The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. War: A Process of Decay—Central Europe and the Slavic East; The Dead as Agents of Human Progress

[ 1 ] Not only must our spiritual-science worldview address the development and ascent of individual souls, but above all it must truly help us to gain further perspectives for our understanding of life. And in our time, it must be of particular concern to us to gain such broader perspectives for the assessment of life. Certainly, it is a great and also significant task for the individual to advance themselves through what they can gain as the fruit of Spiritual Science self-education. And only by truly advancing themselves can individual human beings contribute to the development of humanity as a whole. But our attention should not be focused solely on this; rather, as adherents of the anthroposophical worldview, we should also be able to perceive the great events of our time from a higher perspective, a truly spiritual perspective. We should truly be able to place ourselves on a higher plane when assessing what is happening. And a few perspectives, particularly with regard to the great events of our time, may be indicated today, because our present gathering takes place in this fateful era.

[ 2 ] Let us start with something that is familiar to us as human beings. At certain times, people are afflicted by illness. Illness is usually viewed as something that damages our organism, something that invades our organism like an enemy. Now, such a general perspective is by no means always justified. Certainly, there are symptoms of illness that must be judged from this perspective, where, so to speak, the illness invades our organism like an enemy. But this is not always the case. In fact, it is not even the case in most instances; rather, in most cases, illness is something entirely different. In most cases, illness is not the enemy, but rather the very friend of the organism. That which is the enemy of the organism usually precedes the illness; it develops within the person before the outwardly visible illness has broken out. There are conflicting forces within the organism, and the illness that breaks out at some point is the organism’s attempt to save itself from these conflicting forces, which had not been noticed before. Illness is often the beginning of the body’s work to bring about healing. Illness is what the body undertakes to combat the hostile influences that precede the illness. Illness is the final stage of the process, but it signifies the struggle of the body’s healthy forces against what lies in wait within. It is there to drive out of the person what lurks within. Only when we view the vast majority of illnesses in this way do we arrive at a correct understanding of the disease process. Illness thus indicates that something occurred prior to its onset, which is precisely what the illness is meant to expel from the organism. When certain aspects of life are viewed in the right light, one easily arrives at what has just been said. The causes can lie in the most diverse areas. What matters is what I have just indicated: that we view illnesses as the organism’s act of self-defense against the things that are to be expelled.

[ 3 ] Now, I do not believe there is any comparison that could be as apt as comparing the sum of such significant, profoundly impactful events—which we have been experiencing across much of the globe since the beginning of August 1914—to the process of human development. We must recognize precisely that these war-related events are indeed a process of illness. But it would be wrong to believe that we can cope with this simply by viewing this process of illness in the mistaken sense in which many processes of illness are viewed: as if it were the enemy of the organism. What lies at the root as the cause precedes the process of illness. Now, especially in our time, we can see quite clearly how little people today are inclined to take into account such truths, which must immediately appear self-evident to anyone who takes in a spiritual-science worldview not merely with the intellect, but also with the feelings.

[ 4 ] We have, after all, had to endure many infinitely painful experiences, especially over the course of the last, let’s say, nine months—painful experiences regarding people’s capacity for judgment. Is it not actually the case that, when one reads what is ultimately disseminated through the literature that is most widely read and distributed across the most diverse countries of the world, is it not as if the people who judge today’s events were assuming that history actually began in July 1914? That was the saddest experience we have had to endure, alongside all the other painful things: it has become clear that precisely those who set the tone—or rather, those who supply the headlines and shape public opinion—know basically nothing about the unfolding of events and look only at the immediate present. That is why these endless discussions, these utterly futile discussions, have arisen. What is the cause of the current armed conflicts? Time and again, people have asked: Is he to blame? Is that person to blame? — and so on. People have rarely looked back further than July, or at most June 1914. I mention this because what I am saying is truly a characteristic of our materialistic age. It is commonly believed that materialism brings about only materialistic thinking and a materialistic worldview. That is not the case. Materialism brings about not only these things, but also short-sightedness; materialism brings about intellectual laziness and a lack of insight. What constitutes materialistic thinking leads to the point where, in the end, one can prove anything and believe anything. And it is truly part of that self-education that genuinely well-intentioned anthroposophy must provide us with—that we realize that if one remains solely within the realm of materialism, one can prove anything and believe anything.

[ 5 ] Let’s take a simple example. Whenever the Spiritual Science worldview has been put forward here and there in recent years, and this or that person felt compelled to assert their own views in opposition to it, one could often hear: “But Kant has already proven through his philosophy that human beings have limits to their cognition, and that one cannot reach the point where the worldview of Spiritual Science aims to go in cognition.” — Then they cited the certainly very interesting points through which Kant is said to have proven that one cannot penetrate the spiritual world with human cognition. If one nevertheless advocated Spiritual Science, then people would come and believe: He is denying everything that Kant has proven! And of course, there was an implication in this: that must be a particularly foolish person, for he is denying what has been rigorously proven.

