The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Tolstoy and Carnegie

[ 1 ] What will form the basis of our discussion today may well seem to some to be a peculiar combination: on the one hand, Tolstoy; on the other, Carnegie—two figures of whom many would say there could hardly be two more different or more opposed; on the one hand, Tolstoy, the puzzle-solver who sought answers to the highest social and spiritual problems from the depths of spiritual life; and on the other hand, Carnegie, the “steel king,” the man who became wealthy, the man about whom we know little more in literary terms than that he pondered how best to utilize the wealth he had amassed. And then, again, the juxtaposition of these two personalities with spiritual science or anthroposophy.

[ 2 ] However, when it comes to Tolstoy, it would probably never occur to anyone to doubt that it is precisely through the light of spiritual science that one can shine into the depths of his soul. But when it comes to Carnegie, some might say: What does this man—a man of purely practical, business-oriented activity—have to do with what is called spiritual science? — If spiritual science were the dry theory, the worldview alien to and hostile to life, as it is so often regarded—if it paid little attention to the questions of practical life, as is sometimes believed—then it might seem strange that such a man of practical life should be called upon precisely to illustrate certain questions. But once one has grasped to some extent what always underlies the lectures on spiritual science given here—namely, that this spiritual science is something that can flow into all individual areas, indeed, into the most everyday realms of practical life, then one will not find it surprising that this figure, too, is occasionally drawn upon to illustrate many of the very things that are meant to be illustrated within spiritual science. And secondly, to speak in the spirit of Emerson, we thus have before us two representative figures of our time. Both of them typify the entire striving—the contemplation on the one hand, the work on the other—as they prevail and interweave in our time; they are, in fact, thoroughly representative. It is precisely the contrast in the development of personality and soul between these two men that, on the one hand, is so characteristic of the diversity of life and work in our time, and on the other hand, is indicative of where the fundamental spirit and the true goals of our present age lie.

[ 3 ] On the one hand, we have Tolstoy, who grew up in a distinguished family, surrounded by wealth and abundance, in a sphere of life that contained everything that outward, present-day life could possibly offer in terms of comforts and pleasures. In him we have a man whose spiritual development has led him to proclaim—as if it were a gospel—the utter worthlessness of everything into which he was born, not only for himself but for all of humanity. On the other hand, we have the American steel magnate, a figure who rose from hardship and misery, from a sphere of life where none of the comforts and conveniences that external life can offer are present. A figure who, one might say, had to earn his way dollar by dollar, and who rose to the greatest wealth that can be acquired in the present day—a figure who, in the course of his spiritual development, came to regard this accumulation of wealth as something entirely normal and self-evident for the present, and to reflect only on how this accumulated wealth might be utilized for the welfare and happiness of humanity and for its corresponding further development. That which Tolstoy never desired once he had reached the pinnacle of his spiritual development had been given to him in abundance at the beginning of his life. That which Carnegie had ultimately acquired in great abundance—the material goods of life—had been completely denied to him at the beginning of his life.

[ 4 ] This is, albeit in an external way, the defining characteristic of both personalities, and at the same time, to a certain extent, an expression of their essence. What can happen to a personality in our time, what can be reflected in these external processes within and around the personality—all of this reveals to us, in both of them, what prevails in our present day in the depths of social and spiritual existence. We see Tolstoy, as mentioned, born into a sphere of life in which everything was present that one might describe as the comfort, wealth, and refinement of life. Of course, we can only touch upon his life in a very sketchy manner, for our aim today is to characterize our own time through these representative figures and to recognize their needs in a certain way.

[ 5 ] Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 into a Russian count’s family, about which he himself says that the family originally immigrated from Germany. We then see Tolstoy lose certain of life’s higher blessings. Barely a year and a half old, he lost his mother; at the age of nine, his father. He then grew up under the care of a relative who was, so to speak, the embodiment of love, and from whose state of mind that beautiful, magnificent disposition of the soul must have flowed into his own soul as if of its own accord. But on the other hand, he is under the influence of another relative who, entirely in keeping with the conditions of our time as they took shape in certain circles and based on the views of those circles, seeks to exert an educational influence—a personality who is completely absorbed in the external hustle and bustle of the world, which Tolstoy later came to hate so much and against which he fought so hard. We see how, from the very beginning, this figure strove to mold Tolstoy into what is called a “comme il faut” person—someone who, as was necessary at the time, could treat his peasants appropriately, who was to receive titles, ranks, honors, and orders, and who was also expected to play a corresponding role in society.

