The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Opening Remarks

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Ours is a time of doubts and mysteries that have been placed before humanity. And one might say, blessed is the one who, deep within, can honestly and resolutely say to himself in the face of current events: “Yes, for me this is a time of doubt, of mysteries, and of questions that must be resolved.” — For if he could not say this to himself, yet still looked upon the events of our time with an alert spirit, there would in fact be only the opposite extreme for him: despair regarding the future of human civilization in the West. And if our time conceals doubts, questions, and mysteries that must be resolved, then this requires the strong power of people who can find their way through the current chaos of civilization and who, from the flood of questions and mysteries, can bring forth what can lead to a new direction, to the rebuilding of our Western civilization. Everything undertaken from this Goetheanum aims to contribute to the emergence of the forces that our time so desperately needs—forces capable of resolving the doubts and riddles within the human soul.

[ 2 ] In such a time of questions and mysteries, it will become apparent that even some aspects of ancient tradition need to be viewed in a new light. Now the oft-repeated Apollonian saying shines upon us—as it were, like an ancient, sacred legacy of Greek culture: “Man, know thyself!”—And much of Western civilization since the time of the ancient Greeks has been shaped by this saying. It seems to me, however, that even such a magic word—which appeared to be so firmly embedded in human development—can survive today, in our times of great transformation, only if it undergoes a kind of transformation itself by drawing upon the forces of our time. And so it seems to me that the ancient Delphic maxim must resound to people today as follows: Man, know thyself and become a free being! — We must be able to view world events—insofar as they relate to human beings—as oscillating back and forth between the two poles of self-knowledge and true human freedom.

[ 3 ] Why did Greek wisdom inscribe the meaningful words “Know thyself” on the temple at Delphi? From ancient times—times so ancient that their historical origins cannot be determined—an ancient, sacred wisdom and science shone forth upon this Greek civilization. The origins of this science go back into the darkness of prehistoric times. In Egypt, people still had a direct connection to this primordial wisdom. In Greece, people had only a sense of it—albeit one steeped in noble Greek humanity—and they felt that this wisdom had come to humanity from the world itself, from the world of wisdom. Within the world of wisdom, human beings had felt themselves to be more or less instinctive, more or less unconscious members of the whole of the world. Then, in the Greek sensibility, the feeling of the independence of the human soul began to dawn. In addition to the ancient understanding of the world, the self-knowledge of the human being was to be sought. Essentially, the motto of ancient wisdom was: Know the world, and within the world, know humanity! — This motto of ancient wisdom shone into Greek civilization. But now the urge arose to strive, alongside this knowledge of the world—with humanity within it—for independent human self-knowledge. To the call: “Know the world!” — was joined by: “Know thyself!” — The Greeks stood as if on the shore of the past, taking in the treasures of wisdom with all the richness of that past. We—and I believe anyone with an open mind can feel this—stand on a different shore. We stand on the shore of an indeterminate future, but a future that humanity itself must create in a spiritual sense. And we feel that we need a new truth to remind us, with all our human strength, of what can radiate from within us as a creative force into the indeterminate future. On the shore of the past, the Greeks proclaimed the truth: “Know thyself!” — On the shore of an indeterminate future, we must proclaim the truth: “Become a free being!” This building and everything that is created within it wish to speak of what lies in the oscillation between the two poles of humanity’s present tasks. The short series of intellectual and artistic presentations scheduled for the coming days also wishes to speak of this. We stand at the starting point of the great scientific enigma. Humanity has not yet found the full courage within itself to face this great, formidable scientific enigma. Science has achieved mighty and great things. It has adopted a perspective through which, in the chain of causes and effects, one of the events that our souls perceive is necessarily linked to the next. And it is the most natural aspiration of natural science to include human beings in this chain of natural necessity. It is the great ideal of scientific knowledge to study natural phenomena in accordance with this law of causality, to perceive them—in accordance with their essence—in accordance with this law of causality, and thus also to understand about human beings what can be understood about them according to this law of causality. It is just that today we do not yet fully grasp, with a living sense, what this endeavor, this ideal, actually means for human life.

