The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. A Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought

Ladies and gentlemen!

[ 1 ] As I did last winter, I would like to take the liberty this evening of speaking about a subject that is intimately connected with the development of German intellectual life, and thus deviate from what I have been privileged to do for many years, both in this city and in other cities in Germany: speaking on a more specific topic within the spiritual-scientific worldview.

[ 2 ] This sentiment is certainly close to people’s hearts, given the major, significant events the German people are facing, and the circumstances unfolding around us—which, on the one hand, represent a severe trial, but on the other, must become a source of significant hope for the future.

[ 3 ] Furthermore, I do not believe that one needs to speak from a narrow-minded nationalist perspective when linking the humanities-based reflections—such as those that have been cultivated here over the years—to the great eras of German intellectual life. For it is my conviction—derived not from certain obscure feelings, but, as I believe in all modesty, from an understanding of the facts — that precisely what I have often described here as a striving into the spiritual worlds is contained, in and of itself, as a significantly powerful seed within the most diverse endeavors of German intellectual life, in the flowering of this intellectual life.

[ 4 ] If the humanities are to be considered a science, then one could very easily—I would say—from a certain perspective of self-evidence—a self-evidence that is, after all, superficial—one could very easily say: Science, by its very nature, must be something international. And to want to link science to certain aspirations toward populism is, from the outset, inadmissible. That is what a great many people say. And it sounds so plausible when one speaks this way that what seems self-evident actually becomes superficial.

[ 5 ] I would just like to say, by way of comparison: On an international level, for example, ladies and gentlemen, even the moon is the same for all peoples; but what the various peoples have to say about the moon from the depths of their souls stems from their different dispositions. Now, one might say: That may apply to poetry, to literature. However, if science is to become a worldview, then what science has to say must indeed be objective—it must be exemplary for all people. But whether science penetrates deeply into the sources of existence or remains on the surface—to name just these two extremes—depends on the different dispositions of the individual peoples, on the impulses that the individual peoples have to offer humanity through what science means to them. And how these impulses, these forces [...] stem from the innate dispositions of peoples—that is what matters! That is what matters in the overall development of humanity, not what, in an abstract sense, may be common to all!

[ 6 ] One need only—to [hint at] what is actually meant here—recall a remark by Goethe. When Goethe, on his great journey to the south, had not only observed and interpreted the most diverse works of art in his own way, but also the facts of nature and natural beings, he wrote to his friends in Weimar: “After all that I have seen in terms of insights into nature and natural beings, I would most like to take a trip to India—not to discover something new, but to view what has already been discovered in my own way.”

[ 7 ] What matters is the way of looking at things—that which one is able to bring forth from the soul to engage with the phenomena of the world and the fabric of existence. And this is intimately connected with the national souls. And when, ladies and gentlemen, one speaks of the German national soul and its influence within German culture, it immediately seems obvious to anyone familiar with the course of German development that one must reach that pinnacle to which the German national soul had risen at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. There, thinkers such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel created a philosophical foundation—a foundation of knowledge—for what, within European intellectual life, through Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing, and others of their ilk, became a second [...] flowering after the Greek one. For behind Goethe’s *Faust* and the other great poetic and artistic achievements lies what the German worldview had created at that time in the realm of intellectual development.

[ 8 ] Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte—he first appears before the minds of our time in a way that is so natural: to view German minds in the context of the development of their national character. Johann Gottlieb Fichte first emerges as the great orator in the “Addresses to the German Nation.” If you consider what those speeches [have accomplished]—every word of which must still kindle a fire in the German soul today, for the simple reason that, during one of the most difficult periods in German history, these words strengthened and encouraged every heart, and truly shed light on the possibilities of German development. And: Because these speeches sprang from the deepest feeling for the German national character and from the closest kinship with the innermost forces of the German national soul.

[ 9 ] Yet how easily one might say: Yes, what Fichte once addressed to the German people in enthusiastic, impassioned speech will easily find its way into every soul. But if one starts from what Fichte’s worldview actually is, then one encounters something that is difficult to understand. Oh, distinguished guests, if only this prejudice against the alleged obscurity of works such as those by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel could vanish just once: A figure such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte could never have delivered his “Addresses to the German Nation” had he not experienced in his soul that worldview—which is only seemingly difficult to understand—and which he felt, always felt, had arisen within him as if through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. For that is how he felt about what he had to say!

[ 10 ] Well, spiritual science, ladies and gentlemen, as it is understood here, is based entirely on the premise that there are powers slumbering within the human soul that do not find their application in ordinary external life—not even when one considers this external life rationally—nor do they find their application in ordinary external science; but rather, they must first be developed, [they must first] be drawn forth from the depths of the human soul, and developed into what can be described using Goethe’s expressions: spiritual eyes, spiritual ears—through which one can look into and listen to the spiritual world—spiritual eyes, spiritual ears!

[ 11 ] Spiritual science assumes that such a true inner sense is not bound to a physical organ, but lies dormant in the soul in a purely psychological and spiritual sense, though it can be brought forth from it. [Spiritual science assumes] that such a sense is capable of perceiving a real spiritual world that surrounds us and to which we belong with our souls and our spirits, just as we belong to the physical-sensory world with our bodies. The difference is that when we observe the physical-sensory world through the organs of our physical-sensory body, it presents to us that which perishes with our death. Whereas, when the human being’s inner sense proceeds just as scientifically as the other senses or external science—and through the external intellect connected to the brain or the nervous system—when the inner sense proceeds in this way toward the spiritual world, then the human being comes to observe those forces that are within him and that permeate the entire external world. [He comes to observe] those forces that represent for him the eternal, immortal forces of the soul, which pass through births and deaths.

[ 12 ] To awaken such an inner meaning, such inner forces—this was the unchanging aim of Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s, in his pursuit of a worldview. He strove toward this very meaning. He could do so only because this uniqueness—we will see later why I say “uniqueness”—of the German national spirit lived within him: this will to acquire something in his own soul through an elevation, through a strengthening, through a development of the soul’s powers—something that cannot be acquired if these soul powers are not strengthened, but which is one and of the same kind —we are not referring here to some vague fantasy—, which is of the same nature as that which, as spirit, as real, objective spirit, is as objective as external natural objects are to the senses, which, as spirit, interweaves and permeates the world.

[ 13 ] For Fichte, the human self came to life when it was able to grasp within itself that which pulses through, weaves through, and lives through the world as its mysteries.

[ 14 ] Fichte believed that when a person comes to experience within themselves—in the true sense—this inner self, this center of soul life, directly, truly, and powerfully, then they do not merely live as an individual within such an inner experience; rather, the life of the world, the spirit of the world—that which is the creative spirit in all things of existence—lives within this inner experience.

[ 15 ] This desire to know through the innermost sense organ—that is what is so characteristic of Fichte. And it is characteristic of him because it lay in his very nature. For it was in his nature to become one with whatever made an impression on him. He did not merely hear something, he did not merely see something; rather, as he heard something, as he saw something, he poured the entire sensibility and life of his personality into what he heard and what he saw. He immersed himself so deeply in what he perceived that he felt creatively at home within it—co-creating the world, nature, and every other human life. This was present in him as a personal disposition.

[ 16 ] To illustrate this, I would like to cite a few brief passages from Fichte’s life—from Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s life. He was a little boy of seven, the son of a simple weaver; one day he was standing at the edge of a stream that flowed past his father’s little cottage. He had thrown a book into the stream! And now he stood there crying, watching the book float away. Then his father came along and saw what had happened. For this is what had happened: Last Christmas, the father had given the boy—who was precocious and did well in school—*The Horned Siegfried* as a gift. On the boy, the seven-year-old boy in his blue peasant smock, the child of simple folk, the mighty, proto-Germanic tale of *The Horned Siegfried* made such a powerful impression that he became completely absorbed in it. And then it became apparent that one had to say: Although he had previously been so diligent, conscientious, and dutiful at school, he was now less attentive. He was reproached for this.

[ 17 ] What did the seven-year-old boy do? He said to himself: “The ‘Horned Siegfried’—I like him; I love him; I’m attached to him; but he must not take my duties away from me, so I’ll throw him into the water.” — Even as a seven-year-old boy, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was already capable of becoming so deeply attuned to what he would later call the concept of duty!

[ 18 ] And again: He had turned nine years old. The neighbor from the estate had come over to the little village where Fichte lived to hear the pastor’s sermon there one Sunday. He had arrived too late and could no longer hear the sermon. So they came up with a solution. They said: “There is a nine-year-old boy who listens so intently to the sermon that he might be able to repeat the most important parts from memory.” They brought in the nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte: He stood there awkwardly in his blue peasant smock; and once the ice had been broken, so to speak, he began to recount the sermon just as he had heard it; but not the way children recount things—not by reciting the words from memory afterward—but as if he were recreating it! So that one could see: the inner fire of his soul had fused with what had reached his ears from the pulpit. Thus, even as a boy, he blossomed in the realization that what he perceived from the world had become so intimately intertwined with his surroundings. That was what one came to realize, and what led him to his worldview—[what led him] to his worldview in such a way that he felt: What lives in the individual human being as will does not merely live in that individual as will; rather, what lives in the individual as will is like that drop taken from the sea, which is, in its nature, identical to the entire sea. The will that human beings come to recognize in their “I”—it pulses through, lives through, and weaves through all existence as the will of the world. And when a human being utters “I,” the will of the world speaks within them.