[ 6 ] That is not the case at all. The Spiritual Science scholar does not deny at all that what Kant proved is absolutely correct; rather, it is clear that this has been quite well proven. But suppose, for a moment, that someone—back in the days before the microscope had been invented—had rigorously proven that there were minute cells in plants, but that these could never be found because the human eye is not equipped to see them. That could have been rigorously proven, and the proof would be absolutely correct, for the human eye, as it is constructed, can never penetrate into the organism of the plant down to these smallest cells. An absolutely correct proof that can never be overturned. Yet life has developed in such a way that the microscope was invented to supplement the human eye, and that despite the rigorous proof, people have come to recognize the tiniest cells. Only once it is realized that evidence is completely worthless for the attainment of truth—that evidence may be correct but ultimately means nothing special for the progress of truth-knowledge—only then will one stand on solid ground. Then one will know: The evidence may of course be sound, but the evidence does not at all have the task of truly leading to the truth. Just think for a moment of the comparison I gave, and you will see that just as the proof that human vision does not extend to the cell can be absolutely rigorous, so too can the proof that human knowledge, as Kant says, cannot extend to supersensible worlds. The proofs were absolutely correct, but life goes beyond proofs. For this is also something that is given to us on the path of spiritual research: that by broadening our horizons, we truly come to appeal to something other than the human intellect and its proofs. And those who limit themselves to materialistic mental images are indeed led to an unbridled faith in proofs. If they have a proof in their pocket, they are convinced of the truth. Spiritual research will show us precisely that, in essence, one can prove both sides quite well, but that intellectual proofs have no significance for the attainment of true truth. And so it is a concomitant of our materialistic age that people fall into intellectual myopia. And when this intellectual myopia is further permeated by passions, then what we see today—not only among the European nations fighting with weapons, but also in the mutual hostility of the European nations, where one side hurls every possible accusation at the other and there is essentially no prospect that one could ever convince the other—not only during the war—comes to pass. And anyone who believes that a neutral state could ever choose between the claims of two hostile states would be holding a naïve belief. Of course, what is said on one side can be defended just as well, indeed substantiated by all manner of evidence, as what is said on the other side. Insight can only be gained by engaging with the deeper foundations of the entire course of human development.

[ 7 ] For several years before the outbreak of this war, I have been attempting, through the cycle on the individual Folk-souls and their influence on people in various European regions, to shed some light on how the individual nations relate to one another, and to show that truly different forces are at work among the various peoples. Today we would like to supplement what was said there with a few additional perspectives.

[ 8 ] Our materialistic age thinks far too abstractly. Above all, our materialistic age completely fails to take into account that there is a genuine process of development in life, that human beings must allow what is within them to mature so that it may gradually ripen into true judgment. Human beings—as we know, and as is described in sufficient detail in *The Education of the Child from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science*—undergo a process of development such that, roughly speaking, their physical body develops during the first seven years, their etheric body from the seventh to the fourteenth year, and so on. If even this progress in the development of the individual human being is given little consideration, then the parallel phenomenon, the corresponding phenomenon, is given even less consideration. The processes that take place within the various national contexts are, after all, guided and directed—as we all know from Spiritual Science—by beings of the higher hierarchies. We speak, in the true sense of the word, of folk-souls, of folk-spirits. And we know, for example, that the national spirit of the Italian people inspires what we call the feeling soul; that the French national spirit inspires what we call the intellectual or emotional soul; that the inhabitants of the British Isles are inspired by the consciousness soul; and in Central Europe, what we call the human ego is inspired. This is not, however, a value judgment on the individual nations, but merely a statement of fact. That, for example, an inspiration of the people inhabiting the British Isles consists in the fact that, as a nation, they bring into the world everything that is brought about through the inspiration of the consciousness soul on the part of the national spirit. It is remarkable how nervous people become in this very area. When I again emphasized here and there during the war, what, as I said, had already been stated earlier in the aforementioned lecture series, indeed, there were people who took it as a kind of insult to the British people that it was said they had the task of inspiring the consciousness soul, while the national soul—which is the German national soul—has the task of inspiring the human ego. It was just as if one were to take it as an insult to say: Salt is white, paprika is red. — It is a simple characterization, the description of a truth that exists, and as such a truth one must first accept it. One will cope much better with what prevails among the individual members of humanity if one looks at the peculiarities that individual peoples possess, and not if one mixes everything together, as today’s materialistic view does. Of course, the individual human being rises above what is imparted to him through his Folk-souls, and that is precisely the task of our Anthroposophical Society: to lift the individual human being out of the bondage of the group soul and to elevate him to universal humanity. But it remains true that the individual human being, insofar as they are part of a national culture, is inspired by that culture in such a way that, for example, the Italian national spirit speaks to the feeling soul, the French national spirit to the intellectual or emotional soul, and the British national spirit to the conscious soul. We must therefore form the mental image that the national spirit hovers, as it were, above what individual human beings begin in the individual nations. But just as we see that a development is already present in the human being—as one can say of the individual human being: The ego develops in a certain way, undergoing a specific development during a particular period of life—so too can one speak of a development, indeed of a genuine development, with regard to the folk-souls in relation to their people. Only this development is somewhat different from that of the individual human being.

