The Rudolf Steiner Archive

New Year's Reflections II

[ 1 ] If it was good yesterday, on New Year’s Eve, to delve into the various mysteries of existence—into matters connected with great supernatural mysteries, such as the annual transition from one year to the next, and the great cosmic New Year’s Eve and New Year—then, as I said, it was good yesterday to delve into these mysteries—which speak to the depths of our soul and lie far removed from the outer world—then it might perhaps be of particular significance, especially at the beginning of a new year, to allow at least some of our great and significant duties to come to the forefront of our consciousness. These duties are, of course, connected to what we can learn about the course of human development through Spiritual Science. They are connected to the insights regarding the path humanity must take as it strides toward its future. One cannot recognize the duties in question unless one attempts to cast an open gaze upon one’s own time across a wide variety of fields. We have done this repeatedly in the course of our reflections. Yet it may be fitting, as we enter a new year, to bring to mind some of what might be familiar to us.

[ 2 ] Certainly, my dear friends, everything that comes to mind in light of our materialistic times and all their consequences—so that we know: Spiritual Science must provide the foundation for advocating, in a higher way, for the true progress of humanity—certainly, everything that appears to us as necessary to do is so immense, it is so far-reaching, it is so significant—to put it simply, there is so much to be done in the present that it is unthinkable that we, with our limited strength, could ever be in a position to accomplish much of what needs to be done. Yet one thing is essential: that we connect our interests with what needs to be done, that we develop an ever-greater interest in what humanity needs, especially in our time. For it must begin with this: that a circle—however small—develops an interest in what humanity needs; that, however small the circle may be, it gains a clear understanding of what forces in the course of history are leading downward and are harmful. Especially at the beginning of a new year, it would be good to direct our focus a little toward the objective, grand interests of humanity—interests that are entirely separate from our personal affairs.

[ 3 ] As I said, this requires clear insights into what is moving, in particular, down a slippery slope in the development of humanity. We need only apply the thoughts that have once again come to mind in recent days to the present situation, and we will find much of what—or at least some of what—humanity particularly needs right now. We have seen how a profound wisdom virtually vanished at a certain point in humanity’s development, how this Gnostic wisdom sank into oblivion, and how we must now work toward ensuring that knowledge of the spiritual rises again—albeit in a manner appropriate to our advanced age. We have also, in the course of this fall, drawn attention to the deeper reasons why the tide of materialism rose so high precisely in the nineteenth century, and I have had to emphasize time and again that the insight of Spiritual Science into this rise of the tide of materialism by no means leads to a failure to recognize or a misunderstanding of the great advances in external, materialistic natural science. These advances must certainly be acknowledged, and it is repeatedly emphasized that we must recognize these materialistic advances in natural science. But it is our particular responsibility to see through the fact that, in the course of the 19th century and right up to the present day, the great progress in the external material realm has been accompanied by a decline in the power of thought—in clear, confident thinking. Clear, confident thinking has declined, particularly in science. Wherever science is pursued, clear thinking—and especially confident, content-rich thinking—has declined. And since belief in authority, even though people may not realize it, has never been as strong as it is in our time, this sense of despair regarding the certainty of thought has spread to the widest circles, to popular thought as a whole. We are living, quite literally, in the age of neglected thinking, and at the same time in the age of the blindest faith in authority. How deeply is the human being today under the impression that he must believe, that he must recognize the authorities sanctioned by external powers. People want to know whether they are entitled to this or that. Today, people for the most part do not even consider that this might be an individual matter, that one might possibly grapple with it oneself! No, they turn to those among whom “law and order are passed down like an eternal disease,” and seek guidance without claiming any right to think for themselves in any way about the matters on which they are being informed. For people consider it right to blindly acknowledge authority. They become sick; they completely spare themselves the trouble of trying to know anything about even the simplest things. Why bother? After all, we have the state-certified doctors for that, and they are the ones who are supposed to deal with our bodies. Our own bodies are actually none of our business! When one wants to decide on any other question, one goes to those who are supposed to know: to the theologians, to the philosophers, to this or that person.

