LECTURE III
Along with the
tasks which one can set oneself in a certain realm as a
speaker it will be a question at first of entering in the
appropriate way into the material itself which is to be dealt
with. There is a twofold entering into the material, in so
far as the message about this material is concerned in
speaking. The first is to convert to one's own use the
material for a lecture so that it can be divided up —
so that one is as it were placed in the position of giving
the lecture a composition. Without composition a talk cannot
really be understood. This or that may appeal to the listener
about a lecture which is not composed: but in reality a
non-composed lecture will not be assimilated. As far as the
preparation is concerned, it must therefore be a matter of
realizing: every talk will inevitably be poor as regards its
reception by the listeners which has merely originated in
one's conceiving one statement after the other, one sentence
after the other, and going through them to a certain extent,
one after the other, in the preparation. If one is not in the
position, at least at some stage of the preparation, of
surveying the whole lecture as a totality, then one cannot
really count on being understood. Allowing the whole lecture
to spring, as it were, from a comprehensive thought, which
one subdivides, and letting the composition arise by starting
out from such a comprehensive thought comprising the total
lecture, — this is the first consideration.
The other is
the consulting of all experiences which one has available out
of immediate life for the subject of the lecture, —
that is, calling to mind as much as possible everything one
has experienced first-hand about the matter in question,
— and, after one has before one a kind of composition
of the lecture, endeavoring to let the experiences flow here
or there into this composition.
That will in
general be the rough draft in preparing. Thus one has during
the preparation the whole of the lecture before one as in a
tableau. So exactly does one have this tableau before one,
that, as will indeed naturally be the case, one can
incorporate the single experiences one remembers in the
desired way here or there, as though one had written on
paper: a, b, c, d. — There is now an experience one
knows belongs under d, another under f, another belongs under
a, — so that one is to a certain extent independent of
the sequence of the thoughts as they are afterwards to be
presented, as regards this collecting of the experiences.
Whether such a thing is done by putting it onto paper, or
whether it is done by a free process without having recourse
to the paper, will determine only that he who is dependent
upon the paper will speak worse, and he who is not dependent
upon the paper will speak somewhat better. But one can of
course by all means do both.
But now it is a
matter of fulfilling a third requirement, which is: after one
has the whole on the one hand — I never say the
‘skeleton’ — and on the other hand the
single experiences, one has need of elaborating the ideas
which ensue to the point that these things can stand before
the soul in the most complete inner satisfaction.
Let us take as
an example, that we want to hold a lecture on the threefold
order. Here we shall say to ourselves: After an introduction
— we shall speak further about this — and before
a conclusion — about which we shall also speak —
the composition of such a lecture is really given through the
subject itself. The unifying thought is given through the
subject itself. I say that for this example. If one lives
properly, mentally, then this is valid actually for every
single case, it is valid equally for everything. But let us
take this example near at hand of the threefolding of the
social organism, about which we want to speak. There, at the
outset, is given that which yields us three members in the
treatment of our theme. To deal with, we shall have the
nature of the spiritual life, the nature of the
juridical-state life, and the nature of the economic
life.
Then,
certainly, it will be a question of our calling forth in the
listeners, by means of a suitable introduction, — about
which, as mentioned, we shall speak further — a feeling
that it makes sense to speak about these things at all, about
a change in these things, in the present. But then it will be
a matter of not immediately starting out with explanations of
what is to be understood by a free spiritual life, by a
juridical-states life founded on equality, by an economic
life founded on associations, but rather of having to lead up
to these things. And here one will have to lead up through
connecting to that which is to hand in the greatest measure
as regards the three members of the social organism in the
present — what can therefore be observed the most
intensively by people of today. Indeed, only by this means
will one connect with what is known.