[ 9 ] Let us take, for example, the Italian people. So there we have this people, and then the national soul that belongs to this people. The folk-souls are beings from the supersensible world; they belong to the world of the higher hierarchies. They inspire the feeling soul, and this happens continuously as long as the people live—the Italian people, since we are speaking of this people—but they inspire the feeling soul in various ways at different times. There are times when the folk-souls inspire the members of the individual nations in such a way that this inspiration takes place, as it were, in the soul. Then the folk-souls soar in higher regions of the spirit, and their inspiration takes place in such a way that it inspires only into the soul’s qualities. Then there are times when the Folk-souls descend further and engage more strongly with the individual members of the nations, inspiring them so powerfully that not only do people receive this inspiration into their soul qualities, but it acts so strongly that people become dependent on the Folk-souls even in their physical qualities. As long as a people stands under the influence of the folk-souls in such a way that they inspire only the soul-spiritual qualities, the character of the people is not yet so pronounced. There the forces of the folk-souls do not act in such a way that the whole human being is gripped right down to the blood. Then comes a time when one can already discern, as it were, from the way a person looks out of their eyes and from the features of their face, how the national spirit is working within them. This is a sign that the national soul has sunk deeply; it takes a strong and intense hold of the whole person.

[ 10 ] In the case of the Italian people, the point in time I was referring to—when the national spirit sank deeply into the collective consciousness, exerting such an influence that its imprint could be found in individual people—was around the middle of the 16th century, roughly around 1550. Then, in turn, the folk-souls, as it were, drifted back, and from that time on, this has been passed down to subsequent generations through heredity. One can therefore say: The most intense connection between the Italian people and their folk-souls was around 1550. That is when the Italian folk-soul descended to its deepest level; that is when the people of the Italian peninsula acquired their most distinct character. If we go back to the time before 1550, we see that the character traits are by no means so pronounced that they could strike one as strongly as they did from 1550 onward. It is only then that the characteristic traits we know as Italianness truly begin. It is then, so to speak, that the true marriage was first concluded between the Italian folk-soul and the emotional soul of the individual human being who belongs to the Italian people.

[ 11 ] For the French people—I am not speaking here of the individual who is capable of rising above the national character—a similar moment arrived around 1600, at the beginning of the 17th century, when the national spirit sank to its lowest point and permeated the people entirely. At that time, the national spirit completely took hold of the intellectual or emotional soul.

[ 12 ] For the British people, that moment came in the mid-17th century, around 1650. It was then that the British people first acquired their outwardly British identity.

[ 13 ] If you know such things, then a great deal will become clear to you, for you can now, for example, pose the question in a completely different way: What is the situation with Shakespeare in England? — Shakespeare was active in England before the British national spirit had its most intense influence on the English people. That is why he is not properly understood in England. As is well known, there are editions there in which everything that is not entirely to the governesses’ taste has been purged. Shakespeare is very often moralized in the most extreme sense. And we know, of course, that the deepest understanding of Shakespeare has been brought about not in England, but in the development of the Central European spirit.

[ 14 ] Now you will ask: When exactly did this interaction between the national spirit and the people of Central Europe take place? — The fact is this: Because in Central Europe the ego is the determining factor, a kind of descent of the national spirit takes place, followed by a return, then another descent, then another return—and so these cycles repeat themselves. And so, in the period roughly when the wonderful world of legends surrounding Parzival and the Grail arose, we have such a descent of the national spirit, a uniting with the individual souls, a return, and a subsequent descent, roughly between the years 1750 and 1830. It is then that what lives in Central Europe is most deeply grasped by the Central European national spirit. Since then, there has been a retreat of the national spirit once more. So you see how it is actually quite understandable that, let us say, Jakob Böhme lived in a time when he could have very little of the German national spirit. That was not the time when the national spirit was connected with the individual souls of the people. Jakob Böhme is therefore, although he is called the “Teutonic Philosopher,” a person who is temporally independent of what his national spirit is; who stands, as it were, as an uprooted phenomenon, as an eternal phenomenon within his time. If we take Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, they are also German philosophers who are deeply rooted in the German national spirit. And that is precisely what is characteristic: that these philosophers, who lived between 1750 and 1830, are deeply rooted in the national spirit. So you see that it is not merely a matter of simply knowing: In the Italian people, the national spirit works through the soul of feeling; in the French people, the national spirit works through the soul of understanding; in the British people, the national spirit works through the soul of consciousness; in the Central European people, the national spirit works through the ego—but that one must also know that this occurs at certain points in time. And the events that unfold can only be explained historically if one truly knows such things. That nonsense that is passed off as science, where one takes the documents and lists the events one after another and says that one must deduce one thing from another—this nonsense of the historians certainly does not lead to a true history, to an understanding of the becoming of humanity, but rather, one might say, to a falsification of that which reigns and works in human history.