[ 6 ] We then see how Tolstoy enters the university, how he is, in essence, a poor student, and how he firmly believes that nothing the professors at Kazan University say is worth knowing. The only thing outside the realm of academia that still managed to hold his interest was Oriental languages. Nothing else held his interest. On the other hand, he was captivated by a comparison of a certain chapter of Empress Catherine’s legal code with Montesquieu’s *The Spirit of the Laws*. Then he repeatedly attempts to manage his estate, and we see how he literally ends up plunging into the lavish life of an adult from his social circle, how he throws himself into this life to such an extent that he himself must describe it as a plunge into all manner of vices and futilities of life. We see how he becomes a gambler, squandering large sums of money, yet within this life he repeatedly experiences moments when his own behavior actually repulses him. We see how he mingles with the circles of his own social class as well as with literary circles, leading a life that, in moments of reflection, he describes as worthless, even corrupting. But we also see—and this is important for him, who likes to observe the development of the soul where that development manifests itself in particularly characteristic features—how, in the development of his soul, certain distinctive traits do emerge that, even in his earliest youth, can reveal to us what this soul is truly made of.

[ 7 ] It is therefore of immense significance what a profound impression a certain event made on Tolstoy at the age of eleven. At school—as a boy friend of his once brought home—they had made an important discovery, a new invention. They had discovered—and a teacher had spoken about it in particular—that there was no God, that this God was merely an empty invention of many people, an empty figment of the imagination. And everything we can know about the impact this childhood experience had on Tolstoy is revealed in the way he received it—it shows that even then, a soul striving and working its way up to the highest heights of human existence was already struggling within him.

[ 8 ] But this soul was strange in other ways, too. Those people who are so fond of citing only outward appearances and do not take into account that which, from the soul’s center, breaks through all external obstacles as the soul’s true individuality—they are prone to overlook certain aspects of such youthful experiences and fail to recognize that something entirely different affects one soul in one way and another soul in yet another way. One must be particularly careful when a soul shows, in its earliest youth, a predisposition toward what could be expressed with Goethe’s beautiful line from the second part of *Faust*: “I love the one who desires the impossible.” This sentence says a great deal. A soul that, so to speak, desires something which, in the most obvious sense, is clearly folly to any philistine perspective—such a soul, especially when it reveals itself as such in its earliest youth—reveals, precisely through such peculiarities, the breadth of its horizons and the breadth of its aspirations. And so we must not overlook it when Tolstoy tells us such things in one of his early works—which belong to the very beginning of his literary career and in which he reflects his own development. We must not ignore it when he recounts things that must certainly be regarded as valid for him—such as when the boy takes pleasure in shaving off his eyebrows and thus, for a time, quite disfigures his outward, not particularly striking beauty. This is something that might be considered a great eccentricity. But when one reflects on it, it becomes a hint. Another example is that the boy imagines a person could fly if he pressed his arms firmly against his knees. If he did that, he believes, he would be able to fly. So one day he goes up to the second floor and throws himself out the window, holding onto his heels. He is miraculously saved and suffers nothing more than a minor concussion, which clears up after an eighteen-hour sleep. To those around him, he has proven nothing more than that he was an eccentric boy. But anyone who seeks to observe the soul and understands what it means, in the earliest years of youth, to stray in one’s soul from the path laid out to the left and right will not overlook such traits in a young person’s life. Thus, from the very beginning, this soul appears to be grand and far-reaching. We can therefore understand that when he grew weary of the excesses of life—which had already arisen from his station—he was filled with a certain revulsion toward himself, particularly after a gambling affair.

[ 9 ] When he then goes to the Caucasus, we can understand that there, above all else, his soul finds love and affection for the simple Cossacks—the people he first meets there and from whom he realizes that they actually have souls quite different from all the people he had, in essence, come to know up to that point. Everything about the principles and tenets of his peers seemed so unnatural to him. Everything he had believed up to that point seemed so alien to him, so cut off from the primal source of existence. But the people he was now getting to know were people whose souls were so intertwined with the sources of nature as a tree is through its roots with the sources of nature, as a flower is with the sap of the soil. This oneness with nature, this failure to become estranged from the sources of existence, this original transcendence of good and evil in these circles—that was what made such a powerful impression on him.

[ 10 ] And then, when, seized by a thirst for action, he became a soldier to take part in the Crimean War—it was probably in 1854 when he joined the Danube Army—we see him studying the entire inner life of the ordinary soldier with the most intense devotion. We do, however, see how a more specialized sensibility now takes root in Tolstoy’s soul—how, on the one hand, he is deeply moved by the authenticity of the common man, but on the other hand also by the misery, poverty, torment, and oppression of the common man. We see how he is filled with love and a desire to help, and how the highest ideals of human happiness, human salvation, and human progress already begin to glimmer, albeit faintly, in his mind; yet, on the other hand, he also makes it perfectly clear to himself—based on the relationship that has developed between him, with his views, and ordinary people, with their views—that he cannot be understood with the kind of ideals, goals, and thoughts that he holds. This gives rise to a conflict in his soul, something that still prevents him from penetrating to the very core of his being.