[ 19 ] Thus, in his worldview, the individual self merged with the will of the world. And as if surging on the wings of the will, he perceived that which radiates from the divine-spiritual existence—from the divine-spiritual existence of the will—and shines into the human soul as a duty.

[ 20 ] Duty became for him the highest, the most significant thing—that which enters into a human being as duty—toward the world and its manifestations—as a task; for him, this was a direct inspiration from the divine spirit of will, which pulses, weaves, and flows through the world.

[ 21 ] And so, in his will as well as in his self, Johann Gottlieb Fichte felt at one with the existence of the world. Thus, when he spoke, he believed that he must speak not out of personal caprice, but out of what God—who wishes to speak in the soul—wishes to say. And one really cannot imagine that anyone could have been more earnest than Fichte was when, for example, he spoke to his audience in Jena, attempting to convey to their souls what he had experienced in his own soul as a certainty of the world.

[ 22 ] It was not a matter, as with the other speakers, of merely conveying a certain message or certain phrases so that they would be heard; no, rather, what mattered to him, as he ascended the speaker’s platform, was to carry within his soul something of which he was certain—in true humility, in all modesty: The Will of the Worlds, which reigns over the world, speaks through me; it must be carried on the wings of my words into the souls of my listeners. And there must be established that connection between the souls of my listeners and the divine-spiritual Will of the Worlds, by which I myself am inflamed and imbued.

[ 23 ] And deep within his soul—within Fichte’s soul—lay the realization that the deepest aspects of the world must be understood through the innermost depths of the soul. Here, again, is a brief anecdote familiar to those who have studied Johann Gottlieb Fichte, illustrating how he, for example, would present his listeners with the following challenge. Seeking an immediate personal connection with his listeners, he said, for example: “Gentlemen, think of the wall.”—So the people thought of the wall; it was easy for them. After letting them think of the wall like that for a while, he said: “And now think of the one who just thought of the wall!” — At that point, the people were already somewhat strangely moved; they didn’t quite know what to do; they were referred to their own inner selves. They were to draw strength, to fortify within themselves their own inner self—that which, as something impersonal and spiritual, interweaves and ripples through the world.

[ 24 ] This was how he sought to connect with his audience. And yet his words were not merely conventional phrases. People who knew him well said: His speech rolls forth like thunder, and his words strike like individual flashes of lightning. — He sought not merely to educate good souls, but great ones.

[ 25 ] And another said of him: “Oh, with Fichte, it is as if he lives and weaves within the realm of the invisible world of thought—not as one who dwells within it, but as one who rules over this invisible world.”

[ 26 ] It was in this spirit that Fichte, in his Berlin lectures from 1811 to 1813, said things that had probably rarely been expressed before an audience of university students. There he spoke of a “new sense,” a spiritual sense that is necessary for human beings if they wish to come to know the eternal in contrast to the temporal. He spoke of this by comparing this sense to another that prevails as the sense of ordinary life; he said: “Ladies and gentlemen! If a single soul—he meant Fichte’s soul—were to step among a group of people, none of whom can see Fichte and none of whom have ever been able to see him—wouldn’t you dismiss what he has to say as mere fantasy? But this is how it is with everything your senses can perceive, compared to what a person can perceive when he opens himself to the new sense—as Fichte called it—the spiritual intuition, through which a new world dawns upon him.

[ 27 ] A truly humanistic endeavor is developed here out of the German scientific endeavor! And Fichte, aware of the contrast between his own German pursuit and the Romance pursuit with regard to knowledge, said: This pursuit is one that springs from the primal source of the living, and does not seek merely to establish a knowledge of the dead.

[ 28 ] Even more thoroughly than Fichte was able to do, one can point to certain Western views of eternity that clearly demonstrate how differently Fichte stands in the course of human development compared, for example, to similar thinkers emerging from the Romance, French cultural tradition. Take, for example, the outstanding philosopher Descartes, who was active in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In a manner similar to Fichte, he seeks to start from what stirs within the soul: “I think, therefore I am” — “Cogito ergo sum.” But what does this represent? A striving to use the intellect to gain clarity about what one already possesses. Fichte’s energetic activity strives to develop within the soul, as it were, what one does not yet possess, in order to recognize the true, profound mysteries of the world. And one need only mention one thing that is particularly evident in Cartesius, in Descartes. Descartes also sought, from within his own spiritual being, from within the human spiritual being, to gain clarity about nature. About what is around us. But he does not start from the living, and therefore cannot arrive at the living either. And it is characteristic of Cartesius—of Descartes—that he regards not only other natural phenomena but also animals as lifeless, as moving, soulless machines. This is no exaggeration; it is genuine Cartesian theory: Only the human being, who experiences a soul within himself, actually has a soul in the true sense of the word. The rest of nature is soulless.

[ 29 ] Compare this view of nature as something soulless with the immediate vitality found in Fichte: The human soul is present within the divine will that pulses through and interweaves the world. He looks at external things, but he looks at them in such a way that human beings are called to see in these external, material things that in which they must behold the divine will ... ... ... alive everywhere, animated everywhere.

[ 30 ] The time will come, distinguished guests, when people will listen closely to these differences among the various nations, for the recognition of these differences by such outstanding minds must bear fruit. We Germans have no need to prove everything we have just heard from certain outstanding figures on the enemy side. We Germans have no need to echo the tone of not only misunderstanding but also slander directed at German intellectual life, as we hear it everywhere. But we do have good reason to delve into the distinctive and essential nature of German intellectual life itself.

[ 31 ] And then, just as we see Fichte’s follower standing before us—likewise misunderstood, but as a figure who will one day celebrate his own resurrection—we see Joseph Wilhelm Schelling. Schelling does not stand there in the same way as Fichte. That is precisely what is significant in German intellectual life: this versatility, this diversity. He does not stand there as Fichte does; Fichte stands there as if, through the gaze of the individual personality, he were perceiving the World Will pulsing through and weaving through the world. Fichte’s entire personality emanates from this will. From the German spirit—for which the other languages of the West do not even have a literal translation—Schelling creates his magnificent view of nature and the spirit, which is only seemingly difficult to understand.

[ 32 ] In Schelling’s view, nature is not some lifeless entity, something merely mechanical; rather, nature is that which has been created over the course of millennia upon millennia from the very same forces—the same forces that the human soul feels within itself when it truly turns inward. And as Schelling looks upon this nature, he can say to himself: That which lives and weaves out there in nature—the very same forces of the human soul that are now coming into being within human souls—have created this, have created a foundation for themselves, have laid the groundwork; so that they can rise up and appear internalized within the human mind, within the human soul.

[ 33 ] And so, for Schelling, soul and nature grow together to such an extent that he coins the admittedly one-sided statement: “To recognize nature is to create nature!”

[ 34 ] After all, it doesn’t matter at all whether one becomes a supporter or an opponent of these great people, or whether one agrees with or opposes what these great minds have said; that might even seem childish today; that is not what matters; rather, what matters is to look upon these personalities and to see the best in their personalities and their spiritual striving. It must not be a mere parroting of what someone said out of the spirit of his time, but rather a strengthening and empowering of oneself in relation to one’s own soul forces, so that perhaps today we might form something entirely different from what Fichte can offer than what Fichte actually offered.

[ 35 ] When one considers those who heard Schelling—Friedrich Joseph Wilhelm Schelling—I myself have met people who heard him in his later years, and who fully confirmed what those who were young men alongside the young Schelling had to say, back when Schelling was at the University of Jena in the late 1790s. This is what they said, for example—I’ll tell you what Schubert, who was himself a profound thinker [who] sought to penetrate the depths of the human soul, wrote in his diaries after hearing Schelling in Jena: “If one came during a few afternoon hours on a weekday,” Schubert says, “one would see a bustling scene in Jena.” But this bustling life did not stem from some frequent celebration there, nor from any other gathering; rather, this bustling life existed because the hour was approaching when not only students but also mature men of all professions were entering Schelling’s lecture hall. Schubert goes on to say: The personal impression Schelling made was a great one, a powerful one. It seemed to him, when Schelling spoke, as if he were standing there and his intellectual thought were directly connected to the spiritual world, and his words were shaped in such a way that he drew what he had to say from that into which he gazed: the spiritual world.

[ 36 ] While Fichte came across as a powerful man, a powerful representative of the German spirit—Schelling came across as the educator, the philosophical educator, who appeared to his listeners as if enveloped in an aura of spirituality, which he knew how to convey even as a young man to those who listened to him. And those who heard him in his old age—as I said, I myself still knew such people—[who] assured me that the immediately personal aspect of nature spoke from his eyes, which still sparkled in his old age; this aspect revealed itself to him in the messages he sought to convey to humanity, not out of rational wisdom, but out of an inner vision of the spiritual world. And Schelling speaks of the so-called [intellectual] insights. In his own way, he has thus coined the term for the new sense, for the spiritual sense, the spiritual perception that can be awakened in human beings and is capable of looking into the spiritual world. The way Schelling speaks of this “spiritual sense” may be one-sided—but the fact that it could be discussed with such seriousness within German intellectual life is one of the most significant blossoms of that intellectual life, toward which one must feel a genuine sense of appreciation.