[ 15 ] And when one observes how the force that drives these individual peoples—and others could certainly be described as well—affects them in very different ways, one sees the contrasting elements that are at work there. And one sees that what is happening today has truly not only been happening in recent years, but has been preparing itself over the centuries.

[ 16 ] Let us look eastward, toward the region that is the cradle of Russian culture. The very peculiarity of Russian culture is this: Russian culture can only come into its own once the moment arrives when the Russian Folk-soul unites with the Spirit-Self—this is also already expressed in the aforementioned cycle. That is to say, a later period must come in which that which may be characteristic of this peculiarity of Eastern Europe will first take shape. And that will then be quite different from what unfolds in Western Europe or in Central Europe. For the time being, however, it is quite understandable that what is destined for Russian culture is not yet present at all, but that Russian culture—like the individual human being—stands in such a way to the Spirit-Self that it always turns upward. The individual member of the Russian people and even profound Russian philosophers do not speak in the way that the greatest things are currently spoken of in Central Europe, but they speak in a completely different manner.

[ 17 ] Here we find something highly characteristic. What, then, is the most distinctive feature of this Central European spiritual life? You all know that there was a time of great mystics, during which Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and others were active. They all sought within the human mind that which is contained within the human mind itself as the divine. They sought to find God within their own breast, within their own soul, “the little spark in the mind,” as Eckhart put it. Within there, they said, there must be something where the divinity is immediately present. And so arose that striving in which the “I” sought to unite with the divinity within itself. This divinity sought to be won; the divinity sought to be won in the process of becoming. This runs as a thread through the entire Central European being. Consider how infinitely profound it is when Angelus Silesius—who stands, I might say, entirely on the ground of Central European culture and Central European spiritual life—says in one of his beautiful sayings, “Cherubic Wanderer”: When I die, it is not I who die, but God who dies within me. — Consider how infinitely profound that is! For the one who says this has grasped the idea of immortality in a living way, for he felt: When death occurs in the individual human being, it is because the human being is permeated by the Godhead—this phenomenon of death is not a phenomenon of the human being, but of God, and since God cannot die, death can only be an illusion. Death, therefore, cannot be the destruction of life. He who says, “When I die, it is not I who die, but God who dies within me,” knows that an immortal soul exists. — It is an immensely profound feeling that lives within Angelus Silesius. This is precisely a consequence of the fact that inspiration occurs within the self here.

[ 18 ] When inspiration takes hold of the feeling soul, what happened to Giordano Bruno, for example, can occur. The monk feels deeply moved by what Copernicus discovered; he feels the whole world coming alive. Read a single line by Giordano Bruno, and you will find confirmation that, insofar as he grew out of Italian folklore, he is precisely the proof that the folk-souls inspire the soul of feeling.

[ 19 ] Cartesian, Descartes, was born at the very turning point in French development when the French national spirit truly united with the French people. Read a page by Cartesius, the French philosopher, and you will find that on every page he confirms what Spiritual Science has discovered: that the inspiration of the national spirit acts upon the intellectual soul.

[ 20 ] Read Locke or Hume or any other English philosopher, up to Mill and Spencer; everywhere you will find inspiration from the conscious soul.

[ 21 ] Read Fichte as he grapples with the “I” itself, and you will find the inspiration of the “I” through the Folk-souls. This is precisely what is distinctive: that this Central European folk-soul is experienced within the “I,” and that therefore the “I” is the true striving entity—the “I,” I would say, with all its strength and all its errors, with all its missteps and also with all its triumphs. If this Central European human being is to find the path to Christ, he must give birth to it within his own soul.

[ 22 ] Try, just for a moment, to look—unless it has been adopted from Western European culture—for this idea in Russian intellectual life: the idea of experiencing Christ or God within oneself. You will not find it. There, it is universally expected that whatever enters into history does so in such a way that, as Soloviev says, it enters like a “miracle.” Russian intellectual life is very inclined to view the resurrection of Christ in the supernatural, to venerate the external intervention of an inspiring power, but this power speaks as if humanity were beneath it, as if the inspiration were moving over humanity like a cloud, not as if it were entering into the human self. This intimate communion of the self with its God, or, in the case of Christ, with Christ, this longing for Christ to be born within one’s own soul—this can only be found in Central Europe. And once Eastern European culture reaches the stage of development appropriate to it, this will be evident in the establishment of a culture that hovers above humanity, representing a kind of group-soul character, but on a higher level than the old group-soul character. For the time being, we must find it quite natural that, in the manner in which even the Russian philosopher speaks, there is talk everywhere of something that hovers like the spiritual world above the human world, but which one can never approach as intimately as the Central European seeks to approach with his ego that which is divine, that which surges and weaves through the world as the divine.

