personalities who have already gone
about extending these things somewhat. The merit of extending
this concept of humanism in a very beautiful sense is due to
Professor MacKenzie
[Note 4]
who was recently here.
To what do
these endeavors lead? — I mean now, American pragmatism
and English humanism. They arise from a complete skepticism
about cognition: Truth is something that really doesn't
exist! When we make two assertions, we actually make them
fundamentally in order to have guide-points in life. To speak
about an “atom” — one cannot raise any
particular ground of truth for it; but it is useful to take
the atom theory as a basis in chemistry; thus we set up the
atom concept! It is serviceable, it is useful. There is no
truth other than that which lives in useful, life-serviceable
concepts. “God,” if he exists or not, this is not
the question. Truth, that is something or other which is of
no concern to us. But it is hard to live pleasantly if one
does not set up the concept of God; it is really good to
live, if one lives as if there were a God. So, let us set it
up, because it's a serviceable, useful concept for life.
Whether the earth began according to the Kant-Laplace theory
and will end according to the mechanical warmth theory, from
the standpoint of truth, no human being knows anything about
this — I am now just simply reporting — , but it
is useful for our thinking to represent the beginning and end
of the earth in this way. This is the pragmatic teaching of
James, and also in essence,the humanistic teaching of
Schiller. Finally, it is also not known at all whether the
human being now, proceeding from the standpoint of truth,
really has a soul. That could be discussed to the end of the
world, whether there is a soul or not, but it is useful to
assume a soul if one wants to comprehend all that the human
being carries out in life.
Of course,
everything that appears today in our civilization in one
place spreads to other places. For such things which arose
instinctively in the West, the German had to find something
more conceptual, that permits of being more easily seen
through conceptually; and from this the “As If”
philosophy originated: whether there is an atom or not is not
the question; we consider the phenomena in such a way
“as if” there was an atom. Whether the good can
realize itself or not, cannot be decided; we consider life in
such a way “as if” the good could realize itself.
One could indeed quarrel to the end of the world about
whether or not there is a God: but we consider life in such a
way that we act “as if” there were a God. There
you have the “As If” philosophy.
One pays little
attention to these things because one imagines: there in
America James sits with his pupils, there in England Schiller
sits with his pupils; there is Vaihinger, who wrote
the “As If” philosophy: there are a few owls who
live in a kind of cloud-castle, and of what concern is it to
other people!
Whoever has the
ear for it, however, already hears the “As If”
philosophy sounding everywhere today. Almost all human beings
talk in the sense of the “As If” philosophy. The
philosophers are only quite funny fellows. They always blab
out what other people do unconsciously. If one is
sufficiently unprejudiced for it, then one only seldom hears
a human being today who still uses his words differently, in
connection with his heart and with his whole soul, with his
whole human being, who speaks differently than as though the
matter were as he expresses it. One only does not usually
have the ear to hear within the sound and the tone-color of
the speaking that this “As If” lives in it,
— that fundamentally people over the whole of
civilization are seized by this “As If.”
Whereas things
usually come to be corrupted at the end, here something shows
itself to be corrupted at the beginning, something that in a
higher sense must be developed for handling of speech in
Anthroposophy, in the threefold order and so on. These things
are so earnest, so important, that we really should speak
specially about them. For it will be a question of elevating
the triviality, “We need concepts because they are useful for
life,” this triviality of a materialistic, utilitarian
theory, of raising it up to the ethical, and perhaps through
the ethical to the religious. For, if we want to work in the
sense of Anthroposophy and the threefold order, we have
before us the task of learning good speaking, in addition to
the beautiful speaking and the correct speaking which we can
acquire from history. We must maintain an ear for good
speaking.
Until now, I
have seen little sign that it has been noticed, when, in the
course of my lectures I have called attention to this good
speaking — I have done it very frequently. In referring
to this good speaking I have always said that it is not only
a question today that what is said be correct in the
logical-abstract sense, but it is a matter of saying
something in a certain connection or omitting it, not saying
it in this connection. It is a question of developing a
feeling that something should not only be correct, but that
it is justified within its connection — that it can be
either good in a certain connection or bad in a certain
connection. Beyond rhetoric, beyond logic, we must learn a
true ethics of speaking. We must know how we may allow
ourselves things in a certain connection that would not be at
all permitted in another connection.