[ 37 ] The third figure to be considered among those who laid the ideological foundation from which Goethe’s *Faust* and his other works of art emerged is Hegel. In Hegel, we again observe how he strives to relive, within what the soul experiences within itself as an individual soul, that which permeates the world, that which pulses through the world. But whereas Fichte sought this in the will and Schelling in the mind—Hegel seeks it in pure, senseless thought. And when thought becomes entirely pure—when thought does not rely on what the senses observe externally, but rather when thought creates itself as a free thought arising from the soul— then, for Hegel, it is not this human soul alone that thinks, but rather, for Hegel, it is the divine world-being that penetrates the soul and now kindles its world-thoughts—which gave rise to the things outside—within the human soul as the light of the soul itself.

[ 38 ] Here, in Hegel, we find a peculiar kind of mysticism that [does not] seek to revel in obscure feelings, not a mysticism that wishes to live solely in sensation because it believes that sensation alone brings one closer to the world’s mysteries than thought does. In Hegel we have a mysticism that is clear to the intellect and yet is not superficial to the intellect, a mysticism that is illuminated by the light of ideas, by the light of thought. But Hegel seeks to bring to life in his soul those thoughts that truly unite human beings with divine thoughts. I would like to say: mystical—but not mystical darkness, rather mystical light, mystical brightness.

[ 39 ] Hegel did, however, object to the idea that the new sense—the inner sense—might be something that a person could acquire only through a special predisposition; and for this reason he criticized Schelling, who spoke of [intellectual] intuition. In a certain sense, Hegel was right, for every human being—you need only read my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*—for every human being, this new sense is attainable, if only one is willing to develop it. And this new sense, fundamentally speaking, lives most beautifully, most magnificently in that man, the German to whom Fichte, when he revealed to him—in 1794—his seemingly so obscure, arbitrary doctrine, wrote: Philosophical striving is woven into the spirituality of your feeling, just as it is in every pure philosophical striving; for this pure spirituality of your feeling is, in fact, the touchstone. — So wrote Fichte to Goethe in 1794.

[ 40 ] And Goethe himself, in the beautiful essay he calls “Contemplative Judgment,” that there cannot be merely one way of perceiving the world based on the external senses; rather, just as the power of judgment otherwise judges only the external sensory experiences, so too can the power of judgment develop within itself an impulse that unfolds an inner life, so that it perceives the spiritual just as the senses perceive the sensible.

[ 41 ] Kant still possessed this inner vision—this vision of the spiritual through the human spirit, of the divine spirit through the human spirit—which Kant had called “an adventure of reason.” Goethe said: “Let us courageously undertake this adventure of reason!” — And it is precisely from this inner sense that everything Goethe wished to offer to science was created. And Goethe, in his very struggles with science and knowledge, showed most clearly how the German spirit must perceive the world differently from the Western spirit.

[ 42 ] Even in his early youth, Goethe opposed what had become the Cartesian worldview within the development of French philosophy. While Descartes still regarded animals as machines—de La Mettrie had already written the book *Man a Machine*! The mechanistic worldview—that is the one rooted in French folklore—a mechanistic view of the world, a view of the world as a mechanism.

[ 43 ] And when this worldview was presented to the young Goethe, he responded from his German worldview: “So now they’re bringing us atoms that collide with one another—this great world machine. If only they would explain to us how the beautiful, diverse world can arise from these colliding atoms. But after they’ve shown us how the atoms collide and jostle, they don’t explain anything further about it!

[ 44 ] Well, this tendency has persisted within the mechanistic framework right up to the present day. A mechanistic worldview—that is, in fact, the French worldview. Of course, ladies and gentlemen, this is not meant to apply to individual members of a nation; individuality can rise above national character—above what has been discussed, what arises from the character and inner nature of that national character. And in this regard, I believe the right point has been made. I would like to share the voice of a man—a man who may be worth listening to, especially when considering the French national character’s striving toward a scientific worldview. This man says:

“The thirst for truth is not a French passion. Appearance matters more than substance, the shell more than the core, form more than content, the glittering more than the fruitful, public opinion more than conscience. This means that the Frenchman’s focus does not lie within himself, but in others, in the masses. Individuals are zeros; the digit that makes them a number comes from outside: that is the sovereign, the writer of the day, the most widely read newspaper—in a word, the current master of fashion. All of this can be traced to an excessive sociability; it stifles within the soul the courage to resist, the capacity for judgment, personal conviction, and the pursuit of the ideal.”

[ 45 ] This was not written by a German out of a one-sided sense of national pride, but rather, ladies and gentlemen, by Amiel—Henri Frédéric Amiel, the French Swiss scholar at the University of Geneva—in 1875! He was well-placed to know this, as someone who, while having gained a deep understanding of German intellectual life, was bound by blood ties to French intellectual life. And as early as 1862, Amiel wrote the following:

“I feel a kinship with Goethe, Hegel, Schleiermacher, and Leibniz—who are, after all, quite different from one another—while French philosophers, eloquent orators, or mathematicians, despite their great qualities, leave me cold, because they do not embody the sum of universal life, do not master the whole of reality, and either stifle me or make me distrustful. What the French lack is an immediate understanding of living unity, a sense of the sacred, a feeling for the mysteries of being; what they excel at is the establishment of specialized sciences, the art of writing a book, it is style, courtesy, grace, a spirit of order, self-assertive art, discipline, elegance, truth in the particular, staging, zeal for conversion, and strength in practical conclusions. But for the journey through Inferno and Paradise, one needs other guides; they are bound to the earth, to the realm of the finite, the changing, the historical, the limited. Mechanism and dualism are the pinnacles of their intellectual flight. To break out of this circle, they must exert force upon themselves.”

[ 46 ] One simply does not want to present a one-sided view, nor to speak out of national sentiment; therefore, one must choose something said by someone who speaks from a sense of connection—from a bond of kinship—with the French people themselves.

[ 47 ] But the time has come when, just as with other things, the relationship among the individual elements of a people must be objectively recognized. And once one is able to do something like what Fichte achieved—Fichte, for whom that which exists externally in the sensory world is, so to speak, the institutionalized realm of duty—and compares this with what exists in the British, in the English worldview, one need only point wherever one wishes: take the old Bacon of Verulam, who will accept nothing but what the senses perceive externally—everything else is an “idol” to him; and his book on the idols is intended to prove that what a person can grasp in his soul has no objective validity beyond the sensory realm. And let us move on through Spencer and all those of a similar view, right up to the most recent English worldview, [let us move on to that] which has been developed from the English perspective: it calls itself pragmatism. What is this pragmatism? It is not something that applies to us Germans. For us Germans, as with Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, it is a matter of experiencing the truth, and in experiencing the truth, the German lives in union with the world spirit. But the Romance peoples and the British have no conception whatsoever of the objective world spirit. This is something that will only be fully recognized in the future. Truth [...] is something that arises in the soul through this soul’s fusion with the World Spirit itself. Then the soul brings this truth to bear on external things, and the external things become a revelation of spiritual truth. What are they to pragmatism, to this pragmatic product of a worldview? A caricature! I say this, as I have said, purely on the basis of fact, not out of any antipathy. For this pragmatism, truth is of value only insofar as one connects concepts and ideas in the spiritual realm—concepts and ideas that are really nothing more than brackets, mere ties that bind together the external sensory facts, so that one can find one’s way in the external sensory world. Truth has no meaning in and of itself; it has no value in and of itself.

[ 48 ] Take human beings, for example: they perform actions; they have thoughts. All of this finds expression. We seek the soul for the thoughts and for the actions. The soul is a real entity for us. And as we grow together with the truth, the soul itself becomes a reality for us; [it] is grasped as reality.

[ 49 ] For pragmatism, the soul is a concept that was devised to provide orientation, to hold together—as if with a bracket—the thoughts of human beings that would otherwise fall apart. Truth is whatever is useful when one wants to understand the world. — With utility in mind, [the pragmatist] forms concepts and ideas so that he can find his way in the world.

[ 50 ] One need only compare these things with what lives in the pinnacle of German intellectual life described above, and one will be able to gain an understanding of the German people’s intellectual place in the history of human development.

[ 51 ] But now we come to something else. When we consider Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel—they are great, significant minds, geniuses—they depict, from three different perspectives—that of the will, that of thought, and that of the soul—the union of the human being with the mysteries of the world. If people still believe today—and, by the way, most do believe that this must be the case—that they are difficult [to read and understand], then I may well express my conviction that there is a way to present what these minds have accomplished in such a form that even the simplest mind, if it so desires, can grasp what is at stake. These spirits can already be brought to life in school; [the idea that they cannot be brought to life there] is merely a prejudice. But what is peculiar, what strikes one when one considers these spirits, esteemed audience, is that within their triad, something like a unity hovering above them asserts itself! One has the feeling that, in three different ways, something is expressing itself that reigns invisibly over the three. It is what one might call: the German national spirit itself.