[ 23 ] And when I have often spoken of the divinity flowing, weaving, and surging through the world, this stems from the sensibility of the Central European people and could not be understood in the same way—as it is received by the Central European mind—by any other people in Europe. That is what is characteristic, what is unique, about the Central European people.

[ 24 ] These are the forces that exist within individual peoples, forces that stand in opposition to one another, forces that must therefore repeatedly and inevitably compete with one another, forces that must violently discharge themselves, just as clouds discharge themselves, producing lightning and thunderstorms.

[ 25 ] But do we not see, one might say now, how a word has resounded in Eastern Europe that was, in a sense, like a battle cry and was intended to have the effect of Eastern European culture now beginning to spread over and overwhelm the less valuable Western Europe? Do we not see how the Slavophiles, the Pan-Slavists, and Pan-Slavism emerged—especially in minds like Dostoevsky’s and others like him—how it emerged with the specific points of its program, how it was said: “All of you Western Europeans, you have a culture that has gone rotten; it must be replaced by Eastern Europe.” — Then a whole theory was constructed, a theory that culminated above all in the assertion: In the West, everything has become rotten; this must be replaced by the fresh forces of the East. We have the good Orthodox religion, which we do not fight against, but which we have accepted just as the cloud of the national spirit hovering over the people, and so on. And then witty “theories were constructed, quite witty theories, about what the principles and intentions of the old Slavic world might already be, and how the truth must now spread from the East across Central and Western Europe.

[ 26 ] I said that the individual can rise above his national identity. In a certain respect, Soloviev, the great Russian philosopher, was such an individual. Although one can sense in every line he writes that he is writing as a Russian, he nevertheless stands above his national identity. In the early part of his life, Soloviev was a Pan-Slavist. But he examined more closely what the Pan-Slavists and Slavophiles had established as a kind of national philosophy, a national worldview. And what did Soloviev, the Russian, find? He asked himself: Is that which constitutes Russianness truly already present in the present? Is it perhaps already contained within those who advocate Pan-Slavism, who advocate Slavophilism? — And lo and behold, he did not rest until he arrived at the truth. What did he find? He examined the claims of the Slavophiles, to whom he had previously belonged; he took them to task, and there he found that a large part of their modes of thought, their assertions, and their intentions were derived from the Jesuit-friendly French philosopher de Maistre, that he is the great teacher of the Slavophiles in the realm of worldview. Soloviev himself proved that Slavophilism did not grow out of its own soil, but originated with de Maistre. And he proved even more. He unearthed a long-forgotten German book from the 19th century that no one in Germany knows about. The Slavophiles copied entire sections of it into their literature. What kind of peculiar phenomenon has occurred here? People believe that something is coming from the East that is supposed to have originated in the East, yet it is a purely Western import. It has come over from the West and has then been sent back to Western people. Western people are being introduced to their own forms of thought, because such forms of thought do not yet exist in the East.

[ 27 ] It is precisely when one examines things closely that what Spiritual Science has to say is confirmed everywhere. So that even in what is surging toward us from the East, we are dealing with something that is still in its infancy, with something that will only find its development when it embraces what has developed in Central Europe just as lovingly as Central Europe once lovingly embraced the Greek and Latin essence from the South. For the development of humanity proceeds in such a way that the later takes up the earlier. And what I was able to characterize in the public lecture as the Faustian mindset of Central Europe with the words: There was a year 1770—Goethe perceived it as a Faustian striving when he said: “/p”

Alas, I have now studied
law and medicine,
and, alas, theology as well,
with the utmost diligence.
And here I stand, poor fool that I am,
just as wise as I was before!

[ 28 ] There emerged an immensely rich German intellectual life, an immensely intense and rich intellectual pursuit within German intellectual life. But if Goethe had written his *Faust* forty years later, he certainly would not have begun: “I have now, alas! studied philosophy... ," and so on, and have now become the wise man for all time—but he would have written his *Faust* exactly as he did in 1770. This living striving comes precisely from the inspiration of the Folk-souls flowing into the ego, from that intimate union of the ego with the national spirit. This is a fundamental characteristic of Central European intellectual culture. And Eastern European culture must lovingly connect with this, must take it in. That which had to flow into Central Europe was once received and taken in by Southern culture. But now, when the elemental wave of development rolls in from the East, it is no different than when a student is angry at his teacher because he is supposed to learn something from him and therefore wants to beat him up. It is a somewhat trivial comparison, but it is nonetheless a comparison that captures the matter quite precisely. Masses of people with very different inner forces of development live together in Europe. These various forces of development must come into mutual competitive interaction; they must assert themselves in different ways. The conflicting forces at work here, the forces that come into opposition, have developed over a very, very long time. And especially when one looks at the finer details, one finds that what Spiritual Science has to say is expressed everywhere within them.

