The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the face of facts that speak loud and clear, we do not need to prove that the social question is now one of the most burning public concerns. However, those who can observe these facts without prejudice can also see that much deeper human questions play into modern social demands than the problems usually associated with slogans. If you look beyond current academic activity and trends to social facts, you can see how deeper human questions in a certain respect spring from these social problems.

It is obvious that, for the most part, academic life stands by helplessly when confronted with these burning social demands. I need only mention two things to prove this helplessness. We know that in the course of recent cultural development, in addition to the other branches of science, a theoretical socio- or world economics has emerged. We know how the differing schools of thought have affected the area of world economics in the last centuries, particularly in the nineteenth century. We know that there was a mercantilist school, a physiocratic school and so forth, and we know how these different streams have attempted to understand social facts. They have attempted to discover how human social understanding can become a part of human willing, for example, in various governmental programs. However, we have seen that these different theoretical viewpoints have not resulted in any really thorough, fruitful social initiatives. The clearest proof of that is the form that world economic theory has taken. It has slowly withdrawn into a scientific observation of social life and world economics. It has withdrawn into a description of social facts.

Specifically, we see the newest efforts in this area developing into all manner of descriptions or statistical observations and such. However, we do not see anywhere an impulse that can really be carried into social will, that can be fruitful for the social activity of public life. The incapacity of world economic theories in this area is thus evident.

On the other hand, we see the growth of social ideas and social demands from a wide spectrum of the working class.

Certainly, we would have much to discuss if we wanted to speak about the historical development of these more-thanhalf-century-old social demands. Here we wish to take note of only one feature, of one characteristic of these demands. I wish to express it like this: There were also older efforts in this direction, efforts that did not simply rely upon theoretical contemplation, as has been done in world economics, but that were based upon the goals of people seeking a new social structure. Since the time of these efforts (we need only recall Fourier, Saint-Simon, Louis Blanc and so forth), a quite different element has entered into these contemplations. This can be characterized by a certain mistrust. Among the masses and their socialist leaders a certain antipathy is prevalent concerning everything that arises out of the spirit, out of contemplation, out of the human willing that should lead to a rejuvenation of social relationships.

Those whose feeling and thinking embody the intellectual impulses of modern times have much goodwill toward achieving social change. Regardless of that goodwill, the belief has arisen that all this has a utopian character. In spite of all the human inventiveness and goodwill, the belief has arisen that it is impossible to create impulses that will lead to practical changes in social life, to a truly practical reformation of social life. Disbelief in the human spirit and its social ideas has become the prevailing sentiment of the masses and their leaders.

Thus, something has come forth that people in these groups feel to be a foregone conclusion—so much a foregone conclusion that to fight against it is extraordinarily difficult. The conviction has arisen that on/y the means of economic production can stimulate a reformation. The conviction has arisen that, in a certain sense, the human will is powerless and must wait until the means of production themselves cause a different configuration in social life. It has become a habit to speak of everything created through thinking as an ideology, as something powerless in real life. It has also become habitual to speak as though only material relationships and changes are real, as though thinking emerges from these like a wisp of smoke. People speak of historical materialism because they see reality only in materialism, particularly in economic activity. People view what comes from the human spirit as something that rises like smoke out of what is real—in this case, economic activity—and forms a kind of ideological superstructure.

If we look at theoretical world economics, based as it is on the world view of conventional science, or at the thoughts of such thoroughly honest, creative personalities as Saint-Simon or Louis Blanc, whose work comes fully out of modern intellectual life, a question arises. We now ask, given what these two sides desire, is it so incomprehensible that a disbelief in true spiritual impulses has occurred?

No, it is not. If we look at the basic character of modern intellectual life we will find the main reason. The basic character of modern intellectual life has slowly become purely abstract, something foreign and removed from reality.

We must constantly note that attitudes arising from what intellectual life has become in the last centuries have created ethical and moral viewpoints. However, the question is, do these moral viewpoints have the power to affect outer reality? Do they have the power to be creative in outer reality?

Neither science nor moral points of view have been able to create a true bridge between what lives in people’s spirit and what lies in material or natural processes. We see that over time the concerns of the human soul, the concerns of the human spirit, have become the intellectual monopoly, the cultural monopoly, of those groups who have made this or that credo their own. Thus, scientific endeavors have slowly become unaccustomed to concerning themselves with spirit and soul. People believe they are free from prejudice, that they follow a completely unprejudiced science, when they limit scientific methods to what is sense perceptible. People believe these methods immediately go beyond the bounds of human cognition when they enter the spiritual realm, when they enter the supersensible realm. People think that they are unprejudiced when, in fact, they are only following those forces that arise out of the historical course of events.

Those religious groups who, due to historical development, have had a monopoly in creating dogmas concerning the essence of spirit and soul out of old traditions, concerning the essence of human immortality, were in a position to prevent scientific research into these things. These groups applied pressure upon research until it simply succumbed to the pressure and accepted the dictates of the credo. Slowly the sciences came to believe they followed their own lack of prejudice, their own objectivity, because they were no longer conscious that what they actually followed are the prohibitions of the Church.

This “objective” approach has limited itself completely to external, sensible reality and has not endeavored to examine spiritual life with the conscientious methods that have brought modern science such great triumphs. It has, nonetheless, been able to affect the realm of spirit and soul. Thus the realm of spirit and soul has become something foreign to life. Life, external reality, is measured with exact methods. However, what concerns spirit and soul has slowly lost all living concepts. Those of you who follow the usual, the respected, the official textbooks and lectures on psychology and such will find in them nothing sparkling with life. Spiritual life has become something disconnected from life.

The only thing that could be a basis for the spiritual attitude of such people as Saint-Simon or Fourier or Louis Blanc when they considered social questions has remained unfruitful because nowhere were the living effects of the human spirit upon social reality taken into account. People go around talking in abstractions. With normal modern intellectuality, we cannot refute the statement that social facts can be observed only through economics, that no steps can be taken to fulfill human social longings. With only these means, we can make no counter argument when people insist that nothing results from spiritual life that could lead to a true healing of social relationships, that we must leave social development to the means of production. Modern intellectual life has become abstract. In a certain sense modern intellectual life is an ideology. Thus those who are, in the widest sense, members of socialist circles believe that a//thinking must be ideological.

This is just what lies so heavily upon the souls of those who accept spiritual science. Spiritual science does not want to follow the same path taken by that burned-out academic science that has developed in modern times. Spiritual science wishes to lead people back to the true spirit. It wishes to lead people to an understanding of the true spiritual life to which they belong in just the same way that their bodies belong to physical reality, in the same way that through their material needs they are part of economic reality.

When we speak of real spirit today, when we attempt to speak of real spirit, we not only meet opposition, we meet mockery. We meet the kind of ridicule that derides all spiritual desires as pipe dreams or worse. We really meet modern disbelief when we say that what we mean as spirit cannot be comprehended with the usual powers of cognition that lead us through everyday life, through conventional science. We meet disbelief when we emphasize that to grasp and understand this spirit, it is necessary first to awaken powers of cognition that otherwise only sleep in human nature—in the same way that we awaken the usual powers of cognition in the developing child. Modern people will not admit that there could be something like an intellectual unpretentiousness, that there could be something like a further development of the inner human out of our childhood when we instinctively and dully step into life. They will not believe that we can awaken this later development to assist the normal powers of cognition, and that we can continue its development. But, it is not continued because modern intellectual life has resisted its continuance.

It is not our intent to speak in a vague way about spirit and its reality. Due to the spiritual development of the last centuries, it is easier to speak to the hearts and souls of people when we talk about spirit and spirituality in generalities instead of in a more definite manner. When people speak about spirit, they almost immediately think of spirit as an abstraction, something foreign to life. We might say that true spirit has become so foreign to them that they expect this spirit to reveal itself only in an occasional guest appearance.

Now I do not want to hold you up long with things common to the spiritualism to which modern thinking has fallen prey. In the end, however, what is this spiritualism other than the final decadent outstreaming of a desire for an abstract spiritual life! What we must understand is a true, concrete spiritual life to which human spirit can connect itself, and which we can grasp at every step in physical and cosmic reality. true spiritual life is not there to fulfill people’s desires for theatrical effects, to show itself in spiritualist seances or in other ways desired by abstract mystics. The science of the spirit cannot speak of a spirit that partakes of guest appearances that have nothing to do with external reality, and are called forth simply to convince passive people that spirit exists. The science of the spirit cannot speak of such a spirit. Spiritual science can speak only of the spirit that in truth participates in every material effect and every material event. It speaks of the spirit with which people can connect themselves in order to master external reality. Thus, I will primarily speak about the activity of the spirit we must turn toward if we wish to learn how the spirit, working through people, can have an effect in life.

We first need to look at the way the spirit gradually develops out of the growing human. The growing child presents us with one of the greatest riddles of the world—a riddle we in education continuously try to solve. People have recently brought even this amazing riddle to a particularly abstract, nebulous height. Recently, there has been much talk about recognizing the power of education. People have recently made many attempts to use various educational principles. All such attempts have failed. They will stand as evidence of the goodwill of their proponents, but in the face of the great, the intense demands of our lives, these attempts must fail if they do not arise from a recognition of human essence.

People will not recognize human essence if they attempt to understand it only through modern science, or by intellectually assimilating the observations gained through science. Human essence reveals itself only if we understand how to observe it. It shows itself only if we develop the capability to investigate that certain something that reveals itself with every day, every week, every year after human beings enter into physical existence through birth or conception. We must observe the specific stages in the life of young humans if we do not want to remain in abstractions, but instead want to understand the spiritually concrete activity in external reality.

People value these things much too little today. For the observer of human essence, the stage when children change teeth, around six or seven years of age, indicates a deep change in the totality of human nature. If you have an organ that can truly examine such things empirically, the way we can empirically observe physical experiments in laboratories or in the astronomical observatory, then you can see such things. When you examine the life of the soul before this stage, you find that during the time preceding the change of teeth, people are primarily imitators. The imitative element, a kind of intuitive dependence upon the environment, motivates their entire being until seven years of age. In the first seven years of our lives we learn everything through imitation, through the most strict conformity to what is in our environment, right down to our movements, our gestures, our intonation.

In extreme cases, we can easily observe such things. I wish to mention only one of the many cases that become obvious if you have any sense at all for such things in life. I could mention a hundred others. I knew a young child who limped. Even though there was nothing wrong, the child limped, and people could not get her to stop limping. The reason the child limped was that she had an older sibling who, due to a diseased leg, actually had cause to limp! This imitative principle that motivates people until the change of teeth is thus expressed in an extreme case.

The true observer sees that quite new forces enter into the human life of body, soul and spirit when the change of teeth is complete. Then, what children perceive in their environment does not motivate them as much. Instead, they are especially ready to believe, to accept, what they feel to be the opinion or the belief of those who, through age or bearing, they intuitively perceive as authorities.

Until the time of puberty, this acceptance, this automatic acceptance of authority, is like a law of human nature. If you wish to properly affect the human essence during this time, then you must turn to this intuitive principle of authority.

Those who, without prejudice, without some pet theory, observe the life of young people, those who work with facts, know how much it can mean for their whole life if children have someone they can look up to as an authority. You need only observe how people’s feelings about such an authority change! You need only observe what later in life results from these feelings toward authority! Everything that we develop as truly free independent democratic feelings in human social life, everything that we gain in true human understanding and human respect, is at heart a result of appropriate development under intuitive authority during the period from the change of teeth until puberty.

We should not meddle with such things through special programs. We should approach this area through purely empirical observation. Then we will discover what we need to think and feel when we receive the school child who has developed in imitation of the care—or the neglect—of the parents. We will see how we must work out of the principle of authority in school if we truly want to work appropriately. We can only be effective when we derive our pedagogical methods and develop our whole teaching activity out of a human understanding.

If you are not able to observe from year to year, from week to week how other demands develop out of the core of the child and rise to the surface, then you will not be able to work with human developmental powers, you will work against them. Educational material and methods must, in fact, meet these requirements of the developing child.

If you do not know how authority works, if you do not know the intimate interactions that exist between the authority and the growing child, then you will never be able to work positively in the education of children this age. I wish to mention a single concrete example. You know that due to certain programs and prejudices, there is now much discussion concerning visual aids. You are supposed to show the children everything. This often implies that you should teach the children only about things you can place before their eyes, or at least demonstrate to their intellect, so that they can immediately understand everything with their immature comprehension.

You need only look at the books that are to serve as guides for such teaching. Certainly, illustrative material is, within bounds, quite appropriate. But, what is appropriate within certain boundaries leads to error when we extend it beyond these boundaries. Visual aids—as I mentioned, you can see it in the guides—often lead to extremely materialistic triviality. People try to limit instruction to what children can understand, to what such people, in their simple-mindedness, believe is the maximum children can understand. However, they neglect something. They do not take into account what teaching out of authority means to human life. Individuals who are thirtyfive years old may, due to some event, suddenly remember that when they were seven, eight, nine or ten years old, they learned something in school from a highly regarded authority. They say to themselves, “I did not really understand it then. I only looked with high regard to that honored authority. When that honored authority said something, led something into my soul, I knew it instinctively. I did not know how I knew it, but I felt it was something valuable. I remembered it, perhaps only as words, but it lived in me for many years afterward. After many years, now that I have become mature, I recall what I learned long ago.” When people are mature, these recollections of things they accepted in youth upon simple authority now become a source of strength. They now know what it means that things they learned as children can first be fully understood as recollections in later life. In this way, we can give people living strength!

I wish to mention one other thing about the intimate workings between educational authority and the child. We want to teach the child certain things meant for a later period in life. Of course, the child does not understand these things. Thus, we clothe them in all kinds of allegories and pictures. Let us take a picture someone might think of, for instance, the picture of immortality. The teacher might say, “Here you have the cocoon of a butterfly. The animal is nestled within it. It will creep out, the beautiful butterfly will come out of the cocoon.” Now, the teacher might go further and say, “Just as the butterfly is in this cocoon, in the same way the immortal soul lies within your body. When you go through the gates of death, this immortal soul will appear in the spiritual world just as the butterfly will appear here. Remember how here in the physical world the beautiful butterfly comes out of the cocoon.”

You can make such a picture. It may touch the child. But, such a picture will not achieve what it should achieve if, as a teacher, you only have the consciousness that you are clever and the child is dumb, and that, therefore, you have to clothe in a picture what the child cannot yet understand. There are great intangibles in living human relationships. Regardless of what occurs between the intellect of the authority and the child’s intellect, something will happen in the child’s subconscious that comes from the discrepancy between the teacher’s disbelief in the picture and the intent to develop the child’s belief through the picture.

You need only observe how differently things occur—this is something paradoxical—when you yourself believe that the picture of the cocoon and the butterfly is not simply a picture, when you are clear that you do not make this picture, but the creative natural powers themselves make this picture. The one and only great artist, Natura, forms this picture. She carries her divinity within her in such a way that this picture expresses the same thing at a lower level as immortality expresses at a higher level. In other words, when you have complete belief in the picture, when it is not something made up for someone else, when it is your own inner belief, then something occurs in your telling of it to the child. Then, when it affects the child in the proper way, later in life the grown child’s soul will carry a true picture of immortality. Today we must not judge the things connected with the principle of authority by appearances. To really understand what occurs in people’s lives, we need, at the least, a careful study from the standpoint I will discuss in a moment. We need such a study to understand what to use in education during the period between the change of teeth and puberty.

Real capabilities of judgment, of free, independent reason, first appear in human nature after puberty. If we activate this independent reason too early, if we appeal too much to the child’s intellect before puberty, then we do not appeal to what can be given from one person to another through authority. Then we kill much of what we need to develop between the ages of six to seven and fourteen to fifteen, that is, during the time of elementary school.

Now we must ask, where will the teachers gain insight into the forces they must use, first when the child is an imitator, then when the child is between the change of teeth and puberty, and then in that stage of life after puberty? Our detractors can mock, they can ridicule what spiritual science means when it says that particular powers, higher powers of cognition, must be formed in human nature so that people can recognize the spiritual and its actions in the different ages of human life.

In my book How to Know Higher Worlds, 1 have described in detail how people can obtain these higher powers of cognition. The same thing is in the second part of my Outline of Occult Science, and in other books. I have shown how people can use common everyday cognition, common scientific cognition, as a basis to rise through three higher stages that I have called (do not be disturbed by the names, you have to use some common names) Imaginative cognition, Inspired cognition and Intuitive cognition.

We can obtain Imaginative cognition when we systematically do quite specific meditations that I describe in the abovenamed books, when we train thinking beyond the level of normal life and conventional science. Imaginative cognition first gives us the possibility of developing pictures in our soul life, pictures that are not spatial, not fantasy, but that represent spiritual reality.

People learn to recognize that, in the end, everything humans develop as ideas, as conceptions, as sense perceptions for normal life and for conventional science is connected to human physical existence. We learn to slowly disengage the life of the soul from simple bodily life as we increasingly undertake to raise our powers of thinking to a meditative activity. We rise to an Imaginative cognition that at first consists only of pictures, but that shows us reality the moment we further develop ourselves as I describe in the above-mentioned books. When the Inspiration (which we have first prepared ourselves to be capable of comprehending) enters from the spiritual world that is just as much around us as the physical world, then the effects of the spiritual world fill these pictures.

If we then rise to Intuitive cognition, we will meet spiritual beings in just the same way we meet physical beings in the physical world. Today I can merely mention this and must direct you to the books where I describe these things in detail. If we can really rise to what I call Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive cognition, then these stages of cognition are not phantasms, are not daydreams as our contemporaries, with their lack of spirituality, call them. When they are feeling kindly, they say at best, “Well, all right, the product of a sick mind!” However, they will judge differently if we only indicate the true basis, the real source of this higher knowledge—and I will do that today by referring to a characteristic I have mentioned before. Where in human nature do these forces lie that we must develop in life so that we can look into the spiritual world?

Think for a moment. We have certain forces that make us into imitative beings until the change of teeth, forces that, in a certain sense, later recede. These forces find no further use in normal modern social life—they recede. However, they remain connected with human nature. Again, there are the forces that act between the change of teeth and puberty to stimulate the inclination toward authority out of the soul-physical realm. These forces, which I described in connection with the intangibles living between the teacher and the children, are real forces in childhood, but they, too, later recede.

Furthermore, as human beings we have forces that are active from puberty until around the age of twenty that also later recede. (Of course, now we seldom see what we call youthful idealism, youthful motivations that lead to living ideals. At one time people perceived living ideals in the same way that we perceive external life.) These are the same forces that after puberty first form the foundation of true judgment and that need to be brought to a special level of development. They also recede after the age of twenty-one or twenty-two.

In the last centuries, human life has developed such that we only cultivate intellectual capabilities, scientific capabilities, the ability to observe natural and social things. To the extent that this development has taken place, those powers active in the first three stages of life have receded. We can, however, bring them forth again. Imaginative cognition is nothing more than those forces whose spiritual activity forms the human body and soul from puberty until the age of twenty. It is nothing more than those soul forces that, under the direction of my book How To Know Higher Worlds, we can bring forth out of the depths of human nature. The spiritual researcher brings forth again what has receded. Where it otherwise remains hidden, we bring it forth again so that it enters into consciousness. Then it develops Imaginative cognition.

It is more difficult to bring forth those human forces that are active from the change of teeth until puberty but that recede later in life and lie deep in the organism. However, through such exercises as I have described in my books, we can call them, too, into consciousness. These prove to be identical with forces that are active in children, but remain unknown and unnoticed by science. We learn how to master these forces. Through an Inspired cognition, they bring into our consciousness certain spiritual secrets of our surroundings. This is not a made-up force, not something that does not already exist in life. This is something that proves itself to be active during the most important developmental years. Spiritual research brings it forth again to become the basis of insight into the spiritual world.

Because they remain hidden from observation, the most difficult forces to bring forth are those forces that are active in human nature between birth, we can even say between conception, and the change of teeth. Those forces find their conclusion in the permanent teeth and later completely withdraw into the human organic system. Nevertheless, we can bring these forces forth after we have called forth the others.

We see that we now connect ourselves with these forces when we grasp them with our full being, these forces that actually gave us the life impulse. In a certain sense, we unroll in the first seven years of our life—we bring forth out of our deepest souls the actual impulse, which we recognize as spirit, that we received in the first stage of life. When we bring into our consciousness what has receded, then we have Intuitive cognition. We do not connect ourselves only with our own being, but with something in comparison to which our normal thoughts are absurdities. We connect ourselves with something that is one and the same as the Being of the World. We then recognize the spirit in us as connected to the Spirit of the World.

You see, teachers who understand human beings through spiritual science, who have the developing human before them, look at what the spirit forms out of this developing human. The teachers meet this developing human with their educational skills. The teacher working from spiritual science does not have in mind a pedagogy used to educate children according to abstract rules, as is normal today. For this teacher, each child is a riddle. What should come to life in each child is something the teacher must solve in a living way every day, in every hour. However, when the teacher acquires the viewpoint of this living, working spirit in the living development of the child, he or she absorbs a recognition of reality that does not remain in concepts, does not remain in abstract generalities, but permeates the will with spirit. Such a teacher really becomes a pillar of knowledge, and he or she will develop a truly living pedagogy because it comes from an understanding of the human being, from a recognition of the complete, whole person.

Spiritual science is nothing other than what we can create out of the forces that are spiritually active in the stages of human development. It is not some fantasy. The source for the development of higher spiritual powers does not come from just anything that might arise in people, but from the conscious apprehension of what works in the healthiest forces of growth and life in the first three stages of human development. In that we become spiritual researchers, we raise into the consciousness of our understanding of the world and of people what really causes our growth and development as human beings.

So closely related is Anthroposophy to the spiritual sword and shield of cognition! For that reason, spiritual science is not something we can take up simply through our intellect. Since we bring it forth out of the being and growth forces of the whole human, it permeates our whole being, our feeling and will. It becomes a basic human force. Immaturity and unconsciousness are concepts that lose their relevance through the activity of the spirit in human beings. We may not say that people lose their instinctive, basic forces when they consciously develop the spirit. No, this remains. The same basic strength that is otherwise present only in instinctive actions is present when the spirit permeates people in this way. The spirit really enters into the being of the teacher, into the effectiveness of the teacher, into those who are to develop social pedagogical forces in youth. What spiritual science is comes from the same source from which people themselves grow. Self-development is only a transformation of our growth forces.

You see, these are things, at least in their underlying principles, that modern people often regard much as people once viewed the science of Copernicus and Galileo. What most people once viewed as an absurdity has now become a matter of course. In the same way, the knowledge of the three stages of life, their basic forces and their transformation into Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition through spiritual science will become a matter of course.

Our age can notice that modern intellectual life (I have shown this in two examples) has become powerless in the face of social life and social desires. When modern people see that the intellectualism developed in the last centuries (abstract, foreign and removed from life) is not the only possibility, that there is also a science that comes from the transformation of growth forces, they will develop sympathy and interest. This spiritual science can understand the living spirit that does not play guest roles in life, but is present and active in life; and the human spirit, by connecting itself with that living spirit, develops social pedagogical strength.

Why (again we put this question) are we so seldom able to transform into social will what we receive in ideas, what we develop in ideas? How is it that such disbelief has arisen that people speak only of ideology when they refer to the power of the spirit?

The period that is just behind us was a time of great triumphs for modern science. Those great scientific triumphs could arise only when people first turned away from what was within them and devoted themselves to the activities of nature and to the scientific method. Those who are spiritual researchers will certainly recognize the conscientiousness, the exactitude, of modern scientific methods, and will also recognize the fertility of these methods within their areas. They will certainly not go into a simplistic, unsympathetic criticism of limited and bounded material knowledge. However, we must be clear about one fact of experience that people do not observe today. People do not observe it because they can see, completely correctly from at least one point of view, that scientific methods are well suited to give a picture of natural phenomena. Because scientific methods work so well in this realm, people are not inclined to ask how this experience, derived in this way, affects the whole essence of humanity.

Concerning observations of nature and the recognition of natural laws, people accept only what their senses believe and their intellect can process. They consciously shut out everything that comes from their feeling and will life. What they understand about nature does not affect the will and feeling life. Thus, many people who view the entire situation without prejudice speak about modern science and its effects differently than those who simply accept all the great scientific triumphs.

If we look at the human essence, the picture we can achieve through the scientific method has something fatalistic about it—it is something that fills only our intellect, but does not touch our will. If we use the scientific method in popular or scientific thinking about social life, then social life in a sense ebbs away, falls apart. Just as something finely ground runs through a sieve, true social life slips past our observation when we approach it only with modern scientific methods. We can see how strict causal scientific thinking fails the moment it is applied to the social realm or general external society. I want to give an example of this: There is perhaps no other book in a much-debated area that so beautifully develops exact scientific thinking as Das Werden der Organismen, eine Widerlegung der Darwinschen Zufallstheorie (The development of the organism—a rebuttal of the Darwinian theory of chance), by the well-known biologist, Oskar Hertwig. We can offer only the highest praise for this book’s attempt to characterize conventional scientific insights into the theory of evolution.

A short time after Hertwig’s book appeared, he also published something about social, legal and political issues, issues concerning general society. It would be impossible to think of something more dilettantish and incompetent than this firstrate biologist’s stroll through an area generally encompassed by the concept “social life”!

There are hundreds, thousands, of such examples. They all show what we can directly observe, namely, that even the highest devotion to natural scientific knowledge causes us to fill our consciousness with ideas that are actually the content of an ideology that cannot pulse into our feeling and will. These ideas remain unfruitful in feeling and willing.

I want to expressly emphasize that in considering such things, it is not my intention to go in the reverse direction. I do not wish to contend that the way of thinking of the vast majority of modern people is simply the outcome of the scientific way of thinking. No, quite the opposite. The last centuries have brought forth a certain kind of common thinking. Those who really study history, not simply a fable convenue, a convenient story, see how human life, particularly social life right down to the peasantry, has changed in the last three or four centuries. What has come forth as natural scientific thinking is, in my opinion, only an external expression of what has generally taken hold of human soul life. I do not wish to call human thinking and feeling a product of modern scientific attitude and knowledge, but just the opposite. I see in the scientific attitude and knowledge only the external symbol, the revelation, of what is the general direction of human thinking, the general attitude toward life and external reality.

What has developed is the basis for a thinking and feeling foreign to life, for a spiritual life foreign to life. If, on the other hand, you consider what forms the basis of spiritual science (I have just shown that this spiritual science is only a transformation of the human forces of growth and development), then you can rise to see a real world in these things. Then what we take in with spiritual knowledge enters into our powers of feeling and will. This is the only healthy way for people now and in the near future to come to a truly social willing. It is necessary for the future to infuse this social willing with the knowledge that can come from the spiritual.

We would not say that everyone can effortlessly achieve the development of higher spiritual powers. We certainly do not at all contend that. Certainly, only a few people will be able to recognize the secrets of spiritual life through direct vision of the highest spiritual facts. This recognition is first connected to a certain inner courage, a certain boldness. Human will, human intellectual power, all human soul forces must develop so that they extend beyond the normal level of strength. These soul forces must grow so they can grasp the spiritual world that flits past ordinary human cognition, the spiritual world people cannot usually perceive. In a certain sense, we must reach for the finest among everyday capacities. The spirit does not come in the same way that external realities come. The spirit comes when you connect yourself with it in the same way that you feel pain, that you feel desire and distress that flood through your soul, as something very real. In this way you will feel, experience and recognize the spiritual through a flooding in your soul, only you know that it is not something simply subjective like desire and distress. It is so intimately connected with the soul, like desire and distress, joy and sorrow, yet it streams into our souls as something foreign, something spiritual. At first, it will be something unexpected. We expect something quite different in external life. Thus, we must accept this spiritual life in sorrow and pain, since we receive and perceive around us a life that we do not expect. No one comes into the spiritual world who does not struggle for this entrance, step by step, through sorrow and pain. This, though, only concerns research of the spiritual world.

In contrast, we must say that the capacities to understand what spiritual research has to say comprise only ordinary healthy common sense. For spiritual researchers, it is unimportant simply to assure others that they love truth and see what they speak of as spiritual. Rather, spiritual researchers can speak so that people with healthy common sense can understand their path of thinking. Of course, their thinking is formed from spiritual vision. However, people can recognize that it has the same inner logic they learn from external, sense-perceptible reality. Thus, if it is not limited by opposing prejudices, healthy common sense can judge whether spiritual researchers talk nonsense. Healthy common sense can judge from the way spiritual researchers speak whether the spiritual world is open to them, whether they really see into it. Thus, what individual spiritual researchers bring into social life is itself a social pedagogical force.

If people accustom themselves to acquiring understanding, to acquiring the healthy common sense to be able to perceive the convincing power of what spiritual science reveals as the true reality of human life, then they will develop another social force. This social force will lead people to one another and will bring into the structure of the social organism things that cannot come into it any other way. These things form a more intimate recognition of one person by another, an ability to accept other people, a germination of true social impulses.

This is what develops in human interactions based upon true spiritual cognition and everything connected with it. People will feel how social pedagogical forces can enter social will when they begin to extend what we can draw from human growth and development into the living social organism. Only then will they understand that human essence embodies social organs. People will be able to bring into the social organism what they understand of the spirit working in the natural organism.

People will not come to true social pedagogical strength until they are able to draw social pedagogical forces from the motives, from the impulses, of spiritual knowledge!

Where does our understanding of spiritual scientific knowledge come from? It comes from those diminished forces that made physical and spiritual adults from little children. We do not need to let those forces lie fallow, we need to use them. We need only to apply our own humanity to external social order for a true social pedagogical strength to develop in the education of children. Then, too, that indefinable but very real activity in education that lies in human relationships, in human interactions, will develop between us. If we will only understand what meets us from the personality of the whole person, if we will only understand what mysterious things lie in each person, how individuals can, in their sub- and superconsciousness, grow beyond themselves, then a social pedagogical strength will exist in human interactions. We will so interact with one another that the being of one raises and carries the being of the other. In short, social pedagogical strength flows out of spiritual recognition, not only for the education of children, but for the totality of human life.

You see, the idea of the threefold social organism does not, in truth, come from some program, like so many social ideas. It comes from a new spiritual direction for which, on the one side, modern people have only very little sympathy. But, on the other side, they yearn for it with all of their subconscious desires and instincts. They thirst for it. Much more than people consciously believe, they carry in their subconscious a thirst for the spiritual. Today we see that people clothe their social desires in all sorts of formulas, forms and demands. What is characteristic about them, if you look at what meets us from people’s well-meaning will forces, from correct rightful needs, is that they cannot generally be understood. They cannot be so understood that genuinely constructive activity could arise from them.

This is quite characteristic, and it is very remarkable the way those people who have worked for years on ideas and programs for social reform, the way all their thinking, everything they have derived from their spiritual life, fails. Recently a letter from a well-known social revolutionary appeared in the newspapers, a letter from Kropotkin to George Brandes. In it Kropotkin describes the bleak situation in eastern Europe. In his way, he really describes the whole European situation, and concludes, “Yes, the only thing we can hope for is that we are given bread and tools to produce bread.”

You see a social revolutionary, who has for years attempted to think about his ideas, has come so far as to state that the world is to be organized so that the tools to produce bread shall be properly provided, so that people can be fed. In the end, only an abstract cry for bread and tools results! Disbelief in abstract spirituality, in his own spirituality!

We have to see through the cry for bread, to see that it is nothing other than a modern cry for the spirit. Only out of an understanding of the true spirit can come the social strength of will that can properly provide tools for bread production. The point is not to cry for programs, but to turn rightly to human faculties, to turn to the strength of human activity. That means to correctly understand people, so that they find their proper place in life and can work in the most efficient way to feed their families, to work for the whole life of their fellow human beings.

We must make the social question a question of humanity in the broadest sense. Otherwise, no good will come of it. It is possible to improve things when we recognize that the social question is complete only when we perceive it out of the spirit.

What we strive for in the threefolding of the social organism arises out of a new spiritual direction, out of a recognition of the demands that are so nebulous today. Although they are correct, they are nonetheless nebulous. What we strive for arises out of the recognition that an unconscious longing for this new spirituality lives in these demands. Everything we recognize as decadence in the striving for spirituality is an expression of people’s still clumsy search for the spirit. Certainly, one of the most decadent forms of this search is spiritism, or false mystical paths. This decadent direction has come out of centuries, we can even say in this case millennia, of education through which people have not learned to search for the spirit in reality itself, in the reality to which they belong. The striving toward spirituality has been carried to such abstract heights because dogmatic monopolies wanted to usurp it.

Spiritual science wants to prove that the same powers that can grasp external nature, if we develop them further as I described today, can also penetrate spiritual life. Then people will not strive toward an abstract spirit, toward a spirit created for the occasional gratification of human consciousness, but toward a spirit that is in reality, that is ome with material life. We do not recognize the spirit when we look at matter simply as matter, and say that it is only matter and the spirit is somewhere else. No. Those who seek the spirit through abstract formulations and think they should seek it along the path of spiritism, for instance, in the dark corners of life, have not yet achieved the correct human relationship to the spirit.

We have achieved the proper human relationship to spiritual life only if we seek such a spirit as we can see in nature around us, particularly in human life itself, in the life of children, in social connections. We have achieved the correct relationship when we know that in everything around us, even in economic life, the spirit is active, and when we search in such a way that we connect this spiritual activity to ourselves. A proper seeking of the spirit exists only when people want to understand the spirit, only when they love the spirit that is active in themselves. It exists only when people can form a bridge between the spiritual reality in themselves and the spiritual reality in the world. Only through such a spirit and through the knowledge of such a spirit can we develop the social pedagogical strength that we need for human life now and in the near future.

Thus, we can only repeat time and again:

May the dark unconscious desires living in human hearts and minds flame up into the conscious life of soul, so that humanity may find, in this age when social concern has become so bright, the true spiritual power of the world with which inner spiritual powers of humans can connect.

Out of this union between the World Spirit and the human spirit will flow the best source of social pedagogical strength for human life.

After a short discussion, Dr. Steiner concluded with the following:

Now, of course, those who speak out of spiritual science will not be of the opinion that what has come forth recently as science, philosophy or art needs to be thrown away simply because it has led to the false path mentioned by the previous speaker. However, the essence of spiritual science should be that the one-sided human activities that arose in the last centuries out of modern scientific assumptions should give up their one-sidedness and merge into a general stream of all-encompassing life.

You will not expect that I am in any way against what science, philosophy or the arts have generated within their rightful boundaries, if you follow not only my spiritual scientific books but also, for example, my description of the progress of philosophy in The Riddles of Philosophy. 1f you look at the way I have interpreted the essence of art—the Goetheanum in Dornach that houses the School for Spiritual Science, which, in its external appearance, attempts to represent spiritual science—you will not see an opposition to the modern developments in science, philosophy or art, to the extent that they occur within their proper limits. The one-sidedness that has come forth in these areas seems to me even to be something necessary. Life develops in contradictions, even polar contradictions. Thus, if we introspectively consider history, we can see that periods when certain activities were one-sided alternate with periods when these activities flow into a certain universal, consonant, harmonious life activity. However, it is the fructification of modern scientific views, of philosophical considerations and modern artistic trends that spiritual science should particularly accentuate.

Let us take, for example, to use something that I could barely mention in the lecture, many of the more modern trends in art. Certainly, we can easily make fun of such trends in art. But, you see, even though certain things like expressionist art appear incomplete to our souls, nevertheless we must say that they are only a preliminary, often clumsy attempt to come to something that is really in accordance with life. In the last century, we have slipped into a kind of intellectuality. Intellectuality is unfruitful. In social life and in art, what has been the consequence? The necessary consequence has been that although people have wanted to be artistically active, they have slipped into naturalism, into the simple imitation of nature.

The simple imitation of nature can never be art in an absolute sense. I say that not in deference to the art critics, but simply because when someone so strongly imitates what they see in external nature, they will never reach nature. If you have a sense for it, you will always prefer nature over what simply imitates nature.

An outrageously inept thing often occurs (you will excuse me if I bring up this trivial example) that is the expression of outrageously bad taste. You show people, let’s say, an apple that you find particularly pleasing, beautifully polished, and so forth. Then, you say, “It’s as though it were made out of wax!” It is impossible to think of something more outrageously inept than when someone compares something from nature with an artificial thing, regardless of how good this artificial thing is! For the simple reason that we can never reach true nature in art, we must reject absolute naturalism.

It is something quite different if, in the expressionist manner, the artist wants to embody something that people experience beyond what is simply natural—even though the embodiment may be clumsy. However, to recognize that clumsy beginnings should be neither over- nor undervalued, you must be open to what is today often expressed by a slogan, but which, in connection with human life, people do not correctly understand.

The following may sound like a paradox. I certainly belong among those who have the highest admiration for Raphael. However, from my point of view the only people who have a right to admire Raphael are those who are convinced that if someone today were to paint just as Raphael painted, it would be impossible and inconsistent with modern times. It would not be art that we could accept today as contemporary art. This may sound paradoxical. However, what has occurred during human development belongs to its particular stage. You must really take this whole idea of development seriously. What developed since the middle of the fifteenth century in science, philosophy and art is completely justifiable as an educational impulse in developing humanity. However, human development has today reached a stage where it must strive for the other pole. As humans, we needed to go through a one-sided science for a time. We needed to absorb the thoughts of this science, to come to a mood of soul brought about by our noticing the powerlessness of these scientific thoughts. This powerlessness calls forth a counterforce in the active soul life, the counterforce toward spiritual recognition, toward a spiritual viewpoint.

If you take Lessing’s thoughts earnestly, that history is an education of humanity, then you can best come to grips with such things. Thus, today in certain areas people’s prejudices allow what spiritual science has to offer to enter directly into social pedagogy, that is, into external reality.

It has been possible to make artistically visible in the Dornach building what moves us inwardly, to express in forms what moves us inwardly. I might also mention that only very recently has it been possible to attempt to found a school upon real pedagogy. Our friend Emil Molt integrated the founding of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart into a modern industrial undertaking (people are beside themselves in ridicule over this), into the Waldorf cigarette factory in Stuttgart. Here we can now build a unified elementary school upon what can result for pedagogy from an understanding of the spiritual point of view. I held the pedagogical seminar for the faculty of the Waldorf School, and I must say that this belongs among the most beautiful of things I could imagine as a task for myself. There, a pedagogy was founded that does not exist to fulfill norms imagined as necessary to train people, but rather a pedagogy that results from a true understanding of the whole person, that is, the body, soul and spirit of human beings. This is a pedagogy that paradoxically makes life more difficult for the teacher than it would be with simple, normative education.

Those who believe in standardized education, who preach programs, who give educational principles, know how to instruct. However, those who teach directly from life can only receive impulses to observe what really occurs in the developing human being, from year to year, from week to week, from month to month. Even though it may be a large class, you must continuously be in living interactions. You must understand what it means not to practice a learned pedagogy from memory, but to invent at each moment the individual methods that this child needs.

What is effective in life cannot be based in memory or in habit. What we have in our memory, what we practice from memory in our human activities, what we practice out of habit is something that in all cases is simply a cliché. What results from spiritual life can never be a cliché!

There have been times, and probably still will be, when I have lectured on the same theme week after week. I do not think anyone can say I have ever spoken about the same theme in exactly the same way. When you speak from the spirit, your concern is to create something immediate. It is not at all possible in the normal sense to memorize what comes from the spirit, because it must continuously develop in direct contact with life. For those who are active out of the spirit, the simple memorization of spiritual knowledge is about the same as if someone were to say, “I am not going to eat today because I ate yesterday; why should I eat again today? My body will continue simply on the basis of what I ate yesterday.” Yes, our physical organism is such that it continuously renews itself. This is also true for the spirit. The spirit must also be within this vigorous life. The true spirit must at all times be a creator. In the same way, education carried by the spirit must be a continuously creative art.

There will be no blessing upon our elementary schools, and there will also be no healing in our school systems, until education becomes a continuously living, creating art, carried by true love and those intangibles of which I have spoken.

We can see in all areas how necessary it is in the face of the unconscious and subconscious demands of modern humanity (and in the near future it will be even more necessary) to take what people wish to make into a comfortable intellectual program and go from that to a truly productive experience of the spirit. This will be much less comfortably achieved than a great deal of what people today call spiritual life. However, this will become the social pedagogical force that we need. On the one hand, it is true that after so many years of devotion to scientific thinking the innermost souls of modern people long for a direct recognition of the spirit. It is on the other hand true that social demands cry for a spiritual deepening. It is true that the subject of my lecture is not something thought of haphazardly, but something heard from contemporary human development. However, you must first educate yourselves to it and connect yourselves with it.

In conclusion, I would like to point out one other thing that is particularly necessary now. Because everyone thinks that some fruitful philosophical life can result from subjective opinions, we must indicate how to understand questions today. I want to do that with an example.

Many years ago I held a lecture in a southern German city in which I spoke about the Christian saints. There were two priests at the lecture. Since they could say nothing against the content of the lecture, they came to me and said, “We don't have anything to say against the content of what you said today. However, we do want to say something about the fact that you claim to speak for people whose path leads them to your way of thinking. We, however, speak for all people.” This is what they said. I, of course, addressed them with their proper title. You must always be polite. I said, “You see, Reverend, you believe that you speak for all people. I find that natural and reasonable since, subjectively, that is the case. However, whether I speak, or whether you believe that you speak, for all people doesn't mean anything, particularly not in the present when individual human lives exist so much in the whole of society. Today we must learn not to define our tasks by subjective arbitrariness, but to develop them individually out of objectivity and objective facts. And so I ask you, Reverend, if you think that you speak for all people, then look at the facts. Does everyone go to church?” There they could not say yes! You see, thus speak the facts. I then said to them, “I speak for those who no longer come to you in the church.” That is what the facts teach us today.

Things do not merely guide us in the direction of an objection. Rather, we must see the facts as they are and let them form the argument. It is something quite natural that people think that they speak for everyone.

What is important today is that (although we can know that the majority of people consciously resist real spiritual scientific impulses) if we can understand the revelation, we can also know that these impulses have the effect of a subconscious cry, “Make whole again what has split into philosophy, science, art, religion and the other areas, especially the social areas, of culture!”

However, we can only make these things whole according to their own spirit. Only then do things speak to us not out of the abstract, but out of a concrete unity where the true spirit that we find in all individual things is the one spirit in everything.

However, because the unifying spirit is something concretely alive, we cannot understand it by encompassing it with abstract concepts, with ideology. We must resolve to seek the living spirit. We can only seek it, though, if, with a certain intellectual modesty, we find the bridge between the sleeping inner human forces that are of a spiritual nature, and the spirit that lives in nature, in human life, in the whole cosmos. Thus, in concluding, I wish to emphasize once again that we must take into account the longing that lives in the depths of the human soul to bind the human spirit with the Spirit of the World. Much of the solution to humanity’s burning questions lies in this bond between human spirit and World Spirit.

I do not want to arouse the belief that we can solve every problem. However, humanity is on the path to a partial resolution of riddles that have always been presented to it. In this partial resolution lies true human progress in that we recognize how the spirit lives in everything, and how this spirit can light the way if we awaken the spirit in ourselves. The greatest, most important contemporary social tasks live in this recognition, and it will lead to healing when wider and wider circles realize this.

I consider it a particular honor to be able to speak to you about the relationship of my work in spiritual science to your pedagogical work. You will allow me to make two introductory remarks. The first is that I will, of course, need to clothe my thoughts in apparently theoretical words and ideas, since to discuss points of view, we need words. However, I expressly note that I do not speak theoretically. I would not even speak about today’s topic if I did not direct a portion of my activity toward the practical, particularly concerning educational methods and their effectiveness. Thus, what I wish to bring to you today comes directly from practice.

The second thing I would like to say is that at present spiritual science is extremely controversial. I therefore can quite understand (especially because I represent spiritual science) that there may be many objections today because its methods are, in many cases, foreign to modern points of view. Perhaps we can help make spiritual science more understandable through the way we introduce it and attempt to make it a true living force in such an important practical area as education.

Can we name any areas of life that are unaffected by pedagogical activities and interests? At an age when children can develop themselves into everything possible, we entrust them to those who act as teachers. Teachers can provide what humanity needs only through the warmest participation in the totality of human life. When I speak about the special topic of spiritual science and pedagogy, I do this because, particularly now, the science of the spirit should become an active part of life. Spiritual science should be present to reunite the separate human cultural interests that have been driven apart in the last centuries, particularly in the nineteenth century. Through spiritual science, through a concrete point of view, we can unite the specialties without becoming paralyzed by the requirements of specialization. Today, there is also a very important reason to think about the relationship of spiritual science to pedagogy: education has influenced all human thinking and activity, including modern science and its great achievements.

More than people know, the scientific way of thinking that has led to such glorious results in science has won influence over everything we do, particularly over what we do in education. Although I am unable to develop the foundations of spiritual science here, I wish to take note of one thing, namely, the relationship of the scientific method to life.

Think, for example, about the human eye, this marvel through which we experience the outside world in a particular realm of the senses. The eye, this marvelous organ, is constructed so as to see the world and at the same time (I speak comparatively) always to forget itself in this seeing. In a sense, when we really want to investigate this instrument of external vision, we must completely reverse the standpoint of observation that modern science can only approximate. While seeing, we cannot at the same time look back at the essence of our eyes. We can use this picture to relate the scientific method to life. In modern times we have carefully and conscientiously developed the scientific method so that it gives the different sciences an objective picture of the external world. In doing this, we have formed a basic mood of soul such that we forget the human self in the scientific observation of the world, such that we forget everything directly connected with human life. Thus, it has come about that the more we develop in a modern scientific sense, the less we can use this science to see what is human.

The desire of spiritual science to bring about that reversal of observation that again turns to human beings arises from an understanding of science that goes beyond the understanding conventional science has of itself. This reversal can only occur when people go through those stages of soul life that I have described in How 7o Know Higher Worlds, and in an abbreviated form have indicated in the second part of An Outline of Occult Science.These are the processes that really carry this life of the human soul beyond normal life, and beyond the normal scientific world.

To come to such a manner of looking at things, you must have what I would like to call intellectual modesty. In a recent public lecture here, I gave a picture of what is necessary. Suppose, for example, we observe a five-year-old child. Suppose we put a book of Goethe’s lyrical poetry in the hands of a fiveyear-old child. This book of Goethe’s poems contains a whole world. The child will take the book in hand and play around with it, but will not perceive anything that actually speaks to people from this volume. However, we can develop the child, that is, we can develop the soul powers sleeping in the child, so that in ten or twelve years the child can really take from the volume what it contains. We need this attitude if we are to find our way to the science of the spirit. We must be able to say to ourselves that even the most careful education of our intellect, of our methods of observation and experimentation, brings us only so far. From there on, we can take over our own development. From that stage on, we can develop the previously sleeping forces ourselves. Then we will become aware that previously we stood in the same relationship to the external nature of our spirit-soul being, particularly the essence of our humanity, as the five-year-old child to the volume of Goethe's lyrical poetry. In essence and in principle, everything depends upon a decision for intellectual modesty, so that we can find our way to the science of the spirit.

