The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Happiness, Its Essence, and Its Appearance

[ 1 ] Among the insights of spiritual science that are least comprehensible to the broader circles of our contemporaries are undoubtedly those concerning repeated earthly lives and, furthermore, the carryover of causes established by a person during one earthly life into other earthly lives—in short, what we call the law of spiritual causation or the law of karma. The fact that present-day humanity must react to these insights with skepticism and doubt can be understood in light of all the habits of thought characteristic of contemporary life. And it will likely take time for these habits of thought to change before there is a more widespread recognition of the plausibility of precisely these fundamental truths of spiritual science. But an unbiased observation of life, a prejudice-free view of what appears before our eyes in everyday life as nothing short of a mystery—and which can only be explained if we take these aforementioned truths as our foundation—will increasingly lead to a change in habits of thought and, ultimately, to a recognition of the self-evident nature of these great truths.

[ 2 ] Among the phenomena that we may particularly include in this category are, without a doubt, those that are usually summarized under such ambiguous terms as human happiness or human misfortune. One need only utter these two words, and immediately the emotional judgment will resonate in the human heart that they express something capable of making people acutely aware of the boundaries drawn between their cognition and what takes place out there in the world. This, just as much as any other, resounds in the soul as an intuitive judgment: a judgment that leads to an indelible longing to know something about those inexplicable connections which, from a certain enlightened perspective, one may repeatedly deny, but which a completely unbiased impulse of human cognition must nevertheless acknowledge. We need only bring to mind what happiness or unhappiness—especially the latter—can hold of mystery for human life in order to understand what has been said, a mystery that truly cannot be resolved by any theoretical answer, but which clearly shows that answering it requires more than a theory, more than anything that, in the external sense, can be called abstract science. For human beings—and who would doubt this?—have within their very souls the urge to be in a certain harmony with their surroundings, with the world. And what sum of disharmony can be expressed in the fact that sometimes a person cannot say anything else about himself, or that his fellow human beings cannot help but say of him that he has been pursued by misfortune his entire life? Linked to such a recognition is a “Why?” of profound and far-reaching significance for everything we have to say about the value of human life, and also about the value of the forces that underlie that human life.

[ 3 ] Robert Hamerling, the significant but unfortunately far too underappreciated nineteenth-century poet, wrote a short essay titled “On Happiness” in his collection of prose essays, and he begins his remarks with a memory that, as he says, kept coming back to him again and again whenever he reflected on the question of happiness. He heard this story—whether it was a legend or something else, that doesn’t matter—told in Venice: “A couple had a baby girl. The woman died in childbirth. On the very day the child was born, the father learned that his entire fortune had been lost in a shipwreck, and he was so overcome by the news that he died on the day of the child’s birth. Thus, the child was struck by the misfortune of being an orphan from the very first day she entered this world. She was initially taken in by a wealthy relative. In the will she drew up, this relative bequeathed a large fortune to the child. However, she died while the child was still very young. And lo and behold, when the will was opened, a technical error was discovered; it was contested, and the child lost the entire fortune that had been promised to her. She then grew up in poverty and misery and later had to take a job as a maid. There, a very kind, nice young man fell in love with her, and the girl was very fond of him. But after the relationship had lasted for some time, and the girl—who had had to make her way through life amid misfortune and the most difficult circumstances— and could now have hoped for some measure of happiness, it turned out that her beloved was of the Mosaic faith, and that therefore the marriage could not take place. She reproached him bitterly for having deceived her, but she could not bring herself to leave him. Life always unfolds in a strange interplay of events. The young man, too, could not let go of the girl, and he promised her that once his father died—which could not be long in coming—he would be baptized, and the marriage could take place. He was, in fact, soon summoned to his father’s deathbed. Added to all the pain our unfortunate heroine had to endure was the fact that she fell ill—seriously ill. Meanwhile, her fiancé’s father had died far away. Her fiancé was baptized. But when he arrived, the girl had already died from the emotional anguish she had to endure, compounded by her physical suffering. He found only his dead bride. Now the most bitter grief struck him. He was seized by an irresistible desire, and he could not help himself—he had to see the girl one more time, even though she had been buried. He was eventually able to arrange for her to be exhumed. And lo and behold, she was lying in such a position that one could clearly see: she had been buried alive and, upon waking in the grave, had turned over!”