[ 11 ] Thus we see that he is repeatedly cast out of the life he leads, and that, particularly in the Danube Army, he is thrown from one extreme to the other. One of his superiors says he is a golden soul whom one could never forget. He seems like a soul who radiates nothing but kindness and, at the same time, has the ability to cheer others up even in the most difficult situations. Everything is different when he is there. If he is not there, everyone hangs their heads. But once he has thrown himself back into life, he returns to camp filled with terrible remorse and deep regret. — This soul—one can’t help but call it a great soul—was tossed back and forth between such moods. From these moods and experiences also spring the insights and vivid narratives of his literary career—those works that have elicited, for example, even the most appreciative criticism from a figure like Torgeniev himself, and which have found recognition everywhere. At the same time, however, we see how, in a certain sense, this runs parallel to the actual center—the focal point of his soul—how his gaze is always directed within his soul toward the great power, toward the fundamental source of life, how he struggles with the concepts of truth and human progress, and how, even in the presence of a personality such as Turgenev, he cannot help but say: “Ah, none of you really have what is called a conviction. You’re really just talking to hide your convictions.

[ 12 ] It is fair to say that life had taken a heavy toll on this soul by plunging it into grave, bitter conflicts. However, some of the hardest trials were yet to come. In the late 1950s, one of his brothers fell ill and died. Tolstoy had often witnessed death during the war and had often watched people die, but the problem of life had not yet dawned on him to such a degree as it did when he witnessed the death of his own beloved and cherished brother. At that time, Tolstoy was not so imbued with philosophical or religious ideas that they could have sustained him. He was in such a state of mind that his attitude toward death was expressed, for example, in his statement: “I am incapable of setting a goal for life. I see life ebbing away; I see it rushing worthlessly by among my peers; they do things that are not worth doing. If one strings one event after another and forms such long chains, nothing of value comes of it.” — Nor could he see any meaning or purpose in life at that time in the fact that the lower classes were in need and misery. Such a life, whose meaning one searches for in vain, is ended by the meaninglessness of death—so he told himself at the time—and if for every person and every animal life can flow into the meaninglessness of death, who then can still speak of a meaning to life at all? At times, Tolstoy had already set himself the goal of striving for the perfection of the soul, of seeking meaning for the soul. He had not yet reached the point where some meaning of life could have been kindled within his soul from the spirit itself. That is why the sight of death had presented the mystery of life in such a gruesome form before his mind’s eye.

[ 13 ] We see him traveling through Europe during this very same period. We see him visiting the most interesting cities in Europe—in France, Italy, and Germany. We see him getting to know many distinguished figures. He meets Schopenhauer in person; shortly before Schopenhauer’s death, he meets Liszt, as well as many others—many leading figures in science and the arts. He gains insight into social life and becomes acquainted with court life in Weimar. Everything was open to him, yet he views it all through eyes that reflect the mindset just described. From all of this, he gained only one insight: just as things are at home, in the circles from which he had outgrown, so too, fundamentally, are they in Western Europe.

[ 14 ] One goal now stands out for him in particular: an educational goal. He had wanted to establish a kind of model school, and he did indeed establish it in his hometown, where every student was to learn according to his or her ability, where no one was to be treated as a cookie-cutter. We cannot go into detail here about the educational principles that prevailed there. But it must be emphasized that he had in mind an educational ideal that was intended to do justice to the individuality of the child.

[ 15 ] We see how a kind of interregnum now sets in, in which—in a certain sense—a kind of standstill descends upon the tempestuous soul, a soul in which problems and questions have piled up, and in which sensations and feelings have flowed in contradictory ways from all sides. A quieter life takes hold within it. This period begins with his marriage in the 1860s. It was the era that gave rise to the great novels in which he presented the sweeping, powerful depictions of social life in his own time and the period immediately preceding it: *War and Peace* and *Anna Karenina*. These are the works into which so much of what he had learned found its way.

[ 16 ] He lived this way well into the 1870s. Then came a point in his life when he found himself at a true crossroads, where all his doubts, scruples, and problems—which had previously reigned in his soul as if rising from dark spiritual depths—resurfaced. A comparison, an image he conjures up, is truly indicative of what this soul experienced. One need only bring this image to mind and realize that it means something entirely different for a soul like Tolstoy’s than for another, far more superficial soul. One need only bring this image to mind to gain a deep insight into Tolstoy’s mind. He compares his own life to that of an Eastern fable, which he recounts something like this:

[ 17 ] There is a man being chased by a wild animal. He flees, finds a dry well, and throws himself into it to escape the wild animal. He clings to branches that have grown out from the sides of the well. In this way, he believes he is safe from the pursuing monster. But down below, he now sees a dragon, and he feels that he will be devoured by it if he grows even slightly tired or if the branch he is holding onto breaks. Then he also notices a few drops of honey on the leaves of the shrub, which he could use for sustenance. But at the same time, he also sees mice gnawing at the roots of the shrub he is clinging to.