[ 4 ] If we immerse ourselves completely in what we, through a true understanding of nature, recognize as the necessity of the world, then we ourselves, with our consciousness, stand within this necessity of the world; then we must tell ourselves: Everything we experience within ourselves is merely a link in the chain of necessities. But if, through a true deepening of our scientific understanding of life, we have acquired such an awareness, then our innermost being rebels against this feeling; then an experience that illuminates our soul speaks against this feeling; then we say to ourselves: As a human being, I am free, and I must grasp my freedom; with my understanding, I must penetrate the fabric of natural phenomena just as I do the life of my freedom.

[ 5 ] If one grasps this inner enigma of freedom in the fullest sense of the word, one is led to say to oneself: The significant body of knowledge, whose development has spanned the last three to four centuries and which has shed such significant light on nature, needs to be expanded so that it may also shed light on the experience of human freedom. — For those who, drawing on the scientific consciousness of the present, have said and continue to say: “We can only understand nature; we have no choice but to stop short of understanding human freedom”—they would always appear justified. We must repeat the old Kantian saying: “To make room for faith, we must destroy knowledge.” — Indeed, as long as we remain confined to mere scientific knowledge of nature, this statement holds true. But then comes the backlash, the revolt of human consciousness. And it is precisely in the proper appreciation of the greatest scientific achievements of modern times that the urge must arise for knowledge, for the recognition of the experience of human freedom. And this recognition must at the same time be an experience in itself. For, starting from this, we must carry the strength we gain from it out into social life, which today presents us with no fewer mysteries and questions than the life of knowledge and faith. Just as the mysteries and questions of the life of knowledge and faith play themselves out in the solitude of one’s room in inner struggles of the soul, so do the other—the social—mysteries and questions rage tumultuously throughout the world: because there are no human forces at work within them that, stemming from a clear sense of freedom—a sense of freedom experienced through knowledge—know how to stand up against what surrounds us today as social chaos.

[ 6 ] Only those who penetrate the mystery of freedom with living knowledge are capable of bringing the power of harmonious human coexistence into social life. Because in recent centuries, precisely by delving into the depths of external events, this power has been taken from us, we live today in social chaos. Light will only dawn in this chaos when we step into it with the inner strength that comes from a knowing insight into the riddle of freedom. Just as the ancient Greeks once stood questioning all that ancient wisdom had handed down to them—questioning the command: “Know the world!”—and moved on to: “Know thyself!”—so must we stand questioning today before the call: “Human being, become a free being!”

[ 7 ] Between these two poles of human existence—between the pole where the Greek sage addressed the assembly of thinkers and open-minded people with the words, “Know thyself!”—and the other pole, which finds expression in the words, “Man, become a free being!”—lies, in essence, an episode in human development.

[ 8 ] It is plain to see how an episode in human development lies between these two poles. Let us take the most modern of men, from whom this School of Spiritual Science takes its name: Goethe. He found his way into the modern way of life, which was already dawning and pressing in on the old at that time, sensing it in advance at a time when most people were still fully immersed in the traditions of the past. How did this affect Goethe’s soul—on the one hand, toward true knowledge; on the other, toward true art; and in his art, also toward religious deepening and religious inwardness? All these impulses surged through his soul—impulses that were actually noticed at the time only by him, or at most by a few of his friends, but which have since risen to the surface of general human life—all these impulses that incline toward and aim for a social life embraced in freedom. And when he felt strongly enough what was alive within him—like the dawn of a new era—he turned his back on the Northern world and went south to discern, from what remained of ancient Greek culture, the deepest essence of that culture. This modern man, Goethe, had sought to build within his own soul a vast bridge spanning the gap between the future tasks of modern humanity and the all-encompassing synthesis of the past, as it had been forged in Greek civilization.