[ 29 ] Is it not wonderfully expressed? Does not the tide of European development surge forward in such a way that it is, as it were, symbolically presented to all of humanity: how the intimate coexistence of the “I” with the spiritual world must be felt in Central Europe; how God is to be experienced in the “little spark within the soul,” how Christ is to be experienced in the “little spark within the soul”! Christ himself must become actively alive within the human “I.” Therefore, in Central Europe, as in no other European language, the entire development is gradually tending toward the use of the term “I.” And “I” is “I-C-H.” Like a powerful symbol in the intimate interplay of what can be most sacred to the soul with the soul itself, this stands in Central Europe: I = I-CH — Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ and at the same time the human “I.” Thus the national spirit works, inspiring the people to express in characteristic words what the underlying facts are. I am well aware that people laugh when such things are said; when it is stated that for centuries the national spirit has been at work so that the term “I” might come into being, a term that is so symbolically significant. But let the people laugh! In just a few more decades, they will no longer laugh, but will then call it something far more significant than what people today call the laws of nature.

[ 30 ] What appeared to be a wave of development had a very distinctive character. Consciousness sometimes reveals only a very small part of the truth; but what is at work in the depths of the subconscious expresses itself much, much more truthfully. We speak, for example, of the Germanic peoples. Words are formed by the active genius of language. A portion of the inhabitants of Central Europe call themselves “Germans.” But when they speak of the Germanic peoples, they include Germany, Austria, Holland, the Scandinavian peoples, and also the inhabitants of the British Isles. They extend the term “Germanic peoples” over a vast area. The inhabitant of the British Isles, however, rejects this. He calls only the German “German”—a Germanic people. He himself does not apply the word “Germanic people” to himself. The German language, with this word, encompasses a much larger circle. As such, it is inclined to place the word in the service of selflessness; the German does not merely call himself a Germanic people; he includes the others as well. The other, the Briton, rejects this. If you consider the marvel of linguistic genius, you will see that there is truly something marvelous in it. In relation to what people hold in their consciousness, maya—the great illusion—arises. What reigns in the depths of the subconscious has a much, much truer effect. In it, something immensely significant and profound is expressed.

[ 31 ] And now compare this with the intimate approach one must take to understand the power dynamics in Europe; compare this intimate approach with the crude, clumsy way in which people today view the relationships between the European nations, and only then will you be able to grasp the devastation the materialistic age has wrought upon human judgment. The fact that people have begun to think that matter sustains and upholds everything is not the worst part; rather, the real problem is that they have become short-sighted, unable to see the main point, unable to take even a single step beyond the veil that is woven over the truth as maya.

[ 32 ] Materialism has achieved exactly what it set out to do. And here, too, the Genius has been at work; only the Genius who has brought about materialism as the supreme leader is Ahriman. He has exerted a powerful influence over the past few centuries—a truly powerful influence. And I would like to briefly point out a chapter that people may not like to mention today. When it happens, it is regarded as a particular form of madness. The easiest way to influence a person is to instill into their imagination and mind, while they are still young, that which is then to grow within them. In later life, very few people can still be thoroughly taught anything. Ahriman would therefore never have better prospects for truly conditioning souls to be materialistic than if he were to instill into youthful, childlike souls what would then continue to work in the subconscious. If materialistic thought forms are already absorbed during the period when a person does not yet think with intellectual faculties, then people will learn to think thoroughly materialistically if materialism is already planted in childish minds! Ahriman did this by inspiring a writer of the materialistic era with the idea of “Robinson Crusoe.” For anyone who allows “Robinson” to work upon them with a truly perceptive spirit will see how thoroughly materialistic mental images are at work in “Robinson.” It may not seem so, but the whole structure of “Robinson”—how he is driven by external circumstances in this adventurous life until, in the end, even religion grows like cabbages in a field—all of this prepares the child’s mind very well for materialistic thinking. And when one considers that during a certain period—in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries—there were Bohemian, Portuguese, Hungarian, and so on versions of “Robinson” modeled after “Robinson Crusoe,” one must say: the work has been thoroughly accomplished, and the part that reading “Robinson” has played in the development of materialism is something immense.

[ 33 ] In light of such phenomena, it must be pointed out that there is something else that children should absorb into their understanding well into adulthood: namely, the fairy tales that are part of Central European culture, and especially those collected by the Brothers Grimm. This is far better literature for children than *Robinson Crusoe*. And if, in our time, what occurred among the European peoples in such a terrible, and fateful manner, is understood as a warning to look more closely at the way in which, beneath the surface of events, that which extends into the present has developed, then one will recognize above all that it really does not matter, in the end, whether a few German scholars send their medals and diplomas back to England! If the warning of the times proves so powerful that one recognizes the significance of the materialistically inspired consciousness-soul of the British people, then one will also see through the significance of “Robinson” reading and eradicate the whole of Robinson once and for all. Much more thorough, much more radical action will have to be taken if the warnings of our present time are ever to be taken into account in the right sense.