Let us suppose
we have an audience, and an audience will be most agreeable
and sympathetic which is a mixture of middle-class people,
working-class people — in turn with all possible
nuances — and, if there are then of course also a few
of the nobility — even Swiss nobility, — it
doesn't hurt at all. Let us therefore assume we have such a
chequered, jumbled-up audience, made up of all social
classes. I stress this for the reason that as a lecturer one
should really always sense to whom one has to speak, before
one sets about speaking. One ought already to transpose
oneself actively into the situation in this way.
Now, what will
one have to say to oneself to begin with about that which one
can connect with in a present-day audience, as regards the
threefold social organism? One will say to oneself: it is
extraordinarily difficult in the first place to connect onto
concepts of an audience of the bourgeois, because in recent
times the bourgeoisie have formed extraordinarily few
concepts about social relationships, since they have
vegetated thoughtlessly to some extent as regards the social
life. It would always make an academic impression, if one
wanted to speak about these things today out of the circle of
ideas of a middle-class audience. On the other hand,
however, one can be clear about the fact that exceptionally
distinct concepts exist concerning all three domains of the
social organism within the working-class population, —
also distinct feelings, and a distinct social volition. And
it means that it is nothing short of the sign of our present
time, that precisely within the proletariat these qualified
concepts are there.
These concepts
are to be handled by us, though, with great caution, since we
shall very easily call forth the prejudice that we want to be
partisan in the proletarian direction. This prejudice we
should really combat through the whole manner of our bearing.
We shall indeed see that we immediately arouse for ourselves
serious misunderstandings if we proceed from proletarian
concepts. These misunderstandings have revealed themselves in
point of fact constantly in the time when an effect could
still be brought about in middle-Europe, from about April
1919 on, for the threefolding of the social organism. A
middle-class population hears only that which it, has sensed
for decades from the fomenting behavior of the working-
class, out of certain concepts. How one views the matter
oneself is then hardly comprehended at all.
One must be
clear that being active in the world at all in the sense, I
should like to say, of the world-order has to be grasped. The
world-order is such — you have only to look at the fish
in the sea — that very, very many fisheggs are laid,
and only a few become fish. That has to be so. But with this
tendency of nature you have also to approach the tasks which
are to be solved by you as speakers; even if only very few,
and these little stimulated, are to be found to begin with at
the first lecture, then actually a maximum is attained as
regards what can be attained. It is a matter of things that
one stands so within in life, as for instance the
threefolding of the social organism, that what can be
accomplished by means of lecturing may never be abandoned,
but must be taken up and perfected in some way, be it through
further lectures, be it in some other way. It can be said: no
lecture is really in vain which is given in this sense and to
which is joined all that is required.
But one has to
be absolutely clear about the fact that one will actually
also be completely misunderstood by the proletarian
population, if one speaks directly out of that which they
think today in the sense of their theories, as these have
persisted for decades. One cannot ask oneself the question
for instance: How does one do it so as not to be
misunderstood? — One must only do it right! But for
this reason it cannot be a matter of putting forward the
question: Then how does one do it so as not to be
misunderstood? — One tells people what they have
already thought anyhow! One preaches to them, in some way,
Marxism, or some such thing. Then one will, of course, be
understood.
But there is
nothing of interest in being understood in this way.
Otherwise one will indeed very soon have the following
experience — concerning this experience one must be
quite clear —: if one speaks today to a proletarian
gathering so that they can at least understand the
terminology — and that must be striven for —
then one will notice particularly in the discussion, that
those who discuss have understood nothing. The others one
usually doesn't get to know, since they do not participate in
the discussions. Those who have understood nothing usually
participate after such lectures in the discussions. And with
them one will notice something along the following lines.
— I have given countless lectures myself on the
threefolding of the social organism to, as they are called in
Germany, “surplus-value social democrats,”
independent “social democrats,” communists and so
on. — Now, one will notice: if someone places himself
in the discussions and believes himself able to speak then it
is usually the case that he answers one as though one had
really not spoken at all, but as though someone or other had
spoken more or less as one would have spoken as a
social-democratic agitator thirty years ago in popular
meetings. One feels oneself suddenly quite transformed. One
says to oneself roughly the following: Well, can it then be
that the misfortune has befallen you, that you were possessed
in this moment by old Bebel?