[ 18 ] The two things Tolstoy held dear were family love and art. Otherwise, he viewed life as a series of tormenting worries that never let up. You escape one and are met by another monster. And then you find that the little you still have is being gnawed away by mice. — One must take this image deeply enough to see what is going on in such a soul, what is being shown there, and what Tolstoy experienced in the most comprehensive way in all his thinking, feeling, and willing. It was the twigs that still brought him joy. But little by little he also found all sorts of things that were bound to gnaw away at his joy in them. Indeed, if life as a whole is such that one cannot find meaning in it, that one searches in vain for the meaning of life, what does it then mean to have a family, to raise and educate offspring, upon whom one essentially passes on the same meaninglessness? That, too, was something that lingered in his mind. And art? Yes, if life is worthless, what of the mirror of life—what of art? Can art be valuable if it is only capable of reflecting that very thing in which one searches in vain for meaning?

[ 19 ] That was what now, after an interregnum, once again stood so clearly before his soul, what burned so intensely within that soul. As he looked around at all those who were trying to fathom the meaning of life through grand philosophies and the most diverse worldviews, he found nowhere anything that could truly satisfy his quest. And recently, he had begun to turn his gaze toward those people who, in his opinion, were originally connected to the sources of life. These were the people who had preserved a natural sense of meaning, a natural religiosity. He said to himself: The scholar who lives as I do—who overestimates his reason—finds nothing in all his searching that could reveal the meaning of life to him. But when I consider the ordinary person who gathers in sects: he knows why he lives; he knows the meaning of life. How does he know this, and how does he know the meaning of life? Because he experiences within himself the feeling that there is a will—the eternal divine will, as I call it. And that which lives within me submits to the divine will. And what I do—what I carry out from morning till evening—I do as part of the divine will. When I move my hands, I move them in accordance with the divine will. Without being led by reason to abstract concepts, my hands move. That was what struck him so deeply, what moved him so profoundly: when the human aspect of the soul is touched. He said to himself: There are people who can find an answer to the meaning of life—one they can truly use. — It is truly magnificent how he contrasts these simple people with those he has come to know in his own circle. Everything is conceived from the monumental scope of paradigms. He says: “I have met people who understood nothing of giving life meaning or conceiving of it. They lived out of habit, even though they could derive no meaning from life; but I have also met those who, precisely because they could find no meaning in life, ended up committing suicide.” — Tolstoy himself came very close to that point.

[ 20 ] So he examined the category of people about whom he had to say: There can be no question of a meaning of life or of a life with meaning. But the person who is still connected to the sources of nature, whose soul is linked to the divine forces just as a plant is linked to the forces of life, can answer the question: Why do I live? — That is why Tolstoy went so far as to seek fellowship with those simple people in religious life. In a certain sense, he became a believer, even though the outward forms made a repulsive impression on him. He even began attending Communion again. There was now something within him that might be described as follows: With every fiber of his soul, he strove to find a purpose, to feel a purpose. Yet everywhere, in a certain sense, his own thinking and feeling stood in his way once more. He could certainly pray together with people who were believers in a naive sense and who had answered the question of the meaning of life for themselves. He could pray—and this is tremendously telling—to the point of a unified state of feeling. But he could not go along with them when they continued praying: “And let us confess the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” — That made no sense to him. It is significant, in general, that he could go along to a certain point, in that a religious life stood before his soul—one that, among people in a community, brought about a brotherly sharing and expression of what lives in the soul. Harmony of feelings, harmony of thoughts—that was what this life of faith was meant to bring about. But he could not rise to the positive content—the knowledge of the Spirit—to spiritual insight that gives reality. The dogmatics that had been handed down meant nothing to him. He could find no meaning in the words associated with the Trinity.