[ 52 ] Amiel—again, the French-speaking Swiss—sensed that the German national spirit itself seeks to merge, in the souls of its people, with the innermost essence of things. That is why Amiel says:

“Perhaps it is unique to the Germanic spirit to think independently, to search for the origin of all things.”

[ 53 ] Amiel goes on to say:

“The German spirit, like the collective inspiration, flows into these distinctive personalities; it speaks through them.”

[ 54 ] That is why, esteemed audience, it came to pass that certain figures did indeed emerge—figures whose work is now largely forgotten. That is why I am speaking today, seeking to revisit this as if it were a faded, forgotten endeavor in the development of German thought—figures who are now largely forgotten, appearing after the great figures just mentioned. And the peculiar thing is that, while these figures—compared to the three great ones—are lesser spirits, less brilliant, they nevertheless achieve greater and more profound accomplishments in the realm of the spiritual quest than the great ones who preceded them. Of course, one needs the inspiration of the great ones; but the lesser figures who follow in their footsteps usually achieved greater things—or at least more profound ones—from what had once been inspired within German intellectual development. They stand closer to the soul’s inner search for the concrete spiritual world, to the search for spiritual beings that can be found with the characterized sense, just as one finds concrete external natural objects and natural facts through the external senses.

[ 55 ] And among these lesser spirits, we must mention the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Immanuel Hermann Fichte. Certainly, there are not many who still concern themselves with this Immanuel Hermann Fichte today; but Immanuel Hermann Fichte—to mention just this one thing about him—already stands there saying: The human being whom we perceive with our external senses, the human being composed of flesh and blood [, is] bound, in terms of his substance and powers, to the transitory earthly realm. But within this human being there is another human being. That other human being—I have mentioned him before here in these lectures. People still laugh at this quite a bit today. But they won’t be laughing forever! That other human being, whom Immanuel Hermann Fichte already calls the “etheric human,” is a supersensible, higher human being who possesses certain higher powers through which he is just as connected to the eternal-spiritual aspect of existence—the entire universe—as his transitory body here is bound to the physical-sensory forces of the earth. And the etheric body, which Hermann Immanuel Fichte posits, is what actually builds up the physical body!

[ 56 ] And another figure may come to mind—one who, too, has been more or less forgotten, but who is no less significant for that and no less characteristic of the innermost freedom and the innermost strengthening of the forces of German intellectual life: Troxler. Who still knows him today? But what an impression he makes on those who came to know him! Troxler wrote his beautiful lectures on a worldview in the 1840s. In them we see emphasized—again and again—how within the human being who stands before us in the physical sense, a spiritual human being lives, a spiritual human being who has a spiritual world around him just as the physical human being has the physical world around him. Troxler speaks of faculties possessed by the soul that are merely hidden in ordinary life. Troxler speaks of what he calls the “super-spiritual sense.”

[ 57 ] What does he mean by that? When Troxler speaks of the “super-spiritual senses,” he means that the senses we usually call by that name—which are associated with various organs—are not the only organs of human perception; rather, humans can perceive another world with new organs, with new senses, with purely spiritual senses, a world that is just as rich in content as the external physical world.

[ 58 ] I have said here before that today, almost everyone who even mentions the subject believes there is a spiritual world in general. And [the one] who throws around a few pantheistic terms, who believes he is speaking of a spiritual world—spirit, spirit, and spirit again—[is in fact merely throwing around abstract terms]! Spiritual science speaks of individual spiritual beings that can be perceived; just as one does not simply say, when referring to external physical nature, “Nature, nature, nature!” but rather “lilies, tulips, carnations,” and so on. Specifically, one demonstrates, case by case, what physical nature brings forth individually. In the same way, one can also show what spiritual nature reveals in individual instances. This is what Troxler means when he speaks of the “super-spiritual sense.” And then he speaks of the “supersensory spirit,” which is not dependent on the senses, but which is aware of itself within the spiritual realm, which feels itself as a body within the spiritual realm.

[ 59 ] But Troxler delves even deeper into this spiritual, this higher human being who passes through births and deaths. And it is truly beautiful how Troxler addresses—not abstractly or vaguely—but specifically addresses the higher human being. Even if this is a faded, forgotten note in the development of German thought, it lives on there. And whether one notices what lives there or not is certainly crucial for understanding; but even if one has not noticed it: it lives in the development of German thought, and it will certainly be noticed! It will surely celebrate its resurrection as a true spiritual science!

[ 60 ] Here Troxler observes that within the human soul—insofar as it experiences itself in its outer physicality between birth and death—three forces are at work—which, according to Troxler’s worldview, are the most beautiful forces. First is the power of faith—that which a human being possesses as the power of faith. That which a human being [secondly] possesses as the power of love, he possesses as a power of his soul, but within the soul, insofar as this soul lives out its existence within the body. Behind the power of faith, however, lies another, higher power for the soul itself, which Troxler calls spiritual hearing. That is to say: He believes that here in the physical body, a human being can develop the outer form—as it were, the shell—for spiritual hearing, through which, when he becomes aware of it, he can hear the language of spiritual beings who speak of the eternal mysteries of existence. Thus, faith appears as the outer shell of a much deeper power, a power of eternity within the human being. Spiritual hearing is love, [the power of love, which manifests itself in the body as the most beautiful, the greatest blossom of human soul life]. Nevertheless, for Troxler, it is merely the outer expression of the spiritual power of touch, of the spiritual power of feeling. The one who loves possesses the most beautiful blossom of human existence on earth. For such a person, love is the shell for the powers of which he can become aware—powers that extend the spiritual organs within the physical body so that he can touch the spiritual world just as he touches physical things with his physical senses of touch.

[ 61 ] And what lives within us as the power of hope is, in turn, the “hülle” for Troxler—the “Schaukraft” for spiritual contemplation.

[ 62 ] Thus Troxler sees a higher human being within the ordinary human being—a higher human being who possesses spiritual hearing just as the physical human being possesses sensory hearing; [who also] possesses spiritual feeling just as the physical human being possesses physical feeling; and [who] possesses spiritual sight, a spiritual soul. And the reason we can be people who see, love, and hear within the body, according to Troxler, is that as we pass through the gate of death, our soul leaves the body. The power of faith then appears as spiritual hearing, the power of love as spiritual touch, and the power of hope as spiritual sight.

[ 63 ] It is in this spirit that Troxler also expresses the following so beautifully. He knows that, on a human and spiritual level, one is closer to things through feeling than through mere abstract reason. But one can develop thoughts that are just as close to the immediate experience of the thing as feelings otherwise are. Nor is Troxler seeking the kind of sentimentalism found in mysticism. That is foreign to the true German spirit! That ethereal, hazy quality of sentimental mysticism is not inherent to the German spirit; it is also foreign to Troxler. Yet Troxler nevertheless speaks of “thoughts felt” — of thoughts that, like feelings, live as thoughts within the soul. He speaks of “intelligent feeling” and of sensitive thoughts—thoughts that touch the spiritual life!

[ 64 ] Troxler is completely imbued with this view. And at one point he speaks of how, through such a perspective, he feels in harmony with the entire spiritual life of the German people, insofar as this spiritual life has manifested itself in great post-Christian figures. Troxler says at one point—I will read these words to you myself:

“Philosophers of old had already distinguished a subtle, noble spiritual body from the coarser physical body … a soul that possessed an image of the body within itself, which they called a ‘schema,’ and which represented to them the inner, higher human being … Even in recent times, Kant, in the dreams of a clairvoyant, seriously—yet in jest—imagines an entire inner, spiritual human being who bears all the limbs of the outer body upon his spiritual body. Lavater expresses this more poetically and thinks the same way; and even when Jean Paul humorously jokes about Bonn’s “underpetticoat” and Platner’s “soul corset”—which are supposed to be tucked into the coarser outer body’s overcoat and torture smock—we still hear him ask once again: “Why and from where were these extraordinary inclinations and desires placed within us—which, like swallowed diamonds, are slowly cutting through our earthly shell? ... In the stony limbs”

[ 65 ] of human beings

“grow and mature in a way unknown to us... We could”

[ 66 ] Troxler goes on to say —

“I could cite countless other similar ways of thinking and writing, which are ultimately nothing more than different perspectives and conceptions that … contain the true, sole doctrine of human individuality and immortality.”

[ 67 ] Troxler, too, speaks of the possibility, on the path of knowledge he seeks, of a science of the human being through which—to use his own words—the “super-spiritual sense,” in union with the “supersensible spirit,” grasps the supersensible essence of the human being in his “anthroposophy.”