[ 9 ] And does not what Goethe so vividly portrayed in his own personality essentially live on today in every person who seeks to ascend to that sphere where the great questions of the world can confront them in their true forms? Do not those who devote themselves to our education still draw from Greek culture the very foundation that is meant to provide the formal basis for this education? Are not the hearts and minds of those being educated in this tradition still permeated by Greek culture in our high school education? — We must experience this episode as Goethe first perceived it—as tragic and then as redemptive—for humanity. But then we will also understand how we must turn in a new way toward the other pole—the pole of human self-knowledge—and how, at this moment in world history when the word resounds from our deepest inner being: “Man, become a free being!”—we must also approach the call: “Know thyself!”—in a different way than the Greeks did.

[ 10 ] Let us look around, particularly among those who have immersed themselves, with their entire being, in the modern scientific worldview, which has grown so large on its own terms. We see how, through observation as well as experimentation—which have solved so many mysteries for modern humanity—human beings immerse themselves in material existence. And we should listen more closely than we are accustomed to when hearing a statement such as the one made by Du Bois-Reymond, for example, out of this modern consciousness: “Where matter haunts, human knowledge can do nothing!” — Modern knowledge has become accustomed to penetrating material existence. It has achieved great things in this field. Everywhere it traces how the material world is structured within material phenomena. But in seeking to decipher the fabric of material phenomena, it must presuppose that which it can never penetrate if it remains on its own ground: the world of matter itself.

[ 11 ] What has unfolded between the pursuit of human knowledge and the mystery of matter is a long story. What has taken place in the theoretical realm is of less interest to us at this moment. However, we must draw attention to what has remained as a residue in the human mind and in human life as a whole. As much as people believed they were walking the path of pure knowledge in their study of material phenomena, by presupposing matter as such they established, deep within the soul, a foundation of feeling that permeates all of human life. And we do have such a foundation of feeling. We can observe it in the best of our contemporaries. They toil over the riddle of matter; they wrestle with this riddle of matter. And a good number of them could not help but rise above this struggle and admit that the riddle of humanity cannot be found or solved in this way, not even in a relative sense. And yet this solution is necessary for the security of the human soul. One might now wish to arrive at the true nature of the human being “within the human being,” but one’s mind has become accustomed to thinking about and perceiving the external world—“which cannot be fathomed”—and the “prerequisites of material existence.” What one has become accustomed to in this way renounces the act of fathoming. And if one turns this mind, which has renounced insight, inward, one becomes a mystic in the modern, negative sense.

[ 12 ] Unfortunately, far too few people realize this today: that the best among us, who turn away from our understanding of nature and come to seek knowledge of the human inner life, have acquired their habits of thought and feeling through the observation of matter, “which is inscrutable,” and now carry into the human inner world what they have acquired as habits of thought and feeling through their observation of the external world. But when one turns inward the gaze that was first trained on dark, gloomy “matter,” it becomes nebulous mysticism, and this nebulous mysticism locks the gate to “Know thyself!”

[ 13 ] This is precisely what everything done within this School of Spiritual Science seeks to emphasize. We must avoid both the path of nebulous mysticism and the path that leads solely to external scientific necessity and thus to the destruction of the knowledge of freedom. We can avoid these paths only if we seek true spiritual science—not the kind of spiritual science that is not permitted to pause at the threshold of the human inner being, and which, having paused there, nevertheless continues on its way by casting mystical mists into that inner being. The spiritual science referred to here must not do this! With the training gained through bright, clear, and luminous insight into external facts, it must be possible to shine light into the human inner world—free of mysticism, yet in accordance with spiritual science. The command: “Know thyself!”—must not be grasped in a dark, mystical life; it must be grasped in bright, luminous clarity. Then what springs forth from inner knowledge—from the fulfillment of the word “Know thyself!”—will unite with what springs forth from the human being’s cognitive engagement with external nature under the watchword: “Human being, become a free being!”

[ 14 ] These two guiding principles should be viewed as two pillars standing symbolically in the mind when one enters this building: the pillar of true, enlightened human self-knowledge and the pillar of human freedom. The first serves to remind people of what can provide them with security and stability, artistic expression, and religious fulfillment. The other serves to empower them to play an active role in addressing the pressing social issues of the present and the near future. In all that is being sought here through the cross-fertilization of the individual academic disciplines—as will become particularly evident in the coming days—we wish to grasp, as best we can in all modesty, the moment in world history that places us on the threshold of an uncertain future, just as the Greeks stood on the threshold of a fulfilled, overwhelmingly powerful past.