[ 4 ] Anyone who continues this line of thought within themselves will indeed find countless examples within themselves that stem from the most blind faith in authority. And if they can find nothing, my dear friends, then please do not hold it against me if I tell them that the less of this belief in authority they find within themselves, the greater their dose of it actually is! But first I would like to show how inadequate, insufficient thinking has crept into the very finest realms of spiritual life throughout the world—regardless of nation, race, or color—and how a certain element of inadequate thinking is present precisely in the most refined areas of spiritual cultural life. Let us take a branch of philosophy as it has developed. Who today, on the basis of a belief in authority transmitted through many, many channels, would not be convinced that human beings simply cannot in any way approach “the thing-in-itself,” but can only perceive the external appearances, the impressions on the senses, and the impressions on the soul that come from things? One can only experience “effects” from things; one cannot approach “the thing-in-itself.” This has become a fundamental archetype in nineteenth-century thought. I have described this entire predicament in the chapter of my *Riddles of Philosophy* that I titled “The World as Illusion.” Anyone who studies this chapter will be able to gain an overview of this entire predicament. Human beings can only experience effects; they cannot approach the thing-in-itself, which remains unknown. It is precisely the finest thinkers of the 19th century who are infected by this thing-in-itself that must remain unknown—if one can even speak of “fine” in this context.

[ 5 ] If we now examine the line of reasoning underlying what I have just said, it turns out as follows. It is proven—strictly proven—that the eye can reproduce only what it is capable of producing through its nervous processes and other processes. Thus, when an external impression arrives, the eye responds in its own specific way. One can only perceive the impression itself, not what actually makes an impression on the eye. Through the ear, one can only perceive auditory impressions, not what produces the impression, and so on. And so it is only the impressions of the external world that act upon the senses of the soul. Ever since Lange, who believed he had first established this for a specific domain—for colors, sounds, and the like—the general consensus among people has been that human beings can only receive impressions of the world, can only receive effects. Is this wrong? Certainly it is not wrong, for, as I have often emphasized, the issue is not at all whether something is right or wrong, but rather entirely different matters come into consideration. Is it true that only images, only impressions, can be evoked in our senses by things? Certainly that is true. There is no doubt about it. But something entirely different is at play here.

[ 6 ] I’d like to clarify this with an analogy. If we stand in front of a mirror and a second person is also standing in front of a mirror, there is absolutely no denying that what we see in it is the image of ourselves and the image of the other person. What we see in the mirror are images, without a doubt. And in this respect, all our sensory perceptions are indeed images, for the object must first make an impression on us, and our impression—our reaction, one might say—comes to consciousness. We can therefore quite rightly compare this to the images we see in the mirror, for those, too, are images. In this line of thought by Lange-Kant, we are dealing with a perfectly valid assertion that human beings deal with images. We are then dealing with the conclusion that, precisely because human beings deal only with images, they cannot truly access anything “real in itself.” On what does this rest? It is based solely on the fact that one cannot think beyond a given premise, that one remains stuck at a correct premise. This line of thought is not incorrect; but it is frozen in its correctness. For what we see there in the mirror are correct images. But the person standing next to me, with whom I am looking into the mirror, now slaps me in the mirror. Will I then say—even though these are all just images—that one mirror image has slapped the other mirror image? — Here, what is happening among the images points to something very real. If one has not a frozen way of thinking but a living way of thinking that is truly connected to things, connected to realities, then one knows that the Long-Kantian premise is correct: that we are dealing with images everywhere. But when these images enter into living relationships, then these living relationships truly express what leads us into the thing-in-itself. So the issue is not that the gentlemen in question, who have led thought astray, started from incorrect premises; rather, the whole matter rests on the fact that we are dealing with a frozen way of thinking—a way of thinking that leaves one standing there saying, “Right, right, right”—and unable to go any further. This neglected thinking of the 19th century lacks flexibility and vitality. Thinking in the 19th century has frozen—truly frozen.