[ 4 ] This story, says Hamerling, kept coming to mind whenever the subject came up, or whenever he had to think about what human misfortune can be, and how it might indeed sometimes look as if a person were pursued by misfortune not only from birth to the grave, but even beyond the grave, as in this case. Certainly, the story may be a legend, but that is not the point, for each of us will say to ourselves: At this moment—whether the event is true or not—the event could be possible and could have happened just as described, even if it did not actually happen. But it illustrates for us with the utmost clarity the great, anxious question: How can we answer the “Why?” regarding the value of a life so plagued by misfortune? — This does, however, draw our attention to the fact that it might be entirely impossible to speak of happiness or misfortune if one even considers the individual human life at all. And looking beyond this individual human life, at the very least, might prove to be a necessary shift in our habits of thought when we are faced with a life that seems so entangled in the world that no conception of the value of human life is compatible with what this life must endure between birth and death. Here, we seem to be pointed quite clearly beyond the boundaries of birth and death.

[ 5 ] But if we now take a closer look at the words “happiness” or “unhappiness,” we will immediately see that, strictly speaking, they are applicable only within a certain sphere; that while many things out there in the world, outside of human beings may remind us of the peculiar harmony or disharmony between human beings and the world, we can hardly find ourselves in a position to speak of “happiness” or “misfortune” in connection with similar, analogous occurrences outside of human beings. Let us suppose, for example, that even a crystal—which is supposed to form regular shapes according to certain laws—can be compelled, by the proximity of other crystals or by other natural forces acting in its vicinity, not to develop in all directions, in that it is prevented from forming the corners and edges it should form, so that there are actually very few well-formed crystals in nature that conform to their inner laws. Or if we consider the plant, we must say that it, too, possesses an innate law of formation. But in the case of how many plants must we say that they by no means manage to truly unleash the full power of their inner growth impulses against wind and weather and other factors in their environment? And we can say the same of animals. Indeed, we can go even further; we need only keep in mind the undeniable fact of how many embryos of living beings perish in the process of development and do not reach true maturity, because, in the face of external conditions, they have no opportunity to truly become what they are predisposed to be. Let us consider how vast is the number of embryos in the sea alone that could become the marine creatures that populate these seas here and there, and how few of them actually reach full development. In a certain sense, we could indeed say: We see clearly that the beings we encounter in the various kingdoms of nature possess inner formative forces and laws, but that these inner formative forces and laws encounter their obstacles and limitations in their environment and in the impossibility of harmonizing themselves with it. — And how could we fail to see that something similar is indeed at work when we speak of human happiness or unhappiness? There we see how human beings, faced with obstacle after obstacle, are unable to transform the possibility of living out their full potential into reality. Or we can see that a human being, like a crystal—and this is only a metaphor—who is so fortunate as to be able to freely develop his or her edges and corners in every direction, could say: Nothing hinders me; external circumstances and the course of the world work in my favor; they help me to develop what is inherent in the core of my being! — And it is only in the latter case that a person usually speaks of being lucky. Any other situation either leaves them indifferent or compels them to speak directly of misfortune. But if we do not wish to speak merely in figurative terms—without lapsing into the fantastical—we certainly cannot speak of the misfortune of crystals, plants, or even the countless germs that perish in the sea before they can even come into being. We must, as we sense, ascend to human life in order to have any justification for speaking of misfortune or good fortune. And within human life we soon notice that there is a limit beyond which we can no longer speak of good fortune or misfortune, even though external circumstances—which drive human beings—may at first appear to be destructive, inhibiting, or hindering to their immediate existence. Or do we—though we can sense that we do not—speak of misfortune, for example, when we see the great martyr, who has some significant message to convey to the world, fall to his death at the hands of forces hostile to his mission—do we, with some justification, speak of misfortune in the case of, say, Giordano Bruno, because he was condemned to death by burning? We sense that there is something inherent in human beings themselves where the possibility of speaking of mere misfortune—or, if the endeavor succeeds, of good fortune—comes to an end. Thus, we see that good fortune and misfortune are confined to the human sphere and, within that sphere, are in a sense further restricted to a narrower domain.

[ 6 ] If we now approach human beings themselves at the point where they experience their lives in terms of happiness and unhappiness, it turns out that, fundamentally speaking, this happiness or unhappiness can hardly be grasped anywhere if we try to define it conceptually. For let us consider Diogenes—even if this is based on a legend, it is possible that it happened this way—when Alexander asked him to request a favor, that is, let us say, a form of happiness, from him. And lo and behold, Diogenes demanded—as very few people would in this situation—that Alexander step out of the sun. So that was what he lacked at that moment for his happiness. How might many others have interpreted for themselves, at that moment, what was missing for their own happiness? But let us continue. Can anyone even remotely believe that the happiness of the pleasure-seeking person—who considers his life happy only when all his desires, arising from his passions and instincts, can be satisfied— sometimes through the most mundane pleasures—that what such a person calls happiness could also be happiness for the ascetic, who expects the perfection of his being to come from this and considers life worth living only by depriving himself of everything possible in every way, even to the point of subjecting himself to certain pains and sufferings that would not otherwise be imposed upon him by ordinary happiness or unhappiness? How different are the conceptions of happiness and unhappiness in an ascetic and in a hedonist! But we can go even further to show how any concept of happiness that claims to be universal slips through our fingers. We need only consider how unhappy a person can be who becomes quite jealous for no reason, without any true reality underlying it. Let us take a person who has absolutely no reason to be jealous, but who believes that he has every possible reason for it. He is unhappy in the deepest sense of the word—and there is no external cause for it at all. But the degree, the intensity of this unhappiness, does not depend at all on any external reality, but solely on the way in which the person in question—in this case, entirely based on an illusion—relates to the external reality in his life.

