The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Times and Its Social Demands

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! The lectures I am about to deliver are intended to build upon the reflections I have already presented here: not as if anything substantial could be said about contemporary social life by devising social reforms from ideas in some abstract, utopian manner, but in the sense that I believe the spiritual worldview that has been developed here can—if it is transformed into impulses for the whole human being, into a human attitude—provide guidelines and directions for understanding social life and also for shaping social driving forces. The next lectures, however, will have to show us how such a worldview, rooted in the spiritual, does not remain in the abstract and utopian, but how it is precisely predisposed to enter into immediate, concrete reality. Today, however, I would like to build a bridge between the lectures I have already given and those I still intend to give here.

[ 2 ] Anyone who takes in the full meaning of the lectures so far will have to admit that what has been presented here is not meant to be just any philosophy of life for the hermitage, or for a contemplative life in a quiet little room, but rather that a conception of life with a social dimension was intended—one that can, in a sense, lead us not only into the spiritual worlds as such, but also into the world of the spirit and soul that surrounds us directly in our fellow human beings. Today, however, it is easier to speak about social issues if one feels affiliated with a particular political party. Then, one has, so to speak, one’s platforms; one has firmly established ideas and can say: “This is the time!” These are the demands of the times!” — But we certainly cannot proceed from such a rigid party template here. For, first of all, I am fully convinced that—to put it somewhat radically—there is actually no party that is not right in some way regarding what it asserts. The point is simply that parties usually fail to recognize the limits of what they can actually claim. On the other hand, I also do not believe that any particular party faction is entirely correct; rather, in a certain sense, it must be wrong. But here, too, the point is that one can quite well understand this error, precisely because of the particular nature of the human view of the world. After all, one can only properly photograph a tree from different angles; everything that is usually presented as political ideologies can seem like photographs of life taken from different angles. Then people come together and, with their various viewpoints, actually behave as others would—though in this realm that doesn’t exist—who, upon seeing a photograph of a tree from the right, would say: “Yes, that’s a completely wrong shot.” — For they are familiar only with the shot from the left. Thus, I am also fully aware of everything that can be objected to from a certain point of view against the views presented here; and if it came down to setting forth all the opposing arguments, that would not be all that difficult from the perspective of the worldview represented here...

[ 3 ] I must preface this so that it becomes clear how, simply by attempting in the following lectures to approach social life and social problems from a wide variety of perspectives, one can arrive at a vibrant understanding in this regard.

[ 4 ] There is a great deal of talk about social demands in our time. But if we take an unbiased look at the history of humankind, we find that this has only been the case for a relatively short time in the course of human development. Certainly, there have always been social demands and social aspirations; but the fact that they appear in a formulated way—I would say, formulated as abstract theory—is, fundamentally speaking, a characteristic of only the very most recent times. And if one tries to understand why, in fact, almost everyone today speaks of social demands, one sees that perhaps no era has had such strong antisocial impulses as our own.

[ 5 ] Certainly, when the immediate hardships of life press upon us, when misery knocks at our doors, we find ourselves compelled to act out of social concern. But when we speak of social demands, we actually mean something else entirely; we mean the feelings and emotions that can dwell within a person—the realization that he is not merely an isolated being, but that he must interact with other people, that he must work among and with others, and that he exists for his own fulfillment and for the well-being of others. And in this regard, as paradoxical as it may sound today, people of past eras were, in essence, actually closer to one another than they are today. And, fundamentally speaking, with good reason! Rightly so, because in our time we live in a historical epoch that—as the previous lectures have already indicated—has drawn forth particular forces from the depths of human nature, especially within the civilized world, forces that are particularly suited to the aspect described, but which are less suited to vividly stirring within the human being the social instincts and social impulses that, albeit in a manner no longer appropriate for our time, were present in earlier eras.