[ 68 ] Just as Troxler cites these [individual figures], one could cite many others who, drawing entirely from the essence of German folk culture, sought the path to the real, true spiritual world. And before Troxler’s [inner eye] stood a certain science. He reasoned as follows: When a person observes human beings themselves with their senses and explains this observation with the intellect, which is bound to the senses, then anthropology arises—the science of humanity through the senses. But anthropology arises when human beings, as sensory beings, observe human beings themselves; yet the spiritual human being—the higher human being with the awakened senses of which we have spoken—can also observe human beings; then a higher science arises. It is of this higher science—one that transcends anthropology—that Troxler spoke in 1835 with these beautiful words:

While it is indeed most gratifying that the latest philosophy, which ... must reveal itself in every form of anthroposophy, is gaining momentum, it cannot be overlooked that this idea cannot be the product of speculation, and that the true individuality of the human being must not be confused either with what it posits as subjective spirit or finite “I,” nor with what it sets against this as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

[ 69 ] This German spiritual life developed entirely out of German folk culture. And isn’t it wonderful to witness a phenomenon such as this: In the 1850s, a simple little book was published by a humble pastor in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck, a wonderful little book that stands at the pinnacle of spiritual science, one that stands apart from all materialism, but also from all purely intellectual and purely conceptual approaches, and which aims to view the human soul in such a way that it can grasp spiritual reality.

[ 70 ] While some aspects of this simple little book from Rocholl—written in plain language for those on a spiritual quest—may seem fanciful, that is not what matters; what matters is that here we have a simple man, standing at the pinnacle of learning, who is leading the way into the spiritual realms. What matters is the intention, the aspiration. That is why such intentions—like this little booklet, published in Waldeck in 1856—are so infinitely important. And anyone who might think that I selected these phenomena in order to prove something is completely mistaken.

[ 71 ] However, over the course of the last few decades, circumstances have developed in such a way that even the vast majority of scholars were numbed by what Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel had created, and descended from that height, thinking: “One-sided, materialistic Darwinism has proven powerful; French materialism has proven powerful.”

[ 72 ] But what I am describing is not drawn solely from German intellectual life; rather, one could cite hundreds and hundreds of such examples. Once one truly becomes aware of this, one will see the depth of insight that German culture is capable of drawing from the German people. For this is what truly strives toward a German worldview, emerging from German intellectual life.

[ 73 ] Perhaps it is worth mentioning—just as an aside—just how profound these matters actually are. Who among physicists today—overwhelmed by French mechanicism and English utilitarian philosophy—does not laugh inwardly at Goethe’s Theory of Colors, even while outwardly praising it at times? I am surely entitled to speak on this matter, for it has been more than thirty years since I began striving to bring out the profound significance of Goethe’s Theory of Colors in contrast to that theory of color which is entirely overwhelmed by Newtonianism and mechanism in general. Time and again, when one speaks with a contemporary physicist about Goethe’s Theory of Colors, one finds that, at best, he says: “Goethe’s Theory of Colors means absolutely nothing to me...”

[ 74 ] This is quite understandable to anyone familiar with today’s circumstances; but there is something more at work here. And that is that Goethe, through his direct engagement with the mystery of the life of colors in nature, created a monumental work and dared, as a German, to oppose the intellectual domination exerted by the British through Newton—and that the world did not understand it. But that chapter is yet to come: Goethe—including in his theory of colors—will be proven right against Newton once people come to grasp more deeply what Fichte calls “Germanness” within Europe.

[ 75 ] I could point to some other spirits. I could point, for example—as I said, you just have to pick them out—I could point to a researcher of the soul — his name is Schultz-Schultzenstein, which is certainly a German name: Schultz-Schultzenstein —, [I could point to] a researcher of the soul who, in the 1850s of the previous century, attempted to frame the inner life of human beings under the concept of “rejuvenation.” What wonderful insights this Schultz-Schultzenstein offers! He says that the human soul can only truly be understood in its life here between birth and death by observing how it develops within itself what it experiences as feelings and thoughts throughout its various life stages. And as it progresses, one can observe how, spiritually speaking, what has already been experienced is shed like a layer of skin, and within the soul something continuous, something living, is renewed and rejuvenated.

[ 76 ] I can point to another thinker whose literary career also began as early as the 1850s and who died unnoticed in 1880. In my book *The Riddles of Philosophy*—[...] as early as the first edition, which was published in 1900—I referred to Karl Christian Planck. [He was] a thinker who was fully aware of how he drew his inspiration from German folklore. Who knows him [at all]! But that doesn’t matter; for the power that lay within him is at work in the German spirit, is at work in Central Europe, and brings forth that which belongs to the very essence of Central European life.

[ 77 ] I want to mention just one thing to illustrate Karl Christian Planck’s unique character. Anyone today who, from the standpoint of natural science, believes they already understand everything—who views the world as the French view the Earth, as the English observer views the Earth, as the geologist views the Earth—such a person views the universe as consisting of matter. For Planck, such a viewer of the Earth is like someone who would look at a tree only in terms of its trunk and its wood, and does not ground the leaves, blossoms, and fruits in the very essence of the tree! For Planck, one does not view the Earth in its entirety unless one also considers the whole human being on Earth. Planck looks upon the Earth as a spirit; he looks upon the Earth from the outside. And in what the geologist sees, [one sees only a part of the Earth]—such as the trunk, the wood of the tree—but nothing else of the Earth’s essence. For Karl Christian Planck, the Earth is not merely a weaving entity, but a living being imbued with soul—a being permeated by spirit—that springs forth. And what the physical human being on Earth is himself—as a flower, as a fruit—is part of the essence of the Earth. —A spiritual—as Goethe would say—a spiritual worldview. And Christian Karl Planck is aware that he arrives at such a spiritual worldview from the depths of the German people. Planck already expresses this beautifully in the 1860s. He has written several books; the books he has written breathe the spirit of such a worldview. In 1864, in his book *Grundlinien einer Wissenschaft der Natur* (*Fundamentals of a Science of Nature*), he beautifully articulates how he is aware that his view—one that perceives the spirit in nature—has emerged from the depths of the German soul. I will read the words to you myself:

What Power

[ 78 ] Planck writes

deep-rooted prejudices stemming from his previous view of his

[ 79 ] by the author

He is fully aware that this contradicts the text; yet, just as the work itself—despite all the adverse circumstances resulting from the author’s overall situation and professional position—

[ 80 ] Planck goes on to say

opposed a work of this kind, yet fought for its realization and its way into the public eye, he is also certain that what must now first fight for recognition will one day appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in this, not only his cause but the truly German view of things will triumph over all still unworthy, superficial, and un-German conceptions of nature and the spirit.

What our medieval poetry had already foreshadowed in an unconscious, profound intuition will finally come to fruition in our nation as the times mature. The impractical, inward-looking nature of the German spirit—plagued by harm and ridicule (as Wolfram depicts it in his *Parzival*)

[ 82 ] These words were written in 1864—before Wagner, truly!

finally attains the highest through the power of her unceasing striving; she penetrates to the very depths of the ultimate, simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what poetry symbolized in a fantastical, medieval manner through the wonders of the Grail—whose dominion its hero attains—finds, conversely, its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the enduring understanding of nature and the spirit itself.”

[ 83 ] Karl Christian Planck died at the age of eighty. He left behind a work he called “The Testament of a German”; the first edition was published in 1881, and the second edition by Diederichs Verlag in 1912. Who has [already] read it?

[ 84 ] Well, people did have other things to do, after all! For example, there were the books published by the same press by a man who lives entirely in a rigid mindset—of course, he shouldn’t be blamed for that at all—and there were the books by the French philosopher—his name is still Bergson—a French name! He is the one who, since the beginning of the war, has not been able to find enough slanderous words for the German worldview and German intellectual life. I believe I actually said last year as well that this Bergson has repeatedly reproached his fellow Frenchmen in Paris: Once upon a time, the Germans did indeed have a significant intellectual life, but now they have completely fallen into decline; all one sees now is their mechanistic way of life. I already said last year that the good Henri Bergson used to extol the praises of Novalis, Goethe, and Schiller in earlier times, at a time when he perhaps would not yet have called it “mechanistic.” One cannot emphasize this point strongly enough. People used to look out into the world with admiration. Not just now, during wartime and this period of hatred—I tried to point this out earlier as well, regarding how Bergson presents his “philosophy.”

[ 85 ] A distinctive feature of Bergson’s philosophy is the following: He arrives at an idea, but presents it in a somewhat abbreviated form. It consists in his stating: One is not proceeding correctly if one views the development of the world in such a way that one regards subordinate beings as the origin from which humankind descends, for one must start with humankind. — That is, in fact, quite a good idea: One must start with human beings. Human beings are the most primordial, existing before any other being in the mineral, plant, or animal kingdoms came into being. People do not understand this today, but it is nevertheless substantiated in Bergson’s work *The Reconstruction of the Worldview*.

[ 86 ] This was also evident in Planck’s work: Before anything else existed, human beings were already there—albeit in different forms—and then they cast off certain things they could not use in their development, and thus, through the exclusion of the plant and animal kingdoms, human beings came into being. Just as human beings secrete their bones inward, so does that which stands at the pinnacle—the plant kingdom—secrete the mineral kingdom from within itself. This is a thought, ladies and gentlemen, that will take root in German intellectual life once the materialistic overtones of Darwinism have been refuted and properly illuminated.