[ 7 ] The fact that not only misfortune but also happiness can be highly subjective—that it, so to speak, at every turn directs us from the external world to the inner world—is illustrated by a very beautiful story that Jean Paul presented to us at the at the beginning of the first volume, in which a man who otherwise lives in Central Germany imagines the happiness he would find if he could be a pastor in Sweden. It is a truly charming passage, the way he imagines sitting in his parsonage and experiencing the day as it grows dark as early as two o’clock in the afternoon. How people would walk into the church, each carrying their own light—and then the images from his childhood would resurface, when each of his siblings also came with their own light—how he revels in the fantasy of people walking to church through the darkness, each with their own light. Or when he daydreams his way into other situations, which are evoked simply by the fact that they remind him of certain natural phenomena—for example, if he were in Italy, he would only need to imagine seeing the orange trees and so on. All of this puts him in a mood of the most wonderful happiness, but none of it is reality at all; rather, it is all just a dream.

[ 8 ] Undoubtedly, with this dream of a pastor in Sweden, Jean Paul points to profound connections regarding the questions of happiness and unhappiness, seeking to show how, at its core, the question of happiness or unhappiness can be redirected from the external world to the human inner self. Strangely enough, precisely because happiness and unhappiness can depend entirely on the human inner world, we see the concept of happiness dissolve into a general abstraction. And yet, when we look at what people usually call their happiness or unhappiness, in countless cases they certainly do not relate what they call that to their inner world, but rather to something external. Indeed, we could even say: The peculiar nature of the human need for happiness is deeply rooted in the fact that human beings have an incessant urge not to be lonely and alone with their thoughts, their feelings, and their entire inner life, but to be in harmony with what is at work and unfolding in their surroundings. — Fundamentally, people speak of happiness when they do not want their success or impact to depend solely on themselves, but rather when they place value precisely on the fact that it depends not on them, but on something else. We need only—and here, undoubtedly, the smallest and the greatest belong together—picture in our minds the happiness of the gambler. We can quite easily relate the gambler’s happiness—paradoxical as it may seem—to the satisfaction one derives from a newly gained insight. For what we have come to know evokes within us the feeling that we are in harmony with the world in our thinking and in our inner life, that what exists outside is also present within us in our understanding, that we do not stand here alone with the world staring at us like a riddle, but that the inner world responds to the outer world. That there is a living, intimate contact with the external world; that the external world is reflected and shines anew within us; that the external world has a connection with the inner world—as evidenced by this harmony—this, after all, is the satisfaction we derive from insight. In the case of the gambler who wins, if we wish to analyze his satisfaction, we cannot help but tell ourselves—even if the thought of what his satisfaction is based on does not occur to him—that it could not exist if he himself were able to bring about what actually happens. And that satisfaction rests on the fact that something is brought about outside of him without his intervention, that the world, as it were, takes him into account—that it brings him something that benefits him, that the world shows, in this particular instance, that he is not outside of it, but that he has a certain contact, a certain connection with it. And the unhappiness the gambler feels when he loses is based, fundamentally, on the fact that such a feeling does not exist for him; rather, the unhappiness triggers in him a feeling as if he were excluded from the world, as if it took no account of him, as if contact with it had been severed.

[ 9 ] In short, we see that it is not at all correct for a person to regard happiness or unhappiness merely as something that can be confined to his inner self; rather, when he speaks of happiness or unhappiness, he means—in the deepest sense—precisely that which can establish a connection between himself and the world. That is why people in our enlightened age are hardly as easily superstitious—or as grotesquely superstitious—about any other matter as they are about what is called “luck,” that is, their expectations of certain forces or elements that lie outside themselves and are supposed to come to their aid. When such a thing is present in a person, they can become quite superstitious. I once knew a very enlightened German poet. During the period in question, he was writing a play. He knew in advance that this play would not be finished by the end of a certain month. But he held the superstition that he could only achieve success with this play if it were sent to the relevant theater management before the first of the following month. He was superstitious that if it were sent later, it would not be a success. As it happened, as the last days of the month were drawing near, I was walking down the street—I knew from my interactions with him that he was far from finished with his work—when I saw him riding his bicycle at breakneck speed to the post office. I waited, and when he came back out, he told me, “I’ve now sent my play to the theater.” I asked him, “Have you actually finished it?” He replied, “I still have to work on the last few acts. But I’ve sent it in now because I believe it can only be a success if it arrives before the end of this month. But I also wrote right along with it that they should send it back to me once it arrives. Then I’ll finish it. But it has to be sent in by that time!” Here we see, so to speak, a person who does not trust in his own abilities, but rather expects help from outside—just as he expects that what is to come about will not be achieved solely through him, through his competence or his strength, but that the world outside of him will come to his aid, that it knows something about him, so that he does not stand there so alone with what he is as an individual soul.