We achieve the capacity to really observe ourselves, to observe the human being, when we practice specific thinking, feeling and willing exercises developed to make thinking independent, to train the will, when we become increasingly independent from physical willing and thinking. If we can observe the human being, then we can also observe what is so extremely important, the developing human. Today, there is certainly much talk about the spirit, talk about independent thinking. The science of the spirit cannot agree with this talk for a simple reason. Spiritual science develops inner spiritual techniques to grasp and understand concrete spirituality, not the spirit about which people speak nebulously as forming the basis of things and people. Spiritual science must go into detail concerning the essence of the human being.

Today, we want to speak about the essence of the developing human. I would say that people speak quite abstractly about human individuality and its development. However, they are quite correctly conscious that the teacher especially needs to take the development of this human individuality into account. I only wish to point out that insightful teachers are very clear about how little our modern science of education is able to identify the orderly stages of human development. I would like to give two examples. The oft-mentioned Viennese educator Theodor Vogt represented the reformed Herbartian school of thought. He said that we are not advanced enough in our understanding of human history to derive a view of child development from human historical development in the same way biologists derive the individual human embryonic development from the development of the species. The pedagogue Rein repeated this point of view. It culminates in accepting that today we do not have research methods of any sort that could identify the basis of human development. The development of such capacities as those I have just cursorily mentioned (you can read more in my books) enables us to approach the riddle that meets us so wonderfully when we observe how, from birth onward, an inner human force increasingly appears in every gesture. In particular, we can see how it manifests through speech, through the relationships of people with their surroundings, and so forth. Usually people observe the different manifestations of human life much too superficially, both physiologically and biologically. People do not form a picture of the whole human being in which the body, soul and spirit intertwiningly affect one another. If you wish to teach and educate children as they need, you must form such a picture.

Now those who, strengthened by spiritual scientific methods, observe the developing child will find an important developmental juncture at approximately the time of the change of teeth, around six or seven years of age. There is an oft-quoted saying that nature makes no leaps. To a certain degree, this is quite correct. However, all such views are basically one-sided. You can see their correctness only if you recognize their one-sidedness, for nature continuously makes leaps. Think about a growing plant, to name only one example. Fine. You can use this saying, nature makes no leaps. However, in the sense of Goethe’s law of metamorphosis, we must say that, despite the fact that the green leaf is the same as the colorful flower petal, nature does make a leap from the leaf to the colorful petal, and yet another leap from the petal to the stamen, and another quite special leap to the fruit. We do not get along well in life if we abstractly adopt the point of view that nature, or life in general, does not make leaps. And this is particularly true with people. Human life flows along without leaps, but in this other sense, there are such leaps everywhere.

Around the age of six or seven there is a particularly important turning point that has far-reaching consequences for human structure and function. Modern physiology does not yet have a correct picture of this. Something also occurs in people in the spirit-soul realm. Until this time, human beings are fundamentally imitative beings. The constitution of their body and soul is such that they totally devote themselves to their surroundings. They feel their way into the surroundings. They develop themselves from the center of their will so that they mold the force lines and force rays of their will exactly to what occurs in their surroundings. More important than everything that we can bring to the child through reprimanding words, through preaching in this stage, is the way in which we ourselves behave in the presence of the child. Since the intangibles of life act much more strongly than what we can clearly observe on the surface, we must say that what the child imitates does not depend only upon the observable behavior of people. In every tone of speech, in every gesture that we as teachers use in the presence of the child during this stage, lies something to which the child adapts itself. As human beings we are much more than we know by the external reflection of our thoughts. In life we pay little attention to how we move a hand, but the way we move a hand is the faithful reflection of the whole state of our souls, the whole reflection of our inner mood. As adults with developed soul lives we pay little attention to the connection between the way we step forward with our legs, the way we gesture with our hands, the expressions on our faces, and the will and feeling impulses that lie in our souls. The child, however, lives into these intangibles. We do not exaggerate when we say that those in the young child’s surroundings who inwardly strive to be good, to be moral, who in their thinking and feeling consciously intend to do the child no wrong, even in what is not spoken—such people affect the child in the strongest possible manner through the intangibles of life.

In this connection we must pay attention to what, if I may express myself so, actually lies between the lines of life. In that we slowly find ourselves caught in the web of a more materialistic life, particularly in relation to the intimacies of existence, we become accustomed to paying relatively little attention to such things. Only when we value such things again will a certain impulse enter pedagogy, an impulse particularly necessary in a time that refers to itself as social, as a socially minded period.

You see, people cannot correctly value certain experiences if they do not take into account observations of the spirit-soul nature that is the foundation of human beings. I am speaking to you about everyday events. A despairing father comes, for example, and says, “What shall I do? My child has stolen something!” We can, of course, understand how a father can despair about such things. But, now we attempt to understand the situation better. We can say, “Yes, but what were the complete circumstances?” The child simply took some money from the drawer. What did the child do with the money? The child bought something for a friend, candy, for instance. So, the child did not steal for selfish reasons. Thus, we might possibly say the child did not steal at all. There can be no talk about the child having stolen. Every day the child has seen that Mother goes to the drawer and takes money out. The child has seen that as something normal and has only imitated. This is something that has resulted from the forces that are the most important at this stage, imitation and mimicking. If you direct the child properly in this sense, if you know how to properly direct the child’s attention, then this attention will be brought to all sorts of things that will have an important influence at this stage.

We must be quite conscious that reprimands and preaching at this stage do not help. Only what affects the will can help. This human characteristic exists until the moment when the remarkable physiological conclusion of childhood occurs, when “hardening” makes its final push and the permanent teeth crystallize out of the human organism. It is extremely interesting to use spiritual scientific methods to look at what lies at the basis of the developing organism, what forms the conclusion, the change of teeth. However, it is more important to follow what I have just described, the parallel spirit-soul development that arises completely from imitation.

Around the age of seven, a clear change in the spirit-soul constitution of the child begins. We could say that at this age the capacity to react to something quite differently than before emerges. Previously, the child’s eye was intent upon imitating, the child’s ear was intent upon imitating. Now the child begins to concentrate upon what adults radiate as opinion, as points of view. The child transforms its desire to imitate into devotion to authority. 1 know how unpleasant it is for many modern people when we make authority an important factor in education. However, if we wish to represent the facts openly and seriously, programs and slogans cannot direct us. Only empirical facts, only experience can be our guides. We need to see what it means when children have been guided by a teacher they can look up to because this teacher is a natural authority for them. That the developing human can take something into its thoughts, can live into something, because the respected adult has these thoughts and feelings, because there is a “growing together” between the developing being and the adult being, is of great importance in the development of the child. You can know what it means for the whole later life of the child only when you (I want to say this explicitly) have had the luck of having been able to devote yourself to a natural authority in the time between the transformation at around six or seven years of age and the last great transformation around the time of puberty, at about fourteen or fifteen years of age.

The main thing is not to become mired in such abstractions, but instead to enter into this very important stage of life that begins around the age of six or seven years and concludes with puberty. At this age the child, having been properly raised or spoiled through imitation, is turned over to the school by the parents. The most important things for the child’s life occur in this period. This is quite true if we keep in mind that not only each year, but each month, the teacher must carefully discover the real essence of developing children. This discovery must be not only general, but as far as possible in large classes, the teacher should also carefully consider each individual child. After the child enters school, we see the residual effects of the desire to imitate alongside the beginning devotion to authority until around the age of nine (these things are all only approximate, of course). If we can properly observe the interaction of these two basic forces in the growing child, then the living result of this observation forms the proper basis not only for the teaching method, but also for the curriculum.

Excuse me if I interject a personal remark, but I encountered this very question when the Waldorf School was formed this year. Through the understanding accommodation of our friend Emil Molt and the Waldorf-Astoria firm in Stuttgart, we were able to bring a complete unified elementary school to life. We were able to bring to life a school that, in its teaching methods and in the ordering of its curriculum, is to result entirely from what the science of the spirit can say about education. In September of this year it was my pleasure to hold a seminar for the faculty I assembled for this school. All of these questions came to me in a form very fitting to our times. What I want to talk to you about now is essentially an extract of everything given to the faculty during that seminar. These teachers are to guide this truly unified elementary school according to the needs of spiritual science and contemporary society.¹

We concerned ourselves not only with teaching methods, but particularly with creating the curriculum and teaching goals from a living observation of growing children. If we look at the growing child, we will find that after the age of six or seven much still comes from that particular kind of will that alone makes the child’s desire to imitate possible to the degree I described previously. It is the will that forms the basis of this desire to imitate, not the intellect. In principle, the intellect develops from the will much later. That intimate bond between one human being, the adult teacher, and another human being, the growing child, is expressed in a relationship between will and will. Thus, we can best reach the child in these first elementary school years when we are able to properly affect the will.

How can we best affect the will? We cannot affect the will if during these years we emphasize outer appearances too strongly, if we turn the child’s attention too strongly to material life. It turns out that we come particularly close to the will if in these first years we allow education to be permeated by a certain aesthetic artistry. We can really begin from this aesthetic artistry. We cannot, for example, begin with that teaching of reading and writing that does not arise from the proper connection between what we teach and the powers that come from the core of the child’s soul. The letters and characters used in reading and writing consist of something quite removed from life. You need only look back at earlier characters (not those of primitive peoples, but, for example, those of the highly developed Egyptian culture) to see that writing was still quite artistically formed. In the course of time, this has been lost. Our characters have become conventions. On the other hand, we can go back to the direct primary relationship that people once had to what has become writing. In other words, instead of giving abstract instruction in writing, we can begin to teach writing through drawing. We should not, however, teach through just any drawings, but through the real artistic feeling in people that we can later transform into artistically formed abstract characters for the growing child. Thus, you would begin with a kind of “written drawing” or “drawn writing,” and extend that by bringing the child true elements of the visual arts of painting and sculpture.

Psychologists who are genuinely concerned with the life of the soul know that what we bring to the child in this way does not reach simply the head, it reaches the whole person. What is of an intellectual color, what we permeate only with intellect, and particularly with convention, like the normal letters of reading and writing, reaches only the head. If we surround the instruction of these things with an artistic element, then we reach the whole person. Thus, a future pedagogy will attempt first to derive the intellectual element and the illustrative material from the artistic.

We can best take into account the interaction of the principles of authority and imitation if we approach the child artistically. Something of the imitative lies in the artistic. There is also something in the artistic that goes directly from subjective person to subjective person. What should act artistically must go through the subjectivity of people. As people with our own inner essence, we face the child quite differently when what we are to bring acquires an artistic form. In that way, we first pour our substance into what must naturally appear as authority. This enables us not to appear as a simple copy of conventional culture and the like, but humanly brings us closer to the child. Under the influence of this artistic education, the child will live into a recognition of the authority of the teacher as a matter of course.

At the same time, this indicates that spirit must prevail since we can teach in this way only when we allow what we have to convey to be permeated by spirit. This indicates that spirit must prevail in the entire manner of instruction, that we must live in what we have to convey. Here again I come to something that belongs to the intangibles of teaching life. People so easily believe that when they face the child they appear as the knowing, superior person before the simple, naive child. This can have very important consequences for teaching. I will show this with a specific example I have used in another connection in my lectures. Suppose I want to convey the concept of the immortality of the soul to a child. Conforming myself to the child’s mood of soul, I give the example by presenting a picture. I describe a cocoon and a butterfly creeping from it in a very pictorial way. Now, I make clear to the child, “In the same way that the butterfly rests in this cocoon, invisible to the eye, your immortal soul rests in your body. Just as the butterfly leaves the cocoon, in the same way, when you go through the gates of death, your immortal soul leaves your body and rises to a world that is just as different as the butterfly’s.”

Well, we can do that, of course. We think out such a picture with our intellect. However, when we bring this to the child, as “reasonable” people we do not easily believe it ourselves. This affects everything in teaching. One of the intangibles of education is that, through unknown forces working between the soul of the child and the soul of the teacher, the child accepts only what I, myself, believe.

Spiritual science guides us so that the picture I just described is not simply a clever intellectual creation.We can recognize that the divine powers of creation put this picture into nature. It is there not to symbolize arbitrarily the immortality of the soul in people, but because at a lower level the same thing occurs that occurs when the immortal soul leaves the body. We can bring ourselves to believe in the direct content of this picture as much as we want, or better, as much as we should want the child to believe it. When the powers of belief prevail in the soul of the teacher, then the teacher affects the child properly. Then the effectiveness of authority does not have a disadvantage, but instead becomes a major, an important, advantage.

When we mention such things, we must always note that human life is a whole. What we plant into the human life of a child often first appears after many, many years as a fitness for life, or as a conviction in life. We take so little note of this because it emerges transformed. Let us assume we succeed in arousing a quite necessary feeling capacity in a child, namely the ability to honor. Let us assume we succeed in developing in the child a feeling for what we can honor as divine in the world, a feeling of awe. Those who have learned to see life’s connections know that this feeling of awe later reappears transformed, metamorphosed. We need only recognize it again in its transformed appearance as an inner soul force that can affect other people in a healthy, in a blessed, manner. Adults who have not learned to pray as children will not have the powers of soul that can convey to children or younger people a blessing in their reprimands or facial expressions. What we received as the effect of grace during childhood transforms itself through various, largely unnoticed, phases. In the more mature stages of life it becomes something that can give forth blessing.

All kinds of forces transform themselves in this way. If we do not pay attention to these connections, if, in the art of teaching, we do not bring out the whole, wide, spiritually enlightened view of life, then education will not achieve what it should achieve. Namely, it will not be able to work with human developmental forces, but will work against them.

When people have reached approximately nine years of age, they enter a new stage that is not quite so clearly marked as the one around the age of seven years. It is, however, still quite clear. The aftereffects of the desire to imitate slowly subside, and something occurs in the growing child that, if we want to see it, can be quite closely observed. Children enter into a specific relationship to their own I. Of course, what we could call the soul relationship to the I occurs much earlier. It occurs in each persons life at the earliest moment he or she can remember. This is approximately the time when the child goes from saying, “Johnny wants this,” “Mary wants this,” to saying “I want this.” Later, people remember back to this moment. Earlier events normally completely disappear from memory. This is when the ensouled I enters the human being. However, it has not completely entered spiritually. We see what enters the human soul constitution spiritually as the experiencing of the I that occurs in the child approximately between nine and ten years of age. People who are observers of the soul have at times mentioned this important moment in human life. Jean Paul once so beautifully said that he could remember it quite exactly. As a young boy, he was standing before a barn in the courtyard of his parents’ home, so clearly could he recall it. There, the consciousness of his I awoke in him. He would never forget, so he told, how he looked through the veil at the holy of holies of the human soul.

Such a change occurs around the age of nine, in one case clearly, in another case less clearly. This moment is extremely important for the teacher. If you have previously been able to arouse in the growing child feelings tending in those directions of the will called religious or moral that you can bring forth through all your teaching, then you need only be a good observer of children to allow your authority to be effective when this stage appears. When you can observe that what you have previously prepared in the way of religious sensitivities is solidly in place and comes alive, you can meet the child with your authority.

This is the time that determines whether people can honestly and truly look from their innermost depths to something that divinely courses through the spirit and soul of the world and human life. At this point, those who can place themselves into human life through a spiritual point of view will, as teachers, be intuitively led to find the right words and the right behavior. In truth, education is something artistic. We must approach children not with a standardized pedagogy, but with an artistic pedagogy. In the same way that artists must be in control of their materials, must understand them exactly and intimately, those who work from the spiritual point of view must know the symptoms that arise around the age of nine. This is the time when people deepen their inner consciousness so that their Iconsciousness becomes spiritual, whereas previously it was soulful. Then the teacher will be able to change to an objective observation of things, whereas previously the child required a connection to human subjectivity. You will know, when you can correctly judge this moment, that prior to this you should, for example, speak to children about scientific things, about things that occur in nature, by clothing them in tales, in fables, in parables. You will know that all natural objects are to be treated as having, in a sense, human characteristics. In short, you will know that you do not separate people from their natural surroundings. At that moment around the age of nine when the I awakens, human beings separate themselves from the natural environment and become mature enough to objectively compare the relationships of natural occurrences. Thus, we should not begin to objectively describe nature before this moment in the child’s life. It is more important that we develop a sense, a spiritual instinct, for this important change.

Another such change occurs around eleven or twelve years of age. While the child is still completely under the influence of authority, something begins to shine into life that is fully formed only after sexual maturity. The child’s developing capacity to judge begins to shine in at this time. Thus, as teachers we work so that we appeal to the child’s capacity for judgment, and we allow the principle of authority to recede into the background. After about twelve years of age, the child’s developing capacity for judgment already plays a role. If we correctly see the changing condition of the child’s soul constitution, then we can also see that the child develops new interests. The child previously had the greatest interest, for example, in what we (of course, in a manner understandable to a child) brought in describing natural sciences. Only after this change, around eleven or twelve years of age, does this interest (I understand exactly the importance of what I say) develop into a true possibility of understanding physical phenomena, of understanding even the simplest physical concepts.

There can be no real pedagogical art without the observation of these basic underlying rhythms of human life. This art of education requires that we fit it exactly to what develops in a human being. We should derive what we call the curriculum and educational goals from that. What we teach and how we teach should flow from an understanding of human beings. However, we cannot gain this understanding of human beings if we are not able to turn our view of the world to seeing the spiritual that forms the basis of sensible facts. Then it will become clear to us that the intangibles that I have already mentioned really play a role, particularly in the pedagogical art.

Today, where our pedagogical art has developed more from the underlying scientific point of view, we place much value upon so-called visual aids (this is the case, although we are seldom conscious of it).² I would ask you not to understand the things I say as though I want to be polemic, as though I want to preach or derogatorily criticize. This is not at all the case. I only wish to characterize the role that the science of the spirit can have in the formation of a pedagogical art. That we emphasize visual aids beyond their bounds is only a result of the common way of thinking that has developed from a scientific point of view, from scientific methods. However (I will say this expressly), regardless of how justified it is to present illustrative materials at the proper time and with the proper subjects, it is just as important to ask if everything we should convey to the child can be conveyed by demonstration. We must ask if there are no other ways in which we can bring things from the soul of the teacher to the soul of the child. We must certainly mention that there are other ways. I have, in fact, mentioned the all-encompassing principle of authority that is active from the change of teeth until puberty. The child accepts the teacher’s opinion and feeling because they live in the teacher. There must be something in the way the teacher meets the child that acts as an intangible. There must be something that really flows from an all-encompassing understanding of life and from the interest in an all-encompassing understanding of life. I have characterized it by saying that what we impart to children often reveals itself in a metamorphosed form only in the adult, or even in old age.

For example, there is one thing people often do not observe because it goes beyond the boundaries of visual aids. You can reduce what you visually present the child down to the level the child can comprehend. You can reduce it to only what the child can comprehend, or at least what you believe the child can comprehend. Those who carry this to an extreme do not notice an important rule of life, namely, that it is a source of power and strength in life if you can reach a point, for example at the age of thirty-five, when you say to yourself that as a child you learned something once from your teacher, from the person who educated you. You took it into your memory and you remembered it. Why did you remember it? Because you loved the teacher as an authority, because the essence of the teacher so stood before you that it was clear to you when that teacher truly believed something, you must learn it. This is something you did instinctively. Now you have realized something, now that you are mature. You understand it in the way I have described it—"I learned something that I learned because of a love for an authority. Now the strength of maturity arises through which I can recall it again, and I can recognize it in a new sense. Only now do I understand it.”

Those who laugh at such a source of strength have no interest in real human life, they do not know that human life is a unity, that everything is connected. Thus, they cannot value what it means to go beyond normal visual aids, which are completely justifiable within their boundaries. Such people cannot value the need for their teaching to sink deeply into the child’s soul so that at each new level of maturity it will always return. Why do we meet so many inwardly broken people these days? Why do our hearts bleed when we look at the broad areas in need of such tremendous undertakings, while people nonetheless wander around aimlessly? Because no one has attended to developing in growing children those capacities that later in life become a pillar of strength to enable them really to enter into life.

These are the things that we must thoroughly consider when we change from simple conventional pedagogical science to a true art of education. In order for pedagogy to be general for humanity, teachers must practice it as an individual and personal art. We must have insight into certain inner connections if we want to understand clearly what people often say instinctively but without clear understanding. Today, with some justification, people demand that we should not only educate the intellect. They say it is not so important that growing children receive knowledge or understanding. What is important is that they become industrious people, that the element of will be formed, that real dexterity be developed, and so forth. Certainly, such demands are quite justifiable. What we need to realize though, is that we cannot meet such demands with general pedagogical phrases or standards; we can only meet them when we really enter into the concrete details of human developmental stages. We must know that it is the artistic aesthetic factor that fires the will, and we must be able to bring this artistic aesthetic factor to the will. We must not simply seek an external gateway to the will. That is what we would seek if we sought out people only through physiology and biology. That is what we would seek if we were not to seek them through the spiritual element that expresses itself in their being and expresses itself distinctly, particularly in childhood. There is much to be ensouled, to be spiritualized.

In our Waldorf School in Stuttgart, we have attempted for the first time to create something from what is usually based only upon the physiological, at least in its inner strength and its methods. Namely, we have attempted to transform gymnastics into the art of eurythmy. Almost every Saturday and Sunday in Dornach you can see a eurythmy performance. Eurythmy is an art form in which we use the human organism, with its possibilities for inner movement, as an instrument. What you see as an art form also has the possibility of ensouling and spiritualizing human movements that otherwise occur only in gymnastics.

Thus, people not only do what may affect this or that muscle, they also do what naturally flows from this or that feeling of the soul into the movement of the muscles, into the movement of the limbs.

Because it is based upon a spiritual scientific vitalization of life, we are convinced eurythmy will be significant for both pedagogy and healing. We are seeking the necessary healthy relationship between inner experiencing, feeling and expression of soul, and what we can develop in people as movement. We seek to develop these natural connections. We seek through the recognition of the ensouled and spiritualized human being what people usually seek only through physiology or other external facts. We can also affect the will not only when we apply the most common of arts to the principles of teaching in the early elementary school years. We can equally affect the will in a very special way when we allow soul-spirituality to permeate something also thought to cultivate the will, namely, gymnastics. However, we must recognize soul-spirituality in its concrete possibility of effectiveness, in its concrete form.

Thus, we must recognize the connections between two capacities of the human soul. Modern psychology cannot see this because it is not permeated by spiritual science. If we can look objectively at that important moment that I have described as occurring around nine years of age, we will see, on the one hand, that something important happens that is connected with the feeling capacity, the feeling life of the child. People look inwardly. Quite different feeling nuances occur. In a certain sense, the inner life of the soul becomes more independent from external nature in its feeling nuances. On the other hand, something else occurs that we can see only through a truly intimate observation of the soul. Namely, we learn because we still have what we might call an organically developed memory. Jean Paul noticed this and expressed it brilliantly when he said that we certainly learn more in the first three years of our life than in three years at the university. This is so because memory still works organically. We certainly learn more for living. However, around the age of nine a particular relationship forms between the life of feeling and the life of memory that plays more into conscious life.

We need only to see such things. If we cannot see them, then we think they are not there. If you can really see this intimate relationship between the life of feeling and memory, then you will find, if you pay attention, the proper standpoint from which to appeal to memory in your teaching. You should not appeal to memory any differently than you appeal to feeling. You will find the proper nuances, particularly for teaching history, for everything you have to say about history, if you know that you must permeate your presentation of what you want the children to remember with something that plays into their independent feelings. You will also be able to properly order the teaching of history in the curriculum if you know these connections. In this way, you can also gain a proper point of view about what the children should generally remember. You will be able to affect the feeling to the same extent you intend to affect the memory, in the same way you previously affected the will through artistic activity. Slowly, you will gain the possibility, following this stage of life, of allowing will and feeling to affect the intellect. If, in education, we do not develop the intellect in the proper way out of will and feeling, then we work in a manner opposing human developmental forces, rather than supporting them.

You can see that this whole lecture revolves around the relationship of spiritual science to pedagogical art, and how important it is to use spiritual science to provide a true understanding of human beings. In this way we obtain something from spiritual science that enters our will in the same way that artistic talents enter the human will. In this way we can remove ourselves from a pedagogy that is simply a science of convention, that always tells us to teach in this or that manner, according to some rules. We can transplant into the essence of our humanity what we must have in our will, the spiritual permeation of the will, so that from our will we can affect the developmental capacities of the growing child. In this manner, a truly effective understanding of human beings should support education in the spiritual scientific sense. The developing human thus becomes a divine riddle for us, a divine riddle that we wish to solve at every hour. If, with our art of teaching, we so place ourselves in the service of humanity, then we serve this life from our great interest in life.

Here at the conclusion, I wish to mention again the standpoint from which I began. Teachers work with people at that stage of life when we are to implant all the possibilities of life into human nature and, at the same time, to bring them forth from human nature. Then they can play a role in the whole remainder of human life and existence. For this reason we can say there is no area of life that should not, in some way or another, affect the teacher. However, only those who learn to understand life from a spiritual standpoint really understand life. To use Goethe’s expression, only those who can form life spiritually will be able to form life at all. It seems to me that the most necessary thing to achieve now is the shaping of life through a pedagogy practiced more and more in conformity with the spirit. Allow me to emphasize again that what I have said today was not said to be critical, to preach. I said it because, in my modest opinion, the science of the spirit and the understanding that can be gained through it, particularly about the essence of humanity, and thus about the essence of the growing child, can serve the art of education, can provide new sources of strength for the pedagogical art.

This is the goal of spiritual science. It does not desire to be something foreign and distant from this world. It desires to be a leaven that can permeate all the capacities and tasks of life. It is with this attitude that I attempt to speak from spiritual science about the various areas of life and attempt to affect them. Also, do not attribute to arrogance what I have said today about the relationship of spiritual science to pedagogy. Rather, attribute it to an attitude rooted in the conviction that, particularly now, we must learn much about the spirit if we are to be spiritually effective in life. Attribute it to an attitude that desires to work in an honest and upright manner in the differing areas of life, that wishes to work in the most magnificent, the most noble, the most important area of life—in the teaching and shaping of human beings.

Discussion Following the Lecture

W: The speaker says that he listened to Dr: Steiner’s explanation concerning pedagogy with great interest and that the same could be extended to art. He mentions Ferdinand Hodler’s words that what unites people is stronger than what divides them. He then continues—

What unites us all is just that spirituality of which Dr. Steiner has spoken. Modern art also seeks this spirituality again and will find it in spite of all opposition.

I would like to mention something else. We can follow the development of children through their pictures. We often see pictures that children have painted. These pictures tell us something, if we can understand them. I will relate an experience that L, as an art teacher, have had in teaching.

I had a class draw pictures of witches. Each child expressed in the picture of the witch the bad characteristic that he or she also had. Afterward, I discussed this with the class teacher, and he told me that what I saw in the pictures was completely correct. My judgment, based upon the pictures, was completely correct.

Now a short remark concerning the way we can view modern art, the way we must view it. I can show you by means of an example. In front of us we have a blackboard. I can view this blackboard with my intellect, which tells me that this blackboard has four corners with two pairs of parallel sides and a surface that is dark and somber. My feelings tell me something else. My feelings tell me that this black, hard angular form gives me the impression of something heavy, dark, harsh, disturbing. What I first think of in seeing this blackboard, what first comes to mind, is perhaps a coffin.

It is in this way that we must understand modern pictures, no longer through reasoning, but through feeling. What do I feel in this picture, and what thoughts come to mind? We must teach children not so much to see what is externally there, but more to feel.

X: I find myself speaking now due to an inner need. In particular, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to the lecturer for his beautiful words and for the pictures, ideas and thoughts that he unrolled before our eyes. His words have affected me extremely positively because they come from ideas with which I have concerned myself time and again for many years.

I did not know what “spiritual science” meant. Now I see quite clearly that a close connection exists between spiritual science and pedagogy. This is now my complete conviction. His words have also quite positively affected me since he demonstrated a certain development throughout the complete presentation, the development we see in the Herbart-Ziller school to which the lecturer also made reference.

The lecturer also referred to certain stages of development in children, and this causes me to make a short remark.

He has described stages in such a way that I am convinced such stages really exist. We find that Herbart also defined such stages. Already in 1804 Herbart showed, in a very interesting work concerning aesthetic form in education, what should be, what must be really important in education. From this he created the theory of stages, which Ziller carried further. These stages were to a certain degree plausibly described by Vogt in Vienna.

However, reading about all these stages had still not convinced me of their reality, of their existence, as the lecturer, Dr. Steiner, did in speaking today. For that I wish to express particular thanks.

Now one thing more. You have certainly felt that everything depends upon one thing, upon something that surely must lie heavily upon our souls, including my own. Everything depends upon the personality of the teacher. This comes out quite clearly throughout the whole lecture, with warmth, depth and responsibility. Time and again it made me particularly happy that Dr. Steiner emphasized this with complete insight and certainty. Thus, he has also shown us what a great task and responsibility we have if we wish to continue in our profession as teachers. I am generally in complete agreement with all the pictures of life he has presented. You have spoken from what I myself have experienced, thought and felt for decades. I wish to again express my most heartfelt thanks to the lecturer for his remarks.

Y: The first speaker has already expressed to a large extent what I wanted to say about how we should live into the child through art.

Now, I would like to say something somewhat critical. Dr. Steiner said that we should replace gymnastics as we now have it in the school with eurythmy. I have seen some of the eurythmy performances and understand their intent. However, I do not believe that we may use eurythmy alone in the school. What does eurythmy develop? I think that all these dancing movements ignore the human upper body, the formation of muscles. However, it is precisely this that is important to working people, and most of our elementary school students will become working people. Through eurythmy we will produce undeveloped, weak muscles, weak chest muscles, weak back muscles. The leg muscles will be strongly developed, but not those of the upper arms. They will be undeveloped and weak. We see just this weakness already today in so-called girls gymnastics, where the tendency is already to lay too much value upon dancing. Where the strength of the upper arms is demanded, these muscles fail. These girls cannot even do the simplest exercises requiring support of the arms. However, this is much less important to girls than it is to boys in their later work. If we take eurythmy and leave aside physiological gymnastics—the parallel bars, the high bar, rope climbing—then I fear that the strength people need in their work may suffer. What I wish to say is that we can teach eurythmy, and the children will receive an aesthetic training, but it should not be eurythmy alone. What pleased me at the performances in Dornach was the beautiful play of lines, the harmony of the movements, the artistic, the aesthetic. However, I would doubt that these eurythmy exercises can really play a part in making the body suitable for working. I would like to hear a further explanation if Dr. Steiner desires to have only eurythmy exercise, if he desires to deny school gymnastics, based in physiological facts, its rightful place. If we were to deny those physical exercises based upon an understanding of the human body their rightful place, then I would be unable to agree completely with the introduction of eurythmy into the schools.

Dr. Steiner: I would first like to say a few words concerning the last point so that misunderstandings do not arise.

Perhaps I did not make this clear enough in the lecture, since I could only briefly discuss the subject. When we present eurythmy in Dornach, we do this, of course, as an artistic activity, in that we emphasize just what you referred to as being pleasant. In that we emphasize what can be pleasant, in Dornach we must, of course, present those things meant more for viewing, for an artistic presentation. In the lecture I wanted to indicate more that in viewing eurythmy people would recognize that what they normally think of as simply physiological (this is somewhat radically said, since gymnastics is not thought of as only physiological), what is primarily thought of as only physiological, can be spiritualized and ensouled. If you include eurythmy in the curriculum (when I introduce a eurythmy performance, I normally mention that eurythmy is only in its beginning stages), and if today it seems one-sided in that it particularly develops certain limbs, this will disappear when we develop eurythmy further. I need to mention this so as not to leave the impression that I believe we should drop gymnastics.

You see, in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, we have a period of normal gymnastics and a period of eurythmy, consisting of more than you see in an artistic presentation. Thus, we take into account the requirements that you justifiably presented.

What is important to me is that along with the physical, the physiological that forms the basis of gymnastics, we add the spirit and soul, so that both things are present. Just as people themselves consist of a totality in the interaction of body, soul and spirit, what is truly the soul, recognizable for itself, also works in the movements that people carry out in gymnastics and such. We are not at all concerned with eliminating gymnastics. Quite the opposite. It is my desire that gymnastics be enriched with eurythmy. We should not eliminate one single exercise on the parallel bars or high bar. We should leave out nothing in gymnastics. However, what eurythmy attempts is that instead of asking how we can handle this or that muscle from the physiological point of view, the question becomes how does a soul impulse work? In other words, alongside what already exists, we add something else. I do not at all wish to criticize what already exists, but rather to describe briefly what spiritual science fosters in the way of permeating things with spirit and soul. I agree with your objection, but it is my desire to show that bringing the soul element into gymnastics can originate from the science of the spirit.

Z: Mr. Z describes how the principle that Dr. Steiner has developed would be extremely educational and fruitful for the school.

If people were to consider how schools now handle things, they would have to say that this does not correspond to the stages described by Dr. Steiner. Goethe once said that children must go through the cultures of humanity to develop their feeling life. If we want to connect with these valuable words from Goethe and make them fruitful, we should have methods that are completely contrary to the ideas we have used for years. The second thing I would like to mention is that in drawing, we always begin with lines and figures. If we look at the drawings of the cave dwellers, we must realize that they did not have any instruction in drawing at all. I think that we can learn a great deal for teaching drawing to our children from the first drawings and paintings of those primitive people. Regarding singing, we now begin with the scale, as if that was the natural basis for singing in school. However, if we study the history of music, we will immediately see that the scale is an abstraction to which humanity has come only over many centuries. The primary thing in music is the triad, the chord in general. Thus, our singing instruction should much more properly begin with chords and only later come to scales. For other subjects, such as geography and history, I think we should pay much more attention to how primitive people first obtained this (I dare not say science), this knowledge. We could then continue in the same way. For example, we could present geography beginning with interesting drawings of the trips of discovery to the New World, and so forth. Then the children would show much, much more interest because we would have enlivened the subject instead of presenting them with the finished results as is done today in the dry textbooks and through the dry instructions—“obstructions.”³

Dr. Steiner: It is now much too late for me to attempt to give any real concluding remarks. I am touched with a deep sense of satisfaction that what has come forth from the various speakers in the discussion was extremely interesting, and fell very naturally into what I intended in the lecture. It’s true, isn't it, that you can comprehend in what, for example, you can see in Dornach, in what we present in the various artistic activities in Dornach, that something is given that reflects the fundamental conviction of spiritual science.

Now the gentleman who just spoke so beautifully about how we can educate for artistic feeling rather than mere viewing, would see that spiritual science artistically attempts to do justice to such things. He would see that in Dornach we attempt to paint purely from color, so that people also feel the inner content of the color, of the colored surface, and that what occurs as a line results from the colored area. In this regard, what is substantial in spiritual science can work to enliven much of what it touches today. The remarks about the Herbartian pedagogy were extremely interesting to me, since in both a positive and negative sense we can learn much from Herbart. This is particularly true when we see that in the Herbartian psychology, in spite of a methodical striving toward the formation of the will, intellectualism has played a major role. You must struggle past much in Herbartian pedagogy in order to come to the principles that result from my explanation today.

Regarding the last speaker, I agree with almost everything. He could convince himself that the kind of education he demands, in all its details, belongs to the principle direction of our Waldorf School, particularly concerning the methods of teaching drawing, music and geography. We have put forth much effort, particularly in these three areas, to bring into a practical form just what the speaker imagines. For instance, in the faculty seminar we did a practice presentation about the Mississippi Valley. I think the way we prepared this presentation of a living, vivid geography lesson that does not come from some theory or intellectuality, but from human experience, would have been very satisfactory to the speaker. In place of a closing word, I therefore only wish to say that I am extremely satisfied that so many people gave such encouraging and important additions to the lecture.

• 1. Translators’ note: The needs of society are to be understood as both the requirements of the Department of Education and the inherent needs of a more humanly formed social organization.
• 2. See note, p. 87.
• 3. Translators’ note: This is a word play in German: Lejtfiden—Leidfiden

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I count it a special honour to be able to speak among you on the connection between that spiritually scientific outlook on the world to which I have devoted my life's work, and the educational activity, to which your lives are devoted. Let me begin with two introductory remarks. The first is, that what I now intend to say to you will, of course, have to be clothed in apparently theoretic words and phrases, for the simple reason that words are necessary in order to set forth our thoughts. But I say expressly at the outset, that it is not meant theoretically. For I should speak on this present subject least of all, were it not for the fact that I have always devoted a part of my activity to practical educational work, and indeed to the whole educational culture of mankind. What I want to put forward is definitely intended in this sense: it is derived from actual practice.

The second thing I would like to observe by way of introduction is this: The Spiritual Science, which I am here representing, is itself very widely and vehemently controverted and attacked as yet. And for the very reason that I represent this Spiritual Science, I can understand it well, if many an objection is brought forward at this present stage to one or other of the things I have to say. For in effect, the method which is adopted by Spiritual Science is new and unaccustomed from the points of view that still hold sway in modern thought. But it may be that the very way in which we are endeavouring to make it a real force in life, endeavouring to introduce it in so eminently practical a sphere as mar -of education, will contribute something towards an understanding, a way of approach to Spiritual Science itself.

There is no sphere in life that lies remote from the activity and interests of education. To one who has to work as a teacher or educator, the human being is entrusted at an age when he may still develop into anything in the wide world. And only when the teacher, the educator, is imbued with the very warmest interest in the whole life and civilisation of humanity, only then can he pour forth all that is needed for the teaching, the education of the child.

In bringing forward the particular subject of Spiritual Science and Education, I have this special reason: At this very point of time. Spiritual Science is intended as an element of thought and spiritual culture, to unite and gather up again the diverse spiritual and intellectual interests of mankind which have drifted so far apart in recent centuries, particularly in the 19th century. Through Spiritual Science, it is possible to draw together again into a concrete conception of the universe, all those things that have become specialised, without however failing to meet the demands of expert and special knowledge.

And to-day there is a very real reason to consider the relation of the Spiritual Science here intended, to Education. For Education, too, has had its share of the overwhelming influence that modern Natural Science, with its attendant triumphs, has exercised on all human thought and activity. Applied as a method in the sphere of Natural Science itself, the natural-scientific way of thought has led to glorious results. But at the same time—far more so than the individual realises or is conscious of—this way of thought has gained influence on all our activities. And it has gained especial influence on that activity which I call the Art of Education. Now while in the nature of the case I cannot go into the foundations of Spiritual Science as such—which I have often done in lectures in this town—there is one thing I would like to point out by way of comparison. It concerns the peculiar relation of the natural-scientific method to human life.

Consider, for example, how' the human eye comes to be this miraculous instrument, whereby in a certain sphere of sense-perception we see the outer world. This wonderful' function is fulfilled by the human eye, inasmuch as its whole construction fits it to see the surrounding world, and—I speak by way of comparison—ever and always to forget itself in the act of seeing. I might put it in this way: We must entirely invert the observing point of view (which we can only do- approximately with external scientific methods), if we would investigate and really penetrate our instrument of external, sensely sight. In the very act of seeing, we can never at the same time look back into the nature of our eye.

We may apply this image to the natural-scientific method in its relation to life. The man of modern times has carefully and conscientiously developed the natural-scientific method, until, in its Natural Law's and scientific conceptions, it reflects a faithful and objective picture of the outer world. And in the process, man has so formed and moulded his underlying mood and attitude of soul, that in his scientific observation of the world he forgets his own human self; he forgets all those things that have direct and immediate connection with human life. So it has come about, that the more we have! developed in the sense of Natural Science, the less able have we become, with this our scientific method, to see the essence of Man himself, and all that has to do with Man.

Now Spiritual Science—working entirely in the Spirit of Natural Science, but in this very spirit transcending natural- scientific knowledge—Spiritual Science would add to Natural; Science, if I may put it so, that inversion of observation which leads back again to Man. This can only be accomplished by really entering on those processes of inner life which are described in my books on the attainment of higher knowledge, or more briefly indicated in the second part of my book on “Occult Science.” Those processes do actually carry man's soul-life beyond the sphere wherein it moves in ordinary life and thought, including even Natural Science. [See “The Way of Initiation” and its sequel “Initiation and its Results” (particulars on back cover of this booklet). Dr. Steiner's book, “An Outline of Occult Science” is, unfortunately, out of print at present.]

In order to find our way into the thought of Spiritual Science, we must needs have what I would call: Intellectual Modesty. Some time ago, in a public lecture in this town, I used a certain image to indicate what is needful in this respect. Consider a child of five. Suppose you place a volume of Goethe's poems in the child's hand. A whole world is contained within its pages. The child will take it in its hand, turn it this way and that, and perceive nothing of all that would speak to the human being from out this volume. But the child is capable of development; powers of soul are slumbering within the child; and in ten or twelve years it will really be able to draw from the book what lies within it. This is the attitude we need, if we are to find our way into the Spiritual Science of which I am speaking here. We must be able to say to ourselves: By developing his intellect, his method of observation and experiment ever so carefully, the human being is brought up to a certain stage and not beyond. From that stage onwards he must take his own development in hand; and then he will develop powers which were latent and slumbering before. Then he will become aware, how before this development he confronted external Nature (so far as its spiritual essence is concerned), and, most particularly, he confronted Man, as the five-year-old child confronts the book of Goethe's poetry. In essence and in principle, everything depends on our making up our minds to this attitude of intellectual modesty. It is the first thing that counts, if we would find our way into what I have here called “Spiritual Science.”

Through adopting special methods of thinking, feeling and willing—methods which aim at making our thought independent and at training our will—through making our life of thought and will ever more and more independent of the bodily instruments, we become able, as it were, to observe ourselves. We attain the faculty of observing the human being himself. And once we are able to observe the human being, then we can also observe the growing human being, the human being in process of becoming—and this is of extraordinary importance.

It is true that the spirit is much spoken of to-day; and independence of thought is spoken of as well. But Spiritual Science as we understand it cannot join this chorus. For, by a real development of inner life, it seeks the spiritual methods to grasp the spiritual reality in actual and concrete detail. It is not concerned with that spirit of which people 'talk in a vague and misty sense, which they think of as vaguely underlying all things. The Spiritual Science here intended enters into the spiritual being of man in detail. To-day we are to speak of the being of man in process of growth, development, becoming.

People will speak, it is true—in abstract and general terms, if I may put it so—of the human individuality and of its development. And they are rightly conscious that the educator, above all people, must reckon with the development of the human being as an individual. But I may draw your attention to the fact that educationalists of insight have clearly recognised, how little the natural-scientific development of modern times has enabled man to understand any real laws or stages in the evolution of the growing human being. I will give you two examples. The Vienna educationalist, Theodor Vogt, who was well-known m the last third of the 19th century, speaking from out of the reformed Herbartian conception that he represented, made the following remark. He said: In the science of history, in our conception of the historic life of mankind, we have by no means got so far, up to the present, as to recognise how mankind evolves. ... From the evolution of species, the Natural Scientist arrives at the embryological development of the individual human being. But we have no historic conception of humanity's evolution, from which, in this sense, we might deduce conceptions about the evolving child.—This view was repeated by the Jena educationalist, Rein. It culminates in the admission, that we do not yet possess any real methods of spiritual science, such as might enable us to indicate what really lies beneath the human being's development.

In effect, we must first awaken such faculties as those to which I have just alluded, and of the cultivation of which you may read in further detail in my books. Then only are we able to approach that riddle, which meets us with such wonder when we observe how from birth onwards something works itself out from within the human being, flowing into every gesture, working itself out most particularly through language, and through all the relations which the human being enters into with his environment. Nowadays the different types of human life are, as a rule, considered too externally, from points of view of external Physiology or Biology. They make themselves no picture of the whole human being, in whom that which is bodily, that which is of the soul, and that which is spiritual, are working inwardly together. Yet if we would sensibly educate and instruct a child, it is just such a picture of the child which we must make.

* * *

Now one who, strengthened by the methods of Spiritual Science, observes the growing child, will discover, about that period of time when the change of teeth occurs—about the sixth ok; seventh year—a most significant break in the child's development. There is a constantly repeated proverb: “Nature makes no jumps.” Natura non facit saltus. That is true to a certain extent; but all these general ideas are after all one-sided. You can only penetrate their real truth, if you recognise them in their one-sidedness. For in effect Nature is continually making jumps. Take, for example, a growing plant. We can apply the proverb, “Nature makes no jumps.” Yet in the sense of Goethe's idea of metamorphosis we should have to say: “Although the green leaf of the plant is the same thing as the coloured petal, yet Nature makes a jump from the leaf to- the sepal of the calyx, from the sepal to the coloured petal, and again from the petal to the stamen.” We do not meet the reality of life if we abstractly apply the idea that Nature and Life make no jumps at all. And so it is especially in man. Man's life flows by without discontinuity, and yet, in the sense here indicated, there are discontinuities everywhere.

There is a significant break in the life of the child about the sixth or seventh year. Something enters the human organism, that penetrates it through and through. Of this, modern physiology has as yet no real conception. Outwardly, the change of teeth takes place; but something is also taking place in the spiritual and. soul-being of the child. Until this point of time, man is essentially an imitative being. His Constitution of soul and body is such that he gives himself up entirely to his surroundings. He feels his way into his surroundings; from the very centre of his will his development is such, that the lines of force, and rays of force, of his will are exactly modelled on that which is taking place in his environment. Far more important than all that we bring to the child, in this age of life, by way of admonition and correction, is the way in which we ourselves behave in the child's presence.

In real life, the intangible, imponderable elements are far more effective than what we observe externally and clearly. So it is with regard to the child's impulse to imitate. It is not only tin- gross external behaviour of the human being that matters. In every tone of voice, in every gesture, in everything the educator does in the child's presence during this period of life, lies something to which the child adapts itself.