[ 6 ] We look back on a history of human development that lies behind us: over the course of three to four centuries, the human capacity—the power of the human soul—has emerged from within the human soul itself; this can be regarded as the intellectual, as the power of reason, and as a more or less rational view of the world. This view of the world has achieved great things in the field of the natural sciences. It can take human beings an immense distance when it comes to developing their relationship with and interaction with the external natural world. But the question arises as to whether it is possible that this power—which, I might say, constitutes the splendor and triumph of modern times—is also directly suited to mediating human interaction with one another. A clear understanding of this question is, in essence, the only way to shed light on the social demands of recent times. For these social demands, as they are usually formulated, could be nothing more than a kind of superficial view—in a sense, merely a symptom of something lying much deeper within the human being. This is particularly relevant for a spiritual-scientific perspective.

[ 7 ] But if we, in turn, take an unbiased look at the way in which social structures and social relationships among people emerged in earlier eras, indeed, as they in many ways still arise today—right up to the cartels and trusts—we must conclude that the dominant forces at work here are not, fundamentally, intellectual ones, nor those of a rational view of life, but rather life instincts—inner, unconscious feelings. And if we were to create social structures based on what has proven to be such a magnificent intellectual force in the contemplation of nature, they would likely have very little vitality. For it is by no means insignificant that this power of the intellect has proved particularly significant in the contemplation of inanimate nature, and that the person who seeks only a view of nature—who does not wish to ascend to a spiritual contemplation of things— faces an unsolvable mystery when it comes to using his perception to ascend from the inanimate to the living. Given that what is of great significance precisely because of its inner nature for the inanimate—for the dead—it should come as no surprise that it cannot possess the same carrying capacity, the same fruitfulness, for that which is not only alive but is also meant to develop into soulful, social human forms.

[ 8 ] And so we can say: In certain subconscious regions of the soul, the forces that were at work in social structures continue to operate; but on the other hand, human beings owe two of the strongest socially effective impulses to the present era with its particular characteristics. And it is precisely for these two powerful socially active impulses that human beings must seek integration and orientation within the whole of social life.

[ 9 ] One of the most significant social issues of our time came to the forefront of my mind thirty years ago, when I attempted to grapple with the problem of human freedom within the broader context of human social life. This experience of freedom is, in essence, as old as intellectual life itself. As intellectual life elevated human beings to the point of grasping pure thought—through which they then also comprehend natural phenomena—they first became aware of their freedom. In earlier times, something was still mixed into all intellectual life that was merely the result of organic processes—something rooted instinctively in the unconscious regions of the will or unconsciously in emotional life. To see through something so clearly, so transparently and brightly—as is the case in thinking when thought soars to clearly grasped, mathematically formulated laws of nature—to grasp something so clearly that one is fully immersed in it with one’s entire being—this became possible for human beings only when they rose to pure thinking, the very thinking that inspired Copernicus, Galileo, and their successors to undertake modern scientific research. Thus, the experience of freedom is precisely linked to what leads us out of the instinctive forces that previously shaped society.

[ 10 ] But when one approaches the problem of freedom in all seriousness, one is cast for a while into a kind of emptiness—the kind one feels precisely when one takes it seriously—with all the shivers that emptiness, or rather, nothingness itself, can instill in human beings. One comes to the following conclusion in particular: In earlier eras, when humanity was more naive with regard to spiritual life—when it had not yet risen to the level of consciousness that prevails in more recent times—views could thrive that were more pictorial in nature, that did not take the form of pure, abstract thought. But such pictorial thoughts are necessary if one wishes to immerse oneself in the complex social life of human beings. What leads us to understand how we are to find our place in the world can never be determined by an abstract thought.

[ 11 ] In the lectures of the past few days, I have discussed how the development of the spiritual sciences leads us back from abstract, dead thought to living thought—through which one can indeed penetrate not only inorganic, lifeless nature, but also the forms of living nature and the inner realms of the spiritual worlds. But by taking this most modern development into account, human beings are once again drawing their consciousness closer to what once existed, in earlier epochs, in an instinctive manner. I know that even today many people shudder when they are told: what operated unconsciously in earlier epochs, what fertilized the imagination from the unconscious, and so on—all this can be brought up into consciousness through the kind of spiritual development I have described. And immediately one senses that behind such a claim lies something like a kind of philistinism, a kind of schoolmasterly pedantry that seeks to transform naivety into consciousness. One will shudder at the prospect of such a path to consciousness only as long as one does not realize that the experience of naivety—which was initially instinctively inherent in human beings—is reestablished, despite the consciousness of living thought. But this living thought then also leads us into the fluctuating concepts that play out in social life.