[ 10 ] All of this merely proves to us that, when we try to grasp it, the concept of happiness in its generality truly eludes us. And it also eludes us when we look to literature at those who have written anything at all about happiness, for it is usually people who, so to speak, are engaged in writing in some way who write about such things. Now everyone knows from the outset that one can really speak properly only of that with which one has a vital, not merely a theoretical, relationship. Now, those who write about happiness as philosophers or psychologists are, in essence, in a vital relationship only with that aspect of happiness or unhappiness which they themselves have experienced. Now, one factor that weighs extremely heavily in the balance is that cognition itself—as it presents itself to us in the external human world—that knowledge, when taken in a certain higher sense, constitutes a kind of happiness from the very outset. Anyone who has ever felt that inner bliss which knowledge can bestow will admit this, and it is essentially corroborated by the fact that the most outstanding philosophers—from Aristotle down to our own time—have always described the possession of wisdom and knowledge as a special form of happiness. But on the other hand, we must ask ourselves once again: What significance does such an answer to the question of happiness hold for someone who, with few exceptions, works for weeks on end down in a dark mine, or for someone who is buried in a mine and perhaps survives for days in the most horrific conditions? What does such a philosophical interpretation of happiness have to do with what lives in the soul of a person who must perform menial, perhaps repulsive, work in life? — Life provides strange answers to the question of happiness. And we can experience in abundance that the philosophers’ answers, in a truly strange and grotesque way, often diverge in this very regard from what we encounter in everyday life—if we are willing to view this life in its true form. But life also teaches us other things about happiness. And even from the perspectives just outlined, life itself appears to us as a strange contradiction in the conception of happiness. Let us recount a case that applies to many.

[ 11 ] Let us suppose that a person with, say, lofty ideals—even one endowed with an excellent imagination—is forced to perform menial labor. He must spend almost his entire life as a common soldier. I am speaking of a real-life case—one that is truly no legend—but rather the case of a most remarkable man, named Josef Emanuel Hilscher, who was born in Austria in 1806 and died in 1837, who had to serve as a common soldier for most of his life, rose to no higher rank than quartermaster, and who, despite brilliant talents, could not advance beyond that rank. This man left behind a large number of poems that are not only formally perfect but also deeply imbued with the life of the soul, as well as excellent translations of the English poet Byron. This man had a rich inner life. One can imagine the stark contrast that existed in this life between what each day brought him in terms of external happiness and what he experienced internally. The poems are by no means imbued with pessimism; they are imbued with strength and abundance. They show us how this life, despite the many disappointments that such a life entails, expanded to a certain degree into infinity and attained inner bliss. It is a pity that humanity forgets such phenomena so easily. For when we bring such a phenomenon back to mind, we may realize—since things differ from one another only gradually—that perhaps there is still a possibility, even where a person’s external life seems to be utterly devoid of happiness, to create a state of happiness from the very core of one’s being.