[Note 1]
That is really how you are confronted! The persons concerned
hear even physically nothing else than what they have been
used to hearing for decades. Even physically — not
merely with the soul — even physically they hear
nothing other than what they are long used to. And then they
say: Well, the lecturer really told us nothing new! —
Since they have, because one was obliged to use the
terminology, translated the whole connection of the
terminology right-away in the ear — not first in the
soul — into that which they have been used to for a
long time. And then they talk on and on in the sense of what
they have been used to for a long time.
This is the approximate
course of countless discussions. At most, a new nuance entered into
the matter when, from their newly attained standpoint, the Communists
made an appearance and declared something like this: Above all else
it is necessary to gain political power! Certainly, it is quite
natural — I speak from experience and cite examples that
actually occurred — that one first has to have political power.
For instance, one person believed that if he had the political power
in the capacity of head of the police, he would certainly not install
himself as a registrar, since by profession he was a shoe-repairman,
and he could well understand that a shoe repairman could not know
anything of the responsibilities of a registrar. Therefore, if he
were head of the police (over the whole country), he would not make
himself a registrar since he was a shoe-repairman. — He did not
realize that by saying this he really implied that while he felt
quite well suited to be installed as Minister of the police, he did
not consider himself qualified to be a registrar! — This was a
kind of new nuance for the discussion. The nuances were always
approximately in this form.
Well, nevertheless, we must
understand that in order to be comprehensible one must speak out of
the inmost thoughts of the people. For, if one does that, their
unconscious mind can follow somehow. This is particularly the case
when the lecture is structured in the manner I have already indicated
and shall elaborate on still further. But concerning the points that
are really important, we must avail ourselves of concepts based on
experience which, in this case, are concepts that can be formulated
out of the experiences of the feelings of the working class.
Consider the spiritual part
of the threefold social organism. Since the dawn of Marxism, the
workman has developed quite definite concepts in regard to this
spiritual aspect, namely the concept of ideology. He says: The
spiritual life has no reality of its own. Religion, concepts of
justice, concepts of morality, and so forth, art, science itself
— that is nothing by itself. Only economic processes exist on
their own. In world-historical development, one can follow how actual
reality consists of how one level of the population relates to the
other in economic life. From this factor of how one class relates to
another in the life of the economy, the concepts, the feelings in
religion, science, art, morals, rights, and so on, must evolve quite
by themselves like a form of smoke that arises from something. So,
rights, morality, religion, art are not realities by ideologies.
— In all social-democratic and other Proletarian meetings, this
expression, “ideology,” along with the underlying
sentiment that I have just characterized, could be heard for decades.
It was nothing short of an especially developed means of
indoctrination to make people understand: The middle class speaks of
truth per se. It speaks of the values of morality and art — but
all this has no standing in reality by itself; these are chimeras
that arise from the economic process. One of the leaders of the
working class, Franz Mehring,
[Note 2]
carried this matter to special extremes in a book,
The Lessing Legend.
A not very significant book
by a typical middle-class professor, Erich Schmidt,
[Note 3]
was published concerning Lessing. The reason that it isn't very
significant is that it is not really Lessing who is being dealt with
there, but a papier-mache figure, wrongly designated as
“Lessing,” to which Erich Schmidt links the remarks,
narrations and observations that he was capable of due to his special
talent or lack of talent. The reader is not dealing with a person at
all in this book but with a made-up statue calling [sic]
“Lessing.” Before the book
Lessing
by Erich Schmidt
had even been written, when I heard Erich Schmidt give a lecture in Vienna
in the Academy of Sciences, where he presented the first beginnings of
the first chapter of this Lessing-book in condensed form in a speech,
I already knew that this middle-class professor did not have particularly
clear conceptions about the living man Lessing but only a papier-mache
Lessing. At that time, I was strangely impressed by this speech, which
demonstrated so clearly that if a person is otherwise enjoying a certain
social standing and is allowed to speak, even in such a venerable academy
of sciences, he need not say anything of real substance. For, at the
most important points, where Erich Schmidt brought out something that
was supposed to be characteristic for the personality whom he was
discussing, he always said — singling out something of
Lessing's manner of working or style of writing —
“That's typically Lessing!” And this expression,
“That's typically Lessing!” — one heard, I
believe, fifty times during this lecture at the academy.