[ 12 ] To that end, I would like to begin today by pointing out just one thing by way of introduction. For example, there is an extraordinary amount of talk these days about capitalism and the role of capital in the social order. There are countless definitions of what capital is. Often, these definitions are heavily colored by partisan views. But behind this diversity of definitions of capital lies something else entirely. One must simply be clear about the fact that even what exists within the social structure of humanity—such as capitalism—cannot be grasped in its function with sharply defined concepts, but that we need precisely those living concepts that once belonged to the instinctive, naive life of the soul and that can once again be acquired by the conscious life of the soul today. People need only look around to see, for example, what “capital” meant in Central Europe, in Germany—where a certain social development began later than in England—and what “capital” means in England, where, when a certain social development began, commercial capital was already present—due to the preceding stages of economic life—to lay the foundation for what in Germany had to be achieved without commercial capital, through other forms of capital creation. If one considers what the role of capital was in Central Europe and what it was in England, one very soon finds that one cannot have sharply defined concepts intended to encompass social life—even in its individual manifestations—but rather must have something that grasps immediate reality at a point that is internally flexible within the idea itself, so that it can move on to other manifestations of the same social structure. And because we live in an age that has been virtually raised on intellectualism—which can exist only in sharply defined concepts—it is necessary that, in order to arrive at an understanding of social demands, we move beyond intellectualism to a living world of thought, which can then in turn be translated into social impulses such as those that arose from instincts in earlier epochs of human development.

[ 13 ] The worldview referred to here is not meant to be merely theoretical. It is often accused of dogmatism; when it comes to social life, it is also accused of seeking utopias—that is, of being dogmatic. All of this is unfounded. For what matters is not at all what one encapsulates in one concept or another; rather, it is a certain attitude toward life as a whole—toward physical, emotional, and spiritual life as a whole—an attitude toward the ability to grasp this totality of life in its individual, concrete forms in a way that corresponds to reality.

[ 14 ] This, however, opens up a certain perspective on the most important social demands of our time: If one views human life itself through the lens of a spiritual perspective, such as the one I have developed, one finds that even the life of the individual human being, like the development of humanity as a whole throughout history, is subject to certain phases. And these phases, which are also apparent to a superficial observation, reveal their true nature only when one looks into the spiritual interrelationships. There we see, for example, how neither the child in the first years of life, nor the child of compulsory school age, nor indeed the young person before the age of twenty lives fully and with inner devotion within what has emerged as an intellectualistic way of thinking in the development of humanity. Essentially, we only come to grasp intellectualism within ourselves—out of an inner affinity—once we have entered the more mature years of our twenties. It is then that we begin to perceive intellectualism as an inner, soul-based skeletal system. Until then, we actually experience our lives—albeit instinctively—as if they must first harden inwardly in a certain way according to guidelines that then emerge as this soul-structure. But our entire social life, which is understandably shaped by adults, is permeated by what is, in a certain sense, influenced by this intellectualism—even if intellectualism itself cannot be socially creative. It flows into what has become uncertain in our instincts. And so, in our present-day social structure, we have an inorganic interplay between the instincts that have become unstable and that element of intellectualism which seeks to enter social life but does not actually fit into it.

[ 15 ] But this presupposes that we essentially form ideas about what is actually happening in social life that are quite different from the forces that actually exist in reality. Today, we usually speak of what prevails socially among people in a rather inauthentic sense. Over the last three or four centuries, we as humanity have trained ourselves to cast everything in intellectualistic forms. We can do this as adults, but we cannot do so as long as we are children, as long as we are young people.

[ 16 ] Youth develops faculties that are entirely different from intellectual ones. The child first develops the faculties—I would say—through which it is a single sensory organ, very similar to the sensory organ I have described as the spiritual organ; only, in the child’s case, it is in a more material sense. As a whole human being, the child perceives its surroundings and transforms what it perceives into its own movement. It is an imitator. This imitation, which pulses through the child’s entire soul life, is certainly not intellectual in nature. Then the child enters the stage of life—extending roughly from the time of tooth replacement to sexual maturity—in which it is no longer called upon to imitate, but rather to absorb what is given to it as opinion or conviction by its adult environment.