[ 87 ] Well—Bergson illustrates this; but I was able to show—as I said, just before the war, so that no one might think that it is only under the influence of the events of the war that things are now characterized as they are here—I was able to show that precisely this idea, which—in a somewhat flippant manner—the French philosopher Henri Bergson puts forward—that this idea was already [published] in the 1870s, in 1882 [published], lived on in the German thinker Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss—a long-faded, forgotten aspiration of German intellectual life—and had been vigorously and energetically championed by Preuss!

[ 88 ] I would like to read aloud a few specific passages in which I have cited this Prussian, this German view of the matter—passages from Pruss’s book *Geist und Stoff* (*Spirit and Matter*), the second edition of which was already published in 1899. It states:

“It is [therefore] likely time to formulate a [different] theory of the origin of organic species, one that is not based solely on one-sided propositions derived from descriptive natural science, but is also in full harmony with the other laws of nature, which are at the same time laws of human thought. A theory, at the same time, that is free of all speculation and rests solely on rigorous conclusions drawn from scientific observations in the broadest sense; a theory that preserves the concept of species to the extent that is actually possible, but at the same time incorporates Darwin’s concept of evolution into its own framework and seeks to make it fruitful.

The focal point of this new theory is now humanity, the species that occurs only once on our planet: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the earlier observers began with natural objects and then strayed so far that they failed to find the path to humankind—a feat that even Darwin managed only in the most meager and thoroughly unsatisfactory manner, by seeking the progenitor of the Lord of Creation among the animals — whereas the naturalist would have to begin with himself as a human being, in order to return progressively to humanity through the entire realm of being and thought. ...

It was no coincidence that human nature emerged from the development of all earthly things, but rather a necessity. Man is the goal of telluric processes, and every other form that appeared alongside him has borrowed its traits from his. Man is the firstborn being of the entire cosmos ...

Once its embryos had formed, the remaining organic residue no longer possessed the necessary power to produce further human embryos. Whatever else came into being became an animal or a plant ...»

[ 89 ] and so on. Bergson, the Frenchman, is either unaware of this German predecessor—which, for a philosopher, would of course be just as great a mistake as if he knew of him but failed to mention him; but the latter is, after all, already to be expected of Bergson! He accuses today’s Germans of mechanistic thinking! It has now been demonstrated that entire pages in Bergson’s books were copied from the Germans, whom he now disavows. Entire pages of exposition were copied by Henri Bergson from Schelling and Schopenhauer! That is perhaps not a mechanical way of constructing intellectual life.

[ 90 ] I would like to say: With something like this in the background, Germany’s enemies—insofar as they are represented by such figures—now dare to slander and belittle the German spirit. But this German essence will learn, precisely from what it is currently undergoing in the course of world history, to assert in the unfolding of world history that which lies at the very foundation of its being.

[ 91 ] Ladies and gentlemen, what is happening now—in the context of world history, little needs to be said to characterize it in the way one might imagine an objective event would be characterized: Central Europe’s enemies are encircling it. One need only cite a few figures that will speak volumes in the future, once people begin to view things differently than Germany’s enemies do now: 777 million people—not counting the Italians—were arrayed all around Central Europe against a group of 150 million. 777 million against 150 million. Do they really need to be envious of this Central Europe? Well: the territory of these 777 million people spans 68 million square kilometers, compared to the 6 million square kilometers of territory held by the 150 million in Central Europe. [And these 777 million—augmented by Italy—against these 150 million: they are positioned not only to fight them with weapons, but also to claim the better part of the rest of the world for themselves, seeking to starve out those 150 million people.] And leading figures—people referred to by Germany as “great personalities”—indulge in the most vicious accusations and slander against the spiritual life that has emerged on those 6 million square kilometers in the heart of Europe, revealing just how little they understand of what is alive there.

[ 92 ] Besides Bergson, there is, for example, the French philosopher Boutroux—shortly before the war, he was still traveling around Germany and even gave lectures in German on the close scientific partnership between the Germans and the French! Now he’s spouting such nonsense to his Parisian audience, such as this: The Germans imagined that, in all their searching, they were at the heart of things. In doing so, they also imagined that they were part of the divine world order and capable of ruling over all people. [...]

[ 93 ] We need not resort to such a tone; but it is certainly necessary to point out such facts and to be aware of them. After all, Boutroux—well, the Frenchman is known for his wit—managed to make a joke not too long ago: A Frenchman, an Englishman, and a German are discussing the pursuit of a worldview and the understanding of external things; then Boutroux said to his companion: “When a Frenchman wants to learn about a camel, he goes to the menagerie, looks at a camel, and then describes it. The Englishman goes to the region where camels live, looks at that camel, and then describes it. The German goes neither to the menagerie to see a camel nor to the region where camels live—to distant lands—but rather he goes into his study and studies the camel in its inner essence, in its very being, and creates the camel within himself out of its very being. The French sure are funny! In fact, this very joke by Boutroux actually comes from Heinrich Heine!

[ 94 ] And so many examples could be cited. It must be said: The German does not really need to succumb to the same things as those around him! But the German has all the more need to engage with that which is the very best part of his nature in the pursuit of knowledge. The German spirit will also overcome those prejudices that arise from the fact that a person who seeks spiritual science is still regarded today—under the influence of French and English materialism—[as] a German thinker, [as a person with a German mindset], who is still regarded as a dreamer, as someone who is not grounded in reality: Ah, when one looks at a person like Planck or [a person like] Preuss—well, these people can certainly craft concepts, but to engage with reality, to see what lives in reality, that is where the “practitioners” are needed; a man like Planck is of no use in life!

[ 95 ] I could cite many examples; I’ll mention just one, relating to Planck, since I had the opportunity to discuss him: About 35 years ago—Planck died in 1881—that is, about 35 years ago, he wrote the words that I am even going to read aloud. He was no diplomat; he was no politician; he was not one of those preachers who believe they have grasped the workings of the world so thoroughly that they have “swallowed this knowledge whole,” who know how to speak about everything from a broad perspective and look down on those who live only in the spiritual worlds. He was none of those things. He was a simple man of conviction! But a man who was able to look deeply into the course of events. And what he developed before the year 1881 is recorded in his *Testament of a German*—and he died in 1881—in which he wrote about what presented itself to him within the course of European development; and he observed what presented itself to him with discerning eyes. And there he wrote that war must come. And regarding this war, he wrote the following words:

“If such a universalist people—central by its very nature—were to unite into a purely national state, in the sharpest contrast to its earlier history, and were to become, for all others, a model of the most intense military buildup, what else could be the consequence in an age of heightened nationalist aspirations other than, ultimately, the most comprehensive clash?”

[ 96 ] So says the “impractical ideologue”! How many people who were actually immersed in the circumstances still did not believe, even when the war broke out, that the Italians, too, would turn against Central Europe! Yet the impractical ideologue was able to say this as early as 1881. Not only will the Russian East rise up against Central Europe, but—as in the past—we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South.

“It is not merely the conflict of political interests that must give rise to it,”

[ 97 ] the clash,

“but, as is now becoming increasingly clear, above all the conflict of economic interests in their still rigid national form, which remains inorganic and resistant to any higher overall order. And the more the contradictions and ills discussed earlier—which this state of affairs brings about in contrast to the universalist expansion of means of communication—come to the fore, the sharper the tension resulting from this must become on all sides.

To this is now added another contradiction, in which the very one-sidedness of our Western culture has drawn upon itself an enemy, and which, by the very nature of things, must once again become hostile above all to the German spirit. From the very beginning, as we have seen, alongside Western Christianity and its striving for a full, humanly present mediation of divine content, there has gone hand in hand the rigid otherworldliness and lack of freedom characteristic of the Oriental and Byzantine worlds, in which ecclesiastical and political power and authority were directly intertwined. Within this rigid unity, the Christian East has remained just as unfree as, conversely, in the West, where free national development has overgrown religious unity and pushed it into the background. Yet it is precisely the one-sidedly secular and outwardly material character of Western culture, rooted in this very situation, that has enabled the unfree East to appropriate these outward cultural means without, for that reason, having internalized the deeper, free spiritual aspect of that development. Rather, it has merely helped it to confront the West—which has disintegrated into a one-sided, national existence—with all the greater self-confidence in its sense of distinctive religious-political unity, and thus, in view of the still unfinished state of other Slavic tribes and the crumbling Turkish Empire, to claim an even more far-reaching significance for itself. And precisely because of this, by the very nature of things, he becomes an adversary of the nation—the German nation—which also has, in this respect, its central and unifying, universally human vocation, and above all of that empire which has long found the foundation of its existence precisely in the comprehensive interconnection of German and foreign elements.

No political prudence, no love of peace on Germany’s part can prevent this hostile clash within the current, purely national order. For the nature of circumstances is more powerful than all prudence; and even now, despite the friendly stance of Germany and Austria, the hostile sentiment of the Russian East is becoming all the more evident, precisely because it could not be given a free hand in everything, but rather a specific goal had to be set. And if it ever comes to battle, then—no matter how much we must fight it for the good of Europe—Europe will not stand by our side; rather, just as in the East, we will have to defend ourselves simultaneously in the West and in the South; on all sides, hostile national jealousy will rise up against the new empire placed in their midst.