[ 12 ] Now, particularly from the perspective of spiritual science—that is, if one insists on clinging to misleading or primitive notions—one might even rail fanatically against happiness, or seek to explain life in a fanatically one-sided manner based on the idea of repeated earthly lives and karma. One way to rail fanatically against happiness would be for someone, approaching spiritual science on the basis of misunderstood sources, to claim that all striving for happiness and contentment is nothing but egoism, and that spiritual science, in fact, seeks precisely to lead people beyond egoism. Even Aristotle, in essence, found it ridiculous to claim that a virtuous person could somehow be content in the midst of inexplicable suffering. For happiness need not be understood merely as a gratification of egoism; even if happiness initially means nothing more than a gratification of egoism, it need not be without value for the overall good of humanity. For happiness can also be understood as bringing our mental faculties into a certain harmonious state and thereby allowing them to unfold in every respect, whereas unhappiness creates disharmonious states in our inner life and prevents us from fully realizing our abilities and strengths. — Thus, even if happiness is initially sought merely as a satisfaction of egoism, we can regard it as the nurturer of inner, harmonious spiritual strength, and on the one hand, we can hope that the person who gains such inner, harmonious spiritual strength through happiness will gradually transcend his or her egoism, whereas a person is likely to find it difficult to move beyond egoism if he or she is pursued only by misfortune. And on the other hand, one might also say: When a person strives for happiness and receives it as a fulfillment of egoism, the harmonization of their powers enables them to work for the good of themselves and others in a wholesome way. — Thus, one must not simply rail one-sidedly against what can be called happiness. But on the other hand, many who believe they have already arrived at spiritual science—merely because they have perceived one thing or another from a distance—commit another error by saying: Here I have an unhappy person before me, and there a happy one. When I think of karma—the causality of one life arising from another—I can easily explain to myself how the one who is unhappy has brought this unhappiness upon himself in a previous life, and how the happy person has brought about his own happiness in an earlier life. — Such a statement is somewhat treacherous because, in a certain sense, it is correct. But karma—that is, the law of one earthly life arising from another—must not be taken in the sense of a merely explanatory law; rather, it must be regarded as something that penetrates our will and leads us to live in accordance with this law. Yet this law is valid and justified in the face of life only if it elevates and enriches life. With regard to happiness, it has become clear to us that human beings initially generate a craving for happiness out of the desire not to stand alone, but to have a share in the external circumstances of the world, so that these circumstances take them into account. On the other hand, it has become clear to us that happiness can be something that—in complete contradiction to external facts—can be brought about solely through human perceptions, through what a person experiences in those external facts.

[ 13 ] Where can we find a resolution to this apparent contradiction—one brought about not by abstractions and theories, but by reality itself? We can find a resolution to this apparent contradiction if we turn our spiritual gaze toward what we might call the inner essence of the human being—that which, as we have said in previous lectures, works upon the outer human being, shapes even the physical body, but also places the human being in his rightful place in the world. If we focus on this inner core of the human being and ask ourselves: How can this inner core relate to a person’s happiness or unhappiness? — we will most easily find an answer if we take into account that various circumstances of happiness can approach such an inner core, so that the person must say to themselves: I intended this or that, I willed this or that; I also directed my prudence and wisdom in such a way that this or that could come to pass; but now I see, from what has occurred, that the outcome far exceeds what I had arranged through my prudence, what I had predetermined, or what I had been able to foresee. — What person, especially those in positions of responsibility in the world, would not say something like this to themselves in countless instances: that while they have indeed expended energy, a success has befallen them that bears no relation whatsoever to the energy expended. What can a person do—if we do not conceive of the core of the human being as something that exists only once, but rather as something in the process of full development; if we understand it in the sense of spiritual science, as that which shapes not merely one life but many lives, and which therefore seeks to shape this one life in our immediate present exactly as it is— and tell us that when this inner core of being passes through the gate of death, it then traverses a supersensible world in order to act, when the time has come, in a new existence within a physical life, — what attitude can a person who conceives of their central essence in this way, who understands themselves within such a worldview, adopt toward a success that has come to them in the manner described? They will never say to themselves: “So fortune has smiled upon me; therefore, I am satisfied,” I am glad that, although I intended only a small thing with the forces I set in motion, something greater has come to me through good fortune!” — Such a person, who sincerely believes in karma and in repeated earthly lives and wishes to organize his life in accordance with karma, will never say this to himself; rather, he will say: “This success is here. I myself, however, have proven weak in the face of this success. I will not be content with the success, but I will use it to learn how to increase my powers; I will direct seeds into the core of my inner being that will lead it to ever higher and higher levels of perfection. My undeserved success, my stroke of luck, shows me what I lack. I must learn from it. — One who faces the good fortune of success and views karma in the proper sense—who believes in karma—cannot give himself any other answer. What does he do with it? Such a stroke of luck—where “luck” is not meant here in the ordinary sense, but rather in the sense that something befalls one—does not make it something he accepts as an end in itself, but rather something that becomes a beginning, a starting point from which he learns, and which sheds light on the subsequent stages of development in his existence.

[ 14 ] But what is the opposite of what we have just mentioned? Let us really bring this to mind. It is precisely through this that a person who believes in repeated earthly lives, in karma, or in spiritual causes will receive the seeds to spur on their strength, so that they regard success and good fortune as a beginning, as a cause for their further development. The opposite of this would be if, in the reverse case, we did not simply accept a misfortune or failure that befalls us by saying, “It just happened to us.” Rather, those who perceive human life as extending beyond individual experiences regard it as an end in itself, as something ultimate—something whose causes must be sought in the past, just as success, when it occurs as a stroke of good fortune, has its effects to be found in the future—the future of our own development. We view misfortune as an effect of our own development. How so?