[ 17 ] Do not think, my esteemed audience, that the author of *The Philosophy of Freedom* is about to say what he is about to say out of some reactionary instinct. What I have to say corresponds to a law of human development. From the time of losing their baby teeth until sexual maturity, young people develop, from within their very being, the need to listen to what can be a natural authority for them and to what is given to them by that natural authority. Anyone who knows how to view life with an open mind can already tell what a blessing it is for their inner harmony throughout their entire life if, precisely at the age just mentioned, they were able to look up with such reverence to this or that authority—an authority they did not imitate, but which stood before them in such a way that they said to themselves: Through this human individuality, what I am meant to be and what I want to be is revealed to me; I listen to what he or she thinks and take that opinion into my soul.

[ 18 ] For a true psychologist, the following actually becomes clear: One can go on and on about how a child of compulsory elementary school age should only be taught what he or she already understands. But then one is really only catering to this one stage of the child’s life—not to mention that an endless pile of trivialities has been accumulated in the effort to present the child only with what one believes the child “already understands.” The child does indeed understand more than many people believe, but the child does not understand through intellectuality alone; rather, the child understands through the entirety of its being. And then there is this other aspect: that one is thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty years old, and something surfaces from the depths of the soul—a reminiscence, say, from the age of eight. You took it from an authority; you absorbed it out of reverence; you didn’t understand it in an intellectual sense back then, but you immersed yourself in what you took in with your whole being. That which you immersed yourself in has sunk into the depths of the soul. Decades later, it resurfaces. One has matured. Now one understands it; now one brings it to life for the first time! It means an immense deal for life in later years when, in this way, one can bring to new life what one has carried within since childhood. This is something entirely different from living in mere, untransformed memories.

[ 19 ] This other approach, however, can be based on a vibrant art of education. An art of education that does not seek to give the child sharply defined concepts at that age, but rather living ones. The former are, of course, good for certain purposes in life. But to the child, they appear as if we were to take hold of its hand and squeeze it so tightly that it cannot grow, that it must remain small, that it cannot take on new forms. Only when we advance to an art of education that conveys living concepts—concepts that live on within the child, just as its limbs live on with it, concepts that are not sharply defined but possess inner growth—only then do we give the child not only the right joy of life but also the right life force. When the child experiences this—as I have just indicated—as something entirely naive in the life of the soul, it is not a matter of intellectual understanding or comprehension. It is the acceptance of a revered authority that brings us life forces.

[ 20 ] And then, after this period, old age begins—a time when we essentially have no choice but to approach the world in such a way that, without immediately resorting to sharply defined concepts, the capacity for love thrives within it; a time when our immersion in things is such that we sometimes draw from them ideals that are quite illusory, yet all the more powerful, which fuel our love.

[ 21 ] Only after we have gone through all of this do we enter the intellectual stage of life—I would say—without harm to our full humanity. But what the older generations often impart to young people today as educational content is actually something that is only appropriate for a later age. And so, as teachers of young people today, we often find ourselves in a situation where they cannot understand us—not merely due to some chance circumstances, but from the very core of their being.

[ 22 ] In earlier eras, social life gave rise to forces through which the elderly were understood by the young in a completely different way than is the case today. This is why this social divide has opened up between the elderly and the young. One can understand this by grasping our time as it must be grasped when looking at the developments of the last three to four centuries. And it is not only through intellectual deepening but also through the revitalization of our spiritual life that we must once again attain that capacity through which adults can fully understand young people.