[ 15 ] But to achieve this, we must come to the point where we feel, within knowledge itself, a luminous grasp of the human inner life—knowing that we no longer merely drag knowledge along with external observation and external experimentation, but that we freely elevate it and, by infusing it with the inner essence of the human being, we immerse ourselves with this knowledge in the life of freedom—a life into which mere scientific observation can never lead us. From a scientific standpoint, it is honest to deny freedom; from a human standpoint, it is to protest against this denial and to see in this protest the starting point of a free spiritual science born from the inner human being—in accordance with its own organs.

[ 16 ] This spiritual science is needed because it delves not into what is dead, but into life; there is no need to fear that it will have a stifling effect on art, as the dead science of the intellect does. It will be able to enrich art with what it draws from the spirit. This insight itself will be able to exert an artistic influence outwardly, because it plunges into the depths of the human soul with luminous clarity. It will flow from true insight into a reverence for that which can reveal itself within the human soul. And such insight—which retains only the form of mysticism but strives toward the light—will at the same time allow human knowledge to flow into the religious

[ 17 ] Worship of the Supreme, which lives and weaves its way through the world. New artistic powers and new depths of religious experience will be able to arise from such knowledge, which encompasses the innermost being of the human person. And the life into which such knowledge is allowed to immerse itself will be a life of freedom. It will first and foremost ensure that human beings have an awareness of freedom. Human beings will not need to lose themselves to the external necessities of nature—to which they lose themselves through mere scientific consciousness, because the latter perceives only necessity and not freedom.

[ 18 ] And the artist will be freed from the mere model in his imitation of external nature, which he can never truly capture. From spiritual heights, he will draw what he wishes to imprint upon matter. A tentative beginning toward such a drawing down of forms—forms that reveal themselves to the free spirit and are not bound to imitation of a model—is to be found in what speaks from the forms, the visual arts, and the other artistic elements of this building.

[ 19 ] And religious experience is to become free from everything that is merely traditional, which approaches human beings as something external, as something unfree: freely grasping what reveals itself as the divine within human beings themselves, freely uniting within with that power which, by its very nature, truly desires to unite with this human inner being only in freedom: the Christ-power.

[ 20 ] Knowledge extending into the most diverse realms—into the external natural world, into the inner world of the human being, and into the unified whole that encompasses both—this is the new striving to fulfill the saying: “Know thyself!” — The threefold step toward freedom: freedom in the inner experience of what is most human, freedom in creative work—including artistic creation—and freedom in religious experience; that is the other aspect.

[ 21 ] This is to be achieved through the cross-fertilization of the individual sciences, the various aspects of human life, and social life as a whole—a topic that will be discussed here in the coming days. The aim is to show that from the individual sciences—not only, as a modern, dying philosophy would have it, can certain propositions be derived from which one then cobbles together an abstract worldview—but that through spiritual observation, a worldview transcending all the sensory realm can be attained, and that this general, luminously grasped worldview can shine into the individual specialized sciences.

[ 22 ] It has also been demanded that a worldview draw its nourishment from what the individual sciences and their findings provide. The time has come when the findings radiate down into the individual sciences from a worldview experienced in the spirit. Even if the world today recognizes this only to a limited extent, what happens here in this place must never be expressed in any tone other than one that is itself inspired, on the one hand, by the true maxim: “Know thyself!”—and, on the other hand, by the call: “Human being, become a free being!” — But this call does not come to us only from solitary scientific reflection within the human soul. It comes to us from our entire catastrophic age today. And if we summarize what lies deepest within the mysteries and questions of our time, it is precisely what I have attempted to convey today.