[ 21 ] Thus, as all these things converged, he entered the period he must describe as the mature phase of his life—the period in which he sought to immerse himself completely in what he could call true, authentic Christianity. He strove as if he had wanted to embrace and penetrate the vitality of the Christ-soul with his own soul. And he wanted to be permeated by this spirit of the Christ-soul. From this, a worldview was to emerge for him, and from this was to result something like a transformation of all present-day life, which he subjected to the harshest criticism, just as it appeared to him. Now that he believes he can feel with his own soul what Christ thought and felt, he feels strong enough to throw down the gauntlet to all present-day ways of living and feeling and all forms of thought, to level a harsh critique at everything from which he had emerged and everything he could see in the wider world around him. He feels strong enough, on the other hand, to demand that the Christ Spirit be allowed to prevail and to bring about a renewal of all human life through the Christ Spirit. With this, we have, so to speak, characterized his maturing soul and seen how this soul has outgrown what many of our contemporaries call the heights of life. We have seen how this soul has come to level the harshest criticism at these “heights of life,” and how it has set as its next goal the renewal of the Christ Spirit—which it finds alien to everything that is currently alive—and the renewal of the Christ life, which it finds nowhere in reality. Thus, in a certain sense, we see Tolstoy becoming a negator of the present and an affirmer of what he could call the Spirit of Christ—which he could not find in the present, but only in the early days of Christianity. He had to go back to the historical sources available to him. Here, then, we have a representative of our present who has outgrown the present, denying this very present.

[ 22 ] And now let us turn to the other figure who, just as Tolstoy arrives at the most intense rejection of the present, likewise arrives at the most intense affirmation of it; who, in essence, arrives at the same formula, only applied in a completely different way. There we see Carnegie, the Scotsman, emerging from that watershed of modern culture, which we can characterize by the fact that large-scale commerce and large-scale industry sweep away everything in the social order that constitutes small-scale commerce. We truly see Carnegie emerging from that watershed of modern life, which a recent poet so beautifully characterized with the words:

In the depths of the forest stands a ruin
A blacksmith’s shop by the forest path,
From which the hammer’s blow no longer rings out
To the song of joyful labor.
Not far away, soaring into the air
a long, narrow building,
where, in the machine room,
soot-stained hammermen
with nails from the steam factory
forged the coffin
that carried the impoverished nail smith
to his grave.

[ 23 ] One need only evoke such a mood to shed light on that turning point in modern cultural development that has become so important to so many aspects of life. Carnegie’s father, a Scotsman, was a master weaver who initially made a good living. He initially worked for a factory. Everything went well until the point when large-scale industry swept everything away. Now we see the final day approaching when Carnegie’s father can still deliver his manufactured goods to the merchant—as he delivers the last order. Poverty and misery now set in for this master weaver. He sees no further possibility of making a living in Scotland. To prevent the two boys from living in poverty and perishing, the family decides to emigrate to America.

[ 24 ] The father finds work in a cotton mill, and the boy we are talking about is hired as a bobbin boy at the age of twelve. He has to do hard work. But after a week of hard, grueling work, there is a joyful day for the twelve-year-old boy. He is paid his first paycheck: $1.20. Never again—so Carnegie says—did he receive any income with such delight as he did that dollar and twenty cents. Nothing later gave him such joy, even though many millions passed through his hands. We see before us the embodiment of practical ambition—a man who has risen from poverty and misery, who is naturally inclined to immerse himself in the present as it is and to become a self-made man within it. He toils away. Every week, he earns his dollar.

[ 25 ] Then someone hires him at another factory with a better wage. Here he has to work even harder; he has to stand in the basement and stoke a small steam engine, keeping it running in the intense heat! He feels this is a position of great responsibility. The fear of turning the valve on the machine the wrong way—which could spell disaster for the entire factory—is terrifying to him. Quite often, he catches himself sitting up in bed at night, dreaming all night long about the valve he was turning, making sure to do it just the right way.

[ 26 ] Then we see how, after some time, he is hired in Pittsburgh as a telegraph messenger. He is already overjoyed with the meager wages of a telegraph messenger. He gets to work in a place where there are also books that he had hardly ever seen before. Sometimes he even has newspapers to read. He now has only one concern: telegraph messengers are of no use in the city unless they know all the addresses of the companies that receive telegrams by heart. He really manages to learn the names and addresses of Pittsburgh’s companies by heart. He is also already developing a certain degree of independence. His intelligence is exceptionally sharp. He now goes to the telegraph office a little earlier, and there he teaches himself to send telegrams through practice. This allows him to set his sights on the ideal that every telegraph messenger in a young, up-and-coming community is allowed to have: to one day become a telegraph operator himself. He even manages to pull off a remarkable feat. One morning, when the telegraph operator was absent, a death notice arrives. He takes the dispatch and delivers it to the newspaper for which it was intended. There are, of course, situations where such an action—even if it succeeds—is not viewed favorably. But Carnegie was promoted to telegraph operator as a result.