[ 23 ] But this is only one aspect, merely a very small part—even within the social demands of our time—of bridging the generational divide. It can be achieved only through a broadening of the entire inner human experience. Only those who inwardly transform today’s intellectualistic inner life into living thought and spiritual vision—or at least accept the results of this thinking and vision, for they also enliven the whole soul—only they will once again find the possibility of looking fully into the life of a child, in order to seek, from within that child’s life itself, the powers through which one can communicate with the child. But when one points to something like the gulf that has opened up between the elderly and the young in our time, one is at the same time pointing to the gulf that prevails in general between human being and human being, between man and woman, between class and class in our time. For just as a purely intellectual life separates us from the child, so, in essence, it also separates us from other human beings. Only when one has developed living thought—which in turn comes to resemble certain instinctive perceptions of existence in the world—does one realize that through this living thought one can once again find one’s place in the social order just as firmly as the instinctive human once did, making social organisms possible. One also finds that it is only through what one attains—by emptying one’s consciousness, that is, by receiving through inspiration from the spiritual world what spiritual beings reveal—that one becomes capable of truly understanding other human beings, of looking beyond the chasms of class and the chasms of gender.

[ 24 ] This is the second stage of social coexistence. The first stage is finding one’s own point of view through the imaginative—just as, in the past, it was through the instinctive immersion in the environment. The second stage is finding a bridge to another person—to the person who lives within a different social context. Today, this is made extraordinarily difficult for humanity; for, fundamentally speaking, one does not judge based on reality when one enters social life guided solely by one’s own feelings. In fact, it is precisely when one believes one is judging in the most realistic way that one is judging in the most unrealistic way. One need only observe how even leading figures today engage with life, seeking to master it, yet ultimately fail to grasp the reality of that life.

[ 25 ] I would like to cite an example, neither to take a position for nor against the figure I am about to mention; nothing is to be said for or against her—only her public persona is to be characterized. I would like to draw attention to a particularly striking and radical figure in recent social activism: Rosa Luxemburg. If one got to know her as a person, one encountered someone who, in fact, presented herself entirely with bourgeois manners: measured in her movements, measured in her speech, thoroughly restrained in every single movement, in every single word. There was even a certain gentleness—not anything impetuous—in this individuality. But when one heard her speak from the podium—well, let me give a concrete example—she would say something like this: “Yes, there have been eras in which people believed they originated from some spiritual worlds, and that these spiritual worlds had placed them into social life.” Today, she said, we know that human beings once climbed around in the trees in a highly indecent manner, unclothed, like monkeys, and that from this ape-like human being emerged those who today occupy the most diverse positions in social life. And this was presented in a way that, I would say, was imbued with a certain religious impulse, though not with the fire of immediate individual agency, but in a way that the great proletarian masses in particular could best understand: with a certain measured dryness, so that it could also be received with a certain dryness of feeling, and that, despite the dryness of this feeling, it aroused a certain enthusiasm, for the reason that it was felt: “After all, all people are essentially equal, and all social distinctions have been swept away!” — But what was said in this way was not spoken from a position of being immersed in social life. It was spoken from a theoretical standpoint, which, admittedly, believed itself to be full of life. It created, I would say, a reality that, at the end of the day, cannot be a reality—namely, not a fruitful reality.

[ 26 ] Most people today, in their approach to social life, are essentially like this striking figure, Rosa Luxemburg: they talk about social life without their words pulsing with the power that springs from immediate experience—from the lived experience of the social dimension within human beings. This is possible when, with the old, instinctive power of observing social structures, one finds one’s place in life and, furthermore, builds a bridge to people of other social strata, other classes, and even other age groups—as well as to individual human beings and their unique personalities. In earlier eras, this was achieved through extraordinarily deep-seated human instincts.

[ 27 ] They become powers of cognition—conscious powers of cognition—as the human being evolves into a spiritual organism, into the “sensory organ” that he becomes as a human totality, as I have described, through which he then lives in the spiritual world with his own will, free from a physical body.

[ 28 ] For living one’s way into another person is always an unconscious or conscious, body-less sensing of what the other is. It is a hollow theory to believe that we look at a person, observe the shape of their ear, nose, and face, and—because we know that we, too, have a nose like that, a forehead shaped in such-and-such a way, and so on, and because we have a “self”—we then unconsciously conclude that the other person also has a “self.” We do not do that. Anyone who can grasp this reality on a soul level knows that when we stand face to face with another person, what is involved is a direct perception of what lives within that other person. One might say: the direct perception of the other is nothing other than the act of seeing, elevated into the spiritual-soul realm.