Here I may now
use an example close to hand, that could perhaps have already
struck some of you who were present lately at the lectures: I
spoke in a certain connection of the fact that, in reality,
Goethe was not born at all. I said that Goethe for a long
time endeavored to express himself through painting, through
drawing, but that nothing came about from it. It then flowed
over into his poetic works, and then again in the poetic
works, as for example Iphigenia, or especially in
Naturliche Tochter [“Daughters of
Nature”], we have indeed poetic works not at all in the
sentimental sense. People called these poems of Goethe's
“marble smooth and marble cold,” because they are
almost sculptural, because they are three-dimensional. Goethe
had genuine capacities which really did not become human at
all; he was actually not born. — You see, in that
connection in which I spoke lately, one could quite certainly
say it. But imagine, if someone were to represent it as a
thesis in itself in the absolute sense! It would be not only
illogical, it would be of course quite crazy.
To speak out of
an awareness of a life connection is something different from
finding the adequate or correct use of a word association for
the thought and feeling involved. To let a pronouncement or
the like arise at a particular place out of a living
relationship, that is what leads over from beauty, from
correctness, to the ethos of language — at which one
feels, when a sentence is uttered, whether one may or may not
say it in the whole context. But now, there is again an
inward growing together, not with language, but with
speaking. This is what I should like to call good speaking or
had speaking; the third form. Aside from beautiful or ugly
speaking, aside from correct or incorrect speaking, comes
good or bad speaking, in the sense in which I have just
presented it.
Today the view
is still widespread that there can be sentences which one
forms and which can then be spoken on any occasion, because
they have absolute validity. In reality, for our life in the
present, there are no longer such sentences. Every sentence
that is possible in a certain connection, is today impossible
in another connection. That means, we have entered upon an
epoch of humanity's development in which we need to direct
our view to this many-sidedness of living situations.
The Oriental
who with his whole thinking lived within a small territory,
also the Greek still, who with his spiritual life, with his
rights life, with his economic life, lived on a small
territory, poured something into his language that appears as
a linguistic work of art must appear. How is it though in a
work of art? It is such that a single finite object really
appears infinite in a certain realm. In this way beauty was
even defined, though one-sidedly, by Haeckel, Darwin and
others: It is the appearance of the idea in a self-contained
picture. — The first thing which I had to oppose in my
Vienna lecture on “Goethe as the Father of a New
Aesthetics,” was that the beautiful is “the
appearance of the idea in outer form.” I showed then
that one must mean just the reverse: that the beautiful
arises when one gives to form the appearance of the
infinite.
And so it is
with language, which in a certain way also acts as a limited
territory — as a territory which encloses the possible
meaning within boundaries. If that which is actually infinite
in the inner soul- and spirit-life is to click into this
language, it must there come to expression in beautiful
form.
In correct
speaking the language must be adequate; the sentence must fit
the judgment, the concept, the word. The Romans were
compelled to this, especially as their territory became ever
larger and larger; their language transformed itself from the
beautiful into the logical. Hence the custom has been
retained, of conveying logic to people precisely in the Latin
language. (You have indeed learned logic quite well by
it.)
But we are now
once again beyond this stage. Now, it is necessary that we
learn to experience language with ethos — that, to a
certain extent we gain a kind of morality of speaking in our
lecturing, while we know that we have in a certain context to
allow ourselves something or to deny ourselves something.
There, things do not click-in, in the way I described
earlier, but here we make use of the word to characterize.
All defining ceases; here we use the word to characterize.
The word is so handled that one really feels each word as
something insufficient, every sentence as something
insufficient, and has the urge to characterize that which one
wishes to place before humanity from the most varied aspects
— to go around the matter to a certain extent, and to
characterize it from the most varied aspects.
You see, for
free spiritual life — that is to say spiritual life that
exists out of its own laws — there is as yet not very
much understanding in present-day humanity. For, mostly what
is understood by free spiritual life is a structure in which
people live, where each one crows his own cock-a-doodle-doo
from his own dung heap — excuse the somewhat remarkable
picture — and in which the most incredible consonances
come about from the crowing. In reality, in free spiritual
life, harmony comes about through and through, because the
spirit, not the single egoists, lives — because the
spirit can really lead its own life over and above the single
egoists.