[ 23 ] One may speak in this way of old age, both in terms of what is presented to us by the signs of the times and by the sentient human being who lives within that time. These older people have experienced what it means to live in a time of catastrophe. They feel how the ideals of their youth have melted away. They feel how what they believed in their youth they were to carry forward into modern Western civilization has dissolved into a chaos of civilization. To them, who have experienced such things, one may speak as has been spoken today. For such words must find a place in the life of the human soul that says: We must still make use of what remains of our lives to point humanity toward something stronger than what has worked through us.

[ 24 ] And such words may also be spoken to the youth. For they still see, with all their strength, what lies in the collapse, what lives in the catastrophe. Possessing their full human strength and full human enthusiasm, they can feel that something new, something powerful, must happen. And the true elder of today will seek the words that can ignite the youth, so that the souls looking out into the world through the eyes of today’s youth may see different times than the souls who look out into the world through the eyes of today’s elders.

[ 25 ] And so one may well speak to people of every age. One may speak to those whom, in a certain language, one calls the “old houses” of all kinds, and one may speak to one’s young fellow students. For one may speak in this way not only in light of the challenges of our times, but also in light of the greatest challenges of human existence itself. And we live in a time when humanity’s greatest questions of life have become the challenges of our time. We live in a time when we can look into the deepest recesses of the human soul. And there we will see inscribed the call to act—to act in a direction that is simultaneously laid out before us when we look at the outward signs of the times with their clear language.

[ 26 ] In the coming days, I would like to speak about what lies within this dual perspective. May what is said receive attention. For in today’s world, to understand human beings means to perceive and feel for oneself what is most essential in human life. Only those who can say to themselves: “The signs of the times clearly call upon us to look into the deepest recesses of the human soul—to look with spiritual insight”—can truly and justly position themselves within the human endeavors of our time. And what a person can fathom only within themselves today is, at the same time, what the clearly speaking signs of the times demand of us to recognize, to feel, to will, and to accomplish.

[ 27 ] Rudolf Steiner’s opening address was followed by a lecture by Albert Steffens on “The Becoming of the Work of Art.”

[ 28 ] Mrs. Marie Steiner then recited Hilarius's words, which Rudolf Steiner had already adapted for the opening ceremony of the First School of Spiritual Science: “The Keeper of the Threshold”:

In the name of that Spirit who reveals Himself to the souls
In the place of our striving,
I appear at this very moment
Before people who, from now on, wish to hear
The Word that resounds here with solemnity for the souls.
In times past, those powers
That guide the goals of our earthly existence,
Reveal themselves in a fully conscious manner.
For just as in a child’s body
The powers must first gradually mature and grow stronger,
Those destined to be bearers of knowledge,
So too must humanity as a whole unfold
In its earthly journey.
At first, the soul’s impulses lived in dullness,
Which were later to prove themselves worthy,
To gaze upon the light of the spirit from high worlds.
Yet, as wise guides for humanity
At the dawn of the Earth, souls devoted to the spirit
Were chosen by higher powers of existence.
In the places where knowledge is sought
they cultivated the spiritual powers that sent rays of insight
into souls whose consciousness was still so dim
that they could only be permeated by their vision.
Only later could the spiritual researchers from among humanity
select their disciples—
who, through a life of trials marked by strong will
had proven themselves mature, so that in the light of consciousness
they might purposefully strive toward spiritual knowledge.
And when the disciples of the first guides were later able
to cultivate this noble treasure with dignity,
the unconscious leadership vanished,
So that free souls might strive in knowledge.
And free souls then chose for themselves people,
Who were permitted to follow them in the preservation
Of the spiritual treasure; and so it continued
From one generation to the next.
Indeed, all centers of knowledge to this day,
That are truly such, have rightly sprung
From the highest, which stands in the spiritual spheres.
In earnest seeking, we strive here
Toward the true spiritual-human heritage.
We will never speak of knowledge,
That does not bear the Spirit’s own seal,
But only of the light from the spiritual worlds,
Which, when beheld, can reveal itself to human beings,
Who, striving toward it, wish to entrust themselves to it,
To fathom the depths of their souls.
To strive worthily toward this light,
is what the gravity of this turning point
and its distress teach us; the signs are indeed
laden with meaning, which on the world stage
now reveal themselves clearly to the eyes of the spirit.