[ 29 ] This is even the conclusion reached by certain strands of contemporary philosophy. Spiritual science shows that by consciously discovering the unconscious, instinctively acting force, human beings transcend themselves into other human individualities and can only then fully engage in social life. But then, once we are able to point to such a spiritualizing development of the human soul—based on the intellectualism we have attained at the stage of human development to which we have risen, or rather through what can grow out of it—then social perspectives can also be found. However, only when one can grasp the spiritual in this way does one arrive, with a power that dispels the earlier dread, at a direct experience of the impulse toward freedom within the human being.

[ 30 ] Now, this impulse toward freedom can truly be grasped by the soul only from within a full human life. I would like to illustrate once again—using the example of the art of education—that it can be grasped only from within a full experience.

[ 31 ] What, then, is the foundation of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was created based on a spiritual worldview and philosophy of life? It seeks, precisely as a social institution, to position itself within contemporary social life in the way that the forces of the present themselves require. Therefore, it is by no means founded on the idea of being a “worldview school” in any sense. It would be a completely mistaken understanding of the principle of the Waldorf School to believe that children there are to be taught any particular worldview. A worldview and outlook on life that is presented as spiritually grounded is actually intended for the teaching staff. And what is not merely theory but full life in this worldview and outlook on life can also find expression in pedagogical skill, in didactic tact, in everything the teacher does, and in the entire process of teaching and educating.

[ 32 ] What is often said about Waldorf education in individual statements is not at all the point. In response to these individual statements, people may well say: Yes, that is also what these and those teaching and educational methods aim for. In fact, when one looks at abstract principles, one can say that what can be expressed in abstract terms regarding the teaching and educational methods of the Waldorf school can also be found elsewhere. What matters here is the immediate life that flows from a life-generating worldview, rather than from a view of life that merely generates concepts.

[ 33 ] What is achieved by this? Well, it is difficult to define things with sharp boundaries when one wants to describe life. Therefore, I will express myself as follows: It certainly happens among the teaching staff at Waldorf schools that there are some who are not always exceptionally gifted—one can say this without offending anyone. But even if teachers possess a wide range of physical, emotional, and intellectual abilities, one must still say: Among the schoolchildren the teacher has before him or her, there may well be some who will one day develop abilities in life that far exceed the teacher’s own.

[ 34 ] We must therefore foster an educational approach that not only allows us to treat children of every age in such a way that they eventually develop the abilities we ourselves possess, but also enables them to freely develop talents that we ourselves do not possess—talents that are inherent in them. Therefore, even if one is not a genius oneself, one must not stand in the way of a child’s development toward genius. One can go on and on about how one should develop a child’s individuality, not impose anything on the child, but rather draw everything out of the child—one can say that, and if one looks only at the concept, it sounds wonderful, and one believes it to be something fruitful in life. Yet often, what one really means by such statements is nothing more than this: one develops in the child what one believes might be its individuality, and that individuality will not extend beyond the teacher’s own individuality.

[ 35 ] In the Waldorf school, everything is geared toward education in freedom. What constitutes the innermost spiritual and soul aspect of a human being is, in essence, left entirely untouched by the Waldorf school method. It is left just as untouched as, for example, a plant that is set in the ground and allowed to develop freely through light and air—one would not attach all sorts of sticks to it or tie it into a mold. The child’s spiritual-soul individuality is a sacred treasure; anyone who recognizes true human nature knows that it follows, entirely of its own accord, the impulses exerted upon it by its surroundings—by the whole world. Therefore, the teacher must remove whatever might hinder the development of this individuality, which is safeguarded with sacred reverence. The obstacles that may arise from the physical, the emotional, and also the spiritual realms can be discerned through a genuine understanding of human nature, provided this understanding is developed from a pedagogical and psychological perspective. And it is precisely when one develops such an understanding of human nature that one learns to observe with keen sensitivity where any obstacle to the free development of individuality lies. There is no need to intervene crudely here. One avoids imposing an alien form on this individuality. By recognizing that there is an obstacle that must be removed, one removes it. Then the individuality knows how to develop through its own power in a way that, in terms of its abilities, can go far beyond what the teacher possesses.