Far more than we know, we human beings are the external impress of our thoughts. We pay little heed, in ordinary life, to the way we move our hand. Yet the way we move our hand is a faithful expression of the peculiar constitution of our soul, of the whole mood and attunement of our inner life. In the developed- soul-life of the grown-up human being, little attention is paid to the connection between the stride of the legs, the gesture of the hands, the expression of the face, and that which lies, within the soul as a deep impulse of wi)I and feeling. But the child lives its way right into these imponderable things of life. It. is no exaggeration to say: If a man most inwardly endeavours to be a good man in the presence of a child before the age of seven; if he endeavours to be sound in every way, if he conscientiously resolves to make no allowances for himself even in his inner life, in thoughts and feelings that he does not outwardly express—then, through the intangible, imponderable things of life, he works most powerfully upon the child.

In this connection there are many things still to be observed, things which, if I may so express myself, “lie between the lines.” We have become enmeshed in a more materialistic way of life, especially as regards life's more intimate and finer aspects. And so we have grown accustomed to pay little attention to these things. Yet it is only when they are rightly observed and estimated once again, that a certain impulse will enter into our educational thought and practice—an impulse that is very badly needed, especially in an age which claims to be a social age, an age of social thought.

There are certain experiences in life, which we cannot rightly estimate unless we take into account these real observations of the soul- and spiritual-life within the human being. I am referring to actual facts of experience. For instance, a father comes to you in some consternation and says: “What am I to do? My child has been stealing.” It is of course very natural for the father to be concerned about it.

But now you look into the matter more closely. You ask,

How did it happen?

The child simply went to the drawer and took out some money.

What did the child do with the money?

Well, it bought some sweets for its playmates.

Then it did not even steal for selfish reasons?

And so at length you are able to say: “Now look, the child did not steal at all. There is no question of its having stolen. Day after day the child saw its mother go to the drawer and take, out money. It thought that was the right thing to do and imitated it. The child's action was simply the outcome of the impulse which is predominant in this early age—the impulse to imitation.” Bearing in mind that this imitative impulse is the most powerful force in this first stage of childhood, we may guide the child rightly in this sense. We may direct its attention to actions, whose influence will be powerful at this stage and permanent in its effect. And rye must be fully aware that at this period of the child's life exhortations and admonitions are as yet of no assistance. It is only what works on the will, that really helps.

Now this peculiar constitution of the human being lasts until the point of time when that remarkable period, is reached physiologically—when, if I may put it so, the hardening principle makes its final onset and crystallises the permanent teeth from out of the human organism. To look into that process by the methods of Spiritual Science and see what lies beneath it. in the growing organism when this final period is reached, when the change of teeth takes place, is extraordinarily interesting. But it is still more important to follow what I just now described, namely, the spiritual psychical development that goes parallel with this Organic change, and that still takes its start from imitation.

About the seventh year a very distinct change begins to make itself felt in the spiritual and soul-nature of the child. With this change a new faculty bursts in upon the young child, a faculty of reacting to different things. Previously the eye was intent to imitate, the ear was intent to imitate. But now the child begins to listen to what goes out from grown up people as expressions of opinions, judgments, and points of view. The impulse to imitate becomes transformed into devotion to authority. Now I know that many people to-day will particularly disapprove if we emphasise the principle of authority as an important factor in education. Nevertheless, if one is out to represent the facts with open mind and serious purpose, one cannot go by programmes nor by catchwords; one must be guided simply and solely by empirical knowledge, by experience. And it must be observed how much it means for a child, to be guided by a teacher or educator, man or woman, to whom the child looks up with reverence, who becomes for the child a natural and accepted authority. It is of the very greatest significance for the growth of the human being, that at this age he will accept this or that thought as his own, because it is the thought of the grown-up man or woman whom he reveres; that he will live into a certain way of feeling, because it is their way of feeling, because in effect there is a real growing together between the young developing human being and the mature one. We should only know how much it means for the whole after life of man, if in this period of life—between the change of teeth about the sixth or seventh year, and that last great change that comes at the time of puberty in the fourteenth or fifteenth year—he had the good fortune (I use this word deliberately) to be really able to give himself up to a natural and accepted authority.

But we must not stop at the abstract generalisation; we must enter more deeply into this most important period of life—the period which begins about the sixth or seventh year and ends with puberty. The child is now taken from its home—educated or spoilt through the principle of imitation—and handed over to the school. The most important things for after life are to be done with the child during this time. Here indeed it is right to say, that not only every year but every month in the child's development should be penetrated and investigated with diligent care by the teacher or the educator. Not only in general terms—but as well as may be, even in teaching large numbers at a time, each succeeding month and year should thus be studied and observed in every individual child's development. As the child enters school, and until about the ninth year, we see the imitative impulse still working on alongside the impulse of devotion to authority, which is already making itself felt. And if we can rightly observe the working together of these two fundamental forces in the evolving human being, I hen the full and living result of such observation will provide the true basis for the method of teaching and for the curriculum.

This question came upon me very strongly during the present year, when the new “Waldorf School” had to be instituted in Stuttgart. By the sympathetic co-operation of our friend Emil Molt, we were in a position to found this school in connection with the Stuttgart firm, “The Waldorf-Astoria Cod' The Waldorf School is in the fullest sense of the word a unitary school, i.e., a school without distinction of class, a school for the whole people. [For further particulars of the Waldorf School, see Numbers 1, 2 and 5 in Volume I of the “Threefold Commonwealth” fortnightly (price 3d. each), and also Volume I, Number 2 of the bi-monthly magazine “Anthroposophy” (price 1/-). To be obtained from the Publishers of this booklet. The Waldorf School is a “unitary” school in that it makes no distinction of Class. About 500 boys and girls, between the ages of 6 and 14, or 6 and 19, are educated there; and among them the children of manual workers and of the “educated classes” are represented in fairly even proportion. They all receive the same education, up to the time when they leave school, which varies according to their future vocation and the wishes of their parents.] In its whole plan and method, and in the arrangement of the subjects, it proceeds from the impulse that Spiritual Science can give towards an Art of Education. During last September I had the privilege of giving a course of training for the group of teachers whom I had selected for this school. At that time, all these questions came upon me in a very vivid way. What I am now endeavouring to say to you is in its essential features an extract of what was given to those teachers in the training course. For they were to direct and carry on a school, founded on principles of Spiritual Science and on the social needs of this time—a real people's school, on a basis of unity.

Now in effect not only the method of instruction, but the curriculum, the arrangement of subjects, the definite aim of the teacher, can be drawn from a living observation of the evolving human being. So, for example, we shall find much in the young child's life, even after the sixth or seventh year, that still proceeds from the peculiar will-nature which alone could make it possible for the child to have so powerful an impulse to imitation. As a matter of fact, the intellect develops very much later, and it develops from out of the will. The intimate relationship which exists between the one human being—the grown-up teacher, for example—and the other human being—the growing child—this intimate relationship finds expression as a relationship from will to will. Hence in this first year of elementary school we can best approach the child if we are in a position to work upon the will in the right way. But that is just the question—How can we best work upon the will?

We can not work on the will by laying too' much stress, at this early stage, on external perception and observation—by directing the child's attention too much to the external material world. But we can very effectively approach the will if we permeate our educational work in these first years with a certain artistic, aesthetic element. And it is really possible to start front the artistic and aesthetic in our educational methods. It is not necessary to begin with reading and writing lessons, where there is no real connection between the instruction given and the forces which are coming- outwards from the soul-centre of the child. Our modern written and printed signs are in reality very far removed from the original. Look back to the early forms of writing, not among “primitive” peoples, but in so highly evolved a civilisation as that of ancient Egypt, for example. You will see how at that time, writing was thoroughly artistic in its form and nature. But in the course time this artistic element gradually became worn, down and polished away. Our written signs have become mere conventional symbols. And it is possible to go back to the immediate, elementary understanding, which man still has for that which later on became our modern writing.

In other words, instead of teaching writing in an abstract way, we can begin with a kind of drawing-writing lesson. I do not mean anything that is arbitrarily thought-out. But from the real artistic sense of the human being it is possible to form, artistically, what afterwards becomes transformed, as the child grows and develops, into the abstract signs of writing. You begin with a kind of drawing-writing or writing- drawing, and you enlarge its sphere so as to include real elements of plastic art, painting and modelling. A true psychologist will know, that what is brought to the child in this way" does not merely grasp the head—it grasps the whole human being. In effect, things of an intellectual colouring, things which are permeated by the intellect only, and by convention most particularly, like the' ordinary printed or written letters, do only grasp the head, part of man. But if we steep our early teaching of these subjects in an. artistic element, then, we grasp the whole human being. Therefore, a future pedagogy will endeavour to derive the intellectual element, and objective teaching of external things, object- lesson teaching also, from something that is artistic in character at the outset.

It is just when we approach the child artistically, that we are best able to consider the interplay of the principle of authority and the imitative principle. For in the artistic there lives something of imitation; and there also lives in it something which passes directly from the subjective man to the subjective man. Anything that is to work in an artistic way must pass through the subjective nature of man. As a human being, with your own deep inner nature, you confront the child quite differently if what you, are teaching is first steeped in an artistic quality. For there you are pouring something real and substantial into yourself as well, something that must appear to you yourself as a natural and unquestioned authority. Then you will not appear with the stamp of a merely external conventional culture; but that which is poured into you brings you near to the child in a human way, as one human being to another. Under the influence of this artistic education it will come about quite of its own accord: the child will live and grow into a natural and unquestioning acceptance of the authority of the person who is teaching him and. educating him.

This again may bring it home to us, that spirit must hold sway in education. For instruction of this kind can only be given by one who allows spirit to permeate and fill his teaching; Spirit must hold sway in our whole treatment of our teaching work, and we ourselves must fully live in all that we have to convey to the child. Here 1 am touching on another of the intangible things in the teacher's life. It is very easy, it seems to come quite as a matter of course, for the teacher as he confronts the child to appear to himself as the superior and intelligent person, compared with the simple ingenuous nature of the child. But the effects of this on our teaching work are of very great significance. I will give you a concrete example, one which I have already mentioned in other connections, in my lectures here. Suppose I want to give the child, a conception of the immortality of the human soul. I take an example, a picture of it, adapting myself to the child-like spirit. I draw the child's attention, in a real nature-lesson, to the chrysalis and the butterfly emerging from it. And now I explain to the child: Look, just as the butterfly rests in the chrysalis, invisible to- the external eye, so your immortal soul rests in your body. Just as the butterfly comes out from the chrysalis, so when you go through the gate of death, your immortal soul rises out of your body into another world. And as the butterfly enters an entirely new world when it emerges from the chrysalis, so the world into which you enter, when you rise out of the body, is a very different world from this one.

Now it is perfectly possible to think out an image like this with one's intellect. And as an “intelligent person,” while one teaches it to the child, one does not quite like to believe in it oneself. But that has its effect in education and in teaching. For by one of the intangible facts of life, through mysterious forces that work from hidden soul to hidden soul, the child, only really accepts from me what I, as teacher, believe in myself.

In effect, Spiritual Science does lead us to this point. If we have Spiritual Science, we do not merely take this picture of the butterfly and the chrysalis as a cleverly thought- out comparison, but we perceive: This picture has been placed in Nature by the divine creative powers, not merely to symbolise the immortality of the soul for the edification of man, but because, at a lower stage, the same thing is actually happening when the butterfly leaves the chrysalis, as happens when the immortal soul leaves the human body. We can raise ourselves to the point of believing in this picture as fully and directly as we should desire the child to believe in it. And if a living and powerful belief flows through the soul of the educator in this way, then will he work well upon the child. Then, his working through authority will be no disadvantage, but a great and significant advantage to the child.

In pointing out such things as this, we must continually be drawing attention to the fact that human life is a single whole, a connected thing. What we implant in the human being when he is yet a child will often re-appear only in very much later years as strength and conviction and efficiency of life. And it generally escapes our notice, because, when it does appear, it appears transformed. Suppose, for example, that we succeed in awakening in the child a faculty of feeling that is very necessary: I mean, the power of reverence. We succeed in awakening in the child the mood of prayer and reverence for what is divine in all the world. He who has learned to observe life's connections, knows that this mood of prayer rc-appears in later life transformed. It has undergone a metamorphosis, and we must only be able to recognise it in its re-appearance. For it has become transformed into that inner power of soul whereby the human being is able to influence other human beings beneficially, with an influence of blessing. No one who has not learned to pray in childhood, will in old age have that power of soul which passes over as an influence of blessing, in advice and exhortation, nay, often in the very gesture and expression of the human being, to children or to younger people. By transitions which generally remain unnoticed, by hidden metamorphoses, what we receive as an influence of grace and blessing in childhood transforms itself in a riper age of life into the power to give blessing.

In this way every conceivable force in life becomes transformed. Unless we observe these connections, unless we draw our art of education from a full, broad, whole view of life, a view that is filled with spiritual light, education will not be able to perform its task—to work with the evolving forces of the human being instead of working against them.

When the human being has reached about the ninth year of life, a new stage is entered once again—-it is not so distinct a change this time as that about the seventh year, yet it is clearly noticeable. The after-workings of the imitative impulse gradually disappear, and something enters in the growing child which can be observed most intimately if one has the will to see it. It is a peculiar relation of the child to its own ego, to its own “I.” Now of course a certain inner soul- relationship to the ego begins at a very much earlier stage. It begins in every human being at the earliest point to which ill alter life he can remember back. About this point of time, the child ceases to say “Charlie wants that” or “Mary wants that,” and begins to say “I want that.” In later life we remember hack up to this point; and for the normal human being what lies before it vanishes completely, as a rule. It is at this point that the ego enters the inner soul-life of the human being. But it does not yet fully enter the spiritual or mental life.

It is an essentially spiritual or mental experience of “I,” that first becomes manifest in the inner life of the human being about the ninth year, or between the ninth and tenth years (all these indications are approximate), Men who were keen observers of the soul have sometimes pointed out this great and significant moment in human life. Jean Paul tells us how he can remember, quite distinctly: As a very young boy he was standing in the courtyard of his parents' house, just in front of the barn (so clearly does he describe the scene), when suddenly there awoke in him the consciousness of “I.” He tells us, he will never forget that moment, when for the first time he looked into the hidden Holy of Holies of the human soul.

Such a transformation takes place about the ninth year of life, distinctly in some, less distinctly in others. And this point of time is extraordinarily important from the point of view of education and of teaching. If by this time we have succeeded in awakening in the young child those feelings, if we have succeeded in cultivating those directions of the will, which we call religious and moral, and which we can draw out in all our teaching work, then we need only be good observers of children, and we can let our authority work in this period of life—as we see it approach—in such a way that the religious feelings we prepared and kindled in the preceding period are now made firm and steadfast in the young child's soul. Tor the power of the human being to look up, with true and honest reverence from his inmost soul, to the Divine and Spiritual that permeates and ensouls the world, this period of childhood is most decisive. And in this period especially, lie who by spiritual perception can go out into the young child's life, will be guided, intuitively as it were, to find the right words and the right rules of conduct.

In its true nature, education is an artistic thing. We must approach the child, not with a normal educational science, but with an Art of Education. Even as the artist masters his substances and his materials and knows them well and intimately, so he who permeates himself with spiritual vision knows the symptoms which arise about the ninth year of life, when the human being inwardly deepens, when the ego- consciousness becomes a thing of the spirit—whereas previously it was of the soul. Whereas his previous method of teaching and education was to start from the subjective nature of the child, so now the teacher and educator will transform this into a more objective way of treating things. If we can perceive this moment rightly, we shall know what is necessary in this respect. Thus, in the case of external Nature-lessons, observation of Nature, things of Natural Science, we shall know, that before this moment these things should be brought to the child only by way of stories and fairy-tales and parables. All things of Nature should be dealt with by comparison with human qualities. In short, one should not separate the human being at this stage from his environment in Nature. About the ninth year, at the moment when the' ego awakens, the human being performs this separation of his own accord. Then he becomes ready to compare the phenomena of Nature and their relation to one another in an objective way. But before this moment in the child's life, we should not begin with external, objective descriptions of what goes on in Nature, in man's environment. Rather should we ourselves develop an accurate sense, a keen spiritual instinct, to perceive this important transformation when it comes.

* * *

Another such transformation takes place about the eleventh or twelfth year. While the principle of authority still holds sway over the child's life, something that will not appear in full development till after puberty already begins to radiate into it. It is, what afterwards becomes the independent power of judgment. After puberty, we have to work in all our teaching and education by appealing to the child's own power of judgment. But that which takes shape after puberty as the power of independent judgment, is already active in. the child at an earlier stage, working its way into the age of authority from the eleventh year onwards. Here again, if we rightly perceive what is happening in the soul-nature of the child., we can observe how at this moment the child begins to develop new interests. Its interest would be great, even before Ibis time, in Nature lessons, and descriptions, properly adapted, from Natural Science and Natural History. But a real power of comprehending physical phenomena, of understanding even the simplest conceptions of Physics, does not develop until about the eleventh or twelfth year. And when I say, a real power of understanding physical phenomena and physical conceptions, 1 know the exact scope and bearing of my statement.

There can be no real art of education without this perception of the inner laws and stages of development underlying human life. The Art of Education requires to be adapted to what is growing and developing outwards and upwards in the human being. From the real inner development of the child, we should read and learn and so derive the right curriculum, the planed teaching, the whole objective of our teaching work. What we teach, and how we teach it, all this should flow from a knowledge of the human being. But we shall gain no knowledge of the human being until we are in a position to guide cur attention and our whole world-outlook towards the spiritual—the spiritual realities that underlie the external facts of this world of the senses. Then too, it will be very clear that the intangible imponderable things of life play a real part, above all in the Art of Education.

Our modern education has evolved, without our always being fully conscious of it, from underlying scientific points of view. Thus, we have come to lay great value on lessons that centre round external objects, external objective vision. Now I do not want you to take what I am saying as though it were intended polemically or critically or by way of condemnation ex cathedra. That is by no means the case. What I want to do, is to describe the part which Spiritual Science can play in developing an educational art for the present and for the immediate future. If we have emphasised external objective methods of instruction overmuch, the reason lies, at bottom, in those habits of thought which arise from the methods and points of view of Natural Science. Now I say expressly, at the proper age of childhood and for the right subjects it is justified and good to teach the child in this external and objective way. But it is no less important to ask, whether everything that has to be communicated to the growing child can really flow from objective perception, whether it must not rather pass by another way, namely, from the soul of the teacher or educator into the soul of the child. And this is the very thing that needs to be pointed out: there are. such other ways, apart from the way of external, objective perception.

Thus, I indicated as an all-pervading principle between (be change of teeth and the age of puberty, the principle nl authority. That something is living in the teacher as an opinion or a way of feeling, this should be the reason why the child accepts this opinion or way of feeling as its own. And in. the whole way the teacher confronts the child, there must be something which works intangibly. There must in effect be something, which flows out from a knowledge and perception of life as a single whole, something which flows from the living interest that such a knowledge of life will kindle. I indicated the significance of this, when I said that what we develop in the age of childhood will often reappear, metamorphosed' and transformed, only in the grownup human being, nay, even in old age.

There is one thing we fail to observe if we carry the principle of external objective instruction to an extreme. We can, of course, bring ourselves down to the child's level of understanding. We can restrict ourselves and endeavour to place before the child only what it can see and observe and really grasp—or, at least, what we imagine it can grasp. But in carrying this principle to an extreme, we fail to observe an important law of life, which may be thus described: It is a very source of strength and power in life, if, let us say, in his 35th year a man becomes able to say to himself: “As a child you once heard this thing or that from your teacher or from the person who was educating you. You took it up into your memory and kept it there. Why did you store it in memory? Because you loved the teacher as an authority; because the teacher's personality stood before you in such a way that it was clear to you:—If he holds that belief, then you too must take it into yourself. Such was your instinctive attitude. And now you suddenly see a light; now you have become ready to understand it. You accepted it out of love for him who was your authority; and now by a full power of maturity, you recall it once again, and you recognise it in a new way. Now only do you understand it.”

Anyone who smiles at the idea of such a source of strength in after life, lacks living interest in what is real in human life. He does not know that man's life is a single whole, where all things are inter-connected. That is why he cannot rightly value how much it means, not to stop at ordinary objective lessons (which within limits are perfectly justified), but rather to sink into¹ the child's soul many things that may afterwards return into its life, from stage to stage of maturity.

Why is it that we meet so many, many people to-day, inwardly broken in their lives? Why is it that our heart must bleed, when we look out over vast territories where there are great tasks to perform, where men and women walk through life, seemingly crippled and paralysed before these tasks? It is because, in educating the children as they grew up into life, attention was not paid to the development of those inner forces that are a. powerful support to man in after years, enabling him to take his stand firmly in the world.

Such things have to be taken into account, if we would pass from a mere Natural Science of pedagogy to a real Art of Education. Education is a thing for mankind as a whole. For that very reason it must become an Art, which the teacher and educator applies and exercises individually. There are certain inner connections which we must perceive if we would truly penetrate what is so often said instinctively, without being clearly understood. For example, the demand is quite rightly being voiced that education should not be merely intellectual. People say that it does not so much matter for the growing man to receive knowledge and information; what matters, they say, is that the element of will in him should be developed, that he should become skilful and strong, and so forth. Certainly, this is a right demand; but the point is that such a demand cannot be met by setting up general principles and norms and standards. It can only be met when we are able to enter into the real stages and periods of the human being's evolution, in concrete detail.

We must know that it is the artistic and aesthetic that inspires the human will. We must find the way, to bring the artistic and aesthetic to bear on the child's life of will. And we must not seek any merely external way of approach to the will; we must not think of it merely in the sense of external Physiology or Biology. But we must seek to pass through the element of soul and spiritual life which is most particularly expressed in childhood. Many things will yet have to be permeated with soul and spirit. In our Waldorf School in Stuttgart, we have for the first time attempted to transform gymnastics and physical exercises, which in their method and organic force have generally been based on physiological considerations, into a kind of Eurhythmic Art. What you can now see almost any Saturday or Sunday in the performances of Eurhythme at Dornach, is of course intended, in the first place, as a special form of art. It is a form of art using as its instrument the human organism itself, with all its inner possibilities of movement. But while it is intended as a form of art, it also affords the possibility of permeating with soul and spirit those movements of the human being which are ordinarily developed into the more purely physiological physical exercises. When this is done, the movements that the human being executes will not merely be determined by the idea of working, in such and such a way, on such and such muscles or groups of muscles. But they will flow naturally, from each inner motive- of the soul into the muscular movement, the movement of the limbs. And we, who represent the spiritualisation of life from the point of view of Spiritual Science, are convinced that Eurhythme will become a thing of great importance, for Education on the one hand, and on the other hand for Health. For in it we are seeking the sound and natural and healthy relationship which must obtain, between the inner life and feeling and experience of the soul, and that which can evolve as movement in the human being as a whole. Thus, what is generally sought for through an external Physiology or through other external considerations, is now to be sought for through the perception of man as being permeated by soul and spirit. [For further information about Eurhythme (not to be confused with other forms of art known in England as “Eurhythme” see “The Threefold Commonwealth” fortnightly, Volume I, Numbers 2, 5 and 6. Demonstrations are given and classes arranged in London and other parts of Britain. For particulars, apply to the Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in London.]

Thus, in the first years of elementary school, the whole principle of teaching must be saturated with the different arts, in order to work upon the will. And most particularly; that part of education which is generally thought of as an education of the will—gymnastics and physical exercises—must now be permeated with soul and spirit. But that which is soul and spirit in man must first be recognised, in its real scope, in its potentialities, in its concrete manifestation.

So again, we must recognise the connection between two faculties of the human soul—a connection which has not yet been properly discovered by modern Psychology, for in effect modern Psychology is out of touch with Spiritual Science. If we can look objectively into that important period of change which I described as occurring about the ninth year, we shall see how at that moment a very peculiar thing is happening, on the one hand, in the child's faculties of feeling, in its life of feeling. The child grows more deeply inward. New shades of feeling make their appearance. It is as though the inner soul-life were becoming more independent, in its whole feeling of the outer world of Nature. On the other hand, something else is taking place, which will only be noticed if one can observe the soul really intimately. It is certainly true, as Jean Paul observed and stated in a very penetrating epigram, that we learn more in the first three years of our life than in the three years we spend at the University. In the first three years, our memory is still working organically, and for actual life we learn far more. But about the ninth year a peculiar relationship a relationship which plays more into the conscious H/c comes about between the life of peeling and the tile of memory. These things must be seen; for those who cannot see them, they are simply non-existent.

Now, it we can really perceive these intimate relationships between the life of feeling and the memory, and if we rightly cultivate and nurture them, we find in them the right aspect for all that part of our leaching work in which a special appeal has to be made to the child's memory. As a matter of fact, appealing to the memory we ought always at the same time to appeal to the life of feeling. Particularly in our History lessons, in all stories from History, we shall find just the right shades of colouring in the way to tell the story, if we know that everything that is meant to be memorised should be permeated, as we give it out, by something that plays over into the life of feeling—the life of feeling, which at this age has grown more independent. And if we recognise these connections in life, we shall rightly place our History lesson in relation to the whole plan and curriculum. In this way also, we shall gain a correct view of historic culture in general.

Through all that primarily works upon the memory, we shall at the same time influence the life of feeling; just as we began, through artistic elements, to work upon the life of will. Then, after this period in life, we shall gradually find it possible to let the intellectual element work it way out through the elements of will and feeling. If we do not proceed in this way—if in our teaching and educating work we do not rightly develop the intellectual element from out of the elements of will and feeling—then we are working against, not with, the evolving forces of the human being.

You will have seen from the whole tenor of this lecture that in outlining the relation between Spiritual Science and the Art of Education the real point is that we so apply our Spiritual Science that it becomes a knowledge and perception of man. And in the process, we ourselves gain something from Spiritual Science which .passes into our will, just as everything which has in it the germ of art passes over into the will of man. Thus, we get away from a pedagogic science as a mere science of norms and general principles which always has its definite answers ready to hand: “Such and such should be the methods of education.” But we transplant, into our own human being, something that must live within our will—a permeation of will with spiritual life- in order that we may work, from our will, into the evolving forces of the child. In the sense of Spiritual Science, the Art of Education must rest on a true and effective knowledge of man. The evolving man—man in process of becoming—is then for us a sacred riddle, which we desire to solve afresh every day and every hour. If we enter the service of mankind in this spirit with our Art of Education, then we shall be serving human life from out of the interests of human life itself.—In conclusion, I should like to draw your attention once again to the points of view from which we started.

The teacher or educator has to do with the human being in that age, when there must be implanted in human nature and drawn forth from human nature, all those potentialities which will work themselves out through the remainder of the human being's life. There is, therefore, no sphere of life, which ought not somehow to concern and touch the person 1 whose task it is to teach, to educate. But it is only those who learn to understand life from the spirit, who can understand it. To form and mould human life, is only possible for those who—to use Goethe's expression—are able spiritually to form il. And it is this which seems to me important above all things in the present day: that that formative influence on life, which is exercised through education, may itself be moulded according to the spirit, and ever more according to the spirit.

Let me repeat, it is not for purposes of criticism or laying clown the law that these words have been spoken here to-day. It is, because in ail modesty we opine that Spiritual Science, with those very points of knowledge that it gains on the nature of man, and hence on the nature of evolving man, can be of service to the Art of Education. We are convinced of its power to bring fountains of fresh strength to the Educational Art. And this is just what Spiritual Science would do and be. It would take its part in life, not as a strange doctrine or from a lofty distance, but as a real ferment of life, to saturate every single faculty and task of man. It is in this sense that I endeavour to speak on the most varied spheres of life, to influence and work into the most varied spheres of life, from the point of view of Spiritual Science. If to-day I have spoken on the relation of Spiritual Science to Education, you must not put it down to any immodest presumption on my part. You must ascribe it to the firm conviction, that if we in our time would work in life in accordance with the spirit, very serious investigation and penetration into spiritual realities will yet be necessary—necessary above all in this our time. You must ascribe it to the honest and upright desire, for Spiritual Science to take its share in every sphere of life, arid particularly in that sphere, so wonderful, so great, so full of meaning—the formative instruction and education of man himself.

Printed for the Publishers by Charles Raper (t.u.).
194a Mare Street, Hackney, E.8.

Last night I tried to give some thoughts here about what a spiritual scientific worldview sets out to achieve, about the sources from which it originates, and I tried to draw attention to how this spiritual scientific worldview wants to place itself in a similar way in the spiritual cultural development of humanity, as the natural scientific worldview placed itself in the spiritual life of humanity centuries ago. Most of the honored audience is aware that here in this country, near Basel, on a hill surrounded by beautiful natural surroundings, in Dornach, a building is to be erected - work on this building has already progressed to a certain extent - that is intended to serve the spiritual-scientific world view, and which is to be, so to speak, a place where this spiritual-scientific world view can be cultivated in a right and dignified way.

Now, of course, it is certainly not possible to judge anything that is unfinished. But among the many voices and judgments that have come from the outside world to those who have to do with this building, there is so much that is adventurous, so much that is completely misunderstood and inaccurate, that it might perhaps be of interest to talk here in this city, in whose vicinity this building is located, about the principle of what is intended with this building. I would like to make it clear that this evening I will not be discussing the artistic or other details of this building, but will confine myself to a general description of what characterizes this building as a setting for spiritual scientific research. Anyone who has become familiar with the spiritual scientific world view and at the same time is aware of the prevailing habits of thought and feeling in the present day will not be at all surprised when those who have not yet concerned themselves much with the spiritual scientific world view see all kinds of fantastic, dreamy, perhaps even crazy and twisted things in it. Basically, however, this will appear quite natural to anyone whose whole soul is immersed in the spiritual-scientific world view. But nor will anyone be surprised that the architectural framework of such a structure, which - and this should be stated explicitly - is undertaken as a first, weak attempt, can often appear to the outside world as something adventurous, fantastic, and strange. After all, what lives in this spiritual-scientific world-view current, with all the people who profess this world-view current, is often and quite understandably taken at face value today.

To mention just one thing, really only as something symptomatic: After a lecture I was once asked whether a woman who embraces the spiritual scientific world view must wear her hair short and eccentric clothing. Surely that is not particularly appealing? Yes, I was also asked whether anyone could believe that women could somehow advance in their spiritual development by cutting their hair and wearing peculiar clothes? Such questions have really been asked, and they are actually not fundamentally different from some of the strange things that can be heard from some quarters, not only about the way the Dornach building is shaped, but also about what is to be done in this Dornach building, what mysterious things are to take place in this building in the future. I believe that an understanding of the design of this building as a house for spiritual science can best be gained by sketching out at least a few strokes of the origin of the building.

Spiritual science has been practised by a number of people for years. It goes without saying that at the beginning of its development it had to be cultivated in the spaces that are currently available in the world. Now it became apparent in various cities, including one in Germany, that the premises that had been used until then were gradually becoming too small as the number of participants in the spiritual-scientific worldview grew. So they thought about how to build their own house in this city for the cultivation of the spiritual-scientific worldview. Since the spiritual-scientific worldview not only produces certain ideas of beauty and art from its sources, but can also have a fertilizing effect on artistic creativity itself, the aim was to construct a building that, in its uniqueness, would be a framework for spiritual science, so that the world of feeling corresponding to this way of thinking would be expressed in the artistic form.

Another idea was connected with this. The need arose to express what spiritual science has to say about the laws and facts of the spiritual world not only through words, which in a certain way can only hint at the spiritual facts and spiritual laws hidden behind the physical, but to express it in a living presentation, one could say - if the word is taken with the necessary seriousness - to express it through a theatrical presentation. How could one arrive at this necessity for a theatrical presentation from the spiritual science itself?

Well, spiritual science wants to be something that, although the human soul rises through spiritual science to the regions of spiritual life, of the invisible and the supersensible, nevertheless directly engages with life. Spiritual science does not want to be something unworldly and escapist; in the strictest sense of the word, it wants to be a servant of life, a servant of life for those souls who, for enlightenment about what they experience in life, need insight into the deep connections of existence.

Take, for example, something very close at hand. People meet each other in life. We know that one soul meets another; perhaps at first the other person does not make any particular impression on the first, even though the first has the opportunity to get to know them well. In this way, you get to know hundreds and hundreds of people without being particularly impressed by any of them. But it is not like that with one soul. You feel drawn to this one soul in the first hour, perhaps even earlier, in the deepest sense. You feel something related in it; you do not ask what the relationship is; but that, of which we are not even aware, lives in the subconscious depths of the soul's life. It becomes the shaping of our further life. We are brought together with such a personality by bonds that are of deep, most important significance for our further life.

Spiritual science shows that man has a soul essence that can be brought, through the development of himself, to lift itself out of the physical and can be viewed purely spiritually. Spiritual science, not through philosophical speculation but through direct, real soul experience, thus learns that an eternal being, which goes through birth and death and is linked to the physical body for the time between birth - or let us say conception - and death, is present in man. And just as we have seen that our soul essence, before it enters its physical existence through birth or conception from a spiritual world, was already present in earlier earthly lives, so too does spiritual science show that our soul essence, when it has passed through the gate of death, has gone through a life between death and a new birth, in order to then bring to expression in a new life what it has carried through the spiritual world as results, as fruits one might say, of this life, in order to shape it anew in a new life. All these things are difficult for today's way of thinking to understand, but at the same time they are things that in the not too distant future will certainly have entered into the general consciousness of mankind to such an extent that human life will no longer be imaginable without these things being taken for granted.

Now, in response to what was said yesterday, I would like to say that even in ordinary life, without a person becoming a spiritual researcher, he goes out of his physical body with his soul every night from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up and lives in a purely spiritual world. I already mentioned yesterday that dreams arise, dreams about the nature of external experiences, about the nature of what passes by during the day. Of course, these dreams are not such that they can provide enlightenment about the spiritual worlds. But if one does not approach the dream life superficially, as often happens today, but interprets it oneself with the probe of spiritual research, if one can see through the chaotic, the fantastic of dream experiences with understanding, and if one can separate from these what is only reminiscence, only memory of everyday life, then something remains at the bottom of the dream images that can be characterized as saying: there is something in dreams that has not been lived out in ordinary physical life.

Let us assume that we met with some personalities one day. We can then dream of them and of what we experienced with them. What we dream can be completely different from any memories, but it does not have to be that way. These experiences that we had with individual personalities can be transformed in such a way that we say to ourselves: “You neither experienced this in being with these personalities, nor did you think this.” The whole thing has shifted, so to speak, and something different has emerged from it. And if you now investigate – I can only briefly hint at this – you realize that in this unexperienced, but in the dream pushing through, something lives out of what still keeps us away from the personalities we have come together with, but what contains the seeds of something that will be experienced with them in a later life, something that is carried through the gate of death and will bring one together again with these personalities in a later life.

Now it seems fantastic what I am saying, but the one who can examine dreams in a spiritual scientific way knows that in these dreams, albeit chaotically, that which becomes fate for a person in later lives is already announced in the soul. We carry something in the depths of our minds that reaches into the distant, distant future, and what is just as decisive for our destiny in later life as the plant germ is for the formation of the flowers and leaves of the plant. And in the same way, in what we experience as fate, we can see the results of what was formed in the core of our soul in earlier earthly experiences. This is how man stands in the world. When he meets another person, there are forces at the bottom of his soul, soul forces, which he is not aware of, but in which he is alive. I would like to say that human life is interwoven, permeated and interwoven by that which determines man, which sometimes determines him to the most important and weighty actions of his life, but which does not come up so much in full day consciousness. How we place ourselves in life, how we place ourselves in the whole world, how we are determined by other people, by the whole world and its events, is based on hidden, supersensible experiences.

'If you look at modern dramatic art, it represents above all what takes place consciously in front of people. And it is quite natural that a drama appears all the more transparent the more it is composed merely of what can be directly surveyed. Those deeper forces that determine the human soul, that are connected with the soul, insofar as there is something in this soul that goes beyond birth and death, cannot be represented in ordinary drama. But the fact that life is dominated by such forces is an immediate result of spiritual science. Now spiritual science, by living out itself, not theoretically, not philosophically, but genuinely artistically, can come to a dramatic representation of life through something other than the word, so that in the play, in the way how the dramatic characters are juxtaposed and grouped, how the entire dramatic action is shaped, the deepest forces of life are expressed, which we do not talk about in ordinary life and which we often do not bring to consciousness. What determines and rules life from its depths can basically only be understood if one looks into this life with the same methods that spiritual science uses to look into what is behind external nature, into what transcends and determines the world. A deepening of human relationships, a deepening of the human soul's relationship to the world, that is what must underlie such drama, I would say, such dramatic expression of the facts of spiritual science.

So, in order to, so to speak, sensualize what spiritual science has to say about human life, dramatic representations had to be presented. In the early days we had to present such dramatic performances in ordinary theaters. It is understandable that the ordinary theaters, which are really - nothing at all should be said against them - intended for quite different tasks and goals, cannot provide the right setting for what this spiritual scientific worldview wants. Thus the idea arose from these and other reasons, arising out of pure necessity, to carry out such a building project ourselves and in doing so to combine an auditorium with a space – which does not need to be called a 'stage' – a space that is suitable for allowing such performances, drawn from the spiritual-scientific point of view, to be performed in it.

I am mentioning all this about the origin of our plan because all sorts of things have been said about what this building should contain. It has been thought that ghosts will only haunt the place, that ghosts will be cited there, that people will come into contact with all kinds of ghosts. No, that is not the case, but it is a matter of seriously grasping the depths of life, which are there, which people long and thirst for, and which are presented to the human soul through spiritual science, not through spooks and ghosts, but through artistic creation, artistic design with the means, which must be means of expression for that which has been hinted at as grounding life ever more deeply. It is with these means, these forms of expression, that spiritual science should speak to the audience in this building. This building in Dornach is therefore intended to be a house for cultivating spiritual science through the word and spiritual science through presentation. It goes without saying that as spiritual science advances, many other things will be connected with it, but it had to be be mentioned.

Now, basically, everything that is expressed in art, if it is to be real art, is a revelation of that which works through the human soul as a world view. Otherwise, art remains a mere appendage of life, an idle addition to life. Let us try to imagine ourselves in those art epochs that were truly great epochs of artistic development. Of course, because of the limited time available to us today, we can only touch on the most characteristic aspects, but let us try to realize how, in the dawn of the Italian Renaissance, Renaissance painting, in all that it offered, was in the deepest, most characteristic sense of the word an expression of what permeated and inspired the Christian world view at that time, what was revealed in it. There we see in Leonardo da Vinci's, in Michelangelo's, in Raphael's creations, what pervaded the mind as a world view. All art that does not flow with inner necessity from a world view is only an addition to life and not art in the real sense.

However, it must be clear that when we speak of a “world view,” we do not mean that it demands to flow out into art, as it were, and also not in such a way that this world view only touches our minds, as is the case with some modern philosophical or scientific world views that only affect the mind. When a worldview is built on mere philosophical or scientific concepts and ideas based on reason, there is no need to create or shape the framework, the architecture, in which the word of this worldview is expressed. But when a worldview seizes the entire human soul, when everything that vibrates in the human soul, in feelings and will impulses, is seized by this worldview, when the whole person belongs to this worldview, then this worldview is one that is not merely conceived, but brings the human being into connection with the whole world around him, then this world view is one that does not merely live in its concepts, but, by forming its relationship to the world around it, sees in all that it sees in its surroundings a continuation of its own inner in every tree, every cloud, every mountain.

Everything that surrounds us externally and everything that can be spiritually assumed behind what surrounds us externally wants to be grasped in a living connection with what we experience inwardly. Through his world view, the human being wants to grow together with everything that surrounds him; he wants to grasp his surroundings, not only in abstract understanding, but he wants to grasp spiritually and soulfully with his whole mind what extends out there in space. When, therefore, the world view takes hold of the whole person, it demands to flow out and radiate into the form, into everything that surrounds us. Since we cannot pursue a worldview in the great outdoors according to the needs of today's life, since it does not provide us with the space in which we can pursue a worldview, a spiritual-scientific worldview demands that it be framed by that with which the person pursuing this worldview is truly and inwardly connected.

Let us just realize that there is a core of being in every human being that is spiritual and soulful, that goes out of the human being in sleep. Let us realize that this spiritual-soul core of our being can become independent of the physical human being by recognizing, by grasping the whole world in a living, cognizing way. This core of being unites with the outer world in a completely different way than the human being who only uses the senses and his brain-bound intellect. While we are in the world of the senses, the human being stands here; the world is outside, is, as it were, spatially removed. As we advance into spiritual knowledge, we have to recognize that this spiritual knowledge is something that is much more intimately connected with the things and beings that are to be grasped by this spiritual knowledge than the sensual things are grasped by our senses. When the spiritual researcher with his soul-spiritual relates in such a way that he recognizes outside of his body – as I explained yesterday – he merges, as it were, identifies with everything in the environment. While we, when we stretch out our hand and point to something sensual, keep this sensuality outside of us, when we recognize something spiritually or soulfully, we connect with everything that fills the spiritual and soul world; we immerse ourselves in the spiritual and soul realm.

Let us now bear in mind that this spiritual scientific worldview should be expressed in the artistic realm. Is it not natural then that the need arises to have such an architecture, such an artistic framework, from which the soul can imagine: if you take the next thing that surrounds you here, should it not be something that arises directly from your spiritual-soul life itself; should it not be something that you would like to experience when you want to be with your immediate surroundings? Well, it necessarily follows that a very special form, a very special spatial arrangement, emerges. When we make a physical gesture, we are satisfied when the hand or the arm takes on the form of this gesture. When we speak of the spiritual context in which the soul comes into contact with its surroundings through spiritual knowledge, the gestures come out of us, the gestures directly populate our surroundings; that which otherwise lives in our skin, in that we are physical human beings, that comes out of us in spiritual knowledge, one might say it becomes a spiritual gesture that lovingly embraces the surroundings.

What this spiritual gesture wants to grasp, what it wants to touch, what it wants to see, the forms in which it wants to live, that is what the basic design must provide for a building in which spiritual science is practised. The forms, the colors, everything artistic must arise directly out of that which can be experienced with the world when it is understood spiritually. Thus, a building that is to serve the spiritual scientific world view is so directly connected to the essence of spiritual science itself in its forms, colors, and everything that is created, that spiritual science must transform itself out of its ideas and words into artistic forms. And by transforming itself in this way into artistic forms, it creates the necessary artistic framework for what must be done within the structure.

Now, very specific difficulties arise here from the thought habits of our time. Spiritual science is really only in its beginning, and that which shines forth for the human being, perhaps not so very far in the future, for the one who stands in spiritual science with his whole soul, is nevertheless quite fundamentally present in what we can pursue in the present as spiritual science. Hence it is that among those who today approach spiritual science, there are many who, though not attached to outward materialistic prejudices, are still attached to other prejudices. How often must we see that just those who approach spiritual science with inner zeal of their soul, often with fanatical zeal, yes, even too fanatical zeal, with fanatical zeal that borders on untruthfulness, still cling to all kinds of concepts from mysticism and theosophy, which one would like to overcome through true spiritual science. Do we not very often hear a popular definition of mysticism today: Mysticism is that which cannot be understood, that which cannot be grasped. Mysticism is that which must remain hidden. Some people believe themselves to be infinitely profound when they utter the word “occult” every quarter of an hour, when they say, “These are occult truths!” It is precisely through the clarity made possible by spiritual science that one would like to eliminate such things.

I myself have experienced (please forgive me for mentioning such examples in order to characterize them) how, twenty-seven or twenty-eight years ago, in the city where I lived at the time, various Theosophists approached me and explained what otherwise reasonable people take for an ordinary poem or a dramatic poem, or otherwise a work of art or even a painting, they have explained it by looking for this or that meaning in it, which one must first spin into it if one wants to find it in it. If they wanted to say something very significant to show that they know more than ordinary reasonable people, then they said: That is abysmally deep! That was something you could hear at every turn back then; it was thought to be a very special way of saying something. Sometimes people don't seek to penetrate the things of the world, but rather to put something into them, to mix something in; and what they don't understand, what they don't penetrate, seems particularly deep to them.

We have even had to experience, for example, that Shakespeare's 's “Hamlet” drama, which everyone must take as self-explanatory, has been interpreted by Theosophists in such a way that one principle is seen in Hamlet, another principle in other characters and yet another in yet others; all sorts of things were pulled in and added. It was miserable, terrible. One could say: Yes, this Shakespeare did not just want to depict this dreamy Danish prince, but a particular principle. As if the work of art would gain something by turning a human being into an allegorical-symbolic straw man and a dramatic structure into an external skeleton of Theosophical-philosophical truths! It can happen that one seeks what is truly deeper in the symbols and allegories, while life becomes impoverished when one sees it only in symbols and allegories.

The rich life becomes impoverished when one believes that one can find something deeper in the symbols. There are people who see something special in putting a pentagram on any old wall or anywhere else. They don't realize what this pentagram is, they don't understand it at all, but this pentagram, that is the number five, the pentagram is directed upwards, you can talk a lot about it, you can whisper and obscure a lot about it and obscure, and if you can say something that is not really connected with the five lines that are intertwined, then you are convinced that you have said or expressed something particularly profound. Or even if you attach the snake staff, the so-called Caduceus, somewhere, then you believe you have done something very special. Anyone who somehow puts up such abstract symbols and forms and believes that they have something to do with art is like someone who has notes in front of him and spins and theorizes all kinds of abstractions about their form, while only the person who has a natural relationship to the notes, to whom the musical concepts arise, can truly appreciate the notes, in that the sound fixed in the notes comes to life in such a way that the sound lives in the mind. Only in relation to what lives in the mind can that which is recorded with the external note symbols have any meaning.

When it comes to a building that is intended to serve true spiritual science, it is only natural to have to deal with such misconceptions, which come from false mysticism, false theosophy, and all kinds of adventurous ideas. If the intention is not to express some kind of empty concepts in stone and wood, but to depict something artistic, then it is eminently necessary that nothing be given a symbolic form by a philosophical or theosophical idea or some mystical non-idea , but it is necessary that what emanates from the idea, what the mind experiences inwardly, shapes itself through the creative power of the soul into form and color, so that the art does not need an explanation, but explains itself. Art that needs an explanation is not art at all.

The aim is that anyone who understands the language of this structure should not need an explanation of the structure. Of course, no one who has not learned Spanish cannot understand a Spanish poem. Those who understand the language of spiritual science do not need an explanation of the structure; for them, without a word being said, there is something self-explanatory in this structure because they have their joy, their upliftment, an inner realization of the soul forces from the direct connection with what is standing there, with what really lives in the form and in the color. One would like to say that a picture is no longer a real work of art, where one needs to write below what it actually represents. A picture is only a work of art when one has only to look at it and when all that the picture has to say follows from what one sees. If we therefore seek symbolism or allegory in the Dornach building, if we seek something that requires us to answer the question, “What does this or that mean?” after every step, then nothing will be found in the Dornach building that corresponds to this. But if we seek something in the Dornach building that provides answers to the question, “Which forms does one find beautiful who has a spiritual-scientific feeling? What forms would he who wishes to gather his spiritual strength around him like to have around him? Then the answer to these questions will be found in the Dornach building.