Well, if one is dealing
with John Smith from New Middletown, and one has to characterize him,
relating the special way that he keeps up his compost heap, one will
be able to say along the same lines, “That's typically
Smith!” — One will have made an equally weighty
statement.
What I am saying is that we
are dealing with something extraordinarily insignificant. But a
proper social-democratic writer, as was Franz Mehring, ascribed the
insignificance of Erich Schmidt's book on Lessing to the fact
that Erich Schmidt was a middle-class professor, and so he said,
“Well, that's a product of the Bourgeois.” — And
now he pitted his Proletarian product against it, and he called his book,
The Lessing Legend.
This book examines the economic
conditions under which Lessing's forefathers had lived and what
they did, how Lessing himself was placed in his youth within the life
of the economy, how he had to become a journalist, how he had to
borrow money — this is, after all an economical aspect —
and so on. In short, it is shown how Lessing's conception of
Laocoon,
how his
Dramaturgy of Hamburg,
how his
Minna von Barnhelm
had to be the way they were because Lessing had grown out of certain
economic conditions.
After the pattern of this
book,
The Lessing Legend,
by the party-scholar Mehring, one of
the students of my Worker's Education School — for many
years, I did indeed teach in such an institution, even giving
instruction in lecturing — proved in a trial-speech that the
Kantian philosophy originated simply from the economic conditions out
of which Kant had developed. One always encountered matter similar to
this (in these circles) and probably could find them still today,
although by now they have more or less become empty phrases. But it
was indeed so, and it meant that the modern member of the
working-class held the view that everything pertaining to the
spiritual life is ideology.
In regard to the political
life of rights, the Proletarian only gives credence to what is once
again established within economic conditions as relationships between
people. For him, these are the social classes. The class holding
power rules over the other classes. And a person belonging to a
certain class develops class consciousness. Therefore, what the
modern workman comprehends of the political life of rights is the
class and what is close to his heart is class consciousness.
The third member of the
social organism is the economic part. There too, clearly defined
concepts exist within the working-class, and the central concept that
is referred to again and again, in the same manner as the concepts,
ideology and class consciousness, is the concept of surplus value.
The workman understands: When something is being produced, a certain
value is attached to the economic product; of this value, he receives
a portion as compensation, the remainder is taken away for something
else, He designates the latter as “surplus value,” and
occupies himself with this increment value, of which he has the
feeling that he is deprived of it insofar as the value of the fruits
of his labours are concerned.
Thinking these matters
through in this manner, one can see how within that segment of the
populace that has developed in recent times as the active and truly
aggressive one, clearly defined concepts do in fact exist for the
three spheres of the threefold social organism. The social life
reveals itself in a threefold way — this is approximately how a
proper Proletarian theorist would put it — it reveals itself in
the first place through its reality, through the value-producing
economy. This value-producing economy does itself produce the surplus
value out of the economic life. Through the balance of power that
develops, the socially active people are split into classes in the
economic life, which represents the only reality; therefore, if they
contemplate their human worth, they arrive at class consciousness,
not human consciousness. And then there develops what one likes to
have on Sundays, and what one needs — but also sort of
inbetween — to properly invent machines, so that every so
often, in one's free time, inventions can be made and so on;
thus, ideology develops, which, however, results as a nebulous
product out of the actual reality, out of the economic life.