There is, for
example, — one must already say these things today
— a Waldorf School spirit definitely there for our
Waldorf School in Stuttgart that is independent of the body
of teachers, — into which the body of teachers grows,
and in which it becomes ever more and more clear that
possibly the one can be more capable or less capable, but the
spirit has a life of its own.
It is an
abstraction, which people today still represent to
themselves, when they speak of “free spirit.”
This is no reality at all. The free spirit is something that
really lives among people — one must only let it come
into existence; and what works among people — one must
only let it come into existence.
What I have
said to you today I have also said only so that what we are
meant to gain here may proceed from fundamental feelings,
from the feeling for the earnestness of the matter. I cannot,
of course, suppose that every one will now go right out and,
as those in olden times spoke beautifully, in the middle
period correctly, now all will speak well! But you may not
for this reason object: of what help, then, are all our
lectures, if we are not at once able to speak in the sense of
good speaking? — It is rather a matter of our really
getting the feeling of the earnestness of the situation,
which we are thus to live into, so that we know: what is
wanted here is something in itself so organically whole, that
a necessity of form must gradually express itself even in
speech, just as a necessity of form expresses itself in the
ear-lobe, such as cannot be otherwise depending on how the
whole human being is.
Thus I shall
try to bring still closer together what is for us the content
of Anthroposophy and the threefold order with the way in
which it should be presented to people. And, from the
consideration of principles I shall come more and more into
the concrete, and to that which should underlie the practice
of lecturing.
I have often
emphasized that this must be Anthroposophy's manner of
presenting things. I have often emphasized that one should
not indeed believe that one is able to find the adequate
word, the adequate sentence; one can only conduct oneself as
does a photographer who, in order to show a tree, takes at
least four views.
Thus a
conception that lives itself out in an abstract trivial
philosophy such as pragmatism or humanism, must be raised up
into the realm of the ethical. And then it must first of all
live in the ethos of language. We must learn good speaking.
That means that we must experience as regards speaking
something of all that we otherwise experience in relation to
ethics, moral philosophy.
After all, the
matter has become quite clear in modern times. In the
speaking of theosophists we have an archaism simply
conditioned through the language — archaic, namely as
regards the materialistic coloration of the last centuries:
“physical body” — well, it is thick;
“ether body” — it is thinner, more
nebulous; “astral body” — once again
thinner, but still only thinner; “I” —
still thinner. Now, new members of the human being keep on
coming up: they become even thinner. At last one no longer
knows at all how one can reach this thinness, but in any
case, it only becomes ever thinner and thinner. One does not
escape the materialism. This is indeed also the hallmark of
this theosophical literature. And it is always the hallmark
that appears, when these things are to be spoken about, from
theoretical speaking, to that which I once experienced within
the Theosophical Society in Paris, (I believe it was in
1906). A lady there who was a real rock-solid theosophist,
wanted to express how well she liked particular lectures
which had been given in the hall in which we were; and she
said: “There are such good vibrations here!” And
one perceived from her that this was really thought of as
something which one might sniff. Thus, the scents of the
lectures which were left behind and which one could sniff out
somehow, these were really meant.
We must learn
to tear language away from adequacy. For it can be adequate
only for the material. If we wish to use it for the
spiritual, in the sense of the present epoch of development
of humanity, then we must free it. Freedom must then come
into the handling of language. If one does not take these
things abstractly, but livingly, then the first thing into
which the philosophy of freedom [spiritual activity] must
come is in speaking, in the handling of language. For this is
necessary; otherwise the transition will not be found, for
example, to the characterization of the free spiritual
life.
Notes:
Note 1. Ernst
Curtius, 1814–1896, archeologist and historian.
Note 2. William
James. 1842–1910, American philosopher.
Note 3. F.
C. S. Schiller. 1864–1937. Representative of pragmatism in
England which he combined with humanism.
Note 4. S.
MacKenzie, born 1860. Professor in Cardiff.
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