But in a certain respect spiritual science is something that seeks to establish itself as a new element in our cultural life. It is therefore understandable that such a setting must also be something that, in a certain way, introduces something new into our artistic life. And here, at this point, I would like to emphasize that I ask you not to believe that what one might have in mind as architecture, or as an artistic expression of what spiritual science can give, has already been achieved in the Dornach building. The Dornach building is a beginning, and as a beginning it is as incomplete as any beginning can be. The limited funds that were available, despite the fact that the building took up considerable funds for certain concepts, only allowed the very first step to be taken. And even the work that was necessary from circles of friends could initially only make a very first start on what can present itself to the soul as a new style of art, as it must arise out of spiritual science itself.

Therefore, I would ask you to consider this Dornach building only from the point of view of a very first, primitive beginning, with all the defects and imperfections of a beginning; to consider it only from the point of view of asserting aspects of artistic creation of forms that correspond to spiritual-scientific feeling and sensing, not to spiritual-scientific thinking, but to feeling and sensing when it is artistically intensified. What is being built today, still very imperfectly, on that beautiful hill outside, is really the primitive beginning of something that will one day be formed into a real beauty, into an adequate expression of what spiritual science has to give to human cultural development. Therefore, it must seem quite understandable when so many objections are raised from this or that side against what is being built out there, when so much is found to be imperfect and incomplete. But I would like to mention some of the, one could say, basic feelings that can guide one in the architecture of such a building.

As I said, I cannot go into details today due to the limited time. I would just like to recall a saying of Michelangelo, in reference to the old master of architectural art, Vitruvius, a saying that truly reflects the idea, the essence of architecture. Michelangelo says: Only he who knows human anatomy is capable of truly grasping the inner necessity that underlies an architectural plan. It is a strange saying, but for someone who can engage with such things, it is perfectly understandable. When we survey the whole of nature, when we bring to our soul all the forces at work in nature, when we bring to our soul the formations that live in nature, then we ask ourselves: for an unbiased observer of the whole of nature and the world, where does all this world-becoming, all this world activity, point to? They point ultimately to the human form. In the human form, there is something before us of which we can say, in terms of form and in terms of the way it expresses itself, that Goethe's words apply: 'Man is placed at the summit of nature, so he regards himself as a whole nature that has to produce a summit within itself once again. To do so, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art, which takes a prominent place alongside his other deeds and works.

That that which man himself then reshapes when he, as an artist, continues nature, so to speak, will therefore gain the most diverse points of reference precisely from what has been shaped from the whole world and its secrets into the human form, the human structure with all its gestures, with all its life. Today, it is not possible to go into architectural styles or the development of architecture. Those who are truly familiar with the development of architecture know that, while it is true that the essence of artistic creation is most difficult to see in architectural art, it is also expressed in this architectural art. But because this essence of artistic creation is most difficult to see in architectural art, it shall be shown in sculpture. The same could be shown in painting, in music, in other arts.

In our time, precisely because the materialistic view and attitude has taken hold of everything, there is little real insight into what the essence of artistic creation actually is, which is the emergence of art from the inner soul activity of the human being. Today, the artist is so often obliged to rely on the model, and the person who looks at something that is a work of art has the first question: Is this natural? Does it depict this or that naturally? Such judgments do not belong to real art, but to the decline of art. Real art is connected with what happens inwardly in man. When the sculptor creates a face, something of the feelings and inner soul experiences must truly live in him, which the physiognomy, which even the gesture of the face, conjures up from the depths of the soul. If it lives in the soul of the artist, then what lives in him feeling and creating can pour out into what he shapes.

The forms that we reproduce architecturally are not so close to what we experience directly or what lives in our soul. But in a certain way, what can be architecturally designed does arise from what is experienced in the human soul. I have already indicated how the gesture is continued, how that which can be created in the environment emerges from the movement, from the gesture - not from the gesture that the physical hand makes, but from the gesture that the spiritual organs make when they want to grasp the immediate environment. What is experienced inwardly, to be shaped in forms and colors and in other artistic means so that one stands in everything in it, so that what one creates in space as forms and colors is a continuation of the inner being that flows out into the forms, into all curves and inclinations, into all colors that cover the walls: that is what spiritual science wants to show.

Let us look at how the building should be designed from this point of view. As was explained in the description of the genesis, the challenge is to present to the audience's eyes and ears something that becomes clear to human knowledge through the results of spiritual science. Spiritual science is something that should be absorbed by the soul in a concentrated way; those who want to absorb what is presented in spiritual science must be concentrated. We are therefore dealing with a space for the audience and a space for what is to be presented from the sources of spiritual science.

When a person is collected, he must close himself off from the outside world; he must, as it were, hold his powers together. This is the outer nature of the structure. What kind of space will have to be created if what is in the people who are in such a space is to express itself meaningfully, but also to continue in the surroundings? It is quite clear, not for abstract concepts but for artistic sensibilities, that a rotunda must be created and that, above all, the collection can best be presented in a dome-shaped space. The dome-shaped conclusion expresses what is really alive there, not in a symbolic or allegorical way, but rather in such a way that, as it were, an excavation is made in the room, I would say, that the space is pushed back, and the way the space is pushed back results in the architectural form. In essence, therefore, such a building, which is based on interior design, must be a building that takes its form from the fact that what happens in it vibrates and bumps into its surroundings, and that the vibrations persist. What I have only hinted at so far could be developed further. It would then become clear that two rotundas are created by the two departments - the one derived from the humanities and the other from the audience; two rotundas that are connected, however, that must belong together. This would become clear, not through abstract thought, but by feeling it out in a very artistic way. The two interconnected round structures would arise in the middle, overlapping and closed at the top by parts of spherical surfaces (Figs. 1, 3, 8, 9).

It goes without saying that the exterior architecture, I would say, is of lesser importance for such a building, which is dedicated to inner contemplation and concentration. Everything that seeks to be artistically shaped in forms and colors must arise from within, must be projected from the inside out. What is formed on the outside is, so to speak, that which arises from the fact that, by repelling the waves of the world, the other waves of the world approach again, meet with what reaches out into space; and in the encounter, what is formed is, if I may use the word, the outer form, the outer decoration. But the whole must be formed out of this fundamental idea. Out of this fundamental idea, but out of the felt, sensed fundamental idea, this outer form necessarily arose. Technically, it was not at all easy to execute what you see executed there: to join spherical surfaces together in such a way that the thing can technically exist. And I may mention here that we were able to solve this problem, which has not been solved in architecture before, through the insight and efforts of a Basel engineer friend of ours. In this way we gave the outer form.

In the same way, we must think about how the building itself is to be designed. If you walk around the building, you will find three gates (Figs. 3-9). These three gates are designed in such a way that you may wonder about their forms. Why are these forms exactly as they appear to us? Is there an answer to the question: Do these gates have to be designed in this way?

Yes, you can get an answer, but it cannot be an abstract, philosophical one, nor can it be an unartistic one , but one could say something like this: Yes, I also know something else where something comes in from the outside into an interior, how people will enter through the gate into the interior, I know, for example, the human eye. Light enters through the eye to do its work, the weaving of light, inside the human being. And now do not ask for some abstract idea of how the eye is formed, but feel how the light necessarily evokes a very specific design of the eye. In order for light to come from the outside into the human interior, it needs the eye; in order for the light to propagate, it must come into the interior through something that is designed like the eye. Look at our gates, then you will have to give the answer: Let us assume that there are people who want to gain a certain relationship with spiritual science; these people enter this room from the outside through the gate. The fact that they enter, felt and sensed vividly, should be expressed in these forms of the gate.

And again, we enter the room (Figs. 28, 29). From the way I have depicted it, you can see that there are spectators sitting in it. In the smaller room, which is also a round structure and adjoins the other (Figs. 55, 62), something is taking place that is a revelation. It is not a ghostly or spectral revelation, but a natural revelation of the results of spiritual science, only it is completely transformed from the philosophical-theoretical into the artistic. There are spectators concentrating on what is happening in the space of the performance. The spectators' attention rushes through the space. Now let us imagine that this space, completely animated by the attention of the spectators, should reveal itself within itself. The whole atmosphere, which, so to speak, must take hold of the soul when it feels: There are spectators, there are listeners, there are attentive people, people in whose souls what is happening before them is taking place, this whole atmosphere, this feeling is continued in the structure of the columns that run along the room, is continued in the peculiar sculptural forms that .

There is a single axis of symmetry that runs from the entrance through the center of the room, and the shapes on the individual columns indicate that the audience's attention is directed towards the performance space, and that what emanates from the performance space in turn comes towards them (Fig. 29). If you look at what the columns are supporting, you will recognize from the forms carved out of the wood how attention really does encounter what comes towards it from the representational space, and how this is continued. It is not just depicted, it is really captured in the gestures in these wooden structures in the living life.

The whole thing is designed down to the material. I have heard it said that it is a complicated idea of these Theosophists out there in Dornach that they make their wooden columns in such a way that they always use different woods for the individual columns. Such a question arises precisely from the urge to get something philosophical and theoretical as an answer, and not an artistic feeling, not something that reaches in from direct life. What can one say in answer to someone who asks: Why do you make your columns out of different types of wood? One can perhaps answer: Have you ever seen a violin with only A strings? No, there are different strings; it has to do with the design of the violin. The whole structure is built for life, for direct feeling and sensing, right down to the material. Therefore, the structure should express what lives in spiritual science completely artistically and only artistically, not abstractly meaningfully. It was, of course, necessary for the individual artistic fields to develop in very specific ways, because spiritual science, as it were, seeks to penetrate the secrets of existence in the sensory world. This means that what would otherwise be developed as art only in direct connection with sensuality is shaped in a different way.

The interior of that dome – which can only be called a dome in a figurative sense, because it is not a dome at all, but only a spherical termination – this interior is painted (Figs. 29, 62). But this painting is based on something other than what usually underlies painting. Of course, the painting cannot depict what really is in the materialistic sense of the word. This painting shows the way in which a being, an object, a landscape is illuminated, what flits across the external material reality; it shows what in the next moment can no longer be there, it shows the fleeting, that for which the objects are only the cause of its being there. In a still completely different sense, our painting must have an effect.

Do you remember what I said before: that the essence of artistic creation is that the artist himself is present in what is created by the artist, that the artist, by shaping the material, shapes something that lives within him, where he is inwardly present, not painting after something external, but rather shaping the external itself according to what is within him. That this can also be transferred precisely to the principle of painting may not yet be universally understood today. But there is a way of thinking about it: How would you experience it in your mind if you, I would say, saw the world through and through red? Would it affect your mind differently? That the question is justified was known to those who had a somewhat deeper connection to art at all times. Goethe, for example, remarked that if someone wanted to depict how, at the end of earthly existence, the wrath of the world would pour out over all that is sinful in humanity, this divine wrath would have to shine in a red-hot light. Here we see how colors merge into the moral, into the soul-spiritual.

What do we experience in red, in green, in blue? Just as the form can be experienced, so can the color. Then one is not dealing with a reproduction of the colors of what light offers as a coloration; then one crawls into the color, so to speak, and experiences the essence of the color, and by living out in the color, one creates from the essence of the color itself. Thus, in our entire wall painting, nothing should be copied, but from the inner reason of things, insofar as they have something to do with color or with the moral, the spiritual-soul, which is expressed in color, the form should be created from the color itself. What is painted on the walls should express itself, not something else; it should speak to us through itself.

And so the whole structure is formed in such a way that the walls, as it were, are not real walls. The spiritual scientist is convinced that, just as he as a physical person is surrounded by air and the rest of the physical world, he as a spiritual being is surrounded by the spiritual, with all its entities and processes, which fills and fulfills the world. While a building is otherwise designed to be thought of as complete, it must be said of our building that, however much it is a frame for the gathering audience, it is at the same time something that cancels itself out. Seen from within, this ceiling should give the impression that basically there is nothing there, but that we know that by looking up at this ceiling, this ceiling lifts itself up; it becomes a spiritual direction, into infinite spiritual expanses it is the beginning. We will basically have no walls despite the frame, but something that is permeable, that leads into distant worlds, into vast worlds. And it is the same with architecture, with sculpture, with column forms, with everything that surrounds us. It should not shut us off; it should lead us out into the expanses and distances of the spiritual world. The walls must be placed in such a way that one says: when one takes the step out, that must be the first thing, and if one pursues this further, one comes out into the expanses of the spiritual world. Walls that destroy themselves through what they are, that is what, in a certain respect, is the goal of a new art, even if, as I have indicated, it is only in its very beginning.

And something else may be said. Anyone who enters our building today will be able to say: Yes, everything that is so often regarded as the actual architecturally correct, as the noblest forms of architecture, is basically no longer there here. And there is some truth to that. If we take an extreme case and look at a Greek building in its harmonious forms, built by the forces that act outside as spatial forces, brought into beautiful harmony, then we cannot say: our building is designed in the same way. The Greek building is designed in such a way that it represents the highest level of utilization of the forces of space, of pressure, or, as they are called, of gravity, which otherwise fills space. In our case, a breath of the living and weaving permeates the entire building. While we have something mathematical in Greek temple construction, something that comes from the mere interplay of forces, which is nevertheless inanimate, even if it is composed in the most beautiful harmony, in rhythm and proportion, our building is conceived in such a way that one can have the feeling that something alive is quietly passing through its lines, as something highly alive passes through the human form. Life pulses and vibrates through that which is expressed in forms. This is true; but therein lies the progress of architecture.

I would need many hours to discuss the architectural principles of style; how Greek gradually leads to that which brings life into architecture. In the future, the hitherto dead architectural form will truly come to life. We can only make an imperfect very first start. But this start must be made, and something dynamic, something invigorating, something that moves must be introduced into the purely physical-mathematical forms. Here, too, we may refer to Michelangelo's saying: Only he who knows human anatomy is able to form a true conception of the inner necessity on which an architectural plan is based.

But we find that when we look at the human form as it we see in the truly spiritually understood anatomy, that alongside all its movement and life, there is something that already presents itself in life as something dead, as something merely mathematical: the way in which the structure of our bone system relates to each other. The way in which we physically move the various parts of our skeletal system in relation to each other shows that something dead and mathematical is present in the life of a human being, that death is contained in it. And now it is possible to bring just as much life into the dead structure as there is death in the living human being. And that is what has been attempted with our structure. It has been lifted out of the rigidity of the merely mathematical, of merely following lines and adding forces. It has been imbued with life, with organicity, as much as there is dead matter in a living human being. The living element in the human being can only exist because the dead is mixed in with it in a certain way.

Our building takes on the appearance of life because what is merely joined together dead is given the appearance of life, the appearance of the living is lent to it. And at one point, it is shown what underlies it as a basic idea of spiritual science, that this spiritual science should stir up something in the soul that brings the soul into intimate contact with life. Spiritual science should make people life-friendly and devoted to life. In spiritual science, people should find something that introduces them to life, that makes them strong and powerful for life, which is becoming ever more complicated. Therefore, our building must also have something that directly shows how to not just put something together and paint it with the means that are available to us as human beings, but something must be presented here that expresses the tendency for our building to be in close contact with the whole world so that not only we as human beings work on the building but the whole world works on it.

This is attempted by transforming the earlier glass painting into a kind of glass etching (Figs. 102, 103). A special kind of artistic treatment of the windows in the Dornach building will be found. I can only hint at it. The window panes will not be treated in the way that stained glass was treated in the past. Instead, the panes of different colors will be treated in such a way that a special etching technique is used to scrape out the form from the glass, so that the corresponding figures are created by the fact that the light from outside can penetrate through the different thicknesses of the glass and the outer light, by holding the glass against it, works together with us. A glass pane like this is not a work of art in itself; it is only when it is installed and the external light passes through the glass pane that the work of art is created. Glass etching, through which sunlight penetrates directly into the interior of the room through various drawings on the glass. Here we have the whole world working together in the way that light can come in from the outside into the interior, which, during events, usually has to be illuminated with the artificial light of the modern age, with electric light.

And so it must be said that such a building is not intended to to represent something particularly abstract, something quite strange, which a few good-for-nothings of life perceive as a pleasant place to stay, but rather it should be presented in such a way that it is sought out by precisely those who need a boost for their lives, so that they can get to know life in its depths. It was not allowed to put something there that has nothing to do with what today's culture is. Therefore, the most recent material was used quite consciously. In addition to the part that was made of wood, for reasons that cannot be discussed today, the most recent concrete material was used, and an attempt was made, because artistic creation must really shape out of the material, to use this concrete material in such a way as to express, materially, if I may use the paradox, the most spiritual with this most recent, most material product. Not something outlandish should be collected, but that which the time yields should be used for the ideas that are supposed to bring, precisely for the time that works through external materiality, the spiritual, the ideal, the spiritual-soul.

Next to the building, you can see something else that many people today find particularly crazy (Figs. 100, 101). This is something that arose from the question: How should the whole building be heated? For certain reasons, one did not want what is in this annex to be inside the building itself, mainly for artistic reasons. Should one now build a chimney in the current way, should one put all that such a chimney requires with a boiler house in the way it is often put in the world? That was the question, and at the same time, the task of using concrete for such a construction had to be solved. Now this had to be solved: what concrete casing should be given to such a boiler house? How should what is formed in concrete be constructed? Certainly, the forms that have emerged will not be understood by very many people today. But that is how it is with everything that is built as something new. But people will learn to understand.

The boiler house is only completely finished when smoke comes out of it; that belongs to the forms. And people will one day understand that the forms carved out of the concrete material really relate to what happens inside, to the whole idea of the building – artistically speaking – like the nutshell to the nut. Just as we feel that the nutshell is designed for the nut – the nutshell has to be designed for the sake of the nut, and it would be ugly if it were not designed to be a proper shell for the nut – so what is going on in the boiler house must be enveloped in such a shell, like the strange concrete building that stands next to our Dornach building. So you see that artistic considerations have played a part everywhere. They were questions of artistic feeling, questions of feeling, not questions of allegorical or symbolic meaning.

I have taken up a great deal of your time and yet I have only been able to present to you, I might say, the most elementary main ideas of our Dornach building, without going into the actual fundamental artistic aspects. But perhaps it is precisely through what I have taken the liberty of discussing with you that it has become apparent how such a building must be formed, so to speak, out of the needs of modern life. And anyone who visits this building will also be able to find that this beautiful landscape, which lies around the Dornach hill, this beautiful landscape that continues on all sides, has something in the Dornach building that can be said in the same way as for many successful buildings: they really grow out of the earth, it is as if the earth were sending the power upwards for their creation. Those who allow the forms of mountains and hills, the whole of nature out there, to work on their soul, will find in the outer form of the Dornach building, to a certain extent, an architectural continuation of all of nature.

Therefore, those who were able to erect this building in this beautiful country can greet with particular joy that this has become possible, that it has been shaped by the circumstances. And I believe that those for whom this building is so close to their worldview are filled with a deep sense of gratitude that it was possible to erect this building in this part of the country. It may be called a kind fate that those people who are out there in the world, one in this, the other in that profession, one in this, the other in that place in the world, may stop at certain times of the year on the beautiful Dornach hill and get there, for what they have to do in the outside world, strength of life, strengthening of life, through that collection which is to be sought in our building and which is to be expressed through the forms, through the art of building.

In this context, it may perhaps be mentioned that it is perfectly understandable, indeed self-evident, that people who, through their lives, are able to be where they want, to build where they want, will build their houses near the building. It is indeed a great joy to see, from many points of view, that the building will be surrounded by a number of houses, perhaps later a larger number of houses, in which people will live who are in tune with the purpose of the building. But the main thing is not what is called this colony; the main thing is the building, which wants to be neither a church nor a temple, but precisely that which can be called an embrace of the spiritual-scientific world view. And because this building wants to be what has been described, it wants to serve people who are out there in the world, some of whom work here and others there. Our worldview cannot have much time for theosophical or mystical worldviews, or whatever you want to call them, through which people withdraw from the immediate life of the present, gathering in colonies to pursue their whims and fantasies and dreams in idleness. Spiritual science is not intended for idlers, for people who do nothing but sit together dreaming in what they call colonies. Our world view is not intended for them, but for people who want to work diligently on what is being achieved in the present for human labor, for human salvation and human progress; for these people, who are in the prime of life, for people who have something to do in life, this structure is intended. They should only be there during the times that are their life Sundays, their life holidays, when they come together to gain strength for the innermost forces of the soul for the rest of their active lives. We certainly do not want to found a colony for idlers, but we want to create something that serves life as it presents itself to people in our time, in our cultural epoch. We want to serve what is demanded of people in our cultural epoch. Of course, this is not a criticism of people who want to retire or have a summer house and recover, so that something can arise that can be called a colony surrounding the building. From certain points of view, this will have great advantages, but the basic idea requires that I express what I have just expressed.

Anyone who has grasped what has been said about spiritual science in connection with the design of this house in Dornach will no longer need to be told that this spiritual-scientific worldview is not hostile or opposed to this or that religious belief, this or that way of relating to the supersensible world. On the contrary, spiritual science wants to bring to the human soul that which lives behind physical-sensory phenomena, wants to bring this to the human soul in a way that has not been possible through the achievements of human culture to date, but which is demanded by the future. Just as from a certain point in the development of humanity, the Copernican worldview, the worldview of a Galileo, a Kepler, everything that is connected with modern science, was required for the outer space, so in our time something is required for the life of the soul, something that must come in, just as the scientific worldview has come in, something that will serve life in its moral , its spiritual-soul development, just as natural science has served material life.

Just as progress was indispensable and necessary there, so progress in the spiritual-soul sphere is indispensable and necessary, and in the future people will be just as unable to live without what spiritual science has to give as people today are unable to live without the achievements of natural science. Just as true scientific progress cannot in any way hinder religious elevation to the supersensible, the religious connection of the soul with the supersensible, so the spiritual scientific world view will not do this either. On the contrary, this may be particularly emphasized: While the natural-scientific world view easily leads man to what may be called a soul that does not want to concern itself with anything supersensible, that believes that a satisfactory world picture can be formed from what natural science itself provides, spiritual science shows us that man's soul is in contact with supersensible worlds. And by opening up these supersensible worlds to the human soul, it will deepen precisely the religious need.

Just as our building does not want to be a temple or a church, so spiritual science does not want to be anything that replaces any religion. On the contrary, anyone who penetrates into the depths of the world in a spiritual scientific way will be led back to religious life. What the individual then does with his religious belief is his personal business; spiritual science does not concern itself with this. Spiritual science aims to found a spiritual-scientific world view; it does not alienate people from their religious beliefs; it can only lead them more intimately, more deeply, more energetically into their religious life. And if one were to really see through the very core of true spiritual science, then religious beliefs would have very little to object to against this spiritual science. Rather, they would say: “Due to many things that have arisen in the has estranged many a soul, but now a current is coming that brings people together with the supersensible worlds; this will awaken and fertilize religious life in its depths. Once people have gained an understanding for it, they will no longer see spiritual science as something that encroaches on the religious communities, but as something that must necessarily come into the world, but that comes into the world in such a way that a religious person must welcome it as something gratifying.

But here too we see that there is still much remains to be done if our contemporaries are to develop a true and genuine understanding of what spiritual science wants and what it has to do in all areas of life – for example, in relation to the arts, but one could say the same in relation to social issues – in a world in which human conditions are becoming increasingly more complicated and complex as we look towards the future. And for many areas, indeed for all areas of life, it can be shown that spiritual science wants to be there to sow the seeds of renewal of life as it will be needed. This renewal of life, its inner necessity can be recognized by anyone who sees through life. The task of spiritual science is not to replace religion, nor to found another religion. The task of spiritual science is not to appear somehow polemically or critically against what has been artistically created so far. But like every genuine world view, one that takes hold not only of our abstract intellect, our ideas and concepts, but of the whole human being, must express itself artistically, so must spiritual science express itself artistically. And the first step in this direction is the building in Dornach – a primitive beginning, as I said.

It will be understood that spiritual science is able to deepen religious life and to fertilize art. But spiritual science wants to be a science, albeit a science that is close to the most intimate needs of the human soul. And it wants to be such a science, a strong promoter of the life that our time needs. Therefore, for everything artistic, for everything social, for religious and many other special areas of life, we can say what Goethe said in relation to the religious feeling of man:

He who possesses science and art also has religion. Those who do not possess these two, have religion.

Those who truly possess spiritual science and who immerse themselves in the artistic perception that flows from spiritual science in a feeling-based way, for them it can be said, once again summarizing a feeling, this time a Goethean feeling, which is also what every stone, every piece of wood in our building should express: Those who possess science (in the sense of spiritual science) and those who possess art (especially art in the sense of spiritual science) also possess religion. This is what can be said for religion and for many other areas of life from the point of view of spiritual science. Therefore, the feelings that should flow through my reflections today may end with Goethe's words – even if this only refers to the religious current, what applies to religion also applies to the other areas of life:

Those who possess science and art also have religion.
Those who do not possess these two may have religion.

Last winter, from this same place, I already tried to speak about the outer, as yet unfinished, emblem of spiritual scientific research, the Dornach building. It is quite understandable that this Dornach building is still the subject of many, many misunderstandings today; for just as it is true that it is based on purely artistic principles and not on anything symbolic or similar, it is equally true that it presents itself to the world as something quite different from what one has been accustomed to seeing in buildings or artistic expression. He contradicts previous artistic views in many respects, just as spiritual science contradicts and must contradict the habits of thinking in the previous scientific view. Why is this the case?

As was shown the day before yesterday, spiritual science, in its entirety, leads to a different way of thinking, or rather, to a transformation of thinking, leading to an activity of the soul that arises from thinking, which lives much more in reality than ordinary pictorial thinking, which wants to give nothing other than a reproduction of external reality. While ordinary thinking must see its value precisely in the fact that the ideas it awakens are faithful replicas of an external reality, nothing directly experienced by oneself, but only something re-experienced from external reality, what develops out of thinking through the spiritual research method must be something that the soul experiences directly. The soul should not have to rise into an image, but into real life, into the objective thought-being of the world. And so it is with what develops out of the will. But through this, the soul also comes to live more fully in what otherwise emerges instinctively as the artistic, as the stylistically appropriate, as the artistic formation. That is the essential thing in soul activities, which come to light in the soul through spiritual research, that the soul becomes more immersed in spiritual reality.

And by becoming immersed in spiritual reality, it also immerses itself differently in the world of forms, in the world of shaping. But through this it is led not to set something other than art in the place of art, but to approach art in a different way. While other art must start from what presents itself to the senses, and what presents itself to the senses can be elevated into the spiritual – so that this art appears as something elevated out of the sensory world, that which one has ascended to, until there is a spiritual molding of the outer sensual reality. What one can call the artistic grasp of the spiritual science is something that takes the opposite path. Man then stands first in the spiritual. He lives vividly the weaving and living of spiritual events, he faces the spirit as spirit. And when there is the possibility of artistic activity in him, when art is to come into being, then, not as happens in other art, as has happened in art up to now, the sense perception is led upwards until one can give it the radiance of the spiritual, but the spiritual is led down into the material.

Above all, this is the essential thing that should be striven for in the architecture of the Dornach building, for example. The first question was: What has to be done here? And in relation to this thought, there was no question of how to create a building out of the previous architectural style, out of what is otherwise common or can be learned in architecture. Instead, there was a completely different question, one whose practical answer shows how one has to deal with spiritual science quite differently in the direct than with ordinary logical thinking or with the ordinary activities of the soul in general.

When a fruit forms a shell around itself, then what is separated as the shell has emerged and grown out of the same life forces as the fruit itself with its individual formations. And anyone who observes, for example, how the kernel of the nut forms the shell around it with all the fine veins, will say to themselves: the nutshell comes from the same forces as the kernel itself. This nutshell is not formed in such a way that one could somehow imagine a style that should give a shell around the nut; the whole is one. And so it must become one: what is done in the Dornach building, the forces that prevail in what will be presentations and representations from the spiritual-scientific world view, what messages are from the spiritual world, what thoughts and ideas are developed. All this is, so to speak, the core life.

But the same forces that prevail in this core life must also be used to form the shell. This must be a unity, just as in every natural fruit, the shell and core are a unity and are formed from the same forces. The question could never arise: Which architectural style can be applied here? Rather, the whole building was given its form by the intention of realizing a spiritual idea in the structure; the two-dome form, which brings everything together (Figs. 1-9), really came about in this way. It had to be a unity. And so, in a certain way, the walls also had to become something other than walls have been up to now (Figs. 10-17). But it is significant, especially for the understanding of the unique art that is to be developed there — still quite primitive in its beginnings — that this is taken into account.

Walls, even those that have been artistically designed and especially these, have meant an end in previous art. Even in the Greek architectural works of art, walls mean an end; they close off from the outside world. Spiritual science, by virtue of what it is, should lead out into spiritual expanses. Therefore, forms must arise on the walls, as sculptural formations and the like, which cause the walls, when looking at the forms, to destroy themselves, so that one has the feeling: By living in the building and directing one's gaze to the forms, one has something in the forms that leads out into the world.

And yet one had to be in touch with all of reality. Therefore, the kind of window art that had existed in the past or still exists today, developed out of the old art, could not be created as window art. Instead, a kind of window etching, if you may call it that, was used (Fig. 102, 103). The figurative is now worked into the variously colored glass panels, each one in a different color, in such a way that the thickening and thinning of the glass achieves what is to be artistically achieved. And then the sunlight shining in will interact with it, that is, that which works and weaves in nature itself, to make the work of art complete. There, nature will intertwine with art to form a unified work of art.

Thus, new approaches had to be taken in the most diverse ways. In painting, which will fill the domes (Figs. 29, 53, 55), the aim was to treat the colors in a very specific way. Of course, I can only hint at these things in a fragmentary way. In treating colors in a figurative way, something should be attempted that is not usually attempted with color. The aim should be to experience color directly. Everything that the soul engages in through spiritual research should be experienced inwardly. The color should not be merely superficial; rather, the color should have inner life and develop this inner life itself, so that life itself arises out of the corresponding color and color composition.

When you look at the painted work of art, you should immediately feel the interaction of the color and that which lives out of the color into the form. You should have the feeling: you live in what is alive in the color, what is alive in the form, you grasp reality in the color, not through the color; you grasp the reality behind the color. Colors should express themselves, forms should express themselves, not something through colors, not something through forms. For this is precisely what living with the spiritual world leads to: not adhering to some model, but bringing what is living and weaving in the spiritual fact and in the spiritual essence into the weaving of the colors and into the life of the forms that one now brings onto the surface. And this special feature had to be striven for, for the reason that the whole of the structure, like the 'shell', was intended for spiritual science, which arises from the same forces as spiritual science itself.

For example, we also had to depart from the principle of placing columns, each of which is always the same as the one before, columns with capitals that are all the same as each other. A certain development had to be followed from the first pair of columns with their capitals to the second and so on (Figs. 31-52). This gives an inner design, an inner development, as nature itself does, by developing the other tones, the second, the third and so on, from the fundamental, from the prime. And just as it is not superstition or some kind of mystical madness to see seven tones in the scale and the eighth tone as a repetition of the fundamental, so it is not something mystically mysterious to seek a progression in the inner motives of the capitals and thereby arrive at the number seven for the columns quite naturally, because in this number we stand in the creative process of the world with the spiritual, just as the creative element in nature lives in the creative process itself. Thus a parallelism emerges between what is present in nature in a primitive form, such as the seven tones of the musical scale and the seven colors of the rainbow, and what occurs in the spiritual realm. The strange thing is that people looked at this building in Dornach and thought that seven columns had been chosen here because of some superstitious belief about the number seven. The same people might also say: What a grotesque superstition it is that the rainbow has seven colors, or that the tone scale has seven tones! It would be the same logic, one as the other. One as the other is demanded by the nature of the facts.

If someone comes and says: Well, yes, you would like to be able to agree with what is there in the building. But that you do such superstitious things or such mystical stuff as seven pillars, and made of seven different woods to boot — anyone who speaks like that is like someone who says: I don't understand why each string on a violin has to be different, they could all be the same. It will be a matter of realizing that what leads from spiritual science to art corresponds, as it were, to the whole purpose of spiritual research work.

Don't think that I want to take the floor here today to talk about that cheap understanding with regard to the social question that so many people would like to talk about today and who would like to be heard by name. I would like to speak of a completely different kind of understanding, the kind of understanding that seems to me to be called for by the loud, loudly speaking facts that are spreading across a large part of Europe today: understanding with the historical forces at work in the present and in the future, which call for a very specific, clear and energetic approach to what has been called the social question for more than half a century. How can we speak today of that other understanding mentioned at the beginning? Has not too much been lost for this understanding? Has not a certain part of modern humanity taken a long time to seek such an understanding? Today, a deep chasm is opening up between those who have been the leading classes of humanity up to now and those who are pressing forward with newer demands that have necessarily arisen from the times, i.e. between the leading classes of humanity up to now and the proletariat with its justified demands.

Let us take a look at recent life in order first of all to gain a judgment on the impossibility of easy understanding today. Much has been said for decades about this modern civilization, about this civilization which is supposed to have brought about such great and mighty things for mankind. How we have heard it again and again, the praise for modern technology, for modern transportation! Have we not heard them, all the phrases about how it is possible for people today - yes, which people are possible! - to traverse vast distances of land in a relatively short time, how it has become possible for thoughts to cover almost any distance, how it has become possible to expand so-called intellectual life? Well, I don't need to go into detail about the whole song of praise that has been heard so and so often. But what has all this, to which such a song of praise is sung, risen above? Without what would it not have been possible? It would not have been possible without the work of the greater part of mankind, that part which was not allowed to participate in all that has been so praised, that part which had to provide for these comforts of life under physical and mental privations, without being able to participate in any way in all the achievements of modern civilization.

Let's take a closer look at how, for more than half a century, we have come to the point where we still have to say that the abyss exists today. And if there is much talk of understanding today, it is precisely because people are afraid, because they are afraid of the facts that are looming so threateningly for some people. What, for example, has the moral world view of these leading classes been particularly preoccupied with - to start with a favorite subject of the leading classes since then? The world-view, the moral world-view of these leading classes has been particularly fond of dealing with, in endless speeches, in unctuous expositions, in words that seemed to overflow with feeling, with how men must develop love for one another, how men must see to it that brotherhood spreads, how men can only conquer the spiritual world by entering into such brotherhood. Such speeches, seemingly dripping with deep feeling, have indeed been made quite often by the leading spiritual circles of the hitherto leading class of mankind. Let us put ourselves in the place of such speeches in halls of mirrors or the like, and think how they preached about love of man, about charity, about religiosity, preached over a furnace heating provided by coal - I would like to draw attention to this in order to characterize a little the course of the present facts - which was extracted from those coal mines about which an English inquiry at the beginning of the newer labour movement brought quite strange things to light. Down there in the shafts of the earth, nine-, eleven-, thirteen-year-old children worked all day long in the shafts, children who never saw the sunlight except on Sunday, for the simple reason that they went down into the pits when it was still dark, and were only brought up again when it was no longer light. Men stood down there, completely naked, next to women who were pregnant and who also stood half-naked down there and had to work.

That was the first time that a government inquiry was held to draw attention to what was actually going on among the people, that such experiences were made, about which thoughtlessness had never wanted to enlighten itself, despite all the preaching of humanity, charity and religiosity. Admittedly, that was at the beginning of the modern proletarian movement. But it cannot be said that what has at least to some extent improved the situation of wide circles of people stems from the understanding that would have been gained in the hitherto leading classes of mankind. A large part of these leading classes of mankind are today just as uncomprehending of the true demands of the time, which follow from such facts, as they were fifty or more years ago.

There is no need to go as far as a hitherto leading, or at least seemingly leading, personality of humanity has gone: the former German Emperor, who called the socialist-minded people: Animals that gnaw at the foundations of the German empire and are worth exterminating. These are his own words. As I said, there is no need to go that far, but the judgments that are still made in certain circles today are not so very different from this particularly characteristic judgment just mentioned.

If we now look at what has taken place in the course of the last five to six decades, since what is now called the social question came into existence, we see on the one hand the thoughtless lack of understanding with regard to everything that has come up in the development of humanity, and on the other hand we see the onslaught, the justified onslaught of the broad proletarian masses, which has always been crowding into the words: It cannot go on like this. But today the facts speak a completely different language than they have in recent decades. And how do the judgments that some people make compare with the facts? The terrible catastrophe we have lived through in the last four to five years is a good lesson in this.

Please allow me to make the following personal comment. That which I have had to form for decades as a judgment on European political conditions, I had to summarize it in a lecture which I gave in the spring of 1914 in Vienna to a small circle - a larger one would probably have laughed at me at the time - I had to summarize that which was then woven among the people of Europe, among those people of whom one could say that they had something to do with the shaping of political destiny in Europe. At that time one had to say, if one looked at the times with an unbiased eye: With regard to the political and state relations of Europe, we are suffering from a creeping ulcer, a cancerous disease that will have to break out in a terrible way in the very near future. The time when this cancer broke out came very soon. But what did the “practitioners” say? What did the “statesmen” say? Today, when we talk about statesmen, we are always tempted to put quotation marks around the word. What did the “statesmen” say? What the leading foreign secretary of state in the German Reichstag said back then was the following. He said: “Thanks to the efforts of the cabinets, we can say that European peace will be secured for the foreseeable future. - That was said by a leading statesman in May 1914. This peace was so secure that since then twelve to fifteen million people have been shot dead, three times as many have been crippled. Just as in those days these statesmen spoke about what was in the political sky, so today many people speak about what is being said by the whole educated world through facts of the most significant and energetic kind. This is how people often speak about the social question. There is no idea in many circles of what must come and what will certainly come, and of what every reasonable person must be able to judge.

What I have to say on this matter is truly not based on any theoretical view. For many years I was a teacher at the workers' educational school founded in Berlin by Wilhelm Liebknecht, the old Liebknecht, I taught in the most diverse branches, and from there I also worked within the educational system of the modern proletariat in trade unions, in cooperatives and also within the political party. It is precisely when one has lived among and worked with those who have endeavored to carry the modern workers' movement forward from real thoughts, from real intellectual foundations, that one can perhaps say that one can form a judgment, not as one who thinks about the proletariat. Such judgment has no value today. Today, only a judgment formed with the proletariat, formed from the midst of the proletariat itself, can have any value.

In the hours that the workers spent after the hard work of the day, in which they went to the theater or played skat while other classes - I don't want to list all the nice things - in the hours in which the proletarian tried to enlighten himself about his situation, in those hours one could learn how the modern proletarian question has become and will become something quite different from a mere wage or bread question, as many still believe today, namely a question of human dignity. A question of a humane existence, that is what lies behind all proletarian demands, and has done for a long time.

Today's proletarian demands can be said to rest on three foundations. The one foundation is very often described by the proletarians themselves by referring to the great teacher of the proletariat, Karl Marx, as the existence of so-called surplus value. Surplus value, it was always a word that penetrated deep into the soul of the modern proletarian; it was a word that had an incendiary effect on the feelings of this modern proletarian. What word did the hitherto leading classes oppose to this surplus value? One will perhaps be surprised if I contrast the following two things.

The leading classes opposed this surplus value with the word of the great, important spiritual life which the civilization of mankind has brought forth. What did the proletarian know of this spiritual life? What was the great question of humanity for him? He knew that the surplus value he produced was used to make this spiritual life possible and to exclude him from this spiritual life. For him, surplus value was the very abstract basis of spiritual life. What kind of spiritual life was that? It was the intellectual life that arose in the dawn of the modern bourgeois economic order. It is often said, certainly not unjustly, that the modern proletariat was created by modern technology, by modern industrialism, by modern capitalism, and we shall speak of these things in a moment. But at the same time as this modern technology, with this capitalism, something else arose which we can call the modern scientific orientation. There it was - it was quite a long time ago - that the proletariat placed the last great trust in the bourgeoisie in the face of what the modern bourgeoisie brought up as the modern scientific orientation. And this last great trust, world-historical trust, has been disappointed.

What was the actual situation? Well, out of old worldviews, the justification of which we really don't want to examine today, what is today an enlightened, scientific worldview was formed. The proletarian, who has been called away from the medieval craft to the soul-killing machine, has been harnessed into modern capitalism, could not accept what the old classes had absorbed in their spiritual life. He could only accept, so to speak, the most modern product, the most modern outflow of this spiritual life. But for him this spiritual life became something quite, quite different from that of the leading classes. One need only visualize this with reference to all the depths of the proletarian soul. One must imagine how people from the hitherto leading classes, even if they were such enlightened people as the naturalist Vogt or the scientific popularizer Büchner, how they could be enlightened people with their heads, with their minds, in the sense of today's science; but they were such enlightened people only because they lived with their whole human being inside a social order that still came from the old religious and other world views in which the old still lived on. Their life was different from the one they professed, however honest they were in theory. The modern proletarian was compelled to take what remained to him as the legacy of the bourgeoisie in the fullest human seriousness. One need only have seen what it meant to the modern proletarian when he was told, as Lassalle once was, about science and the workers.

I stood - if I may also make this personal remark - more than eighteen years ago in Spandau, near Berlin, on the same speaker's platform with Rosa Luxemburg, who recently met her tragic end. We were both speaking to a proletarian assembly about science and the workers. At the time, Rosa Luxemburg said words that you could see had a powerful effect on the souls of these proletarian people who had come on a Sunday afternoon and had brought their wives and children with them; it was a heart-warming meeting. She said that, under the influence of modern science, people can no longer imagine that they have come up from conditions that were like angels, from which the modern differences of rank and class would be justified. No, she said almost literally: man, the physical man of today, was once highly indecent, climbing around on trees, and if one remembers this origin, then one really finds no reason to speak of today's class differences.

This was understood, but differently than by the leading circles. It was understood in such a way that the whole man wanted to be placed in this world view, which was to answer the question of the proletarian languishing in the barren machine: What am I as a human being? What is man in the world at all?

Now, however, the modern proletarian could gain nothing from this whole science other than what he could call a mirror image of what has emerged as the modern capitalist economic order. He felt that people speak as they must according to their economic circumstances, according to their economic situation. They had placed him in this economic situation; he could only judge from it. The leading circles said: the way people live now is a result of the divine world order, or a result of the moral world order, or a result of historical ideas and so on. The modern proletarian could only feel all this by saying to himself: “But you have put me into this economic life, and what have you made of me? Does that show what you have made of me, this divine world order, this moral world order, these historical ideas?

And so the concept of surplus value - the surplus value that he produced, that was extracted from him, that made this life of the leading classes possible - ignited in his emotional world and the opinion arose in him that everything that is produced by the leading circles in terms of spiritual life is only the reflection of their economic order.

Finally, for the last few centuries the proletarian theoretician was undoubtedly right in this view. The last few years have amply demonstrated this in the most diverse areas. Or can one believe that the people who taught history, for example, or wrote about history in the various schools - I don't want to say mathematics and physics, there's not much you can do in world views - can one say that they ultimately expressed anything other than a reflection of what the state-economic order was? Just look at the history of the states that entered the world war. The history of the Hohenzollerns will certainly look different in the future than the German professors have written in recent years and decades. It will, however, be made, this history, by people who have been told - yes, it is also a word of the German emperor - that they are not only enemies of the ruling class, but enemies of the divine world order.

So what was the spiritual life of the ruling classes became for the proletarian a dull ideology, a luxury of humanity, something for which he could muster no understanding. Nevertheless, his deepest longing was to find something that told him what human dignity, what human worth was. That is why the first proletarian demand is a spiritual demand. And one may say what one likes here or there, the first proletarian demand is a spiritual demand, the demand for such a spiritual life in which one can feel what one is as a human being, in which every human being can feel what human life on earth is worth. That is the first proletarian demand in the spiritual sphere.

The second proletarian demand arises in the field of legal life, of the actual political state. It is difficult to talk theoretically about what the law actually is. In any case, law is something that concerns all men, and one need only say the following about law: just as one cannot talk to a blind man about what a blue color is, but one does not need to theorize much about the blue color with one who sees, so one cannot talk about law with those who are blind to law. For the law rests on an original human awareness of the law. On the commandments of the political state, which the ruling classes have so finely carved out for themselves in recent centuries, the proletarian sought his right, his right above all in relation to his field of labor. What did he find? At first he did not find himself harnessed to the constitutional state, he found himself harnessed to the economic state. And there he saw that in contrast to all ideas of humanity, in contrast to all ideas of pure humanity, there remained for him a remnant of old inhumanity, a terrible remnant of old inhumanity. That, in turn, is something that Karl Marx so passionately impressed on the souls of the proletariat. There were slaves in ancient times. The whole human being was bought and sold like a commodity. Later there were serfs. There was less buying and selling of people than in the old days of slavery. Even now, people are still bought and sold like commodities. What Karl Marx and his successors have repeatedly and again so understandably expressed for the proletarian soul is that human labor power is sold. In the modern commodity market, where there should only be commodities, labor power itself is treated like a commodity. This rests in the depths, albeit often unconsciously, of the proletarian soul, so that it says to itself: the time has come when my labor power may no longer be a commodity.

This is the second proletarian demand. It springs from the legal ground. In drawing attention to this relationship, Karl Marx was once again speaking one of his most incendiary words. But we must be even more radical in this area than Karl Marx himself was in his approach. It must become clear: a world order, a social order must emerge in which man's labor power is no longer a commodity, in which it is completely stripped of the character of a commodity. For if I have to sell my labor power, I can also sell my entire human being. How can I retain my human being if I have to sell my labor power to someone else? He becomes master of my whole person. Thus the last remnant of the old slavery, but truly not in a lesser form, is still there today in this “humane” age.

So the proletarian, with his labor power and its sale, found himself thrust out of legal life into economic life. And when it is said, well, the labor contract exists, it must be countered that as long as a contract can be concluded between the employer and the worker about the labor relationship, the slave relationship with regard to labor power exists. Only then, when the relationship with regard to labor between labor manager and physical workers is transferred to the mere legal ground, only then is there that which the modern proletarian soul must demand.