I am really not drawing
caricatures, I am only describing what dwelled in millions, not
thousands, but millions of heads in the decades preceding the war,
continuing also through the war. The working-class therefore does
have a concept of threefoldness of the social organism, and one can
relate to that.
One can relate to it in a
still further sense. Once can refer to the fact that in recent times
the economic life has basically developed in a separate direction,
since it contains its own inherent laws of necessity, and that the
other elements of life, the spiritual life and the political life of
rights, have lagged behind. People could not remain behind in the
economic life. In the last third of the nineteenth century, they
first had to change over to universal communications, then to the
world economy. An inner necessity underlies that. In a certain sense,
it develops b itself unless people ruin matters as was the case
because of the war. But because other matters did not keep up with
the pace and because abstract intellectualism developed in them,
awareness of the economic life became influential to an extraordinary
degree and mainly affected people everywhere suggestively by its very
nature. And this suggestive influence did not only take root in human
conceptions but it turned into establishments. Intellectualism
gradually has taken complete hold of the social life.
Abstraction, the abstract
element is the property of intellectualism. In life, one finds,
let's say, butter; or a Madonna by Raffael, or one has a
toothbrush or a philosophical work; in life, there are powder boxes
for women, and so on. Life is made up of a lot of things, as you
know. I could continue with this list endlessly. But you will not
deny that these items differ vary greatly from each other and that if
one wants to gain concepts of all these things, these concepts will
be very different from each other. But in the social life of recent
times something developed nevertheless that became extremely
significant for all relationships in life and that is not so very
differentiated after all. For, we can say that a certain amount of
butter costs two francs; a Madonna by Raffael costs two-million
francs; a toothbrush costs only about two-and-a-half francs now; a
philosophical work — which might be the least expensive —
costs, shall we say, if it is a think single volume, seventy rappen;
a powder box, if it is of especially high quality, costs ten
francs.
Now we've found a
common denominator for the whole thing! Now we only need to consider
the differences of the numbers, something that is part of one area.
But we have spread an abstraction, the monetary value, over
everything.
This has ingrained itself
especially deeply into people's manner of thinking, although
people do not always admit to it. Certainly, a person who is a poet
considers himself as the world's most important point, he will
therefore not evaluate himself in the above way; neither will a
person who is a philosopher, and so on. Least of all one who is a
painter! But the world evaluates all these matters today in this
style in the social evaluation of human beings. And the end-result is
that, let us say, a poet has a net value of ten-thousand francs for a
publisher, if the publisher is generous from the time he beings to
write his novel until it is finished. So this is the value of a poet
for a certain period of time, isn't that right? We have placed
him also in the equalizing abstractions.
2.— |
Fr. Butter |
2 000 000.— |
Fr. Madonna by Raffael |
2.50 |
Fr. Toothbrush |
-.70 |
Fr. Philosophical Work |
10.— |
Fr. Powder Box |
10 000— |
Fr. Poet |
3.— |
Fr. Daily Capacity for Work |
Well, I could cite all
sorts of examples here; but I already said that the middle-class
didn't waste much time thinking about these matters. A poet in
his attic room
[Note 4]
— I am now referring to the
“Oberstuebchen” that is situated on a floor high above
the others — naturally considers himself something quite
special, but in social life he was worth ten-thousand francs. But he
paid no attention to that unless he happened to belong to the
working-class. He paid no heed to it. But the laborer did;
from all this, he drew the conclusion: I don't have butter, I
don't have powder, I don't have a philosophy book. But I
have my capacity for work; I offer it to the owner of the factory,
and to him, it is worth, let's say, three francs for each day;
the daily capacity for work.
You must forgive me for
writing “poet” here for the reason that one could
experience that a poet was treated a good bit worse in the course of
the last few decades than the workman with his daily capacity for
work. For the latter could defend himself still better than the poet,
and as a rule, the ten-thousand francs were not worth more than the
wage of three francs for the Proletarian working capacity, with the
exception of a few. It goes without saying that poets such as, for
example, the blessed E. Marlitt — I don't know if many of
you remember her — earned splendid wages with her
The Secret of the Old Spinster,
a novel concerning which the best criticism would be the one expressed
once by a certain person: Oh book, if only you had remained the secret
of the old spinster!
