The Rudolf Steiner Archive

17. Moral, Social, and Religious Life in the Light of a Transcendental Worldview

[ 1 ] Moritz Benedikt, the criminal anthropologist and renowned physiologist, found that in criminals the occipital lobe is relatively small, as in higher apes; he identified this as a case of atavism. Thus, crime is attributed entirely to physical constitution. Even the inner life is controlled entirely mechanically by modern school psychology—the speed of sensory perception, memory strength, and so on. Human beings are treated like machines. This has been happening to an increasing extent for the past 50 years. Social life, too, is to be shaped in this way, as expressed by the maxim of […]: Act in such a way that your motive can become the standard for all people. This is like saying: Wear a skirt that fits everyone. — It is Kant’s categorical imperative. But even if one achieves excellence in the natural sciences, it does not follow that one could (apply) its results to the moral realm. The same is true of Oscar Hertwig, who so brilliantly refuted Darwinism; in the social sphere, he produced not only inadequate but harmful results.

[ 2 ] Insight from the humanities is necessary to gain an understanding of the possibility and nature of human freedom; the recognition of what constitutes the true nature of the human being leads to love for the human being and is the sole foundation for true morality and the social life of the future, based on brotherhood. General morality, as it currently exists, leads to the exact opposite, as today’s events prove; preaching morality is like telling a stove, “Get warm without being heated.”

[ 3 ] Thinking, feeling, and willing find their counterpart in the nervous system, in breathing and rhythm—for example, in blood circulation, digestion, metabolism, and reproduction. The nervous system is destructive; it leads to death, just as thinking in waking consciousness always destroys something. It must transition into imagination if it is to become viable. Willing, metabolism leads to life, to being born, when it is connected to intuition. The essence of intuition is love. Feeling in the center then maintains the balance, so that the pendulum swings neither in one direction nor the other.

[ 4 ] No new religions have emerged since the synthesis of all religions within Christianity. Anthroposophy should not be confused with various forms of obscurantism; rather, it is part of the common heritage and is destined to become so more and more—and will indeed do so—even if it is currently rejected. From it will be born a socialism grounded in reality and dedicated to the common good, in which all salvation lies. Because people today are asleep, it has become possible for a select few to bring about these catastrophic events.