However, this can only be the case when a relationship is no longer concluded only about wages, but only about what is produced jointly by the physical and the intellectual worker. There can only be contracts about goods, not about pieces of people. Instead of knowing that his labor relationship is protected on the basis of law, what did the modern proletarian find on this legal basis? Did he find rights? When he looked at himself, he really did not find any rights. Certain people had gradually become accustomed to perceiving this modern state as a kind of deity, as an idol. Almost as Faust spoke to Gretchen about God in the first part, so certain people spoke about the modern state. One could well imagine a modern labor entrepreneur instructing his workers about the divinity of the modern state and saying of this state: “The all-preserver, the all-embracer, does he not grasp and sustain you, me and himself?” He will probably always think: especially me. - Rights awaited the consciousness of humanity on the soil of the state. The modern proletarian found the privileges of those who had gained them from economic life, especially in recent times. Instead of that which must be demanded in regard to all rights - the equality of all men - what did the modern proletarian find? If one looks at what he found there on the ground of the constitutional state, one comes to his third demand; for he found on the ground on which he was to find the right, namely the right of his labor and the opposite right, the right of the so-called owner, he found the class struggle. For the modern proletarian, the modern state is nothing more than the class-struggle state.

Thus we designate the third proletarian demand as that which aims at overcoming the class state and replacing it with the constitutional state. Labor and labor management are objects of law. What, after all, is property? In the course of modern times it will have to become something that belongs to the old rusty things; for what is it in reality? In the social organism we need only the concept which says: possession is the right of any man to make use of any thing. Possession is always based on a right. Only when rights are regulated on the basis of a true democratic social order will workers' rights stand in opposition to so-called property rights. Only then, however, can that which is the legitimate demand of the modern proletarian be fulfilled.

If you look at the facts of today, which speak so loudly, then you come to the conclusion that what has gradually emerged as a social organism under the influence of modern technology, under the influence of modern capitalism, must be looked at more closely. - And one need only look at the three demands of the modern proletariat just characterized, then one will also see what is necessary for the recovery of the social organism. A spiritual, a legal and an economic aspect - these are the three aspects that must be looked at. But how have these three aspects been treated in the modern historical order, which is currently under the influence of technology and capitalism?

This is where we come from the critique of what has been formed by the ruling classes of the present, to what emerges today as a historical demand. I can imagine that some people will not fully agree with me in what I am about to say. But do not the facts that have developed show that people's thoughts have often lagged behind these facts? That is why it is perhaps justified to listen when someone says: “We not only need all kinds of talk about the transformation of conditions, no, today we need to move forward to completely new thoughts. New thoughts must enter the human brain, because the old thoughts have shown what they have made the human social order into. Rethinking and relearning, not just trying things out, is necessary today. And if what I have to say differs in some respects from the usual thoughts, I ask you to take it in such a way that it is taken from the observation of the facts of life and is just as honestly meant as many other things that are honestly put forward for the recovery of the newer social conditions.

I see, for example, how in recent times, precisely under the influence of the bourgeois social and economic order, economic life has increasingly grown together with legal life, how the political state and the economic state have become one. Let us take a very characteristic example of the present. Let us take the example of Austria, which has just succumbed to its fate. When, in the sixties of the 19th century, this Austria finally decided to establish a so-called constitutional life, how was the Imperial Council, this old blessed Imperial Council - because they wanted to have such a clear and short name, they called this Austrian state, apart from Hungary and the lands of the so-called Holy Crown of St. Stephen, “the kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council”, - short name for Austria! - was elected? Elections were held for this Imperial Council according to four curiae, firstly the large landowners, secondly the chambers of commerce, thirdly the cities, markets and industrial towns, fourthly the rural communities. The latter were only allowed to vote indirectly. But what are all these curiae? They were economic curiae. They had to represent purely economic interests, and they elected their deputies to the Austrian Imperial Council. What was to be done there? Rights were to be established, political rights. What ideas did they have about political rights by basing the Austrian Imperial Council on these four curiae? Well, they had the idea that in the Imperial Council, where the law was to be decided, economic interests were merely transformed into rights. And so it was, and still is, that basically the state representations include, mostly openly or covertly, the mere economic interests. Look at the Farmers' Union in the German Reichstag; you can refrain from giving me closer examples. Everywhere we see how the tendency of modern times has been to merge economic life with the political life of the state proper. This was called progress. They began with those branches which were particularly convenient to the ruling classes, the postal, telegraph and railroad systems and the like, and extended them more and more. That is one thing that was welded together. The other thing that was merged, that was welded together, was intellectual life and the political state.

I know that I am to a certain extent treading on ice when I speak of this fusion of intellectual life with the political state, when I speak today of the fact that this fusion has led to the disadvantage, to the harm, to the illness of the social organism. Certainly, it was necessary for the ruling classes in the last centuries, and especially in the 19th century. But one must not merely believe that the administration, the operation of science and other branches of intellectual life has been corrupted, impaired by the state administration, but the content of science itself. Here, too, there is no need to go as far as the famous physiologist Du Bois-Reymond, who once called the members of the Berlin Academy of Sciences “the Hohenzollern's scientific protection force” in a beautiful speech - gentlemen always speak very, very beautifully when they talk about such things.

In an enlightened age, there was a lot of mockery about how in the Middle Ages external science and worldview, the handmaiden, was the servant of theology. Certainly, we will never want to return to those times. Anyone who looks at things today with unbiased judgment knows that a later time will judge ours in a similar way. In many cases, scholars no longer carry the train of theology, well, I don't want to say that they clean the boots of the states concerned, but in many respects the bearers of the train of the states concerned have already become the bearers of the train. That is what one must keep in mind again and again if one wants to talk about what it has actually brought about that in recent times, on the one hand, economic life has merged with political state life, and on the other hand, intellectual life has merged with precisely this political state life. Anyone who looks into these things does not now ask, as so many people ask: What should the League of Nations do, which is now to be founded from one point of view or the other? The other day in Berne I heard a gentleman who considers himself particularly clever say: The League of Nations must establish a supranational state, it must create a supra-parliament. Yes, you see, anyone who looks with an unbiased eye at what the previous states have achieved in these four terrible years really does not want to ask with regard to the League of Nations: How should the various measures and institutions of the previous states be transferred to this League of Nations? What should be done to make this League of Nations as similar as possible to the state? - He will probably ask differently. He will perhaps ask: What should this state refrain from doing? - After all, what it has done in the last four years has not really borne much fruit. Gradually, if you really look into the workings of modern social life with a healthy mind, you come to say what the historical powers and forces really demand in modern times.

While the world war was raging, I spoke to many people about what I am also saying here. I preached to deaf ears. I said to quite a few people: You still have time now; as long as the cannons are thundering, it is advisable that those states that want to end this war sensibly speak words into the thunder of the cannons, words that are demanded by the times, words that will definitely be realized in the next ten or twenty years. Today you have the choice of either accepting reason and realizing it through reason, or, if you don't want that, you will face cataclysms and revolutions. Like sound and smoke, that went past our ears.

What the times demand of us is that we really make up our minds to create independent social entities: a free, self-reliant intellectual life, a political state to which we leave only legal life, and an economic life that we place on its own foundation. - How dreadful it is for some who, in the sense of the old habits of thought, consider themselves practitioners, that one should now approach the complicated, three juxtaposed social organisms, a special spiritual organization, a special legal organization and a special economic organization! Just think what effect this will have on economic life, for example. On the one hand, economic life is limited by the natural basis, climate and soil conditions. On the one hand, nature can be dealt with by making all kinds of technical improvements, but there is a limit beyond which we cannot go. The natural basis forms one limit of economic life. One need only recall extreme examples. Think of a country where many people can feed themselves from bananas. It takes a hundred times less work to bring the banana from its place of origin to consumption than it does to bring our wheat in our regions from sowing to consumption. Well, such extreme examples clear things up. But even if things are not so extreme in a closed social territory, the natural basis is there. It is one limit of economic life. There must be another boundary. This is the one formed by the state, which stands independently alongside economic life. Within this state, which must stand on a purely democratic basis, because it deals with what applies equally to all men, what all men must agree upon, because it must emerge from the consciousness of right which is rooted in the soul of every man, in this constitutional state, measure, time and many other things relating to human labor will also be determined quite independently of economic life. Just as the seed is not already part of economic life in relation to the forces that grasp it under the earth, but just as these natural forces determine economic life itself, so labor law must also form the basis of economic life on the part of the independent state. The price of the commodity must be determined, as by the natural basis on the one hand, so on the other hand by the labor law independent of economic life. Commodity prices must be dependent on labor law, not, as is the case today, labor prices on commodity prices.

That is what every real worker secretly, in the depths of his soul, basically expects, that the regulation of labor power and also the regulation of so-called property, which will thus no longer be property at all, will be separated from economic life, so that in the economic field there can no longer be a compulsory relationship between employer and employee, but merely a legal relationship. Then there will be in economic life only that which belongs solely to economic life: the production of goods, the movement of goods, the consumption of goods. And what can be realized is precisely what socialist thought strives to realize, that from now on production will no longer be in order to profit, but that production will be in order to consume. This can only happen if the rules are made about labor and work performance just as independently as the rules themselves are made by nature for the economic order independently of this economic order. Only then will that come into its own in the field of economic life which is today developing as the cooperative system, the associative system; this must find a proper administration on the ground of economic life. Production life must be regulated in associations, in cooperatives, according to the needs of consumption. Above all, the entire regulation of currency must be taken away from the political state. Currency, money can no longer be something that is subject to the political state, but something that belongs to the economic body. What will then be that which is the representative of money? No longer some other commodity, which is really only a luxury good and whose value is based on human imagination, gold, but what will correspond to money - I can only hint at this, you will find it explained in my book on the social question, which will appear in a few days' time - what will correspond to money will be everything that is available in the way of useful means of production. And these useful means of production, they will be able to be treated as they should actually be treated in the sense of modern social thought, they will be able to be treated in the same way as today only that which is regarded in our time as the most abominable property is treated.

What is considered to be the worst property in our time? Well, of course the intellectual, the spiritual property. In our time we know that we have it from the social order. Yes, no matter how clever a person is, no matter how much he can achieve, no matter how beautiful things he produces, it certainly corresponds to his talents, and to some other things as well, but insofar as it is utilized in the social organism, insofar as one has it from the social organism. It is therefore just that this intellectual property should not remain with the heirs, but should, at least after a number of years, pass into the social organism, become common property, to be used by those who are suited to it by their individual abilities. This most precious property, intellectual property, is treated in this way today. This is how all so-called property will be treated in the future. Only it will have to be transformed much earlier into common property, so that those who have the abilities for it can in turn contribute these abilities to this property for the benefit and purpose of the social organism. Therefore, in the book that will be published in a few days, I have shown how it is necessary that the means of production remain under the management of one person only as long as the individual abilities of this person justify the management of these means of production, that everything that is profited on the basis of the means of production, if it is not again put into the production itself, must be transferred to the community. Through the spiritual organism, we can seek out those who, in terms of their individual abilities, can pass this on to the social community.

If one has really come to know this social organism from life, it is not so easy to fulfill this modern demand that the means of production no longer be transferred to private ownership so that they remain in this private ownership. But the means must be found by which this private property loses all meaning, so that the so-called private owner is then only the temporary leader, because he has the ability to manage the means of production best for the good of the community through his skills.

When, on the one hand, workers' rights are regulated in the political state, when, on the other hand, property thus becomes a property cycle in the true sense of the word, only then will a free contractual relationship between worker and labor leader concerning communal production be possible. There will be workers and labor leaders, entrepreneurs and employees no longer.

I can only briefly outline all these things. Therefore, please allow me to point out that, in addition to the independent economic area, which on the other side will have the independent political state, the constitutional state, which will stand independently and sovereignly next to the economic area, like nature itself, there will be spiritual life. This spiritual life can only develop according to its own, true, real forces when it is placed on its own ground in the future, when the lowest teacher up to the highest leader of any branch of teaching or education is no longer dependent on any capital group or on the political state, but when the lowest teacher and all those who are involved in spiritual life know: what I do is only dependent on the spiritual organization itself. Out of a good instinct, even if not exactly out of a special appreciation of religion, out of a good instinct, modern social democracy has coined the word with regard to religion: religion must be a private matter. In the same sense, as strange as it may still sound to people today, all spiritual life must be a private matter and must be based on the trust that those who wish to receive it have in those who are to provide it. Of course, I know that many people today fear that we will all, or rather our descendants, become illiterate if we can choose our own school. We won't become illiterate. It is perhaps precisely members of leading circles, hitherto leading circles, who today have quite a lot of cause to think this way about education; they remember how much trouble it has been for them to acquire the little bit of education that secures their social position. But that which the tripartite social organism demands of people will certainly not lead to illiteracy in a free intellectual life, especially under the influence of the modern proletariat.

I am completely convinced that if one is able to realize in this way the completely democratic constitutional state, which secures workers' rights, in which every person has a say in what is the same for all people, then the modern proletariat in particular will not be preoccupied with preaching illiteracy, then it will demand of its own accord, even in a free intellectual life, that people should not be led to the ballot box in the way that can now sometimes be heard from individual regions of a neighboring state, where the monks and country priests have cleared out the asylums for idiots and lunatics in order to lead those people who did not even know what their names were to the ballot box.

Whoever wants to believe in these things and hope for these things must, however, have faith in real human power and real human dignity. Anyone who, like me, has been independent of any kind of state order all his life, who has never submitted to any kind of state order, has also been able to preserve his impartiality for that which can be built up as a spiritual life that is independent of the state and stands on its own. This spiritual life will not cultivate the individual human faculties in the way that the luxury spiritual life, the ideology of the previous spiritual life, has done. The spiritual life that is built on itself will also not be a philistine, bourgeois spiritual life, it will be a humanity spiritual life, a spiritual life that will reach down from the highest, very highest members of spiritual creation into the individual details of human work and its management; the leaders of the individual economic areas will be pupils of the free spiritual life and will not develop out of this free spiritual life what has today become the entrepreneurial spirit, the spirit of capitalism.

There are labor contracts, but no real contract can actually be made about labor. What is today a labor contract is a lie, because in reality labor is not comparable to any commodity. Therefore one must say: if any contract is to be concluded in the future, it will be concluded about the jointly performed product, and then one will feel all the more: What was this previous employment contract actually about? What was it based on? - It was not based on any right, but on an abuse of personal, individual abilities. Basically, it was an overreaching. But overreaching, where does it come from? From the cleverness that today's intellectual life has often displayed. The spiritual life that I imagine, which is left to its own devices, will not produce this cleverness, it will not produce the lie of life, it will produce the truths of life. There will no longer be protective troops for any thrones and altars, but the spirit itself will administer the individual abilities of man right down to the individual branches of mankind. Capitalism is only possible if the spiritual life on the other side can be enslaved. If the spiritual life is liberated, then capitalism in its present form will disappear. I wanted to think about how capitalism can disappear. You can read in my book on the social question in a few days' time that this capitalism will disappear when spiritual life is truly emancipated and the truths of life are put in the place of the lies of life.

In essence, what I have outlined to you today in a brief sketch has been resounding through humanity for a long time. At the end of the 18th century, the words “liberty, equality, fraternity” rang out like a mighty motto in France. - In the course of the 19th century, very clever people repeatedly proved that these three ideas contradict each other in the social organism. Liberty, on the one hand, demands that individuality can move freely. Equality excludes this freedom. Fraternity, on the other hand, contradicts the other two.

As long as one was under the hypnosis of the dogma: The All-holder, All-embracer, does he not embrace you and me, himself? As long as one was under the hypnosis of this idol of the unitary state, these three ideas were contradictions. At the moment when mankind will find understanding for the threefold healthy social organism, these three ideas will no longer contradict each other, for then freedom will prevail in the field of the independent, sovereign spiritual organism, and equality of all in the field of the state organism, the legal organism, the equality of all men, and in the field of the economic organism, fraternity, that fraternity on a large scale which will be based on the cooperatives of production and consumption, which will be based on the associations of the individual professions, which will administer economic life in an appropriately fraternal manner. The three great ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity will no longer contradict each other when the three areas - spiritual, legal and economic - have come into their own in the world. Take this today as something that is still little thought of, but it is not a utopia, it is not something that has somehow been thought up, but something that has been gained from decades of observation of modern political, economic and spiritual conditions, something that can be believed to rest in the womb of human development itself like a seed that wants to be realized in the near future. And one can perceive in the loudly speaking facts of today, one can perceive in the demands of the proletariat, even if much is still expressed differently, that the longing for such realization is already present today.

Many people call what I am saying a utopia. It is taken from a reality-friendly, reality-appropriate way of thinking. This idea of a tripartite division is not a utopia. It can be tackled immediately everywhere from any social condition if one only has the good will, which is unfortunately so often lacking today. If you believe that what I am saying is a utopia, then I would like to remind you that what I am saying here about the healthy social organism is not what is usually said. People who otherwise speak of social ideas are setting up programs. I am not thinking of a program, I am not thinking of wanting to be cleverer than other people and to know the best about everything, how to do it and so on, but I am only thinking of structuring humanity, which should decide for itself what is true, what is good, what is expedient, in the right way. And it seems to me that if it is organized in such a way that people stand within it firstly in a free spiritual life, secondly in a free political legal life, thirdly in an economic life properly administered by economic forces, then people will find the best for themselves; I am not thinking of legislation about the best, but of the way in which people must be called upon to find through themselves that which is pious for them. Nor am I thinking, as some have believed, of a rebirth of the old estates and classes: The teaching class, the military class, the nurturing class - no, the opposite is what I am talking about here. People should not be divided into classes. Classes, estates, they are to disappear by dividing up life outside man, objective life. Man, however, is the unity that belongs in all three organisms. In the spiritual organism his talents and abilities are cultivated. In the state organism he finds his rights. In the economic organism he finds the satisfaction of his needs.

I believe, however, that the modern proletarian will develop a true consciousness of humanity out of his class consciousness, that he will find more and more understanding for what has been pointed out here: for the true liberation of humanity. And I hope that once the modern proletarian's soul will clearly realize how he is called to strive for the true goal of humanity, that he will then become, this modern proletarian, not only the liberator of the modern proletariat - he must certainly become that - but that he will become the liberator of everything human, everything that is truly worth liberating in human life. That is what we want to hope for, that is what we want to work towards. When it is said: Words are now spoken enough, let us see deeds - I wanted to speak today in such words that can really turn directly into deeds.

Discussion

1st speaker (Mr. Handschin): Spoke very spiritedly of the oppression of the worker by the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie imposes violence on the proletariat. The private property of the propertied classes has been created by the workers. Only communism would bring peace.

2nd speaker (Mr. Studer). Points to the ideas of free money and free land, which should enable the liberation of economic life.

3rd speaker (Mr. Mühlestein): Shows how in Germany the old powers are re-emerging and nothing has changed. Criticism of Social Democracy and the Center. Criticism of the threefold structure: it removes the law from economic and intellectual life; but justice must prevail in all three areas, not just in the constitutional state.

4th speaker: Wants to report on a “Swiss Federation for Transitional Reforms”; but is interrupted and the discussion is closed.

Rudolf Steiner: You will have noticed that the first two speakers in the discussion have basically not put forward anything against which I would need to argue, since, at least in my opinion, what has been put forward by the two gentlemen essentially shows - at least to me - how very necessary it is to take seriously what I have tried to do in a perhaps weak but honest way to contribute to the solution of the social question in the present serious times, as far as it is humanly possible. And that this is necessary, that today is the time to do so, you will at any rate have been able to gather from what the first speaker in the debate has just said to you from a soul that is certainly warmly felt.

Since the time is already well advanced, I would like to address just a few points here. The word “free land, free money” was used by the honorable second speaker. You see, this hints at something that is like a lot of things in the present day, if you want to approach the social question in precisely those ways, as I said, in real ways, as I tried to do in my presentation. On such occasions I have very often been in the situation of having to say: I am in complete agreement with you; the other person just usually, or at least very often, doesn't say it to me! The thing is, if I believed that my ideas were simply plucked out of the air from somewhere, then I wouldn't bore you with them, I would believe that they had long since not matured. That is precisely what I believe, that there is something essential about the ideas presented to you today. You will find the material, the building blocks everywhere. I gave a similar lecture in Bern the other day. A gentleman came to me then, not only in the discussion, but the next day for a conversation, and also spoke about “free land, free money”. After an hour, however, we were able to agree that what is actually wanted in the regulation of the currency question, in the creation of an absolute currency, will simply be achieved if this tripartite division that I have spoken of today is carried out properly - properly indeed - if the administration of values, the administration of money, is simply taken away from the political state and transferred to economic life. As I have said, I will show in my book “Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft” that the basis of the currency will then be quite different from what it is today, and that it will also become international. As long, of course, as the leading state, England, clings to the gold currency, the gold currency will have to apply in foreign policy; but internally, those who now really have the one true currency will no longer need gold in the social organism; for the only real true currency will consist in the means of production, which will then be there to be the currency for money. Money is completely misunderstood today. Money is only understood if it can be grasped as the complete opposite of the old natural economy.

What is money for today's social organism? It is the means of conducting a common economy. Just imagine the whole function of money. It consists simply in the fact that for what I work myself I have an instruction for something else that someone else works. And as soon as money is something other than this instruction, it is unauthorized in the social organism.

I could go on at length to confirm this, but I will only say briefly that this is what money must become! It will become so when all other machinations that play a part in the circulation of money cease. For only money is the common index which is there for the common comparison of the mutual values of commodities. That is what can also be achieved through the nature of this tripartite division, and what is partially, individually sought by the free-money movement; that is why I have said in such a case: I am in complete agreement with this movement - because I always try to see the individual movements in their justification, and I would like to lead them into a common great stream, precisely because I do not believe that one person, or even a group of people, can find what is right, but because I believe democratically that people together in reality, working together, properly organized alone, will only find what is right.

This is what I have described as a view of reality, not as some objective development. But I believe that the real human being will find what is right for the social organism out of his healthy human experience in association with other people.

We have one thing that everyone knows is only possible in social life - today's egoists would probably also like to have it for themselves - and that is language for a closed organism. Again and again it is preached in schools: If man had grown up on a lonely island, in solitude, he would not be able to speak; for speech can only be formed in social life. One must recognize [...] that all those things which are hidden behind private capital, property, which are hidden behind the mastery of some kind of work and the like, that all these things, including human talents, individual gifts, just like language, have social functions, that they belong to social life and are only possible within it. There must come a time when it becomes clear to people in schools what they are through the social organism and what they are therefore obliged to give back to the social organism. So what I am counting on is social understanding, which must come, just as the multiplication tables are taught in schools today. We will also have to relearn this. There were times when people learned something completely different in schools than they do today; just think of the Roman schools. There will come a time when children will be taught social understanding in schools. Because this has been neglected under the influence of modern technology and capitalism, we have ended up in today's conditions, in the pathological conditions of the social organism.

As far as Mr. Mühlestein is concerned, I must say that I am also in a position to have nothing against what he has put forward; I only believe that if his ideas continue to develop, they will then lead to what I have said.

For example, he has not at all considered that I am not - of course not! - want to take law out of economic life and intellectual life. No, on the contrary, I want to keep it in. And because I want it inside, I want to have developed an independent social science in which it can really be developed, created. When it has been generated, then it can have an effect on the other areas. Comprehensive thinking will show you this. If you consider the following, for example: Today, even scientific thinking does not yet really think logically and appropriately in relation to the natural human organism. People today think: the lungs - a piece of meat; the brain - also a piece of meat, and so on. Science says otherwise, but it does not say much else; for it regards these individual members of the human organism as parts of a great centralization. In truth, they see nothing else. The human being as a natural organism is a tripartite system: we have a nervous-sensory organism. The one is centralized and has its own outlets at the sensory organs. - We have a rhythmic organism, the lung-heart organism; it has its own outlets in the respiratory tract. - We have the metabolic organism, which in turn has its own outlet to the outside world. And we are this natural human being precisely because we have these three limbs, these three centralized limbs of the organism.

Can anyone now come along and say - if I say, as I have now done in my last book, “Of Riddles of the Soul”, that simply the proper scientific observation results in these three members of the human natural organism - can anyone come along and say that nature should not have developed these three members, because what matters is that all three members have air? - Of course all three limbs have air! - When the air is first inhaled through the lungs and processed accordingly, the metabolic members and the brain have their air, so that this air is drawn in and processed, and can therefore also be treated with all natural care in a specially separated member of the human natural organism. I do not want, like Schäffle, or like Meray or others, to play this analogy game between physiological and social concepts, that does not even occur to me; I only want to draw attention to the fact that a thoroughly formed thinking does not understand man as a natural organism if one only thinks: everything is centralized into one - but one understands man if one understands his three organ systems centralized in themselves.

It is precisely because man is perfect that he has these three centralized organ systems. This will be a great advance in natural science when we realize this! And the thinking that thinks so healthily about the human being also thinks healthily about the social organism, and feels healthily about the social organism. Spiritual life will be freest and best organized when it is emancipated. For in the field of emancipated spiritual life the people are already to be found who will provide for this free spiritual life. There will arise those who will actually bring the necessary dominion to this spiritual life. Those who do not bring it are those who are servilely dependent on capitalism or other things. Those who will be free as spiritual administrators will also be able to bring the blessings of spiritual life to the other two members.

And so, if justice is really produced in a state of law existing for itself, really centralized in itself, one will not have to worry that the other two members will not have justice, certainly in favorable distribution; in all the things that have been touched upon by Mr. Mühlestein, there must be justice; that will come in when it is first produced.

So it is not in order to have justice in one separate organ and not in the other that I take these three parts, but precisely in order to have justice in all three, I see the necessity that it should first be produced.

I would like to know if anyone can say: In a house, there are father, mother, children, the maidservants; but now you divide this house into father, mother, maidservants, and two cows that give milk, but all need the milk, so all must produce milk, not just the two cows? - No, I say: the cows must produce the milk so that everyone in the house can be properly supplied with milk. And so the constitutional state must have the law according to plan, produce the law, then the rights will be where they are needed. And that is precisely when they will be - forgive the somewhat trivial comparison - when they can be milked by the rule of law!

That is what I would like to emphasize; that what is important today is not to somehow pursue favourite ideas, but precisely to summarize that which pulsates in many hearts as a demand, that which is already present in many minds, even if more or less unconsciously, out of the forces of the times, and to really grasp that in the impulses that are there as the great forces of the times, which want to be realized, which we should now realize through reason. But if we do not want to realize them through reason, this will not prevent them from entering into reality.

Dear readers, we either have the choice to be reasonable or to wait in some other way for the realization of that which must be realized because it wants to realize itself out of the forces of history.

In this sense, however, I believe that proletarian consciousness is capable of grasping these demands, which lie in history itself, and thus of really striving for and achieving what I said at the end, insofar as it is possible for human beings: the liberation of everything in humanity that is worth liberating.

A powerful movement is developing out of the catastrophe of the world war, a movement borne by proletarian demands, and which speaks to people today through significant facts, through facts that have already seized a large part of Europe, through facts that undoubtedly have to be overcome by certain new social institutions of humanity. The question may arise, especially when one considers the initial course of these loudly speaking facts: Is there already a reasonably sufficient social will emerging somewhere, a social will that arises from a deeper understanding of our current historical world situation? For it seems that it depends on such social will.

Therefore, it filled me with great satisfaction that today, at the invitation of local students, I was able to express the relationship between the proletarian demands and the necessary social will from a certain point of view, which I, wanting to serve the present, have explained in my soon-to-be-published work: “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Present and Future Life

That we are dealing with a profound world-historical phenomenon in the movement mentioned, seems to follow from the fact that what is happening today shows something like a realization of that program that went around the world seventy years ago and is known as the Marxist Communist Manifesto. Whether one understands what is expressed by these two milestones of our more recent historical development, by the statements of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and by what is now sweeping across Europe, whether one understands it in one way or another, according to one's circumstances, one's views on life, that is of little importance today. What is important is that we are faced with loud facts, facts that must be taken into account. And we will have to take a stand on what may arise in the coming years, in the coming decades, precisely from that transformation of scientific and ideological thinking that will become necessary, like many other things, under the influence of this loudly spoken fact of the present.

That is why I am particularly keen to address this question to students who want to be supporters of what can develop out of our current scientific and ideological thinking into thinking, into recognizing the future.

Just as what is usually referred to as the social question appears today, so it can be said that it initially arises in two significant demands. Both demands, as they arise, actually point to phenomena in our economic life. One can say: the first demand culminates in the rejection of the management of the economic life of the civilized world, which has emerged in the course of modern times through private capital. And secondly, it can be said that a new attitude to human labor in social life is demanded by the proletariat.

Now, even if it is initially these two significant economic phenomena in which the social movement is playing out today, it is not yet said that only economic impulses can provide what is necessary to overcome the social question today and in the near future. However, the way in which the life of civilized humanity has developed in recent times shows how human energies and all human endeavor have been primarily absorbed by what has resulted from economic development. And so it is not surprising that the most significant thinker of the proletarian world – for that is what it still is today – Karl Marx, directed his attention above all to economic life.

We may devote a few minutes of our attention to him, Karl Marx, not because I believe that the modern proletarian demands have arisen from what the proletariat has learned from Karl Marx, but because that which has slowly emerged in the innermost feelings, in the basic impulses of the soul life of the modern proletariat over the course of the more recent centuries, then quickly over the course of the 19th century, because that has found the most intense expression to date in the views of Karl Marx, because he is the interpreter of that which, more or more or less consciously lives in millions of people today.

Now, precisely because in the last seventy years those impulses that Karl Marx prophetically expressed in the first half of the 19th century and then later have matured more and more in the souls of these millions of people, precisely for this reason his view seems so plausible to the leading personalities of the proletarian masses. It appeared to him, Karl Marx, that what must happen in modern times is emerging – this is well known in the broadest circles from the development that economic life has taken in recent centuries, through the development of modern technology and industry, and through the management of these industrial and technical operations, activities by private capital. To him, the whole process of human development appeared to be such that, in the course of historical epochs, economic forms always replace each other. The economic form that has developed on the basis of capitalist ideas in modern times thinks itself, as Karl Marx sees it, pressing towards its own dissolution; so that this economic order, which has more and more need to proletarianize large masses of humanity, will call this proletariat against itself, because the forms of economic life that have emerged must find their resolution through the productive forces that are formed within these economic forms. The productive forces are constantly changing. The economic forms strive to remain conservative. Eventually the point is reached when the productive forces are no longer able to fit into the old economic forms.

Marx believes he sees such a point in time approaching, having recognized how the proletariat will tear apart the economic order in which this proletariat itself has been harnessed, with its productive forces.

What is characteristic here is that Karl Marx sees in economic development itself, so to speak, the driving forces that will bring the proletariat forward to those points which will then bring about a new economic order, but for him this means a new world order.

Now, of course, the transformation of everything that makes up the scope of state life and the transformation of everything that makes up intellectual life is also connected with what Karl Marx imagines the transformation of modern economic life to be. Karl Marx thinks about the development of humanity entirely in the sense of modern scientific thinking. He has completely abandoned the view of older socialist thinkers, who at the time believed that the most important thing is the human will, which intervenes in the structure of human social life. Karl Marx believes that people basically have to want what is determined for them by the necessity of the economic order. And from the economic order itself, from the way in which people produce, from the way in which people manage their economic affairs, the state orders are formed, as are the law, morality and so on. And today, knowing what goes on in the minds of proletarian people, we can say that this view is widespread. Man is harnessed to economic life, and economic life, the way he feeds himself, how he can lead the rest of his life, determines how he is satisfied with the legal order, which legal order can form at all. Economic life also determines how he thinks, how he feels, what he produces in art and what he produces in science.

This is how it has become for broad circles; in the broadest leading circles of the proletariat, in particular, what is considered intellectual life is regarded as an ideology. This word ideology is heard again and again and again when the proletarian wants to describe precisely what he regards as intellectual life. On the one hand.

On the other hand, the proletarian turns his attention to state life. But in this state life he finds what he calls – again according to the approach of Karl Marx – the all-dominant class struggles. And finally he turns his attention to economic life, which is closest to him because he is directly involved in it. And because he finds his whole life completely absorbed by this economic life, he develops what he calls the “Marxist conception of history”. He develops this out of his conviction that basically the whole historical development of mankind consists of economic struggles, is shaped by forms of economic life, and that everything else depends on this material life. And this, in turn, is connected with his perception of the culture of the leading and guiding circles, into which he cannot penetrate with his soul, and which often seems to him to be a kind of luxury culture, even in its scientific rigor, and which he perceives as an ideology.

Today we stand at a turning point in European culture, where we must ask deeper questions than have been asked in socialist and non-socialist circles for the last seventy years. We must ask deeper questions such as: What is actually the basis of this view of the proletariat, this view that all intellectual life is an ideology, that all state life is a class struggle, that all real history is only a result of material development? It was precisely the thinking of modern humanity that was led into materialism in its most diverse forms, into which Karl Marx was also led with his ideas, with all his impulses.

Now one can ask: Why is it precisely the direction of ideas of these important, these incisive thinkers that has been steered in the direction of looking solely at economic life as the decisive factor for all human development? How then has the thinking of the modern proletarian himself been pushed onto the same path?

Anyone who studies the development of modern times not according to conventional history, but according to what a deeper historical view can already provide today, will indeed find a very, very strange phenomenon that can bring him close to the solution of the question just raised.

One could say that economic life in modern times has taken a course that can be understood if one tries to understand it in the same way as one understands scientific facts. It cannot be said of this economic life that it has not been subject to a certain scientific necessity, as it has developed; one cannot even say, when one examines things properly, that this economic life as such could be different. But then, if one wanted to stop at that, one would come to an extraordinarily pessimistic view of life.

But other questions arise. I would say that people's gaze and energies were restricted, as if hypnotized, to economic life.

Other areas of life have developed in a way that must be viewed very differently today from mere economic development. It was part of the whole way of looking at things in modern times to regard the economy, so to speak, as the source of the other two main branches of human life: political and intellectual life.

One might say that, influenced by natural science prejudices, it became clear to Karl Marx and his followers that economic life contains the causes. Out of these causes, the shaping of state or legal life develops, as does intellectual life. But is that so? This is the big question. Today we have already reached the turning point where it is necessary to recognize that this whole fundamental view is radically wrong, that it is impossible to understand the other two branches of human life as arising from economic life, just as it is impossible to understand state or legal life as arising from economic life, and it is impossible to understand intellectual life as arising from economic life.

This is precisely the peculiarity of modern times, that in its world and life view, this newer time has had nothing that would have made it possible for it to go beyond this prejudice that economic life underlies all other human life.

Three sides of a deeper, more fundamentally human nature present themselves as spiritual life, legal life and economic life. They stand side by side. This is what we must begin to understand. We must do away with the error, resulting only from natural science and from natural-scientific prejudices, that the economic order is the basis for the other two spheres of life, for the sphere of law and for the sphere of the spirit.

Anyone who wants to understand this must, above all, focus on one thing. Look at the way in which modern thinking, the modern way of looking at the world, has developed. This thinking, this way of looking at the world, is more connected with scientific knowledge than one might think. If I were of the opinion that practical life, the outer practice of life, were somehow dependent on theories, on views, on concepts and ideas, as can be imagined from a one-sided philosophy, then I would not make the remark I just made. But that is not how I view the historical process. What is expressed in the whole sphere of life, shaping this life, impelling this life, seems to me to be expressed more or less only symptomatically in the way of thinking of a time; so that I would never want to deduce practical life from the way of thinking, but I would like to assert that the way of thinking , the way of looking at things, is a clear symptomatic expression of what is going on in the depths of the human soul and ultimately shapes the outer, including the practical and economic, life.

What could be called scientific thinking has been incorporated into this way of thinking in all walks of life. But what is the sole focus of scientific thinking? There are still many prejudices regarding this question today, and I believe that those who live in this way of thinking today will be very surprised at the changes in today's way of thinking that they will grow into. What is today considered to be axiomatic, absolutely valid, will most certainly be challenged; it will most certainly undergo significant, powerful metamorphoses. What do rationally thinking natural scientists think today in a broad area? How do they think in a particular area? They think: We do not really understand life or the soul today; basically, we only understand everything that is inanimate in the order of time, well, let us say, what is dead. But it is seen as an ideal that something like the understanding of the living will also develop from the ever-increasing understanding of the dead.

But one must realize that the whole way of looking at things, as we have developed it in the last three to four centuries, as it is the nerve of scientific thinking, that this whole way of looking at things is only suitable for understanding the dead. The reason why natural science has become so great is precisely because this way of thinking is suitable for grasping the dead, all the dead that is embedded in plants, animals, humans, in all living things. Through natural science we understand only the dead that is present in everything.

This way of thinking, which has made natural science so great, ruins and corrupts everything that is social thinking and must be the basis of the social will, for the simple reason that the social will must be directed towards the viable social organism. But if we do not even understand the living forces in nature, how can this thinking be suitable for bringing about the viability of the social organism in any way? It is connected with the innermost structure of modern thinking that man must admit his helplessness, his awkwardness, in relation to social life. Above all, a metamorphosis of the innermost human outlook, of the innermost human thinking, must take place so that man no longer faces things so helplessly and awkwardly.

Those who today look without prejudice at all that that is asserting itself here or there as something socially new, actually has the feeling that in another area what Goethe so dramatically embodied as medieval superstition in the second part of “Faust” in his homunculus scene is coming to life. In the Middle Ages, people believed that the human organism itself could be created by combining dead substances and dead forces according to a human intellect, which itself actually only rules over the dead.

We have moved away from this as a superstition; but it is as if a human superstition wanted to be transplanted from one area to another. And what is often asserted today as a social view seems to us to be a homunculus theory, as if one had no concepts of what should take shape as a living social organism, as if one only wanted to put this social organism together in the way that the medieval alchemist wanted to put the homunculus together from what one had penetrated with the scientific way of thinking, which only deals with the dead. Above all, this is what must be overcome.

Alongside the economic development of humanity, there is the development of the state, which, among other things, consists primarily in the development of the law, and there is the spiritual life. As I said, economic development can be understood in scientific terms. But can the other two branches of human life also be understood in scientific terms? Can it be the legal life? Can it be the spiritual life? This question can be answered by taking a brief look at the development of these two branches of life in modern times. When, three to four centuries ago, at the same time as the technical and capitalist development, the newer world view also emerged, the whole thinking of the circles that were the leaders was such that it pushed to include more and more of the spiritual life in the life of the state, on the one hand, and the economic life, on the other.

The spiritual life has, in fact, already been incorporated into the life of the state to a high degree. One can see the actual progress of the newer development of humanity in the fact that the branches of spiritual life, which used to be more or less independent, have been harnessed into the state legal order. How proud one is of this, to mention just one example, that one has managed to squeeze the entire school system into the state legal system.

It did not happen so quickly with economic life; but it was still seen as a significant step forward that the major transport institutions, the post office, the telegraph and railways; and in accordance with the interests of the ruling and leading circles, they have increasingly forced more and more of economic life into state life.

Because the gaze has been hypnotized on this economic life in modern times, and because the proletariat is primarily involved in this economic life , the ideal arose for the proletariat to take over the state for itself in the same way as the leading circles took over the state in their interest in the past, and to use the state, as it has developed out of all possible old forms, as a framework to squeeze the entire economic life like a huge cooperative into this modern state.

One can show how more and more of the modern proletarian question has also developed under this economic hypnotism. One only has to look back to the 1880s, to the 1870s of the 19th century! What was the situation in the classes of social democracy in Germany, what was the ideal of this social democracy?

Well, the two main points of this social-democratic ideal were, until well into the 1890s, firstly: the abolition of all social and political inequality; secondly: the abolition of the actual wage relationship, of wage labor. These were two demands that emerged, I would say, from a general consciousness of humanity. These two demands are not yet fully imbued with the nuance that is oriented only towards economic life. In the 1890s, these two ideals, which I have just mentioned, are replaced by two essentially different ones: firstly, the transformation of all private ownership of the means of production into common ownership; secondly, the transformation of commodity production into socialist production, guided and led by and for society. The social-democratic demands have been completely reduced to a purely economic program.

Thus, I would say, in its present economic program, social democracy shows itself to be the ultimate executor of what the bourgeois world view has developed over the last few centuries.

Only those who realize that the demands of the proletariat are nothing more than the logical consequence of the bourgeois world order and the bourgeois economic order that has been developed to date can see what is at stake in the right way.

But it went even further.

What I just characterized as the newer world view, which is completely permeated by the impulses of science, is also what

But it went even further.

What I have just characterized to you as the newer world view, which is completely permeated by the impulses of science, is also what has repeatedly formed within bourgeois circles over the last few centuries as the underlying world and life view. Where did the leading spirits of the proletarians get what they think today, what they have brought into everything that is their social will? They have it from the heritage of the bourgeois scientific way of thinking.

It may well be said that up to now the acceptance of the bourgeois scientific orientation was the last great trust that proletarian circles placed in this bourgeoisie, basically up to today. For they have adopted the bourgeois world outlook. And with this bourgeois world outlook they were put to the machines, were harnessed into the desolate life, into the life of capitalism that was becoming desolate for them, were torn away from all those occupations that answer the question: What am I actually in the world? Next to the machine, with its soullessness, and within the capitalist order, in which one is a wheel, the question is not answered: What am I actually as a human being within human development?

Above all, the proletarian demanded to receive the answer to this question from science, from a scientific orientation. The images of the newer world view became quite different for the proletarian than for the bourgeoisie. The member of the bourgeoisie still stands within an economic and social order that basically contains tradition and the teachings of the past everywhere. No matter how convinced he may be of what has emerged under the sole influence of the scientific way of thinking in modern times, it does not conquer the whole person in him; he has religious, spiritual, artistic or other impulses from somewhere else that stand alongside this modern scientific orientation. For the proletarian, this modern scientific orientation is the one that should answer the question: What am I as a human being?

Oh, if one has looked into the souls of numerous proletarians, into those souls that have retained their human feeling and their longing for human dignity, then one knows how they long to have the question answered from the modern scientific orientation side: What do I mean in the world as a human being? - Then what is already present in the expression 'ideology' presents itself to these souls: a spiritual life that does not guarantee man his connection with the spiritual world, a spiritual life that is supposed to consist only of unreal ideas, only of an ideology; it cannot sustain the souls. The individual may not know this, but the effect of it is in the soul! What desolates the souls is that the proletariat has adopted a way of thinking and a world view from the bourgeoisie and the ruling circles that cannot fulfill man, that the proletarian, who has been torn away from the old orders of life, cannot believe, cannot be connected with the old traditions to which the others still cling, and that this scientific way of thinking, which is only what the dead can grasp, cannot give him any answers to the question of the highest things, for which he nevertheless feels more or less unconsciously yearning, for the life of his own soul within the world order. This is basically in every proletarian soul; no matter how badly what comes from it may express itself, it rests at the bottom of the proletarian soul. And even what is visible in the excesses of today's social movement is only visible because that spiritual poverty exists, which has come about under the influence of what has just been described.

Let us take a look at how the ways of life have developed in recent times, ways of life to which man also owes something alongside the scientific order that brought the proletarian the aforementioned, how have these developed? Certainly, the belief in the state, as it has emerged in the course of modern times, is firmly anchored in the minds of many people who are absolutely unwilling to change their minds. This is the belief in the state, which would best take everything under its wing, including the economy and intellectual life! Because this belief is so deeply rooted, so little is learned from the facts. Do not the last four and a half years speak all too clearly of what the states and their missions have achieved over a large part of the world? The time will come when it will be seen that what has been experienced as the most terrible world catastrophe is a consequence of the structure of the entire organization of modern states. And if we examine how it came about that the states, through their own actions, were driven into this world catastrophe, we must ask: How have the states tried to and been able to cope with this combination of the three spheres of life: the spiritual, the state or legal life and the economic life? As states, they were driven into the world war! And anyone who observes the starting points of this world war in particular will see strong arguments against the existence, the composition and the inner structure of the states that have emerged in the last three to four centuries of human development.

But another thing that emerges is how spiritual life actually developed during the very period in which it was most claimed by all that belongs to the state, in the time when one was so proud of extending the power of the state over everything spiritual more and more.

This is basically a chapter of modern historical development that can only be drawn with strong pessimistic strokes! Let us take a look at this intellectual life of the last three to four centuries: many songs of praise have been sung to it. But the characteristic features have basically been little emphasized. The voices of our time will be obliged to say something different about this intellectual life of the last three to four centuries than was said in the songs of praise that were sung to it. Let me emphasize a characteristic feature of this intellectual life.

If we really want to see with an open mind, do we not see how great and significant people have emerged over the last three to four centuries? Even if they have not worked in the field that was directly necessary for the life that one was leading, have the most outstanding minds had some kind of impact? We should have no illusions about this.

Let us turn our attention to a very, very important personality of modern times: to Goethe. Do people really know Goethe? On the contrary! We basically know nothing about this Goethe! Has that which lives as a gigantic, great, powerful spiritual life in this Goethe somehow entered into the souls of men? No, nowhere! In Germany itself, after Goethe had been more or less a favorite of distinguished circles, a “Goethe Society” was founded in the 1880s. Is this “Goethe Society” a matter for the nation, as Goethe's intellectual heritage should make it necessary? No, esteemed attendees! Someone who himself worked within this “Goethe Society” for a long time, but was always in opposition, especially with the leading circles of this Goethe Society, is allowed to tell you: This “Goethe Society” is a pedantic, scholarly elaboration of that which has something to do with this Goethe on the outside, but not on the inside! The spiritual life of modern times, not only in Goethe but in all the other greats, has not been absorbed into general human life. It is a spiritual life that, to a certain extent, modern humanity has been unable to accept. When it has accepted it, it has done so only by absorbing this or that sensation, by informing itself about this or that, by making this or that acceptable, so to speak. For example, when the Goethe Society experimented with its leadership for a long time, they finally ended up making a former Prussian finance minister, who never had any kind of inner relationship to Goethe, the chairman of the Goethe Society! This is only one of the characteristic phenomena; it could be multiplied not only tenfold, but a hundredfold, a thousandfold, a millionfold, if one were to enter into this modern spiritual life. This spiritual life is characterized precisely by the fact that the broadest circles of humanity have not been able to absorb the significant achievements, that these significant achievements have had to live in the most tragic way, as parasites on the development of humanity. In a deeper sense than is usually believed, this is part of the development of social consciousness and of social life in general in modern times. And if we do not want to see in such phenomena of spiritual life something significant for modern social development, we will never find the transition to real, meaningful social will.

In a sense, this newer spiritual life has become a sterile theory. Why? Those who know what the conditions of a real spiritual life are know that if it is to flourish, the spiritual life must never be harnessed to the power of any external force. Natural science, which is directed only towards the dead, and all those branches of the spirit that have approached natural science under the compulsion of newer conditions, they could be harnessed into the structures of the states. But those branches of spiritual life that are based on the most individual abilities of human beings, that were to develop the momentum in the human being to the soul's will, were driven out of these state structures. That is why our newer spiritual life lacks the momentum that the old religious ideas had, because in the broadest circles people are not in a position, are unable, to take in that which runs counter to the development of humanity, and which unfortunately, in a tragic way, must live like parasites.