[ 36 ] But that means truly respecting human freedom! This human freedom requires that a person find within himself the impulses that guide and drive him in life. In earlier times, by instinctively immersing themselves in their social environment, people absorbed something from their surroundings that then took effect within them as moral and religious impulses. This, I would say, has been weakened in its power by intellectualism; what, in consciousness, leads back to the same social impulses that were once acquired instinctively must first be developed.

[ 37 ] As a result, however, modern man finds himself faced with two realities: on the one hand, the fact that he must now seek his moral and religious impulses within his own individuality, that he can find them only where his soul develops its most primordial powers; on the other hand, that over the course of the last three to four centuries, intellectualism has been cultivated—to such an extent that it is regarded as the sole authority, which can no longer provide such direct spiritual experience, but can only look to natural life and organize it.

[ 38 ] On the one hand, we are faced with what we as humanity—albeit in a magnificent way—are capable of achieving within the natural order through our intellect. In this sense, humanity as a whole is also productive. We have seen this productive aspect of humanity emerge over the past three to four centuries in the magnificent bridges that have been built between the view of nature and technology. Anyone who can trace what human beings have achieved through their ability to understand nature will also see how humanity has advanced in technical terms. Consider, for example, how Helmholtz—who was, in a certain sense, a genius—invented his ophthalmoscope.

[ 39 ] If you want to understand this, you must consider how close his predecessors had already come—as if propelled by scientific progress—and how he needed only to take that very last step. One might say that scientific thinking as such takes root in human beings and guides them forward. Then human beings become productive in the field of technology. For what they draw from nature lives within them as an inspiring gift in its own right. One can trace this all the way to the most recent discoveries: when someone becomes a natural scientist, what they take in propels their mind, as it were, from one technological innovation to the next, so that nature’s inspiration continues to have an effect. There is a power of inspiration there!

[ 40 ] Modern human beings lack this source of inspiration wherever ethical, volitional, and religious considerations—in short, everything that, originating in the human soul, ultimately leads to social formation and social life—come into play. Here, too, we need a force that acts in the spiritual and psychological realm just as the purely natural, inspiring force does in our external technology. We have made extraordinary progress in our external technology. What we have achieved there, we as modern humanity must pay for by the fact that the purely spiritual life—which drew its nourishment from old traditions in religious, moral, and social matters—has lagged behind for a while. But today we need the ability to arrive at immediate moral impulses from within human individuality, in a full experience of freedom. Because we face this social necessity, I was also able to point out in my *Philosophy of Freedom* that there must be such a thing as moral intuition. And I had already indicated at that time that what human beings can find in the form of genuine moral impulses—which now, in modern life, seem to act only on an individual level—and which strengthen them ethically and morally, can come only from a spiritual world. Thus, we are confronted with the necessity of rising to spiritual intuitions precisely because, in our observations of the external world, we do not arrive at anything that is spiritually productive.

[ 41 ] Anyone who is able to consciously immerse themselves in the inner experience of the technological age is perhaps most inclined, on the other hand, to say: Because we are compelled to overlook the lifeless nature of technology and remain grounded in the material reality of the technical world, we cannot draw moral impulses from what technology gives us in the same way that people of earlier generations could—who saw in storms, winds, rivers, and stars a spiritual and soulful essence that they perceived as forces of nature. We cannot do this because our understanding of nature has been purified of all that. We can therefore gain our moral world only if we grasp it directly, spiritually and individually, through free intuition.

[ 42 ] But for this, we need an inner, life-giving spiritual force. And this life-giving spiritual force, I believe, can be attained through immersion in the insights of that worldview and outlook on life that I have developed here. This view of the world and of life does not at all mean to say: “This is so and that is so” in terms of ideas and concepts; rather, it seeks only to present ideas and concepts so that they may become something so alive within us—in a spiritual sense—just like the lifeblood itself, so that human activity is stimulated, not merely human thinking. Thus, what can be developed as such a spiritually grounded worldview and outlook on life appears at the same time as a social impulse alongside an impulse toward knowledge.