[ 27 ] Now another opportunity presented itself to him. A man who was heavily involved in the railroad industry recognized the young man’s talent and one day made him the following proposal. He told him to buy, for five hundred dollars, some railroad stocks that had just become available. He could make a lot of money if he pursued this venture. And now Carnegie recounts—it’s delightful how he tells this story—how he actually managed to raise five hundred dollars through his mother’s care and love, and how he bought his shares. When the first dividend arrived—the first check for five dollars—he went out into the woods with his friends. They looked at the check, pondered it, and came to realize that there is something more than just being paid for work—something that turns money into more money. This opened up new perspectives in Carnegie’s life. With this insight, he grew into the spirit of our times.

[ 28 ] Thus we see how he immediately grasped the idea when another proposal was made. It is telling how, with complete presence of mind, he comprehends what is appearing before him for the first time. An inventive mind shows him the model of the first sleeping car. He immediately recognizes that there is something immensely fruitful in it, so he gets involved. Now he emphasizes once again what actually broadened his horizons. He did not have enough money to participate appropriately in the venture of the world’s first sleeping car company. But his ingenious mind made it possible for him to actually obtain money from a bank right then and there: he issued his first promissory note. “That’s nothing special,” he says, “but what is special is that he found a banker who accepted this promissory note as ‘good.’ And that was the case.”

[ 29 ] Now all he had to do was build on that to become the man of the present. Therefore, we need not be surprised that, when the idea occurred to him to replace the many wooden bridges with iron and steel bridges, he became, from that moment on, the “Great Steel Man”—the man who, to this day, has in a certain sense set the tone for the steel industry and amassed untold wealth. Thus we see in him the very archetype of the person who grows into the present—the present that unfolds the most outward aspect of life. He grows into the very outermost layer of outwardness. But he grows into it through his own strength, through his own abilities. He becomes an immeasurably wealthy man rising from hardship and misery, having truly earned everything himself from the very first dollar onward. And he is a thoughtful man who, for his part, connects this entire impulse of his own life with the progress and life of all humanity.

[ 30 ] Thus we see how, from a certain way of thinking, another peculiar gospel emerges—a gospel that, interestingly enough, is also fundamentally based on Christ. However, Carnegie states right at the beginning of his gospel that it is a gospel of wealth. Thus, the book came into the world as a treatise on how wealth can best be used for the salvation and progress of humanity. In it, he immediately takes issue with Tolstoy, of whom he says: “He is a man who views Christ in a way that is entirely unacceptable for our time, who regards him as an alien being from the distant past.” One must understand Christ in such a way as to integrate him into present-day life. — Carnegie is a man who fully embraces the whole of contemporary life. He says: Let us look back to the times when people were even more alike than they are today, when they were even less divided into those who have work to give and those who have work to take, and if we compare those times, we see how primitive the individual cultures were back then. In those ancient times, the king was unable to satisfy his needs in the same way—because they could not be satisfied that way—that even the poorest person can satisfy them today. What has happened was bound to happen. It is therefore correct that goods are distributed in this way.

[ 31 ] Carnegie now sets forth a curious doctrine regarding the distribution or use of wealth. Above all, we find that his thoughts turn to purely personal competence—to the very nature of the competence of a person who has worked his way up in life to become what he ultimately is. At first, Carnegie sees only external goods, but then he also recognizes that a person must be capable—externally capable. And this capability must be used not merely to acquire wealth, but also to manage it in the service of humanity.

[ 32 ] Carnegie strongly emphasizes that entirely new principles must, so to speak, take root in the social structure of humanity if salvation and progress are to spring from new progress and the distribution of goods. He says: We have institutions from earlier times that make it possible for wealth, rank, titles, and honors to be passed down from father to son and to grandchildren. In the way of life of the past, this was possible. — He believes it is right that routine can compensate for what personal ability lacks: rank, titles, and honors. But regarding the life into which he has grown up, he is convinced that it demands personal, individual competence. He points out that, among seven bankrupt firms, it was found that five of them went bankrupt because they had been passed on to the sons. Rank, titles, and honors had been passed down from fathers to sons, but business acumen never had. In those areas of modern life where business principles prevail, they should not simply be passed down from the bequeather to the descendants. It is far more important to bring in a personally capable person than to bequeath one’s wealth to one’s children through inheritance. From this, Carnegie draws the conclusion, which he expresses with the following striking statement: It is up to the one who has acquired wealth to ensure that, during this lifetime, he also uses that wealth—applies it to such institutions and initiatives that will benefit people to the greatest possible extent. — And the statement with which he formulates this—which may seem grotesque but which nevertheless stems from Carnegie’s entire way of thinking—is this: “He who dies rich dies disgraced.” In a certain sense, one could say that the steel magnate’s statement sounds even more revolutionary than many of Tolstoy’s. “He who dies rich dies disgraced”—that means, after all: Whoever does not use the wealth he has amassed to establish foundations through which people can learn, through which they are given the opportunity to further their education—in other words, if a person does not use his wealth to make as many people as possible capable, but instead leaves it behind so that his descendants, with their lack of character and talent, can use it, and it serves only their personal comfort, whoever does not die having administered his wealth throughout his life for the benefit of humanity dies in disgrace.