An explanation will be found for these phenomena. It lies in the fact that in recent times a particular progress has been seen in the intermingling of spiritual life with state life. Until it is realized that a radical change is needed in this respect, social recovery cannot come from this quarter. Intellectual life, school life, and all the other branches of spiritual life must form a special, independent link in the healthy social organism; they must be detached from the structure of the state, which should only really be responsible for the legal life, for the actual political life.

One could point to many phenomena if one wanted to discuss how not only the administration of science, the administration of intellectual life, has become dependent on state power and constraints, but also how the content of science itself has become dependent, how the inner workings of science have become dependent. Hence it appears how unsuitable the natural scientist is when it comes to social thinking and social will. A characteristic example of this is the following: Oscar Hertwig, an important naturalist in the biological field, could recently be cited as an unprejudiced mind who, in his excellent book 'The Development of Organisms - a Refutation of Darwin's Theory of Chance', has achieved something unspeakably important for the development of modern scientific thought. The same Oscar Hertwig made the unfortunate attempt to express his scientific way of thinking in a small booklet for social and legal and state life. One cannot imagine a more nonsensical, unhealthy concoction than this childish little book about social, legal and other similar questions, questions of science in modern times, alongside Oscar Hertwig's great work in the field of natural science! This is a perfect example of how, under the nationalization of intellectual life, a way of thinking has developed that simply cannot penetrate into what lies within social demands.

In general, this intellectual activity has become strangely dependent on something else; so that, after all, scholars like the historian Heinrich Friedjung are really no rarity at all. I am not speaking out of animosity towards Heinrich Friedjung; he was a dear friend of mine in my youth, but today the times are so serious that only objective interests come into consideration. That Heinrich Friedjung, the historian, who, as they say, has written an epoch-making work about modern Austria, he has applied the historical document method, the method of examining historical documents; he has put himself at the disposal of the Austrian Foreign Minister, Baron Ährenthal, with his story; he proved, or so he believes, according to the true historical method, that certain anti-Austrian machinations must have originated with seven conspirators. It came to a court case. Heinrich Friedjung was able to point out that he is not an historian to be taken lightly, that the University of Heidelberg gave him an honorary doctorate. In spite of the fact that Friedjung had proved, using strict historical methods, that the documents with which Baron Ährenthal wanted to condemn the Serbs were genuine, the court had to acknowledge that they were crude forgeries.

At that time, the historical method itself was condemned. Unfortunately, we live in a time when such things are not taken seriously enough, and above all, not deeply enough. Despite the seriousness with which it is pursued, intellectual life in general runs parallel to the rest of life as a secondary current. For me, the way in which the deepest intellectual life can be taken today has always been characterized by what I would like to call the count with the two trouser pockets. I experienced this count with the two trouser pockets, a witty man, I experienced him during one of my visits to the Nietzsche Archive. He was a familiar figure at the Nietzsche Archive. He had two trouser pockets, from one of which he pulled out a Bible for me at the time when we were just leaving the Nietzsche Archive; a complete Bible in pearl print; he was able to put it in his trouser pocket. He said: “You see, I always carry this with me.” But I have another one; and he took out the “Zarathustra”, also published in pearl print, from the other trouser pocket for me to see. So the count had carried with him, or at least wanted to carry with him, the two most important books for him! I would like to say that this is a purely symbolic expression of some of the modern man's affairs, to stand by spiritual things at all. The count with the two trouser pockets was quite symbolic: one pocket was filled with the Bible, the other with Nietzsche's “Zarathustra”. So we see how the newer spiritual life has become sterile and barren, despite all the praise.

Thus we see that political life, as it has developed in modern times until today, has, as it were, reduced itself to absurdity through the world catastrophe. Should we not ask ourselves whether it is not precisely in the interweaving of the three most important branches of life, the life of the legal, spiritual and economic order, that we find the cause of our being driven into the world catastrophe, and which prevents us from coming to terms with the social facts of today?

Anyone who studies the way in which these three branches of human life have gradually been absorbed into the life of the state, cannot but recognize that the recovery of the social organism lies in the re-dissolution, in the re-separation with regard to the three limbs mentioned. We shall not arrive at a living, vital social organism, in the sense of a real human organism, merely by considering the conditions of the spirit life, on the one hand, and the conditions of the legal or political life in the State, on the other. But then one will also realize that these three branches of life have completely different foundations, that they develop best when each of these branches of life is strictly left to its own devices.

In more recent times, this could not be understood only because people's gaze was hypnotized and directed only towards economic life. And so, above all, the human being was seen as harnessed with his labor, if he was a proletarian, into economic life. In this economic life, in the economic cycle, only that which is a commodity or a service similar to a commodity should actually move. The modern proletarian also feels this. This is expressed in his demands, even if he formulates it differently in what he literally says. He feels that it contradicts his human dignity that he is harnessed into the economic process like the commodity itself. Just as commodities have their mutually determinable price, so within this pricing, there is also a price for human labor. On the one hand, the most striking thing about Karl Marx's teaching was that he expressed the deepest feelings of the proletariat with regard to labor, drawing people's attention to the fact that Just as goods are bought and sold on the commodities market according to supply and demand, so your labor power is bought and sold on the labor market. In this respect, we must become even more radical than Karl Marx himself if the social organism is to be cured. We must be clear about the fact that human labor power is something that cannot be compared with any other commodity, and therefore cannot have a price like any other commodity. This is felt by the person who has to take his labor to the market. He feels that we have now arrived at the point in human development where the third must follow, in addition to the two other things that have fallen away in the course of human development. The old slavery has fallen away within human life, where the whole person could be bought and sold; property has fallen away, where less of the person could be bought and sold; the third, which the capitalist economic order has still preserved, must also fall away, the fact that human labor can be bought and sold on the labor market. For when a person sells his labor, he must go along with his labor. By having to go along himself, he still sells himself, so to speak. That is what is felt: we have arrived at the point in human development where nothing more may be bought and sold by man, where only that which, separate from man, can have an objective value for itself, may remain in economic life. That is to say, in the future, economic life and the economic cycle must be limited to the production, circulation and consumption of commodities.

What was human in economic life, and what is still partly human in it today, namely human labor, must be excluded. It cannot be released from economic life in any other way than by being administered independently in a healthy social organism, when labor becomes a legal rather than an economic matter, that is, when the legal state, the political state, develops alongside the economic organism. In economic life, fraternity will prevail, that fraternity which is, as it were, fraternity on a large scale, where an associative life arises from professional communities, from the regulation of production according to consumption, and so on. In the political state, which in turn will develop quite independently, like a sovereign state alongside another state, alongside economic life, democratic equality of all people will prevail. All institutions will have to be such that what makes all people equal among themselves, what concerns all people, is given full expression. Above all, it will be necessary to determine what relates to labor law, among many other things. But labor law is the first issue for the social movement in the present. Quite apart from the economic sphere, equality will prevail among people in the independent state under the rule of law, whether they work spiritually or physically; labor law will be regulated there.

What will happen as a result? The result will be that economic life, as a self-contained area, borders on the natural order on the one hand and on the legal system on the other. Economic life is dependent on the natural order. Whether the fields are fertile in any given year or not, what forces are actually present underground, much in economic life depends on this. One can bring about a different natural condition through technical means, or one can preserve the natural condition through different economic conditions, but a limit is set with regard to what is present through these natural conditions. This is expressed in the formation of prices in the economy and in all economic institutions. It would never occur to anyone to somehow make nature dependent on economic institutions. Just as independent as nature itself, just as independent as the germs of the grain fruits come from below, which are independent of economic life, the labor laws regulated within the legal system must be just as independent. The worker enters the economic cycle with rights that are formed outside of this economic cycle, just as the forces of nature lie outside of the economic cycle. All pricing, everything that develops in economic life, develops on the basis of labor law that has arisen outside of economic life. Labor law sets prices, but the price of human labor is not determined by the economic cycle.

That can only be determined by the healthy relationship between the physical worker and the spiritual leader. Then the laborer will no longer need to conclude today's illusory contract for his labor; then he will be able to conclude the only possible contract that refers to the corresponding division of what is produced jointly by the physical laborer and the spiritual leader. Nothing can be achieved in this area except through the strict separation of state and economic life.

On the other hand, however, an independent and free spiritual life is just as necessary. That which can develop in the state is only healthy if the state regulates only that which applies equally to all people. The spiritual life is simply stifled if it is to be formed on the same basis as the rights and political life. The spiritual life must develop out of the self-sufficient provision and administration of the individual abilities of human beings. This will then be a spiritual life that is emancipated from the life of the state, which in turn the human soul will be able to sustain. This will not be an ideology, this will not be a spiritual life that only provides abstract concepts; this will be a spiritual life that will fully prove its own reality, that will sustain man with his soul, that will place man back into a spiritual order. This is what the modern proletarian still rejects. In the depths of his soul he longs for such a spiritual life, because he feels that otherwise the soul is desolate.

This call for a free organization of spiritual life is a terribly serious matter. The reason it is so serious is that all human instincts, everything that has developed according to the current views of modern times, according to habits of thought, runs counter to this recovery of the social organism. That is why we should like to speak about this demand for a free spiritual life, a free spiritual life that is independent, to those who represent the youth of today. If science and worldview, spiritual life in general, are to be sustainable in the future, then we need a spiritual life that is something other than that which can be placed on the basis of the state. They should feel that it will be different when the teacher at the lowest level knows that what he has to do is administered by those who only administer within a self-contained spiritual organism, when a teacher knows that he is not dependent on any state regulations. When the state no longer has an educational role to a large extent, when those who want to become theologians, lawyers, doctors and so on are no longer dependent on the state, and when it is felt that what is needed, the needs of the spiritual life itself will develop, that it will be needed precisely for what the spirit needs for humanity, then a spiritual life will develop that can have an effect on the other branches of human life.

If we have just discussed what form the proletarian demands for the abolition of the wage relationship must actually take, we can now point out what the true form of the capital question is.

Many people today talk about the spirit, about that spirit that has become a shadow, an ideology, under the development of the last few centuries. From this spirit nothing can be drawn that will sustain the soul. This spirit, this intellectual life, has largely become something that has no impact on, and cannot be realized in, practical life. That is why Karl Marx found nothing in the economic life that still guaranteed him any realities. He said: “In practice, man must experience that his thinking really has a meaning, that the truth of his thinking can really develop.” But this practice was found only in economic life. The spiritual life must be able to give itself the practice of life from foundations that are realities. That is what makes these matters so tremendously serious. But then this spiritual life will not have those abstractions which are our great social, inwardly social evil today; then this spiritual life will take shape as something very concrete.

Oh, let us look at this spiritual life again from a certain point of view. We see how, within this spiritual life, ethical demands have been constructed. We see how, within this spiritual life, ethics of feeling, ethics of neighbourly love, ethics of the divine or moral world order have been founded on certain philosophical bases. What do these ethics speak of? They speak a great deal about the necessary love of one's neighbour, about human goodwill, about brotherhood. But their concepts and ideas remain at an abstract, shadowy level and do not penetrate down into the immediate reality of everyday life. Our intellectual life has become philistine – that is the word, even if it expresses something that does not appear so radical to man. It has become untrue. It moves on abstract heights and cannot descend into the immediate practical reality of everyday life. But it must immerse itself in it. It must become anti-philistine. When it immerses itself in the most mundane needs of everyday life, when the spirit proves itself by being able to intervene in the most immediate, I would say most mundane, actions of man, only then will the power of the spirit be able to show itself in social life. But then it will become clear that the question of capitalism will be resolved at the same time as the question of spiritual life. Certainly, in abstract terms, there is much to be said for the idea that private capital has delivered modern human life to decay and economic war and that a change must occur. At first, one knows nothing else but to say: So private property must end. One can be as honest as anyone can be with this demand, but one can still have the view, precisely from a deeper knowledge of social impulses, that nothing special will be achieved by converting private property into common property. On the contrary, the desolate capitalism would be replaced by the no less desolate bureaucracy. The throne and altar would be replaced by the factory and office. Now, whether the conditions would be better is still open to doubt.

The real issue is that what is actually meant, what actually lives in the subconscious of the proletarians, should actually come about: that capital, which is present in the administration of capital through the connection with individual human abilities, should in a certain way intervene in the economic process. It is precisely not the egoism of the individual, but the general public that is to be served. For it is in this area that the proletarian perceives an enormously significant economic principle, which has perhaps never been emphasized by modern economists precisely because it is so truly borrowed from life, because it is so truly significant. In the ethical and moral spheres, altruism and egoism are regarded as opposites; altruism is beautiful, egoism is extremely ugly. People do not consider the following: as soon as one looks into ordinary economic life, into that social organism in which, in the modern sense, the old primitive economy has been replaced by an economy based on the division of labor, the fact is that the more the division of labor has progressed, the less the individual can work for himself, at least in economic terms.

I am stating an economic principle that I have been trying to make popular since 1904; but humanity does not want to understand this economic principle. Whether one likes it or not, in a social organism in which there is a division of labor - and this is the case with every social organism in the modern civilized world - one cannot work and act selfishly in economic terms. Everything that the individual works must benefit the whole. And everything that belongs to the individual comes to him from social capital. After the replacement of the natural economy by money, and the further division of labor that came about through money, it has become a fundamental economic principle that in a social organism in which there is a division of labor, man cannot work for himself, but only for others.

In fact, in a social organism you cannot work for yourself any more than you can eat yourself. You will say: If someone is a tailor and he makes a suit for himself, then he is working for himself. It is not true if this happens in a social organism in which there is a division of labor; because the relationship that he thereby establishes between the skirt and himself by making this skirt for himself in a social organism with a division of labor is quite different from that in a primitive economy. It is certainly not possible in these brief discussions to present you with full and valid evidence today, but such evidence can be provided, and I will refer to these things in my book on “The Crucial Points of the Social Question”. It can be shown that when a tailor sews a coat today, he sews it for the purpose of serving his fellow man, so that he can work for other people. The tailor no longer has to make the coat just for himself; it is no longer made for selfish purposes, it is a means of production. This change in character has come about simply because the tailor lives in a social organism based on the principle of the division of labor.

This economic altruism is the active force behind everything that happens. If you sin against it, that is, if you place that superstructure over this self-realizing substructure, through which you selfishly acquire the fruits that actually flow to the general public in the true social process, then you place what I would call a real lie into the world. The egoism of today's economic system is nothing more than a sum of real lies, of sins against what actually happens beneath the surface, and what is beneath the law of social, economic altruism.

And it is the reaction of the human proletarian soul, which feels that in the modern social organism, which is based on the division of labor, economically, it is the reaction to the unhealthy, hypocritical egoism that lives itself out in the fight against capitalism.

What is today simply social ignorance in the broadest circles of the leading classes of humanity must give way to social understanding. Then social understanding will also advocate that what happens through capital must become a cycle, that care must be taken to ensure that the steward of capital is always the one who justifies this stewardship through his individual abilities. The moment he no longer justifies this administration through his individual abilities, ways and means must be found to ensure that the capital flows to someone else who, through his individual abilities, can in turn manage this capital profitably for the human community.

This is what will be found through the free cultivation of individual human abilities in the spiritual organism: that the circulation of capital will work. Today, something exists that is similar to what I mean here, but only for the most shabby property that the modern economy has, for the very shabbiest, namely for intellectual property. Intellectual property is said to come from the social order; even if it is based on individual abilities, a spiritual achievement cannot come from mere individuality of the human being. We always owe it to social impulses. We are obliged to give it back to the social impulses. It is therefore fair that what someone produces intellectually should become common intellectual property after his death. In a similar way, although the time periods must be different, material property is only justified for the individual person as long as he can claim the right of disposal over it through his individual ability. That which may remain with an individual as long as his individual abilities are active must find the means and ways, through the indirect administration of the spiritual organization, to reach other personalities who are again placed in the service of the general public. A cycle in the ownership of the means of production will take the place of today's private ownership. That will be the great solution of the capital question. We are only getting started in this area, as can be seen from the fact that people are now talking about the socialization of the means of production. This socialization of the means of production would only lead to a bureaucratic order, which in turn would give rise to the same tyranny from the ranks of those making demands today, never to one that can truly represent the healthy social organism. This healthy social organism must be established by circulating capital among the spiritually capable. The circulation of capital means that over time that which must be managed capitalistically can actually be managed for the common good.

I can only hint at this. It will be further developed in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Present and Future Life”.

But you can see from this that not only intellectual life itself is sought in its more intellectual branches when it is placed on its own, but also that what is dependent in economic life on the spiritual capacities, the spiritual abilities of people, that this would take the right path for the recovery of the future by making the spiritual organism independent. Above all, it is this that will not only produce shadowy thinking, shadowy spiritual life, luxury spiritual life, but a spiritual life that becomes aware of the spirit in that this spirit can penetrate everywhere into material life.

This is something that comes to mind when one looks into the very foundation of humanity basis of humanity, as it is developed by man today, at the present time; the old catchwords regarding whether spirit or matter is justified should be pointed out today.

I am speaking to you from the point of view of a spiritual science, but a spiritual science for which the old dispute between spirit and matter has become nonsense. For it is a third thing that is at issue, of which spirit and matter are the outer expressions. When we enter into this third realm, where neither spirit nor matter is seen, but the primal living spirituality of the world itself, then we arrive at that which no longer presents one link of the whole of human life as the cause, but expresses all three links: economic life, legal or political life and spiritual life as the three revelations of a primal depth. Then we shall overcome the great error that has become a practical error in life today, namely, that we want to base everything on economic life. Then that will come about which is not an abstract unity incorporated in the organism of the State, but then economic life, legal or state life, spiritual life will develop out of their own vitality. And as they develop, they will grow together into one unity.

I am not thinking of some kind of revival of the old estates: the estate of teachers, the estate of farmers, the estate of the armed. All class-like thinking is overcome by the fact that the social organism itself is divided into its three limbs. But man stands in these three limbs as the unifying element. Man is placed in any occupation, in any grouping, for my sake. He stands in a living relationship with the other members. Out of free trust, he sends his children to the schools of the spiritual organization. In economic life, everyone is involved in it anyway; in the life of the state and of the law, the fact that this state life has to administer, above all, that before which all people are equal.

Weak souls and thinkers, they tend to imagine, based on what I have just said, that basically the unity of state life would be endangered by it. Indeed, what has most endangered the unity of state life in the last few centuries? Precisely the fact that an abstract unity has been sought, precisely that these three members of the social organism, which should develop independently, have been chaotically mixed up and fused. I have shown you how intellectual life would flourish under this unity. But economic life, despite the existence of the state, has developed in such a way that today it is fiercely opposed in numerous areas of the civilized world to what state life is.

A recovery will only occur when one works one's way up from the usual way of thinking in this area to the lively view of the healthy social organism. And this can only consist of the following: the economic organism, the legal or political organism and the spiritual organism, structured alongside one another, like sovereign states that only attend to their common affairs through their delegates. Many still dispute this today. But he who, like the one speaking to you, will soon have reached his sixth decade of life and throughout his entire conscious life has always kept an eye on the development of the proletarian movement, but not in such a way that he only thought about the proletariat, but rather that he always learned to think with the proletariat through the vicissitudes of his life, knows how many prejudices are still piling up today against what the times demand, against what basically lies in the subconscious of the proletarian soul: the threefold social order. I am not one of those who, even though I have seen how decade after decade prejudices pile up against this, in my opinion, unique contribution to the health of the social organism, I am not one of those who I am not one of those who stand frightened when events take on a frightening form for some, even today. I am not one of those who, at the twilight of their days, would say: how much, how much has been gone through in vain! No, I am one of those, and I would like to mention this only as a personal comment at the end, so that you also understand the whole tenor of my talk this evening, I am one of those who would not say when they look back on their lives: if you could be young again, would you want to live through life again? - I would never say: no - but I would always say: yes!

Because of this positive outlook on life, I feel distant from some of those who have lived through this life with me up to my age and who, as unfortunately has to be said for the present time, have not been able to come to terms with what the loud facts of the present are able to cope with; but I have the faith that those to whom I feel close, feel close, even when I am three times their age, that those who are young today and to whom I am mainly addressing my speech today, that they will be the ones who will grow into a time in which there will be a lot of suffering, a lot of pain, a lot of tragedy to go through, but in which there will also be the opportunity to rethink and relearn very intensely. Therefore, I am not afraid that there will be many in this circle who will call what I have discussed today a utopia.

Something quite different could be called a utopia today, and it was also recently Basel as utopian by Kurt Eisner, who only recently met a tragic end, who said in his lecture: the world with its economic management and other social order in which we live, the most daring utopian two thousand years ago could not have imagined. Reality today is the strongest utopia. No wonder that when one speaks of a reality that is demanded by the human soul, that is demanded by human reason, when one speaks of such a reality, it seems like a utopia.

But those who are young today will grow out of today's real utopia into real realities. Strong power, strong courage and a certain good will for spirituality, the three will compose the true social will. And from this synthesis of true social life with proletarian demands, what must come about for the recovery of our conditions will develop.

That today's youth may find that path of the spirit to knowledge, which today from the social horizon, is what I presuppose, and it is what has filled me with great satisfaction and great love in response to the request that came to me from students in particular. If we find vitality, courage to face life and strong spirituality in those who look ahead to an afterlife, and a social will that is composed of these, then, despite all that is pressing and devastating today, the development of humanity will continue. Then we can hope for this again.

But today we can already hope for something that will prove that human life is always worth living if it is based on freedom of spirit, on the equality of all people before that which can truly establish human dignity can truly be established, and on an economic life that is equal in its brotherhood, in its brotherly work, to the freedom of spiritual life, to the equality of the democratic order of state life.

Discussion

Rudolf Steiner: I will take the liberty of responding to individual respond to the remarks of the honorable speakers.

First of all, I would like to point out that I understand that the things I said about the social order, the social organism, cannot, I would like to say, lead to conviction in the twinkling of an eye. In this lecture, which has been long enough as it is, I only wanted to provide some suggestions that can be pursued in some way.

I know how extraordinarily well established what the first esteemed speaker said in reference to private property, in reference to the demand for socialization of the means of production, has become. I would like to draw your attention to just one thing: it is not true that people today have usually accepted the idea, or are usually of the opinion, that external facts are extremely solid; but much more solid within us are our habits of thought. And what we have long become accustomed to in our thinking, above all as a human society, not only over decades but even over centuries, cannot leave us indifferent. Therefore, it will not be easily noticed that in all that is taking the form of the transition from private property to common property today, there is actually something in it that is quite justified as a demand, but which cannot so directly become the object of social will, because something ultimate is not overcome in the process, which is overcome when you really, in the deepest seriousness, go into what I have presented today. What all socialists today have not overcome in their thinking habits, and thus also not in the impulses of their will, is the concept of property. One would like to abolish private property; but because one has become so accustomed to the concept of property, one cannot get beyond the concept of property. Property must be; so, since it cannot be private property, one demands common property, social property, nationalization, and so on.

If you just think about what I have said today, the old concept of property disappears altogether. The objects that are owned today – capital, the means of production – will circulate. That is, there is a living organism there. The person who has the most ability to manage certain means of production will always be the one to do so. That this is not utopian, some may be convinced of when they read what I have put forward in my book on the social question, which will be published in a few days and which is not yet exhaustive. But it is precisely a matter of breaking out of certain habits of thought that are all too much alive in everything that people do today. This is what I meant when I pointed out that the means of production can only be found in connection with a human being for as long as that human being's ability justifies it. You see, today, under the influence of the scientific way of thinking, all the social and historical sciences, among other fields of study, are also influenced by the natural sciences; we even have a national economy within such sciences. One thing in particular is not noticed. And in this circle, perhaps, this one in particular may be discussed. People today suffer all too much from an illness that Marx very correctly called “mors immortalis”, the undying death. In life, everything is in motion; only the abstractions that man makes in his mind are actually something fixed. That is what remains. And so, in the period in which the capacity for comprehension has developed in relation to the earlier capacity for intuition, especially since the mid-15th century, in this newer age, which is fundamentally different from all earlier ones, people have often become the victims of concepts. If we look at our most elementary sciences, we see real errors in the methodological, in the theoretical [. . .]. It does not lead to any useful, living social impulses, but rather develops into a hopeless way of thinking in the social sphere. That is why it is difficult to understand the vitalization of concepts that is being sought in my presentations today. One would like to hold on to something that upholds the old concept of ownership. One must go beyond the concept of ownership altogether! And the first speaker in the discussion, if he thinks through what I have stated today to its conclusion, will see that in the demand for nationalization or socialization and so on of the means of production, there lies nothing else than the demand to bring that which is produced by the means of production to the benefit of the community. But perhaps – the current experiments show this precisely where they are conducted, but I do not want to discuss these current experiments at all – perhaps to a certain extent this will be achieved through such experiments. It will be achieved when the means of production really do circulate, when not the totality, which is only an abstraction and can only execute something based on some majority decision, when not the totality owns the means of production, but when the means of production can circulate freely, as, for example, intellectual property intellectual property thirty years after a person's death is something that is freely circulating, but something that is of course then administered by the intellectual organism.

What is to be achieved by demanding the socialization of the means of production will still be able to encroach upon the freedom of the individual without any fallow laying of human individual abilities. This will be achieved precisely in the way I have spoken of today.

My aim – now truly, I may say, after thirty-five years in the field of the social question – is to think things through to the end everywhere, not to seek theories everywhere but to seek out what is possible in life, based on direct experience.

If you think through what I have presented today, you will see that at every point in today's social order, we can simply continue in the direction I have indicated. Therefore, what I have stated is the opposite of any utopia: it is something immediately practical. Whether you start in Russia, where things have progressed to the point of certain destruction, or here in Switzerland, where the old order still stands, and continues to some extent today, you can achieve what I am calling for from a wide range of very specific institutions: the separation of spiritual, economic and legal life. One has only to turn back the machine, which has been running in the wrong direction in recent times, and in the last decades. What should be the result if the relationship of the individual to the individual is regulated in the one link of the social organism, in the constitutional state? A monopoly cannot arise, because, as I will also show in my book, what a person draws as a director can be determined from the outset, while what arises from the social situation must either be put into the business or, to balance it out, must go to the general public, that is, to someone else, who then administers it if he has the ability to do so. All the harm that results from the present position of private property will thus be eliminated. This is what should be noted about my arguments: that what is really achieved is what others want to achieve, but want to achieve with inadequate means. This is what I would like to say in particular with reference to the first honored speaker.

Of course, he did make a very valid point. You see, he described people who today talk about the individual state as an organism in the sense that an organism is in science. In doing so, he refers to a false way of thinking. The truth is that if one wants to make comparisons, one must make them correctly; then the individual state can at most be a cell, the entire organism can be the earth as an economic entity. This is what, I would say, detracts from this truth when people think of what is spatially limited as a whole. This way of thinking would immediately cease if one were to see that this organization, which we call the state, if it cannot be the case with real organisms [.. .], can certainly be the case with cells that come together. So, without going into this gimmick in great detail, I would just like to say something that is true: that the whole earth has already become a kind of unified work today. But this is based on a different sense than the one I have discussed. And as I said, I have not dealt with the relevant issues theoretically, but from the perspective of direct experience.

Of course, the second speaker must be agreed when he says that love for one's fellow human beings must become the fundamental idea of humanity. I would just like to draw attention to one thing in such matters. I will put myself in the position of this second speaker. I always find it more fruitful to talk to someone than to go directly to the points that can be put forward as opposing arguments. You see, as the honorable speaker said, people have been talking about love for two thousand years. Nevertheless, despite all this talk of love for one's neighbor, I ask you to consider the last four to five years! So perhaps it is not just a matter of talking about love for one's neighbor, but rather of how one talks about this love for one's neighbor, whether one talks about it in the abstract or whether one looks in concrete terms at how this love for one's neighbor can be put into practice. And here I would like to take the position of the honorable speaker. You see, one of the most significant and beautiful sayings of the Gospels, of Christ Jesus, is: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” That is more or less how it would be translated correctly. It is time to recognize that in the truest Christian sense, this is a true saying. We do not have to look for Christ only in the Gospels, we do not have to look only for the Christ who was, as it were, buried in the Gospels, we have to look for the Christ who is alive, who walks among us. We have to listen to what the Christ proclaims anew every day. I believe that one hears the Christ correctly when one is able, in each new era, to hear what the Christ says for each era in a new way from the place where the signs of the time appear. And I believe that today he speaks to us through the ages in such a way that we must not stand still, not even with the words, as was preached in the past, such as charity, but that we must progress to new forms, also in our outlook on life, as we clearly progress to new forms of life itself. That is what I would like to consider.

Not long ago, I heard a speaker in Bern, a Catholic priest, who spoke very effectively. The man spoke very similarly to our second speaker. He also said that love for one's neighbor must prevail; above all, Jesus Christ must lead the modern social movement. - I would like to say: nothing could be more self-evident than this. But then this gentleman made further statements - in Bern, I think - yes, he said what he said very effectively, but I myself remembered that I had read these statements in my schoolbook as long as forty-five years ago - they remain words. The gentleman used the same words. I had to think: Nevertheless, between the writing in my schoolbook and what the Lord said today lies the terrible catastrophe of the world war! So it will be necessary today, after all, to rethink, to approach things differently than they were approached before. Are we not to learn anything? Should we continue in the same old rut, always repeating, as our ancestors said, “love for one's fellow creatures,” when in spite of their preaching love for one's fellow creatures these terrible days have come about? It is not a matter of preaching love for one's fellow creatures! I have often said in the most diverse circles: If there is a stove in the room and I speak, as is now customary in the bourgeois world view, of all kinds of ethical demands, of which love of neighbor is one, then I would have to say: The stove has the duty to warm the room. But even if I try to say, Dear stove, it is your duty as a stove to warm the room, it is your sacred duty – and I repeat this over and over again, the room will just stay cold! But I can save myself the speech if I put wood in and light it. Then I am doing something concrete, and it will get warm in the room. Sometimes people talk about the way in which associations should form in economic life, how, as I said, fraternity should prevail on a large scale and come about in concrete life; when they talk about how the social organism should be structured, then they are talking about something concrete. That already includes everything, including what charity wants to be! But mere talk of love of neighbor is not enough either, at least not in our complicated circumstances. And when it is said, “Jesus Christ should be our leader,” then of course He should be our leader. But it is not talk that counts, but what one does. That is what matters, not merely saying, “Lord, Lord,” for He is Lord anyway! but on actually following him.

When it is said here that the great spheres of life must form a unity, and it is difficult to imagine how these three spheres of life can be separated, then I would like to point out that it is necessary to take this step forward in the field of social thinking, which unfortunately science for its part has not

In my penultimate book, “Riddles of the Soul”, I pointed out how, by using everything that modern science could already use, I was able to find out in the course of thirty years of spiritual research how the human organism is a threefold being , how the human organism really breaks down into the nerve-sense organism, which is centered in itself, and which also naturally stands in a relationship with the outside world through the sense organs; how, as the second, stands beside it the so-called rhythmic organism, the respiratory-heart organism, and as the third, the metabolic organism. All the activities of the human organism are contained in these three members, which are centered in themselves, and work together to form the most powerful unity precisely because each member has its center in itself, and it is precisely through being centered that the living unity comes about. One should not think in a scientific way in this field; I do not want to play with analogies like Schäffle or Meray, that is far from my mind; but I would like to point out that healthy thinking with reference to the social organism has difficulty in making this threefold division. With regard to the social organism, we must not only make this threefold division in theory, but also implement it in reality. I cannot understand why it should be difficult to imagine that a spiritual organization administers itself, to a certain extent sovereignly within itself; the constitutional state, in turn, sovereignly within itself; and the economic state, sovereignly within itself. The higher unity comes about only through living interaction; whereas if one imposes unity from the outset, whether it be unity directed towards economic life, or unity in legal life, as in this old constitutional state, or spiritual life, as in the old theocratic institutions, these three elements interfere with each other; whereas they not disturb each other when they work together in the living unity, when one is truly centered in oneself; only must the centering be done in the right way.

Recently, a listener in Basel replied to me that he could not imagine what it was like either, there must be justice in all three links, for example. Yes, of course, right and justice must be present in all three members, just as air, in its materiality, must be present in all three members of the human organism; but that is why it must be processed by the respiratory and cardiac systems, and specially prepared in one member. In this way it is particularly effective for the other members. The fact that one limb produces and develops in the right way that which is necessary for the others brings about just the right unity. The living organization is based on this. This is what man will have to go into; for that is what matters.

This is what I have to say in response to the objections that have been raised regarding these divisions. What matters is that what can be achieved through this organization is precisely what lies unconsciously in the proletarian demands, but what can only be realized through conscious social will. And of these different possibilities I wanted to speak to you today, as far as possible in this short time.

If you board the tram here at Aeschenplatz in Basel and travel to Dornach, then take the small path through Dornach, you will come to a hill on which stands the Goetheanum, which is to become a School of Spiritual Science. Although it has been encouraging to note that an extraordinarily large number of visitors have been coming to see this building day after day, it must be said that, whenever the outside world world, for instance in newspaper articles, answers are given to the question of what is actually to be done inside this building once it is finished, these answers generally present the opposite of the truth, with a few exceptions of course. All sorts of things are said about what is to be done there in the past or present in this Dornach building. In any case, the answers given to the questioners are very far removed from what those involved in the spiritual current on which the Dornach building is based actually set as their goal. For this goal emerges from a careful consideration and observation of what I would call the cultural conditions for humanity in the present and future. And out of all the various presuppositions, which I shall venture to speak about this evening, this spiritual movement, which is to find expression in the Dornach building, is based on the conviction that the longings of wide circles of people today contain the realization that a complete recovery, a healthy further development of our human culture must come from the soul of the human being, from that which the human being can grasp in his soul as his connection with the spiritual world. It is based on the conviction that, in the face of the demands and difficulties that arise in our social life, we must try to find the impulses that correspond to the longings of a large number of people – and this number is growing ever larger and larger – from the spirit and soul.

Now, one can see – I would just like to mention in passing that now on Sundays and other days quite a few people come from Basel and the surrounding area to see what we call our eurythmy performances in the provisional hall of our carpentry workshop, where we have to hold these events for the time being until we can open the Goetheanum itself. , and it is reasonable to believe that a large number of those who have already made the pilgrimage to Dornach for these eurythmy performances have come to the conclusion that, in this particular area, too, an attempt is being made to spiritualize something, to raise something into the sphere of the spirit, which, under the influence of materialism of the last centuries, is still practised today by our culture in a more or less materialistic, physiological and similar way.

In this eurythmy, there is an art of movement of the human organism itself, which is taken from the organizational structures of the whole human being, the whole human being, who encompasses body, soul and spirit. And quite apart from the fact that this eurythmy aspires to a special new art form that cannot really be compared with what are often perceived as neighboring arts, it can also be said that these efforts to the spirit is based on what I would call the inspiration of the human organism's possibilities of movement, which, for example, in gymnastics, are understood only in an external physiological way, in a purely material way. The human being is meant to carry out movements, and that is why this eurythmy will also have a spiritual-educational value at some point. In addition to artistic movements, the human being should carry out movements that are not merely taken from anatomy and physiology, as in gymnastics, but that are taken from what can live in the moving human being: spirit and soul.

Now, it is difficult not to be misunderstood when you go out into the world with a thorough spiritual or soul current today. One would like to say that misunderstandings are coming from all sides. And so it may happen that in some places some misunderstandings regarding spiritual science itself have already been cleared away, to the extent that this spiritual science is even allowed to speak on social issues. But we have committed what we believe to be the right thing to do, but what others have thought of as ineptitude: in some places where I have had to speak about spiritual science and social issues, I have also given eurythmy performances at the same time. And lo and behold, the judgment was immediately made: how can a spiritual endeavor be of any value that also includes dance performances?

Well, I could easily add to the list of misunderstandings that come from all quarters, because the world still judges in many ways today as if everything that is to be done in the Dornach building is something obscure, something dark and mystical. So often today, when spiritual endeavors are mentioned, one hears that all sorts of mystical things are being done here or there, even in many places. The fact that the movement that is to be linked to the Dornach building has nothing to do with such obscure mystical movements could be taught to those who seek to see clearly and truthfully in such matters by the fact that one who stands before you and speaks to you about his cause, the cause of this building at Dornach, this Goetheanum, can point to a book written as early as 1894, The Philosophy of Freedom. And if anyone reads this 'Philosophy of Freedom', I think they will not get the impression that this 'Philosophy of Freedom' is intended to bring anything of obscure mysticism, enthusiasm or the like into the world. And I may say that, after all, everything that is to form the main content, the main impulse of this spiritual scientific movement, of which I am speaking, is permeated by that longing of present-day humanity, which expresses itself in the urge for such a way of life within which the individual human being can, on the one hand, fulfill his social duties, but on the other hand, can still be a free being as an individual human being.

I would like to begin by pointing out a phenomenon that is connected to something that is very familiar to you. And although I take as my starting point in today's reflections a politician, you should not think that I am going to devote myself even remotely to the political culture of the present day. I would like to speak about the cultural conditions of the present and the future in a much broader sense; but I would like to mention a characteristic that can show us how the call for freedom is, so to speak, emerging from the cultural aspirations and ideals of the present, only emerging in such a way that it is truly not taken deeply enough. And to take it deeply enough, to deepen what humanity's longing for freedom is, that is intimately connected with the view that spiritual science has of the cultural conditions of the present and future.

Those who have heard my lectures this year and in previous years, this visitors who remember how I spoke at that time, when Woodrow Wilson was, one might say, seen as a man honored throughout the world, to whom people looked up and to whom they attached great hopes for the future, these honored visitors will not hold it against me if I, who in the days when this man had many supporters freely expressed my opposition from a certain point of view, if I today take as my starting point the special conception of freedom, the special call for freedom, that resounds from the political world view of Woodrow Wilson. One must believe that the strong, otherwise, in my opinion, quite incomprehensible impression that Woodrow Wilson has made on the world so far, where the matter stops, is based precisely on the fact that all the program points, everything that has come from this man into the world, is ultimately based in a certain way on the impulse of human freedom. Let us see what this man did before he became President of the United States, let us see what made him great as President of the United States. We will find that it is his conception of a possible social organization of human coexistence in which man can have his freedom in a democratic way. Woodrow Wilson saw how, in the last decades of the 19th century and the early 20th century, large accumulations of capital had come to be concentrated in the hands of a few people in the course of the life of America. He saw how trusts and the like had been formed. And he saw how a few wealthy people had gained control over other people as a result. This is where he began his reflection and his work. He first of all asserted the impulse of freedom. He demanded a complete democratization of human political life in the face of the accumulation of economic and political power in the hands of a few. He wanted every single person to have the opportunity to make use of their abilities in human coexistence. He did not want those who had established themselves in any branch of industry or trade to be able to have monopolies that the legitimate abilities of the weak could not compete against. He wanted us to look for the causes of what happens in social life in every single human situation, even the simplest. And he often expressed this. And it is characteristic of him that he has based his political aspirations on precisely this goal of freedom.

We need only consider his extraordinarily significant writing “The New Freedom”. One might say that on every page one finds the truth of what I have just said. I will quote just one of his most remarkable sayings. He said: There is only one way to create a free life, and that is to ensure that under every garment beats a free and hopeful heart. I truly believe that what had such a strong effect was this call for freedom.

Now, this call for freedom always resonated in the practical political and social effectiveness. The writing “The New Freedom” is actually just a collection of election speeches. There is no talk of a freedom that is only philosophically speculated, there is no talk of any abstract mere freedom of consciousness, there is talk of a freedom that is to be realized and realized in life .

Now, I also tried to grasp such a freedom, which should be realized and actualized in life, through my book “The Philosophy of Freedom,” which I wrote at the beginning of the 1990s. But now, after much hesitation, I have published a new edition of this book, and I can now openly express the belief that freedom can only be truly and practically lived out if we seek it not only in the outer social and political life, but if we seek it in the depths of the human soul itself. And it is in the depths of the human soul itself that freedom should be sought through my “Philosophy of Freedom.” If one stops at the surface of mere social and political life or of external social life, one will very soon see that the realization of freedom is not at all possible if one grasps it only in that sense. For freedom is something that must arise from the individual human being, something that cannot exist if individuals are not able to realize it, if individuals do not first pour it into the social life that they lead together. But if we wish to appreciate the full significance of what is suggested here for the culture of the present day, then we must overlook much of the mere phraseology of the present, and we must try for once to speak seriously and honestly and truthfully about many things. The call for freedom is, I would say, present throughout the entire educated world. Today it is there for those who want to hear it, for the American, the European, and the Asian world. And the only question is: how can the awareness of freedom be realized in the life of the present?

To answer this question, we must take a closer look at how a man inspired by the impulse of freedom, such as Woodrow Wilson, talks about freedom today, and how others talk about freedom today. It will sound strange to you, and I must confess that I hesitated for a long time about expressing the truth I have to say here as bluntly as I will, because such things still shock many people today, because people still take such things far too much at face value, far too little in terms of what is actually behind them. Read Woodrow Wilson's book 'The New Freedom'. Listen to how he talks about the social conditions in America and, ultimately, about the social conditions of contemporary civilization in general. What do you find in it? Actually, only criticism, criticism of how this freedom is not realized within today's civilization, how one must strive to realize this freedom within today's culture and civilization. There are sharp words in this direction of criticism in Woodrow Wilson's book 'The New Freedom'. And if you stop at the criticism - and there is not much else in this book except criticism - and now really seriously and honestly ask yourself: How does this criticism of freedom or social criticism by Woodrow Wilson relate to the criticism that is asserted from another side? you come to a strange result. For example, I have tried to examine Lenin's and Tyotzki's criticism of freedom in terms of how this criticism of freedom and social conditions relates to Woodrow Wilson's criticism in The New Freedom, and I believe that anyone who makes such a comparison honestly and truthfully can say nothing other than: With regard to the criticism of social conditions and the realization of freedom in them today, Woodrow Wilson agrees with Lenin and Trotsky, however different the conclusions they draw.

One must be able to admit such a truth to oneself, even if one finds it quite understandable that despite this criticism, Woodrow Wilson naturally comes to the opposite conclusions from Lenin and Trotsky. And even if one, like the person standing before you, is convinced that Lenin and Trotsky are the gravediggers, not the founders, of a social life, that hardly anything worse could happen to humanity than if the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky were to be realized - but an important, an important fact is expressed in what must be set apart right now; the fact is expressed that from the most opposing party standpoints, from the most opposing social passions, people today come to similar criticisms of the existing cultural conditions and finally also to the abstract call for freedom. Only they understand this freedom in very, very different senses.

If one penetrates to the fact that ultimately the true impulse of freedom can only come from the depths of the human soul itself, then one may well also ask: Why is it that despite all the politicking and calling for freedom in his book, and in his other books as well, there is so much that one must say are abstract, impractical truths that can never penetrate into reality? I believe that precisely what Woodrow Wilson thinks of as freedom is precisely what prevents him from being a truly practical person for the spiritual life of the present. It is very characteristic how Woodrow Wilson explains freedom. He explains it, one might say, as if he had absorbed the whole sum of his concepts from the art of machines. For example, he says: A ship moves freely when it is so equipped that its apparatus is precisely adapted to the movements of the wind and waves, when it experiences no obstacles or hindrances from the movements of the wind and waves, when it is, as it were, carried along freely, without resisting what carries it. And so a person would be free in the sense of Woodrow Wilson, who would be so adapted to the external social conditions that nothing in him would give rise to obstacles and inhibitions, so that he would feel nowhere, as it were, dependent, constrained, disturbed in any direction. If we take seriously only one sentence, we shall see what significance this statement by Woodrow Wilson has for the concept of freedom. If we compare seriously and honestly the human being who is to act freely from the innermost impulse of his soul in some humane social order with a ship that offers as little resistance as possible to the forces of wind and waves, then we completely ignore the fact that the ship must be held still by another force must be held still against wind and waves, cannot hold itself still, but that if man is to be free, he should certainly not be carried along by social forces, but that under certain circumstances he must be able to stop and also to oppose the forces that affect him. The opposite of this would have been the result for a real idea of freedom, which is found as a kind of definition of freedom in Woodrow Wilson. And we will find that the vague call for freedom sits in many human souls today, but that what they consciously connect with the impulse of freedom is different from what they unconsciously really strive for. This was already before my soul's eye when I conceived my “Philosophy of Freedom” out of the human spirit in the 1880s. I saw how the question, “Can man be inwardly free or unfree at all?” occupied philosophy and worldviews and religious convictions throughout the entire civilized development of mankind. If man is a being, a natural being, that is driven purely by natural causes, then he is not free. Or does a being live in man that possesses and uses what he is as an external physical being only like an apparatus out of his own innermost impulses? If he were that, then it could be said that he, this man, is a truly free being. Is man free or is he not free? Is he one or the other by virtue of his nature and being? These questions were before me. And anyone within today's scientific community who wants to tackle these questions must, however, give an account of how he deals with the various views that have been expressed here and there in the whole of civilized human development on the question of freedom

Now it seemed to me that the main thing was that the question is usually asked quite wrongly: the question is, “Is man by his own nature and essence a free being or is he not?” It is wrongly formulated. And as a wrongly formulated question, it can never be answered with a simple yes or no. And so you will find that my 'Philosophy of Freedom' is based on putting the whole question on a different footing. However, what I am going to explain now lies more than the foundation under what is presented in my 'Philosophy of Freedom' itself. The way modern man is, in whom the true consciousness of freedom has actually only awakened, is the way this modern man has developed out of earlier states of the human being. Today, far too little consideration is given to the fact that one should seriously and honestly apply the principle of development to humanity. Although it is thought that in the very, very distant past, man was once a kind of ape-like creature; then it is said: It is not yet scientifically time to talk about how today's man has become from this ape-like creature, from this animal-like ape that once climbed around in the trees. One leaves a long, wide desert between the ape-like man and today's man. But even if this is not admitted, essentially one does have the idea that once man has become man, his soul and spirit have not changed particularly radically. I know that this is a debatable statement. But anyone who allows the history of the development of humanity, as it is usually viewed, to take effect on them, will find this statement justified. And anyone who delves more deeply into this history of human development will find that, as man has developed, consciousness of freedom has awakened in him, so that from the depths of human souls the call wells up: First of all, you must be able to act freely out of your own passions, emotions, sensations and feelings; you must live in a social condition in which you can be free. But on the other hand, this call actually exists only as such. Today, there is also no human consciousness that would allow this call to come to its full meaning in man himself. That is to say, man does not find enough of his own being within himself, so that he could say of this within himself: yes, there is something in me that is a free being. In the course of human development, we have advanced to a magnificent development of scientific knowledge, and the last one will be the one who represents the spiritual science meant here, who - as I have often discussed here - would somehow like to deny the magnificent scientific progress or would like to object to the justified scientific views. But the way in which we have developed natural science in modern times means that the human being of modern times, of the last three to four centuries, can actually only understand himself as a physical being. From the depths of the human being, from the human consciousness that is given according to nature, it does not rise at all: you are just as much a real soul, you are just as much a real spirit – as it rises from the depths of the human being: there you have your arm, there you have your hand, they are made of flesh and blood and bone.