[ 7 ] Let’s take another example. Over the course of the past year, I have often shared with you various insights from an honest thinker, Mauthner, the great critic of language. With Kant, it was a “Critique of Concepts.” Mauthner goes further—after all, what comes later must always go further: he offers a “Critique of Language.” I have shared a few samples from this “Critique of Language” with you over the course of the fall, and indeed throughout the year; you will recall. Today, such a man has many followers. He was a journalist before he joined the ranks of philosophers. An old proverb says: One crow does not peck out the other’s eye. — Not only does it not peck out the other’s eye, but blind crows are even given eyes by the other crows—if those crows are journalists! As I said, I have absolutely no objection to the honesty, or even the thoroughness and depth—in the modern sense of “depth”—of such thinkers, for I must emphasize again and again that it is incorrect to say that criticism is being leveled here at, say, the natural sciences or any other endeavors—the aim is merely to characterize them. That is why I say explicitly: Mauthner is an honorable man—and “they are all honorable men”—but let us consider a line of thought that is very much in the spirit of linguistic criticism. For example, it is said: Human knowledge is limited—so says Mauthner. Limited—why limited in his sense? Well, because what a person experiences of the world enters his soul through his senses. Certainly not a very profound truth, but an undeniable one nonetheless. Everything from the external world, from the sensory world, comes in through the senses. But Mauthner has now arrived at the idea that these senses are “accidental senses”—that is, that instead of the eyes, ears, and senses we already possess, we might just as well not have them at all and possess different senses instead. Then the world out there would look entirely different. A very popular idea, in fact, among some philosophers of our time! And so it is actually by chance that we have precisely these senses—and thus this world as well. If we had different senses, we would have a different world. “Chance senses”!—Someone who has followed in Fritz Mauthner’s footsteps, for example, might say something along these lines: The world is immeasurable, but how can a human being know anything about this immeasurable world? After all, they have only impressions through their “chance senses.” Through these random senses, through the gates of these random senses, many things pour into our soul, and there they take shape, while outside the immeasurable world continues on its course, and human beings can know nothing of the laws by which this immeasurable world operates. How can a human being “believe that what he experiences of the world through his random senses has anything to do with the great mysteries of the world out there?”—So says a follower of Fritz Mauthner, who, however, does not consider himself a mere follower, but rather one of the wisest people of our time. One can translate this train of thought into another. I want to remain entirely true to the character of the thought form, merely translating the thought into another.

[ 8 ] One can never really grasp the full extent of what a genius like Goethe has given to humanity, for a genius like Goethe can, after all, do nothing other than express what he had to give to humanity by grouping it, as it were, into the twenty-two or twenty-three random letters we have, which arrange themselves on the paper according to their own laws. But how can one ever grasp anything of the essence of Goethe’s genius from what is arranged on paper by those twenty-three random letters? No matter how clever the person who believed: “Since Goethe had to express his entire genius through the twenty-three letters A, B, and so on, one cannot gain anything from them regarding his genius and its achievements”—just as wise would be the person who says: “The world out there is immeasurable; one cannot know it, for we have nothing within us except what enters through our random senses.”

[ 9 ] But the fact is that this neglected way of thinking is not limited to the areas I am discussing now. It is simply particularly glaring there; it is present absolutely everywhere. It permeates our entire human coexistence. It is at work in the deeply tragic events of the present, for these would not be as they are if all human thinking were not permeated by what, in a field such as the one indicated, expresses itself only in the most extreme way. One will never be able to take a genuine interest in this field—I mean: in the field of human activity, properly understood in the sense of Spiritual Science, aimed at true progress—unless one has the will to engage with these matters, unless one is willing to see what humanity truly needs. Time and again we hear objections here and there to the findings of Spiritual Science: These are accessible only to those who look into the spiritual worlds through clairvoyance. — And no one will ever believe that this is not true, but rather that the point is that one can truly enter, through thinking, into an understanding of what the seer brings forth from the spiritual world. But one should not be surprised that today one cannot grasp through thinking what the seer brings forth from the spiritual world, if this thinking is of the nature that has been described. This way of thinking is the dominant force. It has permeated all fields. And it is not because one could not understand through thinking everything that is proclaimed by Spiritual Science that it is not understood, but because one allows oneself to be infected by the weak-minded, neglected thinking of the present. What matters is that Spiritual Science inspires us to intense, resolute thinking! And Spiritual Science is perfectly suited for this, my dear friends. Of course, as long as we approach Spiritual Science in such a way that we merely allow ourselves to be told what it is all about, we will not get very far in the kind of thinking that we ought—I would say—to foster for the future of humanity. But if we strive to truly understand things, to truly grasp them, then we will certainly make progress.