Now the workman considered
what he had become by having been placed into the abstraction of
prices in regard to his capacity for work. For what does anything in
the economic life represent by virtue of having a price-tag? It is a
commodity. Anything for which a price can be paid must be considered
a commodity. I've said that the life of the middle-class runs
its course along with a certain indifference in regard to such
matters. But these concepts arose from the working-class and in this
manner, the idea emerged: We ourselves have become a commodity with
our capacity for work.
This is something that now
worked together with the other three concepts. A person who
understands modern life correctly, knows that when he comprehends the
four concepts, ideology, class consciousness, surplus value, capacity
for work as a commodity in the right way so that he can place himself
into life with these four concepts in regard to experiences, that he
then encounters with these four concepts the reality of consciousness
that exists in particular among the segment of the population which
actively and consciously wants to bring about a transformation of
social conditions. One therefore has the task of contemplating how to
deal with these four concepts.
If a lecturer has a mixed
audience of working-class people and those of the middle-class, he
will have to speak first of all in such a manner so as to call
attention to the fact that the working-class could not help but
arrive at these matters and how, due to modern life, a workman could
not become acquainted with anything except the processes of the
economic life. For this is how matters developed since approximately
the middle of the fifteenth century. This was when it slowly began.
For if we go back further than the middle of the fifteenth century,
we find that man with his being was still connected with what he
produced. One who makes a key pours his soul into his key. A
shoemaker makes shoes with all his heart. And I am quite certain that
among those, where these things continued on in a healthy way, no
disdain existed in regard to any such labor. I am fully convinced
— not only subjectively, for, if necessary, such matters could
be proven — that Jakob Boehme
[Note 5]
enjoyed producing his boots just as much as his philosophical works,
his mystical texts that he wrote, likewise in the case of Hans Sachs,
[Note 6]
for example. These matters
— that something that is material is looked down upon, and that
spiritual matters are over-valued — have only developed along
with intellectualism and its abstractions in all areas. What happened
is that through the modern economic life, which has been permeated by
technology, the human being has been separated from his product so
that no real love can any longer connect him with what he produces.
Those people who can still develop a sense of love for what they
produce in certain professional fields, are becoming increasingly
rare. Only in the so-called professions of the mind, this love still
exists. This is what causes the unnatural element in social
differences and even classifications in recent times. One has to go
east — perhaps this is no longer possible now, but it was the
case decades ago — in order to still find joy in one's
profession. I must admit I was really delighted, actually moved,
when, decades ago, I encountered a barber in Budapest to whom I had
gone for a haircut, who danced around me all the time and each time
when he had cut off something with his scissors, would say, taking
his hand-mirror: Oh what a wonderful cut I've just made! What a
great cut this was! — Please go and try to find a barber
capable of such enthusiasm today in our civilized country!
What has taken place is the
separation of man from his product. It has become something of
indifference to him. He is placed in front of a machine. What does he
care about the machine! At most, it interests — not even the
one who built it, but the one who invented it' and the interest
that the inventor has in the machine is usually not a truly social
interest. For social interest only begins when one can discover the
possible value, the monetary yield, in other words, when the whole
thing has been reduced to the level of its price.
It is, however, the
economic life that the modern workman has become familiar with above
all else. He has been placed into it. If he is to approach the
spiritual life, the latter is nowhere connected with his immediate
inner life. It does not move his soul. He accepts it as something
alien, as ideology. It is part of the modern historical process that
this ideology has developed.