[ 34 ] It has now been thirty-five years since I began interpreting Goethe, specifically in terms of his work on Spiritual Science. I have tried to show how Goethe’s theory of evolution represents a truly great, spiritually grounded theory of evolution. The time must come when this is recognized in wider circles. For Goethe presented a great, powerful theory of evolution that is spiritual in nature. This was difficult for people to understand. Then, in the materialistic age, Darwin was able to have a greater impact, presenting in a crude, materialistic way what Goethe had presented in a refined, spiritual way as a theory of evolution. It was a thorough anglicization that gripped Central Europe. Now imagine the tragedy that actually lies in the fact that the most English of natural scientists in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, who swore by Darwin, had to appear with his furious hatred of all things English, and when the war broke out, was one of the first to return the medals and diplomas he had received from England. He was probably already too old to send back the English-tinged Darwinism, but that would have been the essential point, the more important one.

[ 35 ] The matters at hand are immensely profound, they are immensely significant, and they are connected to the necessary spiritual deepening of our time. Once one realizes how infinitely deeper Goethe’s theory of colors is than Newton’s, and how infinitely deeper Goethe’s theory of evolution is than Darwin’s, only then will one become aware of what Central European spiritual life holds, even with regard to such highest realms.

[ 36 ] Through all this, I wish only to evoke in your souls a sense of the warning that the current grave, fateful events must serve as for us. A warning to work, which is meant to lead us to reflect on what lies within Central European spiritual life and what is, in a sense, an obligation to bring it forth and bring it to the fore. That is also what I meant when I spoke yesterday in the public lecture about how this Central European spiritual life contains seeds that must lead to blossoms and fruits.

[ 37 ] And when we repeatedly affirm: the conscious life of the soul takes place on the surface, but beneath it lies everything that has been spoken of in recent days, then we may also direct our thoughts to the fact that, even in the present, something quite different from what they are conscious of still lives within the impulses of numerous people. Let us not believe that the people in the West and East, who must defend the great Central European stronghold, are fighting only for what they are conscious of in their outer consciousness. Let us look above all to the impulses that are unconscious to many, that pass through blood and death today, but there they are, the impulses; they are present, and we should be able to draw from Spiritual Science the feeling, as we look to the East and West, that within the impulses of those who are making the sacrifices there lives that which the future must yet bring forth for outer experience—of which perhaps even the combatants themselves have scarcely a notion in their consciousness. Only then, when we contemplate it in this way, does what is happening there permeate us with the right feeling, with the right sense.

[ 38 ] But let us consider how many souls are involved in these events—events whose military grandeur is unmatched by anything that has ever existed in the conscious history of humanity—let us consider how many souls are passing through blood and death, and let us consider that these souls will look down upon the death that has been imposed upon them by the great events of the age. Let us consider that, in the sense of what was said the day before yesterday, the youthful etheric bodies permeate the spiritual atmosphere. Let us consider that not only the souls, the individualities, will be in the spiritual world, but that useful elements from the youthful etheric bodies will permeate the spiritual atmosphere. Let us try, starting from there, to look at the warnings that should be heeded by the people who remain here on Earth. Indeed, the individual who has passed through the gate of death serves as a reminder of the great tasks that must be accomplished in European culture. And these reminders must be heeded. And people must be inclined, from the depths of spiritual life, to gain insights—insights that recognize the true nature of the world in which we live. Once one comes to feel in this sense—that with every person who today remains in the prime of life out on the battlefield stands a warning voice, a caller for the spiritualization of humanity within European culture—then one will have understood it correctly. And one does not wish merely for such places as the one where we stand to yield only abstract knowledge: that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, astral body, and an I; the human being passes through many incarnations; the human being has karma, and so on—but what we wish is that the souls participating in our Spiritual Science life may be stirred in their innermost depths to the emotional life just described, to the shared experience of what the warnings of those who died prematurely will be in the near future. The most beautiful thing we can acquire as adherents of Spiritual Science is the living life that is to pass like a breath through the ranks of those who count themselves among us. Not knowledge, not insight alone, but this life, the becoming real of this life.

[ 39 ] In recent times, several members have passed away from the physical plane. Among them was a young colleague, our dear Fritz Mitscher. And I had the task—prompted in part by karma—of speaking at his cremation in Basel. I had certain words to say to the departing soul. Among other things, the words I spoke to the soul expressed our conviction that she would remain a colleague even after passing through the gate of death. I had to speak these words out of the awareness that what animates us all is not merely a theory, but that what we express as a theory must fill the entire soul with full life. Then, however, we must stand by those who have passed through the gate of death just as we stand by those who are still living here. Yes, we must not hesitate to say to ourselves: Those living in the physical body are prevented by the most manifold circumstances from fully living the spiritual life. How many obstacles can we observe in this physical earthly life among human beings when it comes to recognizing—and then also fulfilling—the truly great tasks of development! But we can rely on the dead far better in many ways. This sense that they are among us, this entrusting of a special mission, led me to deliver the eulogy in a fitting manner for our friend Fritz Mitscher, who, having died prematurely, has passed through the gate of death. And what is said of him applies to many others who have passed through the gate of death. We see them as our most important collaborators, and there will be no misunderstanding when I say: In our spiritual work, we can rely on the dead far more than on the living.