[ 33 ] Thus, we see a very peculiar principle emerge in Carnegie’s work. We see that he affirms contemporary social life and activity, but that he derives a new principle from it: that man must take responsibility not only for the use of wealth, but also for its administration, as a steward of goods in the service of humanity. This man has no belief that anything can be passed down from ancestors to descendants through heredity. Even though he is familiar only with outward life, it is nevertheless clear to him that the forces that make a person capable of acting in life must spring from within.

[ 34 ] This is how we see these two representatives of our present age: one who offers a harsh critique of everything that has gradually developed, and who, through the spirit, seeks to guide the soul toward higher things; and we see the other, who accepts material life just as it is, and who, through contemplation of material life, is led to recognize that within the human being lies the source of work and vitality. As strange as it may sound, one might find in Carnegie’s teachings something that justifies the following statement: If one does not look at this life of the soul thoughtlessly and aimlessly, but rather looks at it in such a way that one gradually observes the forces flowing from the soul, looks at the individual, and is thoroughly aware that these forces are not passed down through heredity—what, then, must one look for? One must look to the true origin, to that which comes from other sources. And one will find, when one reaches the sources of one’s present talents and abilities through spiritual science, that these lie in past lives. Through the law of reincarnation and spiritual causation—karma—one will find the possibility of thoughtfully processing such a principle as practical life has imposed upon a practical person.

[ 35 ] No one can hope that a mere externalization of life could produce anything that would satisfy the soul or elevate culture to its highest heights. One can never hope that such a path would lead to anything other than a distribution of wealth that is beneficial in an external sense. The soul would become desolate; it would exhaust its energies but find nothing within itself if it could not penetrate to the sources of the spirit that lie beyond external, material life. As the soul is repelled by a material view of life, it must find the source that can flow only from a spiritual outlook on life. Such a way of life as Carnegie’s must be combined with that deepening and spiritualization of life that comes from spiritual science, so that souls do not become barren. While Carnegie demands of the individual soul that which makes it capable of living in the outer world, Tolstoy seeks to give the individual soul that which it can find from the deep springs of spiritual being.

[ 36 ] Just as Carnegie, with a keen eye, grasps the essence of the present from the perspective of material life, so, on the other hand, we find Tolstoy, with a keen eye, able to grasp the nature of the soul. Up to a certain point, we see Tolstoy emerge, and he indeed touches us in a remarkable way when we compare everything that lives in Tolstoy’s worldview with what we encounter, particularly in Western European culture. One can examine, work by work, the immense body of work that Tolstoy wrote, and one will see one thing above all else stand out: Things that here in the West are brought together with an immense effort of philosophical reflection, scholarly musings, and the back-and-forth shifting of conclusions and inferences—in Tolstoy’s work, they appear as flashes of insight in five or six lines and become a conviction for those who can grasp such things. For example, Tolstoy shows how we must find within the human soul something of a divine nature—something that, when it shines forth within us, can make the divine present in the world. Tolstoy says: “Around me live the learned natural scientists; they investigate what is real out there in the material world, in so-called objective existence.” There they seek the divine foundations of existence. Such people then attempt to construct the human being from all the laws, substances, atoms, and so on, which they seek scattered throughout outer space. They ultimately seek to understand what a human being is by believing they must synthesize all external science in order to find the foundation of life. Such people, he says, strike me as people who are surrounded by trees and plants of living nature. They say: “That doesn’t interest me. But there is a forest in the distance that I can barely see; I want to explore and describe that forest, and then I will also understand the trees and plants that are right next to me, and I will be able to describe them.” — That’s how people strike me who use their instruments to investigate the nature of animals in order to learn to recognize the nature of human beings. They have the answer within themselves; they need only look at what is right in front of them. But they don’t do that. They seek out the trees far away, and they seek to comprehend what they cannot see—the atoms. But they do not see human beings themselves.

[ 37 ] This way of thinking is so monumental that it is more valuable than dozens of insights and theories written by ancient cultures. This is characteristic of Tolstoy’s entire way of thinking. He has arrived at such things, and one must look deeply into them. For Western Europeans, this is highly unsatisfying; they can only arrive at it indirectly through Kant. Driven by a certainty arising from the workings of the soul, Tolstoy is impelled to articulate what is unproven yet true—what is recognized through direct perception, and which, once articulated, one knows to be true. This monumental, original welling up of the deepest truths, as if from the very source of life that he sought, is evident in his work *Life*. This is what often reveals itself to us in his later writings, and it is such that it can shine like a dawn upon a rising future.