[ 15 ] We can illustrate this with a comparison that shows us that we are not always capable of correctly assessing the causes of life in every situation. Let’s suppose a person has lived carelessly and idly off his father’s money until the age of eighteen, but, in his own view, he has lived a truly happy life. When he turns eighteen, his father loses his fortune. As a result, the son is now forced to stop living idly and lazily and instead learn a proper trade. At first, this brings him all sorts of suffering and pain. “Oh, a great misfortune,” the son now says, “has befallen me!” The only question is whether, in this situation, he is the right judge of his own fate. If he now learns a proper trade, he may perhaps say at the age of fifty: Yes, at the time I had to regard it as a great misfortune that my father lost his fortune. Now I can only see it as a misfortune for my father, not for me; for I might have remained a good-for-nothing my whole life if this misfortune hadn’t befallen me. But because it turned out this way, I have become a decent person and have become what I am today.

[ 16 ] So let us ask ourselves: When is a person truly capable of judging his own fate? At the age of eighteen, when misfortune struck him, or at fifty, when he looks back on that misfortune? — And let’s suppose he thinks even further and asks himself about the cause of his misfortune back then. He might ask himself: Yes, that misfortune didn’t have to befall me at all back then. Outwardly, it seems at first as though the misfortune befell me because my father lost his fortune. But let’s suppose that from my earliest childhood I had been the sort of person who possessed an immense eagerness to learn, who had accomplished an immense amount without external compulsion, so that it would not have bothered me if my father had lost his fortune; then the transition would have been entirely different, and no misfortune would have befallen me. On the surface, the reason for my misfortune lies outside of me. In truth, I can say that the deeper cause lies within me. For the way I was is what brought about the fact that life became a misfortune, pain, and suffering for me at that time. I brought that misfortune upon myself.

[ 17 ] When a person says this to themselves, they have already, in a certain sense, grasped a little of how, in fact, everything that comes to us from the outside is brought about by something within us, and how we can also view what comes to us as being caused by our own development. Any misfortune can present itself to us in such a way that we tell ourselves we have been placed in that situation because of an imperfect state within us; the misfortune points out to us that something about us is not yet as perfect as it should be. Here we have the opposite case of success: misfortune is understood as an effect, as the outcome of what we ourselves brought about in earlier stages of our development. And if we do not merely present this misfortune before our soul in such a way that we lament over it and blame only the external world for it, but if we look to the core of our inner being and seriously consider the causes stemming from our various earthly lives—that is, karma— then we see misfortune once again as a call to make ourselves ever more perfect, to learn in life, and to regard life as a school. But when we view the matter in this way, karma—and what we call the law of repeated earthly lives—becomes a force for life, that which can make life richer and more meaningful.

[ 18 ] Now, however, the question may arise: Can the mere knowledge of the law of karma, in a certain way, elevate life, make it richer and more meaningful—can it, perhaps, in a certain way, transform misfortune into happiness, so to speak? — As strange as it may seem to many today, I would nevertheless like to make a remark that may be significant for the overall understanding of happiness or misfortune from the perspective of spiritual science. Let us recall once more the legend told by Hamerling about that girl who was pursued by misfortune until her death and even beyond the grave, having been buried alive. Certainly, anyone who has not delved more deeply into the forces that can provide insight will find this paradoxical. But let us assume, hypothetically speaking, that this girl, with her misfortune, were placed in an environment that a spiritual-scientific worldview would provide to such an extent that the individual would say to themselves: Within me lives a central spiritual core that transcends birth and death, which, in what it is in this life and what it is capable of in the outer world, reveals the effects of past earthly lives and continues to acquire powers for the earthly lives to come. — Let us assume that such an insight had been a power of the soul within that girl—it is entirely conceivable that these ideas might have existed—then such an insight would strengthen the belief in the inner power of our central spiritual core. And it may perhaps be said: Since that power, which emanates from the soul-spiritual realm, works into the physical body from the core of the being—as will be described from other perspectives in the following lectures—and since the power of which a person can become aware could have worked into this girl’s state of health, she might perhaps have been able to hold on through the power of such faith until the man had returned after his father’s death. This may seem paradoxical to some who do not know what power is inherent in a realization that stems from true reality and is therefore not abstract or merely theoretical, but acts as a germinal force within the soul.