Yet it is precisely the realization that in this final and most arduous struggle the utter inadequacy of all previous, purely national orders will be laid bare—that, above all, the universal position of the German nation, linked to a host of foreign elements, is entirely incompatible with such orders and could only lead to ceaseless strife— it is precisely this realization that will also give this bloodiest struggle its decisive significance for all time, and will open the spirit of the nation—which is now still trapped in dull superficiality—to its ultimate and enduring calling. Amid blood and tears, the realization will dawn that the mere nation-state and its profit-driven society can never bring about peace and reconciliation, but only the universal law of vocation; that only in it lies the renewal and rebirth for all—both for the inner wounds and for the relations between states— for the degenerate conditions of the Orient, as well as for the corruption and externalization of our own culture, lies the renewing rebirth. If the first struggle, which was intended to prevent our national awakening, actually brought it to completion for that very reason, then, conversely, the second—which is caused precisely by the inherent inadequacy of this entire national order—will also lead us forever beyond it to the universally human goal.”

[ 98 ] Renewal must come to humanity from the German spirit, so that we may defeat that which lives precisely in the sense implied by these facts, and that which—stemming from a non-German spirit—has taken root especially in modern times; this can be described by saying: The power of incompetence that tramples upon all legitimate aspirations—this must be recognized. The German spirit is strong and vigorous, and it will gain insight in this realm and heal the world in this realm when it becomes aware of what still lives today, in many ways, as a forgotten aspiration within German spiritual life.

[ 99 ] We have been able to look westward on several occasions. Let us conclude by turning our gaze eastward for a few moments. What, then, is the nature of this entire East? Central Europe?

[ 100 ] The German spirit: Can it be characterized in relation to the West in such a way that one can say there is truly no need to disparage the West in any way? One can recognize that the scientific spirit originated in Italy, even before the dawn of modern intellectual life. This scientific spirit made its way up from the south. One can recognize that the rational conception of the world also emerged from the French spirit; that the sense of utility emerged from the English spirit—a view of the world in which everything is measured by its utility. Yet just how far, for example, this British spirit is removed from the German spirit—well, one can gauge it by considering, for example, if someone were to attempt to apply Fichte’s *Science of Knowledge* [there], where he repeatedly attempts to characterize this “I” that feels itself within the world spirit and this “I” that experiences itself within the world spirit—if one were able to penetrate so deeply into this realm of knowledge—[even] linguistically, it would look rather peculiar ...

[ 101 ] When I say: “I place the ‘I’”—not even that could be maintained, [using the lowercase “i” in English instead of the word “ich” in German]—not even that could be maintained, that one [in English] transitions from the lowercase “i,” as it is written in German, to the capital “I” when one has experienced the “I” — Fichte calls it “reproduction,” the progress of culture within the “I” — one has experienced it within oneself, how should one call it, somehow, when one wants to transition from the lowercase “ich” to the capital “Ich,” since grammatically the personal “I” [in English] is written “I” everywhere.

[ 102 ] One could say: The German spirit relates to the Western spirit just as the Italians were the observers, the French shaped reason, and the English were guided by the principle of utility; but the principle of internalization—that lies at the heart of the German spirit. The Italian looks at the world. As he looks at the world, he says: The world is quite right; but it just needs to be reshaped a bit—it must become such that it corresponds to our capacity—not so much a prescriptive language as a word experienced firsthand. Precisely when one looks deeply, deeply into it—especially into the finest aspects of spiritual life—this word proves true.

[ 103 ] The Frenchman says: This world, too, is worth something /[gap in the transcript]]. The Englishman says: [gap in the transcript] The German says: I, too, like the world. And within himself, he wants to create a small reflection of the world. The Russian—well, one need only think of such characteristic figures as Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s *The Brothers Karamazov*. But this type of Karamazov was, in essence, widespread throughout the East in the nineteenth century. [...] Ivan Karamazov himself says: “I could still accept God; but I cannot accept the world from God.” The world, in the Russian sense, is essentially something that must be replaced by another—namely, one that is [made] for the Russian people.

[ 104 ] It is a seemingly radical term, but anyone who traces the development of Russian thought in the nineteenth century will find it to be true. For it is indeed strange: From the very first decade of the nineteenth century in Russia, it has been emphasized—and this is true of the Russian people; Dostoevsky, for example, said it—and despite Dostoevsky’s greatness, one must also take Dostoevsky’s greatness into account—that the Russian person is, among all people, the one who, through universal humanity, must place his spiritual life above that of others. And humanity faces the world in such a way that one can say: In the nineteenth century, it increasingly comes to the realization that European intellectual life is senile and spent. This must be eradicated. Russian intellectual life, it is said, is young; it must take the lead. “Russian” signifies joy; it signifies love. The West—and this includes Central Europe, as well as France, Italy, Spain, and England—signifies struggle; it signifies war; it signifies egoism. This runs like a thread through all [Russian] intellectual life of the nineteenth century.

[ 105 ] Outwardly, it is not so apparent; but it is true. It is just strange: Who, after all, was the first to articulate the nature of the Slavic, from which they then sought to derive something entirely different from what lies in the Russian national spirit? So this is what a noble man attributed to them—a word upon which they then built their case. Who was it, after all, who first characterized the matter so beautifully, who coined a word, a concept, upon which they then based their entire nineteenth-century worldview? Herder! Herder was, in essence, the first Slavophile. But this statement by a Slavophile degenerated into magnanimity, even megalomania. And it came to pass that the refrain echoed time and again: Europe is senile, and Russian intellectual life must take the place of European intellectual life.

[ 106 ] Ladies and gentlemen, as I said, just one final point: In 1885, a book was published written by the Russian author Yushakov. Yushakov stands on a somewhat different cultural ground than the one I have just described—the literary antithesis set forth for that which has persisted down to our own day and into our current, terrible events—Yushakov, 1885, a remarkable book! He does not turn his gaze toward the West, but toward the East, toward Asia, toward the Asian peoples. Now, in his—as I said—remarkable book, Yushakov states: These poor Asians have themselves depicted how they gradually struggled their way up from their own cultural life to the corresponding contemporary culture; they have portrayed it as a struggle between two spiritual beings. But this struggle is a reality over in Asia. The Asians, says Yushakov, depicted the two spiritual powers—the good Ormuzd and the evil Ahriman—as the forces under whose influence they stood.

[ 107 ] Ahriman was always the one who was like the negation of Ormuzd. Regarding the Iranian peoples—which included the Persians and the Indians—Yushakov says: Ahriman, the evil spirit, took away from them the fruits of both material and spiritual culture.

[ 108 ] But what have the European peoples of the West done? — asks Yushakov. They have squeezed out of these Asian peoples everything that those peoples had acquired under the influence of the good Ormuzd! This is where Russian culture must intervene. Russian culture is the only one capable—says Yushakov, not I—of embracing the Asian peoples with love. There are two powers in the world that will bring happiness in the future—and above all, happiness to the Asian peoples; these two powers are—I am not saying this, Yushakov says it!—these two powers are: the Russian peasant and the Cossack, the two great representatives of [Russian] humanity—says Yushakov in 1885. And until the alliance of the Russian peasant and the Cossack extends into Asia to bring love to the Asians once again, nothing will improve—not until the evil, the oppression—he could not truly speak of Germany at that time—that the Western peoples have brought upon Asia is removed.

[ 109 ] Strangely enough, the book is titled *The Anglo-Russian Conflict*. And regarding this, Yushakov says: Through their treatment of the Asian peoples, the English act as if they believed these Asian peoples were entirely dependent on this cold, fickle English affection. And then Yushakov explains how he views his people’s relationship with the English. England, he says—these are his words, his own words:

“England exploits millions of Hindus, yet its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I wish nothing of the sort for my homeland—I can only rejoice that it

[ 110 ] my Russian homeland [according to Yushakov]

is sufficiently far removed from this state, which is as brilliant as it is sad.»

[ 111 ] In 1885, the Russian Yushakov wrote about England.

[ 112 ] He is probably not referring to the alliance between Russia and England—at least not initially—but rather to restoring Ormuzd’s blessings to the Asians once again. Russia will now move into Asia, says Yushakov, for in Russia the alliance between the farmer—who cultivates all fertility—and the Cossack—who embodies all chivalry—is rooted in a deep culture, according to Yushakov, and they will prefer, for the time being, to spread Russian spirituality throughout Asia.

[ 113 ] So writes one of those thinkers in Russia who held this view and voiced it as early as the 1820s—in 1829: Western Europe and Central Europe are senile, past their prime. But we in Russia, we have the right to bring this Europe under our rule. And once we have it—as Kireyevsky says—once we have it, then we will share what we have with the others, to the extent that it is right.