If, however, you are
successful in calling forth a feeling in the workman that this is the
case, then you have achieved the beginning of what has to be
attained. For a member of the working-class listens to you today with
the following attitude: it is an absolute necessity of nature that
all art, all science, all religion are ideologies. He is very far
from believing that with this view he has simply become the product
of modern-day developments. It is very difficult to make that clear
to him. If he does notice it that everything is merely supposed to be
ideology, he feels terrible about it and turns his whole way of
thinking around; then he becomes aware of the completely illusory
nature of this view. He among all people is, as it were, predisposed
better than any other to feel disgust over the fact that everything
has turned into ideology; but you must make him realize this in his
feelings. The thoughts that you set forth or have developed in your
own mind do not interest the listener. But in the way that I have
described it, you lead him to the point of sensing the matter. For
what is important is that you put the subject into the right light
for workmen by giving your sentences this nuance.
For members of the
middle-class, the matter must be put in a different light again, for
what is quite proper for people of the working-class is detrimental
for those of the middle-class in this area. It is not only a matter
of lecturing correctly, but due to the diversity of life today it is
a matter of speaking well in the sense of what I said yesterday, and
that as far as possible a lecturer addresses the members of the
middle-class as well. What has to be made clear to them is that,
because they were indifferent to what was developing, they helped
cause the problem. Because of what the middle-class did, or rather
didn't do, matters developed to the point where they have
become ideology for the working-class. Members of the middle-class
must be made to comprehend. Once upon a time, religion was something
that filled the whole human being with an inner fire; it was
something that gave rise to everything that a person carried out in
the external world. Customs derived from what people considered holy
in regard to social life. Art was something by means of which a human
being rose above the hardships and difficulties of life on earth, and
so on. But, oh, how the value of these spiritual properties has
declined in the past few centuries! Because of the manner in which
the middle-class upholds them, the workman cannot experience them in
any other way but as ideology.
Take the case that a
workman comes into the office of the employer for whatever reason. He
has his own views concerning the whole management of the business.
Let's assume that the bookkeeper, to whom he was called, or the
boss himself, ahs just left the office. He sees a large volume in
which many entries are made. The workman has his own views concerning
what the figures in it express. He has recently developed these
views. Now, because the bookkeeper or the boss happens not to be
there and he is half-a-minute early, he opens the cover and looks at
the first page. There, it says on top of the page, “In
God's Name!” (“Mit Gott”). That catches his
attention, for, indeed, this religious element appearing on the first
page in the words, “In God's Name,” is really pure
ideology, because the workman is convinced that there isn't
much that is in “God's Name” in the pages that
follow, This is right in the style in which he pictures conditions in
the world in general, There is as little truth in what people call
religion, custom and so on as there is in this book, where it says
“In God's Name” on the first page. I don't
know whether it says “In God's Name” in ledgers in
Switzerland; but it is quite common that people begin their account
books with “In God's Name.”
Therefore, it is a matter
of making it clear to people of the middle-class that they are the
cause for the view concerning ideology among workmen.
Now, each party has its
portion. Then, the lecturer has reached the point where he can
explain how the spiritual life must once again acquire reality, since
it has in fact turned into ideology. If people have only ideas
concerning the spirit and not the whole relationship with the actual
spiritual life and substance, then this really is ideology. In this
way, one acquires a bridge to the sphere, where a conception can be
called forth concerning the reality of the spiritual life. Then it
becomes possible to point out that the spiritual (cultural) life is a
self-contained reality, not merely a product of the economic life,
not just an ideology, but something real that is based on its own
foundation. A feeling must be evoked for the fact that the spiritual
life is a reality based on its own foundation. Such a self-evident
reality is something else than an abstract fact, for something with
an abstract basis must be based on a foundation elsewhere.
The workman claims that
ideology is based on the economic life. But inasmuch as a person only
abandons himself to abstract ideas in his spiritual life, this is
indeed something ephemeral, something illusory. Only if people
penetrate through this nebulous, illusory element, through the idea
to the reality of the spiritual life — as happens by means of
Anthroposophy — only then can the spiritual life be experienced
as real once again. If the spiritual life is merely a sum of ideas,
then these ideas do indeed stream up from the economic life. There,
they have to be organized, there one has to provide them with an
artificial effectiveness and order. And this is what the state has
done. In the age when the spiritual life evaporated into ideology,
the state took it in hand to bestow on it at least that reality,
which people no longer experienced in the spiritual world itself.
