The Rudolf Steiner Archive

80. Theosophy and Tolstoy

[ 1 ] At the request of the Theosophical Society’s Bremen branch, Dr. Rud. Steiner of Berlin spoke about Tolstoy last Friday at the Gewerbehaus. The speaker first pointed out the connections between theosophical endeavors and Tolstoy—a figure who pursued the same goals—despite the radicalism evident in his works, words, and actions. Just as Tolstoy, at the dawn of a new cultural epoch, awakens this new life, so to speak, as a representative of his people—who were still spiritually underdeveloped—so too does Theosophy seek to bring about a new spiritual culture. However, if it is not to lead to sectarianism or dogmatism, it must engage with all such endeavors that also seek to create something new. Such a personality—who so sharply depicts all human conditions that seemed ripe for ruin, who separates human beings in their external relationships (to marriage, family, politics, art, etc.) from the inner human being, from the higher nature, from that which constitutes the field of humanity’s future development—such a figure must awaken a new spiritual life, and anyone who takes artistic and moral matters seriously cannot ignore him. Tolstoy is a moralist in the true sense of the word. A Russian writer once called him the Russian Luther, and yet he is a child of our time, and this designation does not fully apply to him. One can rather apply Goethe’s words to Tolstoy’s work: “Nature invented death in order to have much life.” As in nature, so it is with nations. It is among declining nations—not among rising ones—that the representatives of a new era emerge. Tolstoy views today’s Christianity as ossified; he hopes for an inner renewal of humanity and expects the true solution to social misery to come from the awakening of the spirit of Christ. He brusquely rejects all social reform plans that have a purely material starting point, and there is almost something dry about him when he repeatedly prescribes the same remedy: “Develop the God within you!” Tolstoy cannot be understood unless one understands the present age, and in particular Russian culture as well as the profound inner life of the Russian people. While the Eastern peoples may have lagged behind in culture, they nevertheless possess a certain certainty in their assessment of the spiritual world. Tolstoy has much in common with Western European philosophers, yet his manner of expression is different—even unusual; with just a few elementary strokes, he illustrates clearly and plainly what the former seek to explain with many complicated concepts. It is very easy to come to the conclusion that Tolstoy’s writings offer nothing new, and yet they possess something that sets them apart: namely, the clarity and ease with which difficult problems are resolved. He shares with theosophy the insight that life did not arise from matter, nor did spirit arise from matter, but rather that matter arose from the living, from the spirit. He scoffs at natural scientists who seek to examine the tree while viewing the forest from afar. In the story “Ivan,” Tolstoy most clearly depicts how the moment of death is merely the passing of the individual being, which is then reunited with the universe. Although Tolstoy rejects everything that outwardly appears mystical, he is nonetheless a mystic. However, he cannot be counted among the rational mystics such as Plato, Pythagoras, and the Gnostics, nor among the emotional mystics of the Middle Ages, such as Tauler, Eckhart, and Silesius, but rather among the mystics of the will. His mysticism—which he himself does not acknowledge—is born of the will to action. He demands that the will be transformed into love, which finds God by overcoming the lower instincts and thus fulfilling humanity’s destiny; such people, however, have no need for sociopolitical theories, but rather resolve the social question through humanity itself. The will to give birth to the future from the present is sharply defined in Tolstoy; there is something prophetic in him, along with the conviction that man is called to live out his ideals and must make them his guide. Tolstoy says, echoing Fichte: “Man can do what he ought to do, and when he says, ‘I cannot,’ it is because he does not want to.” The speaker was rewarded with rich applause for his witty and interesting remarks.