[ 40 ] But in order for us to be able to speak of such things at all, we must be fully immersed in what our spiritual movement can offer us. I am confident that, especially now, in the outer realm of the spiritualization of future human culture, those who have passed through the gate of death in our fateful times are the most important collaborators. For this death, upon which those who have passed through the gate of death look back, will be a great teacher. And many today need a teacher stronger than life can provide. This can be seen in many examples.

[ 41 ] I would like to cite one example—though many others could be mentioned: A sensational article, critical of the Spiritual Science I advocate, appeared several years ago in a magazine published in southern Germany, *Hochland*. This article caused quite a stir. It made sense to many people because it was written by a very famous philosopher. The editor of that magazine, “Hochland,” included this article. He thus actually promoted, as he sees it, a highly credible perspective on this complex Spiritual Science. — You see, it really doesn’t matter whether one defends against it with external means. It is entirely understandable that the very intelligent people of the present day find Spiritual Science foolish. But after the war broke out, something else happened. The editor of the aforementioned journal is a good German, a man who feels German. The man whose article he published back then has now written letters to that editor, and the latter has now, well, let’s say, in his particularly gifted “innocence,” printed them in the *Süddeutsche Monatshefte*. Try reading them, and you will see all the venom and bile that this same philosopher directs against Central European intellectual culture in his letters to the editor of the “Hochland,” so that the editor feels compelled to say: Anyone who thinks such things could only be found in mental institutions in Central Europe. — Just imagine what an infinitely significant critique this is! There is an editor of a South German journal. This editor publishes an article that he considers decisive for the destruction of the Spiritual Science, of which he says: “Now that is a good article on the Spiritual Science by a famous philosopher!” — After some time, the editor receives letters from the same man, which he then describes as coming from a person who belongs in a madhouse. So, reasoning with the logic of life, one ought not to go on and say: If the man is a fool now, then he was a fool before as well, and the good editor simply failed to recognize at the time that he was dealing with a fool when he wrote against Spiritual Science. — That is the logic of life. Sometimes one cannot wait for such logic to take effect, but it is already at work in our lives, and so one can sometimes experience things according to this pattern. At the time, the article appeared specifically against my Spiritual Science. People read it. They said: Yes, he is a famous philosopher and Platonist; he is therefore particularly clever. — The editor told himself: If someone who is so clever writes about Spiritual Science, that is a significant article. — Some time passes, and the same editor says: The man is a fool. — But he first needed the proof in the manner just described. Yes, that is how it goes with the living. Such people, who have as little solid ground under their feet as that editor of the South German journal, really need to be instructed by events that, in a much deeper sense, are being given by the spiritual world through the life of recent times, more than is agreeable.

[ 42 ] And so you will understand when I return to what I said earlier: Our time has been marked by many conflicting forces, and if we call war a disease—and we can do so—it is a disease brought about by something that took place long before, and it is here to bring about healing, so that certain things may be eradicated which, little by little, were bound to lead to the detriment of the life of the entire culture. If we describe it as an illness in this sense, but if we view the illness as a means of self-defense, then we understand this war and the fateful events of the present, and we also understand it in its significant signs and warnings. Then we experience it with all the inner powers of our soul, so that we can become truly attentive to those who have passed through the gate of death and who look toward the near future and will truly have learned what they can then inspire into the souls that are willing to listen: that the spiritual deepening necessary for human salvation and progress in the near future must enter into them.

[ 43 ] And if your souls are able to receive what I wish to convey with these words in the proper way, then you are, in the fullest sense, adherents of our worldview based on Spiritual Science. If your souls can resolve to become the kind of souls who will turn their attention to what is whispered down by those who, through our fateful events, have passed through the gate of ‘death.’

[ 44 ] A bridge is to be built through Spiritual Science, specifically for the near future, between the living and the dead—a connecting link through which the inspiring elemental forces of those who have made great sacrifices in our time will be able to find their way across.

[ 45 ] That is why, in these days, as I teach and speak to your souls, I have sought to stir up certain feelings. These feelings should be like the anticipation of what is being communicated to the souls through the effects of our fateful times.

[ 46 ] In this spirit, let us conclude today once again with the words I spoke here the day before yesterday, words that are meant to resonate in our souls like a mantra, so that our souls may become expectant—expectant of the inspiration that will come from the dead, yet which, in spirit, will become especially alive:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of battle,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruit of the spirit grows
Souls, spiritually aware,
Send their meaning into the spirit realm.