[ 10 ] But it is precisely the view of Spiritual Science that is influenced by the neglected thinking of the present day. I have shown you how this neglected thinking actually works. I said: We experience effects only from the external world, so we cannot reach the thing-in-itself. Now the thought immediately comes to a standstill. People do not want to go any further. Now they no longer see that what the images are in their living interplay leads beyond mere imagery. This is now transferred to the understanding of Spiritual Science. Because people are completely infected by such thinking, they tell themselves: What the spiritual scientist describes on pages a, b, and c are facts of Spiritual Science. One cannot have these before one’s eyes unless one has attained the gift of clairvoyance. And so they no longer consider whether they might also enter into the interrelationship of what the person who practices Spiritual Science says; they make the same mistake that the whole world makes today. The trouble is that this fundamental flaw in contemporary thinking is so rarely recognized, so rarely seen through. And it is truly seen through very rarely indeed. It permeates our most everyday thinking, asserting itself there just as much as it does in the ostensible realm of philosophical or scientific thought. And people rarely realize what an immense responsibility actually arises from recognizing this fact, how important it is to take an interest in these matters, and how irresponsible it is to allow one’s interest in them to wane.

[ 11 ] It is now a fact that, over the course of the last few centuries, purely external sensory observation has come to dominate science; I have often emphasized that people attach primary value—and I have often emphasized what value should be attributed to this—solely to what they observe in the laboratory, in the clinic, or in the zoo; that they wish to stop there. Certainly, tremendous progress has been made through this scientific method, but it is precisely in the wake of this progress that thinking has been completely neglected. And from this arises the duty: not to allow those who seek power on the basis of mere materialistic experimental knowledge to come to power in the world—for it is power that these people are after, and today we have already reached the point where, through the most brutal power plays of materialistic scholarship, everything that is not materialistic scholarship is to be eliminated from the world. It has already become a question of power. And among those who today most vehemently appeal even to external powers to have their external materialism privileged and sanctioned, we see precisely those who stand solely on the ground of materialistic science. That is why it is essential to understand how the balance of power operates in the world. It is not enough for us to be interested merely in our personal circumstances; rather, we must develop an interest in the great affairs of humanity. Certainly, as individuals and even as a small community, we will not be able to accomplish much today, but the cause must spring from such small seeds. What good does it do if many people today say they have no confidence in conventional medicine and seek, by every other means, that in which they do have confidence? That is not the issue at hand. All of that is merely the personal pursuit of one’s own affairs. What matters is having an interest in ensuring that, alongside today’s materialistic medicine, that in which one has confidence is given its rightful place. Otherwise, it would mean making the situation worse day by day. It cannot simply be a matter of someone who has no trust in today’s so-called scientific medicine now seeking out someone else. By doing so, he actually puts the other person in a difficult position if he is not concerned that the other person is also legally entitled to take an interest in the general course of human affairs. Certainly, today and tomorrow we may still be able to do no more than take an interest in the matter. But this interest in the great affairs of humanity—we must carry it within our souls if we wish to understand the Spiritual Science movement in the true sense of the word. We still often believe that we understand the great interests of humanity because we frequently interpret our most personal interests as if they were precisely the great interests of humanity.

[ 12 ] We must search deep, deep into the recesses of our souls if we are to discover within ourselves just how dependent we actually are on the blind faith in authority that characterizes our times—just how thoroughly we are dependent on it. Our complacency, our comfort—that is what prevents us from being, at least initially, inwardly inspired and inflamed by the great causes of humanity. But that is precisely what we can inscribe in our own souls as the best New Year’s greeting: to be inflamed, to be inspired by the great causes of human progress and true human freedom. As long as we cling to the notion that there is still something deep down that makes us believe: that whoever is heralded by the world as a great man must surely be capable of thinking something correct about something—as long as we have not thoroughly torn this belief, which is specifically connected to and nurtured by the neglected intellectual organism of the present, from our souls, we have not yet acquired an interest in the great general affairs of humanity.

[ 13 ] What I am saying is in no way directed against individual great men. I know that there are many—especially when such matters are discussed in public lectures—who say: “Spiritual Science is attacking modern natural science; it is attacking authorities.” — I choose precisely those authorities of whom I can say, on the other hand: they are significant authorities of the present, they are great men—precisely to show how, in the great personalities of the present, that very thing asserts itself which Spiritual Science must root out completely. And even if one is not a great man oneself, one can still keep a watchful eye on great men to see the neglected thinking that is fostered precisely by the advances, by the bright and glorious aspects of contemporary experimental science.