[ 19 ] But here we see that, when it comes to questions of happiness, there may be no need for consolation for those people who are truly devoted their entire lives to work that can never satisfy them, whose aspirations in life are rejected throughout their entire lives. We do, however, observe that with such a strong belief in the central core of human nature—which knows that this individual human life is one among many—there can indeed be something akin to an awakening of strength. Through my connection with the whole world—into which I find myself placed as I engage with it spiritually—it becomes clear to me, deep within my soul, what initially appears to me in the external world as my happiness or my misfortune, as the good or bad fate of my life. — Ordinary consolation cannot help us overcome misfortune when it truly strikes us according to our own understanding. What must help us overcome it is the ability to view what directly befalls us in such a way that we see it as a link in the chain of existence. Then we tell ourselves: To consider the individual event is merely to consider the appearance and not the reality—just as it is to consider the appearance when someone who has lazed about until the age of eighteen then experiences that particular misfortune and must work, viewing it as a true misfortune and not as the cause of his later happiness. Thus, when we grasp these things more deeply, we are in fact led to say to ourselves: It is precisely in instances of good fortune that it becomes clear to us how viewing life from a particular perspective can give us nothing but an illusion, and how what befalls us as good fortune or misfortune reveals itself only in its appearance when we view it in a limited way; yet it reveals itself to us in its meaning and essence only when we view it as part of the whole of human life. But if we were to view this totality of human life as confined within the boundaries between birth and death, then a human life that can never find fulfillment in relation to ordinary human circumstances and other forms of work would never seem comprehensible to us. It becomes understandable—understandable in reality—as has often been expressed in that statement, which, however, only spiritual science can confirm for real human destiny; it can do so only when we know: When something is understandable to us, it no longer has power over us. - And for those whose very essence is such that success in happiness becomes merely a driving force for upward development, even misfortune becomes a call for further development. Thus, the apparent contradiction is resolved when, in our contemplation of life, we shift our focus away from the notion that we merely perceive something as good fortune or misfortune approaching us from the outside, and instead turn our attention to the way in which we transform these experiences within ourselves and what we make of them.

[ 20 ] If we have learned from the law of karma not merely to derive satisfaction from success, but rather to view it as a call to continue developing ourselves, then we will also come to regard failure and misfortune in the same way. Everything is transformed within the human soul, and what appears to be happiness or misfortune becomes a reality within the human soul. But this conveys an extraordinary amount of meaning and significance. For let us suppose that a person were completely opposed to the idea of repeated earthly lives, and he were to see how one person suffers from mere figments of the imagination that he creates—for example, from unwarranted jealousy—or how another indulges in a dream of happiness; or, on the other hand, he were to see how yet another person, purely out of his imagination, that is, from mere appearances rather than the real world of facts, develops an inner reality—something that is truly very real to their inner being—then such a person might say to themselves: Wouldn’t it be the most incredible incongruity between a person’s inner world and the outer world if this reality were exhausted by the facts of this one human life? - There is no doubt that when a person passes through the gate of death, that which he associates here with the concept of reality—what lives within him as jealousy or as an illusion of happiness—is extinguished. But what has become united with his soul as pleasure and suffering—what has manifested as an effect in the movement of his emotions—has become a force within his soul; it lives a life within the soul that is connected to his further development in the world. And so, through this characteristic transformation, we see how human beings are in fact called upon to develop their reality out of appearance.

[ 21 ] But with this, we have also arrived at an explanation of what we said at the beginning: why human beings, in fact, relate to their happiness in such a way that they cannot possibly connect this happiness with their self, with their individuality. For if he cannot connect it directly to his self—as external events that come to him and enhance his existence—then he can transform it within himself, so that what is initially an external appearance becomes an inner reality. In this way, human beings become the transformers of external appearance into being, into reality. But when we now look at our surroundings and say to ourselves: There we have seen how crystals, plants, and animals, too, cannot live out their inner laws of formation, how they are hindered externally! We have seen how countless seeds must perish before they can truly come into being. — What is not the case here, what does not allow us to speak of luck or misfortune in the way we have described? It is not the case here that the external becomes the internal, so that the external is indeed reflected in the internal, and that an appearance can be transformed into true being. It is only because human beings possess a central core of being within themselves that they detach themselves from immediate external reality and experience a new reality. This reality, which they experience within themselves, stands apart from external life in ordinary existence in that they can say to themselves: On the one hand, I live within the line of inheritance, carrying within me what I have inherited from my parents, grandparents, and so on. But I also live within what has only a spiritual line of causation and can give me something else besides the happiness that can be brought to me through the external world. — Only in this way does it become apparent that human beings indeed belong to two worlds: an outer world and an inner world. If one wishes to call this dualism, one may do so, but it is precisely the way in which human beings transform appearance into being—into reality—that shows us how even this dualism itself is merely an appearance, since outer appearance is continually being transformed into inner reality within the human being. Furthermore, life shows us how what we experience in our imagination—by “misinterpreting” the facts—becomes reality within us.