[ 43 ] This may justify the statement: The social demands of the present, as they are frequently articulated in public life today, appear—to those who can impartially perceive the entire character of our time with the eye of the soul— appear to be, in fact, symptoms—symptoms that the old instinctive certainties of social life have been lost and that we are faced with the necessity of consciously establishing a spiritual life that, in turn, provides the same impulses that once characterized the instinctive life of bygone eras. Because one can believe that such a stimulation of the innermost spiritual life forces of the human being truly corresponds to the social demands of our time, one would like to speak of “the times” and their social demands in this sense, even in this era of severe social trials.

[ 44 ] Sometimes, even in the present, one has the feeling: Oh, the immediate hardships of the day, the misery of the moment, are so great that, strictly speaking, one should devote oneself solely to them, and only after some relief has been brought about in this regard should one look toward broader perspectives. Of all the objections that have been raised to me since I once again attempted, at the urging of a certain circle of friends, to speak about social life and to participate in all sorts of things related to it, I have best understood the numerous letters that have come to me time and again—especially two years ago—whose message was: What, exactly, are all these social ideas aiming for? Here in Central Europe, the immediate concern is simply bread! This objection has been raised time and again. One can understand it. But in another respect, one must also find it comprehensible that the earth, in terms of fertility, is in no age capable of withholding from humanity what it can give, provided that people find those social structures through which what the earth can give can flow in the right way into these social structures and be worked out within them.

[ 45 ] That is why I, too, find the view justified that it is certainly an extraordinarily loving and good thing to devote oneself to the immediate situation of the moment, and no one is prevented from doing so by the kind of reflections that have been made here. But just as that is good, it must be said: What can be done in the moment may be good, but on the other hand, it is essential to develop social understanding as quickly as possible so that the conditions that drive people into such distress and misery do not arise again.

[ 46 ] The fact that the old utopian and intellectualistic formulations of social life are no longer sufficient should have become clear to people when some of those who, until recently, had spoken with incredible certainty about what social life ought to be like were then confronted with what they were now supposed to do. Truly, there has hardly ever been greater bewilderment in social life than among those who seemed to know best how social structures should be formulated, if only the old could be swept away as quickly as possible.

[ 47 ] The experiment along these lines has, after all, led to the most terrible forces of destruction in Eastern Europe. And it is an illusion for humanity today to believe that, without thorough social thinking, feeling, and experience—and by merely continuing with the old formulations—it could arrive at anything other than forces of destruction. The specter of Eastern Europe is what looms menacingly over the West. But this looming threat should not leave us idle; rather, it should compel us to seek, at every moment, vibrant social forces and a vibrant articulation of social demands, since the abstract and utopian ones have proven fruitless.

[ 48 ] The next lectures will show exactly how this can happen. Today I simply wanted to offer a kind of introduction intended to show that behind what is characterized in spoken words as social ideas lies something deeper—something connected with a transformation of the entire life of the soul.

[ 49 ] In very recent times, people have begun to understand this even deep within proletarian circles. And anyone who looks around can see that social demands—and especially the sentiments toward them—are undergoing a very significant process of transformation. The old slogans are already being recognized, to a greater or lesser extent, as fruitless. And in many quarters, it is already being emphasized that we must turn to matters of the spirit, that moral and religious impulses must once again pulse through social life. But we do not yet have the life we truly need.

[ 50 ] Our era believes itself to be quite genuine and realistic, and has no idea how theoretical it actually is—especially when it comes to formulating social demands. That—and perhaps this should be stated in conclusion—cannot really be the task today: to immediately establish new social ideals or any other ideals at all. We have no need for the abstract articulation of ideals. What we lack is not this abstract inclination toward idealism. What we need is something else: the experience of the spiritual, not merely the conceptualization of the ideal. What we need is not merely to have the spirit in concepts, but in such a living way that it, I might say, walks among us like human beings in all our actions.

[ 51 ] If we understand the spirit in this way—as something living—then we will also be able to rise to it as a socially active force. In contrast, we may say: Today, we do not need mere formulations of ideals and social demands. We need something that gives us the strength to follow these ideals, something that gives us an inner life to make these ideals burn brightly, something that stirs our will to a full enthusiasm—one that is fruitful for the world—for these ideals and for spiritual life.