[ 14 ] An example—but truly just one among many: I’ll take a book written by one of the most significant figures of our time—it has also been translated into German—so, as I said, let no one claim that I in any way refuse to acknowledge someone’s greatness. I state explicitly: The book comes from a prominent contemporary figure in the field of experimental natural science. I open to a page—the introduction to the second volume—which, after this great man has addressed specific questions of contemporary cosmology, delves into the development of worldviews, into the history of the evolution of worldviews, and states, roughly: In the times of ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and ancient Rome, people sought in one way or another to form a picture of the world—a worldview—but then modern science emerged over the last four centuries; it has swept away everything that came before; it has finally hit the jackpot and arrived at the real truth, which now only needs to be further developed.

[ 15 ] I have often emphasized: it is not so much what people claim in specific instances, but rather that they are immediately seized by the demonic Luciferic or Ahrimanic character, becoming Luciferic or Ahrimanic at once. And so, at the end of this introduction, we read the following, which is most remarkable. Now pay close attention to what we might find in the words of a man who is undoubtedly a great and significant figure of our time, who, after speaking in terms of how magnificent scientific knowledge is, says: “The times of sad decline lasted until the reawakening of humanity at the beginning of the new era.” The art of printing placed itself at the service of scholarship, and the contempt for experimental work disappeared from the views of the educated. But progress was slow at first, due to resistance from old preconceived notions and a lack of cooperation among the various researchers. These hindering circumstances have since faded, and at the same time, the number of researchers and their tools in the service of the natural sciences has increased rapidly. Hence the magnificent progress of recent times.”

[ 16 ] And now the final sentences of this introduction: “One sometimes hears it said that we live in the ‘best of all possible worlds’; it is difficult to say anything well-founded about that, but we—at least the natural scientists—can state with absolute certainty that we live in the best of all possible times. We can do so in the firm hope that the future will only get better...,” and now comes the part where—forgive the harsh expression!—one might either fall off the stem upon reading it, or be driven to climb the walls! The person in question wants to let everything that has been thought about nature and the world in the research of great men pass before his mind now, in these times. That is why he says: “We can, in the firm hope that the future will only get better, say with Goethe, the great connoisseur of nature and humanity:

... It is a great delight,
To put oneself in the spirit of the times.
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we have ultimately come so far.

[ 17 ] In all seriousness, my dear friends, a great man refers in his reflections to the saying of the “great connoisseur of nature and humanity, Goethe”—that is, to the words of Wagner, which Goethe, as is well known, has him utter in *Faust*:

Forgive me, it is a great delight,
To put oneself in the spirit of the times,
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we have ultimately come so far.

[ 18 ] Wagner says so! But Faust replies to him—and perhaps he is allowed to say what Faust says, in the spirit of Goethe, the “great connoisseur of nature and humanity”:

Oh yes! All the way to the stars!

[ 19 ] It fits perfectly with the man who has also made it “all the way to the stars”! Namely:

Oh yes! As far as the stars!
My friend, the times of the past
Are a book sealed to us;
What you call the spirit of the times,
Is, in essence, the spirit of the masters themselves,
In which the times are reflected.
So it is truly often a pity!
People run away from you at first glance.
A garbage bin and a junk room,
And at most a grand, state-level campaign
With excellent pragmatic maxims,
Just as they would suit the puppets’ mouths!

[ 20 ] and so on. “Let him not be a blindingly foolish fool,” it also says earlier. Thus, in 1907, one of the “greatest men of the present,” who has, however, “reached as far as the stars”—and who has achieved this by looking back on all the others who worked before him—writes the following, attributing these words to “Goethe, the great connoisseur of nature and humanity”:

It is a great pleasure,
to put oneself in the spirit of the times.