[ 114 ] This is not only the “correct” one—as opposed to the forged “Will of Peter the Great”—in the political sphere; it permeates the entire realm of intellectual and cultural life. And what runs through this Russophilia: the distinguished Russian philosopher Soloviev himself has expressed it. And you can see this in my book *Thoughts During the Time of War*—it is currently out of print, but it will be published again in due course. Soloviev himself put it this way: What lives in Russian intellectual life stems from what one might call the fact that Russia still has a long way to go before it attains the maturity of its own being; for Russia today is still right in the midst of—thoroughly immersed in—vague mysticism. That is all. One would have to be “mystical” to say: This German intellectual life seeks that which is the instrument of mystical striving. On the contrary: fully conscious thoughts, insights steeped in light and filled with thought, clear insights; the German seeks an image of the world in order to shape his own being as closely as possible to this image of the world.

[ 115 ] The other peoples should not be belittled. But what can they possibly comprehend of what the German strives for—that which he strives for with full awareness, so that he makes his own image of humanity resemble his image of the world? The Italian cannot strive for this with such awareness if he draws solely from his national character. One would have to instill this in him, as it were, as a suggestion, so that his quest for knowledge has an effect that goes beyond mere morality.

[ 116 ] The Frenchman wants it to be more than just an intellectual art, in order to delight the intellect and to give it a sense of well-being. This is, in essence, something that lies at the very core of the French character—the French way of viewing nature, the mechanistic view of nature that is characteristic of French culture.

[ 117 ] The Englishman wants—he would certainly accept Fichte’s *Science of Knowledge* as well, if its truths could be transformed into a principle or a mechanism, if they could be integrated into the pragmatic order of life, if they could be turned into pragmatism, as has been pointed out today.

[ 118 ] Russians still need vague, hazy mysticism everywhere today. I have already cited Ivan Karamazov from Dostoevsky’s *The Brothers Karamazov* as a true representative of that type of Russian who has embraced Western European culture. God would indeed be there—yes, God—but in mystical obscurity. And one might say: When the Russian becomes an atheist, he wants to have a mystical atheist. The Russian can become an atheist, but he almost wants the atheist to be revealed to him by God! One could also teach him Fichte’s philosophy, one could also teach him Hegelianism; but then it would have to be found somewhere mysteriously on an altar, or at least bear the hallmark of having entered the world in a mysterious way!

[ 119 ] In short, esteemed audience, the various peoples surrounding the German people still relate to this German spiritual life in such a way today that there is truly every reason for Germans to become aware of the seeds, roots, and diversity within their spiritual nature! And the fruits and blossoms will come when the German people become truly aware of this—become aware precisely through the difficult time of trial in which they currently find themselves.

[ 120 ] Yes, what has been attempted to be outlined in brief, distinguished guests, unfolded across the 6 million square kilometers at the center, in contrast to the 68 million square kilometers in the surrounding area! And as if by bonds—which are also bonds of the spirit—this Central Europe is held together. The alliance between Germany and Austria is truly one that is also based on the commonality of what flows as spiritual life through both countries, through both national territories.

[ 121 ] I am at liberty to say this, for I have lived in Austria for more than half my life—nearly thirty years—and throughout all those thirty years I have witnessed firsthand the way in which the German spirit must live there, in Austria, in this multifaceted country. I have come to understand what is meant by the words of one of the most German of Austrians—Robert Hamerling, Austria’s greatest son in the second half of the nineteenth century—words that resonate deep within the heart of anyone who grasps the sense of belonging to Central Europe. Robert Hamerling said: “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland.”

[ 122 ] As early as 1862, in his wonderful *Germanenzug*, Robert Hamerling spoke of this inner dimension of the German worldview. Doesn’t this inner nature of the German worldview strike us as so beautiful when we see, for example, how Jakob Böhme spoke of it even in earlier times—how the German strives for knowledge, but in such a way that he intends to use it to enter into the spirit of the world? He expresses it so beautifully:

“If You Feel the Depth”

[ 123 ] he means the depth of the sky

“And when you look at the stars and the earth, you see your God. And you live within Him, and you are also part of Him. And that same God also governs you.” “You were created from this God and live within Him. All your knowledge also resides in this God. And when you die, you will be buried in this God.”

[ 124 ] Beautiful words! — If we take what I have sought to illustrate today: It becomes clear that the deep, world-historical calling of the German people lies in this internalization of the German essence—in this desire to grasp what, as divine spirituality, interweaves and permeates the world within their own inner being. And it is so rooted in the German people that it truly stands as a second wave in the great ascent of the human race. If we look across to the Orient—looking at it now differently than the Russian Yushakov did—then we find among the Asian peoples how they have dreamed of this, how they, too, once attempted to penetrate the spiritual that permeates and breathes through the world. They tried to bring forth the “I” in such a way that it was as if it were lulled to sleep—[so that] the truly human inner being was lulled to sleep—and thus the human being could merge into that which the life of the World Spirit, in the Universal Principle, weaves through and permeates the world. Now that the greatest impulse has entered into the development of the Earth—the Christ impulse—the Asian way is no longer the one that can dominate the human race.

[ 125 ] The German spirit has found the right way to penetrate the spiritual world in the spirit of the Christ impulse, in such a way that the “I” is not eradicated, as it once was in Asia; [but rather that what will be sought in the future of the world as a divine-spiritual reality is achieved through the elevation and strengthening—not the dulling—of the “I.”] But the “I” is precisely elevated and strengthened in order to grow together with the whole of the world. Thus, the ancient striving of humanity continues in its newest form, as the essence of the German spirit fulfills its historical calling.

[ 126 ] Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German, illustrates this so beautifully in his “Germanenzug,” describing in exquisite language how the Germanic tribes—the ancestors of the Germans—once migrated from Asia to Europe, allowing us to share in that journey, to partake in the setting sun and the gentle twilight that spreads across the land; and as everything sinks into a deep sleep, only one remains awake: the blond Teut. While all others sleep, he is preoccupied with thoughts of the future German essence, the German mission. The Genius, the spirit of the German people, steps before the fair-haired Teut and speaks to him of the future of the German people. This is how Robert Hamerling perceives it and expresses it through the Genius of Antiquity to the fair-haired Teut, precisely during the migration of the Germanic peoples—the ancestors of the Germans—from the East to the West. — Thus speaks the Genius:

“To whom will words one day burst forth from the depths of the soul
As they do to your people—so rich, so tender, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the sounds of the strings
His innermost being? To whom does the mind so magnificently
Carve granite hieroglyphs into the azure sky
Of the soul’s ascent from life’s confines?
Who, in the end, ties the strands
Of the inquiring mind to the stars
So boldly, striving and fighting on every path?
Whom does his urge, his intuition lead so high, so deep?
Who grasps both the near and the far so faithfully?
Where does every zone of earth and sky
Reflect itself as in your thoughts, O Teuton?”

[ 127 ] And how closely related—yet on a higher level—is the spiritual quest for the divine foundation of the world. Here, too, the genius of the German people speaks—as if through Robert Hamerling’s mouth—to the fair-haired Teut, expressing what I have just alluded to through the words of Jakob Böhme: where devotion becomes knowledge, where dedication becomes a worldview—dedication to the divine-spiritual forces of the world. Thus, Hamerling has the genius of the German people say to the fair-haired Teut:

“Yet no matter how proudly you soar, above the other swarms
Hovering high, you will always preserve a flame
Of that ancient, sacred fire:
Within you will live on the dream-filled
Divine ecstasy, the soulful warmth of the heart
Of the ancient Asian homeland.
Of peaceful existence
This sacred ray, a temple fire
For humanity, free of smoke, with a pure flame
Will continue to glow in your breast and in the depths of your soul
Remaining with you and guiding your course!
You strive only because you love: your boldest thought
Will be devotion, seeking to sink into God.”

[ 128 ] Yes, becoming aware of the German essence—that is what the German needs. Then he will find his place in relation to the events of the present! For: He will be able to place his trust in that which exists as a source—as the root and seeds of spiritual aspiration within the German people. And whatever possesses such seeds may be regarded with hope and confidence that its blossoms and fruits will develop, despite everything that rises up in the world as a hostile force against this spiritually grounded aspect of German development.

[ 129 ] This, I believe, is what a truly objective—rather than a narrow-minded—view of the German character reveals. And Germans can rely on such an objective view. Then they, too, can look objectively at the way in which what spans 6 million square kilometers—as opposed to 68 square kilometers—is not only oversimplified but also slandered.

[ 130 ] Anyone who contemplates this—the roots, the seeds of hope for the future, the blossoms, and the fruits to come—may summarize what today’s contemplation has been, summarizing it intuitively in a few words. Words that are intimately connected with the full sensibility of the German essence, the entirety of the German essence. These words, too, are by Robert Hamerling, and they, too, demonstrate how Central Europe—on both sides of the Ore Mountains—is forged together today, but is also forged together through this shared spiritual weaving and essence within Central Europe.

[ 131 ] Let us therefore conclude today’s reflection with a quote from Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German—a quote that poignantly sums up what I have attempted to convey to your hearts in a longer—alas, all too long—exposition. Speaking from the same mindset that led him to say, “Austria is my fatherland, but Germany is my motherland,” Robert Hamerling says:

“And if ever the day proves hostile
To the German name,
From sea to sea
The German spirit will find its path!”