[ 22 ] Thus we see how what we call happiness and unhappiness is closely linked to the human inner being. But we also see how it is closely linked to that inner human essence which, in the sense of our worldview, implies that—from a spiritual-scientific perspective—human beings exist within a series of repeated earthly lives. If we view the matter in this way, we can ask: Do we not then base our sense of inner happiness on all outward appearances of happiness, and count on this happiness as something enduring in our development? — All external good fortune that befalls us is so wonderfully characterized by the legend of Croesus, in which Solon told Croesus that no one should praise their own life as happy before its end, for everything that comes to us in the form of external good fortune is subject to change. Good fortune can turn into misfortune. What can never be taken from us when it comes to happiness? It is what we make of external events—whether they be successes or failures. And so, fundamentally, a person can apply that beautiful and genuine folk proverb to their entire relationship with happiness: that each person is, after all, the architect of their own fortune. The people have coined many beautiful and extraordinarily apt sayings about happiness, and one can see from these sayings what profound philosophy lies in the outlook of even the simplest of people. In this regard, those who call themselves the most educated could learn an infinite amount from them. Sometimes, however, these truths present themselves to us in a rather crude form. There is, after all, a proverb that says even the gods struggle in vain against a certain human trait. But then there is a curious proverb that links precisely this human trait—against which even the gods are said to struggle in vain—to happiness, stating that the fool is the luckiest of all. We need not draw the conclusion from this that the gods, precisely because of that futility, seek to bribe these very people with good fortune. But we can certainly say: it becomes clear to us how, in this proverb, there is a distinct awareness of the inner nature and the necessity of internalizing what we must call the connection between human beings and good fortune in the world. — For our wisdom, as long as it relates only to external things and their interconnections, will ultimately be of little help to us. What will help us is the wisdom that has already been transformed back into an inner wisdom—that is, wisdom that has regained the quality still possessed by the original, primitive human being—when it is built upon the strong center of his inner life, which transcends birth and death and can only be understood when we view it in the light of repeated earthly lives. Thus, everything that a person can experience as happiness from the merely external world is, in essence, merely the appearance of happiness—distinct from what we call the true essence of happiness, which arises only at the moment when a person can make something of the external facts of life, transform them, and incorporate them into the evolving core of their being that passes from life to life. And we then understand why a person in the deepest physical pain of illness—Herder—once said to his son: “Give me a great, beautiful thought, and I will find refreshment in it!” We can clearly see here how Herder anticipated the shining in of a great, beautiful thought into a tormented life as a source of refreshment—that is, as a stroke of good fortune. It is easy to speak of how a person must be the architect of their own happiness through their inner being. But when we contemplate the worldview of spiritual science—in the aspects we have been able to touch upon today—in all its powerful effectiveness, where it is not merely theoretical knowledge but seizes our spiritual and soul, by being fully filled with that which transcends happiness or unhappiness—when we grasp this worldview in this way—then it can yield those great thoughts like hardly any other, thoughts that still make it possible for a person, even when he must perish in misfortune, to be filled in that very moment with the thought: “This is, after all, only a part of life as a whole!”

[ 23 ] That is why this question about happiness was raised today—to illustrate how everyday external life is inspired and enriched by the real insights into the whole of life that spiritual science can offer us, and how these insights do not merely intervene in life as a theory, but bring forth the very forces of life itself. And that is the essential point. We must not only offer external sources of comfort to those who, in the face of external misfortune, are to learn to endure it by awakening their inner forces; rather, we must be able to give them the real inner forces that lead beyond the sphere of misfortune to a sphere to which they belong, even though life itself seems to contradict this. But this can only be provided by a science that shows how human life extends beyond birth and death, and how it is, after all, connected to everything that constitutes the sources of bliss in our world order. If we can expect this from a worldview, then we can say that it fills the intuitions of the very best people with meaning. With such a worldview, a person can view life in such a way that, in this life, he stands like one who is rocked on a ship by the waves surging up and down in a storm, yet finds within himself the courage to rely on nothing in the external world in the same sense as he relies on the strength and essence of his own inner self. Perhaps then reflections such as those of today may be suitable for presenting to people an ideal that Goethe, in a certain sense, sets before us—an ideal that we can, however, grasp beyond the intuition that fills Goethe, as a human ideal that applies to all: admittedly not as something that is immediately fulfilled in the life of the individual, but as an ideal for human life as a whole, when a person, in a life marked by both happiness and misfortune, feels as if on a ship rocked back and forth by storm-tossed waves, and can trust in their inner self. This must lead to a perspective that we can characterize—with a slight modification of Goethe’s words—as follows:

The man stands at the helm,
The ship is moved by wind and waves—
But not by the wind and waves within him.
Mastering them—he gazes into the grim depths
And trusts, whether he fails or reaches shore,
In the strength of his inner self!