[ 38 ] So we must say: The less inclined we are to take Tolstoy dogmatically, the more inclined we are to absorb the nuggets of a primitive, paradigmatic way of thinking, the more fruitful he will be. Of course, those who can only accept a personality by swearing allegiance to its dogmas—and who cannot allow themselves to be enriched by it—will not gain much from him. Much of it will sit rather poorly with them. But those who can allow themselves to be enriched by him—by what flows from a great personality—will be able to receive much from Tolstoy. We see that truth is at work within him, paradigmatically, and that this truth flows with powerful force into his personal life. How does it flow in? It is quite interesting to see that different views coexist and are tolerated within his family. But how was he able to incorporate his principles into daily life? Through work and action, and not merely through principles. In this way, he becomes a true pioneer for many things that must first sprout in the future. Yet on the other hand, we see once again how Tolstoy, despite being a pioneer of the future, is still a child of his time.

[ 39 ] Perhaps nowhere is it more evident than in that remarkable portrait from 1848—when he was twenty years old—how he places himself within the present. One need only look at the face of the twenty-year-old, which expresses energy and strength of will, yet at the same time a certain reserve. The spirited sparkle in his eyes, however, betrays something that confronts the mysteries of life with a questioning gaze. He is volcanic within, yet unable to bring that volcano to eruption. Nevertheless, we see mysterious depths of the soul expressed in his physiognomy, and thus his physiognomy reveals that something powerful lives within him—something he is not yet able to fully express within this organism he has inherited.

[ 40 ] The same is true of the diversity of forces that live within Tolstoy and that could not quite find expression. It is as if they had to be expressed in a caricatured, distorted way in some respects. Thus, one must also recognize the character within him that is sometimes distorted into the grotesque. That is why it is quite marvelous when he is able to point to what people usually call the transitory: Look at the human body. How often have its materials been replaced! Nothing of the material substance that was present in the ten-year-old remains. And as for what constitutes ordinary consciousness—take it and compare it with the imaginative life of a fifty-year-old: it has become something entirely different, right down to the very structure of the soul. We cannot call it something permanent, but everywhere within it we find the center, which we must say is reached in the imagination through the following. The objects of the external world are there. This one is here, that one is there, and a third one over there. Two people stand before these things. The eye sees the same things, but they are one way for one person and another way for the other. One says, “I like that”; the other says, “I don’t like it.”—If everything in the external world is the same, if the same impressions are present, and one soul says: “I like it”—and the other says, “I don’t like it”—if, then, the way of life is different, there is a center that is distinct from everything external, one that remains unshaken despite all changes in consciousness and the body. There is something that was there before birth and will be there after birth: my unique self. This unique self of mine did not begin with birth.

[ 41 ] What matters is not how one, according to Western European customs, reacts to such a statement, but rather that one has the feeling: one can make such a statement. This reveals the greatness of the soul. This reveals that the soul is alive and how it lives. This guarantees immortality.

[ 42 ] Thus we see how Tolstoy comes very close to the very limits of what we, through deep study of the spiritual sciences, come to know as the innermost essence of the soul. He is constrained by the world he himself so vehemently opposes and cannot advance to the true understanding of what exists before birth and what comes after death. He does not arrive at the doctrine of reincarnation and karma. Nor does he arrive at the inner impulse of the soul, as Carnegie does, who actively calls for it. Thus we see that whether a person is, from the depths of his being, at odds with everything that lives, acts, and strives in the present, or whether, as a yes-man, he is in harmony with all forms of life in the present—he is led to the gates of what we call the anthroposophical view of life. Tolstoy would be able to find his way to Carnegie, but Carnegie would never find his way to Tolstoy.

[ 43 ] The purpose of this lecture was to show that it is possible to present a worldview and philosophy of life that leads directly into practical living, one that can carry what has been newly recognized over into the familiar, into what has already been accomplished. And so we will see, as we delve deeper and deeper into this spiritual science, how it brings to people of both one and the other disposition what Tolstoy ultimately found in his own way, and what Carnegie found in his own way: a life that is satisfying in itself. But what matters is not merely that the individual seeker finds a fulfilling life, nor that those who seek alongside him may also find it. What Tolstoy found satisfying for himself and what Carnegie found satisfying for himself can only be found—in an impersonal, pure way and through a realization directed toward the spiritual plane—by all people who seek along this path, once true spiritual knowledge of that which passes from life to life, which bears within itself the guarantee of eternity, has been found for all people.