This is not just, I would say, a carelessness of worldview. One completely misunderstands what is actually at the root of it if one merely criticizes what I have just said and sees only a carelessness of world view in it, if one merely says: People today are so comfortable that they believe that the human being is only a material being, and that nothing of the soul and spirit is expressed in him. No, my dear audience, with such a criticism one does not get anywhere. One must rather recognize that, as man has developed, he is initially forced to see himself only as a material being if he takes in nothing into his soul but what today's external view of nature and external natural science and the consciousness of the times can offer. In other words, if we allow contemporary culture, which particularly loves time, to be what contemporary culture produces as time, as science, as art, as religious conviction, and also allows it to influence schools, if we allow this to influence today's man to such an extent that he is permeated by it, then, if he is honest, he will have to become a materialist. That is a harsh word. But I believe it is a true word. Today, in a certain respect, one can be dishonest, can say out of some prejudice: “I do believe in spirit and soul.” Then one is not serious about what has actually been produced by the consciousness of the times and by scientific convictions. And if you take these convictions seriously, there is no other option than for man to feel like a material being. He once developed in such a way that if he merely abandons himself to the conditions of life he has created for himself today, he can only come to believe that he is a physical being. A physical being, no more than any other natural being, can be a free being. Therefore, one can say: If the present consciousness is taken seriously, then nowhere does something like the impulse of freedom arise from this present consciousness. One can sound the call for freedom out of subconscious instincts, as Woodrow Wilson does. But if you become absorbed in the time consciousness of the present, you will arrive at false concepts of freedom, at a definition of freedom that says nothing about freedom and a free being, as Woodrow Wilson does. You have to have the courage to step outside of this time consciousness, which has taken hold of the widest circles, which has become popular. And one can say that, especially at the time when I wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom,” one could feel quite alone within contemporary culture with such ideas, no matter where one lived on earth. One can understand that Woodrow Wilson's particular views grew out of America's young life in terms of world history. And when I look at my “Philosophy of Freedom” today - I may also speak frankly about it - I know how justified those criticisms are that may strike today's reader of this “Philosophy of Freedom”. I know very well that if anyone reads the first thirty or forty pages of this book today, they will say: Well, this clearly bears the eggshells of German philosophy, professorial concepts, university concepts, school concepts.

Nevertheless, I have to stick to the form of this book and appeal to the present in such a way that I say: Just as one should not take the essence of man from his clothing, so one should not take my philosophy from its clothing in concepts, which had to serve as such a clothing for it for reasons of time and education, for reasons of the intellectual life within which this philosophy originated. Rather, something else seems important to me, which, I would say, has symbolically confronted me during the elaboration of my “Philosophy of Freedom”. At that time, while working on this philosophy, I was also working at the Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar. For some time, an American scholar worked with me there. He was preparing a literary-historical treatise on Goethe's “Faust”. It was very interesting to talk with him, and anyone who can see reality in symptoms had American intellectual life in the midst of Central European intellectual life, so to speak, in the form of the excellent American literary historian Calvin Thomas. But you see, I felt as if I were working in a typical Central European office in the Weimar Goethe and Schiller Archive, with all kinds of scholars, including American scholars. I could only use my leisure time to work on my “Philosophy of Freedom” after office hours. But I often had to ask myself: How close is what is in Calvin Thomas's mind American knowledge, American insight, to what European scholars are writing on the same subject, and how alone one is in the face of this cultural formation, in the face of the whole world, with what can be conceived as a real idea of freedom from an independent intellectual life. To a certain extent, one also felt isolated when it came to what could be derived from the young sense of freedom in America, in terms of world history, in terms of an idea about the impulse of freedom. And at that time it was important to me to put the whole question of freedom, as I said, on a different footing. I had to say to myself: the way man is, if he leaves himself to himself, if he only takes what can first fill his soul out of the consciousness of the time, then he cannot know himself as a free being. Therefore, I put the question differently. And this other way of posing the question permeates what I recognize as the idea of freedom. I cannot ask: Is man free or is he not free? but rather: Can man, in the depths of his soul, after he has gone through what arises from himself, as it were, from nature and from his being, continue to develop his soul by taking his soul's development into his own hands, and can he then awaken something in him that is dormant in such a way that this actually deeper being in him comes into its own, so that only through this awakening of a second man in him does he become a free being? Can man educate himself to freedom, or cannot he? Can man become a free being or not? How does he become a free being? That was the new question that had to be raised.

But this pointed out that the present-day human being, if he wants to come at all to the consciousness of the full human being, must not stop at what arises of its own accord in the human being in his development, but that he must take his development into his own hands. Admittedly, this is a point of view that is highly inconvenient for a great many people today. For in order to make it plausible, one must say the following to people: Take a look at a five-year-old child. Let us imagine that this five-year-old child is standing in front of a volume of Goethe's lyrical poems. This five-year-old child standing in front of the volume of Goethe's lyric poems will do something with this volume of lyric poems; he will tear it up, perhaps bite it, or something else, but one cannot assume that this five-year-old child will do the right thing with the volume of Goethe's lyric poems. But the child can develop, the child can be educated so that later he will learn to do the right thing with this volume of Goethe's lyric poems. Now, what would it be like if we were to say to people today: Just surrender to what time consciousness itself gives you, and then you will relate to the actual secrets of nature, to the actual secrets of the world around you, as the five-year-old child relates to Goethe's lyrisches Band. It has the whole of Goethe's Iyrisches Band before it like a fully understanding human being, but of course it does not penetrate into that which one can penetrate into as a fully understanding human being. It must first be educated. Now the call for freedom actually presupposes that the human being has the great intellectual modesty to say to himself: perhaps I stand before nature, before the essence of the world, as the five-year-old child stands before the first volume of Goethe's lyrische Gedichte. I must first take the development of my soul into my own hands, and then, just as Goethe's volume of lyric poetry will mean something completely different to a five-year-old child after five or seven years, so the world will mean something completely different to me. While before, when I just leave myself to what comes naturally, I am a fettered being, a different person awakens in me when I take my development into my own hands. And as this other man glows through me, warms me, permeates me, I become a free being.

Yes, that was the foundation of a human conception of freedom in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” and it was not intended merely as a philosophical truth, but to show that through what man awakens in himself by advancing himself – as if he only achieves what is given to him of its own accord – by developing himself in this way, he develops, as it were, a previously dormant, hidden reality within himself. He creates something in himself that brings him to freedom. As long as one theorizes, as long as one thinks up abstract ideas, these will be a matter for the human mind. They will not particularly take hold of the whole person. Anyone who has dealt with such things could actually know how shadowy the most beautiful, the most ideal abstract ideas live in people. It is different when not abstract ideas but life itself is to be awakened in the human being, when the human being is to go through something vividly, through which something awakens in him that was not there before. This is something alive that takes hold of the whole human being, that is not just a matter of the head, that is a matter of the soul and spirit of the whole human being. Here all feelings and impulses, the whole human life of will, are brought together; freedom becomes a real force in the human being, freedom becomes something that is experienced. But then, when it becomes something experienced, then the human being also wants to develop it in the external life together, then, by living with other people, he comes from his experience of freedom to an idea of such a social structure of human life together, in which only can be realized.

Therefore, in the second part of my philosophy, I tried to establish a moral teaching for people, to establish a social outlook that, I would say, must then naturally arise from the awakened sense of freedom. If we take the impulse of freedom as something that is vividly grasped in the deepest essence of man, then freedom is not an abstract idea, then the philosophy of freedom is not a mere philosophy, then what is expressed by such a view of freedom is something that merges into all of man's actions, into all of man's objectives. Then it contains something that others long for when they speak of freedom, but that can only be found by those who, if they want to understand freedom, do not stop at the world views of the present, but ascend to what lies dormant in man and can be awakened. What I would call a language of freedom that can be spoken to humanity in such a way that it is intimately connected with the cultural conditions of the present and future human being, still needed another thing in its further development.

And here is the reason why we had to move on from the foundation of a philosophy of freedom to anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Take one of the main books of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. There you will find a detailed description of the paths that a person must take inwardly, in soul and spirit, in order to awaken in him the consciousness of the other person, of the truly free person. There you will find how it is possible for a person to truly come to such an understanding of his own being that the true form of thinking and also of willing appears before his soul. And here I may refer to something I already mentioned in one of the last lectures I gave here: thinking and willing becomes something different for the human being than it is for ordinary consciousness, which, as described in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds', penetrates the human being. By thinking one learns to recognize how the being, which one then grasps as the higher human being, was already there before man entered into physical existence through birth or conception. By thinking one learns to recognize the true form of the human will, how man carries his nature through the gate of death into the spiritual world. One learns to recognize by truly rising, by developing to the truer essence of man, to the eternal in man.

But this only properly sketches out the paths that lead people to, I would like to say, regard the “Philosophy of Freedom” as something self-evident; the paths to finding the truly free human being. But at the same time, this serves the deeper cultural conditions of the present and the future, which express themselves precisely in such calls for freedom as I characterized in the introduction to my lecture today.

What does a human being need when he feels intensely about a dignified existence, what does a human being need for the content of his innermost human consciousness? What I want to say here can perhaps be best illustrated by referring you back to the starting point of spiritual human culture in the last three to four centuries. For it was a great thing when, at the dawn of the newer development of humanity, minds such as Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno and so on appeared. What did they do, basically? They broke with the knowledge and worldviews of the old days and directed human attention to the unbiased observation of the external world. They wanted to dispel prejudices. They wanted to make clear what man can gain by observing the external world. But little by little something else has occurred, something that I have already partially characterized. What has occurred is that an old awareness of what man is in his innermost being has been destroyed by more recent observation. If today, in accordance with our newer natural science, we look at the starry sky, what is this starry sky? Something that we want to understand through mathematics and mechanics, something that we only feel related to – this abstract product of our minds, mathematics and mechanics. And if we compare this with the consciousness that people in older times had when they looked up at the starry sky, He did not have the abstract scientific consciousness: up there the stars revolve according to mathematical-mechanical laws, but you, earthworm, stand here on this earth, are born with birth and perish with death, and that which you are has nothing to do with the course of the stars. If we go back to the earlier stages of human consciousness, we find that this earlier human consciousness held the view that you, human being, as you stand here on this earth, you are not merely attached to this earth; that which lives and works in you is connected with that which circles up there in the stars. And when you perfect your knowledge, when you become aware of yourself as a complete human being, then you know yourself as being related to the animals and plants and stones of the earth, and thus to the entire cosmic space of the stars. We have paid for what we have learned mathematically and mechanically about the stars by cutting ourselves off from the cosmos, from the world. If one now walks the path to higher knowledge in the way I have described, and comes to recognize that human being that did not begin with birth or conception, but that was there in spiritual worlds before birth and conception, and that also lives in us now and which penetrates through the portal of death into the spiritual world, then one does indeed learn anew, with this human being, only in a new form, not in an old, worn-out form, one's kinship with the whole cosmos; then the human being is again imbued with world consciousness. His mere earthly consciousness is transformed into world consciousness. But then man has something that he needs precisely as a cultural condition of the spirit in the present and for the future. Humanity could never experience the moment without the deepest damage to its essence, where reference would be made to new external observations, and the old spiritual life would gradually be extinguished. Man needs faith, the reference to the realization of a permanent, that can withstand, as well as the outer observation of the world expands.

Thus it is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that shows man himself in such a way that he can in turn tie his world consciousness to the whole cosmos, that he in turn knows himself in connection with the world spirit. This is not just a theoretical idea, but something that comes to life in the whole human being, and what makes him, this human being, a different being. In the present and in the future, there will be much speculation about what social institutions are needed so that people can find a dignified existence within them. In recent times, people have even deluded themselves into believing that such institutions can be invented. We shall only arrive at institutions that give man a dignified existence when man is able to create such institutions from his deepest spiritual and soul life. But for that we do not need to dream of a transformation of the external social conditions; for that we need to seriously tackle a new spiritual culture, to awaken that which slumbers and sleeps in the human soul, and which must first be awakened so that man may know of himself that he is a free being. Today we completely overlook the deep rift in our spiritual culture. For many centuries, certain social powers have ensured that external science does not speak of the spiritual and the soul. That should be the concern of dogmatism. One was to experience it through mere belief, to let mere authorities dictate what one should think about spirit and soul; because certain social powers claimed a monopoly on dictating what should be recognized about spirit and soul, science was pushed aside to the merely material. It makes a very peculiar impression on the one who looks deeper into the development of humanity when he hears today how official science believes that it is pursuing the truths without prejudice and that through this unprejudiced pursuit of the truths it will find something that is today called science and that basically only wants to deal with sensual facts. In truth, it has become a developmental process, in truth, it is human research that has capitulated to the monopoly of certain social circles that alone wanted to deal with what people have to think about spirit and soul. A science such as I have characterized, such as leads to freedom, it leads at the same time to man not only being able to investigate the physical, his bodily nature, it leads to man also learning to investigate the spiritual and the soul. And when he learns to investigate the spiritual and the soul, he absorbs stronger, more realistic concepts than those he absorbs when he has to limit himself to mere external material. And so they have tried to allow only that into social thinking which arises out of the present-day consciousness. And from this point of view they believe that human ideas cannot actually penetrate into social conditions, or they fashion for themselves most perverted social ideas. In my book Von Seelenrätseln (Riddles of the Soul) — one of the last that I wrote and which, like the others, is only a continuation of what you will find in my book The Philosophy of Freedom — in this book Von Seelenrätseln, I have shown how truly anthroposophically oriented spiritual science not only capable of speaking abstractly about all kinds of spiritual and psychological phenomena, but that by grasping the reality of the spirit it is at the same time able to comprehend the human being, which is body, soul and spirit, in its wholeness. And so, for example, in these “Puzzles of the Soul” I was able to point out how it is a great error in present-day scientific physiology to speak of the fact that man has sensitive nerves that go from the sensory organ to the central organ, while the motor nerves go from the central organ to the muscles. An abstract science that speaks only abstractly of spirit and soul will never dare, and will never find the method, to say anything about the senses that cannot be proven merely by the senses. One can prove by stating that there is only one kind of nerve, that there is no difference between sensitive and motor nerves, that such phenomena as tabes dorsalis, which are cited in support of the opinion that motor nerves exist, actually prove the opposite proves the opposite of what is believed to be proven by them.

Thus, in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, something is created that in turn penetrates all of nature, that has enough impact to penetrate all of nature. But this also allows this spiritual science to penetrate into that which must be of particular interest to contemporary culture. This spiritual science is allowed to penetrate into the structure of social life. And it is only through those experiences that people have with the higher human being that truly social concepts can be gained. That is why we live in such a confusing time today, why we live in such confusion and such chaos today, because people who deal with the solutions of various social issues are not able to dig deep enough into the human being itself to find the ideas that can truly govern social life. And so we are at a loss when faced with the most pressing and burning questions of the present day, and we are left standing before these most searing and burning questions in such a way that no answer comes from the depths of human nature as an echo.

We have seen how great transformations have taken place in the course of human history. Or was not one of the greatest transformations that have taken place in the course of human development that through which Christianity arose? Christianity, which has given the evolution of the earth its true meaning, has emerged through a mighty transformation. It left many things behind. Not all people recognized the truths of Christianity; but on the whole, Christianity was the one thing that worked transformatively in the old cultural element, and basically brought forth the whole of European civilization with its American civilization appendix. Later, something like the French Revolution was experienced. While Christianity was a purely spiritual transformation and has achieved its goal to the greatest extent, it can be said of the French Revolution, which was a political one, that it has achieved some of its political goals, but that important and essential things have been left behind, which have not been achieved of the goals that were set. And now in our time we are experiencing the longing of many people for a new transformation, for new revolutions. And we already see these revolutions at work in many ways. Mankind has had sad experiences. If it wants to be unbiased enough, it should also recognize this in proletarian circles. Mankind has had sad experiences with the extreme social revolutions in Eastern Europe, in Hungary, and a great lesson of world history should be the failure of these social revolutions. And an even greater lesson could be learned if people are at all capable of learning from world-historical events, namely the sad fate of the German revolution of November 9, 1918, a revolution that fizzled out. And if we take a comprehensive view of all that follows from such facts, from the failed revolutions in Hungary and Eastern Europe, from the sadly abortive German Revolution, then we see: spiritual transformations, such as those brought about by Christianity, can take place in the course of the development of humanity; political revolutions, such as the French Revolution, only in part; economic revolutions, such as are being attempted now, are doomed to failure, can only destroy, can bring forth nothing new, if they do not transform themselves into spiritual impulses for progress. One of the most important and essential cultural conditions of the present time is that, out of the correctly grasped impulses of freedom, people come to realize that all the questions that are being addressed today must be considered in the context of the whole spiritual development of humanity, with a renewal of the human spiritual life. And mankind must realize this clearly before the sad and terrible lesson of necessity can occur, which would occur if what is happening to the downfall of human culture in the east of Europe, what has happened in Hungary under such sad circumstances, what is happening in Germany, if what is happening in the way it is grasped by those , who have no conception of the real impulse of the spirit, takes its course, which is now regarded by many as appropriate for the times.

Even what is done economically is only done correctly out of the human spirit, and we live in an age where the old concepts no longer suffice, where we must find new concepts that can create a new economic culture for the present and for the future. Woodrow Wilson is right when he says: We have new economic conditions, people could not shut themselves out from the new economic institutions; but we think about this economic life with the old legal concepts, with the old traditional spiritual ideas. But then, nothing will sprout from that which is rooted in the soul that could now master the new economic life.

What is sought here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in what is communicated here, will on the one hand reach up to the highest heights of human spiritual and soul life, but on the other hand will also be strong enough to reach down to where the most everyday aspects of life need to be grasped. What is the situation today? Intellectual life has gradually taken on a very abstract character. Think about how the religious, aesthetic, artistic, and ideological convictions of, say, a merchant or an industrialist or a civil servant are formed. This is a matter for himself, which he experiences in his soul. It has nothing to do with the account book or with what he does in his office. In the realm where he generates his spiritual ideas, the ideas and impulses that are then expressed in his account book are not created at the same time. At most, it says “With God”; but that is also all that connects the activity that is expressed there with what he carries through the world as an abstract spiritual and soul life. But that is why it was said when people with good social ideas arose in modern times, such as Saint-Simon, Blanc, Fourier: These are good moral ideas, but good ideas alone will not transform social conditions. This can be heard everywhere today where the socialist point of view is discussed. And they are right. With such social ideas as Saint-Simon, Blanc, Fourier and so on had, you do not transform social life, because they arose from the consciousness of people that, when you think and reflect on the spiritual, this spiritual is a thing in itself, that should not grasp the world at the same time. In the end, all spiritual life has become abstract. On the one hand, man takes the upward surge religiously or artistically or ideologically to spiritual heights, if he takes it at all. On the other hand, he abandons himself, I might say, to the hazards of life; in natural science, by working in laboratories, in the observatory and the like, and what he brings out of it, whether in the social or in the scientific field, has no connection with the abstract spiritual life. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to pour out a unity of spiritual and material life over all of human civilization. And from that which is developed in the human being, through beholding the higher human being within himself, ascending to the eternal, the possibility should follow of grasping that which lies beyond birth and death for the human being, but at the same time to make the ideas so strong that they can intervene in everyday life. For it is not the person who speaks of the spirit who is serious and true about the spirit, but the person who is serious and true about the spirit who pursues the spirit to its last involvement in material existence, for whom nothing at all remains of spiritless matter even in the practical conception of life. That is what could be called the cultural conditions of the present and the future, that such spiritual and mental consciousness should be in people.

Then people who are imbued with such consciousness will also create social and political conditions that are desired by people like Woodrow Wilson. Today, however, the situation is such that people only criticize, that productive ideas are not yet there, because they do not want to descend to the spirit or want to ascend. Today we see how, starting from America – we have given the example of Woodrow Wilson himself, certainly a decisive personality – how, starting from America, there is criticism of contemporary social life, and the call for freedom is heard. But one does not want to decide to properly ascend to the real impulse of freedom. And we have seen how truly beautiful, ingenious ideas about freedom and social conditions have emerged in Europe. But it is characteristic of us in European civilization that we are incapable of bringing down from the abstractions, from the philosophical heights, what we conceive and feel so beautifully and introducing it into direct life. And we still do not understand it when there is talk of such an introduction of real, not merely imagined ideas into political life. And when we look across to Asia, we are confronted with a different civilization that criticizes the social and freedom life of the present just as aptly as America and Europe. One only has to read the beautiful arguments of Rabindranath Tagore to see how far the one who stands at the forefront of Asian culture can go in criticism. He does not achieve this in the productive sphere because he is not able to say to himself: if we are to speak of spiritual life again, we must strive for something new. He wants to preserve an old spiritual life, but only to be effective in it.

Now, unfortunately, we have seen in Europe that people have finally lost the direct connection between what they strive for in spirit and what everyday life, so that we now see numerous societies engaged in shaping Europe according to purely external economic aspects and trying to satisfy the needs of the soul, since the Christian religion no longer satisfies one in Europe, from Asia, through all sorts of theories and so on. Such relationships are not suitable for bringing about a new spiritual life; they are the last decadent shadows of an old one.

What is meant here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science takes all this into account. It is pretty much the opposite of what is said about it. And the building in Dornach, which is so often said to be symbolic, does not have a single symbol. Rather, it is said to be built, I would say, purely naturally, in such a way that it is envisaged that one day this and that will be , just as one learns to recognize the nut within its shell, and when one looks at the shell around the nut, one finds that it is naturally shaped to fit the nut. In the same way, we wanted to create a new shell for a new spiritual life, in architectural, artistic and pictorial terms. The building was not constructed out of abstract ideas or out of a complicated aesthetic view. I have often used a rather trivial comparison to try to express what I actually mean by this Dornach building. I am sure many of you know that in Germany, Austria or here, certain cakes are called Gugelhupf, and then the form in which the Gugelhupf is baked is called the Gugelhupf pan. Now, I said, if we imagine that what is to be done in this building is a Gugelhupf, a cake, then, if the cake is to be right, the Gugelhupf pan must be right. In the same way, the spiritual life that is to be cultivated there must have the right shell, just as the nut in the nut shell has the right shell. Except for this basic principle of the building, everything is still fundamentally misunderstood in wide circles today.

Now, as in other numerous lectures that I have already given here at the same place, I wanted to point out once again how the things that are really involved in the Dornach building and what is to be done in it for the civilized development of humanity, in contrast to the numerous misunderstandings that arise, that must arise very naturally. Perhaps it is possible to see from the few suggestions I have been able to make, but which are intimately connected with the most important human longings for the renewal of culture in the present and for the future, what is meant and wanted by this building and its purpose. When the call for freedom rings out from America, as I characterized it with Woodrow Wilson: the goal is to find humanity, a dignified existence, through a spiritual and soulful understanding that can meet this call as its realization, as the right answer to the question that is being asked. Some people today still avoid it. Out of dark, vague feelings, demands are made. The answers must be given out of a clear spiritual insight. I have to think how right Woodrow Wilson is in a certain respect when he points out that secret consortia should not decide on the affairs of the people, of humanity. Woodrow Wilson wants decisions to be made in every family home, be it in the country or in the city, but he wants people to come together in the schoolhouse in particular. It is a beautiful idea that the place of nurturing the spirit should be the place of origin for the formation of contemporary ideas. And it is a beautiful saying of Woodrow Wilson's when he says: Our goal is the reality of freedom. We want to work towards preventing private capital accumulation by law and to make the system by which private capital accumulation was created legally impossible. And another very nice saying is: Inside the country, on the farms, in the shops, in the villages, in the apartments of the big city, in the school buildings, everywhere where people meet and are true to each other , that is where the streams and rivers rise from their source, to form the mighty force of that stream that carries and drives all human endeavors on its journey to the great common sea of humanity. It is a fine idea to call people together in such a way that the stream can form from all the individual sources for the liberation of humanity, and it is a fine idea to let the goals that are to carry humanity forward be set precisely in the places where the spirit is cultivated, in the school buildings.

But if you take what I have tried to explain today, then perhaps Woodrow Wilson's call for schoolhouses will have to be different after all. For I believe that only when a cultural life is cultivated in these school buildings, permeated by a realistic, humane understanding of the free human spirit and the human soul, only then will the right current of human freedom come from the school building. Until we can implant in the human soul a correct understanding of freedom, we may gather in schools, but they will hardly find realistic goals there either. These will only be found when we have the courage to bring into the schools a spiritual, realistic worldview, an artistic outlook, and a religious confession. For what will come out of the schools for the future of humanity will be more important than what people in general decide on the basis of what they have learned at school.

It is still considered in many circles today to be a sign of a particularly enlightened mind to reject the possibility of penetrating into the spiritual, into the supersensible world, through human knowledge. It can be said that in some circles, especially in the scientific way of thinking, a front is already being made against this so-called enlightenment. But however much may be said from this side about spirit and the supersensible world from this or that point of view, it cannot be said that a really satisfactory way into the world of spirit is already being tried or striven for in wider circles.

That there is the possibility of penetrating into the supersensible world, not merely through an indefinite, scholastic belief, but through a genuine and true continuation of that way of thinking which has made modern scientific thinking so great, to penetrate into the supersensible world, that is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks, which - as I already said here a few weeks ago - is to find its external representation through the Goetheanum in Dornach, as a proof to be presented to the world, to be fathomed through the experience of the spirit.

If I am to explain the path of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from a different perspective than the one I have already presented in numerous lectures here, I would like to begin today by talking about something that seems rather abstract and perhaps far-fetched to some.

It is no coincidence that the Goetheanum takes its name from Goethe. In a certain respect, Goethe's entire world view, his entire way of thinking, forms the starting point for a more recent spiritual-scientific endeavor. And even if one can say that what one finds in Goethe still presents itself as a beginning, it is perhaps best to illustrate the fundamental principles by starting from certain simple thoughts or ideas of Goethe's. Well known in wider circles, but unfortunately still too little appreciated today, is what Goethe called his metamorphosis doctrine, in which we also find his idea of the primal plant.

By this archetypal plant, Goethe does not mean a simple, tangible plant structure, as a modern natural scientist would say, but rather something that can only be grasped and experienced in the mind. At the same time, however, he means by this archetypal plant something that is not found in any single plant, but that can be found in every single plant in the wide plant kingdom of the earth. He therefore assumes that, I would say, within every plant that can be perceived by the senses there is a primal plant that can be grasped supernaturally and experienced in the spirit.

He also imagines the same, although he has not explained it so clearly, for the others, for the non-plant organisms. And even if Goethe, partly out of his artistic attitude, developed this idea of the primal plant, it must be said that his main aim was to find something scientific in the very best sense through something like the primal plant, something that can be a guide for man as an idea, a spiritual guide through the whole vast world of plants.

When Goethe traveled through Italy to clarify and mature his world view, he once wrote to his friends in Weimar, who were well aware of what he actually wanted with his primal plant, that the image of the primal plant had emerged for him again, particularly in the rich, abundant plant world of Italy. To begin with, in abstract terms – we need not, as we shall see in a moment, adhere to the abstract – to begin with, in abstract terms, he says: such a primal plant must exist, for how else could one find in the whole manifold plant kingdom that each individual being is really a whole plant? – As I said, that is expressed in abstract terms, but Goethe expresses himself about this primal plant in much more definite, much more forceful terms. For example, he says: “When one has grasped this primal plant in one's mind, then one can, from the living image of this primal plant, create images of individual real plants that have the possibility of existing.”

One must only look in the right sense at what is actually being said with such words. Goethe wants to arrive at an idea of the nature of plants in his mind, and he wants to be able to form a spiritual image of a plant from his Primordial Plant. This plant is a single plant, not like a plant that he sees with his senses, but rather, he invents a plant that is added to the plants that exist in the senses. This plant does not exist in the senses, but it would have the possibility of existing in the senses if the conditions were right. What does this actually point to? It points to the fact that man, through his soul, can become so immersed in the sensual reality and, in this immersion in the sensual reality, can experience the spiritual that is within the sensual reality in such a way that he grows completely together with this spirit, which lives and weaves everywhere in nature, creating.

The greatness of Goethe's world view is that it aims at this immersion in reality, and that it is convinced that, to the extent that one immerses in this reality, one comes upon the spiritual reality, so that one spirit of reality, which can then be one's guide through the entire confusing diversity of the sensual world itself.

Now, what Goethe strove for can be extended to the entire world surrounding man and to man himself. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has set itself the task of extending this way of thinking to everything that confronts man from outside and from within. It is thus the opposite of all unclear obscurantism, the opposite of all unclear mysticism. It strives for what Goethe claimed for his world view: to delve into the spiritual world with mathematical clarity and transparency.

This spiritual science now feels completely in harmony with modern science, although it goes far beyond the science of modern times. One has only to have passed through this natural science to realize how this spiritual science must spring from this natural science itself. Let us take a look at what this newer natural science is actually striving for. It sees its real goal as finding a knowledge of the things surrounding man, of the mineral, vegetable and animal world, and even of man himself, in which nothing is said about any subjective feelings or ideas of man himself. This natural science, in particular, from its newer point of view, that of experiment, to which it has rightly placed itself as a natural science, seeks to explore nature in such a way that the individual phenomena and processes of nature themselves reveal their essence, their laws, so that man does not weave anything into what he calls knowledge of nature, from what he finds within himself.

This is how what has been presented as natural science for three to four centuries, but particularly in the 19th century, differs from the knowledge of nature in earlier times. Anyone who has studied the way in which nature was understood in earlier times knows that people took what they formed in their imaginations and projected it onto natural phenomena, and to a certain extent they extracted from natural phenomena what they had first projected into them. That this does not happen, that man allows nature to speak to him quite impartially, that is the endeavor of modern natural science.

But one cannot help but let the spirit do the research when researching nature. One cannot help but apply that which one has within oneself as a life of thoughts and ideas, and which is of a spiritual nature, to the context of natural phenomena. Now one can take one of two paths. The ordinary scientific worldview of recent times has taken one path; but anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would like to take the other.

When science develops its ideas, these ideas, which pure as I have described them, are to be gained from nature, then with these ideas, I might say, science can contemplate itself; then it can ask itself: What is the nature, what is the value of the ideas that we apply to external nature? – This is not done by the newer natural science. Modern natural science is limited to discovering everything about nature that does not answer the question: What is the human being actually? That is the characteristic feature of all, one might say, insightful natural scientists, the emphasized point, that they say: Yes, we can explore much about the physical world outside and within us - but this does not answer the question: What is the human being itself? And again and again we must emphasize: in its efforts to understand nature, natural science sets up a picture of the world in which the human being is not included as soul and spirit. Natural science, honestly based on the present standpoint, has no answer to the question of soul and spirit.

The question as to why this is so must be answered historically. Natural science itself does not know why it does not advance to the knowledge of soul and spirit, why it stops despite its admirable results on the outer nature before soul and spirit, why again and again natural scientists arise who say: Yes, if natural science were to speak of soul and spirit, it would transgress its limits. - One believes to speak about nature without prejudice. One does not speak without prejudice, because what has become established over the centuries as a certain way of thinking weighs heavily on natural science, actually on the way of thinking of modern natural science. And this pressure consists in the fact that certain confessional currents have claimed a monopoly on the truths of soul and spirit.

If we go back a few centuries, we find precisely in the period in which modern science had its early days, how religious denominations claim their monopoly on dictating the truths about soul and spirit. In the face of this claim to monopoly, modern science recoiled. Natural science of modern times has penetrated with magnificence into the outer nature; but not because one would have recognized through this penetration into the outer nature that one could not ascend to soul and spirit, one has refrained from this ascent, but because it was so firmly rooted in the unconscious human views that the monopoly claim of the confessional religions must be taken into account. That is why this belief was transformed into an apparent proof that it is impossible to penetrate the soul and spirit.

Anyone who has seriously studied the scientific research methods of modern times, and who has then inwardly processed that that arises as ideas about external nature with the exception of the actual essence of man, knows that the other path, which is taken by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, must be further pursued into the future of humanity. If natural science understood itself, if it did not live under the pressure hinted at, then, precisely because it strives to be a natural science that disregards the subjective element of the human being, it would come to the Goethean principle of growing together with the spirit that is spread out in the phenomena and facts and beings of nature. And if it understood itself, modern natural science would choose of its own accord precisely that which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as a continuation of the natural science direction, must claim for itself.

Indeed, what must be essentially supported is that which can be cultivated through natural science in terms of inner imagination, of thinking power, through careful inner spiritual methods. And it is on the training of such inner spiritual methods that everything through which the spiritual science referred to here wants to find its way into the supersensible, into the spiritual world at all, is based.

Today, people perhaps imagine far too lightly what is meant here by this path into the supersensible world. One thinks that it means something like an inner spinning, a surrender to all sorts of ideas, through which one weaves out all sorts of things that the nature of things should be. One might imagine that this is easy compared to the difficulty of the experimental method or compared to the methods used in observatories and clinics. But if you read something like I have tried to present in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in my “Occult Science”, you will see that it is not just any kind of spinning around in inner ideas, but a strictly lawful, inner soul work of the spirit into the spirit. For true spiritual science can never be the view that one can penetrate into the spirit through external methods of experimentation, but true spiritual science must uphold the view that only the spirit in man can find the spirit of the world.

What man has to accomplish in his inner being, I have often referred to here in these lectures and in my books as meditation, as concentration. Today I would just like to point out that this work of concentration, this meditation work, is a purely inner soul work. But what is the goal of this inner soul work? What is the goal of this work with only the inner soul forces, this devotion to the pure workings of the soul and spirit in the inner being of man?

You know that we perceive the world through our senses as we live in it, and then we process this world. This is also how science works. We then process this world by reflecting on it, by revealing its laws, by forming ideas about it. But you also know that this process of forming ideas leads to something else, to something that is intimately connected with the health of our personal human being. This process of forming ideas about the world is connected with the fact that we can retain impressions of the world, as we say, through our memory, through our power of recollection. People so easily overlook this power of memory, this memory of the human being, because it is something so everyday for them. But that is precisely the peculiar thing about the real pursuit of knowledge: that which is often everyday for people must be understood precisely as that in relation to which the most important, the most significant questions must be raised.

When we perceive the world of the senses, form ideas about it, and after some time seemingly bring these forth from our inner being again, so that we remember events we have experienced, then there is much that is unconscious in these memories, in this memory process. Just think how little you are actually in control of your memory with your will, how little you can command, so to speak, your power of remembrance. Consider above all how little you are able to think of this memory while you are perceiving outwardly. Or is it the case that when a person looks out into the world with his eye, when he hears sounds with his ear, he simultaneously ensures that representations are present that make reminiscence possible? No, for that to happen the human being would have to consciously exercise another power alongside perception and the inner workings of the senses. In reality, this does not happen in ordinary life. I would like to say that memory with its power runs alongside the outer life. But it is the one that works subconsciously, so to speak, that helps determine all life in the outer world of the senses, so that we support this life through our memory through life. This power must be brought up from the unconscious. In other words, we cannot bring up from the depths of our soul what we unconsciously practise in our power of remembrance by merely remembering our experiences, but by trying to bring the power, which we otherwise do not know at all, which, as I said, runs alongside, I have said, to such a conscious clarity as otherwise only the external sensory perception is, by bringing this power up from the subconscious depths and weaving and living in what is otherwise in the subconscious of memory. If we use the power of recollection not for memory, not for remembering, but to make ideas and images that are otherwise only kept alive by the power of recollection consciously present in our mind, we strengthen something in our mind that, when the necessary time comes, allows us to experience a very different awakening from the one we experience every morning. If you consciously work again and again in the way that otherwise only memory works, then you experience something of a new awakening in the soul. One experiences something like the appearance in the soul of a completely different person than the one who otherwise walks through the world of the senses. One cannot reach the spirit through theorizing. Every philosophical argument that wants to reach the spirit through mere reasoning has nothing else in mind than the word or words about the spirit. The spirit wants to be experienced. And it can only be experienced by our raising up what would otherwise remain in the subconscious, in the deeper layers of our human soul, so that it lives in us with the same luminous clarity as what we see through our eyes, what we hear with our ears, and that in this brought-up conscious will lives in such a way as the conscious will lives when I direct the eye from this wall over to that wall, in order to turn the gaze away from what I see here and to look at what I can see there. By availing myself of my senses, the conscious will lives in this availing of the senses. This will must fully penetrate

this inner soul work, then one comes to something that is a continuation of the ordinary soul activity of man, which relates to the ordinary soul activity of man just as the waking day life relates to the life of sleep, from which at most the dream speaks .

That there is something in human nature that can be brought up and becomes a new organ of knowledge, that becomes what Goethe calls the soul eye, the spiritual eye, that is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to demonstrate through gradual familiarization with such inner soul work. In this way it will express what natural science is unable to express because it lives under the pressure I have indicated. But this pressure must, because humanity longs for it - one can notice this longing if one is only unbiased enough to do so - this pressure must fall away from the knowledge of humanity.

So you see that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not want to be some kind of false mysticism, some kind of obscurity, but a truly genuine continuation of what is known in natural science. And especially those who have enjoyed a scientific education will find it easier to concentrate and meditate on thoughts, because they are accustomed to methods and ways of research that disregard the subjective side of the human being and enter completely into the objective. If we now apply what we have been trained in to natural science, especially to meditation, then we eliminate all human arbitrariness, then we bring something into meditation, into the inner work of the soul, which is an objective lawfulness, like that of nature itself. It is precisely by taking the way of thinking and imagining of natural science into the human being that the chaotic, unclear self-knowledge, which is striven for with many a complicated and wrong mysticism, where one only wants to brood over one's own inner being, is overcome. Working in one's own inner being, which proceeds in every step of this work in the same way that only the most conscientious natural scientist proceeds, by extending his power of judgment over that which unfolds before his eyes or before his instruments, stands in opposition to this uneducated brooding into one's own inner being.

That is one side of it. I would like to say that it is the side that points to the awakening of special powers of knowledge. The ordinary power of memory will certainly not be there in those moments when one wants to explore the spiritual directly, because this power of memory itself has undergone a metamorphosis. It has become a spiritual eye that can perceive the spirit. With the usual conclusions that today's popular logic has, one cannot penetrate to the real spirit. Whoever wants to speak of a real penetration to the spirit must point to the real existing forces that lead to this spirit. And one such real existing force is the power of remembrance. But this power of remembering must be transformed, it must become something quite different. Every other penetration into the spirit leads at the same time into the dark, because human will is thereby eliminated, and with it the most important part of the human being itself. Just as we regard as fantastic what arises from, I might say, organic foundations of our mind, and as we do not call what we have no control over a true memory, so the true spiritual researcher will accept no soul-content for his spiritual research that he does not completely permeate with the light of his will.

So much for one side, the life of imagination, as used in spiritual research. But something else in man can be used and must be used if one really wants to find the way into the supersensible, into the spiritual world. And just as spiritual science has been challenged by the spirit of natural science through the way of thinking of modern times, so on the other hand spiritual science has been challenged by human life in modern times. Anyone who follows the development of the human soul through the last few centuries without prejudice, not with the preconceptions of today's historian, but just without prejudice, can see that a tremendous change occurred in the state of human souls around the middle of the 15th century, admittedly only within the civilized world, but just within this civilized world. It is a mere prejudice to believe, merely by looking at the external historical facts, that a human soul in the civilized world in the 8th or 9th century A.D. had the same inner makeup as the human souls of today. Of course, there are still backward human souls today who more or less still stand on the standpoint of the 8th or 9th century; but they are instructive precisely because they also lead us outwardly back to that time. But on the whole we can say: One need only look at human life in accordance with experience. A tremendous change has taken place, which has become ever more pronounced since the mid-15th century. If we want to describe it in more detail, we have to say that if we go back to that point in time, we find that people's relationship to one another was very different from what it is today and from what unconscious human forces are striving for in the future of humanity. Whatever may be said against it out of certain prejudices, something is being striven for in relation to the relationship between human beings that has its beginning at the time referred to. In earlier times, people were close to one another through blood ties, through tribal ties, through everything that made them related to other people through their organism, or what made them related to other people through the organic connection that manifests itself, for example, in sexual love. Do we not see, if we only want to see, that in place of the old blood relationship, in place of the old clan relationship, the old family relationship, the old tribe relationship, there is more and more that works from person to person in such a way that it passes from the soul, from the willing soul of one person to the willing soul of another person? Do we not see that the development of modern times makes it more and more necessary for man to approach another human being through something quite different from his mere physical organism? We see that since the time indicated, the sense of personality has grown, that the human being has become more and more inward-looking and inward-looking, and thus also more and more lonely and lonely. Since that time, I would say that the human being lives more and more isolated in himself with his soul life. The soul life closes itself off from the outside world. The blood no longer speaks when we are face to face with our neighbor. We must make our inner life active. We must live ourselves over into the other. We must merge spiritually into the other. What may be called the social principle, the social impulse of modern times, is very much misunderstood, especially in those circles that today rightly believe themselves to be socialist. One sees the social impulse emerging, but even today only a few circles know what it actually consists of.

It consists in the fact that more and more in the lonely human being the impulse awakens to live himself over into other people, spiritually and inwardly through his will, so that the neighbor becomes the one who becomes it through our consciousness, not through our blood, not through our organic connection. There we stand face to face with people and have the necessity to live ourselves into them. What we call goodwill today, what we call love today, is different from what was called by that name in times gone by. But by living ourselves into other people in this way, it is as if everything that pulsates in us, that lives in us as will, would take up the will of the other. We enter completely into the other with our soul. We go out of our body, as it were, and enter into the body of the other. When this feeling increasingly takes over, when this feeling, permeated by love, I would say, as modern love of one's neighbor, spreads among people, then something arises from this shared experience of the will, of the entire soul life of the other person, which is a real life experience. Today, many people could already have this life experience if they did not allow it to be clouded by prejudices. Where it occurs, it is rejected with truly unsound reasons. One need only remember a person like Lessing. At the end of his life, when everything that he could produce in the way of human greatness had passed through his soul, he still wrote his “Education of the Human Race,” which culminates in the acknowledgment of the fact of repeated human lives on earth. There are higher philistines, as there are higher daughters, and they have their judgment ready for such a thing. They say: Yes, Lessing was clever all his life; but then he became decrepit and came up with such complicated ideas as those of repeated lives.

But these repeated lives are not a fanciful not a fanciful idea; they are what we experience when we do not stand before another human being merely by virtue of blood relationship or organic belonging, but when we can truly live our way into what lives in his soul. There, in response to what is approaching us, the spirit of one person meets the spirit of another person, and from this arises, as we know from experience, that which can be said: what is forming a bond here for your soul, for your spirit, with the other person, did not come about through this life. What arises in the blood has come about through this life. But what arises in the spirit as a necessity has come about through something that preceded this life. Anyone who really follows the development of modern human life since the middle of the 15th century – it is still shrouded in mystery for the widest circles of humanity – will come to the idea of repeated earthly lives through living with people. And what comes to light then occurs, I might say, like a dream. I say “like a dream” for the following reason: When we fall asleep, we fall asleep into an unconscious. Then, out of this unconscious, this or that emerges as a dream. One can compare this falling asleep into the unconscious with submerging into the souls of our fellow human beings, as I have just characterized it. Then, out of this immersion, I would like to say, not figuratively, but very literally, out of this sleeping into our fellow human beings, something also emerges at first, like the dream of repeated earthly lives, and draws our attention to the fact that something like this must be sought in order to understand life, in order to find the way through the world of the senses. And what shines out like a dream from our social life becomes a complete certainty when we train the human will in the same way as I have described for memory. But just as memory must become a fully conscious power, so the will must, on the other hand, discard what completely directs it in ordinary life.

What then directs our will, our desires, our longings in ordinary life? If our desires did not arise out of the organic life of our body, the will would, so to speak, have nothing to do with them. He who, through experience, has penetrated to the will, knows that this will is based on desire. But we can also detach that which is the actual power of the will from our desires. To a certain extent we do detach it in our social life. But that only draws our attention to what is actually important. We detach it in social life by loving our neighbor, by being absorbed in our neighbor, not desiring him like a piece of meat. We do not love our neighbor out of our desires, but rather it is an application of a desireless will. But this disinterested will can also be developed through a special training. This happens when we do not merely want what can be achieved in the outer world, what one or the other desire is after, but when we apply the will to our human being and his development itself. We can do that. We all too often abandon ourselves to the way life carries us. But even after we have outgrown school, that is, when others are no longer providing the education, we can still practice continuous self-education and self-discipline. We can take our own spiritual being into our own hands, we can set out to achieve this and that. One can resolve, if life has led one in a certain direction up to a certain point, to become knowledgeable in this or that area of life, to transfer one's judgment to another area of life. In short, one can turn one's will around. While otherwise the will always works from the inside out, as desire dominates the outside, the will can be turned around, turned inward. By practising self-discipline through our will, by trying to make ourselves better and better in one direction or another, we apply the actual dispassionate willpower. And what you find in my book How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds and in the second part of my Occult Science, aims, in addition to the other thing I have already characterized, to show that man applies such a culture of the will to himself, so that he penetrates more and more, I might say, with his will into himself. But then, when these two forces work together, the power of remembrance brought out of the unconscious, which then seizes the human will, then the human being knows himself inwardly as spirit, then he knows that he has seized the spirit inwardly in a purely spiritual way, then he knows that he does not do this through the organs of the body. Then he knows what spiritual action in the spirit is like, then he knows what it means: soul and spirit are independent of the body.

One cannot prove that the soul and the spirit are independent of the body, because in ordinary life they are not. In ordinary life, the spirit and soul are entirely dependent on the body. But there lives in us another human being who is independent, and we can bring him up from his depths. Only then does that which reigns in man as the eternal reveal itself to us.