This is how one has to try
to make it comprehensible in what way all this, which the state has
given the spiritual life without being qualified to do so —
since it has turned into ideology — does have a reality. It
must have, after all, a reality. For if a person does not have legs
of his own but wants to walk, he must have artificial ones made. In
order to exist any given thing must have reality. Therefore the
spiritual life must have its own reality. This is what must be felt,
namely, that the spiritual life must have its own reality.
To begin with, you will
make a paradoxical impression among the people of the middle-class as
well as those of the working-class. You must even call forth an
awareness of the fact that you appear paradoxical. You can do this by
giving rise to the conception among your listeners that you think in
the same manner as the workman by making use of his language, and at
the same time that you think like a member of the middle-class by
making use of his terminology. But then, after having developed these
trains of thought which can be brought out with the help of what is
recalled of experiences gained in life, after you have gone through
something like this as a preparation, then you arrive at the point of
speaking to people in such as way that gradually a comprehension can
be brought about for the issues that must be met with
understanding.
Speaking cannot
be learned by means of external instructions. Speaking must
be learned to a certain extent by means of understanding how
to bring to the lecture the thinking which lies behind it,
and the experience which lies before it, in a proper
relationship.
Now, I have
today tried to show you how the material first has to be
dealt with. I have connected with what is known, in order to
show you how the material may not be created out of some
theory or other, how it must be drawn out of life, how it
must be prepared so as to be dealt with in speaking. What I
have said today everyone should now actually do in his own
fashion as preparation for lecturing. Through such
preparation the lecture gains forcefulness. Through thought
preparation — preparing the organization of the
lecture, as I have said at the beginning of today's remarks:
from a thought which is then formed into a composition
— by this means the lecture becomes lucid, so that the
listener can also receive it as a unity. What the lecturer
brings along as thinking he should not weave into his own
thoughts. — Since, if he gives his own thoughts, they
are, as I have already said, such that they interest not a
single person. Only through use of one's own thinking in
organizing the lecture does it become lucid, and through
lucidity, comprehensible.
By means of the
experiences which the lecturer should gather from everywhere
(the worst experiences are still always better than none at
all!) the lecture becomes forceful. If, for example, you tell
someone what happened to you, for all it matters, as you were
going through a village where someone nearly gave you a box
on the ear, then it is still always better if you judge life
out of such an experience, than if you merely theorize.
— Fetch things out of experience, through which the
lecture acquires blood, since through thinking it only has
nerves. It acquires blood through experience, and through
this blood, which comes out of experience, the lecture
becomes forceful. Through the composition you speak to the
understanding of the listener; through your experience you
speak to the heart of the listener. It is this which should
be looked upon as a golden rule. Now, we can proceed step by
step. Today I wanted more to show first of all in rough
outline how the material can be transformed by degrees into
what it afterwards has to be in the lecture. Tomorrow, then,
we resume again at three o'clock.
Notes:
Note 1. August
Bebel, 1840–1913. Founder in 1869 with
Wilhelm Liebknecht of the Social-Democratic Party.
Note 2. Franz
Mehring, 1846–1919; socialist writer and politician, founder of
Marxist literary analysis.
Note 3. Erich
Schmidt, 1853–1913, literary historian.
Note 4. Note
by translator: Rudolf Steiner makes a pun with words here. The term
“Oberstuebchen” can refer in German to an attic room as
well as one's head. Not to be quite right in the head can be expressed
as not being quite right in the “Oberstuebchen.”
Note 5. Jakob
Boehme, 1575–1624; mystic and shoemaker in Goerlitz.
Note 6. Hans
Sachs, 1494–1576; Meistersinger, poet and shoemaker in
Nuremberg.
|