[ 21 ] They laughed. But one can only wish that this laughter were truly applied whenever such neglected thinking is asserted within the very circles that hold power today. For this is an example that truly demonstrates to us how precisely those who stand firm, who stand securely on the ground of today’s scientific worldviews—worldviews that are even linked to “great advances in this field,” and who themselves have made great advances—can produce such neglected thinking. And this proves that what is called materialistic natural science today by no means excludes the most superficial thinking. One can have a completely derelict way of thinking and still be a great figure in the field of external natural science today. But one must be aware of this, and one must be able to act accordingly. This is a hallmark of our time. But if it continues to be the case that once someone is labeled a great man, he is automatically regarded as a great authority, and whatever he has to say in this or that field is cited uncritically as something that ought to carry weight, then we will never overcome the great misery of our time. I am convinced that countless people today skim over the passage I read to you, not even laughing at it when they read it, even though this passage is precisely one that points out to us, in the most eminent sense, where the deepest ills of our time lie—ills that are leading the development of humanity in the present into decline. And we must recognize where to begin with what humanity needs; and that, despite the immeasurably great advances in the external natural sciences, it has become possible for precisely the greatest natural scientists of the 19th century—and right up to the present day—to have become the worst dilettantes with regard to all questions of worldview, and that this is the great harm of our time—that people today fail to see through this—fail to see that the greatest natural scientists of the 19th century must necessarily be the worst dilettantes in matters of worldview if they surrender themselves entirely to what reigns as “spirit” within the materialistic view of nature— and that people follow these great personalities even when these great personalities do not merely present the results of their laboratory experiments and clinical investigations, but when they speak about this or that aspect of the mysteries of the world.

[ 22 ] Therefore, alongside the popularization of science—which is useful and beneficial in the highest sense—we are simultaneously witnessing a decline in all matters of worldview, a neglect of critical thinking that is spreading like an epidemic, like a plague, because it devours everything, everything, and because it ultimately stems from the terrible amateurism of precisely those who are great men.

[ 23 ] These are the tasks to which—at least for now, even if we cannot take any action—my dear friends, our interests must be directed. We must at least understand how things stand, and we must form a clear mental image of the fact that, above all, it would lead to times far, far sadder than those we are currently experiencing if what has been hinted at here were not understood by people, if clear and sound thinking could not once again be instilled in humanity to replace this neglected way of thinking. Everything can be traced back to this neglected way of thinking. What confronts us as an external, often deeply tragic phenomenon would not exist if this neglected way of thinking did not exist.

[ 24 ] It seemed to me that, at the start of the new year, we ought to speak precisely about these matters, which must be connected to the spirit and character of our entire undertaking. For if we get into the habit of taking an unbiased look at the way people think today, and at how this way of thinking exerts a powerful influence on all—absolutely all—circumstances, only then will we gain a clear picture of what needs to be done and what humanity particularly needs. To do so, however, we must overcome certain longings for complacency, certain longings for laziness and inertia; we must truly be able—at least at first—to create mental images of the task of a Spiritual Science movement that involve more than merely listening to or reading lectures. Familiarizing ourselves with the relevant ideas—I must emphasize this again and again! Of course, as individuals and as a small society, we cannot do much at first. But our own thinking must move in the right direction; it must know what is at stake; it must not itself be exposed to the danger—if I may use the trivial expression—of falling into the trap of worldview dilettantism, particularly on the part of those who are the greatest minds of our time in the field of the external sciences. Great men who are, however, dilettantes in matters of worldview establish all sorts of worldview societies—monist societies and God knows what other kinds—without the proper objection being raised, which would consist in at least being clear that when such people establish worldview societies, it is just as if one were to say: “I’ll have this man measure me for a coat, because it has been shown that he is an excellent shoemaker!” — It is nonsense, but it is precisely this kind of nonsense when a great chemist or a great psychologist is accepted as an authority on worldviews. That they do so themselves is not something one can hold against them, for they naturally cannot know how inadequate they are. But the fact that they are accepted is connected to the great ills of our time.

[ 25 ] It seems to me, my dear friends, as if our feelings regarding eternity might be connected to a New Year’s Eve reflection, and as if what is immediately incumbent upon us with regard to the task of the day—what is incumbent upon us with regard to our immediate obligations—might be connected to a New Year’s reflection. So it does seem to me that the tone of a New Year’s reflection may relate to the tone of a New Year’s Eve reflection in the same way that the words I have spoken today relate to the words I spoke yesterday.