You see, there is nothing wrong or complicated about mysticism in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is in it thoroughly that which can be expressed in a completely clear way, but which one only comes to when one really explains it inwardly and does not just say: You shall develop your inner being, you shall look into yourself, you shall find the God in your own nature. In anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, reference is made to very specific forces that are to be disciplined in a very specific way. That is what is important here. In this respect, however, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is a continuation of modern scientific and social endeavors. In the field of science, one can no longer completely ignore the spirit. And so it has come about that, because one did not want to eliminate the pressure that I characterized at the beginning, one wants to use the same methods with which one, I might say, ducks under the characterized pressure, to also prove today that there is something in man like a spirit, like a soul. And that is what has occurred in those who do not see the whole situation in the cultural development of the present.

We owe all the hopes that are based on certain justified grounds to this striving for the spirit, but which moves in the wrong direction. that are based on certain legitimate grounds, the hopes that many a naturalist has with regard to hypnotism, with regard to the possibility that one human being may suggest some idea to another when their consciousness is dulled. We owe to this quest the hopes that many place in the study of the dream life and the like, and we owe to this quest, to get to the spirit – because man cannot help but seek the spirit after all – the whole error of spiritualism.

What is actually being sought in this area? Well, take something like what happens in the case of hypnotism or mediumship. What actually happens there? There, that which is normal human consciousness, through which man is firmly grounded in ordinary life, is subdued. When a person is hypnotized, that which is his conscious ability in ordinary life is subdued. In a sense, other forces then take effect on the unconscious or semi-conscious or quarter-conscious person, which may come from the person next to him or from others. There, without doubt, all kinds of interesting things come to light. Of course, all kinds of interesting things also come to light through mediumship; but what comes to light is achieved on the basis of a dimming, a lulling of the ordinary consciousness. This is never the aim of the research methods of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. The research method of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science says: Man has advanced in his development to the consciousness that he has in ordinary life through his senses in the waking state; if one wants to recognize something new about man that is beneficial, one should not paralyze this consciousness, one should not dampen it down, but on the contrary, one should develop it further, as I have indicated. One should increase clarity, guide sensory perceptions into the power of memory by applying the will, which otherwise arises only from dull desire, to self-discipline. Because one does not go this way, because one has not the courage and the perseverance for this way, one belittles the will and believes that in this way one will arrive at a knowledge of the soul, of the spiritual in man.

But what does one arrive at by taking away man's other abilities? By putting people to sleep, one arrives at an external way of looking at people that does not show them as spiritual-soul beings, but shows them precisely in their subhumanity, in that which makes them more like animals than they are in ordinary life. It must be strictly emphasized that through all these sometimes well-intentioned research methods, the human being is led down into the subhuman. If I hypnotize someone and give him a potato, but by the power of suggestion make it clear to him that it is a pear, and he bites into the potato with the consciousness of biting into a pear, then I darken his higher consciousness in such a way, I act on him in such a way as is done to the instinct of the animal. The only difference is that even in his subhuman aspects, man is not entirely an animal, but that his animal nature expresses itself in a different way. That is the essential point. And if one seeks to find any kind of thought-transference in a state of sopor or in a diminished consciousness, then one is dealing with an instinctive activity that has been translated into the human, that is to say with something subhuman. Anyone who lumps together what wants to be anthroposophically oriented spiritual science with these things defames anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For here it is not a matter of leading man down from his ordinary state of consciousness into something subhuman, but of leading him beyond himself, so that the ordinary consciousness continues to have an effect and a higher consciousness is added to this ordinary consciousness.

This is precisely what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science shows through its research method: that the human being we have here in the sense world is based on an animal, subhuman instinct; and this can be evoked and demonstrated by putting ordinary consciousness to sleep. When it expresses itself differently than in ordinary consciousness, the spiritual science just meant here can follow this other expression. It characterizes this other expression, which always takes place in hypnosis, in the mediumistic state, as a subhuman, as a descent into animality. But at the same time it shows that what lives in man as animality is not the same as in the ordinary animal. The method of research of which I have spoken here, as of the spiritual science meant here, knows that what comes to light through such experiments as in hypnotism and mediumship is something that still lives in man today from earlier human conditions. It is precisely because this spiritual science does not arrive at a subjectively colored, but at an objective self-knowledge, that it can gain a judgment about what it actually is that occurs through hypnosis and through mediumship. This is something that does not belong to this earthly world.

If we follow the development of the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms in the earthly world with the means of spiritual science, and follow it in its relation to man, then we find that man, as he is now, is adapted to the earth precisely because he has his present consciousness. The states of consciousness that occur in sleep, in hypnosis, and in mediumship are not states of consciousness, are not human powers that could arise from man being adapted to the earth; that arises from such an adaptation that was peculiar to man before the earth became earth. And it is precisely through such states that research into the conditions of the earth itself is rejected, but these preceded the present state of the earth.

If one now investigates further how the present state of the earth is connected with the animal and plant world, one sees that man carries something within himself that does not make him appear adapted to today's earthly existence, but that the animal and plant world is adapted to today's earthly existence. From this we can see that man certainly existed in primitive conditions, which, if brought about today, would have nothing but a deadening effect on his consciousness, before the present-day animals existed in their present form. So that we have to say: Man did not ascend from the animal world, but man was, albeit with such states of soul and spirit as we bring up, as they occur in animal-like ways in the characterized states, present before the earth came to this present planetary state.

I cannot go into the details for you today, which you can read about in my books. But I wanted to at least hint that precisely by observing certain things on which hopes are pinned today for knowledge of the present nature of man, a way is shown to gain insight into pre-earthly times and into the nature of man in such times. But in the same way, the fact that we can evoke states of consciousness that lie above the present state of consciousness adapted to the earth indicates how we will live in these higher states of consciousness when the earth is no longer our dwelling place.

These things open up to the inner eye. One cannot say: These things cannot be proved, just as little as you can prove that camels exist. You must have seen them, or someone must have seen them, and then you know that camels exist. In this way one cannot prove the supersensible with the ordinary power of judgment, which is valid only for the ordinary world. One must show how one comes to see the supersensible. From this vision of the supersensible, that which indeed has an effect on the sense world but can never be seen in the sense world itself, arises.

So, of course, it could now be said: Yes, you show us how some people succeed in making the spirit their guide through a supersensible vision through the sense world and into the supersensible world. But can all people see into the supersensible world in this way? The situation is as follows: if you allow the inner training and inner development that I have described in the books already mentioned to take effect in you, and which you undertake for your soul, you will inevitably come to recognize, through your own powers of judgment and your own healthy human understanding, which is then developed, what spiritual researchers can discover in the spiritual world. But just as there are individual researchers in the physical world who investigate one thing or another, and we have to accept what they have found, so in the future development of humanity there will be individual spiritual researchers who investigate this or that in the spiritual world. Whether they can research something depends on whether, in certain moments of life, for which they have been waiting, without their having done anything to bring it about (for one can only become a waiting being through the development of the soul), that which presents itself as a spiritual fact becomes recognizable. One could say, using a religious expression, that this must come about through grace. This grace will intervene for the man as a spiritual researcher just as, let us say, this or that experience in the material world intervenes for one person and not for another. It will be so, because certain facts will always bring individual people from the spiritual world.

In order to bring these facts to light, various things are necessary; it is not only necessary to have gone through what is written in the books mentioned, to be able to fully understand what the spiritual researcher expresses, but something is needed that can be described as a quality of the human being as “fearless” to a very high degree in the face of the spiritual world. People are so reluctant to enter the spiritual world because they are actually afraid of the unknown, as a person is always afraid of the unknown. The spiritual researcher must become fearless. And on the other hand, he must acquire the quality of being able to suffer, to feel pain; because a real discovery from the spiritual world cannot be achieved without a certain pain, without a certain suffering. You will understand that this must be so if you simply imagine that the state of spiritual vision is not adapted to ordinary earthly conditions, is basically just as little adapted as our soul is adapted to our diseased organism, which hurts. If one really places oneself with the developed soul in the facts of the spiritual world, then one is in a world for which one is not initially organized. One penetrates into a world that cuts, that burns. This must be experienced. And one only penetrates to the facts if one really approaches them with the attitude that consists in applying everything that the soul can develop, but that one then waits until, in certain, I would like to say once more, gracious moments, the spiritual facts approach

This should not be imagined as something that approaches one like a fantasy idea, but rather as an experience of a profound intensity in relation to the inner being of the human being. I will just take this simple fact, which I have already mentioned, which can actually only arise through spiritual research today before the human soul, the fact that in the middle of the 15th century the whole human race in the civilized world experienced a turnaround – a simple fact. That it may be stated as a scientific fact can only come from the fact that one has worked on one's soul, diligently worked, not wanting to conquer the spirit by arbitrariness, but by working one has put oneself in an expectant state, until that which reveals itself as such an apparently simple truth has come.

Then something else is necessary. There are people, I am just mentioning the philosopher Schelling or others, who, through special moments of grace, received one or the other impression from the spiritual world. What did they do? They could not be quick enough to build up a worldview when they received an impression from the spiritual world. They draw conclusions from some impression they receive from the spiritual world. They have received an impression, then they make a whole system out of it, a whole worldview. This is what the real spiritual researcher must completely refrain from doing. The real spiritual researcher must stop at this single fact that is revealed to him, and he must wait to see if another fact is revealed to him. For example, if one has become acquainted with the fact that the earth was preceded by pre-earthly conditions in which man already lived, one must not derive a whole scientific system from it about the evolution of the Earth, but must accept such a fact as an isolated, individual fact and allow other equally isolated, individual facts to be approached, so that fact after fact presents itself, more or less comprehensive. But one must wait for each individual fact; that is what matters. Even though spiritual revelations are definitely what underlies spiritual research, these spiritual revelations only occur when the destiny of man predestines him to them. Just as one must not draw conclusions from the northern hemisphere of the earth about what is in the southern hemisphere of the earth, but must research separately what is in the southern hemisphere of the earth, so one must not draw conclusions from one corner of the spiritual world to the other, but must learn to wander around in the spiritual world, to grasp the details in their isolation. From this you can see that people will be given what they can research from the spiritual world; they can indeed learn many things.

Now you could say: Yes, but isn't there a danger that those to whom such spiritual facts are revealed will now become haughty among people, that they will consider themselves special creatures that stand out above the rest of humanity? That is already taken care of. The first thing that must precede real spiritual research is absolute modesty, especially intellectual modesty. Without developing this modesty towards all of humanity, one cannot progress in the field of spiritual research. The spiritual researcher may indeed know how to communicate individual facts from the spiritual world to his fellow human beings, but the fact that he has the grace to communicate something that is revealed to him is at the same time due to the way he approaches his fellow human beings. The spiritual researcher is one who treats even the smallest child with true reverence when it babbles something from the spirit and the soul hidden within man, even if it only asserts itself screaming from a child's throat. The spiritual researcher is glad when he hears this or that from the experience of the individual person. The experiences that people share with him are his school. He completely subordinates himself to it. He knows only one thing: he knows that what people experience, even if they are at the most primitive levels of education, is infinitely valuable, that only what is usually man's power of judgment does not follow from it. If people would judge what they have experienced correctly, they would bring forth treasures of soul and spirit from their inner being and from the depths of their being. It is these that the spiritual researcher looks for. For him, every person is an equal being with sacred mysteries in the soul, except that the consciousness, the power of judgment, sometimes does not correspond to what is in the depths of the soul. Thus the spiritual researcher in particular becomes a modest person because he always has the spiritual equality of people in mind in this regard, and because he knows that he only has what he researches in the spiritual world because he is a human being among humans. Thus he is predestined to work in the spirit for other people, who in turn can develop their souls through meditation and concentration to such an extent that they can receive what the spiritual researcher says.

You may reply that it is not very well organized that people should live side by side in such a way that they should learn from individuals what they can understand but cannot discover for themselves. I can answer that in two ways. One is that this is a fact that has to be accepted like many other facts of life, even if some people might wish otherwise. That is the first thing I can say. But the other thing is that anyone who foresees such a future for humanity, a future in which there are people among us who can see into the spiritual world and reveal intimate matters to people from this spiritual world, so that in this way other people can experience from their own understanding what they can gain in the way suggested, also knows that the most intimate relationships will develop from person to person. And he also knows that it is precisely through this that the social impulses pass from soul to soul and that the real social life is brought about in the spirit, which today one believes can only be achieved through external means. Just think how people will be brought together, how they will present a social structure in their living together, when people will face each other in such a way that one person accepts what the other is investigating as a most important, intimate matter for him. It is precisely in this way that people in the future will come close to each other in the desirable way, that spirit will work in the soul of the next person in the way that has been indicated. Those who can explore the spirit will be felt to be a necessity for other people. On the other hand, the spiritual researcher will also feel that the whole of humanity is rooted in it, without which he cannot live, without which he himself would not have the slightest meaning with his spiritual research.

Even if today the social question has been made into something that is merely understood in an outwardly materialistic way, what is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, when viewed inwardly, shows that when the spirit becomes the guide through the world of the senses and out of the world of the senses into the supersensible world, the structure is thereby also brought about in the social life of people, through which the human being can become for the human being in the future what he is actually meant to become.

In this way, I have tried to characterize to you today, from a different point of view than in the numerous previous lectures, how anthroposophy attempts to penetrate the spirit and how this penetration is based on developing the inherent powers of the human soul. I have been trying to do this for almost two decades in what I call anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is still said in many circles that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science represents something of a striving for Buddhism or something similar. In my last lecture here, I already hinted at how precisely this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which works from the essence of the human being, from the present essence of the human being himself, abhores that weakness of people who do not want to strive from what is there, not from what we have acquired in modern natural science, but who want to go to the Orient, to India, for my sake, and take there that which was adapted for a completely different age and no longer fits into our present. We experience it again and again. A few days ago, here in Switzerland, it could be experienced again that people say: Anthroposophism, as they express themselves, also represents some kind of escape to India. When this is said in particular by people who call themselves 'Christian', then I would like to remind these Christians of something that they may know: 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor'. Because it is nothing less than bearing false witness against one's neighbor when one speaks of what is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science, as if it were something obscure, as if it were something for humanity that has become purely passive and the like. Because humanity has become passive, because humanity can no longer come to action through what has been traditionally imparted to it through the centuries, a new spirit must be sought as a guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world.

Those who always only speak of warming up the old spirit and loathing, as one loathed natural science at the time of Galilei, that which appears as spiritual science, to them should be said above all, especially when they want to speak from the Christian spirit: Those who take Christianity seriously need have no fear that the Christ Impulse in its true significance, the religious worship of man, will suffer any impairment through any discovery, even if it be a spiritual discovery. On the contrary, religious life will be given a higher radiance by the fact that people will once more know what spirit and soul are, that they will not allow themselves to be dictated to about what spirit and soul are, that they will seek within the soul the way to experience the spirit and the soul. But this is what is striven for in the movement that has its external representation outside in Dornach at the Goetheanum.

The movement strives for that which lives unconsciously as a longing in numerous souls without their knowing it. It will not be possible to extract it from these souls by mere decree or dictate, but it will live in the souls as a striving, even if one were to bring about the actual representation of this striving. For just as man would die if he ceased to absorb new life forces at the age of thirty-five, just as he could not continue to live from that point on if he did not supply himself with new material life forces, so humanity cannot continue to live if it only only wants to assimilate what is old and traditional, if a new spirit does not arise in due time, weaving itself into the evolution of mankind.

For that is what this spiritual science wants to make clear and unambiguous, not obscurantism, not complicated mysticism. That is what it wants to make clear and unambiguous: that the spirit is the living element, the true guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world. Without the spirit we become directionless in the world of the senses. But if we develop the spirit as a guide through the world of the senses, then it proves not to be an abstract spirit of ideas alone, but to be the living spirit in us. And then we would have to clip its wings, through which it wants to strive into its actual homeland, into the homeland of the spirit, if we, after having chosen it as a guide through the world of the senses, do not want to ascend through it, through its guidance, into the supersensible world. For the spirit is alive. And if the belief can spread that the spirit, in contrast to matter, is not an independent living entity, what is the cause of this? The only cause is that man has deadened the spirit within him through his will, and so the dead spirit cannot grasp the living spirit. But if the spirit in man is quickened, then the living spirit in man grasps the living spirit in the world.

Anyone who looks at the building in the neighborhood that is dedicated to the so-called Goetheanum, a free university for spiritual science that aims to serve the spiritual and cultural interests of the future, may initially be struck by the peculiar forms and style that confront them. One might have various objections to what one sees there. Those who are involved in the construction will be able to understand such objections, that it is a preliminary attempt, if they arise from goodwill. But a certain question must be raised about this building, which is characteristic of everything that the spiritual movement wants and strives for, of which this building is supposed to be a representative. If it had been necessary, in the usual way, to erect an independent building somewhere for a certain spiritual movement, for a certain kind of spiritual activity, then one would probably have turned to this or that architect, to this or that artist, and one might have conferred with them about what was to be done in such a building, and then a building would have been erected in some antique, Renaissance or other style, in which this spiritual-scientific activity was to find its home. There would only have been an external relationship between the forms within and around the building dedicated to this spiritual activity, and the activity itself. This was not possible with this spiritual movement. The aim here was to create an outer shell for a particular spiritual current that, in its entirety and in every detail, even the most insignificant, seemed to have been born out of the entire thinking, feeling and willing of this spiritual movement itself. The point was to create something in the external forms, down to the most minute detail, which is an external expression of the inwardly willed in the same way as a word or anything else that is intended to express the content of this spiritual movement itself. In this matter one could not turn to some existing style, to some formal language that has been handed down historically. What is visible to the eye in the structures had to be created from the same spiritual foundation from which the content of the world view is drawn. This is not only the innermost motivation of the spiritual-scientific movement, which also calls itself anthroposophical, but also of the whole way in which this movement conceives of its task, its paths and its goals in relation to the great demands of the present civilized world.

This spiritual movement does not want some abstract theory, a science that only occupies the intellect; it does not want to be something that can only serve the one-sided satisfaction of the inner soul's interests; it wants to be something that can indeed give the most intimate satisfaction to those longings of the human soul that go to a world view. But it wants to anchor this Weltanschhauung so firmly in reality that it can intervene in all practical life. And so it is that what we were able to achieve alone at first was the direct creation of building and art forms for our cause, which are characteristic of this whole movement. In this particular sphere it has intervened in the most practical matters; but this spiritual movement will seek ways and indicate goals which will have an effect on all social and moral aspects of human coexistence, in the widest sense. Those who build on this spiritual science should not be unworldly idealists, but should become idealists who can allow what arises from their soul to flow directly into their practical life. And all that often goes so strangely in the thoughts of man should be harmonized with what is in man's innermost soul striving. The outer practice of life should become one with that through which man seeks his moral impulses, develops his social instincts, and engages in his religious worship. With such a view, however, this spiritual-scientific movement still stands today quite far removed from that which is striven for, willed, and even considered right by the broadest circles of today's educated people.

That this must be so, but also that it is necessary for such a spiritual movement to take its place in our modern civilization, can be seen when we turn our gaze to the way in which our whole life, in which we live today, has actually come together out of the most diverse currents. Today I would like to speak first of two main currents in our civilized life. We have today what we call our spiritual education, in which our religious convictions are rooted, in which our moral ideals arise, but in which our entire higher spiritual life is also rooted. We have that through which man is to educate his abilities and strengths for a spiritual education beyond the ordinary manual work. And we have, in addition to this, the practical activity of life, which has received such intensive impulses in recent centuries. We have around us a technology that has been inspired by our science but that also reaches deeply into social life. This technology has transformed modern civilized life in a way that would certainly have been completely incomprehensible to a person eight or nine centuries ago.

If we now ask ourselves where our intellectual and cultural life comes from, a life that not only dominates our higher schools but also unfolds its impulses down to our elementary schools, and where, on the other hand, our practical life, permeated by such an extensive technology, comes from, we get an answer that the man of the present still gives little account of. But one need only – and we will discuss this in more detail in the third lecture – consider what, so to speak, forms the basis of our Western civilization, especially its higher spiritual part, one need only look at Christianity in the broadest sense, so one will be able to say, even from a superficial world-historical point of view, If we look for the origin of our Christian views and convictions, which have shaped so much of our general intellectual outlook and convictions, and if we look for the origin of these beliefs and convictions, much more than we are willing to admit today, we will eventually come across the path that Christianity took from the Orient to the Occident. And one can continue to look around for the thread that one has gained in such a way, and one will find that those paths that arise when one traces back our spiritual education - those paths that lead into Latin-Roman, into Greek, from which our spiritual education still clearly shows its inner — that these paths ultimately lead to the special state of mind, to the special constitution of the soul, through which, millennia ago, before prehistoric times, our educational life, which is more directed towards the inner, the soul-spiritual, originated from the Orient. Only because this educational life, this inner spiritual view, has changed so much over the centuries and millennia, we no longer notice today how it derives its origin from what, as I said, took its origin before pre-Christian millennia from a state of mind that has become quite alien to today's civilized man. To understand this long journey, we must not only go back to what external historiography, which can be proven by documents, offers, we must go beyond what this historiography can say, and go back to prehistoric times. This is quite difficult for the modern man. For he thinks in his innermost being that he has “made such wonderful progress” in spiritual things in the course of the last few centuries, perhaps only in the very last century, that everything that lies in the times just mentioned must be referred to the realm of the childlike, the primitive.

But anyone who is able to see the ancient culture of the Orient clearly, without being clouded by such prejudices, will see that, although civilization and intellectual development were substantially different in pre-Christian times in the Orient, they offered human souls very intense spiritual content. But these were achieved in a completely different, I would say radically different, way than what is achieved today to influence people who are to acquire a higher education at secondary schools.

In the ancient Orient, anyone who was to acquire a higher intellectual culture had to undergo a complete transformation of their entire human being after being chosen by the leaders and directors of the educational institutions concerned. I am speaking of the educational institutions of this ancient Orient. They are cognitively accessible to the spiritual science that is being discussed here; but if one is unprejudiced enough, if one has a certain courage of thought and cognition, then one can also deduce from what has been handed down historically what was there prehistorically. One must speak of these educational institutions in such a way that what appears separately in us has an inner unity there. These educational institutions, to which everything that we actually still carry within us today refers, but in a significantly transformed form, were at the same time what we call a church today, but also what we call a school today, and were at the same time what we call an art institution today. Art, science, and religion formed a unity in the older human civilizations. And anyone who was to be developed in these educational institutions had to bring their whole being to development. They had to transform their whole being. They had to adopt a different form of thinking from the one that is effective in everyday life. He had to devote himself to contemplative thinking. He had to get used to dealing with thinking in the same way as one otherwise deals with the external world. But he also had to get used to transforming his entire emotional and volitional life. It is difficult to imagine today what was striven for in this direction. For how do we actually think about our lives? We admit: the child, that must be developed. The abilities and powers with which it is endowed when it comes into the world must be developed through education. Now, the child cannot educate itself; the others, the adults, initially have the view that the child's abilities and powers must be developed. And we also make the child different in terms of his thinking, feeling and will than when he is born into the world. But if we now expect the human being to continue this development even when he has already come into his own will, when others no longer take care of his development out of their own views, then the present human being finds this a strange expectation; for one should only be developed as long as one cannot take charge of this development oneself, cannot take it into one's own hands. Once one comes to a certain freedom with regard to one's own development, then one abandons evolution. This is the intellectual arrogance in which we live today. We think in the moment when we would be in a position to take our development into our own hands, we are already finished, and we place ourselves in the world as finished people.

Such a view did not exist within that civilization, but rather, the human being was developed further and further. And just as the child is able to recognize, feel, and do more and more after going through a certain training, as if there were a kind of awakening in the soul, so there is also such an awakening for the further development that the human being can now take into his own hands. The oriental mystery school student was educated for this awakening in soul activities, which were higher than the ordinary ones in the same sense that the higher abilities of adults are higher than those of a child. And it was believed that only the one who has gone through this later awakening in the best sense of the word in life is capable of judging the highest matters of life. And one was not prepared there merely to be a person who, when he reflects, when he develops a certain inner feeling and perception, feels satisfied through the knowledge of his connection with a spiritual world. No, it was not only the ability to develop a worldview that was developed there, but also those abilities through which social and outwardly technical life was guided, through which human coexistence was directed. The whole of life was influenced by spiritual education and development.

It is so difficult for us to place ourselves back in the prevailing situation in the Orient thousands of years ago, at the starting point of our more recent human development, because our whole soul constitution has changed with the further development of humanity, because we have come to different feelings and views about life. For those people who were steeped in the spiritual development I have just hinted at, it was instinctive to move towards such a transformation of the human being. These people's instincts were different. They tended towards such a vision of spiritual life after a certain transformation. Those who did not themselves undergo such training looked up, by virtue of the instincts that were also present in them, to what those who had been trained could give them. They followed them in the training of their inner soul life. But they also followed them in the ordering of their social life, in their attitude to the life of the whole.

The instincts that led to such a life have been transformed just as much as the special soul instincts of the child have been transformed in the adult in the context of today's overall culture of humanity. But through these instincts, in connection with what had been absorbed from the teachings of those educational institutions that can truly be called mysteries, there arose a human soul-disposition that could not but lead to seeking what is at the core of the human being, not here in the sphere of life that includes the human body, but to direct this whole view of life, also to rise, as it were instinctively, in the popular consciousness, to the higher man in man, to that in man which is essentially spiritual-soul-like, to that in man which, although it appears in the sensual body for the time between birth and death, is eternal in itself and belongs to a spiritual world, into which one instinctively looked. Something superhuman, if I may use this expression, which has become somewhat questionable through the followers of Nietzsche, something superhuman was seen as the essence of man. What man looked at as his own nature was something that went beyond this ordinary human being. In this respect, education was great: seeking out the human being in his essence in a spiritual-soul realm, which finds expression only in the physical, reaching out from the spiritual-soul world into the whole human being, directing this human being in his most material expressions from the spiritual-soul realm.

In many metamorphoses, through many transformations, what came about as the content of spiritual education was then worked out in the Orient and came to Greece in many transformations. There it appears, I might say, filtered. While in the oldest Greek period, which Friedrich Nietzsche called the tragic age of the Greeks, we can still see something of such a directing of the whole human being to the higher human being, in the later Greek period what can be called, in a more comprehensive sense, the dialectical, the purely intellectual essence of the human being emerges. The whole rich and intensely all-human content of an original culture was, as it were, filtered and further and further filtered, and in the most diluted state it came over into our age. And so it forms the one current of our life, which went right up to the spiritual and soul-filled human being and gave the human being an awareness through which he felt, in every moment of life, in the presence of the giver and in the most menial of tasks, as an external expression of the spiritual and soul-filled human being.

We shall see in the third lecture that the Mystery of Golgotha, from which Christianity emerged in its development on this earth, stands as a fact in itself, which can be grasped in different ways in different ages. But that from which the next understanding of this Mystery of Golgotha was shaped was what had been brought over from the Orient in the form of education. And in fact, in all that we still summon up today to comprehend Christianity, there lives that which is the last, albeit intellectually diluted, experience of the Orient. There is a certain idiosyncrasy to this entire soul configuration, which lives in us only in its final metamorphosis. And this idiosyncrasy must be sought in what follows.

As great and powerful as this world view is in terms of rising to the superhuman in man and descending to what Western civilization has risen to and become great in, this oriental civilization could never have done so. It could produce the superhuman, the spiritual-soul, it could not produce anything else. It is something I have already hinted at in other contexts here. Just at the time when the last metamorphosis of Oriental spiritual life began to take root in the West, a new spiritual life began to take shape, a spiritual life that has indeed produced enormous blossoms in our time, but blossoms of a completely different kind than the Oriental spiritual life just described. Let us look at these other blossoms.

I would like to point out the following fact again. As I said, I have already mentioned it here from other points of view. If we look through the current handbooks to see how many people live on the earth, we are told that about 1500 million people inhabit the earth. If we look at what is being worked on within human civilization, if we look at the human resources that are active in our human being and human life, then, strangely enough, we have to say something different. We would actually have to say that the Earth works as if it were inhabited not just by 1500 million people, but by 2200 million people. For three to four centuries, our world of machines has been working in such a way that work is being done that could also be done by people. We are replacing human labor with machine power. And if you convert what our machines achieve into human labor, you find, based on an eight-hour working day, that our work on earth involves seven to eight times a hundred million people, that is, not real people, but human labor, which is raised by machines.

This is something that is being introduced into human civilization by those spiritual forces that have arisen from the Western world, those spiritual forces that could never have developed in a straight line from that inner culture of spirit and soul that had so magnificently risen to the superhuman, to the higher human in the human, to the spiritual-soul human being. This culture remained at the level of certain heights of the soul. It did not penetrate what we call practical life today. It could never have brought dead metal or other material into such a context that a man would work among people, not a superman, but an underman, a man who is actually a homunculus compared to people of flesh and blood, a mechanism that introduces into human culture what otherwise people could introduce. This is the essence of our Western intellectual life. It is all the more characteristic of this Western intellectual life the farther west we go, where the mechanical man, the sub-human, has emerged from this intellectual life, just as the spiritual man, the super-human, has emerged from the Oriental intellectual life.

The fact that such a thing could be created in the West is not an isolated phenomenon of civilization. It is connected with the whole development of perception, feeling and thinking. The people who brought this homunculus into being are, in their whole state of mind, of course, greater in the other direction than the Oriental man. Today, one cannot understand life if one cannot see through this contrast in all its intensity. For on the one hand, this modern man still carries within him the last metamorphosis of that which came to him from the Orient, and on the other hand, he has been absorbing for centuries what is most essential to Western spiritual life. A balance has not yet been achieved. They stand there like two separate currents flowing apart: the current of the superman, though much changed, and the current of the subhuman, though only in its beginning. And the modern man, the man of the present, when he awakens to the consciousness that in his soul these two currents live abruptly, he suffers mentally, spiritually and probably also physically from the discord that arises from it. These are matters that become so deeply entwined in the unconscious and subconscious that something quite different from the actual cause enters not only into the consciousness of the person, but even into the constitution of his body. The modern human being finds himself nervous, finds himself dissatisfied with circumstances. There are hundreds of ways in which modern man feels a discord between himself and his surroundings, and how this discord is also expressed in his physical health. What has been mentioned is behind this. Behind this lies the great question: How can we, for the civilization of the future, harmonize what produced the subhuman with what lives in us in its last phase as the legacy of a civilization that has led to the spiritual-soul human being?

The spiritual science oriented towards anthroposophy seeks to take on board what is contained in the forces of our civilization, as I have just mentioned. It sees as a necessary goal, borne by the most significant demands of the time, a balancing between the soul forces that have led in one direction and the soul forces that have led in the other direction. And it is aware of how tremendously necessary and significant it is for humanity to find the paths to this goal. Instinctively, I have named the oriental spiritual life.

This spiritual life was born out of the instincts of ancient man. We have received it as an heirloom. But we have received it in an already intellectualized state; it has lived its way into our civilization in concepts and ideas of a rather abstract nature. For we no longer have the instincts that the former bearer of this spiritual life had. No matter how much one may fantasize about it, the fact remains that the present-day human being should return to naivety, that he should become instinctive again. In one respect, one is right to make such a demand. But naivety will express itself in a different way than before. The instinctive life will go in different directions. And to demand that we should become like people of previous millennia is the same as demanding that adults should play like children. No, we cannot go back to satisfy our deepest soul needs, into the civilization of past millennia, nor can we, if we do not want to fall into decadence, call out as Westerners “ex oriente lux”; no, we must not call out, the light comes to us from the Orient. For the light that is there today has also undergone many metamorphoses, and we cannot indulge in the illusion that what can still be found somewhere in the Orient today represents a spirituality that could somehow fruitfully reach into our civilization. It was a decadence of the worst kind when a theosophical movement asserted itself out of the religious and cultural needs of the Occident, out of the machine age, which had also formed a mechanistic world view that cannot satisfy man. It was decadence of the worst kind that one went into the area that today's decadent oriental succession of an intellectual life of earlier times has. When Indian culture was sought out today in order to incorporate it into Western theosophy, it showed just how barren one had become, how the creative powers no longer stir from one's own spiritual life, how one could only be great in the mechanistic, but how one could not find one's own way into those areas that the soul needs for its view of the true spiritual essence of man.

This tendency, by the way, underlies today's life all too much. Do we not see how those who are dissatisfied with present-day Christianity often inquire: What was Christianity like in the past? What was early Christianity like? Let us do it again as the early Christians did. As if we had not progressed since then, as if we did not need a new understanding of Christianity! Oh, the characteristic of infertility is everywhere, the impossibility of one's own creation. No, that is not what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants: borrowing from some ancient culture or from the present-day succession of an ancient culture.

Particularly when one grasps the concrete reality of the roots of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, it is easy to see what has been said. You can hear how the present-day Oriental, I would even say, how old methods are reproduced, seeks the path to the spiritual in a certain breathing process, in a regulation of breathing, seeks to develop the human constitution through which one finds inner powers of knowledge and feeling and will, in order to ascend into the spiritual world, where the spiritual-soul human being is found, where true self-knowledge is. The Oriental of today does what the Oriental has always done in earlier centuries and millennia for such a path: he descends from the mere intellectual life of the head into the life of the whole human being. He knows the inner organic connection between the way we breathe in and the way we breathe out — I will speak of this again in the next few days — and the process of our imagining and thinking. But he also knows that thinking and imagining grow out of the breathing process. And so he wants to go back to the roots of thinking, to the breathing process. He seeks the path up to the spiritual world in a regulation of the breathing process. We cannot imitate this path. If we were to imitate it, we would sin against our human constitution, which has become quite different. The inner structure of our brain and nervous system is different from that from which the instinctive spiritual culture of the Orient emerged. If we were to consider it right today to devote ourselves only to a regulated breathing process, we would be denying the intellectual life. We would be denying what we are constituted for today.

In order to ascend the paths into the spiritual world, we must undergo other metamorphoses. We no longer have to go back from thinking to bodily processes such as breathing; we have to develop thinking itself. That is why today's spiritual science, living at the height of its time, must speak of an education of the intellectual life, but not of the intellectual life that is almost the only one known today. It is precisely this intellectual life that has made us dry and arid, as if parched, for the full scope of life. No matter how much the one-sided intellectualism is railed against from all sides in the present day, nothing is being done to really fight it. One has the feeling that mere concepts, even those taken from serious and conscientious science, leave the soul cold and do not lead it along the paths of true life. On the other hand, however, one does not find the possibility of directing this intellectual life in a direction that can be satisfying, because one wants to avoid precisely that which the spiritual science meant here must regard as the right thing for the modern human being. The modern human being cannot, when he realizes the dryness, the sobriety, the one-sidedness of mere intellectualism, draw on some, as one often says, pre-thought, primitive, elementary life to improve himself as an intellectual person. He cannot, I would say, seek in a life of blind rage, which one does not understand, that which he wants to externally affix to intellectual civilization.

Therefore, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks, through the practice-based development of the soul, that which modern man actually longs for in order to truly satisfy his soul. I have described in detail in the second part of my “Occult Science”, in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in other of my writings, how this path is to be followed in a way that is appropriate for Western man. In principle, I will only hint at the fact that it is a matter of taking hold of the soul life in such a way that one avoids developing concepts, notions and ideas in the highest degree, that one does not develop only the life of thought in a one-sided way, but that one exercises the soul in such a way that the most living feelings are connected with the thoughts themselves, which arise, combine and separate. While today the one-sided intellectualist is sober in his thought life, but also lets this thought life wander in the alien fields of science or other fields and otherwise thoughtlessly lives in life, that which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science calls its practice seeks to deepen into thinking, but at this deepening of thinking of thinking, so that one can rejoice, become angry, hate and love what one only thinks, how one hates and loves people, how one becomes angry at outer events, so that a whole inner life arises, arises in such liveliness as the outer life is. The books mentioned are intended to bear witness to the fact that this can be done systematically.

But then, when a person seeks out such paths, when he really develops the forces of knowledge, feeling and will that otherwise lie dormant within him, when he therefore takes his development in hand not from the body, as in the ancient oriental culture, in a regulated breathing process, but from the soul and from the spirit, then he finds the way into the spiritual world. And what forces does he apply? He applies the forces through which his civilization has become great. He applies the forces that he also applied in building his machines, in developing his mechanistic Copernican, Galilean, Keplerian, Newtonian astronomical conceptions. The powers of imagination and ingenuity that are developed by our minds and souls in our machines, what lives in our astronomy, in our chemistry, what lies in our social life, all this is being cultivated. The Oriental had none of this. He could not have continued his spiritual life to the point of developing these powers of the soul. He had to go to the breathing of the body in order to follow the path of knowledge. We must start from the point where we start in our outer practical life. We must proceed from the same soul and spiritual powers that live in our mechanistic culture, which has produced seven to eight hundred million specimens of the subhuman. We must develop a new orientation, that is, a vision of the higher, the eternal, the immortal human being from the most sensual, the most mechanical, from that which proves to be the path to the subhuman in our Western civilization.

However, not everything that wants to be part of modern civilization is appealing to modern people. For this modern man, he demands that the child should develop, because the child cannot yet make its own decision about its development. At the moment when he is supposed to make the decision himself, he no longer allows himself to be involved in the development; at that point he is done; at that point he allows himself to be elected to the city council, to parliament, because he knows everything. One knows everything. There is no need to descend to the development of abilities through which one knows something. One is a critic for everything, if only one has come to the awareness of one's arbitrariness, if only the others are no longer allowed to mess around in relation to development. This modern man must seek the way to ascend again to those heights where one finds the spiritual-soul man.

Now the fact of the matter is that for the time being the inner urge to seek this spiritual-soul-man, to tread the path to these realizations, is still a renunciation-filled one, for this path demands a life that certainly takes place in pain and suffering, a life that not everyone has to live today, not everyone can live, nor does everyone need to live. But just as not everyone can become a chemist, but the results of chemistry can be useful for all people, just as not everyone can become an astronomer, but the results of astronomy can appeal to all souls, so there can be few spiritual researchers, but the results of this spiritual research can be grasped by ordinary common sense, as I have often said here. The few spiritual researchers can communicate their spiritual insights, and common sense will understand them. But that is precisely what people today deny. They come and say: What you spiritual researchers communicate to us may be beautiful fantasies; but we dissect it logically, we do not accept it, because it does not show itself before our human understanding. We have not yet trained ourselves to see higher things.

One does experience very strange things in this area. Just recently another pamphlet has appeared about what I, as an anthroposophically oriented worldview, have to represent before humanity today. A man who is, well, a “university professor” says, where he gives me the brush-off as a philosopher and, as he says, as a theosophist: Yes, there Steiner claims that one must also become a chemist in order to understand chemical things, a physicist in order to understand physical things; one can admit that to him. But now it is very strange how this gentleman behaves strangely. He says: Everyone can agree with what chemists claim about this or that, because if he becomes a chemist himself, he will see that it is correct; everyone can agree with what physicists claim, because if he becomes a physicist himself, he will see that what physicists say is correct. But to understand what spiritual science says, one would have to develop special abilities.

But I am not saying anything else. Just as a person must become a chemist in order to judge chemistry, and as a person must become a physicist in order to judge physics, so a person must become a scholar of spiritual science in order to decide on spiritual science. But now, continuing his text, that strange - perhaps not so strange - university professor says: It is not a matter of what Steiner claims only being justified before people trained in spiritual science, but of it having to be justified before me! That is, it must be justified before someone who not only has no idea about it, but also does not want to get one.

This is, of course, a “common sense” written in quotation marks, which is not good at understanding what spiritual science has to offer. The unbiased common sense will grasp it. Yes, in the future people will perhaps think quite differently about these things than they are accustomed to thinking in many circles today. The world is there. The philosophers have always argued about the world. Well, philosophers will still have common sense. And one can even say, if one is unbiased: philosophy is better than its reputation. But philosophers argue. And if you are unprejudiced, you can even grant a certain acumen in the philosophical field to someone who says the opposite of what another is saying, again out of a certain acumen. Yes, if you are unprejudiced here in this field, you come to a very strange judgment about common sense. It is there. People generally speak in this common sense. But it is not at all suitable for understanding the world, otherwise philosophers would not need to argue. This ordinary common sense does not seem to be at all suitable for grasping the world that is presented to the senses externally, just as it is. Try to see if it can grasp what spiritual science has to say, and you will see: the way will open up for you to grasp precisely that. It is wishy-washy, not even mere prejudice, to say: humanitarians also claim different things; one this or the other that. This is said without knowledge of the facts. If one gets to know the facts, one will no longer claim this.

Of course, many a prejudice and many a preconception will have to be overcome if the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here is to be integrated into modern life. But it will have to be integrated. For the way will have to be found to combine the two spiritual currents you have been shown today. We cannot become reactionaries in order to return to earlier intellectual formations. We must place ourselves in that which the scientific, mechanistic age has produced. But we must spiritualize the forces that have brought forth a Copernicus, a Galileo, a Giordano Bruno, a Röntgen, a Becquerel and so on down to our own day, we must spiritualize these forces so that through the same forces of the human soul, through which we build machines, we also ascend to the knowledge of the spiritual-soul human being. Then we will no longer merely speak of the spirit, but we will be able to give content to the striving for the spirit.

This is what is so disturbing to the deeper observer of contemporary civilization: people today talk a lot about the spirit, but they give no content to this talk about the spirit. This gives rise to world views on the one hand, and to the practice of life in an unorganized way connected with these world views on the other, just as our spiritually scientific world view would be out of place in a house built in an old architectural style. Our spiritually scientific world view wants to live in structures that are born of itself. It should create and can create in such a way that it is able to permeate the external material life down to the technical details and the social interconnections. Then this spiritual science will be able to become the bearer of a civilization that finds the right ways to the goals that have been hinted at today. Then this spiritual science will no longer allow that life to flourish, of which one can say: Well, some strive towards the spirit again; they demand that the person who works hard in the factory no longer works only in the factory, but that he has enough time left over to devote to the spirit as well. Oh, no, spiritual science does not demand that one has to work in the factory and, when one locks the door behind oneself, then steps out of the factory to find spiritual life there. No, spiritual science demands the opposite: that when you enter the factory to go to work, you carry the spirit with you, so that every machine is imbued with the spirit of that which also carries the world view to the highest heights of knowledge, of the immortal. Spiritual science does not want to leave time for the spirit, but to imbue all time with what man can find as the content of his spirit.

Now, people often cry out for the spirit today. A book about socialism has just been published - there are all sorts of heartfelt and sometimes sensible views - by Robert Wilbrandt, a professor at the University of Tübingen. It sounds: Yes, but we will not get anywhere with socialism if we do not find the new spirit, the new soul. So on the last pages of the book, the cry for the spirit, for the soul! But if you take such a man, such a personality, to the point where the spirit is given content, where you not only interpret in the abstract in terms of spirit and soul, where you speak of spiritual and soul content as science otherwise speaks of natural content, then the personality in question withdraws, because they do not have the courage to profess the real spirit that is full of content. And so we see it in many. They cry out for the spirit. But when the spirit seeks a real content, they do not come forward. They remain in merely pointing to an abstract union of human souls with the spiritual. This is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks as a path: the path to real spiritual content, to a real spiritual world, out of our own organic powers of knowledge as a goal: to develop the merely inorganic two currents that have been joined together in us, Orientalism and Occidentalism, to form a striving that finds its way out of our own striving, both down into the mechanism and up into the highest spirituality.

I will conclude today by saying only the following, in anticipation of the further elaboration of this theme that I will give tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, when it will be possible to characterize many things more broadly than I could in today's introduction. The call for a new spirituality is echoing today in many hearts and minds, and in a certain way people already sense that our misfortune, which has manifested itself so terribly in the last five years, is connected in the outer world with the fact that our spirit has reached an impasse. That a wall must be broken through in order to make spiritual progress. There is a sense that we cannot make progress in the social, the political, or the outwardly technical spheres without a new spirit. A man who may not always have played a very favorable role, but perhaps a wiser one than some of his colleagues among the “statesmen” - I say that in quotation marks when I speak of statesmen today - in recent years, has now also - statesmen and generals write war memoirs today, after all - has now also written his war memoirs. They end with the following words:

“War will continue, albeit in a modified form. I believe that future generations will call the great drama that has dominated the world for five years not world war, but world revolution...”

These are the words of Czernin, the Austrian statesman. So at least one person can see how things are connected, even if only to a very limited extent. And he continues:

”... and we shall know that this world revolution has only begun with the world war. Neither Versailles nor Saint Germain will create a lasting work. In this peace lies the disintegrating seed of death. The convulsions that shake Europe are not yet diminishing. Like a mighty earthquake, the subterranean rumblings continue. Soon, the earth will open again and again, here or there, hurling fire against the sky; again and again, events of an elemental nature and force will sweep devastatingly across the lands. Until all that is reminiscent of the madness of this war and the French peace has been swept away.

Slowly, with unspeakable agony, a new world will be born. Future generations will look back on our time as if it were a long, evil dream, but day always follows the darkest night. Generations have sunk into the grave, murdered, starved, succumbed to disease. Millions have died in the quest to destroy and annihilate, with hatred and murder in their hearts.

But other generations are rising, and with them a new spirit. They will build up what war and revolution have destroyed. Every winter is followed by spring. That, too, is an eternal law in the cycle of life, that resurrection follows death.

Blessed are those who will be called upon to help build the new world as soldiers of labor.

Here, too, the call for the new spirit arises from the limited statesmanship of the old days. Now, this call for the new spirit must only be understood and take root truly and earnestly enough in people's souls. For even the most external events in life are connected with the most internal ones, the most external material events with the most internal spiritual experiences. And when we look at what the spirit, which reached its peak at the beginning of the 20th century, has lived out in the events of recent years, we will understand that the call for a new spiritual life must come true. With this new spiritual life, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would like to have its ways and goals connected to the building of the world, just as those spiritual endeavors that fight it are visibly connected to the terrible events of recent years.

Just recently I read a remarkable lecture that was given in the Baltic region – note the date – on May 1, 1918. A physicist's lecture on May 1, 1918, ends with the words: “The world war has shown that the spiritual aspirations of the present day, the scientific work of the present day, are still too isolated.” The world war – roughly speaking, this physicist says – has taught us that in the future, what is being worked on in the scientific laboratories must be in an inner organic connection, in a continuous inner exchange of ideas, with what is being worked on in the general staffs. The most intimate alliance must be sought – so this physicist says – between science and the general staff. He sees the salvation of the future in this!

As one can see, the science of the past can even view alliances that are formed between it and the most destructive forces of humanity as an ideal. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would like to form an alliance between its spiritual striving and all truly constructive forces of human civilization.